While watching John McCain's funeral coverage, I wondered how the world would look if everyone who lost the Presidency actually won. I looked for a list on the Internet and couldn't find it in simple form. So I made one. *Indicates they eventually won, before or after a loss. It's interesting that in the beginning of our Presidential history, the same small crowd kept running for the office for a nearly 50 year period.
*John Adams (He was the runner-up to George Washington)
*Thomas Jefferson
*John Adams
Charles Pinckney
Dewitt Clinton
Rufus King
*John Quincy Adams
*Andrew Jackson
*John Quincy Adams
Henry Clay
*William Henry Harrison
*Martin Van Buren
Winfield Scott
*Millard Fillmore
John C. Breckingridge (He would have been the Civil War President instead of Lincoln.)
George B. McClellan (He would have been assassinated instead of Lincoln? Probably not.)
Horace Seymour
Horace Greeley
Samuel Tilden
Winfield Hancock
James G. Blaine
*Grover Cleveland
*Benjamin Harrison
William Jennings Bryan
*Theodore Roosevelt
Charles Evan Hughs
James M. Cox (Franklin D. Roosevelt, still walking at the time, would have been his vice president, and possibly would not have visited that Boy Scout encampment in New York and contracted polio)
John W. Davis
Alfred E. Smith
*Herbert Hoover
Alf Landon
Wendall Wilkie
Thomas E. Dewey
Adlai Stevenson
*Richard Nixon
Barry Goldwater
Hubert Humphrey
George McGovern
*Gerald Ford
*Jimmy Carter
Walter Mondale
Michael Dukakis
*George H.W. Bush
Robert Dole
Al Gore
John Kerry
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Hillary Clinton
