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A consequential election ends with a stark choice and an uncertain future

John Duffy, the late political strategist and author, began Fights of Our Lives, his lively and encyclopedic account of the federal campaigns that shaped this country, with a simple premise — one always worth returning to at moments like this.

“Elections matter,” he wrote.

Writing in 2002, Duffy was pushing back against what he saw as the lazy cynicism of “academics, journalists and political dissenters of various stripes” who had “worked very hard for many years to convince voters in democracies that elections are inconsequential or, even worse, rigged, so that this or that social group maintains dominance no matter what happens at the polls.”

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