Ghosts in the Wings

The 2008 federal elections. One is in the democratic party primary. It exists in the form of two people either of who could easily dominate any of the present contenders. The second is in the high number of republican’s not seeking another term.

Last week Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize for his work on Global Climate change. While many were quick to put forward the notion that this was for his work on An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has been a long standing advocate for Global Climate change science. Ever since his days at Harvard where he studied under one of the founders of the field Gore has been an advocate about taking the cautious road when it comes to Global Warming, and its associate problems. As a Senator and Congressmen, Gore advocated for an increase in funding to study the problem. Just like Al Gore was responsible for the creation of the commercial internet (yeah, that’s right), Al Gore also bares some responsibility for the wide spread understanding that global climate change is a problem (inconvenient Truth), and also for our ability to conceptualize the impacts via scientific data he as a legislator sought to provide. Back when Al Gore was VP, he flew into Kyoto, and when there looked like there wasn’t going to be an agreement Al Gore politicked it into reality. This accompanied by his book on the Bush administration, Clinton credentials, wry whit, and powerful leadership means that at any time he could throw his hat in and become a viable candidate. Moreover, he has tons of energy going his way. Think of the Star power he could muster?

The other ghost in the wings in the Democratic primary is not so much a person but a duo, Stephan Colbert and Jon Stewart. Colbert has already thrown his hat in the ring for both the democratic and republican primaries in South Carolina, and he did it in character two, which makes me a little nervous. Jon Stewart on the other hand doesn’t have a character. As a result if Jon Stewart chose to enter the race the transition from comedian to candidate would be much smoother then Colbert who would have to place his bets solely on the Colbert Nation. Jon has well established credibility particularly on other news program, for instance Cross Fire. Below are two embedded Youtube videos with links to an interview he did with Bill Moyers, if you watch that video you know that Jon Stewart would rock some serious socks if he got into the races.

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Part-4

My favorite quote, “I would love to do an interview where it just sorta deconstructed the talking points of the Iraq war.” I am such a debate nerd.

Unfortunately for the party faithful, myself included, it’s highly unlikely that either of these two forces will enter into the election race. In the case of Gore, I think it’s an unwillingness to stress his personal friendship with Bill Clinton any further. There was an extremely interesting article in this month’s Vanity Fair discussing their relationship, and I believe that in fact there are serious issues in that friendship. It’s obviously a relationship that he values, and gore is still pretty young. Plus I think he’s happy where he is. But he could win. Colbert won’t/can’t seriously enter into the race. The way in which he has constructed his show/act restricts him. As a result he can get a bridge in Hungry named after him (sorta), but he won’t be able to translate it across to people who are only tangentially familiar with him. Jon Stewart has yet to be show interest beyond being the clown. He has deep held beliefs, cutting insight, and a good sense of humor. While he cares about the issues, I think he has a post-Nixonian sense of cynicism about the political process. On one hand this sense of cynicism keeps Stewart real, but on the other hand it means that in order for Stewart to try and save us from ourselves things are going to have to get pretty bad. Jon Stewart is like a lump of coal becoming a diamond. The worse and more absurd things get the brighter he sparkles. I just hope his luster is bright enough to keep out the darkness that seems to be engulfing us.

One a completely different note, I have been thinking about the other big election coming in 2008 the House and Senate elections. I was going to write about this anyway today, but I thought a discussion of dream scenarios for the Democrats would off set this discussion of a possible nightmare.

The 2008 election could be a bellwether year for the Democrats, however sings are indeterminate. While the nation suffers from Iraq Fatigue, and political destruction under the Bush administration and a sizable republican minority that seems to be very adept at stalling, there are a few signs that things may not be an easy victory. What arose my concern was the failure of the democrats to override a veto on health care, the failure of the SCHIP bill marks a serious failure on the part of Democratic congressional leadership, and spells serious trouble for their excellent (as it stood the last time I heard a report on it) FISA bill, and other issues down the pipe. If the Dems can’t win health care, and they haven’t done much yet on anything else, what is the incentive for the Democratic wave to keep cresting? This lack of legislative record, and the retiring of Senators, and Congressmen with controversial records may mean previously secure seats are more open then they have been in ages, but it also means that they face republican’s without a record. It almost puts the Democrats ina parliamentary position where they need to pick up more seats to govern but can’t pick up those seats without being in power, but unlike a parliamentary government there aren’t any other parties to form and break coalitions with. At least some other people are aware of this situation too. This was a post I found on the NY times blog section. If the Dems are aware of what’s going on then we need Granny to put on some combat boots, because if Pelosi and Reid can’t get shit straight we may be in as a bumpy ride, and I really don’t want to move to Canada.