Author: jamesboyce

The time has come to have a serious discussion about Al Gore and about whether or not you want him to run for President because let’s be honest with each other.

Al Gore doesn’t have to run. He can go forward and fight his fights from the outside in. He can run a different campaign and keep winning it. If you were Al Gore, you probably wouldn’t run either. Do I think he would lose a lot of momentum if and when it’s clear he isn’t running for President? Hell yes. But he would still have plenty to do.

But I’m here to say: we need Al Gore.

Not from a “wouldn’t it be great and make the perfect t.v. movie moment and we fade from hanging chads to confetti at The White House” but from a real deep need: this country needs Al Gore.

Al Gore thinks he is a lousy politician, he’s right. He is. We need some lousy politicians who say what they mean and mean what they say. We need some lousy politicians who can’t stop themselves from rolling their eyes when a member of the press asks a moronic question. We need someone who points out how stupid the captions are on t.v. shows. We need Al Gore.

Al Gore lost a race in 2000 that shouldn’t have even been close. I love this about him as a potential candidate. We need someone who has run the race and lost because only someone who has lost can win in 2008. Why?

Someone who has lost will laugh when the consultants tell him what they want to charge. (20 million for six months work in the McCain campaign for example, that’s what these people think is reasonable and those assholes will get jobs with someone else just you watch.)

Someone who has lost will stick to what they think. Someone who lost and left in DC will look at DC and say hmm, I lived there? What was I thinking?

Besides I don’t need another a candidate to learn from losing. Gore lost and learned. Kerry lost and someday will learn. I don’t need Barack or Hillary or Edwards to learn from losing – I need someone who has lost to win by learning from a previous lost.

Furthermore, for a Democrat to win, and I truly believe this, we need to run an entirely different kind of race. When I see John Edwards’s first tv commercial or read Mark Penn’s strategy memo or see Barack’s response to ‘the troops not being funded,’ I don’t see anyone who has much of a clue.

How about a Presidential Campaign that is new media driven where the candidate actually gets new media? How about a Presidential Campaign that has a contribution limit of $500 per person? How about a Presidential Campaign that’s about YouTube and bloggers and the soul of new media? Not just the bells and whistles of a souped up traditional campaign.

Hell, how about a campaign that isn’t run by, for and about Washington and instead have one that is by, for and about the people?

Paging Al Gore.

We also need a Democratic candidate who publicly and loudly called the Iraq War a mistake right from the beginning. We need a candidate who didn’t vote without reading the intelligence and is now trying to correct a mistake.

We need someone who was right from the start. Because let me tell you – if you think Iraq is a mess now, wait till the end of this year – and seriously, two of our three candidates voted for the war and the other, to be fair, wasn’t on the stage at the time. Of course, then there’s the guy who called it a disaster before it actually was one.

That would be Al Gore.

We need a Democratic candidate who has seen the worse the other side has to offer; who has seen how they fight and how they win. We need someone who understands the evil within the opposition. We need someone who is willing to bring a gun to the gunfight. Say Al Gore.

We need a Democratic candidate who understands how the issue of climate change is impacting our world from a security standpoint, from a poverty and education point, we need someone who can use signing statements for someone other than torture. Al Gore springs to mind.

And unfortunately so do two other things. The first is that Al Gore is not a candidate and has no plans to be a candidate as of today, July 17, 2007. I promise you that this is true. There are no plans, no secret committees, no planning sessions, nada, nothing.

However, the door is not completely shut because Al Gore likes to say something like “I don’t know what I would have to see to change my mind but I would know it if I saw it.”

Guess  what? The only thing Al Gore needs to see is a mirror.

Because the only person who can stop Al Gore is Al Gore. And clearly, he needs a kick the ass on this one. Let me see if I can sum up my message.

Dear Al:

I get you have a great life, I saw you with Cameron Diaz at LiveEarth, I get it. I get you don’t don’t want to deal with the press, I saw Diane Sawyer soil herself on national tv in her interview with her. I get that answering the same stupid question is annoying.

I get that the other side plays dirty and they love to turn their machine against you and make fun of your energy bills. I get that the campaign trail is a shitty place and the food is bad and you’re a long way away from your family. I get that you are making money and having fun and that it’s great to work with smart people like Steve Jobs. I get that we ignored you in the 1970s and 1980s when you were right about global warming.

I get that you love your time with your family and your wife and your grandchildren.

I get that you’re worried the support isn’t real. That you will lose again. That it will be like December 2000 all over again. I get the fear. I get that you really really really don’t want to run

I get it. Really, I do. Guess what? I don’t care.

Stand up. Let’s get to work.

James

The recent poll out of New Hampshire, the first one to ask the question correctly, clearly shows the support for a Al Gore run is real.

If Al Gore enters the race in New Hampshire, he wins.

If Al Gore enters the race by October 15, he can run a four month campaign and win.

So Al Gore needs to look in the mirror. He needs to see that there is one candidate who can not only win The White House, but win the country back. Al Gore knows his history. In the early days of our country, our forefathers risked everything for this country. Our early leaders ran not for themselves but for their country.  Al Gore knows this better than anyone, and Al Gore alone of all the potential candidates out there, needs to respect the history of your country and answer the call.

This then is the core issue. Because the only person who can stand up and get this thing moving is Al Gore. He has to stand up and say:

I am thinking about running,

He doesn’t have to be sure. He doesn’t have to commit. But nothing is going to happen until instead of saying ‘no,’ he says ‘maybe.’

And he has to do this by September 1. Then he sets up an Exploratory Committee but guess what? His committee is really to explore whether to run or not. He can raise money and then by October 15th, he has to declare. But here’s the thing. Money raised to the Exploratory Committee can be donated if not spent. So he could raise the money and say look, if I don’t run, here are the ten charities I will give the money to after I pay the bills.

I will only accept donations up to $250 right now.

And if I run, I will accept another $250 from you. No more than $500 per person.

How much would he raise? Well, this has been a debate among the smarter people I know online and whole I certainly don’t want to name names here are the numbers.

One prominent online strategist thinks $20 million in a month. Another thinks $30 million. And a lot of people think he could raise $40 million.

Here’s how you get to $40 million.

300,000 give an average of  $80 for $24,000,000

64,000 higher end donors give $250 each.

But a funny thing happens in you’re Al Gore – what do you need the money for? Television ads? Not sure you really need them. Mainstream media and the online world will carry your messages in a four month campaign.

High priced consultants? I think he learned that lesson too. He can use the money to travel, set up rallies that are free to attend, he can hold concerts like LiveEarth and make them general admission for $25.

He can barnstorm the country and speak to who he wants to, when he wants to. He doesn’t have to make fundraising calls or do lots of events. He doesn’t have to do tons of one on one interviews and meet the press, because the press will come meet him.

He was $20,000,000 to spend on travel, staff, and signs.

Can he raise $20,000,000? You tell me.

150,000 give an average of $80 for $12,000,000.

32,000 higher end donors give $250 each.

That’s will happen.

So there you have it.

Set up a committee and raise $20 million and worst case, $15 – $18 million gets donated to charity. Set up a committee and you only get $2,000,000 – well, it’s still a good month raising money for charity. And people like me shut up.

Set up a committee and see if everyone who is blathering like me will put their money where their mouth is. I will. I promise.

Set up a committee and see what the polls really do when you’re really in the race.

Set up a committee and explore.

There can be a million draft Gore posts and a million people who write about him running.

There can be a thousand emails sent and a million comments online.

I have very smart top political friends who have sketched out fundraising plans.

One of the smartest political people I know has a plan for Iowa, ready for the taking.

I know people in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, California, Washington State, they all call me and say “do you think there’s a chance?”

It’s the number one question I get in the traditional press.

It’s the number one question I get online.

And the answer to the question is to set up a committee.

Guess who the only person who can answer that question?

Al Gore.

And he now has just under 45 days to answer it.

When I watched former Vice President Gore on Larry King, it seemed as if he didn’t truly believe that the ‘real people’ on the street were really telling the truth when they said, every single one, of them: please run.

Well, a poll released this week in New Hampshire shows that the support is real, very real. Here’s the highlight.

The Gore factor:

The only obstacle for Clinton in the Democratic primary is Al Gore.  Twenty-nine percent of Clinton voters would switch to Gore if he announced for president, and when all of the switches from other Democratic candidates were recalculated, Gore would defeat Clinton.  In total, 32 percent of Democratic voters would support Gore over the candidate they are currently leaning toward.

Here’s why this poll is so important.

First of all, New Hampshire has seen every single person who is running about 15 times by now. They’ve seen them in big crowds and small meetings. They’ve seen their television commercials and heard the speeches. They take their role as first primary very seriously up there and they are not likely to be swayed by the flavor of the month.

So the fact that in New Hampshire, Al Gore is leading the minute he enters the race — pretty amazing. It’s also amazing because D.C. types are saying Gore is running out of time, he has to raise money, build infrastructure, create a ground operation in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Maybe not.

Maybe Al Gore can get in the race, October 15 is my bet. Maybe Al Gore can get in, run a true progressive campaign driven the community online. Maybe he can ignore the mainstream media that were just pathetic in the coverage of his great new book.

The poll also says this about what’s important to the voters there:

Iraq, the lead issue:

The most important issue to New Hampshire voters was the Iraq war (34 percent), followed by Homeland Security/terrorism (19 percent), health care (15 percent), economy/jobs (8 percent), education (7 percent), and the environment (7 percent).

So, it’s not all about the environment. Seems to me that the voters in New Hampshire know what they’re looking for. And his name is Al Gore.

The awareness phase of the campaign to stop global warming has reached a crescendo, which may also be a plateau. With the exception of front groups sponsored by oil companies, it is becoming more and more accepted that we, in fact, are the cause of global warming.

The action phase, however, trails the awareness phase significantly and most troubling of all is the growing belief that someone else is going to be the somebody to actually do something about global warming. Even worse, and most naively of all, that our federal government is going to solve the problem.

A federal bureaucracy and the people within have significant strengths, and they must be part of the solution, but frankly, can we afford to wait for them? When was the last time your local, state or federal government led the charge on anything? Far less something that is so important, so critical and whose solutions will cause hardship to some. In fact, the stronger the actions, the greater the distortions from those affected — it simply is not a solution custom-made for government action.

So who has the power to stop global warming? Who has the power to lead the environmental movement? You do. I do. And every person who reads this does. Not as individuals, true, but as a collection of people, a constituency of those who are willing to do small acts of greenness every single day. A vast movement that can literally change the world if we green our days and our nights and our weekends.

These actions we must ask of ourselves can be as simple as the tried and the true, ‘turn out the lights’ or as cost-effective as changing to energy-efficient lightbulbs. It’s not that the actions are hard, or difficult, or extreme, it’s just that we need to remind each other and ourselves, constantly, of the constant collective good we can do.

The cumulative effect of these actions would be simply astronomical. I have just finished reading a new book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen that outlines over 400 of these simple action items. The Green Book is a marvel because it shows a series of simple steps that are easy to execute and the vast majority save you money while you are helping save the environment.

Here’s an example from the book. If we each bought Fair Trade coffee, which is a good idea for many reasons, for a whole year, we would each save 9,200 square feet of rain forest. If every household in Seattle did this every year, every year, then in a wonderful ying and yang of research, we would save a rain forest the size of Seattle. The destruction of rain forests is one of the factors behind global warming. So there, in a simple action, multiplied thousands of times, is a solution to what is ailing our planet.

As a coffee drinker, this is something I can do. If it’s not your cup of tea, flip through The Green Book and find things you can. That’s the beauty of it. No one has to do everything. Everyone can do something.

The questions are “what can I do about global warming?” and “how can I help the environment?” The answer is plenty. If we do it together.