How will these figures be viewed in 2070?

[Vosem]

Way too soon to say for either of the first two, particularly since it's likely they'll be facing each other again in 2024. It does not seem to be a given to me that we aren't still living through a "Trump Era" of American politics.

Hillary will be remembered as the first female nominee and as the candidate who lost to Donald Trump in 2016. Her tenure as Secretary of State will be remembered largely for the disastrous intervention in Libya. I think this is a story that has basically concluded.

Obama will continue to be an icon among black Americans, but the rest of his legacy remains unclear. The Democratic Party is still under his spell, but it doesn't seem to be a given that this will still be the case 10 years from now, and a decade after its passage Obamacare has been a mixed success at best; conservative opposition to it remains trenchant. I've written elsewhere that the seminal election of the early 21st century -- which will set the tone of how the era is covered in future textbooks -- will be either 2008 or 2016. If 2008, Obama will be seen as the first in a line of liberal Presidents who eventually accomplished reform and will gradually rise to the status of a Top Ten figure; if 2016, he will be somewhat forgotten, though he'll remain celebrated among black Americans forever.

Reagan will be viewed largely positively as someone with a very successful foreign policy who made economic reforms which were necessary at the time; even if America's future is a turn leftward (which I doubt, but is of course possible) I assume the actual specifics of his reforms will simply be swept under the rug, rather like the way TR is remembered for unspecific economic reforms and success abroad but controversial aspects of his leadership (like race relations) are forgotten, and he declines to somewhere above-average, like TR. In a world where the current right side of the Culture War wins (difficult to imagine; the likeliest variant here is that the left side wins without this implying any shift in economic doctrine; but possible to imagine) he becomes viewed as a Top Five figure.

Not sure Sanders will be remembered much among anyone who wasn't politically invested in the late 2010s. At best he's seen like Goldwater (a precursor of what was to come) or Bryan (even if not a precursor of what was to come, the undisputed leader of an influential movement who remains personally positively viewed for decades) or perhaps for an earlier throwback Daniel Webster (an eloquent and memorable leader of a certain political faction, but a faction which outgrew him within his own lifetime and who never did manage to be nominated for President). Most likely he's forgotten like any politician who was never nominated for President in spite of multiple attempts and significant support (Nelson Rockefeller might be too influential as NY-Gov to apply here; Robert Taft actually seems like a weirdly apt comparison). At an unlikely absolute worst he's seen as representative of an influence the future broadly rejects, like Richard Russell.