archived: 18 - 24 Sep, 2005         Back                 Next

                        AL GORE 

If any Democrat has demonstrated national leadership in the past few weeks, it has been Al Gore.  He is speaking out on a range of issues – finding common ground among Democrats. 

Last week, TPJ featured Al Gore’s resolute action to aid Katrina victims as a stark contrast to the indifference of the Bush administration.  TPJ, AL GORE.  TPJ readers should cut, paste and email the article to everyone you know.   

Gore recently addressed the Sierra Club in San Francisco to an overflow crowd.  His speech is good – really good.  Gore cogently draws the parallels between Republican policy in Iraq, New Orleans and global warming.  It strikes a wonderful balance between facts and values, despair and hope, and radical ideology and enlightened government. 

These are a few fabulous excerpts: 

Four years ago in August of 2001, President Bush received a dire warning: "Al Qaeda determined to attack inside the US." No meetings were called, no alarms were sounded, no one was brought together to say, "What else do we know about this imminent threat? What can we do to prepare our nation for what we have been warned is about to take place?" If there had been preparations, they would have found a lot of information collected by the FBI, and CIA and NSA - including the names of most of the terrorists who flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. The warnings of FBI field offices that there were suspicious characters getting flight training without expressing any curiosity about the part of the training that has to do with landing. They would have found directors of FBI field offices in a state of agitation about the fact that there was no plan in place and no effective response. Instead, it was vacation time, not a time for preparation. Or protecting the American people.

Four years later, there were dire warnings, three days before Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA, that if it followed the path it was then on, the levees would break, and the city of New Orleans would drown, and thousands of people would be at risk. It was once again vacation time. And the preparations were not made, the plans were not laid, the response then was not forthcoming.  

. . .

It's not only that there is no vision; it's that there has been a misguided vision. One of the principal philosophical guides for this administration has been the man who said famously that he wants to render the government of the United States so weak and helpless that you can drown it in a bathtub. There were warnings three years ago from the last director in the Clinton-Gore Administration of FEMA that FEMA was being rendered weak and helpless, unable to respond in the event of a catastrophe. The budget was cut, the resources sent elsewhere.  

. . .

The President says that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. He says that he is not ready to do anything meaningful to prepare us for a threat that he's not certain is real. He tells us that he believes the science of global warming is in dispute. This is the same president who said last week, "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break." It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work. And the uncertainty and lack of resolution, the willful misunderstanding of what the scientific community is saying, the preference for what a few supporters in the coal and oil industry - far from all, but a few - want him to do: ignore the science. That is a serious problem. The President talked about the analogies to World War II - let me give another analogy to World War II.

Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was real, he said, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent." He continued, "The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."  -- Common Dreams

Take the time to read the entire speech.  Makes you proud to be a Democrat. 

                        FROM HERE TO THERE 

The major public polls are producing similar results; Bush’s “approval” rating is riding slightly above 40%, virtually unchanged since early September.  Democrats are “here:”

Bush’s public standing is also reflected by the “spread” between “approval” and “disapproval.”

The “spreads” reflect a President that is politically bleeding and bleeding at an alarming rate.   

Viewed from this perspective, Bush’s speech to the nation on Thursday night from New Orleans is an obvious attempt to stop the decent into the abyss.   

It should be apparent to every Democrat that targeting Bush has only limited objectives.  Bush will never stand for election again.  Democrats must translate Bush’s declining support into Democratic Party gains in the 2006 Congressional elections (as well as State and locally).  Democrats, and hopefully all Americans, have learned that a President with low approval ratings can still inflict unpopular policies on citizens when the same Party controls both houses of Congress.   

Democrats simply must recapture one or both houses of Congress in 2006.  “There” is the immediate Democratic Party objective.  If not, radical Republicans will simply continue their policy assault. 

Are we “there?”  No! 

“Generic” Congressional polling since January presents a decidedly different picture than Bush’s polls.  The “generic” ballot simply tests respondent attitudes on which Party should control Congress, not which Party they will support in their own Congressional/Senatorial District.

While Democrats have held a slight lead in the generic poll generally ranging from 3% to 5% (which is better than trailing), there has been no real “slide” in Republican support that corresponds to Bush’s falling “approval” ratings.  Democrats who may be celebrating Bush’s “fall” may be popping the champagne corks much too early. 

Hurricane Katrina may be a tipping point however. Note that the latest Newsweek poll, taken after the Hurricane shows a rather dramatic shift to Democrats.  A blip?  A break through?  

TPJ’s concerns are reinforced by a recent Pew poll asking the more specific question about the reelection of the respondent’s Congressman in their District. This response does not begin to suggest a “Democratic Revolution” comparable to the Republican takeover in 1994.