Democratic presidential candidate and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean bolstered his Internet-stoked campaign this week by gaining support from none other than the self-proclaimed creator of the Internet, former Vice President Al Gore. The Associated Press reported Monday that sources close to Gore revealed that the loser of the 2000 election would in fact back the eventual loser of the 2004 election.
Gore, who embarrassingly lost his home state of Tennessee in 2000, will bring some national legitimacy as well as extreme boredom to Dean's grass roots campaign.
After going into hiding for months, gaining 60 pounds and growing a beard following his defeat in 2000, Gore has emerged clean-shaven and even more irrelevant than when he was vice president. Joining Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in breaking the honored tradition of former administration officials keeping tight lips about a sitting president, Gore has given several speeches deriding George W. Bush's policies. Still jealous that President Bush won Florida even after numerous recounts, Gore has aligned himself with a popular gray-haired Democrat.
While Dean, a medical doctor as well as a tax-raising liberal, is not assured victory in the Democratic field through Gore's public support, it will add to his numerous endorsements that have demoralized his opponents.
Gore has distanced himself from those more widely known Democrats who weren't supposed to be trailing the inexperienced outsider Dean.
Dean has surged ahead of his fellow Democrats, leading by 30 and 32 points in two New Hampshire polls. Gaining support from Gore will undoubtedly help Dean perturb the failing campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Kerry blew a gasket recently when he told Rolling Stone magazine, "Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." With that statement, Kerry signaled the beginning of the end of his campaign as well as paving an even clearer path to the nomination for Dean.
Still in Dean's way are Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. Gephardt represents the biggest obstacle to Dean, as the two are neck-and-neck in Iowa caucus polls. Lieberman remains a viable candidate, but the far-left, whose fancy must be tickled during primary season, frowns upon his Bush-like foreign policy positions.
Add to that the slap in the face handed down by his 2000 running mate, Gore, who has decided to jump on the Dean band wagon.
Even after Lieberman delayed announcing his candidacy, just to keep his pledge of not running if Gore did, he received a friendly shaft from the former vice president.
With the green light ahead of him, Dean has a clear road to the nomination.
He is the only one who can trip up his campaign now; and as he has shown, that is a real possibility.
Demonstrating that news of the Cold War's end had not yet reached the slopes of Vermont, Dean, on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, repeatedly insisted that the United States work with the "Soviet Union" to ease the nuclear situation in Iran. Hopefully Gore can coach Dean on the minor detail that the Soviet Union has not existed for over a decade. Gore can lend a valuable hand to Dean, who has a penchant for nearly losing his temper when pressed with hard questions. Perhaps more helpful for Dean would be to adopt the robot-like, monotone, make-you-fall-asleep voice that Gore has.
That would enable him to spew ridiculous theories on how to work with a country that doesn't even exist and not get in trouble. Voters would be so bored that they wouldn't bother to pay attention to the substance of the statement.
Another infamous slip came from Dean in early November when he said, "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." At first, Dean stood by this statement, which he had made in January when he was a little-known fringe candidate. Now that he has become the frontrunner, his fellow Democrat candidates teed off on this most recent comment, calling it "racist."
Dean has since apologized for the statement, but his poll numbers have remained stubbornly in the lead. Dean showed here that he could withstand criticism, but too many controversial comments during a campaign will eventually lead to failure. Again, Gore may be able to teach Dean a few lessons about running a presidential campaign.
Gore, who has the invaluable experience of being an incumbent vice president during peacetime and a good economy and still managed to lose a presidential election, could show Dean exactly what not to do.
Once Dean wins the nomination, Gore's backing will carry even less punch. By then, presumably every Democrat will have rallied around him. His toughest task will be prove how governing the quaint state of Vermont (population 613,000) qualifies him to fight global terrorism and preside over a $10 trillion economy.
