Gore v. Clinton? Rumors of Gore 2016 campaign take on life of their own
Al Gore speaks during the 2015 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Austin Convention Center in March. (Photo: Travis P Ball/Getty Images for SXSW)
Will former Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore run for President again? Some insiders say he might.
On Thursday, Buzzfeed reported that Mr. Gore supporters have been discussing the possibility of a run for president in 2016. The revelation is a sign that “top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing,” Buzzfeed reporter Andrew Kaczynski wrote.
“They’re figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically,” an unnamed Democrat told Mr. Kaczynski. “It feels more real than it has in the past months.”
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However, a “ top source within the Democrat party” told NBC that the rumor that Bill Clinton’s former vice president is considering taking on Mr. Clinton’s wife in the election is overblown.
The push for Gore to launch a bid for 2016 has been in the making at least since this spring. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein laid out the case for Gore in an essay in Vox in March, in which he argued that Democrats need a new cause. Gore, who is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and has spent much of the past decade campaigning against climate change, could be just the champion for such a cause, Mr. Klein said.
“To many Democrats, the fight the party needs is clear: Hillary Clinton vs. Elizabeth Warren. But the differences between Warren and Clinton are less profound than they appear….Given the near-certainty of a Republican House, there is little reason to believe there would be much difference between a Warren presidency and a Clinton one,” Klein wrote. “The most ambitious vision for the Democratic Party right now rests with a politician most have forgotten, and whom no one is mentioning for 2016: Al Gore.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s Husna Haq examined the likelihood of such a run at the time.
“Dark-horse-underdog-left-field-stalking-horse-sleeper candidate, much? Sure. But given that he is an under-appreciated candidate no one is talking about, Gore deserves a second look,” Ms. Haq wrote.
Still, Gore has made no formal move to join the race, and the rumors that he will enter could be just that, rumors.
A recent Reuters poll found that 3.3 percent of Democrats would vote for Gore in the 2016 election, the same percentage as those who would vote for actor George Clooney.
This report includes material from Reuters.
