Dick Morris has been milking the nomination sweepstakes for fun and profit over the past year or so, touting a Hillary-Rice contest every chance he gets. Apparently that has run its course and now he is wondering aloud at Al Gore's chances.

...Gore has three things going for him: A perception that he was robbed of the White House and Hillary’s possible stubbornness in continuing to back the war.

The third thing? The weather. As the evidence of global climate change impresses everyone who doesn’t work at the White House, Gore looks more and more like a man whose time may have come.

Morris cites Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland as popular vote winners and electoral vote losers who avenged their losses later on, but the value of 19th century precedents in this respect would appear to be very limited.

The bass line in Morris' argument is that Iraq will go badly and that the global warming will become the central issue of 2008 politics.

I doubt even Morris believes that. Whatever the situation in Iraq in two or three years, security is still a very good bet to be a defining issue and a lot of Democrats think so as well. Of course, as recent history demonstrates so well, Democrats can turn on a dime when it comes to Iraq. Just claim to have been deceived by Bush-Satan.

The environment? Its always been such a theoretical issue and voters go with what's real in their lives. Security became definitive after 9/11 because average Americans felt personally threatened.

The real problem for any Democrat candidate is that they can have the nomination or the presidency, but not both.

Zogby has teased out a rather nasty bit of reality for Democrats:

The survey also contained troubling news for Democrats. While high-profile Democrats in Washington, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, spar with GOP adversaries, 58% of self-described Democrats said they think their leaders should “accept their lower position in Congress and work together with Republicans to craft the best legislation possible.”

Only 6% said the top goal for Democrats should be to defeat Republican legislation.

In another sign that Democrats, after spending 11 years in the minority in the U.S. House and most of those years holding minority status in the Senate, are now accepting their lower position, nearly one-quarter of Democrats – 23% – said they think Republicans do a better job running Congress.

That's a pretty good snap shot of how small the moonbat wing of the party really is--when Harry Reid shuts down the Senate, he has 6% of Democrats pumping their fists. Granted they are an important 6%--monied, motivated and malovalent.

Yet it suggests a demoralization that bodes ill for any candidate, much less one that sparkles the eyes of the far-left. A candidate who can't appeal to the broad center is doomed, but such a candidate gets no love in primaries heavily tilted to the left.

Democrats need a Bill Clinton, and neither Al or Hillary fits the bill.