In the waning days of her 2008 campaign, staffers for Hillary Clinton put the final touches on a list of people they thought betrayed the candidate, and then ranked their level of betrayal. The problem with losing, however, is that its hard to exact any revenge.

In an excerpt from HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, Politico's Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes outline the Clintons' tabulation of all of the campaign's many, many betrayals. Hillary's "Hit List," Politico calls it — an Excel spreadsheet delineating those people most and least loyal to Clinton as she unsuccessfully tried to hold off Barack Obama. According to the Politico excerpt, the Clinton camp was gleeful about the fate of some of those who'd failed to see the practical wisdom of endorsing her.


Years later, they would joke among themselves in harsh terms about the fates of folks they felt had betrayed them. “Bill Richardson: investigated; John Edwards: disgraced by scandal; Chris Dodd: stepped down,” one said to another. “Ted Kennedy,” the aide continued, lowering his voice to a whisper for the punch line, “dead.”

Those three are the exception. Allen and Parnes describe a ranking of loyalty from 1 to 7, with 1 being those most loyal to Hillary Clinton during the campaign. The 7s, those people who the Clintons felt betrayed her the most, were added to what "a Clintonworld source" "wouldn’t, of course, call … an enemies list." Regardless of what it's called, none of them seems to have suffered much from being given that low designation.