Worst-run Presidential Campaign

[Stranger in a strange land]

I'd have to say Gore 2000 was the worst. Had he won his home state of Tennesee he would have won. Whoever's idea it was to go after Florida should never work in politics again. I mean yeah Clinton won it in 96, but he won it, IIRC, by a pretty slim margin. Gore's campaign would have done much better had they concentrated on Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Nevada, all states Gore should have won (esp. TN) although he might have lost the popular vote had he not campaigned so much in Florida, which he should have known to avoid based on its long history of electoral fraud if nothing else.

Kerry 2004 was a close second in my opionion. Granted Kerry was a terrible candidate, sticking his foot in his mouth at every opportunity, and Edwards as VP added nothing to the ticket, he still should have won. Bush had A LOT of potential weaknesses, including the economy, Iraq, gas prices, healthcare, education, and outsourcing. Kerry's campaign should have just put together an ad of Bush's worst moments and aired it nonstop. Also go after the swiftboat vets and answer their charges.

I agree Dukakis in 88 was pretty bad, but he probably would have lost anyway as all Bush had to do was paint him as an elitist northeastern liberal out of touch with the rest of America.

Bush 1992 was probably doomed from the start by the economy and the fact that Bill Clinton was a MUCH better politician. Even a great campaign would probably still have lost.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I'd have to say Gore 2000 was the worst. Had he won his home state of Tennesee he would have won. Whoever's idea it was to go after Florida should never work in politics again. I mean yeah Clinton won it in 96, but he won it, IIRC, by a pretty slim margin. Gore's campaign would have done much better had they concentrated on Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Nevada, all states Gore should have won (esp. TN) although he might have lost the popular vote had he not campaigned so much in Florida, which he should have known to avoid based on its long history of electoral fraud if nothing else.

I strongly disagree with that. Gore came as close as you can get to winning Florida without winning it, but you can't ignore a 25 EV state. You can't avoid it because there has been fraud there, it's simply too big. Gore had a great GOTV campaign, he was down in the polls going into election day, yet he won a convincing win in Pennsylvania, and came a hell of a lot closer to a lot of states than John Kerry did. So don't blame Donna Brazile for Gore's loss, if Kerry hired her, he might've won, she's certainly better than his team was.

It was a lot easier for Gore to win Florida than it was for him to win AR, TN, and WV, and if he had courted those states more, the Nader factor may have increased, and cost him states such as Oregon.

Thank you for this Akno, I was hoping someone a little more eloquently then me would say that Gore's campaign was badly run, because it wasn't. 

I might agree with dazzleman to a point that Gore might not have been a good candidate (although I will disagree with him on that, point) , but the running of his campaign was really good.  I think there was a number of factors that made that election a lot closer than it should have been.

I also agree with the assessment if the campaign had taken more time in WV, AR, NV or even TN (although from what I heard from people in TN, his campaign was in evidence and rather strong there) that he might have more closer calls and not even in Oregon, but probably Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico and Washington due to Nader.  And Florida was a state that was very important to the electoral outcome that year, as was evident by the eventual outcome.

Yes, by the way, my second choice for worse run campaign after Mondale '84, would have to be Kerry's in 2004.  Mainly because of things said today on www.alternativeradio.org by author Thomas Frank the writer of "What's the matter with Kansas?"  Frank more or less said Kerry went to far in appeasing new Democratic businessman (the silicon valley type) and didn't go after and appease the middle class/poorer Democrats such as would be found in Florida and Ohio, also Iowa and New Mexico -- as he and John Edwards went after in the primaries -- and of course look what happened to Kerry.  Thomas Frank is correct, there was no reason for that with the Kerry campaign. 

   

I agree with that, although Kerry's biggest problem was simply everything that happened from the terrible Dem Convention up until the 1st debate. The convention was just horrible, bringing back memories of the Vietnam War is not the way to get a bounce, and then he let the Swifties run around slandering his record all throughout August. After the "Say 9/11 as often as possible (GOP)" convention, he was simply in too big a hole, and even his superb debate performance and acceptable finish put him in a position where he couldn't win.

I will also agree with that, as well.

Ok maybe  I was a little hard on Al Gore and Donna Brazile. But still, it's pretty impressive (not in a good way) that he lost despite having helped preside over peace and record prosperity. When I said he should have gone after AR, TN, and WV, I think he probably could have done it without pushing people over to Nader: just repeatedly remind people that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, which I don't think enough people in 2000 understood.  An aggessive campagin tour by Bill Clinton could probably have won AR, while a few more visits and ads by Gore could probably have won TN and maybe WV.