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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (19189)	12/9/2003 10:20:24 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793725

Dick Morris agrees with David Frum. WHY GORE'S BACKING DEAN Dick Morris - NY Post December 9, 2003 -- IT'S payback time for Al Gore. Dissatisfied at how thoroughly forgotten he is among active Democrats and resentful of all the attention Sen. Hillary Clinton, his White House rival, is getting, Al has reportedly decided to flank the Clintons by backing Howard Dean for president. Forget the November election. The fight we are witnessing is a battle for control of the Democratic Party. In one corner stand the Clintons, sending contender after contender out to center ring in an effort to stop Dean from taking over their party. First Joe Lieberman came limping back. Then Wesley Clark ran away from the early primaries and forfeited the match. And now John Kerry is so far behind in New Hampshire that he is down for the count. In the other corner is Dean, backed by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and now Gore, battling to take the party away from Hillary and craft a new Democratic left. Rejecting Clintonian, Democratic Leadership Council-style moderation, Dean and Gore are letting their liberalism hang out as they garner popularity on the left. The tail is taking over the dog. One-third of Americans are Democrats. One-third of the Democrats are liberal activists backing Dean. And now they are dictating policy to the entire party. Dean has mobilized this new power to get power; now Gore is using it to get his relevance back. Hillary, anxious to keep pace in the move to the left and stay the leader of the party, goes to Iraq and on the talk shows to bolster her image as a liberal, living down her vote for the war resolution. She sees the decade-long reign of sanity in the Democratic Party leadership coming to an end and is determined to make it in the brave new world. Enter Al Gore. Robbed of the presidency (in his view), he has been sidetracked by the Clinton machine that once lifted him from the dustbin of history and made him vice president. Has anybody thought of Al Gore in the past six months? Apparently Dean has. Their common cause: independence from Hillary and Bill. Gore likely knows that Dean won't win. But by backing him, he begins to carve out his own identity in the post-Bill Clinton, post-moderation post-sanity Democratic era. Or maybe he just wants to be vice president again? nypost.com

To: John Carragher who wrote (19189)	12/9/2003 4:11:28 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793725

"Who's your Daddy?" Cliff May on Gore's ascendency. December 09, 2003, 11:08 a.m. The Dean Machine Now it's Gore-powered — Clifford D. May was communications director for the Republican National Committee from 1997-2001. A former New York Times foreign correspondent, he now heads the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. It's come to this: Howard Dean will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2004. Today, the remaining Democratic candidates will be brainstorming furiously, trying to figure out a way to prevent the inevitable. But the only way is to take off the gloves and start throwing punches at Dean's fast-moving mouth — and they'll decide not to do that, in part because Al Gore this morning warned them not to, in part because the candidate who attacked Dean would not only drive up Dean's negatives but also his own. In other words, whoever brought Dean down would benefit not himself but another candidate in the race. Such a spirit of self-sacrifice is not evident within this field of wannabees. It's come to this: Either Al Gore will be asked to be secretary of state in 2004, or Hillary Clinton will be asked to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. It's one or the other, it can't be both. Did you notice that Gore said this morning that he wants to "remake the Democratic party"? Well, he's taken the first step: The Democratic nominee next year will be his boy, not the Clinton's. It's come to this: Hillary Clinton now leads the moderate wing of the Democratic party, the faction that favors a muscular foreign and defense posture. Today, Gore branded Dean as the antiwar candidate, the candidate who believes it was a mistake to liberate Iraq from a genocidal dictator, the candidate who thinks Iraq is a Vietnam-like "quagmire." Until now, Dean has been careful to be ambiguous in these regards. Until now, he has attempted to have it both ways, to say on some occasions that he wasn't sure it was better that Saddam was gone, on other occasions that it was a good thing to have toppled the tyrannical Baathist regime. Sometimes he says we were wrong to go into Iraq and that we need to get out, but other times he says that to pull out would not be responsible. To be the antiwar candidate at a time when most Americans support the war is a high-risk strategy. But ten months from now, if we aren't making visible progress in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts in the war on terrorism (or if Americans aren't convinced these are fronts in the war on terrorism) the Gore/Dean analysis may look prescient. It's come to this: Howard Dean is picking up the flag that Al Gore dropped, and rightfully so. Al Gore is not just a former vice president and presidential candidate. He's also a former tobacco farmer, mule driver, homebuilder, inspirer of Love Story, discoverer of Love Canal, and creator of the Internet. He has reinvented himself more often than Madonna. As David Brooks makes clear in his New York Times column today, Howard Dean also exhibits this chameleon-like skill. It's come to this: Republicans are getting their wish. Dean is the candidate most have prayed for (assuming, I guess, that Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Mosley Braun weren't going to pull off an upset). But those Republicans breaking out the cigars and bongo drums should get back to work instead. Exactly which states that Gore won in 2000 are slam-dunks for Bush today? I can't think of one. And do you remember a few years ago when the Democrats were battling for the California gubernatorial nomination? It was Jane Harman vs. Al Checci vs. Gray Davis and most Republicans wanted Gray Davis to win because they thought he'd be a terrible candidate. Turns out they were wrong. He was a good candidate, even though he became a terrible governor. Howard Dean could be cast from this same mold. nationalreview.com