What if Gore was the Democratic nominee for President in 1988?
He would have lost but it would have been much closer more like a obama or trump win and less like Reagan’s win.
How do the Democrats interpret his loss?
I think it depends on the margin. If Gore was closer than Dukakis (which I agree is likely) then it may just be chalked up as a year that was going Republican in any case.
But if Gore was blown out, it may have worked against the Democratic willingness to move to the center that got Clinton nominated and elected in '92. So in that campaign probably Jerry Brown does better, and we'll handwave that as a result, he's more prudent and doesn't mention that he'd consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate, which was something that really broke his momentum.
Let's say that Brown wins the nomination. Presumably Ross Perot still runs, so we have Bush vs Brown vs Perot, with an economy sliding into recession. This could be fairly interesting.