Dum Pendebat Filius

Bill Schneider, CNN Political Analyst, speculates that an Oscar nomination (An Inconvenient Truth is up for Best Documentary Feature) might pave the way for a draft-Gore movement and a bid for the presidency.

Democrats are desperate to win. Doubts have begun to surface about the electability of the party’s current front-runners. How’s this for an argument? Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

It is true that “doubts have begun to surface” about the “electability” of Sens. Clinton and Obama, but is there any candidate whose “electability” has not been questioned?

But even if we pretend that political observers everywhere are biting their fingernails with anxiety as they worry about the Electability Issues which are crippling Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, this speculation is silly. Why? We’ve discussed this before, readers. After the two-year shitstorm he was subjected to at the hands of the Liberal Left-Wing Media during Campaign 2000, all too many Americans tend to think Al Gore is a total looney-tune: a troubled soul who doesn’t really know who he is, a pathological liar who claimed to have invented the Internet, a craven opportunist who wears earth tones and three-button suits because a focus group tells him to, a girly-man who hires slutty consulants to teach him how to be a man, etc, etc. If you paid any attention at all to Campaign 2000, you know most of these stories by heart, and could rattle them off one after another.

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll (9-11 February) shows Gore’s favorability ratings at 52-45, which is maybe not so bad (certainly nowhere near the disastrous 32-46 we saw in January). But does any reasonable person believe that the Liberal Left-Wing Media would refrain from inventing fun stories about Al Gore this time around?

UPDATE: corrected “23-46″ to “32-46″