It was with some surprise that I read that Al Gore has won the Nobel Prize for Peace jointly with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This has, of course, renewed speculation that he'd make the ideal Democratic Presidential candidate.
It's good to see this kind of international recognition for the world's most pressing issue, climate change, something that had been in short supply until recently.
I have two questions though;
1) Should the Democrats adopt Gore as their candidate?
and
2) Would you vote for him if they did (and if you had a vote)?
For me the answers are YES and YES although with reservations about what this may mean. I certainly *would* have voted Democrat at the last Presidential election on the basis that every vote for Kerry was, in fact, a well disguised vote for a global street party that would have lasted a month. You can't turn your nose up at that kind of joyful celebration surely?
But also look at the two main Democratic hopefuls at the moment. Clinton, blah, nuff said, and Obama who the moment he's flummoxed reached for the war machine - what kind of anti-war candidate is that?
Anyway the candidates all seem to be tilting to the left at the moment, supporting strikes and the like, so it's an interesting phase in the race. Would Gore spice it up or be an unnecessary distraction?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Gore blimey
Labels: Democracy, Environment
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5 comments:
"I certainly *would* have voted Democrat at the last Presidential election on the basis that every vote for Kerry was, in fact, a well disguised vote for a global street party that would have lasted a month. You can't turn your nose up at that kind of joyful celebration surely?"
lol best thing I've read or heard all day, however the reality is more along the lines that Kerry and the democrats are complicit with the republicans. One party can't do everything by itself, especially if it has the minority in the legislative branch.
Gore was never antiwar.
You are woefully wrong about the Democratic Party. It is a bourgeoise party, that goes for antiwar voters, not their ideas.
The US needs a labor party.
The Greens are putting up Cynthia McKinney.
Gore's defeat in 2000 was a transformative political moment for me. I'd always felt that the Democrat-Republican choice was (I can't remember whose words these are) the choice between one grain of arsenic or two. (I felt much the same about our Labour-Tory choice: at the Mayday festival in 2007, someone gave me a sticker I proudly wore: "Don't blame me, I didn't vote Tory Blair".)
In 2000, liberals claimed the Republicans stole the vote, with Florida etc. But the fact is, if so many leftists hadn't voted for Nader, we'd never have gotten GW Bush; Gore would have been the president. Not being a US voter, I never had to face the appalling guilt of having voted for Nader (which I would've) and gotten Bush. This kind of made me re-think my "they're all just the same" view.
(I know this is sliightly at a tangent to what you're posting about, but...)
Looking forward to the announcements of the exec election results :)
Hope the count is going/went well.
studentmedic
re: I don't think Gore is anti-war in any sense we'd understand it - but that doesn't mean that the ideas he's advancing are not progressive in other fields, and well to the left of Hillarywhilst being far more balanced than obama.
To clarify I'd have voted for Kerry despite the content of his programme not because of it. The Democrats have been complicit in the past although the situation is slightly more complex at the current time don't you think.
Anyway, I think the arguments on Nader costing the Democrats the election are pretty thin, at the end of the day it was fraud not a left challenger that made the difference.
Although I've gone off Nader - there seems to be a lot of ego there. Hmmm.
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