Not really a surprise,
but it seems certain now:
Al Gore says that he will not run in the 2008 election, saying he was involved in "a different kind of campaign."
Al Gore, who is currently in Japan promoting his award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", spoke with journalists in Tokyo, saying, "The U.S. should be leading the world toward a solution for this climate crisis instead of leading in the other direction."
It may take decades to repair the damage caused by Al Gore not taking office after the 2000 elections. I also find myself sad that he is definitely out, even though I always thought that it was an extreme longshot that he would end up running. He would have brought a great vision to the campaign.
On the other hand, I have never been a huge fan of "draft" movements, so I won't be all that sad to see the inevitable deflating of Draft Gore over the coming days and weeks. Maybe, as a Dean for America backer, it is just subconscious, lingering irritation over what I feel was significant, if not irreparable damage, caused to Dean's campaign by the Draft Clark movement. Or maybe my conscious rationales are correct. I worry that first, if you have to draft someone into the race, then that person might not have the political drive required to be an effective candidate. I also worry that prominent, large draft movements go a long way toward making the announced field look really, really bad. Then again, the Draft Clark movement produced some great movement activists, including Matt Stoller and, I believe, Carol Shea-Porter, so it clearly had a long-term positive effect as well.
Whatever the case, I don't think continuing a Draft Gore push would be particularly useful right now. We have a lot of declared candidates, including many who are not running for President, who both need and deserve support. I say focus our efforts either on those candidates, or on general progressive movement bulding.
Update: See
the post above this for more info on a possibly bogus story by Reuters.
