I think I follow US politics pretty closely for the most part. Obviously every presidential election is important. However, there have been a few that have been critically so in my lifetime. I’ll leave it up to you to determine which ones were most important to you.
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1992 was the first election post Cold War. It was also a referendum on how Bush handled the first Iraq war, and how he increased taxes after saying he wouldn’t. It was the first time in a while that we had a viable 3rd party candidate. It was also a watershed moment for NAFTA which would have unlikely been passed under a republican president. Gay rights also made huge strides due to this election.
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1996 saw the rise of the religious right, and laid the foundation for the political theater that we experience today.
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2000 was a referendum on how important the climate was to the average American. I’m sad to say that the fossils won that one. To me this was one of the most important races of our lifetimes.
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2004 was a referendum on the handling of the second Iraq War and the continuation of torture as an interrogation device. This one to me is the one where we started to lose a lot of our standing and respect around the world .
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2008 was critical in that we finally got some semblance of a national healthcare plan
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2012 was a referendum on that Healthcare plan. This one is yet another critical juncture in the vision for America. The loss here made the right rabid. It also didn’t help that the 24 hour news cycle was no longer hamstrung to report the, you know, actual news.
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2016 was a referendum on electing a black man to the highest office twice. It was also about healthcare, but most importantly it was when the right finally got war fatigue while the left got globalization fatigue. It was important in that the US started to return back to its isolationist roots.
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2020 was a referendum on democracy. We hadn’t experienced such a vital threat to democracy since the era when the atomic bomb gave us near total control over the world. If trump had won, I fear we would ceased to function as a democracy at the national level.
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And now onto 2024 - yet another referendum on democracy, but with the added twist that everyone is spurned by high inflation. The economy simply isn’t working for about 40% of the population. In any other normal year, this would be a shoo in for the change candidate, unfortunately for us that change candidate is a fascist dictator.
So, is 2024 the most important election of our lifetimes? Well, I suppose that depends on whether you value living in a democracy. For me, that is a resounding yes.