So after all the hype about the first black candidate or the first female candidate along comes a rich white guy to take the nomination through some shady backroom deal? That sounds like the perfect recipe for a riot at the party convention, followed by every angry black pastor in America denouncing it as a racist conspiracy. Gore wouldn’t be the unity candidate at all, he’d be the disunity candidate.
As for his chances against McCain, the GOP would use Gore’s own words against him. They would easily be able to portray him as an extremist who intended to shut down American industry and raise taxes sky-high. They could challenge Gore to say whether he really thinks Global Warming is such a dire emergency. If he says yes he can’t then plausibly deny that he would take radical and unpopular measures to stop it, and if he says no he looks like a phony.
If Gore does take the nomination, whether out of vanity or a sense of destiny, he will lose the election and gain the enmity of much of his own party. Hubris, meet Nemesis.
