Please don't get mad at me, but why did Gore lose Tennessee?

[TomC]

He didn't speak like them.  He didn't act like them.  He wasn't one of them.

He speaks, acts and is like some of us.

He was too liberal in a state that has been growing more conservative. The entire South has been trnding GOP as other parts of the country have been trending Dem.

[TomC]

Some people wish to claim that the Gore family spent so much of their time representing TN in DC that they are not Tennesseans. Gore went to school some in DC while his father worked there- representing Tennessee. After Vietnam, Gore worked for a Nashville paper covering politics and uncovering corruption. He attended Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, he represented TN from 1977 to 1993, had a home here, and came home to campaign every year. The notion that he lived somewhere else is just as true for any other Washington DC Representative- you've got to go where the work is.

Tennessee became more conservative and more Republican. When he became VP, he- thankfully- abandoned some of his more conservative positions.