The Al Gore Solution

Why Al Gore?

Al Gore can accomplish what probably no one else can:  he can win the presidency in 2008 in a landslide, and provide very long coat tails to increase the Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Our country faces unprecedented challenges at this point in our history and we need a leader of extraordinary judgment and vision to restore us to our former position of leadership and respect.  For a good summary of Vice President Gore’s record of accomplishments, please visit Wikipedia.

How can it happen? 

The nomination of the presidential candidate from each major party is accomplished according to the rules of the party.  The Democratic nominee must achieve a majority of delegate votes (in 2008 that will be 2024 or 2025 votes) at the nominating convention.  It is now mathematically impossible for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to achieve 2024 pledged delegates, even if one of them were to win every remaining pledged delegate.  Therefore the nominee will be determined by the actions and votes of the Super Delegates.  There are approximately 795 super Delegates, some of whom have not yet been chosen, of which over 300 remain uncommitted to either delegate.  If a sizable portion (approximately 100) of the super delegates abstain from voting on the first ballot at the convention, neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton will win the ballot.

Second, and possibly further, ballots will be needed and we will have what is known as a “brokered convention”.  After the first ballot, the pledged delegates are no longer honor bound to vote for the candidate they were elected to represent.  Party leaders, including the two candidates, will attempt to work out an agreement and other candidates can be entered into nomination.  Our campaign is designed to let the leaders know that if they reach an agreement to draft Al Gore as our nominee, there is a huge amount of public support for this option. 

Once such an agreement is reached, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, assuming both are in agreement, will direct their delegates to vote for the compromise candidate, VP Gore.  Note that the delegates do not need to be released or directed by their candidate to vote for the compromise candidate, but it would be very advantageous for this to happen, to ensure party unity.  Therefore, the most likely scenario is that an agreement will be worked out that both candidates endorse.  This would probably involve one of them being chosen for the vice presidency and the other for another important position.  Our campaign has no official position on who should be VP, but one proposal that has been mentioned often is for Senator Obama to serve as Vice President and Senator Clinton to become the next Senate Majority Leader and/or receive the nomination for the first opening on the Supreme Court.

Once the agreement has been worked out and communicated to the delegates, another vote would be held and the compromise candidate, VP Gore, would need to meet the same threshold of 2024 or 2025 delegate votes.  (The number of delegate votes required will depend on whether a couple current delegate vacancies are filled prior to the convention.)

You can learn more about this process at the official web site of the 2008 Democratic Convention:

Delegate Selection Rules

Call for the 2008 Democratic National Convention

Convention 101 (an interesting short course in how the convention is conducted)

Convention 101, Delegate Voting

Wikipedia also has two excellent articles that relate to this process:

Wikipedia Democratic Party Presidential Primaries 2008

Wikipedia U.S. Democratic Presidential Candidates 2008

Please note the Al Gore section in particular, where it states:

"Gore is not a declared candidate in the 2008 presidential election. However, he has not rejected the possibility of future involvement in politics."

Has something like this ever happened before?  Isn’t it unprecedented?

While it has become less common in recent years, this is not unprecedented.  While it appeared likely that there might be brokered Democratic conventions in 1988 and 1968, those did not take place.  The most recent brokered Democratic convention was in 1952.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was nominated at a brokered convention in 1932.  The 1924 Democratic National Convention ran to 103 ballots before a nominee was chosen.  The brokered convention is a fascinating phenomenon in American political history.  You can learn more about it in these articles at Wikipedia:

Brokered Convention

1924 Democratic National Convention 

United States Presidential Nominating Convention

Of particular interest in this article is the history section, where it explains how primary voting came to be introduced into the nominating procedure and how recent a phenomenon this is.

What about all the people who have worked for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?  Is this fair?

It is a wonderful expression of civic duty to volunteer for or donate to a political candidate that one supports.  Because most candidates can’t win, the payoff for the individual needs to be the satisfaction of knowing one has influenced the outcome and been a part of the public discourse.  This year, thousands and thousands of people have become involved in the process supporting not only Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, but also Senator Edwards, Senator Dodd, Senator Biden, Governor Richardson, Representative Kucinich and Senator Gravel.  Each of those candidates contributed to the formation of what will become our party’s platform for this election.

Each of those candidates can play an important part in uniting our party by urging their supporters to fall behind whomever our candidate will be and reminding us that our main focus, and in fact the goal of the entire process, is not to get a specific candidate nominated, but to nominate the candidate that will run the strongest campaign in the fall, and will win.  We believe that the strongest candidate possible is Al Gore.  Our unwavering goal is to beat John McCain and restore our country to its once honorable state.

Isn’t this undemocratic?  Won’t people be disenfranchised?

This entire scenario is allowed under the rules of the Democratic Party.  Even though many states hold primaries where people can vote for their choice for nominee, presidential nominee is not an elected office.  The primaries and caucuses are just part of the entire process.  Political parties are private organizations.  Their nominating procedures are determined by their own rules, not by laws.  This is why the procedure the Republicans use is so different from what we Democrats use.  The convention is designed to be a deliberative body, meaning that it doesn’t just follow a mathematical formula and rubberstamp a candidate based on votes.  The convention must determine the best candidate through discussion, negotiation and deliberation.  This is why the delegates are not required to vote for the candidate they are pledged to, but only honor bound.  It is also why we have super delegates.  All these pieces are parts of the whole, the whole being the drive to nominate the best candidate possible.

Who will be VP?

We cannot know at this point.  The VP candidate will be put into nomination and voted on.  The party leaders will most likely determine the choice as part of the agreement that is made to put Al Gore in nomination.  If I were placing a bet, I would probably bet on Obama.  He will probably have the most delegates and therefore the most leverage.  We have no official position on this and will gladly accept whomever is chosen. 

Will Gore Accept?

Only the man himself knows the answer to that question.  However, there are indications that he will.  While he has declared clearly and without reservation that he will never serve in a cabinet or any other lesser position, he has made no so-called “Shermanesque Statement” regarding the presidency.  Quite to the contrary, when interviewed by CNN in Oslo in December of 2007, he said, "I haven't ruled out the idea of getting back into the political process at some point in the future. I don't expect to. But if I did get back, it would be as a candidate for president, not in any other position." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0712/10/sitroom.03.html

He has also made videos for Current TV laying out his positions on various current issues.  He has taken an active role in the civic debate of the nation, making important speeches and writing the best-selling book, Assault on Reason.

He has been enormously devoted to the well being of the planet, the country and the party.  We believe that if approached by a group of concerned party leaders and asked to accept the nomination for the good of all, he would be unable to turn it down.