Why another Gore campaign would be good for the Democrats:

Despite winning a bare majority of the popular vote, he was a dreadful candidate in 2000, who somehow managed to turn eight years of peace and prosperity into an electoral burden. He is a smug, stubborn, and aloof human being. He will clutter the race in 2004, suck money from other candidates, force some interesting possibilities from the field, run another awkward, tired faux-populist campaign and, if nominated, he will lose, more decisively this time, to George W. Bush. This critique seems reasonable enough in many of its particulars, but not in its conclusion—that life would be a lot simpler if Gore would just go away. Quite the contrary, Democrats should nurture his ambition and cherish his ineptitude. –Joe Klein Slate

Klein’s idea is that the voting public find Gore so craven and contemptible that any Democratic candidate who defeats him in the primaries — in contradiction to the received wisdom that a primary battle is divisive, wasteful and injurious — will be a hero; this may be the only option to defeat an incumbent President riding the crest of War-on-Terrorism® popularity.