the most important election of your lifetime - identify it please (US postwar edition)

dukakis is the indie hipster pick, right? i'd be genuinely interested to see what direction the two parties had gone if he had won.

but the real answer feels like '64. resets the country's political alignment, vietnam, beatles on ed sullivan, etc.

Leaving aside the fact that several of these elections predate my birth in 1954, I'd choose the closest of the elections listed: 2000.

Bush-Cheney was elected by a 5-4 SCOTUS decision instead of by the electorate, and the majority 5 justices gave widely differing rationales for their individual votes, so that their decision couldn't even be applied in the future as a clear precedent; it was merely an ad hoc fiat by a confused and split court. Bush-Cheney then proceeded to fuck things up royally, torturing, invading and turning a budget surplus into a deficit, by giving away hundreds of billions to the wealthiest 1%.

lots of interesting choices, but i went w/ 1960 (also the one that could have gone differently most easily) b/c the thought of nixon presiding over the cuban missile crisis is terrifying

1980 would be a close second since the last 30 years without reagan's triumph seems unimaginably different in so many ways, reagan changed the rules of the game in a way that none of the others really did

60, 80, and 2000 are all good choices. altho i feel like reagan's ascendancy was a lagging indicator (the seeds of goldwater bearing fruit kidna thing). so i guess important in the sense that he represented the neoliberal shift in us politics most plainly.

1976, an elected Ford regime would have ushered in a 1000 year period of peace and prosperity.

2008 - not the most important insofar as anyone else (almost) would have beaten McCain, but it signals the start of the death of white supremacy as the dominant ideology of the US. A coalition of 'minorities' paves the way for the first black President and sets a path that makes it increasingly difficult for the GOP as constituted to win a national election.

The US is the first western nation where the dominant tribe is going to be displaced (insofar as white America is going to be forced to live side by side with 'non-white' America as political equals) and as cynical as I automatically am about patriotism and American exceptionalism... that's pretty exciting. (Assuming we all don't die off because of climate change and pollution.)

(2008)...signals the start of the death of white supremacy as the dominant ideology of the US. A coalition of 'minorities' paves the way for the first black President and sets a path that makes it increasingly difficult for the GOP as constituted to win a national election.

while obama's election was important in setting a precedent that you don't want have to win a majority of white voters to be president, i would hardly call that the signal of the death of white supremacy. the Black wealth has not recovered from the great recession the way White wealth has, schools are as segregated as they were in the 1960s, we still incarcerate the largest number of people (and the largest percentage of people of color) of any nation on earth, etc. Obama did not run on a reparations and abolition platform. his admin has deported a record number of undocumented, supported the expansion of charter schools which have exacerbated school segregation, he has continued the practice of military intervention, etc.

further, the declining share of the white population in US is -- on its own-- hardly a sign of the decline of white supremacy (see: s africa which had a small minority of white ppl during and after apartheid). i'm hopeful that obama's presidency will be a catalyst that ignites some real gains in dismantling white supremacy, but i'm skeptical based on what i see now.

not sure how to measure "important" - Dubya's election in 2000 turned out to be totally catastrophic, with the longest-ranging consequences (climate change, wars, economic collapse).

other option is '60 - without it LBJ doesn't get his major domestic victories, which have had huge historical (mostly positive) effects.

Popular vote margin kinda beside the point as it has literally nothing to do with who wins.

Not exactly "nothing" - it would be very hard to win in the electoral college if your opponent beats you by 10% in the popular vote! Not impossible obviously, but the map that makes that possible is sort of hard to imagine. But yeah. The "minus" there for 2000 absolutely backs up your general point; I just thought it was interesting since I'd sort of forgotten or never knew how close/far some of these were.

Re: Cuban missile crisis - do we know for sure it would have happened if Nixon had won in '60? Super speculative, but didn't that all result from a chain of events related to the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's Berlin policy, and other such things? Could have been a whole different scenario. I suppose you can also imagine an alternate history where the weight of Vietnam and failure to address building domestic crises gets laid on the 60s Nixon administration rather than LBJ, and '68 is a watershed in a different way, with the Democrats riding in on a long-suppressed tidal demand for change.

Nixon would've loved the Bay of Pigs invasion plan. Assassinating-Castro-w-exploding-cigars plans too.

I have no idea if Nixon in '60 would've been less resentful and boiling with hate. By 1968 he'd had a decade in the wilderness.

1960 validation would've sent Nixon around the bend - finally he beat that fuckin haircut pussyhound

voted 1960 for reasons shakey mentioned

Were the reforms of the 60's the result of LBJ or of pressure from the people? What would have happened to the civil rights movement if Nixon had been the president?

nobody could have got those bills passed but LBJ. JFK couldn't do it, and Nixon wouldn't have even tried.

Leaving aside the fact that several of these elections predate my birth in 1954, I'd choose the closest of the elections listed: 2000.

This is not the closest of the elections listed.

which is not to say there wasn't public pressure (there definitely was) but overcoming the political obstacles required someone with LBJ's unique skills

xp

This would be easier to figure out if someone could split up and pair the lyrics to 'We Didn't Start The Fire' with their respective presidential eras.

of my lifetime: 2000

Nixon had a better civil rights reputation than LBJ and JFK.

....in 1960

yeah but that doesn't mean he would push that legislation through congress in 1960

Didn't imply it. I was filling in the history. As veep Nixon was the Ike administration's point man in Congress working w/LBJ to pass the '57 civil rights bill.

This would be easier to figure out if someone could split up and pair the lyrics to 'We Didn't Start The Fire' with their respective presidential eras

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray etc. = Truman

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev etc. = 1st Eisenhower

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac etc. = 2nd Eisenhower

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land" etc. = Kennedy

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again etc. = LBJ/Nixon/Ford/Carter/Reagan (he gets kind of lazy here imo)

yeah can't speculate on the early ones but 2000 seems like it. in addition to all the dumb Iraq bullshit (which has left some of my best friends with severe PTSD) it would be nice to have a pres willing to take action on climate change 8 years before we actually got one

The fact that McCain is alive today is the one thing that rules out 2008 being the only possible answer.

Josefa, I didn't honestly expect anyone to undertake the task, but you're a hero for doing so.

I know, I'm just bored. Hope it helps.

Another vote for 2000

Born in '92, it's 2000 obviously, if only for 9/11.

Reagan-Bush in 1980 is the nightmare from which we're still trying to awaken.

obviously it's THIS one, what kind of Democrats are u?

The kind that that are so perpetually drenched in kerosene that we get immolated by ur burns.

Sixties President Nixon on civil rights could be a fascinating thing tbh. I imagine him kind of not giving a shit but wanting to look statesmanlike and presidential (and looking for "middle of the road" ways to "defuse" the situation). In our timeline this was a man totally willing to sell out civil rights more generally for what he saw as long-term Republican electoral gain, so it's hard to expect too much - but of course, that was a man in a world where the Democrats were very slowly splitting themselves apart regionally over LBJ's support of civil rights and then the Great Society, so there was a huge opportunity to lay the seeds for Republican takeover of the Solid South.

Maybe in this world that doesn't happen, specifically because Nixon stalls even on the procedural and equal-rights aspects of the struggle, that it should be "left up to the states" and that the slow change being driven one sit-in at a time shows that "the democratic process is working" or some shit. I just think it's interesting to imagine how much more bottled-up frustration there would be by the late 60s without the big LBJ bills, without the massive (and yet, too-little, too-late) efforts of the Great Society to begin to address the economic issues which were beginning to be recognized as the crucial next step after on-paper civil rights.

I don't know enough about the Fifties to really speculate on a Stevenson presidency, not that he had much chance against a war hero. My sense is that the parties were not far enough apart at that juncture for it to have mattered so much, especially in terms of the Cold War; I don't even really know what Stevenson was running on, exactly. Somehow I can imagine, if anything more destructive meddling from the technocrats and their mainframe computers, but maybe the CIA would not have been allowed to get so out of control? Feel like some of the biggest things, like the highway program, probably would have gone exactly as they did in our world. The postwar conservative/red-paranoid turn in domestic policy was already rolling during the Truman administration (see the housing acts, e.g.). Civil rights, again, might be the most interesting space where things could have gone very differently.

In our timeline this was a man totally willing to sell out civil rights more generally for what he saw as long-term Republican electoral gain, so it's hard to expect too much - but of course, that was a man in a world where the Democrats were very slowly splitting themselves apart regionally over LBJ's support of civil rights and then the Great Society, so there was a huge opportunity to lay the seeds for Republican takeover of the Solid South.

Of course, but 1961 was not that moment. No backlash yet. It's easy to imagine The Man Without Principle backing some measures. I doubt he would have insisted on LBJ's sweeping measures in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, though (and we know now that LBJ insisted on them)

Re: Cuban missile crisis - do we know for sure it would have happened if Nixon had won in '60? Super speculative, but didn't that all result from a chain of events related to the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's Berlin policy, and other such things? Could have been a whole different scenario.

― Silence, followed by unintelligible stammering. (Doctor Casino), Monday, August 8, 2016 5:00 PM (Yesterday)

yeah, one thing that hadn't occurred to me is that nixon probably would've been pretty gung-ho about the bay of pigs and prob would have had no problem going along w/ the CIA plan for a full-scale US-supported assault on cuba. it might not actually lead to a change of government in cuba but it conceivably leaves a much bigger mess than the actual bay of pigs did in our universe, and probably ratches up tensions between nixon and khrushchev. (they'd already had a pretty famous televised face-off, right? i realize i don't know as much about nixon's VP years as i probably should.) but whether a slightly different history leads to a missile crisis i don't know. the early sixties was probably the scariest era of the entire cold war, very hard to predict how someone with nixon's bizarre cocktail of a personality would act in some of those situations. (on the other hand, there's probably no kissinger in this nixon white house, which is good, right?)

1968 seems the one for 'what if it went the other way', history etc

But, what do I know...

There's a thing (which is why the popular vote margin is useful information) where some of the races are close enough to imagine what it would have been like the other way. 2000 obviously has a significant advantage here.

But the US voting for Goldwater (or McGovern) is some alternate universe shit, like what would have had to happen years before that, to get that result?

Only way Goldwater wins is with a "live boy/dead girl" situation for LBJ.

1976 may not have been earth-shattering had it gone the other way, but it's an interesting one to think about. It really shows how unpopular the Dems were at that time (post-Southern realignment) that they could barely pull off a victory so soon after Watergate. If there really had been an unbroken line of GOP presidents from 1969 to 1993 I wonder what would have happened to the party.

But if Ford had won the bad economy may have been blamed on the GOP, setting the Dems up for a 1980 victory, perhaps with Teddy as the nominee. Who knows if Ford would have run again, or if not whether Reagan or Veep Dole would have got the '80 nomination.

That's the way I figure it. I kinda wish Dole had won in '96. Even if he decided to run again he'd have been beaten, I suspect, and we might never have heard of George W. Bush.

Reagan-Bush in 1980 is the nightmare from which we're still trying to awaken.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 August 2016 18:31 (Yesterday) Permalink

^^^ I'm tempted to sign on to this one. First election I voted in. Hated Reagan then, hate him even more now.

what if Spartacus had a Piper Cub, amirite?

Gotta go with 1960 because agree that without LBJ you probably don't have 90% of the good things that happened during my lifetime. Everything else feels incremental.

Increasingly torn between 1960/1968, which for me both have the feeling of increasingly bizarre alternate-reality fiction if they'd gone differently ("...and, facing a truculent and vicious Nixon in office, the student protests grew still bolder, and then..."), and 1980/2000, where the differences are tied much more concretely to specific policies that did get enacted, where you can say with certainty "that really huge thing that happened would not have happened." I guess you can chain them together as "without Reagan, there is no George W, and without Nixon, there is no Reagan."

You can also duck '80 by imagining '76 going differently; at least to me it's not super clear how Ford might have done things dramatically differently than Carter, so having him and the Republicans saddled as the party of stagflation and malaise basically gives a free pass for the Democrat of your choice to beat Reagan or Dole or whoever handily in '80 (Ford not being eligible under the 22nd Amendment).

Ford could have run since he didn't have a full term
Same with Johnson in 68

Not so, I think -

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Ford served from August 9, 1974 to January 20, 1977 - more than two years. If he'd won in '76 it would have been a guaranteed one-termer.

JFK was shot in November '63, so Johnson served just over one year of that term and was in the clear.

Reminds me of those 2008 discussions initiated by books by Sean Wilentz et al trying to posit Reagan or Nixon as fathers of modern conservatism

My reading of that amendment is Living not Originalist

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I had no idea Doctor Casino was born before 1960!

And Alex in SF too!

I think for those of us who lived through Reagan it's impossible to pick 2000 over 1980. Maybe people older than me find it absurd I picked 1980 over 1960. But here's the thing. I feel like the 1960s, as we know them, were going to happen Kennedy or no Kennedy. The 1980s as we know them? We really might have avoided them. We might not STILL BE LIVING IN THEM, as we are.

i dunno, the neoliberal wave was not limited to the US. the backlash to decades of progressive victories (limited as they were) was mounting, reagan or no reagan (tho he was obviously head cheerleader).

Haha no, I was born in 1981 - - - I really should have chosen a different title for the thread, since it was really more "in the lifetime of most ILXors/recent national memory" - but the recurrence of this trope in recent elections sort of called out to me.

HAH I just sort of assumed it was the options on the POLL not actually my lifetime.

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'76 because Carter's tumultuous presidency paved the way for Reagan to win? Doesn't seem that momentous otherwise. '92 does, to me, even if you hate Clinton--beginning of hyper-partisanship, for one thing. 1968 seems really important a) just by virtue of being 1968, and b) if there's no Nixon presidency, a whole lot else changes.

(Being Canadian, I wasn't allowed to vote in this.)

Being a Cook County corpse I voted 1960

...eight times!

"And that ain't the record either"

thinking about the supreme court really boosts 1968 a bit i think. a lot of things might have played out very differently had humphrey, not nixon, filled four vacancies in that first term. blackmun turned out a surprise liberal but rehnquist, powell and burger shifted the court decidedly rightward off of where it was going under Warren - really where it had been going since FDR's raft of appointments - and they stuck around forever. even reagan's picks, much as i still loathe scalia, seem to have been less obstructive to the progress of justice and equality.

i said 1964 itt but yeah 68 is really pivotal to me. more likely the US' social democratic reforms would continue from there. what was humphrey's vietnam position?

I think by the time of the primaries, pretty much everyone's (public) position was 'pull out ASAP'.

(Which, for Nixon, naturally meant 'as soon as possible after the election'.)

humphrey's vietnam position might be described as "frustrated." my understanding is that he was one of those in the admin who'd started to think the war was indeed "quicksand" and that the rosy pictures they were getting from the brass were B.S. but it was pretty hard for him to stake out a different position while running as LBJ's veep. meanwhile the national mood was souring on the war at sort of the worst time for the admin trying to pass the torch; he probably would have won if the calendar were all shifted around and the election happened in '67.

he didn't run in the primaries (focused on caucus states IIRC) and of course he entered late because of LBJ's sudden decision to drop out, but all through this period and into the summer he was still stick carrying water for the admin's line on the war, months after Tet and with the momentum clearly shifting to mccarthy and RFK as outright anti-war candidates. a month before the election he finally said publicly that he'd end the bombing and seek a cease-fire as a gamble for the sake of peace talks (which he'd been pushing to LBJ privately for a while, per wiki). it went over well with the public, but it was sort of too-little-too-late. or maybe it would have been just enough had nixon not fiddled with the peace talks. it was a close race (despite the blowout electoral vote). nixon carried several EV-rich states by around 3% or less (CA, IL, NJ, OH) and the Wallace ticket was in striking distance of a couple more than it won (the Carolinas, Tennessee). it really could have gone differently.

this gets much more into his vietnam chronology and his frustrations: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/vietnam-hubert-humphrey.html

this is an auspiciously timed first post :/

yeah. :-/ it was a different time, for sure.

thinking about the supreme court really boosts 1968 a bit i think. a lot of things might have played out very differently had humphrey, not nixon, filled four vacancies in that first term. blackmun turned out a surprise liberal but rehnquist, powell and burger shifted the court decidedly rightward off of where it was going under Warren - really where it had been going since FDR's raft of appointments - and they stuck around forever. even reagan's picks, much as i still loathe scalia, seem to have been less obstructive to the progress of justice and equality.

― This is a total Jeff Porcaro. (Doctor Casino),

Wait till you read John Dean's The Rehnquist Vote, in which the tapes clarify how stupid and troll-y Nixon intended to be with his real picks for the Court. To be honest we're lucky that Powell and Blackmun turned out to be moderates fairly quickly (compared to Scalia, Thomas, and even early O'Connor), despite Powell's writing one of the most influential of modern conservative memos.