“We’re at a tipping point, and quite possibly our country, as we know it, may be lost forever.” Sound familiar?
That comment was made by Chuck Norris in 2012, who pleaded with American voters to defeat President Barack Obama, running for his second term, or, he said, U.S. voters would be sentencing their children to “1,000 years of darkness.” Change out the candidates’ names and his comments could easily have been made this election cycle. And every one in between.
In fact, for every election cycle in my political memory, I’ve heard that “this is the most important election of our lifetime.” If every election is the most important election, then no election is the most important, right? (OK, OK — every election is important, and elections have real consequences. But determining the most important is best left to historians.)
In 2020, a tech podcast with host Jason Feifer released an episode titled “The Most Important Podcast of Our Lifetime!” that explored the genesis of this now-ubiquitous phrase of “most important in our lifetime.” He started off by telling his listeners: “If you’re hearing this podcast before the first Tuesday in November in the year 2020, then you may agree, this is the most important election of our lifetime, and maybe it is. Maybe it is. I admit it sure feels that way. Or maybe you’re listening to this four years from now or maybe you’re actually approaching Election Day 2024. And if that’s the case, well, I bet you have been told that your election is the most important election of our lifetime. And I bet that feels true too.” (There’s a reason for that, which we will get to later.)
As far back as 1805, at least as far as Feifer could find, this has been so. The Philadelphia Aurora wanted the incumbent governor, Thomas McKean, to lose. It printed a nearly full-page ad calling McKean “an apostate from principle” who was “supported by a mongrel faction.” The ad went on to issue a call to action by telling voters, “Today will be held the most important election you have ever been called upon to attend.” McKean won.
It feels like that phrase — or something like it — has been bandied about in every election since then, both locally and nationally. In 1864, the Vermont Chronicle exclaimed “the most important election in the history of this nation” was when Abraham Lincoln was running for reelection. (That’s fair.) The Greeneville Democrat-Sun, a newspaper in Tennessee, reported in 1923 that “the most important election in the history of the county will take place … when Greene County will be called on to vote $200,000 for the purpose of resurfacing the roads.” Presumably Greene County roads have been resurfaced a number of times in the last 100 years.
In 1952, President Harry S. Truman stumped for Democrat Adlai Stevenson to succeed him, saying, “This is, my friends, the most important election in your lifetime. We can’t afford to lose it.” Stevenson lost, and four years later, Truman was back on the trail telling voters that, actually, it was the 1956 election that was the most important in a quarter-century. In 1960, John F. Kennedy called his race the most important since Lincoln’s. In 1988, Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis called his the most important race since Kennedy’s.
During the 1996 Clinton-Dole campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared it “the most important election in our lifetimes and an election in which the choices have never been clearer.” In 2020, he said, “This is the most important election, not only in our lifetime but in the modern history of our country,” speaking to voters in Michigan. This weekend, Sanders endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and told voters in Vermont that “This is, in fact, the most important election of our lifetimes.”
And on and on it goes.
Why that phrase works
There are reasons politicians and their supporters use “the most important election” phrasing. Politicians need voters to feel that the future depends on their vote. By using phrases such as “most important ever!” they can create a sense of urgency and immediacy. According to podcast host Feifer, somebody feels like something’s at stake so they will get off their couches and into the voting booth.
By creating that sense of urgency, candidates can also tap into fear, dislike and negativity bias, which studies confirm are also powerful motivators in getting out the vote. Preaching doom and gloom works. Remember the “Daisy Ad”? I was not yet born when it aired originally in 1964, but the minute-long TV ad showing a massive atomic bomb blotting out the image of a little girl plucking flowers off a daisy helped clinch a landslide victory for Lyndon B. Johnson. That ad has been studied in political science classes ever since.
Immediacy and urgency are about the here and now. The past is over. We can’t control the future, but drumming up worst-case scenarios that will likely never come to pass taps into our fears about that future. But those fears are greatly exaggerated. Obama winning a second term did not lead to 1,000 years of darkness. As previously mentioned, the roads in Greene County have surely been resurfaced.
Our political system is built for the long haul, and to withstand the inevitable pendulum swings between ideologies. We know the Supreme Court has been wrong before, in the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery and the Plessy v. Ferguson case enshrining segregation, for example. I would suggest most voters think the court has been wrong on abortion, whether it was the Roe v. Wade case or the more recent Dobbs case. Sometimes, the people we vote for don’t win. But we have a system built for resilience. There is hope.
Earlier this year, Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson wrote, “No matter who wins the White House this year, 2024 will not be our nation’s last election. Democracy will not die if the Republican wins. The republic will survive if the Democrat wins.”
Having said all that, I will tell you what is actually the most important part of any election, including the 2024 election. It’s your vote. Get out there and exercise it and have a hand in shaping what comes next. If the people you vote for win, win graciously. If the people you vote for lose, lose with dignity. In spite of some blustery rhetoric coming from both sides, this country will still be standing in four years.
This post originally appeared in the Deseret News.
