Fundamentals

Bernstein revisits the 2000 election. He thinks that the state of the economy played a large role:

For better or worse, what political scientists have found is thatvoters have very, very short memories; the models that work best onlylook at election-year economic factors.  So Gore apparently got littlecredit for the boom years.  Moreover, what seems to matter isn'tunemployment, or general economic growth, but changes in realdisposable income.  And as it happened, GDP growth continued...