If my class notes can be trusted, the 2008 election was the fifth turning point in presidential history. The first came alongside Jefferson in 1800, when the Federalist Party was swept away; the second in 1860, when Lincoln, with only 40 percent of the popular vote, brought Republicans to power and the country to civil war; the third in 1932, when what was left of Mr. Lincoln’s Republican regime was undermined by its response to the Great Depression and overthrown by Franklin D. Roosevelt; and the fourth in 1968, which was a turning point in large part because the office of the presidency, and
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