It’s always a cliche to say “this is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes.” But I’m curious what unstuck thinks is the most important election, at least in the last 40 years. So I’m also going to throw in second most important. How you want to define importance is up to you.
sort of tough to compare past elections with this one, especially with the benefit of hindsight.
Like, I think 2000 was the most consequential of our lifetimes, but I’m not sure i looked at it as the most important back then. Now, IMHO it’s the one that would have set our course completely differently had it turned out the other way.
I haven’t voted yet, but 1984 was probably more influential than 1980 because Mondale winning just DC and his home state of Minnesota affected both parties. (It was such a lopsided electoral college victory that people may not realize that the Democrats gained seats in the Senate that year while retaining control of the House.)
The DLC was founded in 1985 as a reaction to Mondale getting crushed. Meanwhile, the ideological views of those in their teens and twenties during the '80s were strongly shaped by Reagan’s electoral dominance. Our current politics are driven in part by self-hating Democrats wounded that brutal loss and a class of Republicans who were inspired by Reagan.
The political realignment of the 1994 mid-term elections was more important than any presidential election.
I went with what’s probably a bit of a controversial second pick with McCain Obama. I think Obama’s election served as a catalyst that spurred so much of the reactionary shit on the right that laid so much of the groundwork for Trump’s election.
In that respect, I see Gore losing as even more consequential. So much stuff goes so differently with even a moderate Dem in power, from 911 to dealing with climate change in a significant way much earlier in the game.
In other words Trump winning was bad and consequential in ways we don’t fully appreciate yet, but I think the two elections that set the groundwork for him taking power are much more important.
Some people are attaching much too much importance to pre-2016 elections. A different result in any of them wouldn’t affect the eventual rise of cheap labour in China that brought the deplorable out in half the population.
That’s a good point. I think that around 1980 though the US was enough of a leader in the world stage that Reaganism probably turned the whole Western world more toward a tolerance of the message that the government causes problems, and doesnt solve them. He also really normalized the idea that lowering taxes and increasing deficits counts as fiscal responsibility, so long as poor people dont get any help.
I suppose a good counterargument is that Thatcher came first, and embodied all the same stuff.
Yeah like if you factor in the butterfly effect you could debate 1980, 2000, 2016 and 2020. Given that we have gotten to the point where 2020 is happening as-is, it’s the most important. But 1980 or 2000 may have gotten us here.
It’s all been steadily downhill under the R’s since Nixon - it’s so clear from afar.
Carter and Gore winning those elections would only have delayed the inevitable - its not like either had a radical vision for America. The decline is hard baked into America’s DNA from its slaver roots and joke of a constitution through its faux historical bravery bullshit propaganda that’s taught to every kid.
This is generally true I think. The one caveat is that, although Gore is a dweeb, if he had gone around the world 2000-2008 as President advocating for climate change action the difference could literally turn out to be the survival of the human race.
It’s not like every free country with a decent social safety net had a history devoid of injustice and evil.
I would argue that a lot of the bullshit injected into our minds ramped up significantly over the last 50-70 years. We then got high on our own supply.
It was tough, but I went with 2016. That election revealed a lot of dark shit about America and opened the door for more darkness to come. Trump is the only candidate on that list who views all the “liberal” (Lockean) values of the idealized America - democracy, freedom, rule of law, checks and balances, etc - with complete contempt. He is utterly amoral.
I remember feeling the day after the election that anything was on the table. The vast bureaucracy and diffuseness of the American system, along with Trump’s stupidity and laziness, has thankfully stymied him to some extent. But 2016 makes the better version of Trump (which could just be Trump’s second term), the one who successfully establishes a one party state, much more likely.