Coming in 2008: Gore v. Clinton

That would be Al Gore vs. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. A lot of names are out there -- John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Tom Vilsack, Bill Richardson, Mark Warner, Russ Feingold, and Wesley Clark, among others -- but at The New Republic Ryan Lizza argues that "Gore may be the only Democrat who can beat Hillary Clinton".

(Lizza's piece is available by subscription only. I'll quote it extensively here.)

Here's the problem: Hillary is a national figure who has recently staked out territory in the center, but "[i]n Democratic circles the conventional wisdom is that Hillary can't lose the nomination but can't win the general election". More, "every move Hillary makes to stamp out the electability meme -- tough talk on Iraq, moderate noise on abortion -- opens her up further to a challenge from the left in the primaries."

And that's where Gore comes in:

Gore is the only anti-Hillary candidate who can credibly attack her on both fronts. His early, vocal, and unwavering opposition to the war in Iraq has made him a hero to many Democrats. The Hollywood liberals over at Huffington Post as well as the university-town activists at Daily Kos and Moveon.org love Gore. If he ran, he would instantly become the favored candidate of the "netroots," the antiwar, anti-Bush crowd that championed Howard Dean and that will be a significant source of money and buzz in the run-up to 2008. The activists in the liberal blogosphere, more than any other opinion-making constituency in Democratic politics, revere Gore. They still wave the bloody flag of the 2000 recount. They still pump out bitter posts about how the mainstream media trashed Gore in 2000 yet gave Bush a free pass. They remember that Gore endorsed Dean in 2004 and they burst with pride at the fact that he chose Moveon.org as the forum for his most important speeches.

Of course, any antiwar candidate could criticize Hillary's vote for the war in Iraq. But the logic of the Gore candidacy is that, unlike other Democrats, he could attack Hillary as both out of step on the war and unelectable come November. If he runs for president he would be the only candidate in either party who instantly passes the post-9/11 threshold on national security issues. Hillary's credible case that as first lady she engaged in diplomacy and was treated abroad like a world leader would be dwarfed by Gore's eight-year record as vice president sitting on the National Security Council.

And Gore might be the only Democrat who can solve a vexing issue facing the party: How does a candidate establish a reputation for toughness on national security while simultaneously criticizing the war? Gore supported the Gulf War and, in most Clinton administration battles over the use of force, he took the more hawkish position. He is the party's only credible antiwar hawk.

Gore has other advantages as well. Having run for president or vice president four times, he has a strong national network of $2,000 check-writers. That network, added to the online donors he could tap, would make him the only candidate who could compete financially with Hillary.

Finally, Hillary may not be the ideal nominee to take advantage of the anti-Washington mood building in America. In presidential politics, candidates who run as credible outsiders have a remarkable record. One thing that the campaigns of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all have in common is that they successfully ran against Washington. If the current mood of disgust persists into 2008, running as an outsider may be essential. Gore can credibly run such a campaign. Hillary can't.

So what does Gore do?

The ideal situation may be for him to hang back for the next year and a half, let the field sort itself out and wait for Democrats to become bored with the pack of candidates trying to dethrone Hillary. That would allow him to enter the race with the moral and political authority of a reluctant draftee. Every primary season goes through such a period of boredom, a time when voters and pundits scour the country for fresh blood. That could be Gore's moment.

It's an intriguing scenario, but I'm not sure I buy it. I (enthusiastically) supported Gore in 2000 and I've generally always liked him. The right-leaning Supreme Court robbed him of the presidency, or at least of a recount for the presidency, and I think that he would have been a very good president these past 4+ years, but I suspect that his time in electoral politics has come and gone. I'm not sold on Hillary, and I'm eager for viable anti-(or at least non-)Hillary candidates to emerge, but would the Democrats really go back to 2000 in order to try to win in 2008?