For the title of "Most Fucked Over Politician in American History" I wish to nominate . . . . .

[Stinky The Clown]

. . . . . Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As runner up, Albert Arnold Gore Jr.

Each for different reasons.

{on edit} Adding John Kerry to the list.

[ananda]

1. Don't forget John Kerry and swiftboating.

...

[onecaliberal]

3. 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

[GoCubsGo]

18. That did that to Max Clelland, as well.

Utterly despicable.

[GaYellowDawg]

81. They sure did.

I have family connections to Max. What they did to him, especially Ann Coulter, hurt him and really hurt his parents.

[peppertree]

25. Plus Ken "Black-Box" Blackwell's shenanigans in Ohio

If Ohio, in 2004, had been a left-leaning 3rd world country, Bush would've slapped them with sanctions (or invaded them outright).

[judesedit]

2. How about John Kerry?

They swift boated him, too.

[PXR-5]

4. Al Franken

[3Hotdogs]

12. Thank you, Kristen. You thought it would give you a side road to the presidency.

[barbtries]

59. i will never forgive her.

hate that kind of cynicism. Franken should still be in office.

[OMGWTF]

91. Me either.

[Duppers]

29. Indeed! 👍

[mountain grammy]

78. +1000

[grantcart]

5. Abe Lincoln and JFK would be at the top of my list

[ITAL]

16. James Garfield and William McKinley too

Especially Garfield though given the medical treatment caused his death more than the bullet!

[twodogsbarking]

99. Both got shot in the back of the head. Hard to top that.

[housecat]

6. Jimmy Carter, but recently, Hillary Clinton. She was the best, but the Russians gave us trump

[Pmc1962]

68. Don't forget Comey

Comey pulling that stunt less that 2 weeks before the election, while covering up for Trump and Putin.

[griffi94]

7. Howard Dean

[calimary]

9. No kidding!!!

And Hillary Clinton also.

[Evolve Dammit]

66. Imus was all over the "Dean Scream" which was a total misrepresentation of a passionate moment.

[Peregrine Took]

79. Scarborough did, also, make a huge deal of it Huge!

What a cheap shot...suits him.

[Evolve Dammit]

95. well that takes him down another peg for me. He is a blowhard conservative, but not MAGA. nt

[OnionPatch]

76. I've never seen a politician destroyed over something so inconsequential and ridiculous.

One hoot of excitement and it was all over. WTF?

[Peregrine Took]

80. Cheapest of cheap shots. A real sucker punch when someone was down. n/t

[Nululu]

87. Agreed. Playing his hoot every 15 min

It was absurd. He gave Democrats the 50 staye strategy that helped elect Obama. He was also a great DNC head.

[griffi94]

94. The Democrats need to go back to the 50 state strategy.

I have never been a fan of that Big Blue Wall strategy.
Concedes too many state level offices.

[Tetrachloride]

100. +50. The 50 state strategy inspires voters in every place

especially swing districts.

[griffi94]

103. It was why Democrats steam-rolled the GOP in 2006.

And in 2008, Obama won the presidency and Democrats had a super-majority in the senate.

[BOSSHOG]

8. Hillary Clinton was the victim many times

Of the machinations of the brilliant conservative minds of the gop for almost 50 years. They got

ZERO convictions
ZERO indictments

FOUR years of the ruinous behavior of Donald trump, whose carcass hangs around the party’s neck providing the wretched stench of brilliant responsibility.

Yes gop your brilliance shines. In the cameras of faux

[librechik]

10. Obama was denied a judge and a healthcare plan

along with respect. But Hillary, yeah. FO.

[Skittles]

13. which one was denied the presidency and which one was not

case closed

[Skittles]

11. the propaganda against Hillary worked on a lot of so-called "progressives"

sickening

[radical noodle]

15. It was the ultimate betrayal

not just of Hillary, but of the country.

[Skittles]

17. damn straight

she would have made a fine president indeed

[radical noodle]

20. She would have

and we would have an entirely different Supreme Court now.

[Skittles]

24. aw jeez, when I think about that

crazy, crazy

[TiberiusB]

40. Only if you think the Republican Senate would have done her the favor

Without the Senate, there's little chance Mitch would have cooperated. Had Ginsberg retired when Obama was first elected, that would have made a huge difference. With Clinton as president, Justice Kennedy would have likely held out until a Republican took the White House, and without Trump to run against, there's no telling who would be President now.

[radical noodle]

47. Scalia's seat was open

She would have filled that soon after she first took office.

[TiberiusB]

48. How?

Republican Senate, so the same problem remains. Could they have blocked her for her whole term? I don't know, but it's a lock they would do everything they could.

[radical noodle]

65. I think it would have been very difficult for Mitch

to continue down that road of blocking all nominees for two more years. He did not block Obama's two appointees earlier in his presidency. Granted, they really wanted to keep Scalia's seat and they would have pushed hard against anyone too progressive, but it could have stymied the court too much to have an even number of justices for much longer. JMHO. We'll never know for sure, but we didn't have the opportunity to find out.

[happybird]

23. I hate doing the "What Ifs" but

very often find myself thinking about how things would be different (and better) had Hillary been President. It’s maddening.

[albacore]

32. What if...Gore (hundreds of thousands of people NOT dead in the ME)...

And Clinton... hundreds of thousands of Americans NOT dead from Covid.

Lots more.. like infrastructure, health care... but just looking at the body count.

[lunatica]

35. Donut forget climate change

It would have been Gore’s crown jewel!

[LisaM]

85. Don't forget 9/11

I remain convinced that Al Gore would have read the Gore Commission Report on Airline Security that would likely have prevented 9/11. Heck, he might even have implemented it. Bush shelved it.

[Warpy]

30. The propaganda also manipulated a lot of her supporters

who had bought into a cult of personality to join a little group called PUMA. Remember them?

She lost to Obama and that should have been it in 2008, but personality cultists can be manipulated.

I agree that what happened to her in 2016 was beyond horrible, she had to fight not only the GOP, she had to fight corrupt major media, Cambridge Analytica, targeted voter suppression via Farcebook, and Vladimir Putin, only to be fatally smeared just days before the election by James Fucking Comey.

It's a miracle she won the popular vote.

The popular vote has been overturned by the EC twice in my life and both times it was a godawful mistake. Maybe it's time to start asking our Congressional candidates what they're going to do about that.

[MrsCoffee]

51. PUMA's threats never materialized.

Clinton's most ardent backers overwhelmingly followed her enthusiastic endorsement of Obama. No Clinton delegates led a walkout during the convention or tried to shout over speakers.

[radical noodle]

67. THIS

She hopped on the Obama bandwagon as soon as it was clear he would win and was super supportive of him. But she's a Democrat and did what needed to be done for him, for the party, and for the country.

[murielm99]

71. We all do that.

At least, if we are real Democrats. We don't support independents, or greens, or people who ride to the "rescue" at the last minute.

[Warpy]

90. I personally know 2 women who changed their registration to R

and they're now in TFG's fan club. Yeah, it had an effect on people who were so invested in the cult of personality they wigged out when they didn't get their prize pony at the end.

My own opinion was a bit divided. She was too conservative for me (they all are, TBH) but I thought she'd do a good job. I just didn't want Bill anywhere near the Oval Office, and no, it had nothing to do with his sex life.

Sensible Clinton supporters endorsed Obama. Some of her fan club were simply not sensible people.

[NullTuples]

33. Well, voter suppression followed by "I guess Dems just didn't show up" seemed to have worked...

Let's not forget that in some states the number of blocked voters via CrossCheck alone was THIRTY times larger than Trump's victory margin.

[TiberiusB]

38. I'm not so sure progressives are to blame here

Clinton's vote totals were comparable to Obama's re-election in 2012. The Republicans leveraged white anxiety, voter suppression, and the Comey intervention to shift the battle just enough to swing an electoral win. There was a lot of background noise on the Left about Clinton as a candidate, but when push came to shove, most still voted for her. The rise of white nationalism and race issues in a post Obama era likely tipped the scales. The estimated 10% of Bernie voters that went to Trump were likely not progressives at all. Bernie was, and is, a populist, attracting a large swath of disaffected voters who have simply lost faith in the government. Trump played on those fears and amplified them.

[Skittles]

41. don't even get me started on Bernie

I would be alerted on...over and out

[Joinfortmill]

56. 👍

[Genki Hikari]

77. In this queue

nt

[halfulglas]

101. Not the progressives, but the multiple Republican hearings demonizing Hillary

Poisoned a lot of the independents who went for Trump. I still know a few independents who still claim they can't stand her, believing she must be guilty of something, demonizing the Clinton Foundation claiming it was corrupt, etc., etc. A few more independent voters plus a more effective turn out of Dems would have put her over in the Electoral College.

[betsuni]

42. I wish there would be more research on this.

I've only seen it discussed at any length in a couple of books.

I saw it happening with liberals I knew in 2014 when they began linking to anti-Obama/Democrats articles from strange websites and by 2016 they believed every conspiracy theory and lie about Hillary except maybe Pizzagate. I couldn't believe it. They weren't even too young to know who Hillary is, most involved in education, yet they refused to fact check anything, as if it was a religious belief. It was the populist righteous progressive Us vs the evil immoral liberal Them. Not new, but it really took off. But why?

Steve Almond wrote a little about a young friend who went from being a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2015 who impressed Almond (who was also a Bernie supporter) with his political engagement to "Clinton will lead us into war. She'll create a corporatist police state" and "'A vote for Hillary is a vote for Trump'" a few weeks before the election. Almond adds, "which is how you know he isn't a person of color or a Muslim, or an immigrant." And it wasn't only Russian. Domestic elected official, public figures, media that claimed to be progressive and were trusted by their audiences told them that Democrats were corrupt evil enemies who will do anything to stop progress, Them. Not Republicans who are the actual enemies. Why would they do that? I need this to be studied!

[Lonestarblue]

69. The so-called liberal NYT not only tolerated attacks on both Clintons, but especially Hillary,

they allowed on of their most famous writers to attack them with lies and vicious claims. William Safire hated the Clintons, wrote about them frequently, and never apologized when his lies about them were proven to be untrue. The Times never printed a retraction, they just allowed him to spread his evil. More recently, Maureen Dowd, whose work I refuse to read, carried on the Safire diatribes against Hillary. The Times was totally complicit in electing Donald Trump, eapecialoy when they published excerpted parts of Clinton Cash, written by people known to make up lies about the Clintons. They also had article after article about her email controversy while rarely publishing anything about Trump’s bankruptcies, shady business dealings, and his use of illegal immigrants to work on his buildings, amny of whom he refused to pay after the work was done.

Slimy Ken Starr and Brett Kavanaugh spent over $70 million of taxpayer money and investigated every personal and professional aspect of the Clintons’ lives, and the result—lots of fodder for the right wing to make up lies while neither Clinton was ever proved to have committed crimes in the Whitewater controversy. Clinton was impeached because he lied about a personal affair, an affair that was stupid but totally outside the duties of president. Donald Trump was impeached twice for criminal behavior in his duties as president, yet Republicans hold him up as their model of a great president.

We need better media.

[ismnotwasm]

14. Yup.

[Sneederbunk]

19. Don Siegelman

[vanlassie]

21. Came here to say that.

[live love laugh]

75. ✔️

[Lucky Luciano]

22. Al Franken

[Texin]

26. I don't disagree.

[DFW]

27. I'd have to give her the title as well.

However, I was once at a Democratic gathering in New York with Al Gore and Howard. This was May of 2008, and it was a small setting in a Manhattan apartment. I was thinking, here are two guys who SHOULD have been President and then President (Gore 2001-2009, and then Howard 2009-2017), and then 8 years of Hillary (or Hillary first and then Howard, and then Obama, since he is still young enough). What an incredible, wonderful country we could have been.

Not just most Fucked Over Politician. Because of what happened, most fucked-over country. Three people, whom History will bury as footnotes, reversed the good trend of things: Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and Sandra Day O'Connor. Their actions in late 2000 set us on a course of turmoil that may yet bury us, long-term, and all for their own petty reasons. Harris was no intellectual beacon in the fog, but Jeb and O'Connor knew full well, that besides having really won the election, Al Gore would do the country a LOT more good than brother W. ever would.

[Polybius]

43. 40 years of one-Party rule (counting Bill Clinton's 8 years) isn't feasible though

The country tends to tire and likes to switch every 8 years or so. The last time one Party won even 3 times in a row was 1988. You're suggesting an unprecedented 8 times in a row.

But would it be cool? Sure!

[DFW]

49. Realistic? No. History rarely hands out Halloween candy

But man, would it have been nice.

I remember at the end of Clinton’s eight years, my European colleagues were saying, hey if you won’t let him be your president any more, can we have him?

[betsuni]

50. I don't understand. Republicans controlled Congress for six of eight years of Clinton and Obama

administrations. How was that one-party rule? Do you mean Americans thought it was one-party rule?

[Polybius]

84. No

I was talking abut the poster who said his lineup (8 years of Bill Clinton followed by 8 years of Hillary Clinton, Dean, and Obama). It's just too unrealistic.

[jaxexpat]

28. Had Carter not been undermined by the politics of treason......

the Reagan era would have never happened. Hillary is kind of a late comer to the party of those great Democratic leaders who've been undone by the vast right-wing conspiracy.

[Alice Kramden]

62. Agree

Let us not forget that

[caraher]

31. Adding Kerry brings back memories of other fuckery

The media really rolled over for the RW that year...

* Swift boat liars were given a free platform to smear a decorated veteran. Kerry's reputation spoiled by clearly false stories, abetted by the media

* Dan Rather's being fooled by a faked document in support of a fundamentally true story of W's suspect Guard service used to dismiss the story itself and erasing in the minds of most a blemish on W's service record

Double standard, much? Consistent standards of evidence and newsworthiness?

[cilla4progress]

34. Totally!

[Dave says]

36. I absolutely agree

[DemocraticPatriot]

37. I don't disagree with any on your list, but I would add to the nominees,

Robert F. Kennedy (via assassination),
Ted Kennedy (via unique historical circumstances),
Gary Hart 1984 (in 1988 he fucked himself),

Michael Dukakis (he turned out to be "too nice a guy" to win... if the '88 campaign had last 2 more weeks, I think he WOULD have won)

[Codifer]

39. And not to forget

California Governor Gray Davis... not so gently screwed by Ken Lay's Enron and Bush the dumber. Just for the money and a good deal of power.

May the enron assholes forever be known as the "smartest guys in the tomb"'

[betsuni]

44. I think it was only Gore who received an apology from the press.

[Celerity]

45. I would go with one of the assassinated ones. nt

[Initech]

46. Agreed! What the right wing white wing propaganda sphere did to Hillary is inexcusable!

And it has been since 2016 when I woke up and began to see the absolute damage that Fox News is doing to this country. Fuck them, fuck Trump.

[SouthernDem4ever]

52. Amazing how the people that want to help the average citizen the most

get treated the worst.

[twodogsbarking]

53. They don't whine about though.

[Joinfortmill]

54. And all filled with grace and dignity.

[Delarage]

55. Going with Gore

Carter and Clinton also got screwed, though. As others have pointed out, the world would be a lot safer, happier, and healthier if they had not been f'd with.

But Al Gore's loss stung me the most. I protested in DC during W's appointment to office, found DU, and this outraged Delawarean (=Delarage) hasn't looked back since. I thought that was the end of democracy and the end of hope for the working masses--until Obama proved that overwhelming numbers can still prevail. Then Russia and Trump counter-punched. Then overwhelming numbers prevailed again. Staying vigilant for their next efforts with their packed Supreme Court paving the way

[Joinfortmill]

60. Yup, no rest for proponents/protectors of democracy

[Vinca]

57. Boy, that's for sure. I still blame Comey for her loss.

[Joinfortmill]

61. Comey still has a lot of explaining to do.

[barbtries]

58. i would agree.

Because of it, the people of the USA have been fucked over.

[JuJuChen]

63. are we going back only as far as we've been alive?

I don't know much about past Presidents but those choices seem legit

[Evolve Dammit]

64. adding Max Cleland

[Martin68]

70. With Al Franken and John Kerry running close behind.

[marmar]

72. Al Gore and Jimmy Carter

[garybeck]

73. One thing in common, they all ran for president

Expect the trend to continue

[live love laugh]

74. Gabby Giffords and Nancy Pelosi.

[Demsrule86]

82. And they were all f'd over by the same losing party...the Greens...Gore and Clinton in the

General...but Kerry was attacked unmercifully in the primary...same outcome. The GOP won. Green stands for 'get republicans elected every November.

[Demsrule86]

83. And they were all f'd over by the same losing party...the Greens and from some who...

foolishly vote for them in the General. Green stands for 'get republicans elected every November.

[geardaddy]

86. What about McGovern? Ed Muskie?

They were roasted by the press for being too soft.

[Boomerproud]

102. George McGovern deserves a huge apology.

Too late, I know. He served this country faithfully as a WWII pilot and TRUE public servant.

[geardaddy]

104. This!

[Cha]

88. Oh yeah, Hillary on so many

levels.

[Pepsidog]

89. Hillary hands down.

[lpbk2713]

92. Jimmy Carter would be at the top of my list.

He was a gentleman in a time and place that had no need for gentlemen.

Likewise Al Gore. Katherine Harris and Saturday Night Live took him down.

[karynnj]

93. I would bet the most F Ed over is someone none of us remember, who was stopped before

they gained any strength or visibility. However, if I had to choose, it would be HRC. Not because she was treated worse, but because of ,how it impacted her legacy.

I agree that all the people mentioned were treated unfairly by the media allowing RW lies that were probably untrue when repeated. However, they all especially Gore and Kerry rose past the unfairness and continued to make extremely important and well regarded accomplishments for the country and world. Gore, more than anyone, woke up significant numbers of people to the facts of climate change. Kerry was an essential player in negotiating the Paris Climate Treaty and is currently a key player in trying to get the world on track. I think history will remember them very favorably, even though neither became President.

It is entirely possible that they will have accomplished more than they could have as President. This is especially true for Kerry, who would have faced significant Republican majorities in both houses and who has shown himself to be an amazing diplomat.

Of these 3, HRC was denied the chance to be the first woman President. She has remained a strong, safe voice for women and Democrats and she will be remembered as an important first Lady, who was elected as senator and then became a Secretary of State. Becoming President after all that would have been an incredible pinacle achievement.

[PatrickforB]

96. Al Franken? Just saying...n/t

[DENVERPOPS]

97. My exact feelings STC

I can't think of a single person who has had the credentials to be President of the United States, other than Hillary.
No question in my mind or Knowledgeable and Accredited people across the entire U.S. that Gore and Kerry were scammed out of being Presidents. The Republicans are getting organized to do an obliteration of the Dems in the 2024 elections..... Biden was a close call, next time they quasi Republican Party & Politicans won't make the same mistakes again.....

They have already announced a to-do list of all the carnage of Bullcrap that they are planning to release on the first day they take control of the U.S. House. Even if there is a 50-50 in the Senate, With our two DINO's still in the Senate, they will have the advantage there also......

[maxsolomon]

98. Don Siegelman

Ratfucked into Federal Prison.

[roamer65]

105. +1000

[roamer65]

106. Don Siegelman.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

107. We didn't deserve her...