Just when you think this election season can’t get any stranger, well, it does.
Two news publications are floating the idea of former Vice President, former 2000 Presidential candidate, and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore could become the compromise Democratic nominee.
Joe Klein explains why this doesn’t seem so outlandish:
Let’s say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let’s also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they’d have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.
The Telegraph picks it up from there:
If neither Mr Obama nor Mrs Clinton has the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination, and if both appear unable to beat Mr McCain, under one scenario a group of about 100 party elders – the “super-delegates” – could sit out the first ballot in Denver, preventing either candidate winning outright, and then offer Mr Gore the nomination for the good of the party.
Tim Mahoney, a Democrat congressman from Florida, said last week: “If it goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket.” This suggests the party would accept a Gore-Clinton or a Gore-Obama pairing.
I have to think that Gore still wants the Presidency, after the mess of 2000. But while some Dems see this as a good idea, I have to wonder how such a thing would play out. In 2000, Gore could have ran on the successess of the Clinton years: an economy that was booming, and government that had a surplus. And yet, he ran away from the Clinton legacy and…well we know how it ended.
To me, that doesn’t show someone who could run against McCain. Of course, I am probably biased being a Republican and a McCain supporter, but unless Gore can run a better campaign than he did in 2000, I just don’t see how he will be able to pull it off.
Like I said, this election year is surely interesting.