Who is most responsible for Gore's loss in 2000?

[Guderian]

1. Ralph Nader and his voters.

2. Electoral college system.

3.  Butterfly ballot.

4. Clinton's libido.

5. Gore himself.

...

825. Lieberman.

Idea that Gore commited an electoral suicide and pulled the defeat out of the jaws of victory is wrong, in my opinion. People often try to blame everything on the candidate, it seems like every losing candidate in last 200 years blew an election by campaigning poorly or picking the wrong running mate (which is always the most overanalyzed campaign decision that rarely makes the difference between winning and losing). As a matter of fact, Gore ran a solid campaign and managed to beat Bush by 550,000 popular votes after trailing in polls against him since mid-1999. It was a bizarre and unrepeatable set of circumstances that prevented him from becoming President, and if those circumstances haven't been in place, he'd be praised for Truman II comeback. Sure, he made some mistakes, but almost everybody does. Bush made even more of them, in my opinion.

Now I'm going to take a shower because I feel dirty after defending Al Gore.