Sticking with:
Tiberius Sempronius Longus – 2
Nicias – 2
Switching for now to:
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre – 1
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 2 Votes
Nicias - 2 votes
Zhao Kuo - 1 vote.
Some real garbage left!
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 2
James Ledlie - 2
Nicias - 1
It’s like we have 3 dimensions of ineptness…
-
Losing big
-
Losing often
-
Your ineptness having a huge effect on the world it shouldn’t have had.
Losing big is like Zhao Kuo.
Losing often is like Santa Anna
Huge effect on the world it should have had is like Percival…well I guess he lost big as well 
Nicias lost big and had a big effect. Just saying.
Yea, but he is overshadowed by another on the list…which is why I (reluctantly) chose him. It’s getting tough to choose. About the only one I feel ‘comfortable’ putting down now is Silvestre and Ledlie. After that I am going to second guess myself like crazy.
But I recall a few folks pointing out that a real winner is someone who thinks they were a super badass general and went out ready to kick someones butts but lost due to sheer ineptness or a stupid-beyond-reason underestimating of the enemy, or losing to some weaker enemy. Not someone who reluctantly went to war and lost to a substantial force of Spartans.
Yeah, that points out my alternative factor - along with losing big, often and badly, a real “winner” (at this stage) has to lose in a manner particularly humiliating. They gotta have style. 
Oh, and votes:
Nicias - 2
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 2
James Ledlie -1
I agree with it as a tie-breaker; I just don’t think we’re deep enough into the dregs for it to apply to Nicias yet.
That pretty well expresses my feeling.
Tiberius Sempronius Longus lost to Hannibal, not in itself a sign of incompetence, and he had military successes before and after that (Grumentum). He does lose points for walking into a classic ambush, but that shouldn’t put him into the finals.
Stopford wasn’t the main strategist in charge at Gallipoli and the battle itself wasn’t decisive in any sense (the victors, the Ottoman Empire, subsequently collapsed). He loses points for sitting on his thumbs, breaking at least three cardinal military rules: pursue your strategic purpose, retain the initiative when you have surprise, and seize the high ground, especially if you are camped right below it.
Ledlie was a moral coward. That’s bad, but the list has its share.
Tiberius Sempronius Longus - 1
Frederick William Stopford - 2
James Ledlie - 1
Abdel Hakim Amer - 1
I’m going to add this gentleman as a result of having seen a History Channel program recently (yeah, I know): Abdel Hakim Amer. Yes, he allowed himself to be bumrushed out of the Sinai. That’s relatively small potatoes historically, it was just once (in the 1960s, even), and frankly the situation was confusing and threatening enough that I don’t see his decision as being entirely disconnected from reality in the way some of our other candidates’ decisions have been (Percival, Hood, Elphinstone, Cadorna, Goering, and, had it come to it, Curtis LeMay all suffered from much more distorted ideas of what was really happening and what they should be doing militarily).
I agree that Amer may be too small-potatoes to be a real ‘winner’, but he gets high marks for losing so very quickly and so very completely and in such a shameful way. His personal panic-and-retreat order was the direct cause of the absolute collapse of Egyptian resistence in the Sinai, for which he’s rightly on the list. The Israelis would probably still have won had he not issued it, but he could surely have saved much of his army, or at least made a better showing, if he hadn’t.
However, what I’m not sure of is to what extent he ought to get marks for the utter humiliation and dishonour this campaign brought on the Egyptian armed forces (I’m referring to the ‘we will crush you’ propaganda build-up, and the atrocious way retreating Egyptian soldiers were treated by their own side - deserted by their officers and in some cases allegedly even shot by their own side to prevent the news of the disaster spreading) – maybe those marks go to Nassar.
The results from Round 25 of voting:
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre - 9
Nicias - 7
James Ledlie, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, Frederick William Stopford - 5 each
Arthur Percival - 2
Abdel Hakim Amer, Zhao Kuo - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
Charles Alexander of Lorraine: Sustained career of incompetence
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
John Bell Hood: Recklessly stupid, lost Atlanta, West
James Ledlie: Drunk during Battle of Crater
Tiberius Sempronius Longus: Lost to Carthage at Trebia
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
Napoleon III: Clobbered, captured at Sedan
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Philip VI of France: Crushed own army at Crécy
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Frederick William Stopford: Blunderer at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli
Zhao Kuo: Became idiom for “bad general”
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Maximilian von Prittwitz
Rodolfo Graziani
William Westmoreland
Crassus
William Calley
Carlo di Persano
Heinrich Himmler
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Braxton Bragg
Duke of Buckingham
Maurice Gamelin
Horatio Gates
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre
Nicias
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Jan. 24.
Reposting:
Tiberius Sempronius Longus - 2
Frederick William Stopford - 2
James Ledlie - 1
I know it’s not an exact science, but I’m having trouble getting my head around Manuel Fernandez Silvestre, who planned a campaign that resulted in a modern state’s humiliating total defeat by markedly (militarily) inferior third-world tribesmen, being let off the hook before subordinate James Ledlie, who sat out one assault.
So now we need to get nit-picky.
Arthur Percival - 2
I still think that he had very little support and it was not entirely unreasonable to expect the jungle would hold back the Japanese somewhat.
William George Keith Elphinstone - 1
I think with a historical perspective, if you’re a Westerner fighting in Afghanistan you already have two strikes against you.
Frederick William Stopford - 2
Bad planning and even worse execution. Par for the course in WWI
Ledlie probably benefits from “Civil War Inflation” - that is, his importance is inflated because he’s well known; plus the Crater is just so damned weird and memorable.
No that you mention it, he ought to be turfed now, and should have been earlier, for being small fry.
James Ledlie - 2
Longus - 2
Stopford - 1
Difference of opinion, I know, but to me Percival is the poster boy for losing despite numerical superiority. The Japanese also had little support, and he substantially outnumbered them, and had the advantage of conducting defense from prepared positions. I would find it entirely appropriate for hi to make the final few rounds.
I agree - Percival has what it takes to go the distance.
Edit: he is kinda reminiscent of Amer.
Sticking with:
Tiberius Sempronius Longus – 2
Adding:
Frederick William Stopford – 2
Napoleon III – 1