Most consequential presidential election?

[mianfei]

Here's a wild card: 1976.

Ford wins and all the woes of the late 1970's get pinned on the GOP. Watergate, vietnam, "malaise," Iranian hostage crisis, all perceived as a 12-year Republican orgy of incompetence and corruption. There is never a Reagan Revolution (with all that entails) in this timeline! Ted Kennedy (or someone very much like him) wins a landslide in 1980, opening the door for a second Great Society with Democratic super-majorities in Congress.

For all we know if Dewey had won in 1948, it would have prevented the Republican resurgence with Ike, Nixon and Reagan.

At least one historian has suggested that a Dewey victory would have prevented the resurgence of the southern strategy; stopped the GOP from adopting its intense Red-baiting campaign; and led to a much more liberal Republican Party in the long term. It's interesting to imagine a United States divided, today, between an anti-elitist, know-nothing "populist" Democratic Party anchored in the South (but with support from working-class whites nationwide)... and a business-oriented "progressive" Republican Party drawing support from educated whites and minorities across the country! Basically an extension of the 19th century's voting patterns.

Imagine a 2012 Democratic platform calling for single-payer healthcare and constitutional amendments banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

Could you tell me which historian suggested that a Dewey victory would have prevented the resurgence of the “southern strategy” which began with Hoover in 1928?

Regarding a Ford victory in 1976, I’ve often imagined a more liberal Democrat (Alan Cranston is one name I have had on my mind of late) winning in 1980 and trying to push forward the social liberalism that swept America’s urban cores during the 1980s with the growth of heavy metal and rap music. I have always imagined, though, that if a wave of social liberalism swept the country during the 1980s, there might have been an extreme reaction if the Republican Party did regain power at some point during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Imagine Pat Buchanan becoming the Republican nominee in 1992 or 1996 and winning – and being able to get a majority of seats in the House without a majority of votes due to a 2020-like concentration of Democratic votes in urban areas.

[mianfei]

the “southern strategy” which began with Hoover in 1928?

It began with McKinley and the Lily-Whites in 1896.

I had forgotten about that, but it is true that the Republicans did try to capture the South’s lily-white electorate from the time of disfranchisement, although until Ben W. Hooper became Governor of Tennessee in 1911 and Harding carried Oklahoma and Tennessee in 1920 it did not have any tangible results. Moreover, in the Border States the Republicans did make many tangible gains during the “System of 1896.”