I should say up front that I'd be completely stunned if he entered the race. But there's an interesting on-line poll at Daily Kos looking at the possible effect of such an entry. There are lots of choices but essential it comes down to "I like candidate X and would stay with her" or "I'm supporting X, but I'll dump her for Gore if Gore joined the race". Why is the poll interesting? Well Daily Kos is always a good place to get a sense of netroots opinion, and among them (with 7800 votes tallied) most supporters of Clinton and Obama would stay with their favored candidate. Only 38% of Clinton backers would move to Gore, and only 42% of Obama backers would. However, Edwards would lose over 2/3's of his support. It would appear he has the most to lose from a Gore candidacy (not that one is going to happen).
Posted by armand at October 11, 2007 07:23 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsOK, so he won it. Good for him. But have you heard the headlines? I heard it on NPR and just copied it from CNN: "Gore shares Nobel Peace Prize with U.N. panel." Now, the medicine prize guys weren't listed as "sharing" (see for example: 3 Scientists Win Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Al Gore, even when he gets the Nobel prize, the headlines say he shares it. The long way of saying, I don't think he's getting in the race, especially because he knows that no matter what he does, he going to be lukewarm for the masses.
Posted by: binky at October 12, 2007 08:39 AM | PERMALINKHe's not going to get in the race because Hillary's campaign has been telling all the old Clinton-Gore people that if they go to work for a competing campaign the Hillary team will ruin them professionally for life. Same deal with the big donors: support someone else and they'll be shut out of the Dem establishment forever.
The Clintons are still very much the Clintons, and they are doing an excellent job of reminding me why I freaking hated their guts for eight years.
There's nobody to work for Gore, and nobody to fund him. It's too late. He can't get in at this point -- absent a Hillary collapse.
Posted by: jacflash at October 12, 2007 09:51 AM | PERMALINKWell for what it's worth Team Hillary has been doing that for ages now - immense, threatening pressure - and there's still a lot of money that's gone to Democratic candidate not named Clinton.
But that said, yeah, he's not running.
Posted by: Armand at October 12, 2007 11:13 AM | PERMALINK