There won't be one anytime soon.
1980 was no realignment.
You could argue that there wasn't a particularly strong Party realignment, but there definitely was a solidification and rise of neoliberal politics.
How did the western world go from this in the late 1970's:
1. Debtor’s paradise (high inflation eats away privately held debt)
2. Sustained inflation
3. Labor share of national income at an all time high
4. Corporate profits at an all time low
5. Strong unions
6. Low inequality
7. National markets
8. Weak financial sector and weak central banks
9. Strong confesses/parliament (strong fiscal policy)
to this today:
1. Creditor’s paradise (since inflation is either low or non existent)
2. Secular disinflation
3. Labor share of national income at an all time low
4. Corporate profits at an all time high
5. Weak union
6. High inequality
7. Globalized markets
8. Strong Financial sectors and strong central banks
9. Weak/hated congress/parliaments (weak fiscal policy-reliant on monetary policy)
Without a reprogramming of our software?
All of those trends in the late 1970's didn't just reverse on a whim. They were down through governmental actions spanning from Reagan-Bush II. Nixon's measures didn't do a damn thing to lower inflation, beef up corporate profits, or increase inequality throughout the 1970's (they all kept trending the same way they had been before he took office to when he left office) and Carter's measures were incredibly tame compared to the ones undertaken by all of his successors.
The Reagans and Thatchers of the world changed the game.
Richard Nixon cut social programs, endorsed free trade, began the earliest deregulation measures, and dissolved the monetary system that was the backbone of Keynesian economics (that he did so in the name of Keynesianism just shows his economic ignorance). Ford and Carter accelerated this process and Reagan even more so. It's true that they didn't have the immediate effect desired because they were so small-scale, but by 1973 every Western government was committed to the themes of fiscal austerity, deregulation, and free trade whether it was governed by "left-wing" or "right-wing" parties. For example, the Callaghan Labour government of 1977-1979 was far more conservative on economics than any British government since the Conservative Baldwin governments of the 1930s. Of course, it's true that the reason the neoliberal measures in the 1970s were of a smaller scale than in the 1980s and especially the 1990s. Yes, Reagan certainly anted up the pressure, but it was already the consensus. If we were to argue an election solidified neoliberalism, it would actually be not Reagan but rather Carter in 1976.
I disagree that unions were strong in the 1970s - this decade is when weak leadership, collapsing membership, outsourcing, and failed strikes became the norm as Michael Goldfield noted his 1987 book The Decline of Organized Labor. A sign of what would follow.
Pointing to Nixon, Ford, and Carter's super small scale neoliberal measures as the beginning of the Reagan Revolution is like saying 1932 wasn't a realignment because Wilson and Teddy implemented smaller scale progressive politics before FDR came along. It's missing the bigger picture and the importance of the Reagan Revolution itself and why 1980 was a critical election.
Again, all of the macroeconomic trends that predated Nixon and Ford continued on during and after their administrations. They weren't even speed bumps in the lead up to stagflation and the high inflation late 70's: they continued much of the same New Deal style consensus politics. Where was the neoliberal consensus if they continued the same macroeconomic trends? They had Democratic congresses that were still primarily geared towards New Deal full employment policies (and who weren't willing to go full on with a neoliberal agenda until Reagan came along). Not even Carter could work well with his own Party in the late 70's because the neoliberal consensus on how to fight stagflation and high inflation hadn't been established yet.
The neoliberal era began with Reagan and the GOP-southern Dem coalition in congress which worked with Reagan to get his agenda through unlike the way they treated Nixon, Ford, and even Carter. 1980-Today we've been targeting price stability, whereas from 1945-1979 we had been targeting full employment.
A significant parallel between Reagan and Obama is that both sent moderate members of their parties packing to the other side. Reagan with the Rockefeller Republicans, and Obama with the Blue Dog Democrats.
Obama was basically the embodiment and fulfillment of Mcgovern's platform. Mcgovern's main left-wing positions that were considered scandalous were his social positions on issues such as drugs and gay rights, he was not that Left-wing on economic issues. There was always a strain of thought representing Obama-style ideas in the Democratic party, just as there was for Reagan (Taft), Lincoln (Henry Clay), and FDR (Jennings Bryan).
There is simply no historical strain of thought representing sanders-ism in the Democratic party. People want to link FDR to Sanders, but that betrays the historical process. Reagan was a very different president from the likes of Lincoln and Coolidge. These developments didn't come out of a void, they were simply embodiments and fulfillments of long-standing factions within the parties.
Sanders is even totally unlike Howard Dean, Dean is closer to Obama. The closest parallel to Sanders is a third-party candidate in the make of someone like Eugene Debs.
Poll
