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Drea's avatar

During our generation, the idea that each successive presidential election could be the most important of our lifetimes might be true, because we began digging ourselves a pit that requires more drastic action to climb out of after each successive year of digging deeper.

If Dukakis had won, instead of asking how little H.W. Bush accomplished, we might ask what it might mean to have had a Democratic president who may not have led the party so thoroughly into the neoliberal consensus as Clinton then did.

If Romney had won, Republicans would have learned that hewing to the center works and might not have looked to Trumpism. We would have a president whose outcomes would not have differed much from Obama, but who would have given us a very different future for partisan politics.

Step by step, neoliberalism has paved the way for fascism. Each election, we have failed to reverse that trajectory. Sometimes our meaningful option for changing trajectory was in the primaries rather than the general election, but each passing cycle made a Trump more likely. 2016 was merely the tipping point of the lost opportunities prior. If we had stopped Trump, the conditions leading toward Trumpism would continue to worsen, and another Trump would have arisen within four to eight years.

Trump's eventual death will not mean the end of Trumpism. If we do stop him this election, we will not return to a Republican party committed to your values. We will be fending off the next Trump, and the next, and the next. And each time will be the most important, because the next time one wins, the guardrails defending the Constitution will no longer be strong enough to hold.

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Phil H's avatar

Among elections before your time (but not mine), the 1980 election which elected Ronald Reagan and his brand of conservatism, lasting right up to the Trump era, was an important election.

The 1968 election that elected Richard Nixon was important given that it occurred during a time of social upheaval, in society in general and the Democratic Party. (I wonder about an alternate history if RFK were not assassinated, went on to win the Democratic nomination and possibly the White House. Maybe the Vietnam War still gets ended. Maybe society calms down a bit. Definitely Watergate, and the cynicism it bred, never happens).

As to your analysis, I agree with ranking 2016 and 2000 as important. Those are both obvious. Too early to tell about 2020, IMO. And waaay too early about 2024, that an election not concluded can't be fairly evaluated. That will depend on an evaluation of the Trump era, which has not yet ended, and may not for at least 4 more years.

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