Nixon was simply a bad president, yes, but Nixon’s election campaign popularized the “Southern strategy”. Republicans at the time weren’t particularly popular in the South because–as they’ll happily tell you–Lincoln was a Republican; so they started flirting with racism and courting Southern voters by openly hating black people. It allowed Nixon and others to win elections in the South and became a mainstay of Republicanism. It was the Republican party’s first major foray into fascism which relies on misinformation and manipulation of people through their worst impulses.

Since that worked, they’ve only gotten worse. The Southern Strategy, which began before I was born, is where I peg the start of the collapse of progressive politics.

BTW, until that time Democrats were doing it. The parties pretty much traded places on their stances toward race over the course of a couple of decades. So you could also argue that things have gotten neither better nor worse. If so, that doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm for our future.