I could actually see him more likely to win Tennessee then West Virginia. The fallout against Gore in West Virginia I think was mainly due to his environmental policy which would remain unchanged with McCain as the GOP nominee while at the same time McCain would have a considerable loss of religious right support due to his denunciation of Falwell. I think it'd look something like this:
[1]
Gore-Kerry 320 [2]
McCain-Engler218
[1] Given that Iowa is relatively close some may wonder why I thought to keep it in the Gore column. My thinking is that because McCain suffers a loss in terms of religious right support Iowa is exactly the type of state you'd see these voters defecting from his column.
[2] In this timeline Lieberman declines Gore's offer of VP and instead endorses his BFF McCain. Gore picks Kerry as his running mate in an effort to counteract McCain's war hero cred. This backfires when Gore surrogate Donald Trump while introducing the Vice-President at an event ostensibly devoted to the Gore-Kerry ticket's tax plan praises Kerry as a real war hero in contrast to McCain who in his words was a "loser who got captured." In the coming years Trump joins a pantheon of other favorite conservative punching bags including Jane Fonda and Michael Moore and a popular conservative chain email referring to "Hanoi Don" circulates the web. Due to mass right-wing boycott pressure NBC is later forced to cancel The Apprentice midway through the first season.
