Before they happen, every national election seems critically important for the future direction of the country. The ‘mostest importantest election everrrr,’ if you will. But, add a little hindsight and it becomes clear that not all elections even came remotely close to that bar. Add a little more, and sometimes it’s easy to wonder why we were even concerned at all. Sure, they're all meaningful in some sense or another, but looking at history it does become quite obvious that some elections are more equal (important!) than others.
So what really makes an election ‘important’ from a conservative perspective? It’s a subjective question, but in general I think it comes down to a mix of several factors, all of which probably should be present to some degree or another to qualify. Here they are, in no particular order:
Ability to win - Some will disagree here, but from my perspective if we were never going to win in the first place it probably shouldn’t qualify for the purposes of this thought exercise. No matter what any of us would have done, in hindsight the outcome of some elections was likely always going to be the same.
For example, John McCain was never going to beat Barack Obama in 2008. After the Bush second term miscues and the economic crisis, that blue wave would always hit and hit hard. And frankly, for the Bush sins as well as the unforgivable sin of nominating someone with McCain’s policies and worldview, Republicans deserved to take that medicine, as hard as it was to swallow.
Going back to 1996, Bob Dole was never going to unseat Bill Clinton, and it’s questionable whether Mitt Romney ever really stood a chance against the incumbent Obama in 2012. In fairness to all three of those GOP nominees, yes, Republicans chose poorly, but they probably would have lost no matter who they picked. In sum, you have to play to be in the game.
SCOTUS seats up for grabs - If it’s a competitive election and SCOTUS seats are up for grabs, it’s probably important. Done correctly, it’s the primary legacy a president can leave, even sometimes for decades after they leave office. If we win an election and can seat at least two halfway decent Supreme Court justices or even one that replaces a leftist, I consider that a win. If we lose a winnable election and Democrats replace one of ours or get two younger ones in there to replace theirs, I consider that a loss.
2008 was a mixed bag in this regard. Yes, Obama was able to hold serve twice, replacing two liberals with two more liberals, but he was never able to install anyone after that successfully. Thankfully, in a moment of sanity and lucidity, Mitch McConnell prevented what would have been a disastrous replacement of Justice Scalia in 2016, paving the way for Trump to make the pick. After replacing two liberal justices during his first term, Clinton never made another pick. Bush, however, made his picks - one of them a home run - after winning in 2004.
Ability to implement policy in a semi-permanent way - If our candidate wins, but Democrats win the House and the Senate, it doesn’t do us a lot of good. Our good judiciary picks will be stifled, and any meaningful legislation will never come to fruition. Sure, we’re keeping the Dems from doing their worst, but does the ability to merely keep Dems from doing their worst quality as a most important election? Maybe, but then again, as we’ve seen from the past four years, sometimes allowing Americans to see the results of horrible policies can swing the pendulum back in the right direction. Generally, however, if we aren’t going to be able to make any meaningful changes from a legislative standpoint, the election isn’t as important as it otherwise would be.
Now, jumping to this election and likely everyone going forward, in addition to the items listed above, two factors amp the ‘important’ scale up to another level altogether:
Immigration - Democrats have been increasingly brazen about their desire just to throw open the borders, make the invaders citizens, and create a “permanent Democratic majority” as quickly as possible. Being able to stifle this to some degree is definitely a huge bonus for a Republican president now, even if they get nothing else done. Still, at some point, we’re just bailing water on the Titanic, and the results must come, or we’re going to sink anyway.
Structural changes proposed by Democrats - As we’ve known for quite some time now, these ghouls play for keeps. They want to make states out of places that have no business being states except that they hold populations that would vote overwhelmingly Democrat. They want to abolish the Senate filibuster to pass anything they want with a simple majority. They want to restructure every election law so there is no transparency, purging of voter rolls, ability to audit, or requirement for ‘voters’ to present identification to prove they are who they say they are. If they succeed, it will be impossible for a Republican to win a national election ever going forward, no matter how much the economy tanks from their horrendous policies.
So yeah, when people say the 2024 election is the "most important ever," the contention isn’t without merit. It’s winnable (I’m happy to have been wrong here!), and, at the least, Trump could replace two elderly SCOTUS justices, reshape the federal judiciary, stop the migrant influx, work on election integrity, and keep the Democrats from doing the hellish things they would otherwise do. Even without the House, which is likely to go Democrat, he could still drastically curb regulations and favorably wield the executive behemoth to get our country going again.
Still, in terms of important elections, I think 2016 may rank the highest, at least in my lifetime. It’s hard to consider where our country would have been had leftists gained the 6-3 SCOTUS majority they would have had had Hillary Clinton won, especially considering that the Supreme Court has been a key bulwark against much of the craziness Biden would have liked to impose, especially during Covid. We would have been much further down the rabbit hole than we are even now.