2000
By 
Here’s someone who needs a hearty dose of shut the fuck up:
The dark irony here is that Hillary Clinton is the only prominent supporter of the Iraq War to pay any material price for supporting it, although her vote was causally immaterial to it happening. Ralph Nader, on the other hand, was a direct cause of the catastrophe, and particularly since he spent the entire campaign assuring the American public that electing George W. Bush would not be meaningfully harmful he’s the last person who should be criticizing anybody over it. And, again, it’s worth noting that his campaign was 100% pure ratfucking. Even if you (wrongly) think that national third parties are a viable path to reform, Nader was openly contemptuous of the Green Party and didn’t care about it or its supporters at all. The sole purpose of his campaign was throwing the election to Bush to own the Dems. He owns the consequences.
It wasn’t just Nader, of course. The Handmaid’s Tale writer Dorothy Fortenberry was discussing 2000 today and pointed to some tweets from last year that sum it up perfectly for people too young to remember:
“she never got over the 2000 election” – my tombstone, basically— Dorothy “DC statehood now” Fortenberry (@Dorothy410berry) January 29, 2020
The 2000 election was the tipping point for life on earth and the extent to which it hung on bullshit is almost unfathomable https://t.co/06xakCbdig— Dorothy “DC statehood now” Fortenberry (@Dorothy410berry) November 26, 2019
it is very very very hard for me to convey to people who were not adults in 2000 the vast mismatch between
– what people perceived the stakes of the election to be
and
– the actual stakes of the election— Dorothy “DC statehood now” Fortenberry (@Dorothy410berry) November 8, 2019
It is almost impossible to overstate the consequences of the 2000 election. Many of these consequences were easily foreseeable to any remotely knowledgeable overseer. And yet the election was almost uniformly portrayed as a zero-stakes contest between a stiff liar and an affable cowboy (who got enormous positive press coverage for a fake ranch he sold roughly 15 minutes after leaving office.) Entire news cycles about the election that played a major role in destroying the planet, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to someone with Strom Thurmond’s views about voting rights becoming the Chief Justice of the United States, etc. etc. were devoted to Al Gore’s suits. The fact that Al Gore knew things about the legislative process was a subject of open mockery. It was covered it was like a junior high student council election.
Fortunately, lessons were learned and the political press never spent an election cycle with massive historical consequences consumed by trivial bullshit again.