I'm a regular listener to My History Can Beat Up Your Politics, a history podcast put out by Bruce Carlson. Carlson is not a historian, he's a serious observer with good insight. He has a recent podcast on the election called Historic. The first half talks about what happened after the Civil War. If this country had stayed on the path to democracy instead of betraying Reconstruction, who knows where we would be today. Below is the description of Carlson's podcast. I recommend it highly.
Historic
This election is clearly historic. In this podcast we
talk of course about the most obvious way: the first African American President. And how that achievement might have happened a long time ago but not for a turning point in history. But we also talk about the myriad ways this election is historic: the major event of a serious female contender for President, the 2nd female VP candidate and first Republican, an election during a war, an election during a recession, an election with no incumbent or veep, a high turnout election, a non 'anti-Washington' election, an election with incumbent party candidates who (once again in history) tried without success to run against the President, an election where money was king but not fatcat money as much as little money, an election where the polls were right, an election where a losing VP candidate (edwards) and a NYC mayor didn't win..but a man unknown to most four years ago, became President - elect, something it appears Americans may like to do. So many ways 2008 is historic, and a great data point for future elections to be judged by. For historical political observers, it's like a nice piece of steak to dive into.
