The election of 1896 was certainly a transitional milestone. The thing that prevents me from moving it to the front rank in importance, though, is that most of Bryan’s platform got enacted anyway, either during the Progressive Era or the New Deal.
So then I say, how important was the election? If Bryan had won, the same things would have happened, only a little sooner.
Mentioned by MGibson in post #10:
Thanks for adding to the discussion, bob. :rolleyes:
Well said. That’d get my vote, too. Otherwise, 1860, with Lincoln’s election spurring secession and the Civil War.
Despite all the ink spilled on the topic over the years, I’m actually not convinced that 1864 was all that significant. Even had Lincoln lost at the polls, he’d still have been CINC through March 4, 1865, just a little over a month shy of when the war ended in a Federal victory anyway. His summer '64 Cabinet letter made clear that he was going to do his damnedest to win the war even if McClellan defeated him in November. I think he might just have done it, or gotten so close that even the feckless McClellan - who blew hot and cold on the Democratic Party’s peace platform, anyway - would have struck the final blows to restore the Union.
Of course, the counterargument is that the Confederacy would have been emboldened by a Lincoln ballot upset and could have hung on until McClellan was sworn in, or that Lincoln would have been stymied on Capitol Hill (and could not have prosecuted the war as vigorously as he did) if the public seemed to have definitively abandoned him. Fortunately all that didn’t come to pass.
I would also say 1800, because it was the first time in history–correct me if I’m wrong about this–that one party ever handed over power peacefully and democratically to a rival party, establishing a precedent crucial to our entire democratic system as we know it. And likewise 1796 as Hail Ants said, for the same reason, but I go with 1800 because I think the peaceful and democratic transfer of partisan power is even more systemically significant than the status of an individual.
ETA–Because the Constitution provides for individuals handing over power, so 1796 was by the book, but a partisan had not been foreseen in the Constitution, so how 1800 worked out in practice set a more crucial precedent for establishing our system.
If by “democratically” you mean as the result of elections, you might be on less shaky ground than by peacefully alone, given that the “Whig” and “Tory” factions had transferred power without bloodshed numerous times in the late 1700’s. I’m not an expert on the Parliamentary elections of the time, so I cannot say if any of the elections were the reason for power transfer.
I will nominate for consideration two elections:
1828: Jacksonian Democracy takes control. Had Adams managed to hold onto the office, it is possible that the great movement to popular democracy would have been stifled, or modified significantly, changing the face of the entire set of elections between 1828 and 1860.
1972: Had McGovern won, no Watergate scandal, and, thus, no shift in the national voter sentiment to the Washington “outsider.”
As for the most significant, I would tend to think the 1864 election probably had the most on the line. McClellan might not have been able to end the war through a negotiated peace (would the Senate have ratified?). But it is damn certain that the assassination of 1865 would not have happened, and that would have changed politics in the South for generations.
You mean there had never been a peaceful transition of power in any of the 13 states prior to 1800? They were all run by Governors-for-Life? 
I think it’s important to remember that the federal system, and the expectations the American people had of it, did not spring out of nowhere - they were based in part on the experience of the American people at the state level, prior to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. The peaceful transitions of power at the federal level were perhaps more obvious and impressive to outside observers, but they were firmly grounded in the previous political experience at the state level.
DSYoungEsq makes a good point - throughout the 18th century, there had been peaceful transitions of power in the British government, but it’s difficult to make direct comparisons to the American system, for several reasons:
throughout the 18th century, the King still had considerable influence in the choice of Prime Minister, although constrained to some extent by political realities in the two Houses of Parliament;
power resided in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, so elections to the Commons were not as decisive as they later became;
there was no firm party system until towards the end of the 18th century; there were political factions, often tied heavily to personalities as much as to policies;
because of the lack of firm political parties, members of the House of Commons had much greater freedom in switching allegiances, so that the choice of government by House of Commons was much more dynamic than it currently is.
However, even with all those differences, the basic point is that within the British political system, there were peaceful transitions of civil power from one faction or party to another, based on the accepted constitutional principles of the day.
For example, on this site: British Prime Ministers, it shows that between 1721, when Walpole took office as the first Prime Minister, and 1800, there were six transistions of power between Whig and Tory ministries:
1762 - the Earl of Bute (Tory) replaced the Duke of Newcastle (leader of the Pelhamite Whigs);
1763 - Grenville (Whig) replaced Bute;
1770 - Lord North (Tory) replaced the Duke of Grafton (Whig);
1782 - the Marquess of Rockingham (Whig) replaced Lord North (Tory);
1783 - the Duke of Portland (Tory) replaced the Earl of Shelburne (Whig).
In addition, there were numerous transitions within the Whig and Tory factions - given the loose nature of those factions, and the importance of personal loyalties within them, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those intra-faction transfers were in fact hostile takeovers, so to speak - but I’m not familiar enough with the details to do more than point out that possiblity.
If Reagan had won the Pub primaries in 1976, could he have won the presidency?
Yes. Ford almost won, and he was the ‘non-elected’ president. If Ohio and Hawaii had gone Republican, Ford would have won. So it’s not a stretch to think Reagan would have won had Carter run against him.
But I don’t think 1976 would have made much long lasting difference. The Reagan Revolution was not about Carter; it was about people being fed up with Rooseveltian Democracy. The revolution was on the way even before 1980, and had Ford beaten Carter, and even assuming that the hostage crisis would have occurred, etc., I think that by 1984, the Republicans were going to take control of the federal government anyway. So long lasting effect would have been relatively nil. IMHO. 
Not wanting to go with the obvious - 1864.
My vote is 1916. Wilson runs under the slogan of “He Kept Us Out of War” after which the hypocrite gets us into WWI. Besides raising the prestige of the US abroad, this starts the rise of the US as the world’s policeman as opposed to being the Western hemisphere’s policeman (Monroe Doctrine).
In Wilson’s defense, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on Feb. 1, 1917, AFTER Wilson’s re-election. It was pretty hard for Wilson to still keep us out of war once Germany sank four unarmed American merchant ships, at a cost of 36 lives. Couple this with the discovery of the Zimmermann Note, and the situation had dramatically changed since the campaign of 1916.
PS Had Charles Evans Hughes instead won, do you really think we would have stayed out of WWI?
I believe Reagan could have beaten Carter in 1976 but it would have been much closer than the actual 1980 matchup. But if you look at the electoral map it isn’t a sure thing. Michigan may well have gone for Carter without favorite son Ford on the ballot. Perhaps Ohio swings the other way. Perhaps Carter would have lost a southern state or two, perhaps not.
However, if Ford had won in 1976, the Reagan Revolution never happens. At least that’s what my crystal ball says. No Reagan Revolution, no vice-president Bush, no president GHW Bush, no president GW Bush.
By the primary measurable objections the conservatives had with Roosevelt, the size of the government and the debt it incurred, were substantially *increased * under Reagan. Especially the debt. What kind of “revolution” is that? Surely you’re not counting simple imagery, are you?
It wasn’t about making government less absolutely. It was about taking away what government does for you while increasing what government does to you.
Who in the world said those were the primary concerns of the conservatives?? :eek:
Rooseveltian democracy is the notion that the federal government has an obligation to solve social woes, rather than leaving those issues to the individual states. The result of such efforts is a big federal government and, potentially, a significant debt, but that’s not it’s defining characteristics (hell, as we have discovered, you can incur one hell of a debt without doing anything in the way of a social program, unless you consider increasing the size of the army a method of reducing unemployment 
). The basic Rooseveltian concept was significantly extended in the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, and by the concurrent and subsequent Congresses; these extensions included the federal welfare, food stamp, etc. programs that conservatives love to heckle.
It is this notion that is at the heart of the so-called Reagan Revolution. Federal government shouldn’t be focussed on solving all social woes; it has a primary purpose that is well defined in our Constitution (so the revolutionaries think; amazing how that well-defined part runs into trouble :smack: ). If the federal government gets back on track, then it won’t cost so much. But since it spends everything we give it, to force it back on track, you cut its income. Reagan proposed to put the federal government back on track. Defend our soil first, yadda yadda. At the same time, reduce the tax burden, thus limiting the income the federal government has to spend.
Of course, it was an imperfect revolution. First of all, you can’t cut taxes and increase spending without there being added debt, and as you noted, there was substantial added debt. But national debt is a very difficult concept to get all worked up about as an individual, unless and until someone points out that your taxes are paying for it in a way that makes you sit up and listen. And federal government expanded, because, as I learned way back in my public policy class in 1979, once a program is established, it’s damn difficult to kill it off. So all that happened was that the things that were the “new” priorities got added; the old priorities stagnated, but didn’t go away, and federal government is bigger than ever, without really having solved any of the questions presented to it in hindsight of more than 70 years of Rooseveltian democracy.
I have heard it argued that had the United States stayed out and left the Allies and and the Central Powers to come to a negotiated settlement, it would have abrogated many of the conditions favourable to the rise of the Nazi party. No Nazi government, no Second World War. Wow.
Just about everybody campaigning for Reagan.
If you can call it a “revolution” when it had no actual identifiable effects other than tripling the national debt, that is. The growth of government kept on at about the same rate it always had, and has since. The claim that he got government to stop doing things to advance social welfare is not matched by the actual record. Yes indeed, you’re mistaking imagery for substance - but that was the definition of the Reagan administration’s style.
Ross Perot, 1992 campaign, remember? Before the Reagan/Bush administration was even left office.
IOW, there *was * no “Reagan Revolution”. Thanks for the admission. :dubious: