Posted on 07/27/2004 6:54:16 AM PDT by Mike Bates
As Democrats meet in Boston this week, their hopes are high. The Democratic ticket is competitive and — as long as not too many skeletons tumble out of the closet and Mrs. Heinz Kerry can be effectively beseeched to keep her big, rich mouth shut — might well regain the White House.
Prospects for the party could have been far less rosy. Democrats might have nominated someone unelectable.
No, I’m not speaking here of Howard or Wesley or Carol or Dennis or any of the other dwarfs. Their candidacies, if they had ever truly gotten off the ground, would have collapsed well before the convention.
The Democrats did have someone with extensive experience and a dazzling resume. They could have nominated the man who won the popular vote in 2000, Al Gore.
Just because a guy’s been defeated once for the White House doesn’t mean he’s politically poisonous. Presidential losers have run and won.
Thomas Jefferson beat John Adams the second time around. Grover Cleveland won the White House, lost a re-election bid and then won a second term the next time out. Grover is easy to remember because he’s the only president to have another one, Benjamin Harrison, squeezed between his two terms.
More recently, Democrat Adlai Stevenson lost the 1952 contest to Dwight Eisenhower. That didn’t end his aspirations.
He ran again in 1956. This time, the results were different. Having lost by about six million votes in 1952, Adlai dropped the second contest to Ike by 10 million votes. In 1960 his support for the Democratic nomination had dwindled to Eleanor Roosevelt and a few other true believers.
Albert is no Adlai. Gore won the 2000 election with an impressive half a million votes. Democrats still grumble about how the election was stolen because of that little technicality known as the Electoral College. Gore, they assert, is actually the president. If that’s the case, they should have selected him to run again.
Yet the Democrats didn’t even come close to nominating him this year. In December of 2002, he announced he wasn’t interested in another bid.
That was just going through the motions. The party had decided they didn’t want to see Albert head up the national ticket again.
The signs were all there. Gore’s legendary ability to raise large political contributions had substantially declined, and not just in Buddhist temples. Even his book sales were dismal.
The month before he declared he wasn’t running again, a poll of party leaders disclosed only a third of them thought he should try again. At about the same time, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed Gore was viewed favorably by less than 20 percent of Americans.
Not urging Al Gore to run again was a wise move by the Democrats. Albert has shown over time that he’s at least one taco short of being a combination plate.
The guy’s anger and rage are palpable. Sometimes looking as though he’s having a conniption fit, Gore attacks with vein popping fury and is given to outrageous claims.
When the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public, he charged the Bush Administration with setting up "an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be ‘stressed’ and even — we must use the word — tortured — to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say."
Maybe the former vice president hasn’t noticed, but putting underwear on prisoners’ heads isn’t exactly equivalent to cutting them off, the punishment meted out to innocents by the terrorists.
Nor is the American abuse of prisoners even close to resembling the widespread persecutions of those imprisoned in Soviet gulags.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, hardly a conservative, has written that Gore represents the "the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party." This was a surprise, as I’ve always thought the entire Democratic Party is its wackadoo wing.
Last month, Al beefed about how "the (Bush) administration works closely with a network of rapid responders, a group of digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors." Disagreeing with Gore, it appears, makes you a Nazi.
On Monday night, the failed presidential contender addressed the convention. He was noticeably subdued. Either he’s using some anger management techniques or he dialed up his meds in honor of the occasion.
Regardless, the Democrats warrant credit for not again nominating a man so obviously detached from reality. He’s a walking argument for keeping the Electoral College system just the way it is.
I won't watch a minute of the DNCC.
DNC CONvention
The scum and slime’s descending,
On Old Boston town.
Smells like bloated rotting fish,
With them all around.
Bill and Hill and Al Gore too,
Jimmy Carter’s there.
Sandy Berger should show up,
Watch you files with care.
Ted Kennedy is belching,
Or is that his speech.
Hillary announces Bill,
With her famous screech.
Howard Dean will scream out loud,
Really draws a crowd.
Al Gore will bring his lock box,
He’ll be shouting loud.
John Kerry and John Edwards,
Are the central theme.
Biggest libs to ever run,
This is one bad dream.
John will bring his Purple Hearts,
Bought so long ago.
Edwards will just stand and smile,
Nothing else to show.
Me, I’ll keep the TV off,
I don’t need their spew.
They aren’t selling what I’d buy,
Hope that’s true for you.
Conspiracy Guy 7/26/04
Algore won by a half million votes ? Tell that the the disenfranchised military voters who didn't get their ballots counted, courtesy of Algore's crew. Deduct the dead people and their dogs who voted in Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis & Sodak, etc...
OK, but you're missing some great unintended hilarity.
The ONLY thing that I want from the Pablum-Puker Party is to have them ALL take a BIG BIG drink of the Kool-Aid. We'll be happy to clean up after they've gone for good!
When they're gone, it'll definitely be good.
I only caught about 20 seconds (as I was searching for the 9 o'clock news) of some woman for whom English is a second language. Who was she and...was...her entire...speech tha...z-z-z-z-z-z-z
The dems never give up on a lie.
I get too queasy watching them.
There was one pricinct on Chicago's south side that had a 100% turnout, even though about 20 of the voters moved or died.
And the Republicans did not say a word about it, Denny Hastert comes to Chicago and sucks up on the radio programs BIG TIME. Big butt kisser, makes me sick.
O'Hare this and O'hare that, Hastert is more concerned on the well being of Cook County and Mayor Daley than about the conservatives, the man is a disgrace.
That was Theresa!
"That was Theresa!"
ROFLMAO! Can't argue with that...
(But who was the OTHER women fitting that description?)
In the last presidential election, 12 people voted in one St. Louis polling place and 22 votes were recorded.
Some days, it appears that Kerry isn't Kerry either. The Waffle Man.
Was it? If so, her English has improved.
That's what industrial-strength Pepto is for.
If I could yell back at the screechers I could tolerate it. But when I yell at the TV it makes my Lab nervous.
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