Anyone who watched Al Gore's performance this week on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (on MSNBC), ought to have picked up that he is running hard for President. Most candidates are unnaturally coy in any event (they want to be wooed and wanted), and Gore has every reason (and it also makes it more safe) to act as if he is out of politics. The thing is his every answer on his two days on Countdown was political.
The main clue was when he was several times offered a chance to bash the Democrats in Congress for wimping out on the Iraq funding bill. Every time he ducked, and got wishy-washy, talking about how hard it is to be a congressman, and so forth. The American People said last fall, take risks, be leaders and get something done! Even Al Gore, for all his passion against the Bush II administration, still doesn't want to take on the outrageous weaknesses of his fellow Democrats.
All the same, he is probably our best bet. We just need not to be so worshipful, as in: Yea Al, we like you and we want you to have the chance you should have had, but one thing you've really got to get - you work for us damn it! Not yourself. Not the Democratic Party either, but for us! So get up off your fat butt (its okay, lots of us have fat butts too) and take some risks. Lead your Party. Tell them they are being dorks and wimps. Be OUR voice!
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When Bill Clinton took over the Center of American Politics, after which in the natural course of things the Republicans took their turn, the True Left of American Politics was without any voice, and this imbalance in the situation led to the excesses on the Right. What this means is that to the extent that leading Democrats want to once again fight over the Center, the needed corrective for balance and harmony in our political life is still absent.
America needs a strong turn to the Left, in order to pull the whole in the necessary direction. This is probably the only national election (the 2008 presidential contest) that can do that correction, because enough people are currently upset with the Right such that tolerance for a Left correction exists for a time.
Obviously this is connected to the War, in the main. What we really need is a Democrat candidate who is strongly in favor of Peace, and a with drawl from foreign entanglements (see Washington's Farewell Address). People are also tired of corporate excesses, so something could be brought forward that questions (lightly) the fake magic of free markets, and other similar excesses out of the world of finance that make of us economic serfs (wage slaves).
The argument that we need a Democrat that can win (using poll data as the criteria) is false. The Country wants LEADERSHIP!!!
True leadership dares, and does not lame itself by worshiping the urgings of pollsters and other so-called campaign experts. Only through this risk taking, will people see that they are being offered the required servant-leadership that can return America to its proper place in the whole of the world's peoples. We don't have to be the greatest world power (a false idol in any event). We just need to be ourselves, Americans - generous of heart and wise in the way that only a young People can be.
We are the first beginnings of a People of Peoples, and the goodness that can come out of that can barely be imagined. Does not the song of our true heart say: " ...and crown thy Good with Brotherhood, from sea to shining sea."
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