Why do just 48% of Democrats in a national poll say they would like to see Al Gore run for President in 2008?

I was at first puzzled by the findings of an Oct. 12-14 Gallup poll as reported in a diary by NYPopulist.  79% of Democrats in the poll have a favorable opinion of Gore, yet

By a 48-43% margin, [Democratic] respondents would like to see the former vice president throw his hat into the ring.

That's a whopping 29% of Democrats who like Gore but don't want him to become a candidate for President.

I learned a lot about these people in the past week as I was out talking to many hundreds of Massachusetts voters, asking them to sign a petition to put Al's name on the presidential primary ballot.

I have a small beef with a large Gore '08 button that Gore drafters are distributing here in New England. Its white letters on a purplish blue background read "Al Gore for President '08," with a thin light green stripe across the middle that outlines the words "The Will to Act."

The button is elegant, quite cool even, but sets the wrong tone, the wrong "frame" for the movement to draft Al Gore for President.  [picture below the fold]

Hillary says that the U.S. must keep nuclear weapons "on the table" -- notwithstanding our treaty obligations.

Despite her upward creep in the opinion polls and the media's willingness to proclaim her inevitabillary, this is no time for voters or the grassroots to take Al Gore off the table.

This morning New York's public radio station WNYC aired a ten-minute story by Christian, a 15-year old Mexican boy who lives in Staten Island and who faces the prospect of a life sentence of being labeled an "illegal immigrant" because his mother brought him across the border when he was 4 years old.

It is impossible to listen to this story without feeling that it is worse than un-American for our government to treat Christian and hundreds of thousands of other undocumented children in this way. It is immoral and inhumane.

We know that many Kossacks favor Al Gore for President in 2008.  (Links too numerous to mention. You know who you are.)

We know that Al is running strongly in polls despite not being a candidate.

We know that Al has put himself in a great position to make a strong run in 2008. (link and link)

Now there is some new and tantalizing evidence from the Washington Times that another key piece of the puzzle for a possible Gore draft and eventual candidacy will be available if needed.

Of the 25 major players who helped raise at least $100,000 for Mr. Gore for the 2000 campaign, at least 12 have not donated or publicly committed to a candidate.

The release of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason on May 22 is sure to be a major political event, and not just because of his subject, which he describes as being

How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy, and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision Making, Degrade Our Democracy, and Put Our Country and Our World in Peril.

It's been known for over a month that Gore is planning a 12-city tour to promote the book. Pundits, Gore admirers, Gore-runners (those chanting "Run Al Run"), and Gore drafters alike see the tour as a chance to learn more about whether Gore intends to enter the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

If Gore's P.R. people are trying to create buzz, which is after all their job, they're doing it by releasing information about the tour in dribs and drabs. There's nothing, nada, on the publisher's web site. However, I have been able to find dates for five appearances from other sources.

Jimmy Carter has said it, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said it, even Madonna has said it. They all want Al Gore to run for president in 2008. Yet their support will be meaningless if Al doesn't run.  

Although Gore hasn't ruled out a run, he appears to be hesitating, and there is simply no way to tell today if the hesitation is strategic, as some believe, or reflects his state of mind.

In American politics a draft is when a large number of citizens organize so effectively that they convince a reluctant candidate to enter an electoral contest. This is a plan of action for a national movement to make Mr. Gore a request he can't ignore.

(Much of this material is re-posted from my April 27 diary.)

Anoodle's FP April 22 diary Gore team assembles... touts a story in the UK Telegraph as "proof" that Gore will enter the campaign for president by the end of the year.

I'm a Gore fan myself so I'm sorry to say this just doesn't check out.

Gore's spokesperson has denied to TPM Cafe's Greg Sargent, that there is "a secret campaign operation." Another advisor told Sargent that the story in the Telegraph was "pure fantasy."

Now we learn from Roll Call (quoted by Raw Story) that as the tempest in the Telegraph's teapot was brewing 12 Gore alums took a poll over lunch in Washington.  The result: 7 of 12 thought that Gore would not enter the 2008 presidential race.

So the $800 thousand-plus "committed" to a Gore run in anoodle's poll don't mean much.  What we do to draft Al to run matters more.  Much more.

Tom Friedman really wants to "Turn the Election Green."  In today's New York Times he writes that addressing energy and environmental questions

will require a carbon tax, or really serious cap-and-trade system, or tighter mileage and efficiency standards -- i.e., sacrifice -- we need our candidates to be talking about such things in the campaign so they have a mandate to act if elected.

He wants to

elevate the issue during the campaign to a level that forces everyone to put a serious energy/environment platform on the table and builds a real mandate for the next president.

Great idea.  The only problem is that Friedman doesn't go on to mention the one thing that is guaranteed to put energy and the environment at the top of the campaign agenda where it belongs, Al Gore running for president.

Kos doesn't do it, but now MoveOn does.

MoveOn.org's latest survey of members' priorities for future actions concludes with a preference poll for 2008 president.

Help us plan our next steps
   We're trying to evaluate our members' enthusiasm and interest in the campaigns we are currently involved in and a few that we might consider working on.

If you had to pick today, who would you say you support for President in 2008?
(List of candidates derived from the March 14th, 2007 New York Times list.)

Former Vice President Al Gore is on the list.  So, Gore fans, here is your chance to vote for your first choice for a change.

This is not a fantasy.  Gore has not categorically ruled out running as he did in 2004.  We may have to persuade him to run with a draft, but if we do, MoveOn could add powerful support to the draft movement.

Last Saturday I was at the Step It Up 2007 rally in Boston carrying a sign that said

Draft Al Gore
in 2007.
Accept no
substitutes.

When I showed it to Congressman Ed Markey after he spoke to the crowd, he raised his eyebrows and said "It could happen."

He was off to another event and didn't have time to discuss it, but here's what I think a draft would mean....

Step It Up 2007 has organized 1100 rallies across the country tomorrow, April 14, for a National Day of Climate Action.  This national event is organized by environmentalist Bill McKibben, and was endorsed by Al Gore in an email on April 3.

Citizen Tube has expressed an interest in featuring a video to promote Al for President in honor of the event tomorrow.  This would help give the Draft Gore movement voice and more coverage, but they need to see a lot more hits and especially comments TODAY to do it.

Please click on this link to view and comment.

More below the fold...

Yesterday, six people from the Cambridge Draft Gore group collected a hundred signatures on the Draft Gore petition at the March and Rally for Peace on Boston Common.  We also passed out over 200 of Draft Al Gore President 2008 flyers and over 30 of our white on green Draft Gore bumperstickers.  

Although the name of our website, Mass4Gore.com, appeared on everything we passed out and the text of the petition was the same as that on DraftGore.com's and (also adopted by AlGore.org), and we used the web to organize the effort, this was pure grassroots, person-to-person politics.  The signatures were in ink on paper, and we had conversations with most of the signers.

The results were well worth the time we put in, and it began a new stage in the local Draft Gore movement.  In this diary I report on the our day on the Common.  I hope that this diary will inspire other Gore drafters to take their activism from the netroots to the grassroots.

[UPDATED  3/26/2007 9:31 EDT.]

This is the first of a planned series of occasional diaries that will track the National Draft Gore Movement, its size and progress and how it is doing in different states and segments of the population, until Al Gore makes a definitive statement about whether or not he will seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.  It will report actual head-counts of participation and support through petitions, meetups, numbers of contributions, pledge drives, and the like, not polling data, as new and interesting data become available.

The Academy Awards ceremony on February 25 marks a watershed for the National Draft Gore Movement.  

This day has been eagerly anticipated by Gore supporters, and Gore himself is reported to have focused on the ceremony for several months because An Inconvenient Truth has been nominated for two Oscars.  If it receive even one, the movie and Gore will receive a new wave of publicity.  Whether or not it does, he will then go on to other things, the publication of his book "The Assault on Reason" (May 22) and the Live Earth concert that he is promoting (July 7)and perhaps then presidential politics.

So how is the Draft Gore Movement doing so far this year?  You've heard the buzz, what do the numbers tell us?

The draft Gore movement is now fragmented.  Besides the two prominent national efforts, DraftGore.com and AlGore.org, there are now some 95 MeetUps some of which are starting to coalesce into state and local Draft Gore groups and will surely develop their own identities and strategies.

As the movement grows, the calls for unity are also growing.  Just this morning in BloggerJohn writes

it is time that these separate expressions of a single passion be united to strengthen the cause.

He's right, but we're not ready for a centralized grassroots organization and may never be.  With the possible exception of MoveOn.org, there is no legitimate leadership to take the reins of such an organization, and unless MoveOn does, there's simply no time to create national leadership on the fly.

This may not be such a bad thing.  Instead we can unite the separate expressions of a single passion by creating a National Draft Gore Movement.  It wouldn't be difficult, and you can help make it happen.  Here's how....

The movement to draft Al Gore to run for President in 2008 is growing and starting to get organized.  Draftgore.com is closing in on 35 thousand signatures (thanks in part to Mike Stark's record-rec'd 2/11 diary "Trouble in Gore-ville").  There are now 93 Draft Al Gore Meetup Groups, and last night they had their first conference call to share ideas and network.

The Draft Gore Movement is much more than a fan club waiting for Al Gore to decide to run.  It is growing into a diverse, grassroots effort to build enough support to change the political landscape in Gore's favor and persuade him to enter the primaries as a declared candidate.

But it is fragmented, with different websites (DraftGore.com, AlGore.org) offering alternative strategies and without recognized leaders.  It will be greatly strengthened if it can unite behind an inspiring mission statement.  Here's a first draft of what a Mission Statement for the National Draft Gore Movement might look like.  

Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your pencils, suggest edits, additions and alternatives in comments and grade in the poll.

Yesterday Kos officially joined the Call Me Al Club (tm)

and he's got plenty of company, from Jimmy Carter ("You can tell Al Gore that I'll support him if he runs.") to  Kossack commenters too numerous to mention to the cartoonist for Rolling Stone.

If Kos believes that Gore really has "got all the time in the world to make a final decision," then he must believe that Gore has magical powers.  

Yesterday I waited in line for an hour in the Harvard Coop Bookstore to have Jimmy Carter sign my newly purchased copy of his book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."  The former President was in the Boston area for the book signing and a speech at Brandeis University in which he rebutted critics of his book.

When I got to the head of the line, still separated from him by a table and a rope barrier, I had the following exchange with him in the time it took him to write J. Carter -- twice.  (This was not much time.  His speed with a pen is still impressive.)

Me: "President Carter I'm working with a group of people to persuade Al Gore to run for President next year.  Would you help us?"

President Carter: "I have been encouraging Al Gore to run for President excessively.  You can tell Al Gore, if he runs I'll support him."

Wow, that puts Jimmy Carter in about the same place as hundreds if not thousands of Kossacks: waiting to hear from Al.