Al Gore campaigned for President of the United States as a Democrat three times. In 1988, he lost to Michael Dukakis. In 1992, he lost to Bill Clinton, who selected him as running mate. He was subsequently elected Vice President in 1992 and re-elected along with Clinton in 1998. In 2000, Gore won the party nomination, but lost in the general election to George W. Bush.

Gore as "anti-Jackson" candidate

During the 1988 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when "Rainbow Coalition" candidate Jesse Jackson was the leader in delegates (Jackson had won 55% of the vote in the Michigan caucuses and appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time magazines in April 1988), some officials in the Jackson campaign accused Senator Gore of focusing on the South as part of a concerted stop-Jackson effort by the Democratic Party leadership to diminish Rev. Jackson's showing there. Rev. Jackson himself accused Gore operatives of employing a subtly racist strategy in the South, and a blatantly racist strategy in New York, where Gore's most prominent backer, New York City Mayor Ed Koch, said that Jews would be "crazy" to vote for Jackson. Roger Wilkins was among those who denounced what they saw as the racially polarizing tactics of Gore's campaign. Despite this ill will on the 1988 campaign trail, Al Gore was eventually able to mend fences with Jesse Jackson, who supported the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, and who also campaigned for the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000.

See also: Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000.