It’s a wise curse that knows when it can do the most damage by going inactive.
“Thoroughly discredited”? AFAICT, many of the hallmarks of 1960’s-1970’s liberalism (the civil rights movement, racial equality, equality for women, the non-conscript military, legal majority at 18, the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, etc. etc.), are very far from being thoroughly discredited, or even discredited at all.
In fact, they’re so thoroughly entrenched in modern society that even many conservatives claim to support them.
I’d agree with you that a certain subset of particular “Great-Society” Johnsonian-liberal type programs for addressing social ills have been discredited by their poor success. But a much greater part of 60’s-70’s liberalism, so far from being discredited, has become accepted as the modern social norm.
[ETA: Oh. As BG said.]
Well, Cuomo is on the list of Dems who almost ran in '88 and '92 now.
I didn’t realize that Kemp was that conservative.
I think that Bush would have been just as tough with the Russians, but wouldn’t have been as hands off as Ronnie, so the follies that Reagan’s underlings dabbled in would not have happened- as a CIA man, he’d be better at managing the mujahedeen.
Bush was less idealogical about spending, so the closing of the mental health system that many blame for the current homeless problem wouldn’t exist. How about the tax code reform of '86?
Well then, perhaps I should retort.
There will always be issues that ebb and flow, and some things once bitterly opposed are later coopted by the other side. That is to be expected. But I don’t think there is any question that for certain huge issues, liberals were badly out of step with national and world political trends by the early 1980s.
Specifically, I refer to economic policy, especially with regard to monetary and tax policy. Also policies regarding crime - liberal guidelines regarding parole, probations, and furloughs were seen by most Americans as too lax by this time.
And in foreign policy and military policy, the Democrats were thoroughly humiliated. McGovern won one state in 1972 largely on this issue. Jimmy Carter lost reelection over it. And it kept Mondale and Dukakis both out of the White House. Indeed, only the end of the Cold War as an issue allowed the Democrats to get into the Oval Office again, and yet they still have to contend with perceptions of weakness on these issues in nearly every single election.
When I wrote my post, I was thinking of these issues, because I believe these were the ones moving votes at that time. Now, if you think that the Democrats were right in touch with where voters were some twenty-some odd years ago, please let me see proof of it.
My proof to the contrary, of course, is those lost elections. I’d love to see you explain those away.
Not Dole. IIRC Bush and Dole hate each other. I would think Phil Crane out of Illinois. He would have placated the conservatives and locked up the midwest for the '84 election. In hindsight, it looks like the Republicans really wanted him made insignificant after 1980 and making him Veep would accomplish just that.
Elections are 90% personalities and 10% issues. If Ronald Reagan had been a liberal or Bill Clinton had been a conservative, they probably still would have been elected.
I find this thread exceedingly bizarre. Reagan died on the street. The country re-elected an animatronic Reagan in '84. And the only reason the current US president hasn’t been killed yet is that the Fates can’t figure out whether to destroy Gore (who really won), Cheney (who really runs things) or W (the figgerhead). 
If Reagan had died in 1981, his Alzheimers wouldn’t have manifested itself later in his life, which means there would not likely have been the push by his family for increased stem cell research. Not exactly a grand schism in the space/time continuum, but this is one area of division in the GOP that may not have happened.
Of course we won…Communism failed in Russia.
So ? It would have failed no matter what we did. Communism failed because it’s communism, and communism doesn’t work well.
Marxist economic and historical theory is crap but to say the Soviet Union was bound to fall because it was communist is nonsense. The PRC is a communist state and I don’t see it collapsing any time soon. Even without ditching the economic side of communism - a la China - a communist state can survive if it is not too stressed. “Communism doesn’t work well” … but it can work well enough to keep going.
China isn’t any more Communist than America is; they’ve just kept the name. And I didn’t say that the Soviet Union was bound to fall, but Communism.