2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Is Donald Trump the Worst Presidential Candidate in American History? [View all]NNadir
(33,638 posts)...by the United States Senate, of which he was a member.
He ran against Lincoln, Douglas and Bell in a four way race in 1860 which thankfully Lincoln won.
He fought against the United States Army for the Confederates, even though his state, Kentucky, did not secede from the Union.
He was Buchanan's VP; Buchanan holding the distinction of being in a pretty close tie among historians as the worst President in US history, with Andrew Johnson.
Then there was Aaron Burr, who was also a traitor, he narrowly lost the election - which was thrown into the House of Representatives - to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was creepy, but at least the democracy survived him. It's not clear it would have survived Burr. Under the constitution of the United States at the time, he actually served as Vice President as the 2nd place finisher.
(Jefferson was elected because constitution at the time awarded electoral votes, 2/5 of a person, to slaves, even though they could not vote and had no power. Without the 2/5 clause, John Adams would have easily been re-elected; with it he came in third.)
Trump is probably a traitor to his country, and the question remains whether or not he is worse than these two. We can say definitively he is the worst candidate in more than a century.
The worst Presidential candidate in the last 100 years - he won the election - was Richard Nixon, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also won, but it is hard to consider either of these awful people to be the equivalent of Trump.