[C. Edmund Wright]

yes, Gore was very weak candidate....had to fight Clinton fatigue, without any charm, ran an awful campaign, and then technically outpolled Bush anyway.

[Verginius Rufus]

When Gore ran for President the first time, in 1988, he did a pathetically weak job of it. He was the nominee in 2000 only because Bill Clinton had picked him for Vice President and because he ran virtually unopposed in the primaries (apart from the feeble effort of Bill Bradley). A few days before the election it looked like Bush would win easily--then the media got hold of the 24-year-old DUI story and obsessed over it for the last few days before the election.

On election night, the mainstream media made it appear that Gore had won while the polls were still open in the western states, which may have depressed the turnout for Bush and given Gore his plurality in the popular vote. Definitely in Florida a lot of voters in the panhandle went home without voting because the networks had announced Gore had won Florida while the polls were still open in the Central Time Zone counties--that is estimated to have cost Bush 10,000 votes. The media did their best to drag Gore over the finish line...then and during the Florida recount.