How Much Could Clinton Have Helped Gore in 2000?

[Westbrook 49]

During the 2000 campaign season, Al Gore wanted to make one thing very clear: He was not Bill Clinton (An obvious fact to most people). Hence, we were given one of the most awkward kisses in history at the DNC, a campaign based partially on morals, and Joe Lieberman as the nominee for Vice President. Delightful.

Gore (or one of his advisors) obviously thought that it would be best if they ran away from Clinton's personal issues, which would have been fine if they weren't also trying to run on the political successes of eight years in office. Apparently, to Gore's campaign that also meant personally avoiding the President.

What the campaign miscalculated on was that Clinton was still quite popular with the majority of the American public, who credited him with overseeing a good economy, as well as a victim of Republican persecution. Rather than utilizing Clinton as a spokesman for a Gore campaign, they hid him away and turned to "values" as a campaign ideal (Ignoring the fact that most of the people who were turned off or disgusted by Clinton's behavior weren't going to be Gore voters anyways).

Anyways, before I start to ramble (more), here's my question: If Al Gore embraces, or at least comes to an understanding with Bill Clinton, how does this affect the 2000 Presidential race? Could Clinton help diffuse some of the disaffection that liberals had with Gore, preventing them from voting Nader? Could his influence have brought Arkansas into the Democratic column, thereby giving Gore the White House?

 

[Namayan]

Unless you got the data mining of undecided voters, you do not know what can affect the swing. Without it, anything we would think are merely wild guesses rather than actual facts. The election is so close that any small decision done differently by the candidate or even its supporters would have made a difference.

In otl, gore still won the popular vote. So, the electoral vote was really who had better strategy and executed it better. But to know which specific issues is hard to say unless you got all that data of the undecided voters before election and that voted for bush in otl election time.

 

[SLCer]

Polls certainly pointed to Clinton fatigue, even though most Americans still supported the President. It was a weird disconnect - they approved of the job he was doing but they wanted him gone. That's why Gore ultimately distanced himself from Clinton during much of the 2000 presidential election.

Even still, Gore carried 17 of 18 states where Clinton's positive rating was at or above the national average of 57% [1]. The lone exception was Florida. Clinton's positive rating was at 58% in that state and who knows, with how close the election was, him campaigning there over a longer period of time might've proven the difference.

Then again, as Namayan points out, without voter breakdowns, we just don't know.

 

[Alstein]

Enough to probably win the election- only had to get a few votes in Florida.

Gore winning in 2000 has some huge butterflies.