The Midterms of 2018 Aren’t So Earth-Shaking After All
Neither party has an interest in saying it, but this will be one of the least consequential U.S. elections in years.
You should vote regardless.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Because voting is voluntary in our country, political activists have to find some way to rev up Americans to do their civic duty. One old standby is calling the next election “the most important in history,” or “a generation.”
It’s easy to make fun of this trope, but elections do vary in their importance. The stakes really were higher in 1860 than they usually are. In 2012, I wrote that the election that year would be the most important since 1980. Republicans had a chance to hold the House and take the Senate and White House, and if they had, significant changes to Medicare would have been on the table. Obamacare would have been dismantled before most of it took effect.