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1) Gore-Lieberman was solid and did help Gore. I know people here don't like Lieberman, and he's not my candidate this yr, but I do think he helped in '00 -- the general public, if not the Dem. activists, liked what they saw and the media coverage of him was very good. The whole running mate selection and runup to the convention were very good to gore, he suddenly pulled into a large lead. (Sighs)
2) Clinton-Gore was solid -- didn't really help or hurt Clinton, but did keep the ticket on message, setting a new precedent for running mates -- not ideological balance, but ideological compatibility.
3) Dukakis-Bentsen was good -- it helped Dukakis win some votes he wouldn't have. Bentsen was very strong and had much higher ratings than Quayle.
4) Mondale-Ferraro didn't help. Initially it did, but once the initial euphoria wore away it became clear that there was nothing in her that qualified her to be vice-president or president for that matter: she was a 3-term not-too-prominent congresswoman. Of course, Reagan was amazingly popular that yr anyway, so Mondale would probably have lost anyway.
5) Carter-Mondale didn't hurt
6) McGovern-Shriver was a disaster. McGovern was a hugely inept candidate as it was; Edmund Muskie would have been vastly better. But the whole running mate fiasco w/ first nominating Thomas Eagleton proved a disaster, and the ticket never made any headway. Indeed, before the running-mate debacle it was only 10 pts behind nixon -- the debacle caused there not to be a post-convention bounce and brought his ratings down dramatically.
7) Humphrey-Muskie was good. The Democrats that year were disastrous, though in the end they did nearly win after a last-minute surge in support as many Democrats came home. Muskie was said to be one of the bright spots of the campaign and proved a good running mate. Both of these men would've made excellent Presidents.
8) Johnson-Humphrey didn't hurt or help. It didn't matter when the Republicans nominated Goldwater.
9) Kennedy-Johnson helped a lot more than most tickets. Johnson gave a lot of geographic support, bringing Texas along w/ him, which was very close that yr, and probably shoring up support in other parts of the South as well. JFK could have won w/out him, but it would've been much harder.
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