Talk Elections

I've often heard that the impeachment of Bubba cost Al Gore the election because the cloud of scandal hung over the White House. However, I'm not sure this narrative is actually valid. Polls showed voters liked Bubba and results he was delivering on the economy, the budget and foreign policy, but were disgusted by his personal conduct. So they liked his policies but not his behavior. But Al Gore was de facto offering that: Continue Clinton policies but without scandals. Nobody ever suggested he played a role in Clinton's wrongdoings, not even the Republicans went after Gore for this. If anything, Gore was more liberal than Clinton what may have cost him some support in southern states and Appalachia that had backed the Democratic ticket in 1992 and 1996.

Gore lost because of the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, FL (and I say this as one who voted for Bush in 2000): the excess Buchanan votes, evidently cast by people intending to vote for the 2nd name on the left side (Gore), over that which can be expected from the number of votes cast for Gore, well exceeds 537, Bush's official FL margin. (The Basic Practice of Statistics, Moore, Notz, Fligner, 8th ed., pp. 4-5)

yeah this narrative is silly

Gore was wrong to run away from Clinton

The 2000 election was close enough that you could make the case for a hundred different things making the difference between a Gore win and a Gore loss. Nonetheless, I think the narrative about impeachment costing Gore a win lacks strong supporting evidence. It seemed to emerge largely because people wanted to make the point that impeaching Trump would actually benefit Democrats politically (and they seem to have been wrong there, given that Trump's approvals are currently the highest they've been since his first year in office).

What is clear to me, though, is that the drive to impeachment cost Republicans in the 1998 mid-terms, leaving Bush with narrow majorities to push his programs through Congress.

Agreed; in reality, this was Americans' general consensus on the matter: Clinton was a good president, though his behaviour in the case was deplorable. He deserved a censure, but nothing more. Impeachment was unnecessary, as he was a good president in other ways. In reality, the GOP impeaching a popular president actually backfired on them, because in backlash to the GOP's response, voters actually rewarded Clinton during his second midterm with more seats in Congress, the first time it had happened since 1822 and the second and last time nationally.

I’ve never heard that the impeachment hurt Gore. In fact, what I always hear is that Gore running away from Clinton backfired.

And why did he run away from Clinton to begin with?  Rhymes with lin-deechment.


And then Trump lost by more than Romney! His opponent taking a larger vote share than Reagan himself. Hmmm.

Actually it rhymes with "had an affair with a White House shmintern". At most, one could argue that impeachment raised the salience of the issue.


Trump lost the national popular vote by more than Romney, but the national popular vote doesn't determine the winner of a presidential election. Similarly, Biden winning a larger share of the popular vote than Reagan in 1980 does not have any direct bearing on the outcome of the elections each ran in, especially considering that 1980 saw a relatively strong third party candidate. Trump lost the tipping point state by less than 1 point, whereas Romney lost it by about 5 points and Carter lost it by about 8 points, and those margins do a much better job of describing how close each election actually was.

In addition to the butterfly ballots in Florida, which ultimately caused Gore's demise in the 2000 election, it can also be said that Gore pivoting to the left and distancing himself from Clinton did not help. Bush largely campaigned on restoring dignity to the White House, so I guess that was a backdrop on voters' minds.

Largely, Gore shot himself in the foot by not embracing Clinton as much because he knew if he didn't go left he'd lose a lot of voters to Nader. So, it was a barrage of different things that pressed Gore on all fronts.

Why screw up a good thing? He should have campaigned on the positive record of Bill Clinton and the Democrats over the previous eight years and pledged to continue those policies. He should've appeared with Clinton at a few rallies during the campaign to make sure Americans got the message.

I think in most cases, had Gore embraced Bill Clinton's legacy instead of running away from it , he would have won.  You could argue that Gore, by distancing himself from Clinton, basically played into the Bush strategy that it was time to move on from Clinton.

Gore lost because he simply made a huge political miscalculation.  Distancing himself from the Clinton/Gore economic record and peace overseas (at the time) was a huge, huge mistake.  Even though the economy was waning in 2000, he had the record on his side.  Like Bush in '88 (never distancing himself from Reagan), all he had to do is play the economic card and he would have won.

Yes, Clinton was not personally popular, but economically America was very pleased.

The election was close enough that a lot of things could have made the difference.  Al Gore was far enough away from Bill Clinton to not get the credit for the good things about the Clinton years but close enough to get the blame for the bad. The saying in 2000 was that if Bill Clinton drove through a car wash in a convertible with the top down, Al Gore is the one who would get wet.

Nice Campaign Trail language there haha

https://newcampaigntrail.github.io/newcampaigntrail/www.americanhistoryusa.com/campaign-trail/index.html