If you are a Gore Fan, Soprano fans feel your pain.

Submitted by stormbear on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 10:07am

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane & My Left Wing


click to enlarge

There is a whole groundswell of people who lean into the TV when Al Gore is on. Endless blog entries are made over the tiniest nuance of Gore's expression, body language and SWEET GOD ALMIGHTY - his actual words.

But at the end of every show, every clip, every soundbite, every video on the Gore-strained YouTube server farm, we never hear "I am running."

The bandwidth used on the nuanced "I have not ruled it out" is utterly amazing. There are only so many ways you can put it, yet the wordsmiths over at the Gore compound have written that phrase in such a way that it means more and more that he will run. At first it was the "I have no plans to run" and that has morphed into "I don't need a 600 day campaign."

And that brings us to today's question, what, Al, do you need? What is Al Gore's decision tree?

Is there a Hillary element? Of all the books I have read, there is not a lot of love shared between the Clinton and Gore household. Yes, Al and Bill had a kumbaya moment after 9-11, but that was Al and Bill, not Al and Hillary or Tipper and Hillary or Tipper and Bill. If Hillary looks to be poised to win the nomination, will Gore jump in to save We The People?

Is there a GOP metric? Would Al be watching the contenders to see what he would face? Would sleepy-headed Fred Thompson (also from Tennessee) raise the ire of Al to push him to Iowa?

Is there a "the world is cooking on high and no one is in the damn kitchen" meme that Al watches? No one else seems to be able to do anything about global warming in our current government and frankly, the current crop of 2008 candidates doesn't seem that worried about it. Yes, they all mostly have somewhat passionate position papers on the environment, with, IMO, Edwards on top, but no one that I have seen has Al's presence on the issue and it is a WEIGHTY issue.

Is there a war switch? By the looks of our current Defeatocrat Congress, the troops aren't coming home until we get a new President. Will Gore get fed up with the sorry state of international affairs compared to the condition he and Bill left the world in 2000? Could it be as simple "screw this, I'm in?"

There are probably a great many factors that would go into this. But my bet, our Larry King Moment won't come until October.

Special Note: Today's strip has two new characters; Larry King and Al Gore.

I love the Al Gore character

Submitted by Linda on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 12:57pm.

He looks like a Brussel Sprout. :)

I'm tired of the will he or won't he, too. But I've got to wonder - is it because the campaigning starts so damn early? We're still 6 months away from the first primary, and I'm sick of hearing about campaigns, and I'm a political junkie.

I'm not sure if not sure if I'd vote for Gore or not. I have before -- but I wonder if his moment is gone. I think he'd make a good top of the ticket in NC, as would Edwards, or Obama. I don't think Clinton would do us any good.

Just my thoughts as I avoid work today. :)

still avoiding work here

Submitted by stormbear on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 1:18pm.

That was a point Gore made to the New York Times...

When I asked Gore why he hasn’t dismissed all the speculation by issuing a Shermanesque refusal to stand, as he did in 2002, Gore said, "Having spent 30 years as part of the political dialogue, I don’t know why a 600-day campaign is taken as a given, and why people who aren’t in it 600 days out for the convenience of whatever brokers want to close the door and narrow the field and say, ‘This is it, now let’s place your bets’ — If they want to do that, fine. I don’t have to play that game."

I think that is the main thing - he is waiting to see what happens because he knows he has plenty of time. I think the front runners are making a mistake for announcing so early. I too am a junkie and I am sick of the front runners - been sick of them for some time. Hillary? Been sick of here for YEARS.

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Town Called Dobson - Daily Political Cartoon: Not all is red in rural America!

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Town Called Dobson - Daily Political Cartoon: Not all is red in rural America!

The season should be shorter

Submitted by Linda on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 2:49pm.

and the financing should be limited.

I think voter participation would be higher if the campaign season were shorter and such obscene amounts of money weren't spent on campaigns. One reason that so many people just don't care is that the candidates have to spend so much time raising money that they wind up sounding like whores, or pandering to the public on entertainment shows like rockstars - signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Wouldn't it be great if what mattered was the substance of what they had to say, and not their end of quarter fundraising numbers?