If Alcohol is Such a Great Fuel, Why Has Gasoline Dominated the Fuel Market for so Long?

Because refining oil into fuel requires large, centralized facilities, which concentrates wealth and profit into powerful monolithic organizations.

Alcohol, on the other hand, can be (and has been since the beginning) produced small-scale. Individual farmers. They don't have the financial clout. They can't afford the political clout.

These fuels have been competing for over a hundred years, but it wasn't until the 1970s that ethanol finally got some political clout, mainly because they used corn as the feedstock.

Corn can be transported and stored very easily, so you can have a steady supply of it, which means you can keep your distillery running all year long, not just seasonally.

So the bigger organizations can afford lobbyists. Not as many as the oil industry, but it's enough to keep ethanol from being completely crushed.