If Gore chose Jeanne Shaheen (Gov-NH) for his VP in 2000, would he have won?

[BluegrassDem]

I was just thinking about this the other day. New Hampshire went for Bush in 2000. If Gore had just won that state, he would've barely won the EC, without Florida. I can't help but to think that if he had picked then Gov. Shaheen, that it might've done the trick? Well I know this is all revisionist stuff here, but it's amazing to think about at how that one decision has probably altered world history in many ways.

And please, let's not start an argument about who really won that election. That's not the point of my post.

[aquart]

1. There is no other point. Gore won with the Veep he chose.

Poor decision though it was.

[snowbear]

2. Yeah.. what aquart said.

[Phredicles]

3. Just about anyone would have been better;

I love Al Gore and even so I briefly toyed with the idea of voting 3rd party when I got a load of Liebershit. I still believe that's be biggest blunder Mr. Gore ever made.

But yeah, I see where you mean something along the lines of "would he have won with a theft-proof margin?" I think the answer is, it would certainly have been more likely.

[countmyvote4real]

4. shoulda, coulda, woulda: NO

We all should know by now that Gore did win Florida, but his victory there was taken by electoral fraud and Gore's naive response to the lengths and depths the GOP would stoop to steal it.

NH was just as dirty a fight. Are you aware of the GOP phone jamming of the Dem GOTV in 2000? They were just as determined then as they are now more determined and empowered to stack the deck in favor of their pursuit of power by any means necessary.

In hind sight, I do believe Holy Joe is now considered an embarrassing VP selection and a total hypocrite, but the ticket pulled the numbers. And as long as we're looking back, she was a miserable adviser to the Kerry 2004 campaign.

Does that help explain my emphatic NO?

[Hippo_Tron]

5. Well Shaheen lost the New Hampshire Senate race in 2002

Granted she may have won had it not been for the GOP phone jamming. Regardless if the race was that close, it suggests she wasn't that popular in the first place.

[Awsi Dooger]

6. Bob Graham was by far the best strategic choice

Sure, we know now that ANY other state would have been enough for Gore. But you can't handicap that way ahead of time, identifying a state with a tiny number of electoral votes.

Florida loomed as the vital state and Graham would have been worth 3-4 points. That's the typical favorite son bump in a large state. It's exactly what Edwards provided in North Carolina, if you look at the partisan index change from 2000 to 2004 in North Carolina. That's the relationship between state margin and national margin.

If we had that 3-4 point cushion in Florida, all of the voter roll purges and so on would have been laughably insufficient. Graham has some odd quirks but he is loved in Florida and no one would have cared. Graham has been a known quantity as gov and senator in that state for decades.

Along with distancing from Bill Clinton and the sighing in debate #1, Gore's biggest gaffe was failing to identify Bob Graham for VP.

[ludwigb]

7. Man....imagine how different this nation would be under Gore/Graham...

Just thinking about is enough to make me really pissed....at Gore. For selecting that worthless scumbag Joe Liebermann. He dismissed Graham because of a few meaningless eccentricities.

[dansolo]

8. Anyone but Lieberman

Al Gore blew the election with his selection of Joe Lieberman as his VP. And contrary to popular opinion, Joe Lieberman did not do anything to help Gore in FL, vis-a-vis the Jewish vote. Anyone who would have voted because of Lieberman would have voted for Gore anyway. More likely, Joe lost more voted in FL (and elsewhere) than he gained. I wouldn't be surprised if there were voters who might have voted for Gore, but who absolutely would not vote for Lieberman. I don't think it would have mattered who he picked, as long as it wasn't Joe, though it is possible that a woman VP might have had the same effect. Gore could have gained NH, but perhaps lost a different close state. You can't assume that all other states would have had the same exact outcome, especially since a woman VP candidate is such a huge unknown.