With regard to the two biggest landslides in American history short of Washington, I have to ask:
Why did Reagan win 49 out of 50 states in 1984? I understand that Mondale was a weak candidate, but why did no state seem to want him? Even Goldwater, who was tarred and feathered as a nutjob who’d start WWIII, won more than a single state.
What was it about that election year, or about the culture of 1984, that propelled Reagan so easily to such a landslide victory?
Also, was Reagan’s victory more of a vote of confidence in Reagan, or more a rejection of Mondale? It has been said, for example, that LBJ’s landslide victory in 1964 was less due the public’s love for LBJ and more their fear of Goldwater.
There was a red-hot recovery in 1984 in stark contrast to the terrible economy of 1980. All presidents are hostage to the business-cycle gods because they have little control of the economy, while the economy, especially in the election year, has an enormous effect on their presidency. Carter was unlucky that the economy performed decently in his first three years and then completely tanked during his re-election year largely for reasons (e.g. Iran revolution) he didn’t control. Reagan benefited from the reverse.
There has to be more to it than this even if the “this” is a built in Republican EC rump. Clinton lost far more states in 96 with a similarly booming (if not better) economy.
Yes, I mean, even Eisenhower, who was also insanely popular, didn’t win 47 out of (then) 48 states with his own booming economy in 1956. Even Wilkie won more than one state in 1936.
I was too young to be really aware of the situation at the time, but I would suggest that his two other advantages beyond the economy were:
He was charismatic (and more scandal-free than the Clintons).
He was a Republican from a Democratic state. While the parties and everyone political tries to pretend otherwise, the vast majority of voters in the country are centrists. We just rarely are given the option to vote in someone who is also a centrist.
May I ask how old Fuzzy_wuzzy and Reddy Mercury were in 1980?
Because I was 20. I remember how 300 adults would line up at the local Dairy Queen to apply for 1 part-time job being advertised because their unemployment benefits had run out.
Fast forward to 1984. Things weren’t perfect but they were a helluva lot better than they were in 1980. Though the VP has little power over such things, Mondale was still half of the team rejected by the people in 1980. Why would they want him back when things were much better 4 years after he was booted out?
Plus there is the whole personality thing. Fritz was a likeable guy but he still couldn’t match the charisma of Reagan. IMHO nobody but nobody was going to beat Reagan in '84. And I was there. Were you?
The economywas growing a lot faster in 1984 than in 1996. Also it was a lot worse in 1980, with both high unemployment and high inflation, than 1992 when it was actually recovering nicely from the 90-91 recession. It was the massive contrast between 1980 and 1984 which really helped Reagan.
That was obviously not the only factor. Republicans had a built-in advantage in the last third of the 20th century after the Democrats lost white working class voters for a variety of reasons. And Reagan was an appealing candidate who many voters liked. But the economy was the biggest reason.
Im not American so I wasn’t there. At no point did I say the economy was irrelevant. I simply said that a thriving economy does not adequately explain the 49 Reagan states. I was going to add earlier that perception matters; that by 1980 there was a significant(if minority?) belief that peak America was over, not just economically but in international affairs as well. The Reagan years proved this belief to be wrong. The job of US President had, according to many commentators, become too big a role for one man by 1980. Again, by 1984 this had been proven wrong too.
I remember seeing a political cartoon between Mondale’s winning the candidacy at the DNC and his selection of Ferraro as the VP candidate. It showed a large bomb with an added cockpit, Mondale waving from the cockpit, and a sign, “Co-pilot wanted/Apply within”
Yeah, the contrast between 80 and 84 is probably significant. I don’t believe the contrast should be viewed entirely in economic terms, but the economy will have been the main reason for Reagan’s success. I would though look at the unemployment rate of Clinton’s in 96 compared to Reagan’s in 84. The unemployment rate was significantly lower in 96 than 84. Everything else being equal this should point to a similar sized Clinton victory in 96 as Reagan’s in 84. For whatever reason Clinton’s wasn’t as large, and as you suggested that was probably to do with perception.
I think it was a combination of factors. Obviously, the economy gave Reagan some strong tailwind. Related to that, it was the belief that a new approach to economics - one based on lower taxation and less regulation - could replace the economic model that an entire generation of people had grown accustomed to since the late 1930s. That’s why people sometimes referred to it as the era of the Reagan “Revolution” - his ideas were new…and they were working. Or at least they seemed to be.
Reagan was also a stark contrast to his predecessor Carter in the area of foreign relations, particularly with respect to dealing with Soviets. Reagan knew how to perform for the cameras and project strength. Reagan’s strength is not to be confused with recklessness and false bravado, which is what we have now with Trump. It was more like a Gary Cooper and John Wayne strength of confidence, not backing down from threats and confronting nemeses more directly. Reagan had already scored some foreign policy wins by 1984, including the release of Iranian-held hostages.
Reagan was strong in these areas, and by contrast, Mondale was in the eyes of many a return back to the era of tax-and-spend, regulation heavy economics and apologetic foreign policy. The cherry on top was the radical selection of Geraldine Ferraro as the VP candidate. Don’t get me wrong - Ferraro was a woman far ahead of her time and would have been great in another era. But in 1984, she was a pioneer at a time when much of Mid-America probably wasn’t ready for one. But Mondale would have lost with or without Ferraro.
Landslides were easier back in 1984 because there was a much larger portion of the electorate that was centrist. By 1996, politics had already started to become fractious and polarized. And that trend has only continued.
For the cherry on top, what’s the most famous line from Reagan’s campaign in 1980? Why, it’s him looking straight into the camera, asking whether you’re better off now than you were four years ago. And that’s stark, because as soon as you hear it you know it’ll be thrown back in his face – again and again and again – if he manages to win this thing and puts in a re-election bid years later; it’s like a movie character shouting YOU HAD ONE JOB when stepping in to handle stuff personally.
And, what, Mondale runs on “Hey, remember Carter/Mondale four years ago?”
Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with securing the release of the Iranian hostages. The release was worked out by the Carter administration; the Iranians kept the hostages until the moment of Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 purely as a fuck-you to Carter.
The only potential question is whether Reagan’s team (similar to what Nixon might have done in 1968 with the Vietnamese) actually tried to delay the release so that Carter wouldn’t get credit for it before Election Day (See Gary Sick’s “October Surprise”).
As for the larger question, 1984 had a lot of factors, including that the Southern Strategy was paying off big in the South but had not yet completely changed the Republican constituency everywhere else.
It was still possible for some liberals and moderates and city-dwellers to vote for some Republicans without thinking that they were voting for a radical-right nationalist, religionist, racist, and misogynistic party.
Reagan was the first successful reality-show president. He said whatever he wanted to and no amount of fact-checking hurt him. Remember, the phrase “teflon president” was coined for him. He was a triumph of image. The right was benefiting from the other part of its strategy, which was to discredit the mainstream media and push its own reality (e.g., the “welfare queen”).
Underneath the hood, there were still Republicans who could do government though, which later waves of true believers purged from the party.
But main reasons—the economy was a lot better than in 1980, Reagan’s personal image as a John Wayne type was extremely popular, and the Southern Strategy was paying off big time but the resulting negative consequences hadn’t kicked in.
You will laugh, but between 1981 and 1984, he presided over the equivalent of #MAGA.
The country’s self-esteem was totally in the dumper in 1979.
Remember the USA hockey win in the Olympics in February (I think) of 1980? The day that happened was the day I knew Reagan would win that fall.
Right message, right time. And then he followed through, and everything else cooperated. Got tough with the USSR, and a huge assist from Volcker and the Fed which had managed to finally break the back of inflation.
1984 was Shangri-La compared to 1979-1980. As asahi mentioned, much less polarization. No surprise Reagan won a landslide, you could almost even say it was expected.
Don’t forget the tax cuts. A huge military build-up and still tax cuts! Free stuff for everyone! This how the massive deficit that has become the norm began.
Due the Democrats nominating Mondale, Reagan was able to run against Jimmy Carter for a second time. And Mondale was not even as good a Carter as was Carter himself.
Had the Dems went with pre-monkey business Gary Hart, young and representative of a new mode of thought within the party, they still might not have beaten Reagan, but at least they would have been able to throw him offscript where, as has been demonstrated, he could be vulnerable.
BTW, the 1979-80 economic downturn did not bottom out until late 1982 (10.8% national unemployment, 16.2% in Michigan). Dems gained 26 House seats in those midterms. So 1984 was still in the relatively early high-slope part of the recovery, things visibly beginning to get better and feel better fast. The public was willing to accept that the recession’s momentum from 1980 had dragged things down and that a lot of the pain was due to the Fed continuing a previously initiated policy to stamp down inflation through stupefying interest rates (but it worked: inflation went down from 10.3% in 81 to 3.2% in 83) but the storm had passed and now we were back on the upswing. Reagan’s team was clever enough to drop the deficit-hawk schtick and instead throw in tax cuts AND increased spending.
Plus there was the whole attitudinal matter and yes, people were willing to buy in that “it’s morning in America again”. Ronnie was making people feel good and honestly, the outlook was seeming good for a majority of “mainstream” likely voters. What was Mondale going to counter with? Then he directly stated in the debate that he WOULD raise taxes… debate watchers wanted to throw things at the TV.
Statistically, it’s not the unemployment rate itself but the change in the unemployment rate which co-relates with election outcome. Both 1980 and 1984 are good examples of that.
People were just crazy for Reagan. The people who loved him loved him BIG. I wasn’t a fan myself, and I never understood his charisma, but it was huge.
He made people feel good about being Americans again.
After Vietnam and Watergate, the government poured a lot of money into the Bicentennial to try to restore a happy feeling about America again. And it worked for a while, but Carter actually squandered quite a bit of it. He had a habit of pointing out where the country needed improvement, and he expected people to jump up and fill the need, because that’s the kind of person he was. People didn’t want that. They wanted to be told that everything was already good, and that’s what Reagan did. Carter presumed that people were giving and generous. Reagan presumed that people were selfish.
It was probably a mistake to run Mondale in '84-- someone else might have taken more than one state-- but honestly, even the resurrected George Washington was not going to beat Reagan in 1984.
Carter mainly won in '76, because anyone could have beat the Republican candidate in '76 after Watergate. It might have been a mistake to run Ford-- even though he wasn’t involved in Watergate, he was Nixon’s VP, so he had the taint of it. But really, I don’t think any Republican-- even Reagan-- had a chance in 1976. Hell, Barbara Jordan probably could have won in 1976, and was even considered as a running mate for Carter.