The Democrats' Best Bet: Gore-Richardson

The Democratic primary will more than likely result in a fractured party and no clear winner going into their Quadrennial confab. The candidates will have beaten up on each other to no avail, and critics will cite Barack Obama's inexperience, and Hillary Clinton's questionable electability. Moreover, John Edwards and othersno, not the name of a Seattle-based grunge bandwill further fragment the voting.

Leave it to Academy Award winner, and the former Vice President Albert A. Gore to ride to the rescue. "The man who used to be the next president of the United States, " has been sounding more and more like a candidate. Observe:

The 60-year-old Gore may have left the door ajar in 2002, when during an interview on National Public Radio, he stated "If I did run again, it would be on the basis of just starting over from scratch and not taking anything for grantedtalking to people in small groups and individually... about the major challenges facing the country."
Three years ago, Gore accused Bush of betraying the country. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place." Later, he called for the resignations of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. In that same speech he also chastised the administration for turning a blind eye to the abuse taking place at Abu Ghraib Prison, calling it "the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy."

Later Gore said, "We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us. We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people."

Gore's central concern is the threat the world faces from global warming, of which the U.S. is the major offender. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wiselyit should be understood for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization on multiple fronts." He has said of the current administration's environmental policy, "a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined

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