There is a less than 1% chance Gore will be the nominee and here is how it could happen

[Herman Munster]

Obama and Hillary have an epic primary fight without resolution. It's August. Both candidates are bloodied and bruised and don't have the delegates needed to win the nomination.

The convention therefore ends up brokered. Gore gets drafted to save the party over the two damaged candidates.

The scenario is within the realm of possibility but not very bloody likely, obviously. That's probably why you don't have Gore making any Sherman type statements. Shit happens and just in case it does he'll like to keep his options open.

[TwilightGardener]

1. It won't happen on the Dem side--the Repub side might end up

with a brokered convention, but all Hillary needs to do is win NH and SC, and the rest is hers.

[Herman Munster]

4. well never say never

let's say Obama wins Iowa and Hillary is a close second.

Hillary then wins NH.

Obama wins SC.

Hillary wins Nevada.

Then all the big states end up up for grabs...

[AX10]

2. That is exactly how Gore gets in. It's also how we all..

win BIG TIME come 11/04/2008! If Gore gets in this way, there will be very little time to smear him again. He could get 55-56% of the popular vote and 400 EV's, as well as 59 Senate seats and up to 270 House seats. This is a best case scenario.

[rateyes]

3. That could only happen if one of two things occur...

1. All the candidates stay in the race for the long haul.

2. All but two drop out after New Hampshire.

I hope number 2 happens, and that the majority of the Democratic Party opposed to Clinton will win the nomination. (Unless, by some miracle, Gore gets in.)

[SheilaT]

5. Every single election cycle

people start fantasizing about a locked convention. But it never happens, and it won't this time, either.

There is a powerful "horse race" mentality at work, and most people very quickly fall in line with the candidate who seems most popular, or who seems "electable". That's why, for instance, Dennis Kucinich gets so very little support. Quite a few people agree with his positions on many things, but they figure he has no hope of being elected, so they instead support someone else.

And this year all of the primaries and caucuses are happening very early precisely to eliminate any hope of a brokered convention. Maybe, just maybe, if we had a one day national primary held early enough with at least three strong candidates, and several lesser ones who could actually all get delegates, then perhaps no one would emerge from that day with enough delegates to avoid an interesting convention. But even then, I can almost guarantee what would happen is the candidates themselves would start jockeying for position (another horse race reference), I mean delegates. Various deals would be cut and we'd know for sure who's going to get the top spot nomination and who'll be the v-p candidate long before the convention itself occurred. The convention has long since stopped being a meaningful place to select the nominee, but is instead a way of showing party unity and having the party feel good about itself.

What the people who run the party want most is to have a strong candidate locked in very early so that the general election campaign lasts as long as possible.