Doug, there was a time when parties would back the same candidate for President more than once. Grover Cleveland won one term, lost re-election, and then won the next time around. Adlai Stevenson ran against Eisenhower in both '52 and '56, and Nixon came back from his narrow loss to Kennedy in '60 -- a situation in many ways comparable to Bush/Gore in 2000 -- to run for the same party in 1972 and win.

With today's media machine, though, I don't think anybody will ever be able to do that again, barring extraordinary circumstances. Even as early as the beginning of 2001, the radio and TV talking heads and comedians were spinning it as though Gore's "loss" to Bush was comparable to Goldwater's defeat by Johnson or Mondale's loss to Reagan. Even if Gore had wanted to go through another campaign, I don't think the media would have played fair enough for it to work -- especially now that Bush was a "war President." As for not being electable, Doug, he WAS elected -- i.e., had enough votes cast for him to elect him -- in SPITE of Ralph Nader. But Florida never counted tens of thousands of its votes, thanks to the Supremes.