Rolling Stone rolls out the argument for Al Gore to step up to the plate and run again for president.
If he takes the bait, there would be no better time than at the Oscars, where his power-point presentation, ah, I mean film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, looks like the top contender for best documentary. While accepting the award he could announce to the world — an audience of one or two gadzillion people — that he is launching his campaign exploratory committee. (Question: What in the hell are these candidates exploring?)

This is Tim Dickinson’s take in Rolling Stone:

Unlike Hillary Clinton, he has no controversial vote on Iraq to defend. Unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, he has extensive experience in both the Senate and the White House. He has put aside his wooden, policy-wonk demeanor to emerge as the Bush administration’s most eloquent critic. And thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, Gore is not only the most impassioned leader on the most urgent crisis facing the planet, he’s also a Hollywood celebrity, the star of the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time.

Dickinson suggests that Gore could easily challenge superstar Hillary Clinton by using the medium he once took credit for inventing — or at least help fund its invention while in Congress:

Thanks to his vocal opposition to the war — and his decision to back Howard Dean’s anti-war candidacy in 2003 — Gore has all but sewn up the backing of the party’s “Netroots” activists. Eli Pariser calls Gore “a close friend of MoveOn,” and Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, is equally unabashed in his support. “More than any other Democrat over the last four years, Gore has actually delivered,” says Moulitsas, one of the Internet’s most influential organizers. “If Gore enters the race, it’s his nomination for the taking.” In an online poll of 14,000 activists held in December by DailyKos, sixty percent voted for Gore. By comparison, Clinton received just 292 votes.

Others also chime in:

“If Howard Dean could raise $59 million on the Internet,” says (veteran Democratic consultant Bill) Carrick, “the mind boggles as to what Al Gore might do.” Joe Trippi, who managed Dean’s campaign, believes Gore could raise as much as $200 million on the Internet: “Gore may have more money than anybody within days of entering the race.”