IF Gore lost because the Florida Republicans stole the election, then having Graham as a running mate wouldn’t have helped; the Republicans would simply have stolen more votes.
IF Gore lost because the ballots were confusing, then it didn’t matter who his VP candidate was.
IF Gore lost because he wasn’t liberal enough to persuade the Nader voters, it’s highly unlikely Graham would’ve motivated them any better. Besides, Nader received 1.6% of the vote in Florida. Nationally, he received 2.7% of the popular vote – which means that Nader was even less of a factor in Florida than might be expected.
A better topic for discussion is why Al Gore lost Tennessee by 80,000 votes. If Gore had won his home state, and its 11 electoral votes, the Florida vote wouldn’t have mattered.
Actually, based on my examination of the election results in the heavily Jewish counties of Florida in 2000 and in other elections, I am tempted to believe that Lieberman did somewhat help energize the Jewish vote in Florida. However, I completely agree with you that Graham would have helped Gore more in Florida than Lieberman did. Indeed, with Graham on the ticket, I think that Gore would have won Florida by at least 1.00%. Frankly, the only weird thing about Graham is his decades-long habit of keeping notebook entries of every single event of every single day of his life since 1977 or so; however, I doubt that this would have hurt the Gore-Graham ticket due to the fact that Gore and Graham could simply say that Graham is an extremely detailed organizer and wants to be aware of his past schedule in the event that he will need to reference some past event/meeting/et cetera of his.
I would think that Lieberman’s primary appeal was to Jewish and moralistic voters (many of whom still voted for Bush, though), no? In contrast, Graham could have probably appealed to a much larger segment of the Florida electorate; after all, Graham already won five statewide elections in Florida (in comparison to Lieberman’s zero). Frankly, that might have been all that Gore needed in 2000–after all, even if Gore would have lost New Mexico and either Iowa or Wisconsin, Gore would have won in 2000 if he would have won Florida.
Also, as a side note, later events indicated that Graham was more in touch with Gore than Lieberman was. After all, both Gore and Graham supported the Gulf War in 1991 and opposed the Iraq War as early as 2002. Plus, Joe Lieberman ended up exposing himself as a turncoat later on. Indeed, while satirical, this 2008 The Onion article appears to sum it up quite nicely ;):
"
President Gore will not be the only new arrival in the White House to face criticism, however. Joseph Lieberman—the former independent senator from Connecticut who in just two months has gone from the short list of possible Republican running mates to nearly being ousted from the Democratic Caucus to becoming the first Jewish Vice President—will also have much to answer for.
“Uhh,” Lieberman said in his first official address Wednesday. “Umm…yeah.”
"
Frankly, Gore appears to have lost both because he was a poor candidate and because the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Florida recount and refused to allow a new recount to occur in Florida. However, the reason that the U.S. Supreme Court was able to do this in the first place while allowing Bush to win Florida is because Bush was ahead by several hundred votes in the Florida vote count. In contrast, if Gore would have been ahead by several hundred or especially several thousand votes in the Florida vote count, then there would have been nothing that the U.S. Supreme Court could have done to make Gore lose Florida and the election in 2000.
As far as I know, Gore lost Tennessee in 2000 because he flip-flopped on issues such as abortion and gun rights after he became U.S. Vice President.
In addition to Bush’s DUI story, though, Bush’s November 1, 2000 statement that Social Security is not a federal program might have also hurt him. While Bush obviously misspoke with that statement (indeed, this statement in context would have almost certainly been harmless for Bush; see here: George W. Bush on Social Security ), Gore took this statement of Bush’s out of context, repeatedly mentioned it on the campaign trail (out of context, of course), and even made and ran an ad in both Florida and Pennsylvania with this statement (out of context, of course).
Plus, as far as I know, Bush also took a day off in the final days of the 2000 campaign instead of sucking it up like he should have and campaign on that day. While this might not have mattered too much in the popular vote, an extra day of campaigning might have prevented or at least shortened the recount drama after the 2000 election.
I certainly agree with this. After all, while the U.S. economy was already slowing down in late 2000, it still appeared to be relatively strong during this time. Plus, Gore could have talked about he was a member of an administration that created even more jobs than Reagan’s administration did and that the U.S. economy went into a recession under Bush Sr.'s watch. Heck, Gore could have also hammered the Republicans for talking about the Lewinsky scandal and pointed out that the Republicans prefer to talk about a scandal that Gore himself was not personally involved in instead of talking about things such as jobs and the economy.
To be fair, though, Bush might have very well lost Florida and the electoral vote as well if a full manual hand count of both overvotes and undervotes would have been done in Florida after the 2000 election. Indeed, that is what happens when Bush takes a day off near the end of the 2000 campaign and when Bush doesn’t campaign in Florida as much as he should have (in spite of his brother Jeb’s warnings). (Thankfully for Bush, though, his friends on the Supreme Court ended up bailing him out of this mess in the end.)
Yes, I certainly agree with you that Gore had every right to contest the Florida results up to the point when his legal options finally became exhausted.
Frankly, you’re certainly not the only one who noticed this ;):
Are you suggesting that Bush shouldn’t have continued reading The Pet Goat to a bunch of elementary schoolers on 9/11? If so, then would that have actually done anything meaningful? After all, couldn’t this have simply traumatized these students.
Frankly, I prefer the “having a barbecue” meme (courtesy of myself ;)). After all, neither I nor Bush are alcoholics. Also, frankly, Yes, I myself would have preferred Gore as U.S. President in 2000 but would have preferred to have a barbecue with Bush. Indeed, I would think that, as a Texan, Bush is capable of having great barbecues.
While Bush was certainly a chicken-hawk, he was also a visionary, at least in his rhetoric:
Indeed, Bush’s goal of reducing support for terrorism among Muslims by bringing democracy to the Muslim world actually appears to be extremely noble. Of course, while Bush was certainly (at least rhetorically) a visionary in regards to this, he and his advisers also certainly didn’t know how to properly execute this goal of theirs.
You are assuming that Gore would not have gotten a boost in the polls with another VP pick, though. Of course, I am tempted to disagree with you in regards to this.
Are you talking about Bob Graham’s notebooks here? If so, then I would like to point out that while this habit of Graham’s was both weird and quirky, I would suspect that it probably wouldn’t have hurt the Gore-Graham ticket.
Also, though, like it or not, but Gore officially lost Florida. Frankly, the official vote count is literally the only vote count which matters in regards to this.
Frankly, the only weird thing about Graham is his decades-long habit of keeping notebook entries of every single event of every single day of his life since 1977 or so; however, I doubt that this would have hurt the Gore-Graham ticket due to the fact that Gore and Graham could simply say that Graham is an extremely detailed organizer and wants to be aware of his past schedule in the event that he will need to reference some past event/meeting/et cetera of his. 
