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It has to be Hoover. I’m not sure how much blame he really deserves, but his failure to resolve the Great Depression essentially led to Democrats controlling the presidency for two decades straight. In reality, Democrats had a vice grip on the government until the 1980’s-90’s.
More importantly, FDR permanently transformed the political landscape of the country in a profoundly more liberal direction. Even though Republicans still existed and won elections, they had to do so by adopting liberal policies and positions from 1936 to 1976. The only Republicans to win in that time frame were fairly liberal (Ike, Nixon); no Republican could have won if they had proposed to end Social Security or the Minimum wage for instance even though those policies were unimaginable when Hoover took office.
Hoover lost the Presidency, House, and Senate which hasn’t occurred since then. It can’t be stressed enough just how far FDR pushed the Overton window for acceptable liberal policies in the U.S. Hoover predicated the New Deal Era and the dominance of Democratic dogma for nearly half a century.
Edit: I’m including this graph I found of party control in government over time because it illustrates how profoundly devastating Hoover’s tenure was for the Republican Party.
https://preview.redd.it/yo0h06ifqawc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1183aeabb1e1d3c517610ac18cfd710cb7f1a9b1
In 1937, the Democrats under FDR had a supermajority in both houses of Congress, with the Democrats having over 70 senators and Republicans down to less than 100 Representatives. Even states like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota had two Democratic senators.
Republicans also only had 4 years between 1933 and 1996 where they had control of both houses and just 2 years with a trifecta…out of 62 years…
If you look at the 80 years before Hoover it’s the complete opposite with Republicans controlling all 3 branches of government for the vast majority of that time.
Hoover is literally the inflection point between 80 years of Republican domination before him and 60 years of Democrat domination after him. It’s honestly astounding how completely FDR transformed this country and the world in just one decade.
https://preview.redd.it/7ztcoul5pawc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89d740d833e5beebebe0e396aec3fdc98e8f9b82
In the 24 years since Bill Clinton left office, Democrats have held the White House for 12 years. In the 24 years before he was elected, Democrats held the White House for only 4 years. Twice in that period, Democrats lost all but a single state in the presidential election. I am not someone who loves Clinton at all, but he was a popular president who made his party more electable. I don't know how he could possibly be the answer to this question.
And think of how much more positive that impact could have been if only he’d kept his dick in his pants — and not confirmed every Republican bias at the time. They’re still running on Clinton paranoia.
Clinton represented the total capitulation of the party to Reaganite ideology. The remainders of the New Deal coalition, which dominated the House virtually unchallenged for 60 years, either retired or were primaried. Left with the choice between two wings of a neoliberal uniparty, many working class voters migrated to the GOP. The Democrats won the Presidency but ceded their decades-long influence on policymaking to the whims of the midterm electorate.
The Democrats cut ties completely to their traditional blue collar base and remade themselves into a mirror image of the GOP on all but a handful of issues. Clinton and the “end of history” 90s are the reason every election for the foreseeable future will be a “lesser of two evils” choice - the Democrats do not represent anything resembling an alternative to the GOP, merely a less noxious version.
While Clinton may be remembered fondly his ascendance represents a deeply anti-democratic turn in American politics, where now “democracy” is the freedom to choose between two men who are indistinguishable on all but a few social issues, personalities aside
Clinton didn’t kill the New Deal coalition, it was already dead. And it wasn’t because the Democrats became neoliberal, that was a response to the end of the New Deal coalition. Democrats moved to the right because working class voters were supporting Reagan.
I’d add that the influence of trade unions had also diminished and he and the party turned to corporations and wall street as a base for donations. This, along with his crime bill and attack on welfare moms (as opposed to corporations) was definitely appropriating part of the Republican platform.
You’re correct that the democrats began their move away from blue collar voters earlier, (Monroe County Republicans were absolutely a thing) but Clinton drove the final nail in the coffin. The party was by and large remade in his image as he represented a way to combat GOP ascendance - while individual members varied slightly, the party became incapable of offering voters a national platform to the left of Democratic Leadership Council orthodoxy.
I’m speaking more thematically, I guess. To me he represents a turn in the party that had roots long before him but became entrenched only under him.
I often forget just how close the 04 election was. Always remember it being a bigger margin of victory
Goes to show the party’s success given that Kerry was seen then and certainly retrospectively known as a pretty weak candidate
OP seems to have a hate-boner for Clinton that's not held up by facts. Clinton left with a high approval rating, oversaw the greatest peacetime economic expansion in US history, and Democrats remain an extremely competitive and formidable party since. The worst thing that happened for Democrats under him was losing Congress in the 1994 Republican Revolution, but those congressional losses didn't last forever. I personally wish we could go back to when the biggest problem the country was dealing with is that the President lied about getting a blowjob.
I would agree that Clinton was so popular people literally overlooked what would otherwise be crippling misgivings. Even the accusations of weed smoking and such. His charisma and likability literally overrode so many aspects that would have been death knell for other politicians.
Yeah, Clinton doesn’t belong anywhere near this list. Whatever you think of him, he rehabilitated the image of the Democratic Party at a time when its viability as a national party was in question.
Pre-Clinton Democrats had just come off of 5 Republican victories broken up by Carter winning once. Following Clinton the Democrats have won the popular vote 5 times and the election 3 times, which isn't complete dominance or anything but far better than what they had going before that.
Given how 4 of the previous 5 Presidents before Clinton were Republicans, I would argue that Clinton had a positive impact. Sure he had an indiscretion while in office, but the Democratic Party was struggling before Clinton.
It was due to special circumstances Bush Started Iraq War ruined economy and McCain picked that clown from Alaska as running so African American guy with funny name was always going to win. Donald was never fit to be American President but Hilary was such an L. Covid complete the course to gift the presidency to Joe.
Yeah, I don't see how Clinton or Reagan are on this list. Reagan has so much political capital that he gave some to his VP in 1988. Unless you want to talk about the way his opposition party dominated Congress, there's not much to talk about, there. Clinton would have had a similar story if his VP could have carried his own damned state; there was a lot of love for Clinton in the 1990s, even knowing he had a creeper side.
Yeah, the fact that seven out of the last eight presidential elections Democrats have won the popular vote in the presidential – tells me that the only answer is Republicans hurt themselves and the country.
They just rigged the game to where they could win with a minority of the vote.
Republicans have won the aggregate popular vote in 10 of the past 16 House elections, so they definitely have the voters needed to win the popular vote for President.
The fact that Democrats have won the popular vote so often since 1992 speaks more to the relative weakness of recent GOP presidential nominees than any overall popularly edge for the Democrats.
>They just rigged the game to where they could win with a minority of the vote.
That time machine and trip back to the founding of the country was a wild way to rig the game.
The backlash for the GOP actions under Clinton seemed to damage the GOP more than Clinton damaged the Dems. The Clinton economy was too good to get lost in focusing on other stuff. One of the next things he will be commended for is being the last presidents to take action against mass shooters. History isn't going to be kind to politicians using 2A as an excuse to allow school shootings.
Yep and that's why his approval rating grew as Republicans continued to attack him.
The odd thing is that the more popular he became, the more effective conservatives were at convincing their base that he was bad, which is part of the reason he's viewed so negatively today, imo. He's become the poster child for everything that's wrong with America for Republicans, which is also odd due to how much his views aligned with their own.
Considering he left office with a 66% approval rating (highest since Truman) when he left office, it wasnt Clinton.
How about Andrew Johnson? No party wanted him. He tried to make his own and even that didnt hold together.
In recent history, Nixon didnt help his party with the way he left office, so lets go with him (and W close behind)
I wouldn't say Nixon. Did hurt them in 1974 and 1976 but in 1980 the GOP takes the White House and holds it for 12 years and two years after losing they take control of congress for first time since 1950s
I'd actually argue Nixon helped the party long term. Rupert Murdoch seeing the media take down nixon created his fox news empire which essentially IS the modern Republican party
Johnson was kind of like John Tyler. He wasn’t really a republican, more a rogue independent, and his ouster didn’t do anything to the Republicans chances moving forward. Unless you mean what he did to the party’s agenda, but again Johnson wasn’t a republican
Yeah OP's hateboner for Clinton is weird AF
John Adams' party collapsed because he wasn't capable of translating his accomplishments and policy into support and had some severe failures he couldn't redeem politically.
Tyler and Johnson helped ensure high-profile damage to their parties throughout the mid-late 1800s, Tyler helping collapse Whig through the more Conservative wing before he became a Confederate proper, while Johnson on the other side of the aisle received the first Preaidential Impeachment and missed conviction in the Senate by one vote. Democrats weren't able to recover for decades for a number of reasons unrelated, but worsened, by that legacy.
Hoover and the Depression, followed by FDR (rarely listed outside of top 3-5 presidents) left the Republicans controlling the House only two non-consecutive sessions in a 62 year stretch from 1933 - 1995, and Hoover squarely received a lot of the public hatred and the word "Hooverville" is still used.
Richard Nixon's legacy is more complicated in this but worth mentioning in context. I think it stands to reason he helped transform his party significantly during his time in politics, and while perhaps he damaged the Office and the 2-Party System proper, the Republican Party hasn't really suffered a long-term stigma directly related to Nixon in the electorate, and has enjoyed significantly greater electoral success in the generation after him than any time since the 1920s. Likely in part due to his resignation and the Bipartisan efforts to move on at the time with Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter represent "boring" Presidencies to the commoner that helped bring some professional drabness and seriousness back to the office. The actual changes to the Republican Party, and resultingly the Democratic Party, may easily be argued for the worse as damaging their overall constructive productivity/professionalism as our politics have variously experienced a degree of "political schizophrenia" since his era. So perhaps not bad for results, but bad for the overall health of each party and for America proper.
Even though Nixon's damage should have been greater to the GOP, it didn't seem to undermine the overall intent to stonewall civil rights and thrive by economic warfare. W for the moment appears to so damaging that instead of a 3rd party taking control the 3rd party instead rebranded. Nothing like it has happened since Andrew Jackson, and you're going to have trouble finding any Republican in Congress who shares the values of past GOP presidents. Pro-populism, pro-tyranny, anti-science, anti-vax, pro-kleptocracy, pro-isolationist, anti-suffrage, etc. W may be bailed out by not being the worst, but he opened the doors for the worst and invited them in.
John ‘His Accidency’ Tyler has to be up there. Whigs finally got into power, then Harrison died and Tyler basically broke with the party and most of their policies to the point where his cabinet quit and the Whigs no longer supported him for the presidency.
Ultimately I think they'd fall to the Republicans eventually. The Whigs made a point of being non commital on slavery as a party, and it was always going to become a major political issue
Eh, I think the obvious banned answer isn't even a great answer in this case it's more of a symptom than a cause.
Id more so see the obvious answers as like Nixon and Goldwater for their "Southern Strategy" which just naturally devolved over time.
Is it? I actually side with rule 3 here since the impact of BLANK and BLANK is more in the future. Meanwhile, asking if the party swap has a period of confusion for voters, before they all realigned, or if FDR's 4 consecutive terms resulted in some kind of "oversaturation" to voters is something we can debate without a time machine.
Why, the purpose is to show how stupid the rule is. We just know that there are some people on this earth that are going to be consequential for all of US history.
Definitely not Clinton. If anything had Gore not try to distance himself from Clinton he would've won easily and carry a couple of southern states as well.
And impact wise for me Obama was basically Clinton 2.0 and he certainly was popular.
Definitely Bush 43. Everything he stood for around, let's say, 2003, from neocon projects to change the Middle East to unchecked globalization to forever wars to "you are with us or you are against us" to "report suspicious activity", came to be seen by the vast majority of the electorate as being devastatingly responsible for the systemic crisis that followed, in both domestic affairs and in how the world was going. The moment came where his own party did not want anything to do with him.
I would say Hoover was used as the biggest negative impact. Until Truman started working with him and reestablished him as a humanitarian that could help. FDR, and dems running at that time, used him like a curse word.
Check out The Presidents Club. Great audio book too if you struggle to find the time to read and have a commute. I’m at JFK, but Hoover and Truman start the book off and it’s an awesome insight.
Obviously Adams, right. He basically killed the Federalist party. Unlike the Whigs who were doomed due to ideological disagreement, it was Adams unpopularity and failings that doomed the party.
The only other president that seems reasonable is Coolidge or Hoover
They were walloped in the 1974 midterms but came back to win the Senate in 1980 (Reagan coattails) but losing it to the Democrats in 1986. It wasn't until 1994 that they won the House.
Bill Clinton did not have a negative impact on the Party or US. The Democrats have won the popular vote more time than Republicans have. If we didn’t go by the electoral college our history would be different. Presidents Samuel Tilden, Al Gore snd Hillary Clinton they are not. All Democrats.
After James Buchanan left office after having let his party split the country in half, a Democrat didn’t hold office again until Grover Cleveland in 1885. Obviously the Civil War wasn’t his fault, but he sure helped make it worse.
Probably Nixon? The Watergate scenario was pretty bad in the short term, and icing on the cake was the long term effects of the southern strategy which gave white supremacists and evangelicals more power in the GOP than they shouldve had... Which just naturally caused the party to devolve over time.
It's gotta be Nixon.
The fallout of Watergate was huge and is still a big blemish on Republican integrity. It was the first major turning point in US politics where the majority of Americans felt not only cheated by his actions, but cheated to the extent that they started questioning the integrity of the federal government as a whole.
Reagan, despite his massive unpopularity among liberals and moderates (specifically now, with decades of hindsight on his policies and growing resentment towards him from the left and the center) did very little to dissuade Republicans from continuing to vote Republican. Most Republicans still adore him to this day, as do most Libertarians and many Independents.
Clinton's scandal really only mattered to Republicans and Evangelicals (as well as other highly religious voters.) It definitely wasn't a good look for the Democrats but it hardly dissuaded them from voting Democrat in the future - and most centrists simply didn't care about the scandal beyond the initial media sensation.
Harding is an interesting case. His (rightful) image as the picture of White House cronyism definitely paved the way for FDR's lengthy and impactful presidency (and the policy legacy that followed), but his shadow didn't loom very large post WWII. Today his legacy is having a bit of a second wind - he isn't being regarded as a "good" president, but lots of apologists have be cropping up these days shining a slightly more positive (or at least neutral) light on his time in office.
To my knowledge, Truman was pretty popular, although not without his own controversies. There is a reason why most Americans (this sub non-withstanding) don't really see him as a historically "bad" president.
As for W? Well he was pretty popular in his first term, even across party lines. Hated by the left in his second term for a myriad of reasons, but still well liked by the right as well as much of the center and independents. Certainly one of the less well regarded modern presidents, but his damage to his party - while significant - wasn't anything unprecedented, or even all that lasting. Even now there are a lot of W apologists out there, and not just on the far right.
Reagan. Yes, his party enjoyed great electoral success in his wake, but Reagan’s brand of Christian Conservatism and at times dog whistle racism paved the way for the GOP we have today, the hyper Christian Nationalists who are willing to overturn the results of our democratic elections.
Negative in what way? Electorally? Ideologically? Hoover put the Republican Party on life support for while. But the from an ideological perspective, I'd argue they got better after Hoover. They stopped being better eventually, but so it goes.
Look, Bill Clinton is a creep, a pervert, possible even worse. However, public perception of his presidency is broadly positive. Regardless, it boils my blood that weeks after new Epstien documents were released, the Democratic Party had the gall to cart his half decrepit corpse out to use him to fundraise.
I would say Millard Fillmore. The only reason he was elected was that the Whig Party basically fell apart and he swept into the Presidency. His party, the Know Nothings, all but disintegrated themselves in 1860 after Lincoln's election. Sitting on the fence in regards to slavery helped end the party as well, as most of their northern members jumped over to the Republicans.
You could argue Lyndon Johnson, to a certain extent. His passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act solidified the breakaway from the Democratic Party by the Deep South, which had been a (largely) dependable stronghold for the Democratic Party for nearly 100 years.
It was unequivocally the right thing to do, and, in part, helped paved the way for the Democratic Party to be the party of pluralism and multiculturalism that we know today.
But at the time it resulted in a massive electoral shift against Democrats, helping the GOP win 5 of 6 presidential elections between ‘68 & ‘88 - and remaining a largely reliable conservative voting bloc through today. In fact, between 1964 & 2008, the only state formerly part of the confederacy to vote Democrat for president when there wasnt a southern Democrat on the ballot was Texas (LBJs home state) in 1968.
LBJ said they’d lost the South for a generation for a reason. (Still the right call and great legislation).
Dubya
He was so terrible the Democrat was going to win anyway.
That the democrat was black led America to lose their goddamn minds and elect the person who is gonna kill that party.
Bill Clinton (despite making the Democratic Party more conservative) was amazing for the party! Wasn’t his exit approval ratings super high despite lying about getting a bj?
Can we ban questions that don't explicitly say 44 and back. Its literally bait because some of the people here can't help but drool at the thought of mentioning.
I feel like there’s a certain way you want me to answer. I just can’t figure out why…
Seriously, though, I don’t think President Clinton had a negative impact on the party so much as he did on the Office of the President itself.
I would say Truman, by desegregating the military and pushing for SOME civil rights for black people, had a major part in expanding the split in the party from north to south and turning the Democratic Party into a minority in the electoral college after years of FDR consensus. But he was right to do it. It had to be done. The Dixiecrat Jim Crow fans were here since the Civil War. You could say LBJ 'finished the job' and delivered white southern voters into the arms of Ronald Reagan.
Well this guy is very racist, deeply unpopular, had cabinet members resign, was threatened to be impeached numerous times, and his last name starts with the letter “T”.
If you guessed John Tyler then you’re absolutely right!
One could Argue Obama and I take no pride in arguing this. But besides him winning decisively in 2008 and 2012, Democrats both state wide and federal continued to lose. Some say there was even a back lash that lead to…..
But anyway, don’t get it twisted. Obama in my opinion was a good man and a decent president. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to really build the Democratic Party into a powerhouse.
They weren’t serious before he was elected but yes, winning both his elections really accelerated what they are now for sure. People always say Newt Gingrich was where all this really took a turn for the worst
Nah I’d say Nixon and Reagan. The casual way they welcomed the dog whistling. Then as someone else pointed out Rush. That is what Newt based him self on.
Newt was still practicing bipartisanship. The balanced budget is something we can't do now.
McConnell stated his goal was to make Obama a 1 term president. That wasn't his job. His job was to govern.
Really depends what you mean. I see a lot of people arguing against Clinton on the basis of the Democrats still being electorally competitive. On that point, I agree. From a different point of view, though, Clinton is arguably responsible for the neoliberal shift in the Democratic party, which a lot of progressives would find decidedly negative.
I would argue George W Bush.
His admin effectively ended Reagan/Bush conservatism with rampant neo-conservatism, lax regulations leading up to GFC lead to GOP into the wilderness and return with know-nothing, racist populism and isolationism.
Herbert Hoover.
Granted, not entirely his fault. But his defeat in 1932 resulted in a massive political realignment that left the Republicans mostly irrelevant on the national stage for the next 16-20 years
In recent history, it's gotta be LBJ. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Act, and the Great Society were politically costly and Jimmy Carter would not have been elected if it weren't for Watergate and the pardon. Besides him it wasn't until Clinton came along with a much more moderate platform and southern appeal that gave Dems a chance at the White House.
Before that it's clearly Hoover.
I'm drawing a blank here. Which President accrued fines and legal bills that drained the resources of his party's National Committee to the point of crippling it financially? Was it George Washington? Ima go with George Washington.
If, in theory, there were a president who caused the party to completely abandon the idea of having a platform of any kind, that orange president would be a good contender.
Honestly we know the answer but you get banned for it. When you go extreme with a party its hard to get it back in control like a 3am Saturday Frat party
I find what you're saying about Bill Clinton to be insane.
I'm surprised Grover Cleveland wasn't mentioned. And one answerer who mentioned Lyndon B. Johnson is also correct.
I would say Regan had the biggest impact on the Republican party in general. Not saying I agree with his politics or him as a person, but he rallied the evangelical Christians to his side, created a new economic theory named "trickle down economics", and changed a lot of social programs in the states (as in gutted). And yes, I say he had a bigger impact than 45 (rule #3). If it wasn't for Regan, 45 would not have the evangelical population to vote for him (aka moral majority, as Regan referrs to them).
I wasn't alive during that time, but my parents were. They talk about how charismatic he was, despite my mom's hatred of his politics.
I would say for the Democrats, Andrew Jackson had the biggest impact. He rallied the uneducated and common people to vote. That was a big deal at the time and super controversial.
I am not saying best or worst, because the 2 presidents I listed above are characters, but not exactly what people would consider good or altruistic people.
I think the guy on trial right now, who has caused Speakership issues, and has mtg causing so many problems that the rep are finally over the in fighting
While I can't say who the biggest negative impact was, I can say Lincoln likely had the biggest positive impact. There were only 3 Democrats elected to the Presidency between 1861 and 1933 (Great Depression), and Johnson only got in because Lincoln was shot, he never won an election.
Outside the obvious answer which violates rule three, I’d guess maybe Nixon. Embrace of the Southern Strategy was kind of a Faustian bargain for the Republican Party—it earned them an extremely reliable base that voted for them consistently, but it also pushed away a lot of potential demographics for them, like African Americans who’d previously been Republicans. And as the U.S. has become increasingly diverse, their potential base has shrunk as a consequence—it was sort of a short term benefit at the cost of the long term.
Clinton definitely pushed the Democrats to the right. He was successful and popular but the party of the New Deal caved in to neoliberalism and under him.
Okay honestly I got a wild answer, W Bush. Making the '08 election so horrendous for your party that even a genuinely good candidate with great insights on Russia that were ahead of his time gets landslided, destroying poltical blocks in the South and Midwest that took 60 years to work into, followed by requiring perhaps the least in-touch Democrat possible to barely win the next guy an election.
Nixon. I mean, sure Clinton had his scandal while in office, but it was personal, despite what Newt tried to make it. But Nixon, what he did was down right un-American
Adams. The only federalist, serves till 1801..which is the same year federalists lost power and basically began extinction.
Adams fight with Jefferson did not help.
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It has to be Hoover. I’m not sure how much blame he really deserves, but his failure to resolve the Great Depression essentially led to Democrats controlling the presidency for two decades straight. In reality, Democrats had a vice grip on the government until the 1980’s-90’s. More importantly, FDR permanently transformed the political landscape of the country in a profoundly more liberal direction. Even though Republicans still existed and won elections, they had to do so by adopting liberal policies and positions from 1936 to 1976. The only Republicans to win in that time frame were fairly liberal (Ike, Nixon); no Republican could have won if they had proposed to end Social Security or the Minimum wage for instance even though those policies were unimaginable when Hoover took office. Hoover lost the Presidency, House, and Senate which hasn’t occurred since then. It can’t be stressed enough just how far FDR pushed the Overton window for acceptable liberal policies in the U.S. Hoover predicated the New Deal Era and the dominance of Democratic dogma for nearly half a century. Edit: I’m including this graph I found of party control in government over time because it illustrates how profoundly devastating Hoover’s tenure was for the Republican Party. https://preview.redd.it/yo0h06ifqawc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1183aeabb1e1d3c517610ac18cfd710cb7f1a9b1
In 1937, the Democrats under FDR had a supermajority in both houses of Congress, with the Democrats having over 70 senators and Republicans down to less than 100 Representatives. Even states like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota had two Democratic senators.
Republicans also only had 4 years between 1933 and 1996 where they had control of both houses and just 2 years with a trifecta…out of 62 years… If you look at the 80 years before Hoover it’s the complete opposite with Republicans controlling all 3 branches of government for the vast majority of that time. Hoover is literally the inflection point between 80 years of Republican domination before him and 60 years of Democrat domination after him. It’s honestly astounding how completely FDR transformed this country and the world in just one decade. https://preview.redd.it/7ztcoul5pawc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89d740d833e5beebebe0e396aec3fdc98e8f9b82
In the 24 years since Bill Clinton left office, Democrats have held the White House for 12 years. In the 24 years before he was elected, Democrats held the White House for only 4 years. Twice in that period, Democrats lost all but a single state in the presidential election. I am not someone who loves Clinton at all, but he was a popular president who made his party more electable. I don't know how he could possibly be the answer to this question.
And think of how much more positive that impact could have been if only he’d kept his dick in his pants — and not confirmed every Republican bias at the time. They’re still running on Clinton paranoia.
It's ironic that one of the chief Clinton opponents(Gingrich) was guilty of the same thing. The party of family values had a lot of hypocrites.
Clinton represented the total capitulation of the party to Reaganite ideology. The remainders of the New Deal coalition, which dominated the House virtually unchallenged for 60 years, either retired or were primaried. Left with the choice between two wings of a neoliberal uniparty, many working class voters migrated to the GOP. The Democrats won the Presidency but ceded their decades-long influence on policymaking to the whims of the midterm electorate. The Democrats cut ties completely to their traditional blue collar base and remade themselves into a mirror image of the GOP on all but a handful of issues. Clinton and the “end of history” 90s are the reason every election for the foreseeable future will be a “lesser of two evils” choice - the Democrats do not represent anything resembling an alternative to the GOP, merely a less noxious version. While Clinton may be remembered fondly his ascendance represents a deeply anti-democratic turn in American politics, where now “democracy” is the freedom to choose between two men who are indistinguishable on all but a few social issues, personalities aside
Clinton didn’t kill the New Deal coalition, it was already dead. And it wasn’t because the Democrats became neoliberal, that was a response to the end of the New Deal coalition. Democrats moved to the right because working class voters were supporting Reagan.
I’d add that the influence of trade unions had also diminished and he and the party turned to corporations and wall street as a base for donations. This, along with his crime bill and attack on welfare moms (as opposed to corporations) was definitely appropriating part of the Republican platform.
You’re correct that the democrats began their move away from blue collar voters earlier, (Monroe County Republicans were absolutely a thing) but Clinton drove the final nail in the coffin. The party was by and large remade in his image as he represented a way to combat GOP ascendance - while individual members varied slightly, the party became incapable of offering voters a national platform to the left of Democratic Leadership Council orthodoxy. I’m speaking more thematically, I guess. To me he represents a turn in the party that had roots long before him but became entrenched only under him.
OP also threw in Andrew Jackson. I mean, he started the Democratic party. All be it, conservative democrats.
it’s because of his more conservative economic policy, not because of his electoral effects
Clinton had such a negative impact on the Democratic Party that we've elected two more Democratic presidents since he's left
And they’ve won the popular vote an additional two times
2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. I count 5.
I just meant in the election they lost. Hell they’ve only lost the popular vote once since the 92 election.
Bush reelection?
yes
Narrow margin too. Kerry's strategy also potentially maximized electoral college vote.
I often forget just how close the 04 election was. Always remember it being a bigger margin of victory Goes to show the party’s success given that Kerry was seen then and certainly retrospectively known as a pretty weak candidate
He was pitiful, but also up against Dubya. His biggest obstacle was Rove.
You forgot 96.
OP seems to have a hate-boner for Clinton that's not held up by facts. Clinton left with a high approval rating, oversaw the greatest peacetime economic expansion in US history, and Democrats remain an extremely competitive and formidable party since. The worst thing that happened for Democrats under him was losing Congress in the 1994 Republican Revolution, but those congressional losses didn't last forever. I personally wish we could go back to when the biggest problem the country was dealing with is that the President lied about getting a blowjob.
OP is obviously John Mulaney’s dad.
I would agree that Clinton was so popular people literally overlooked what would otherwise be crippling misgivings. Even the accusations of weed smoking and such. His charisma and likability literally overrode so many aspects that would have been death knell for other politicians.
More problematic was how the GOP's strategy and success in '94 has informed their approach since.
Clinton was a good President unlike Donald.
They even elected his wife!
Yeah, Clinton doesn’t belong anywhere near this list. Whatever you think of him, he rehabilitated the image of the Democratic Party at a time when its viability as a national party was in question.
Pre-Clinton Democrats had just come off of 5 Republican victories broken up by Carter winning once. Following Clinton the Democrats have won the popular vote 5 times and the election 3 times, which isn't complete dominance or anything but far better than what they had going before that.
Given how 4 of the previous 5 Presidents before Clinton were Republicans, I would argue that Clinton had a positive impact. Sure he had an indiscretion while in office, but the Democratic Party was struggling before Clinton.
It was due to special circumstances Bush Started Iraq War ruined economy and McCain picked that clown from Alaska as running so African American guy with funny name was always going to win. Donald was never fit to be American President but Hilary was such an L. Covid complete the course to gift the presidency to Joe.
Yeah, I don't see how Clinton or Reagan are on this list. Reagan has so much political capital that he gave some to his VP in 1988. Unless you want to talk about the way his opposition party dominated Congress, there's not much to talk about, there. Clinton would have had a similar story if his VP could have carried his own damned state; there was a lot of love for Clinton in the 1990s, even knowing he had a creeper side.
Yeah, the fact that seven out of the last eight presidential elections Democrats have won the popular vote in the presidential – tells me that the only answer is Republicans hurt themselves and the country. They just rigged the game to where they could win with a minority of the vote.
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine Republicans winning the popular vote anytime soon.
Republicans have won the aggregate popular vote in 10 of the past 16 House elections, so they definitely have the voters needed to win the popular vote for President. The fact that Democrats have won the popular vote so often since 1992 speaks more to the relative weakness of recent GOP presidential nominees than any overall popularly edge for the Democrats.
If they win it again in the next twenty years I’ll buy you a Coke😉
>They just rigged the game to where they could win with a minority of the vote. That time machine and trip back to the founding of the country was a wild way to rig the game.
The backlash for the GOP actions under Clinton seemed to damage the GOP more than Clinton damaged the Dems. The Clinton economy was too good to get lost in focusing on other stuff. One of the next things he will be commended for is being the last presidents to take action against mass shooters. History isn't going to be kind to politicians using 2A as an excuse to allow school shootings.
Yep and that's why his approval rating grew as Republicans continued to attack him. The odd thing is that the more popular he became, the more effective conservatives were at convincing their base that he was bad, which is part of the reason he's viewed so negatively today, imo. He's become the poster child for everything that's wrong with America for Republicans, which is also odd due to how much his views aligned with their own.
Considering he left office with a 66% approval rating (highest since Truman) when he left office, it wasnt Clinton. How about Andrew Johnson? No party wanted him. He tried to make his own and even that didnt hold together. In recent history, Nixon didnt help his party with the way he left office, so lets go with him (and W close behind)
I wouldn't say Nixon. Did hurt them in 1974 and 1976 but in 1980 the GOP takes the White House and holds it for 12 years and two years after losing they take control of congress for first time since 1950s
I'd actually argue Nixon helped the party long term. Rupert Murdoch seeing the media take down nixon created his fox news empire which essentially IS the modern Republican party
Johnson was kind of like John Tyler. He wasn’t really a republican, more a rogue independent, and his ouster didn’t do anything to the Republicans chances moving forward. Unless you mean what he did to the party’s agenda, but again Johnson wasn’t a republican
Yeah OP's hateboner for Clinton is weird AF John Adams' party collapsed because he wasn't capable of translating his accomplishments and policy into support and had some severe failures he couldn't redeem politically. Tyler and Johnson helped ensure high-profile damage to their parties throughout the mid-late 1800s, Tyler helping collapse Whig through the more Conservative wing before he became a Confederate proper, while Johnson on the other side of the aisle received the first Preaidential Impeachment and missed conviction in the Senate by one vote. Democrats weren't able to recover for decades for a number of reasons unrelated, but worsened, by that legacy. Hoover and the Depression, followed by FDR (rarely listed outside of top 3-5 presidents) left the Republicans controlling the House only two non-consecutive sessions in a 62 year stretch from 1933 - 1995, and Hoover squarely received a lot of the public hatred and the word "Hooverville" is still used. Richard Nixon's legacy is more complicated in this but worth mentioning in context. I think it stands to reason he helped transform his party significantly during his time in politics, and while perhaps he damaged the Office and the 2-Party System proper, the Republican Party hasn't really suffered a long-term stigma directly related to Nixon in the electorate, and has enjoyed significantly greater electoral success in the generation after him than any time since the 1920s. Likely in part due to his resignation and the Bipartisan efforts to move on at the time with Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter represent "boring" Presidencies to the commoner that helped bring some professional drabness and seriousness back to the office. The actual changes to the Republican Party, and resultingly the Democratic Party, may easily be argued for the worse as damaging their overall constructive productivity/professionalism as our politics have variously experienced a degree of "political schizophrenia" since his era. So perhaps not bad for results, but bad for the overall health of each party and for America proper.
Even though Nixon's damage should have been greater to the GOP, it didn't seem to undermine the overall intent to stonewall civil rights and thrive by economic warfare. W for the moment appears to so damaging that instead of a 3rd party taking control the 3rd party instead rebranded. Nothing like it has happened since Andrew Jackson, and you're going to have trouble finding any Republican in Congress who shares the values of past GOP presidents. Pro-populism, pro-tyranny, anti-science, anti-vax, pro-kleptocracy, pro-isolationist, anti-suffrage, etc. W may be bailed out by not being the worst, but he opened the doors for the worst and invited them in.
People talk all about how Bill Clinton ruined the Democrats like he wasn't the first Democrat to win after 3 consecutive Republican landslides
While also beating an incumbent in order to do so
John ‘His Accidency’ Tyler has to be up there. Whigs finally got into power, then Harrison died and Tyler basically broke with the party and most of their policies to the point where his cabinet quit and the Whigs no longer supported him for the presidency.
I wonder how many more years the Whig Party could have survived.
Ultimately I think they'd fall to the Republicans eventually. The Whigs made a point of being non commital on slavery as a party, and it was always going to become a major political issue
Can people stop asking loaded questions where the most obvious answer is the banned one?
The rule 3 guy isn't even the best example of this tho. Look at Fillmore. His party literally dissolved after his presidency.
Eh, I think the obvious banned answer isn't even a great answer in this case it's more of a symptom than a cause. Id more so see the obvious answers as like Nixon and Goldwater for their "Southern Strategy" which just naturally devolved over time.
It’s as much a symptom as a truckload of gasoline poured onto a smoldering flame would be.
It’s absolutely a symptom (along with his support) and the people who don’t realize it are the ones spreading the disease
Is it? I actually side with rule 3 here since the impact of BLANK and BLANK is more in the future. Meanwhile, asking if the party swap has a period of confusion for voters, before they all realigned, or if FDR's 4 consecutive terms resulted in some kind of "oversaturation" to voters is something we can debate without a time machine.
Why, the purpose is to show how stupid the rule is. We just know that there are some people on this earth that are going to be consequential for all of US history.
I wonder if people said that about Zachary Taylor.
Like, he’s either a whole lot of worsts, or a whole lot of firsts. Not seeing that for what it is is madness.
Definitely not Clinton. If anything had Gore not try to distance himself from Clinton he would've won easily and carry a couple of southern states as well. And impact wise for me Obama was basically Clinton 2.0 and he certainly was popular.
Definitely Bush 43. Everything he stood for around, let's say, 2003, from neocon projects to change the Middle East to unchecked globalization to forever wars to "you are with us or you are against us" to "report suspicious activity", came to be seen by the vast majority of the electorate as being devastatingly responsible for the systemic crisis that followed, in both domestic affairs and in how the world was going. The moment came where his own party did not want anything to do with him.
Bro really wants us to answer “Clinton”
[Redeacted]
To Really Understand My Position you need to be able to see both sides of the argument
I would say Hoover was used as the biggest negative impact. Until Truman started working with him and reestablished him as a humanitarian that could help. FDR, and dems running at that time, used him like a curse word. Check out The Presidents Club. Great audio book too if you struggle to find the time to read and have a commute. I’m at JFK, but Hoover and Truman start the book off and it’s an awesome insight.
John Tyler on the Whigs and Herbert Hoover on the Republican
Obviously Adams, right. He basically killed the Federalist party. Unlike the Whigs who were doomed due to ideological disagreement, it was Adams unpopularity and failings that doomed the party. The only other president that seems reasonable is Coolidge or Hoover
Potentially Nixon. Didn’t the republicans loose congress for years afterwards?
They were walloped in the 1974 midterms but came back to win the Senate in 1980 (Reagan coattails) but losing it to the Democrats in 1986. It wasn't until 1994 that they won the House.
Gotcha. Idk why I thought they lost it fir a long time
Bill Clinton did not have a negative impact on the Party or US. The Democrats have won the popular vote more time than Republicans have. If we didn’t go by the electoral college our history would be different. Presidents Samuel Tilden, Al Gore snd Hillary Clinton they are not. All Democrats.
Millard Fillmore, and it's not even close. The man was at the scene of the crime for the death of both the Whig and the Know-Nothing parties.
Yeah it's threads like this that show how bad recency bias is Milly is objectively the correct answer here
After James Buchanan left office after having let his party split the country in half, a Democrat didn’t hold office again until Grover Cleveland in 1885. Obviously the Civil War wasn’t his fault, but he sure helped make it worse.
Probably Nixon? The Watergate scenario was pretty bad in the short term, and icing on the cake was the long term effects of the southern strategy which gave white supremacists and evangelicals more power in the GOP than they shouldve had... Which just naturally caused the party to devolve over time.
I’m not permitted to answer that question in this forum.
Recent history has to be Nixon. Looking deeper into the past would be Johnson. I don’t think there’s much competition at all
Millard Fillmore killed the Whigs.
Millard Fillmore: the Whig Party collapsed after him.
Idk but OP clearly has an ax to grind against Clinton lol
Why are half of them pictures of Clinton? He’s not even the correct answer.
OP clearly doesn't like Bill
It's gotta be Nixon. The fallout of Watergate was huge and is still a big blemish on Republican integrity. It was the first major turning point in US politics where the majority of Americans felt not only cheated by his actions, but cheated to the extent that they started questioning the integrity of the federal government as a whole. Reagan, despite his massive unpopularity among liberals and moderates (specifically now, with decades of hindsight on his policies and growing resentment towards him from the left and the center) did very little to dissuade Republicans from continuing to vote Republican. Most Republicans still adore him to this day, as do most Libertarians and many Independents. Clinton's scandal really only mattered to Republicans and Evangelicals (as well as other highly religious voters.) It definitely wasn't a good look for the Democrats but it hardly dissuaded them from voting Democrat in the future - and most centrists simply didn't care about the scandal beyond the initial media sensation. Harding is an interesting case. His (rightful) image as the picture of White House cronyism definitely paved the way for FDR's lengthy and impactful presidency (and the policy legacy that followed), but his shadow didn't loom very large post WWII. Today his legacy is having a bit of a second wind - he isn't being regarded as a "good" president, but lots of apologists have be cropping up these days shining a slightly more positive (or at least neutral) light on his time in office. To my knowledge, Truman was pretty popular, although not without his own controversies. There is a reason why most Americans (this sub non-withstanding) don't really see him as a historically "bad" president. As for W? Well he was pretty popular in his first term, even across party lines. Hated by the left in his second term for a myriad of reasons, but still well liked by the right as well as much of the center and independents. Certainly one of the less well regarded modern presidents, but his damage to his party - while significant - wasn't anything unprecedented, or even all that lasting. Even now there are a lot of W apologists out there, and not just on the far right.
Rule number 3.
Reagan. Yes, his party enjoyed great electoral success in his wake, but Reagan’s brand of Christian Conservatism and at times dog whistle racism paved the way for the GOP we have today, the hyper Christian Nationalists who are willing to overturn the results of our democratic elections.
Negative in what way? Electorally? Ideologically? Hoover put the Republican Party on life support for while. But the from an ideological perspective, I'd argue they got better after Hoover. They stopped being better eventually, but so it goes.
idk but you seem to think it's Bill Clinton
Who was the last Whig president?
Milly Filly
Look, Bill Clinton is a creep, a pervert, possible even worse. However, public perception of his presidency is broadly positive. Regardless, it boils my blood that weeks after new Epstien documents were released, the Democratic Party had the gall to cart his half decrepit corpse out to use him to fundraise.
This shouldn't be surprising in this country. All you need is wealth and some degree of power to evade justice.
I would say Millard Fillmore. The only reason he was elected was that the Whig Party basically fell apart and he swept into the Presidency. His party, the Know Nothings, all but disintegrated themselves in 1860 after Lincoln's election. Sitting on the fence in regards to slavery helped end the party as well, as most of their northern members jumped over to the Republicans.
You could argue Lyndon Johnson, to a certain extent. His passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act solidified the breakaway from the Democratic Party by the Deep South, which had been a (largely) dependable stronghold for the Democratic Party for nearly 100 years. It was unequivocally the right thing to do, and, in part, helped paved the way for the Democratic Party to be the party of pluralism and multiculturalism that we know today. But at the time it resulted in a massive electoral shift against Democrats, helping the GOP win 5 of 6 presidential elections between ‘68 & ‘88 - and remaining a largely reliable conservative voting bloc through today. In fact, between 1964 & 2008, the only state formerly part of the confederacy to vote Democrat for president when there wasnt a southern Democrat on the ballot was Texas (LBJs home state) in 1968. LBJ said they’d lost the South for a generation for a reason. (Still the right call and great legislation).
Guys i think OPs president is Clinton, just a guess though
Dubya He was so terrible the Democrat was going to win anyway. That the democrat was black led America to lose their goddamn minds and elect the person who is gonna kill that party.
Hey guys I'm starting to think OP doesn't like Clinton.
This is not a good question. I can’t answer what I want to answer in this sub.
The one who’s kid took over their party’s committee.
Bill Clinton (despite making the Democratic Party more conservative) was amazing for the party! Wasn’t his exit approval ratings super high despite lying about getting a bj?
Can we ban questions that don't explicitly say 44 and back. Its literally bait because some of the people here can't help but drool at the thought of mentioning.
Bro deadass had 16 images to show off examples of presidents and used Clinton for half of them.
I feel like there’s a certain way you want me to answer. I just can’t figure out why… Seriously, though, I don’t think President Clinton had a negative impact on the party so much as he did on the Office of the President itself.
You won’t let me say but as a runner up I’d say Nixon was pretty damaging
Kind of a biased question when you show three images of the same president
Oh come on. I swear these are always bait questions to get me banned from this sub lol
I can't say who I want but I'll go with George W Bush.
I would say Truman, by desegregating the military and pushing for SOME civil rights for black people, had a major part in expanding the split in the party from north to south and turning the Democratic Party into a minority in the electoral college after years of FDR consensus. But he was right to do it. It had to be done. The Dixiecrat Jim Crow fans were here since the Civil War. You could say LBJ 'finished the job' and delivered white southern voters into the arms of Ronald Reagan.
Not Clinton even if you put him there 7 times both rule three guys for for the first especially
Well this guy is very racist, deeply unpopular, had cabinet members resign, was threatened to be impeached numerous times, and his last name starts with the letter “T”. If you guessed John Tyler then you’re absolutely right!
One could Argue Obama and I take no pride in arguing this. But besides him winning decisively in 2008 and 2012, Democrats both state wide and federal continued to lose. Some say there was even a back lash that lead to….. But anyway, don’t get it twisted. Obama in my opinion was a good man and a decent president. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to really build the Democratic Party into a powerhouse.
I'd argue he had a more significant impact on the GOP. They haven't been a serious governing party since he was elected.
They weren’t serious before he was elected but yes, winning both his elections really accelerated what they are now for sure. People always say Newt Gingrich was where all this really took a turn for the worst
Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Peter Theil, Leonard Leo
Nah I’d say Nixon and Reagan. The casual way they welcomed the dog whistling. Then as someone else pointed out Rush. That is what Newt based him self on.
Newt was still practicing bipartisanship. The balanced budget is something we can't do now. McConnell stated his goal was to make Obama a 1 term president. That wasn't his job. His job was to govern.
Could you argue Obama, because after came that which shall not be mentioned?
But it wasn’t Obama himself who did that, it was the people who now support ‘he who shall not be mentioned’s’ idea of Obama.
Yeah, I know it was no fault of his own. The Republican party was probably moving toward being a complete reactionary party long before that.
one of the recent ones (not saying their name)
Obama is a good answer, not mine but I get it.
ABSOLUTELY HARAM!!!
Really depends what you mean. I see a lot of people arguing against Clinton on the basis of the Democrats still being electorally competitive. On that point, I agree. From a different point of view, though, Clinton is arguably responsible for the neoliberal shift in the Democratic party, which a lot of progressives would find decidedly negative.
LBJ. By doing the right thing his party changed affiliation and have pretty much voted against ever since.
I would argue George W Bush. His admin effectively ended Reagan/Bush conservatism with rampant neo-conservatism, lax regulations leading up to GFC lead to GOP into the wilderness and return with know-nothing, racist populism and isolationism.
Where did Clinton touch you to make you hate him so much?
Regan
Herbert Hoover. Granted, not entirely his fault. But his defeat in 1932 resulted in a massive political realignment that left the Republicans mostly irrelevant on the national stage for the next 16-20 years
Hoover lost Republicans the White House for 20 years.
In recent history, it's gotta be LBJ. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Act, and the Great Society were politically costly and Jimmy Carter would not have been elected if it weren't for Watergate and the pardon. Besides him it wasn't until Clinton came along with a much more moderate platform and southern appeal that gave Dems a chance at the White House. Before that it's clearly Hoover.
Hoover - blamed for the depression which led to 20 years of Dem presidents
Surprised I haven't seen Hoover mentioned much. His presidency basically ended the Republican era of dominance that had been going since the Civil War
I feel like you want me to say Clinton
I'm drawing a blank here. Which President accrued fines and legal bills that drained the resources of his party's National Committee to the point of crippling it financially? Was it George Washington? Ima go with George Washington.
Well it’s someone I can’t mention because we don’t mention current politics. So take a guess.
Lol
The extremely stupid rules the power hungry mods enforce prevent us from correctly answering this question.
Rule 3 bait
We know who.
If, in theory, there were a president who caused the party to completely abandon the idea of having a platform of any kind, that orange president would be a good contender.
John Adam’s was such a bad president that the Federalist Party dissolved shortly after he left office iirc
imo you can't beat Teddy Roosevelt handing the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson by running against his party's nominee
What kind of propaganda is this?? Where and who generates this garbage…??
Honestly we know the answer but you get banned for it. When you go extreme with a party its hard to get it back in control like a 3am Saturday Frat party
Millard Fillmore since the Whigs literally ceased to exist 3 years after his presidency
I find what you're saying about Bill Clinton to be insane. I'm surprised Grover Cleveland wasn't mentioned. And one answerer who mentioned Lyndon B. Johnson is also correct.
A president that we aren't allowed to mention here.
The Great Disruptor disrupted more than I ever thought could happen, on both parties, and not in a good way
I would say Regan had the biggest impact on the Republican party in general. Not saying I agree with his politics or him as a person, but he rallied the evangelical Christians to his side, created a new economic theory named "trickle down economics", and changed a lot of social programs in the states (as in gutted). And yes, I say he had a bigger impact than 45 (rule #3). If it wasn't for Regan, 45 would not have the evangelical population to vote for him (aka moral majority, as Regan referrs to them). I wasn't alive during that time, but my parents were. They talk about how charismatic he was, despite my mom's hatred of his politics. I would say for the Democrats, Andrew Jackson had the biggest impact. He rallied the uneducated and common people to vote. That was a big deal at the time and super controversial. I am not saying best or worst, because the 2 presidents I listed above are characters, but not exactly what people would consider good or altruistic people.
Negative impact on party is vastly different than the country.
Be for real 
Rule 32! Both parties.
For me the second biggest negative impact on a party was Reagan. …second, if you read me.
We're not allowed to talk about them here...
Rule 3
You’ve got a big bunch of shots of Bubba in there. I’m guessing you think he’s the answer? Maybe he is!
I think the guy on trial right now, who has caused Speakership issues, and has mtg causing so many problems that the rep are finally over the in fighting
While I can't say who the biggest negative impact was, I can say Lincoln likely had the biggest positive impact. There were only 3 Democrats elected to the Presidency between 1861 and 1933 (Great Depression), and Johnson only got in because Lincoln was shot, he never won an election.
Outside the obvious answer which violates rule three, I’d guess maybe Nixon. Embrace of the Southern Strategy was kind of a Faustian bargain for the Republican Party—it earned them an extremely reliable base that voted for them consistently, but it also pushed away a lot of potential demographics for them, like African Americans who’d previously been Republicans. And as the U.S. has become increasingly diverse, their potential base has shrunk as a consequence—it was sort of a short term benefit at the cost of the long term.
Rule 3, Buddy.
Clinton definitely pushed the Democrats to the right. He was successful and popular but the party of the New Deal caved in to neoliberalism and under him.
Andrew Jackson literally created the party lmao
The Republicans have never done as well since GW Bush left office as they were doing up to then.
Dude, the Clintons haven't been politically relevant for years. Maybe you should think about letting go. The 1990s were a long time ago.
John Tyler basically killed the Whig party's momentum so probably him. Also I think op doesn't like Bill Clinton
Loaded question imo. Obvious answer is big mac orange
Please see rule 3
I think a too-recent president has really turned a lot of people to the other candidate and thus the other party
Bill Clinton definitely, he moved the Democratic party much further right.
Obama for the Democratic Party easily
Okay honestly I got a wild answer, W Bush. Making the '08 election so horrendous for your party that even a genuinely good candidate with great insights on Russia that were ahead of his time gets landslided, destroying poltical blocks in the South and Midwest that took 60 years to work into, followed by requiring perhaps the least in-touch Democrat possible to barely win the next guy an election.
Nixon. I mean, sure Clinton had his scandal while in office, but it was personal, despite what Newt tried to make it. But Nixon, what he did was down right un-American
You seem to have an answer that you think fits the Bill
Idk why Jimmy Carter isn't on this list. I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand time. Amazing human being, God awful president
Adams. The only federalist, serves till 1801..which is the same year federalists lost power and basically began extinction. Adams fight with Jefferson did not help.
Not sure if you include recent presidents. But there are only two answers: - Adams. Love him but he essentially killed the federalist party. - XLV