Bob Dole in the context of "United States District Court for the District of Kansas"

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1976. The Democratic ticket of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and Minnesota senator Walter Mondale narrowly defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent president Gerald Ford and Kansas senator Bob Dole. This was the first presidential election since 1932 in which the incumbent was defeated, as well as the only one of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988 to have the Democratic Party ticket win.

Ford ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which badly damaged the Republican Party and its electoral prospects. Ford previously served as Nixon's second vice president after his first vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in 1973 for taking bribes while he was the governor of Maryland prior to becoming vice president.

Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Tennessee in both houses of the U.S. Congress, first as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1985, and then as a U.S. senator from 1985 to 1993. Gore was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in 2000; he lost to George W. Bush despite winning the popular vote.

The son of politician Albert Gore Sr., Gore was raised in Tennessee and Washington, D.C., where he was born. After graduating from Harvard University and serving in the U.S. Army, he quit law school to run as a representative for Tennessee's 4th congressional district in 1976. Gore was re-elected three times before running for U.S. Senate in 1984, winning re-election in 1990. He was considered a moderate and an "Atari Democrat". Gore served as vice president during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001, defeating then-incumbents George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle in 1992, and Bob Dole and Jack Kemp in 1996, and was the first Democrat to serve two full terms as vice president since John Nance Garner. As of 2025, Gore's 1990 re-election remains the last time Democrats won a Senate election in Tennessee.

Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office after defeating the Republican incumbent president George H. W. Bush and independent businessman Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. Four years later, he won re-election in the 1996 presidential election, after defeating the Republican nominee Bob Dole, and also Perot again (then as the nominee of the Reform Party). Alongside Clinton's presidency, the Democratic Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 103rd U.S. Congress following the 1992 elections, thereby attained an overall federal government trifecta. Clinton was constitutionally limited to two terms (the first re-elected Democrat president to be so) and was succeeded by Republican George W. Bush, who won the 2000 presidential election against Clinton's preferred successor, vice president Al Gore.

President Clinton oversaw the second longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. Months into his first term, he signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which raised taxes and set the stage for future budget surpluses. He signed the bipartisan Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and won ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement, despite opposition from trade unions and environmentalists. Clinton's most ambitious legislative initiative, a plan to provide universal health care, failed to advance through Congress. A backlash to Clinton's agenda sparked the Republican Revolution, with the GOP taking control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Clinton pivoted to the center in response by assembling a bipartisan coalition to pass welfare reform, and he successfully expanded health insurance for children.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1988. The Republican ticket of incumbent vice president George H. W. Bush and Indiana senator Dan Quayle defeated the Democratic ticket of Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis and Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen. The election was the third consecutive landslide victory for the Republican Party.

President Ronald Reagan was ineligible to seek a third term because of the 22nd Amendment. As a result, it was the first election since 1968 to lack an incumbent president on the ballot, and also the first incumbent president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 to be barred from seeking reelection. Bush entered the Republican primaries as the front-runner, defeating Kansas senator Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson. He selected Indiana senator Dan Quayle as his running mate. Dukakis, campaigning on his state's record of strong economic growth, won the Democratic primaries after Gary Hart (a prominent "Atari Democrat" representing the party's moderate wing) withdrew and Ted Kennedy (representing the party's traditional liberal wing) declined to run. Dukakis selected Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate.

Patrick Joseph Buchanan (/bjuːˈkænən/ bew-KAN-ən; born November 2, 1938) is an American author, political commentator, and politician. He was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He is an influential figure in the modern paleoconservative movement in the United States.

In 1992 and 1996, Buchanan sought the Republican presidential nomination. In 1992, he ran against incumbent president George H. W. Bush, campaigning against Bush's breaking of his "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge, as well as his foreign policy, his trade and immigration policy, and his positions on social issues. At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan delivered his "culture war" speech in support of the nominated President Bush. In 1996, he ran against eventual Republican nominee Bob Dole, but withdrew after getting only 21 percent of Republican primary votes. In 2000, he was the Reform Party's presidential nominee. His campaign centered on non-interventionism in foreign affairs, opposition to illegal immigration, and opposition to the outsourcing of manufacturing from free trade. He selected educator and conservative activist Ezola Foster as his running-mate. Despite his own terminology of self-identification, expressed in the desire to be called a "supporter of the doctrine of disengagement", his foreign policy views have been categorized as isolationist.

In the 1976 United States presidential election, Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale, were elected president and vice president, defeating incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford and his running mate, Bob Dole.

Carter, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia, launched his presidential bid in December 1974, as the Constitution of Georgia barred him from running for a second term as governor. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, the declining popularity of President Ford due to his pardon of Nixon, and the severe 1973–1975 recession, many Democrats were sure of victory in the 1976 presidential election. As a result, 17 Democrats ran for their party's nomination in 1976. Carter's opponents mocked his candidacy by saying "Jimmy, who?", for him being relatively unknown outside Georgia. In response, Carter began saying "My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president." Carter extensively campaigned in the primaries, and in the end received 39.19% of his party's primary votes.

Al Gore served as the 45th vice president of the United States during the presidency of Bill Clinton from January 20, 1993, to January 20, 2001. Gore, a member of the Democratic Party who previously served as the junior U.S. senator representing Tennessee from 1985 to 1993, was selected as Clinton's running mate and took office following their victory in the 1992 presidential election over Republican incumbent president George H. W. Bush and vice president Dan Quayle. Four years later, in the 1996 presidential election, they defeated Republican nominees, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, to win re-election.

Alongside Gore's vice presidency, the Democratic Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 103rd U.S. Congress following the 1992 elections, attained an overall federal government trifecta. Near the end of his tenure, Gore ran for president as the Democratic nominee in the 2000 presidential election and selected junior Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate. They lost the 2000 election to the Republican ticket of Texas governor George W. Bush and his running mate, former U.S. secretary of defense Dick Cheney following the controversial Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision. As vice president in his capacity as the president of the Senate, Gore oversaw the certification of Bush and Cheney as the winners of the election on January 6, 2001. Clinton and Gore were succeeded in office by Bush and Cheney on January 20, 2001.