Deadlock in Denver...

Al Gore by Acclimation...

We Will See

Dallas112263
AL Gore 2008!

I had every confidence that this would prove to be the case...

Al Gore will be the consensus candidate for President in 2008....

Thanks extended to all who commented, and to Chris Bowers...

Let the then become the now, all in stride.

RGJ/Dallas112263

Al Gore will be elected President in 2008
Not because he is running...
But because he is LEADING!

Jimmy Carter was a one of a kind deal...
Still is...

But 2008 is Al Gore's year.

And it's real early...we need to live in the Now, 2006 is the Now and it is about Congress...

2008 is the Then, and it will be the Now soon enough.

So write checks, blog, vote, be the elephant in every room, until they listen, until they feel, until they can see and finally change.

RGJ/Dallas112263

Al Gore sent me a letter today...
Actually the DNC sent it but it is from Al and Al is asking me to live in the Now, not the Then.

The Now is 2006, control of Congress and raising awareness of the coming climate crisis is what the Now is all about.
Al wants me to send money to the DNC and I am going to do that.
Al wants me to go see the Movie and I will.

2008 is the Then...and we will be there soon enough, and we will be ready.

It is my contention that Al Gore will be the consensus candidate in 2008...
By consensus I mean by mutual agreement, by the endorsement of his candidacy by all of the potential rivals, including a much relieved Hillary Clinton, and his nomination by acclimation on the first ballot. It is entirely possible that his acceptance speech could also mark the announcement of official candidacy.

The poetic symmetry of Al Gore being elected President to clean up the mess created by the man who was appointed President by the Supreme Court in the wake of the theft of Florida is compelling. The fact of life that bothers them even more is our own demonstrated ability to jump start a Presidential campaign and the expressed desire of a large number of us to do so for Al Gore. Combined with Gore's positions on the Iraq War and the illegal expansion of the Executive's power, the spotlight on the looming environment crisis creates an agenda based moral imperatives, right versus wrong, rather than right versus left. Any contest fought on this higher moral plane, as opposed to such pressing issues as flag burning, the preservation of the assets of the very wealthy and the protection of marriage from the onslaught of gate crashing homosexuals will result in a Republican rout, and most of them know it. Everybody except Bill Frist and Denny Hassert, apparently...

Now I know that all the snarkers and kneekickers out there are probably oiling up the old keyboards to denounce my little bit of poetry...and I know it sounds like a pipe dream, sounds implausible... yada, yada...But considering the course of events over the last several years and the real urgency of our situation, it doesn't sound as kooky as electing Newt Gingrich or Bill Frist, ideas that the mainstream media finds completely plausible. Why even the elevation of a third Bush, Jeb, to the purple is not beyond their consideration, wasting considerable paper and ink over the last few months.

So...consider where we were on Halloween night 2000 and where we are now and then tell me it can't happen...

RG Johnson
RGJ/Dallas112263    

Al Gore will be elected President in 2008...
Not because he is running.
But because he is LEADING!

Okay...

Now what are we talking about here?

Giving the Republican dominated federal government more money to waste on Wars and tax cuts for the really rich...

Define rich...80K on two incomes is poverty level where I live, San Jose CA... Certainly not "rich" in any area of the country, though it goes much further in the hinterlands, where I assume Don lives...

Now, I did make a proposal, right after Katerina, that we institute a voluntary tax increase, based on the unfair tax cuts of the Regime, but directed to charity, Habitat for Humanity or other NGO's who care and do not kowtow to the regime. I asked my tax adviser to calculate the amount that we "saved" under the tax cuts, and over a four year period that amount was about $2,700.00 when averaged out, one hand giveth and the other...

So for 14 months, I started in Jan, I will send $100.00 each month to two worthy causes...

So far... Habitiat, the DCCC, the DNC, Cong. Lofgren and BuzzFlash, April went to Seva Foundation, but I get to go to the party (5/20/06, Happy 70th, Wavy Gravy!).

Oh, and one more thing..."conservatives", like Mr. Surber, live in total fear of the fundraising capacity of the NetRoots...and so they should!

When the time comes to organize, to concentrate resources and take action...we are ready and have been since the Dean Campaign...

Swing the Bat!

RGJ

This is a really important issue...

I want to thank all the people active on the blogs. This slender thread, a lifeline to many, a soon to be actually ubiquitous facet of everyday life, the Net, the web, the information superhighway...whatever Al invented..., needs to put in a category of its own.

But I wonder, having lived in Silicon Valley since the late '60's...Are these guys spending billions buying politicians, lobbying for a decade, are these guys running around trying to lock up something we are going to reinvent, you know like getting a monopoly on the 8-trac, woulda been great for a couple of years...

I mean if they really believe in the "free market", don't they realize that the minute they can truly control it, it will become irrelevant...kinda like the "news", I mean if Cronkite's seat can be given to Katie Who...

Then you are irrelevant...

The future is in a decentralized model and we don't have to invent it...it already exists...
These guys are fightin' over the tail...

But at least we know who they are...and who the lackeys are...

RGJ  

Who'da Thunk....

It comes as no surprise to this 49 year old male living in Northern California, with 2.5 years of college, one child, two cars, two incomes, two mortgages and way too much bandwidth, that the most active, opinionated, intelligent and sensitive group of people in the world would naturally gravitate to the same corner of the Universe as we did...

It became obvious to me some years ago that when the wingnuts talk about a 'culture war', what they are really talking about is refighting, and rewriting, the 1960's...Mr. Bush and Mr. Alito have said as much. The swiftboating of Mr. Kerry was a brutal example of the lengths to which they will go to demonize the anti-war movement of the 1960's and the counterculture in general. The score settling in the Hearst and Weatherman cases were another example, while Clinton sought to bind and heal the wounds and divisions, the current rulers seek to use this pain, and other fears, to undo the real progress that the nation made in those turbulent times, we do not live in the world of our grandfathers, and there can be no turning away from the vision of the world, not hungry, not oppressed, not afraid, not ignorant that is the legacy, indeed the soul, of the America of that Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Martin King and John and Robert Kennedy fought so hard to give us.

No, it is no surprise to me that mature men and women of goodwill, education and relative wealth are concerned about the future of our Republic. It would greatly trouble me if they were not... Knowing as I do that my peers are members of that most fortunate of Baby Booms, the one that landed in the middle of the "post-war economic miracle", and having spent my life working with them, I can think of no other group more qualified by nature and temperament to do what needs to be done to rescue our Republic and our Planet.        

And now we have come full circle... I think we all knew this day would come...Nixon showed us what they were capable of, Reagan told us where they were gonna take us and Bush was created to close the deal.

We, we 'liberals', we educated, we prosperous, we have wrought the fruits of what we have allowed sown...We thought we learned some lessons back then, but maybe we really didn't... We did learn to live a little lighter on the land than our fathers and we don't beat our wives and children, but do we really have what it takes to earn the liberty that the blood of our grandfathers so dearly bought?

Is this how the greatest Republic of Free Men and Women that has ever existed comes to an end? On the edge of a limitless future of knowledge and understanding, are we just gonna sit here and let the wrongly powerful, the deceived and the greedy write a final end to the American Experiment, in ignorance and ignominy?

NOT!

Blog, bitch, write letters to the editor, write checks to people who care...VOTE, be the elephant in every room until they listen, until they see, until they feel, until they change...

And of course be the most literate audience on the planet, and honor that by doing...

RGJ  

I have mulled this in the past...and posted elsewhere...it is "doable", under the right circumstances...catch him in bed with a dead girl or a live boy...but still...

Leach..Ok..but I still have funny taste in my mouth left over from '98, but...in concept...

Chris Shays...?

RGJ

Great subtitle to the sequel movie...

"Crashing the Gate, Trolls gone Wild!"

Can't wait to see the trailer...
Coming to a trailer park near you...
"Watch as the evil Freepers assume new identies and infiltrate the boards, posing as mild mannered reporters from Talon News! Watch as our heros, Kos and Jerome, unmask these villians and expose them to a yawning nation, wake up America! The Freepers are at the Gate!"

Great post...

RGJ

Oh...

One more little point...

Bob Somersby is great! The Daily Howler has been howlin' real loud for years, I first was directed to the site in '98 or '99, and I can report that he answers his own email, intelligently.

The fact that some of the so-called mainstream media went after Gore unfairly in 2000 was but a harbinger of what they have wrought... And we all know it. We, and Mr. Somersby, knew it then, the rest of the country was a couple of years and a couple of changes behind (apologies to Jackson Brown...). In 2000 the Fox motto, "Fair and Balanced" was not a punchline... It draws nothing but chuckles now...and not just on the left or in the blogs.

Fox could care less because they don't speak to the Nation, they only speak to the 25% or so who tune in to have their back scratched, the job they do for the Party is to rally the base, show the crazies that they aren't ignored, and doin' a fine job...it's hard work, workin' hard, fine people...

No, we need to restore balance to our media, and one way to do that is to stick Al Gore and Howard Dean down their throats, so to speak...
They have found their voices, nobody runs over them on a panel of three wingnuts and a Democrat. And the last few years have shown us that we can address the nation in other ways than the TV and talk radio, and guess who is out front on that... I mean besides Mike Moore, Howard Dean and blogs, who is using the indy media and the Internet to lead, and to, as Mr. Bush uses the local TV, remove the filter and speak directly to Americans?

http://climatecrisis.org/

Okay, nuf said...

RGJ

Mornin'...

Good article. I much prefer drafting Presidents to drafting 18 year olds...

I think the first Draft Anybody campaign I had an interest in was the effort to Draft RFK, before New Hampshire '68... Seems somebody thought he needed encouragement...When in fact what he needed was for Gene McCarthy to show the way, and for LBJ to get outta the way. He had the fire in the belly...

I think that today's situation is similar in many respects. LBJ was the elephant in the room in '68... His withdrawal in March of 1968 (in those days the campaign didn't start 2 years before the election...) cleared the field, freed his VP, HHH and RFK of any party or personal obligations or impediments.

Today we have two elephants, Senator Clinton and Al Gore. In any analysis of the coming campaign you will find these two "names" have greater pulling power and must be ranked in the first tier. And many would include the 2004 ticket in that ranking as well, though I wouldn't, at least until the elephants make up their minds which door they are going to choose.

Until that choice is made, and it won't be made until next April at the earliest, the second and third tiers will do what they can to appear relevant.

I disagree that "Draft Gore" efforts have not yet had any impact. Most your audience has seen otherwise, I myself was surprised at the depth of reaction to the ML King Speech and that will pale in comparision to the buzz when Inconvient Truth is released. When I googled "Gore 2008" right after that speech I found at least three sites, two of which are relatively new, all up and running and looking pretty slick for volunteers without an announced candidate, 30 months out...before the midterms.

Which brings me to my other point...

It is early...
Al is leading and what Al is saying is let's focus on the 2006 House and Senate campaigns and on raising the alarm and awareness over the rapidly developing climate crisis. These are both vehicles for changes that are needed now, we can't wait intil Inauguration Day 2009...

I have heard no Shermanesque statement from Al Gore, I don't expect one...I do expect him to rap us on the knuckles and say "pay attention, live in the now...". And we all should, so if you want to show the support Al Gore has, and it is huge... then limber up the Bat...dig out the charge card and get on over to the DCCC and let 'em know how you feel, in real terms, fifty dollars at a time...Make sure they know why you did it and who sent ya...

And when the time comes, and it will, we will be there, powder dry, databases full, happy warriors already in the trenches...          

Oh, and Howard Dean is right where we need him!
If he is anything, he is a man of his word, he will not be a candidate for President in 2008, 'cus he promised...and he's different...gotta love him.

I want to thank everyone whom I have met over the last few weeks, at TPM, DKos, The Al Gore Portal, the Gore Support Center, and now MyDD, the blogoshere is true example of our Nation's resilence and the courage of it's ordinary, extraordinary citizens.

I leave you all with one thought, or more of a hope...

I am supporting Al Gore because he is addressing issues of moral imperative, the condition of our planet, the health of Democracy and the nature of our Republic, War and Peace. These are not partisan issues, and they speak to the greater good of all humanity, they are not addressed to any particular narrow constituency.

My hope is that we can all see them in that light, and put aside petty differences and past slights, leadership is not about what I want to do, or what you want to do...

It is about what we must do, together.

RGJ