Caution: Political Realignment Ahead in 2016

Starting with the 2000 presidential election, I have heard many a political commentator, hack, or strategist utter "this is the most important election of our lifetime." It has gotten to the point that I have gotten sick of it because it's been uttered so many times every four years. However, the recent Rolling Stone article may be spot on because there is just something in the air that says that 2016 is different.

1. America is overdue for a realignment.Throughout this nation's history, such an overhaul has usually happened every 28-40 years. The last one happened in 1968--which would mark 48 years between realignments. This current cycle resulted in the fracturing of the New Deal coalition, the Solid South flipping over from the Democrats to the Republicans, clear ideological identities of the parties, and a drift to the right
2. There's a feeling that the political stasis has to come to an end. Starting with Karl Rove's off-base declaration that 2004 was the start of "permanent Republican majority," every election since then has resulted in the parties alternating victories. Voters have been very impatient to the point that most of them have lost faith in both parties.
3. Several Supreme Court justices are getting up there in age. As we have seen with such rulings in cases like Citizens United, who's on the court matters a lot

A refresher on previous cycles

1. The 1789 election eventually gave us our first parties--Federalists and Antifederalists (who would later become the Democratic-Republican Party)
2. The disputed 1824 election, which went to Congress, saw the fracturing of the Democratic-Republicans after the Federalists collapsed. The Jackson faction renamed the party the Democrats while the John Quincy Adams faction became National Republicans (which later merged with the Anti-Masons to become the Whigs). There was a lot of back and forth between the Dems and the Whigs during this era
3. The collapse of the Whig Party gave way to Republicans, who outlasted the nativist Know-Nothings to become the Democrats' main threat. In 1860, the GOP won its first election on an antislavery platform. As the more liberal of the two surviving parties, the Republicans would hold the White House for 28 of the next 36 years
4. The Democrats gobbled up what was left of the Populist Party in 1896 but it remained a primarily Southern party with some Western strongholds. The Republicans went on another 28 in 36 year stretch but it had long abandoned black rights and liberal ideals for business interests in the Northeast and a libertarian economic ideal before anybody had even heard of the word libertarian
5. 1932 marked the end of that era of business interests directing the national discourse as the public wanted answers to the Great Depression. FDR made the Democrats attractive to blacks after both parties ignored them for 55 years
6. 1968 was the end of the New Deal Coalition as the Democratic Party was torn apart by not only the pro-Vietnam War and antiwar factions but by discontented Southerners who were attracted to either Nixon or George Wallace's American Independent Party. The "Solid South" gradually flipped from a Democratic bastion to a Republican one. The current cycle has made the two parties ideological opposites

So, it stands that the Seventh Political Alignment will be just as big as the previous alignments. However, there are two big problems. The first is that if the Republicans win, America will be pulled even further to the right, which would be unprecedented.

The second problem is that the Democrats also have an unlikable frontrunner in Hillary Clinton, who is not only polarizing, has her long baggage, but also caters to corporate interests. The fact that we could end up with Hillary vs either Trump, Cruz, or Jeb (if the GOP convention ends in chaos) could determine the nation's direction for the next few decades is an indictment of the fact that the American public has been unable or unwilling to demand alternatives to Democrats and Republicans.