Realigning elections

[Scam of God]

I tend to divide realignments into two paradigms: 'hard' (an ideological shift among the electorate - 1932 and 1980) and 'soft' (party/discourse shifts - 1896 and 1968). Or, perhaps more appropriately, a 'soft' realignment must always occur to lay the theoretical groundwork for the second: the country had to be prepared for economic populism by William Jennings Bryan before it could fully accept Roosevelt's full-on liberalism, and Ronald Reagan needed Richard Nixon to de-align the South and court social conservatives before he could win. Of course, Nixon won where Bryan lost, but Bryan held it close, and has most certainly had a greater influence on American political dialogue in subsequent years that William McKinley.

If this holds true, I would not be surprised to talk about 2008 as a 'soft' re-alignment thirty years from now, in the wake of a Democratic landslide election centered on social libertarianism. The race issue has always been the centerpiece in the social conservative armory, so to speak, even if it is not frequently discussed openly; I believe that Barack Obama is the social liberal's answer to Richard Nixon forty years later. Now we simply need our Ronald Reagan.

[Scam of God]

Nixon actually delivered very little in terms of a traditional realignment.

But he did break up the strangle-hold the Democrats had over the South prior to that time; or, more appropriately, he finalized the dissolution of Democratic power in that region began by Goldwater and expanded it out of the Deep South (he won Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina, all states Goldwater failed to carry). Without Nixon to solidify and re-align that region, it's very possible that Reagan could have lost it to Carter, who ran more strongly in the South than he did in any other area of the nation in 1980.

[Scam of God]

Nixon actually delivered very little in terms of a traditional realignment.

But he did break up the strangle-hold the Democrats had over the South prior to that time; or, more appropriately, he finalized the dissolution of Democratic power in that region began by Goldwater and expanded it out of the Deep South (he won Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina, all states Goldwater failed to carry). Without Nixon to solidify and re-align that region, it's very possible that Reagan could have lost it to Carter, who ran more strongly in the South than he did in any other area of the nation in 1980.

He did almost nothing downticket for the Republicans. 

I don't really take that into consideration - Congressional and Presidential re-alignments seem to happen in different elections, one as the aftershock of another (case in point: 1994, which almost certainly culminated in the election of 2000).