Analysis: Can Gore score in '04?
washingtontimes.com
By Martin Sieff
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Will the Democrats next year go again for Al Gore? It sounds far-fetched, but don't bet against it just yet.
More than six weeks before the Iowa caucuses provide the first hard test of strength in the battle for the Democrats' presidential nomination, all too many party insiders fear the script is already carved in stone. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean sweeps the Northeast and a swathe of middle-class suburbs on each coast while retired Gen. Wesley Clark conquers the South and West. Next summer's Boston convention then deadlocks. Or, just as bad, Dean and Clark cut a deal but instead of producing a dream team, they reinforce each other's glaring weakness and go down to a landslide defeat of McGovern-esque or Dukakis-ian proportions.
Who can save the party from this nightmare? Who else but Bill Clinton's two-term vice president: the man who polled half a million more votes than George W. Bush in the November 2000 election and won more votes than any other Democrat in history?
But didn't Gore, after months of prevaricating, pull out of contention for two-oh-oh-four to universal acclaim? Indeed he did. But he has been feeling his oats again recently and party insiders, appalled by how their current leadership race looks like playing itself out, are looking at him in suddenly appreciative ways.
On Nov. 10, Gore gave a powerful one-hour broadside speech blasting the president's Iraq policies to 3,000 activists at a Washington meeting organized by MoveOn.org and the American Constitution Society, a left-of-center legal group. The venue was as significant as the speech. MoveOn.org has established itself with breakneck speed as a dominant marketplace for party debates and policy wonks. Gore was not quite throwing his hat into the ring, but he was clearly signaling that he could and would if the current boxers knocked themselves out.
There are, of course, other way of looking at the 2000 presidential election. The Tennessee Knight couldn't even carry Tennessee and lost three other historic Democratic sure-thing states -- Arkansas, West Virginia and Kentucky -- as well. And whenever by great efforts he managed to pull abreast of Bush he always managed to shoot himself in the foot, most notably by his demeanor in the three nationally televised presidential debates that put off voters by the bushel.
Also, the two Democratic presidential candidates over the past century who lost and then ran again as the party's nominees four years went down to bigger defeats both times. That was the fate of William Jennings Bryan against William McKinley in 1900 and Adlai Stevenson against Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.
However, there are a surprising number of "hard" political factors and precedents that might favor a second Gore run. Only three previous presidential candidates in U.S. political history lost the White House in the Electoral College after taking a bigger share of the popular vote than their principal opponents. All three were Democrats and two of them stormed back to win decisive victories against their old foes in the very next election: Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams in 1824 and 1828 and Grover Cleveland against Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and 1892. Samuel Tilden, who outstripped Rutherford B. Hayes in the disputed vote tallies of 1876, chose not to run in 1880.
Gore would have a lot more than precedent in his corner. The Democrats' biggest problem is to turn out their potential base that, as John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira pointed out in their highly influential book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," is potentially much larger than the GOP's. Gore got half a million more votes than Bush last time, and even that was after Ralph Nader siphoned off 2 1/2 million votes for his Green Party. But Nader is going to be dead in the water next time round. And indeed, Gore has vastly stronger environmental credentials than Dean, the current frontrunner.
Also, Gore does not have hanging around his neck the albatross of the gay marriage legislation that Dean signed into law when he was governor of Vermont. And he proved in 2000 that for all his stumbles he could at least be competitive in Florida. Most recent indications suggest Dean does not have a prayer of equaling that.
Gore even carried must-win California, where he has a lot of support, connections and fundraising potential. Dean is an untested neophyte there. And with Arnold Schwarzenegger breaking the long Democrat lock on the state governorship, the Democrats will want every edge they can get.
Most of all, Gore partisans will argue, Bush did as well as he did with the moderate American center in 2000 by posing as a moderate himself, but the sheep's clothing has long since fallen off the big, bad wolf. Bush's Teflon from the way he led the nation after the Sept. 11, 2001, mega-terror attacks has finally worn off, according to this argument. Even if the economy still booms on a tide of borrowed money, the body bags will still be coming home from Iraq. That means he can be taken, but only by someone who can reach out a lot further than Dean.
There is, obviously, a lot that is problematic about this scenario. Dean may pummel a vulnerable Clark everywhere except the Solid South so hard that his fundraising advantage and enthusiastic Internet-wired partisans will sweep all before them in the Boston convention. Or after a hard-fought fight, Dean and Clark may make potent partners after all.
But then again, maybe they won't. And if they don't, the specter of losing big with Dean may swamp all the Dems' fears of stumbling again with Gore. Besides, Gore is at his happiest playing wanna-be Harry Truman, the angry populist outsider. That horse wouldn't run in 2000. But maybe it will next year
Maybe next year. Boston Red Sox fans say it all the time. Looking at Gore, the Democrats heading for Boston may find themselves saying it, too. |
