Gore endorses Dean

So Gore endorses Dean. And now all sorts of establishment Democrats are angry. Brit Hume interviews Susan Estrich (on Faux, oops, Fox news) who claims not to understand why Gore did this. She goes on and on about “what’s he looking for, an ambassadorship?” As if she hadn’t really listened to anything he had said about the ways in which Dean is supporting the building of a new kind of grassroots constituency for change. I agree with her in this sense: endorsing Dean at this stage of the game is NOT, very vehemently, NOT playing the typical insider Washington game. It actually gives me more respect for Al Gore, it reminds me of the Al Gore who came to the Harvard Divinity school years and years ago to talk about his book (Earth in the Balance) and caring for the Earth. And Susan Estrich’s outrage — not to mention that of the rest of the Democratic establishment — is simply further evidence of how such folk really don’t understand what’s building at the grassroots.