2000: Would people quit saying these things?
Memes I am sick of:
#1: “If Gore had won his home state of Tennesee, Florida would not have mattered.”
Um… So? I don’t get it. Why would he need to win Tennesee when he could win Florida? Let’s say you gave Gore a free thousand votes he could distribute them to any state in the nation. I guarantee he would throw them to Florida and not to Tennessee.
#2: “If Gore had just won the previously Democratic seat of West Virginia, Florida would not have mattered.”
See #1. And also see the changing nature of the map.
#3: “Joseph Lieberman was a horrible pick for vice president.”
I don’t like Joseph Lieberman, but electorally he picked up a whole slew of votes in Florida. Far from being one of the worst vice presidential picks, he was maybe the best pick of any Democratic nominee in winning votes since either Gore or Johnson. Edwards, meanwhile, proved to be either a nonfactor or a slight drag on the ticket — for whatever reason.
One of the disappointments of the 2004 Kerry loss was that if he had won, he would have done so without a single southern state voting for him — which would have done a number for that Carter — Clinton (and actually all the way back to when Roosevelt picked Truman for his running mate) which was proven useless when Edwards failed to pick up a single southern state. Mind you, it’d turn out to be a frighteningly tight base with which to govern for re-election – likely dooming Kerry to one term-hood (might have been valuable in the Supreme Court picture), but no tighter than Bush’s victory — likely dooming a Democratic president.