I think people disliked Gore. I am an admirer of his policy knowledge and general intellectual approach however he made even a supporter like me uncomfortable. I felt he lacked empathy and was internally focused. While I accept that behavior in my friends and family, I felt that it created risk in a leader who must make decisions from conflicting advice and judge the behavior of others.

All that said, I voted for Gore anyway. Bush seemed so obviously intellectually cretinous that I was convinced he would fail in horrible ways. I take no pride in that successful prediction, I think we all knew the same thing. However, and this still makes me shudder, an electoral majority of us thought that Bush's incompetence was the lesser of the two evils.

Someday, I might figure out why on Nov 2, 2004 we repeated our error. Kerry was the lesser politician than Gore, for sure. But on the other hand, we now had confirmed proof of Bush's failures.