I've been busy this evening for two reasons. One is that there's a full moon so I had to go out and be a werewolf for a while. Then after I'd bitten almost enough people for one night, I came in and read about two dozen political websites. On them, I found at least three dozen speculations as to why Al Gore has decided to endorse Howard Dean. They're all predicated on the assumption that Gore thinks it will aid his own self-interest. He wants a cabinet post or a Supreme Court appointment or to stick it to Joe Lieberman or to solidify his base with a certain wing of the party or…whatever. A number of folks seem to think Gore's trying to position himself for a presidential run in 2008. The way that one goes is that he knows that if a Democrat wins in 2004, that Democrat will run for re-election in '08, so Gore wants to support someone who's likely to lose, and that's Dean.
I have no idea what's on Gore's mind and neither do any of the speculators. But most of these theories sound pretty far-fetched to me, especially the notion that Gore (or anyone) is really acting with an eye on 2008. Let's see: The theory is that he wants his party to lose so he's endorsing the front-runner. And of course, if he endorsed anyone other than the front runner, they'd say it's because he wants to see a weaker candidate in there. Or if he didn't endorse anyone, they'd say he's withholding his support because he wants the Democratic nominee to lose…
Aren't there simpler, less devious explanations? Like maybe Gore thinks Dean is the best candidate? None of the people guessing at Gore's motives seem to think that but maybe Gore does. And maybe he thinks it will serve the party's interest, and indirectly his own, to help Dean nail down the nomination a.s.a.p., before a contentious primary battle fractures the Democratic party.
The other thing I notice is a lot of pundits saying Dean has darn near tied up the nomination. I'm not that old but I can still remember when, even after all the primaries, there was still an uncertainty about who'd be the nominee, all the way up until the second or third night of the convention. Then, thanks to changing party and primary rules, we reached the point where the presidential nominee was set before the election and the suspense at the convention was who he'd pick as his running mate. Then even that small nugget of suspense went away and the veep was selected before the delegates convened. Now, we seem to have arrrived at the next, obvious step: A nine candidate race is being called before a single primary has been held.
If this keeps up, we won't even need that silly part of the process where we actually vote. That will be good because, hell, those Diebold machines weren't going to count our ballots, anyway. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out for some more werewolfing…