Josh Marshall wrote this on Wednesday:

“I just saw the AP story reporting the stunning news that Howard Dean has fired Joe Trippi as his campaign manager and replaced him with long
-long-long-time Gore insider Roy Neel.
This has to be one of the most bizarre turns of events I’ve seen in Dem politics in a very long time. … Something very weird happened here.
All I can figure is that this all happened with no warning whatsoever. Gore is now in the mix. And in need of someone immediately they went to Neel. “

Maybe …

But what if Neel is a precursor to a Gore run? The Dean campaign is pretty much is toast, that much is obvious. Still, there is organizational strength there and the greatest knock against the angry one is that he can’t beat Bush. Replace Dean with Gore and you’ve suddenly got an electable name atop a potentially winning platform of being opposed to the war, in favor of health care reform, opposed to the Bush tax cuts and in favor of people from the South. Hasn’t Dean seemed like an over-achieving veep candidate from the start?
Everyone’s been hinting at Hillary being the darkhorse candidate come convention time. But what about Gore? He’s beaten Bush in election, and, by keeping a low profile over the past four years, he’s managed to outlive the dumb lies (Internet, Love Story, etc.) he got caught in.
Yeah, yeah, it’s a stretch, but maybe …

p.s. The real fun will come when Gore takes over for Dean and then picks Edwards as his running mate. Gore-Edwards in 2004? It’s a Dem dream team …