Gore's campaign

[SPC]

I choose option 2.

[© tweed]

I choose option 2.

Why?

[TomC]

In an election as close as the 2000, one can find dozens of ways to cast "blame" for the outcome. Gore's sighs in the debate, Clinton's infidelities, the executive branch of Florida's questionable manipulation of the voter rolls.

Actually, I blame Pat Bucannan, who basically got the Reform Party nomination and went into hiding, failing to turn out several percentage points of hard right voters that he had been cultivating over the previous decade, which would have taken as many votes from Bush as Nader took from Gore. But Pat really seemed to give up. Pity.

[jokerman]

Easily Al Gore.  With Nader gone, Gore wins, but it only flips perhaps two states.  With Gore running a better campaign he could have won the popular vote by at least a good 5% along with the states of WV, OH, MO, AR, NH, FL, and TN.

[Robespierre's Jaw]

I chose option 2 (Al Gore). Let's face it, in a race between Governor Bush, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, Al Gore could have run a better presidential campaign in 2000.

[Colin]

I will use the immortal words of John Stewart and his writers from America: The Book, "Ralph Nader was second only to Al Gore in costing Al Gore the election."

[SPC]

I choose option 2.

Why?

Sure Ralph Nader took some left-wing votes that otherwise probably would have gone to Gore, but let's face it. Gore ran a bad campaign. Had he run a better campaign, Ralph Nader wouldn't have had an effect on Gore's total.

I will use the immortal words of John Stewart and his writers from America: The Book, "Ralph Nader was second only to Al Gore in costing Al Gore the election."

That is actually where the inspiration for the question was from.

[True Democrat]

Al Gore

It's his fault Nader did relatively well in the first place.

[© tweed]

Sure Ralph Nader took some left-wing votes that otherwise probably would have gone to Gore, but let's face it. Gore ran a bad campaign. Had he run a better campaign, Ralph Nader wouldn't have had an effect m.

Explain how Gore "ran a bad campaign."  He rallied from 30 down in midsummer 1999 and 10 down in midsummer 2000 and high single digits down in October 2000 to win the popular vote.

[Michael Z]

Option 2. His campaign was awful.

[Inverted Things]

Gore mistake #1: distancing himself from Clinton. Doing this also distanced himself from the unprecedented prosperity people associate with Clinton. Probably cost him 1% in the PV total.

Gore mistake #2: "I'll put my environmental record up against anyone elses." Gore was a complete dumbass to say this with Nader in the race. This challenge gave Nader free publicity when Nader took him up on the challenge, and made Gore look bad when he tucked tail and ran. Probably resulted in a .5% PV swing from Gore to Nader.

There are more, of course. But these certainly hurt gore badly.

[minionofmidas]

There are other people responsible apart from these. Five judges on the SC, for instance. The American media, giving Bush way too much of a free pass during the campaign. America's allies - I've always wondered what would have happened had the countries of Europe simply congratulated Al Gore on his win and got on with life in mid-november 2000. Mind you, I didn't think of it at the time myself, but it seems noone else did either. Shockstill as rabbits before a snake they sat - . But first and foremost, I blame the American Electorate.

[specific_name]

They both are responsible in a way. Obviously Gore didn't play on his strengths well enough, he was really lack luster. Still, just looking at the raw data for Florida, where the difference was by 500-600 votes, I have a hard time imagining that of the 97,500 votes Nader had, not even 500 hundred would have gone to Gore. Sure, many may not have voted and many may have voted for another canidate, still Nader's name recognition gave him an edge over any other canidate the Greens could have put up. The fact of the matter is, if only 0.5% of Nader's Florida voters would have defected to Gore he would have won the election.

I agree that Gore could have won other states if he had campaigned differently, but it's pretty clear he would have just eeked by in 2000 if Nader wasn't in.

[Verily]

Nader. There were surely a few things that Gore could have done better, but overall he ran a stellar campaign. He returned from a massive deficit of about 20% a year in advance of the election to win the popular vote.

[Alcon]

This seems kind of binary, to me.  They both cost him the election; Al Gore by being a lame candidate and Nader by being on the ballot.  One didn't cost Gore the election any "more" than the other.

[HardRCafé]

The American media, giving Bush way too much of a free pass during the campaign.

Right, focusing the last ninety-six hours totally on a twenty-four-year-old traffic ticket was a free pass.

[Keystone Phil]

Whoever the guy was that lost Tennessee.

[adam]

Al Gore, easily.

As someone else pointed out, Ralph Nader wouldn't have done half as well as he did if Al Gore would have:

A) Tried harder not to look like an uptight ass.

and B) Stuck to his environmentalist roots, rather than reforming himself into some sort of pseudopopulist.

A lot of people point to early polls of Al Gore trailing 30 points. It's not a remarkable feat if you think about it. In 1988, Bush Sn. trailed Dukakis by 23 points (or some such) after the Democratic Convention. We all see how that one turned out. I don't put a lot of stock in the fact that candidates rally from behind unless their opponent is a good one. Neither Dukakis or Bush were strong opponents.

[Smash255]

Both and an added third

Gore ran a poor campaign
Nader for simply being there
The voter "purge" lists

[Ferdinand]

Al Gore, because:

1) No individuals vote belongs to anyone except for said individual. Gore is not entitled to the liberal vote, he should be expected to earn it like the rest of the candidate. Gore did a poor job of keep the base together, and it show's considering that over a quarter of a million self-identified Democrats in Florida voted for Bush.

2) Gore distanced himself from Clinton, which I would imagine hurt himself a good deal in liberal areas, such as New Hampshire.

3) CNN’s polling data said that if neither Nader nor Buchanan had run, Bush would have beat Gore 48 to 47 percent, with 4 percent who voted not voting.

4) Al Gore preformed poorly in the debates and failed to communicate a clear message.

[Joe Biden 2020]

I'm thinking both, though I chose Al Gore.

Everyone else has iterated my opinions collectively, so i won't bore you with re-runs.

However I must say, I voted for George W. Bush and I thought he was the better candidate to handle 9/11.  Even though I'm a Democrat now, I still shudder to think how Al Gore would have handled 9/11.  George W. Bush, in my opinion, started off his administration extremely well, then went down hill toward the summer of 2003.

[King]

Ralph Nader wasn't the reason Gore lost 2000 just like Ross Perot wasn't the reason Bush lost 1992.  If they wanted those 20 million votes that Nader and Perot gained in those two elections, they should've earned them by campaigning for those votes.  Especially since most of them were all flip-floppy independets.

[Ebowed]

Whoever the guy was that lost Tennessee.

Nader or Gore?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I said this at the time, and I believe it even MORE now. Gore's attempts to distance himself from Clinton was one of the biggest acts of political suicide in recent political history, along with John Kerry's "I voted for the war before I voted against it".

[Person Man]

Maybe it was Gore. Even when Nader's people 90% got behind Kerry, it didn't make a difference for Kerry.