Gore Chic

There was a scene in Part I of the "Election Day" episodes on The West Wingin which one character (Bradley Whitford, in the role of Santos campaign manger Josh) screams about blogs posting exit polls that were almost certainly incorrect. (This is, of course, an echo of early exit polls in the 2004 election that were 60-some percent female, hence slanted Dem, hence non-reflective of the actual actual voting population and a result that launched a thousand HuffPostings.)

Anyway, one of Josh's colleagues tells him not to worry. "Anyone who reads 'Barney's Blog' was up at six forty-five to vote anyway."

The comment is, I think, reflective of a kind of Dungeons-and-Dragons aspect to the Blogosphere. What gets discussed here is not often discussed much anywhere else, even if what gets discussed here shows up in print journalism. It would come as a suprise to a lot of people that 260 million or so American citizens do not known who Scooter Libby is, or how Deibold supposedly stole the 2004 elections, or about a book called The Party of Death. I discovered this world in 2000, dove in for good during Rathergate in 2004, and have remained ever since. So sometimes I follow a story for a week or so before I realize that, by and large, very few people, by and large, have been following as well.

This brings me to this week's blogosphere phenomenon, Gore Chic.

Al Gore is back! Or so we're told.

The first hint of this was in, to be fair, the print version of New York magazine, the My Weekly Reader of the "Everyone I Know Voted For Kerry!" set. In a loving portrait, John Heilemann makes the following points:

1. The previous hurricane season has has vindicated his concern--some call it obsession--with climate change.

2. The current state in Iraq has vindicated his forebodings about the war.

To wit:

The burst of enthusiasm for Gore owes much to his emergence, since 9/11, as one of the Bush administration’s most full-throated critics. On state-sanctioned torture, wiretapping, and, crucially, Iraq, his indictments have been searing and prescient, often far ahead of his party. He has sounded nothing like the Gore we remember—calculating, chameleonic, soporific—from the 2000 campaign. He has sounded like a man, in the words of a top Republican strategist, who “found his voice in the wilderness.”

There is also the anti-Hillary sentiment, a sentiment fueled in equal parts disdain (the anti-war netroots, and all the attendant money) and fear. The plan for Hillary in 2008 is simple: hold every state Kerry won, then win either Ohio or Florida. But Hillary vs. McCain or Guiliani in either state? For once, the Dems seem gripped by the next-in-line protocol that has ruled the GOP since Goldwater--in a narrative that places Hillary in the role of Bob Dole, circa 1996. Heilemann again:

But the Gore boomlet is also being driven by another force: the creeping sense of foreboding about the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s march to her party’s nomination. “Every conversation in Democratic politics right now has the same three sentences,” observes a senior party player. “One: ‘She is the presumptive front-runner.’ Two: ‘I don’t much like her, but I don’t want to cross her, for God’s sake!’ And three: ‘If she’s our nominee, we’re going to get killed.’ It’s like some Japanese epic film where everyone sees the disaster coming in the third reel but no one can figure out what to do about it.”

Then, there is That Movie. An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's global warming movie, essentially a film of a slide show, if you need it, but apparently the hit of both Sundance and Cannes. Arianna swoons--is it possible that Al Gore is actually cool?

He's saying no -- but you can hear the "Run, Al, Run" chant growing louder.

"Democrats are looking everywhere to find their presidential candidate," Graydon Carter told me. "But the solution may be right under their noses."

And I think that the pressure on Gore to run will only increase as we move toward 2008.

Sure, that's a lifetime away in politics. And the shelf-life of movie buzz isn't very long -- I doubt people will be debating the relative merits of X-Men 3 and The Break-Up two months from now, let alone a year and a half.

But the debate over global warming is only going to heat up -- and Gore has a whole campaign planned to ensure that it does.

"We are planning to train a thousand people to be able to deliver the presentation all over the country," he told me, "so we can more quickly reach the tipping point."

And finally, the Kos Kidz bring their 0-21 record to bear. His anti-war bonifides in place, his environmental hectoring finally bearing fruit, Gore is the ideal candidate of disaffected alienation. In a fantasy straw poll, named so specifically because it includes Gore, Gore scores 68% over about a dozen Dem rivals for the nomination.

Money breeds money the way momentum breeds momentum. If the GOP loses one or both chambers in November, Hillary becomes a palatable candidate, as representative of the little-of-this, little-of-that strategy the Dems are attempting. If the GOP stays in control, the Dems will be ready for a psychic purging, and serious money behind him, Gore would emerge as the likely alternative.

Having built all this up, one must ask, will it happen?

No.

More on this tomorrow.