Al Gore: Pushing back on environment - POLITICO.com Print View

Gore's calls for climate action are certainly not music to Senate Democrats running in tight races in 2012, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Jon Tester of Montana.

"He's a visionary leader, but not the right spokesperson to reach out to close to half of our country," said an environmentalist who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. "That's been shown in virtually every focus group, opinion poll and piece of research done over the last seven to eight years.

"There are no seats in which climate is an easy issue for the Democrats to deal with, and if they perceive that Vice President Gore is boxing them in, that's not a happy proposition," the environmentalist added.
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Michael Levi, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Gore seemed to be ignoring the political debate that took place around climate change over the past three years.

"If you want to re-inject yourself into the campaign, the last thing you do is say, 'Bring back the thing that a lot of people think got you killed in the last election,'" he said.
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For all Gore has done on the climate issue, Clean Air Watch President Frank O'Donnell said he couldn't let go of the fact that the Democrat didn't make global warming a bigger issue when running for the White House against George W. Bush.