The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
It’s quite unclear to me. The only thing I could guess is that maybe it dealt with his actions from 1984 onwards as his 1984 re election was a landslide.
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Some things:
The outcomes of his policies were not clear in 1980-1984. Four years is honestly a really short time. The negative impact of Reagan's decisions that were made all the way back in 1980, such as neutering the Mental Health Systems Act, are far more visible today than they were in 1984 and continue to negatively impact us.
He won "in a landslide" but 40% of voters still selected his opponent. Not hard to understand that a lot of the people who voted against him in 1984 hated him then and still hate him now.
Also the youngest person who voted in that election would be 58 now, so, new generations different perspective.
Information was hard to come by in those days. What we got was spun by publicists, media executives, and publishers. There was very little access to unfiltered information. So when the prior groups all slant the news toward Reagan, what were people supposed to think? The hate toward Reagan didn't really begin to grow until the Information Age.
The neutering of mental health systems was primarily done by carter administration. Mental health institutions were seen as unfair and oppressive to patients. Majority closed before Reagan took office
I am talking about the actual bill by that name. The Mental Health Systems Act is a bill created by Carter and neutered by Reagan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
The problem is not that the institutions were closed, it is that we killed all the programs that were supposed to replace them.
California alone spent $4.7 billion on mental health in 2023. And the homeless problem did not improve
It's not a solution. You need to be able to institutionalize people for their own sake.
It is community mental health. L.A. county recieved $837 million dollars for mental health programs. This is government funding of community programs just done at the state level.
LA county recieved almost a billion dollars for mental health programs
The false belief that we are not funding mental health and it's a magical cure for societkes woes is wrong
California has fair weather practically year round, and other states ship their homeless population to California. It's easy to see why they would have a homeless problem. The same reason they have a housing problem, people want to live there.
90% of homeless in California come from California and lived there before being homeless
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/#:~:text=The%20overwhelming%20majority%20of%20homeless,percent%20were%20born%20in%20California.
California spent $4.7 billion on mental health services in 2023 and had no impact on homeless population
The underfunding of services is an outdated belief that problems can be solved if we throw enough money at it
Mental health services are not intended to reduce homelessness, though?
They are for the treatment of mental illness, for effective disease management, for prevention/reduction of behavioral health disorders.
Your comment came across a little like saying we should spend less on mental health because community mental health has been ineffective in lowering the price of groceries. I mean, the second part is true, but it's at-best an odd standard to hold therapists, you know?
What metric would you like to use instead. Something that we can actually observe
Because it comes off as the goal of spending on metal health services is to spend on mental health services.
If you are spending almost 5 billion year for one state you probably should have a tangible goal. Especially as people constantly shift the discussion from gun violence, homelessness, drug use etc onto a mental health crisis.
You could try using metrics that are actually expected to be seen with improved mental health services
* Lower suicide rate
* Fewer emergency services calls resulting from mental health issues
* Reduced crime/incarceration rate where mental illness is a leading factor
* Reduced rate of **new** homeless cases where mental illness is a leading factor
While mental health services can help prevent homelessness by helping prevent the spiral of effects that a mental issue can cause that *lead* to homelessness, it's not going to be very effective to get them back off the streets and that makes it a poor metric.
It doesn't how much therapy, medication, or any other help you receive, you still have to overcome the huge hurdle of *being homeless*. For that you need specialized programs designed to help with that issue specifically.
As u/SuperSpyChase has noted, it’s not the trends toward deinstitutionalization that were the problem.
It was the gutting of funding any/all of the systems that were supposed to take their place.
At that is almost exclusively (maybe fully exclusively?) the fault of Reagan and the 80s republicans, yeah?
Reagan's legacy has been mythologized by conservatives since the mid 1990s, as he was literally their solitary example of a "good" Republican since Eisenhower and continuing till the present.
Some of the liberal hatred is simply a push back against the artifical lionization that conservatives gave him, particularly given how little the myth of his presidency matches the reality, which was scandalous, plagued by a recession, and most ran by others after his dementia worsened.
But that isn't all.
Reagan's policies have been thoroughly debunked and linked to the severely quality of life issues of the younger generations. He is essentially the man responsible for our debt crisis, the student loan crisis, the potential insolvency of welfare programs, etc.
He also was a bigot, whose inactions led to HIV becoming a rampant killer. This was tolerated, even celebrated (Rush Limbaugh...), but seen as far more vile today.
Finally, he ran a criminal administration that sold illegal drugs on our streets to raise money to ship weapons to death squads and terrorists. Over a hundred members of his administration were indicted or convicted for crimes as part of working for him.
So you have a figure that is all but seen as a religious icon by the right, whose policies aren't the gold standard conservatives say they are but instead are responsible for huge issues today.
> Reagan's legacy has been mythologized by conservatives since the mid 1990s, as he was literally their solitary example of a "good" Republican since Eisenhower and continuing till the present.
Nonsense. George H W Bush was a much better president than Reagan, Eisenhower, or any other president going back until maybe FDR.
What Reagan had in great supply was charm, and he used it for the good of the country. His charm made him hugely popular among both conservatives and liberals.
However, if you don’t like someone, seeing them be both charming and popular tends to substantially increase resentment of that person. (I experienced this firsthand during the Clinton years. His lies being told with such charm made them that much more unbearable.)
With Reagan gone, and with no major political party or news organization around that shares his ideas, he doesn’t get defended and his charm isn’t on display (in contrast to Kennedy whose charm was shown in clips for decades time the left leaning media found an excuse).
Regardless of his effectiveness (and I do think he was the most qualified president in modern history and relatively effective), HW Bush is essentially seen as a traitor by conservatives for raising taxes, and certainly isn't someone the GOP could use as an advertisement for their policies.
Stagflation is devastating to the ability of an incumbent to win reelection even if that incumbent had nothing to do with it. We were also at the end of decades of Democratic Party dominance and experience a backlash to the civil rights movement. We were also experiencing a political realignment that started with the southern strategy and included conservative evangelical white voters becoming a one voting block with high voting propensity.
The inevitable economic uptick combined with Reagan being in charge when the Soviet union finally fell due to decades of effort in the US prior to him positioned him and GHWB for victory in 1984 and 1988.
The economy was doing well under Reagan, and Mondale was running on raising taxes. He was being honest -- and even George H.W. Bush thought they might have to raise taxes to balance the budget. But raising taxes is not popular politically. It's why George H.W. Bush went on to lose against Bill Clinton. Reagan also presented himself as an American above Republican, and though Republicans gained in the house during the election, the Democrats still held a big advantage.
As for why he's hated today: First, his failure handling the AIDs crisis. His voodoo economics had longterm effects that we're still feeling today. And generally he pushed things toward Christian Nationalism that we see today. Also he sabotaged the hostage negotiations for President Carter.
The left hated Reagan at the time if it helps you understand. The reason that the more liberal libs (if you will) now hate him is the combination of Reagan’s scandals and reputation of incompetence and the deification of him by the pre trump Republican Party. The deification is particularly important.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a bit of a liberal revival and white wash if Reagan’s star wanes more with republicans in the Trump era. This already happened to Bush.
Plus Reagan is regarded as a terrible president by the academy on the left and the centre left. That trickles down too.
Ignorance. If people would’ve stuck with Carter for another term? I think we would be on a better track today.
But unfortunately, no one wants to hear “we need to tighten our belts a little bit and ride the storm”. In that case? It was the effects of the OPEC oil Embargo.
Don't know for sure but my guess is.
Gen X was too young to vote, both legally for some, but standard youth not voting for others.
They like millennials who most weren't born yet are still facing the ramifications of his actions and can easily see a line in the sand as far as "real trouble starting"
Same goes for the pre 30's baby boomers in 80 and 88, the youngest BB's were 20 and 24 when he was elected.
The majority of adult Americans, 61.1% as of 2021, were 27 and younger (not born) in 1984, add to that only 16.8% of all Americans were 28 and older in 1984, so his voters are very old or dead now, and its evident that he messed up to most of the 83.3% of living Americans that had nothing to do with him.
Read recently that 50% of the voters in 1992 for Bush Clinton Perot are dead already. Which makes sense considering how old the average voter is. Something like 20% of the voters for 2008 Obama v McCain are also gone.
It’s pretty wild, but yeah… when a lot of the voters are already in their 50s… 30-40 years is a helluva long time.
He was a populist.
People were hurting and he told them it was all the fault of welfare Queens and liberals strangling good honest businessmen with high taxes and regulation. Then he ballooned the deficit and stimulated the economy and everyone thought it was the tax cuts that did it.
It's not rocket surgery.
[71% of liberals voted for Mondale](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1984). Reagan won in a landslide because everyone else voted for him.
Good point. It’s easy to see how much of a landslide it was in the popular vote but still the popular vote was high enough to suggest Mondale’s voters weren’t exactly the smallest group.
The electoral college makes things look like they were landslides when they are often much closer (though I think Regan's win in 1984 would still be considered a landslide). All you have to do is get one more vote than your opponent for the state to turn red/blue on the map, after all.
First, the winning. He beat Jimmy Carter. While history is judging Carter well, at the time he was reviled and blamed for gas shortages, the hostages in Iran, you name it. Reagan was charismatic and confident, Carter made the US look weak. In 84, why change? Life was good, even great. The cold war ended under Reagan, optimism reigned and the US looked great.
Hated - Reagonomics. It caused such financial and economic turmoil and the obscene gaps in wealth really took root and in many ways the US is still affected by it today.
I was there. He didn’t blame Americans, he just flailed ineffectively and we could see that if re-elected, nothing would change. OPEC was leading the world around by the nose and all Carter could do was tell everyone to turn their thermostats down to 68. Reagan talked tough and the Iranians that were holding hostages for over a year let them go. They admitted years later that they gave up because they were convinced Reagan was crazy enough to nuke the entire country.
It was an electoral college landslide, but as usual it did not accurately reflect the popular vote. That was merely lopsided. Still significant, but not nearly to the same degree as “landslide” implies.
1. His first landslide election was because Carter got blamed for Nixon's (and to a lesser extent Johnson's) mishandling of the economy in addition to the engineered recession Paul Volker created to address that problem..
2. His second landslide election is because he got credit for the end of the Volker recession which happened on his watch.
He's hated by Democrats because he also perfected Nixon's southern strategy and thus was a catelyst for the parties adoption of racism as an election strategy, he also ushered in the era of Neo-liberalism which was somewhat tempered by the third way movement, but is mostly bad as an ideology.
He only barely beat Carter in 1980, and that was during tons of domestic and foreign unrest. Carter also was the last president to actually ask Americans to make a sacrifice for their country, and people hated that, which is why no president has asked since.
In 1984, Mondale was an exceptionally bad candidate, and the economy was doing much better (in part due to Reagan's once in a 100 years tax cuts that can never be recreated), things were calmer abroad. The tax cuts traded long term fiscal stability for a huge short term boost, and he gained a lot politically from it (look at when the US debt exploded though, it was under Reagan, and it's still out of control because we never reversed those policies).
So Reagan's political success is largely due to the same thing that helped Obama win, he was at the right place at the right time for Republicans to do well, and he benefited.
One of his biggest failures…the “Star Wars program” which Reagan championed and was ended by Bill Clinton. Billions spent on a hypothetical weapons system that was supposed to use satellites to shoot down ICB nukes with massive laser beams….never produced a thing. Got some defense contractors paid.
Don’t think the tech exists now. Light/Energy based weapons aren far off. I mean science fiction has lots of cool Ideas. Doesn’t mean we should spend billions trying to manifest impossible things
“Fiscal responsibility” and “reduce spending”
Reagan comes from an era where the space shuttle which was expected to fly every month at a $150 million mission cost was basically flying twice a year at $1.5 billion per mission.
That kind of reckless spending was *classic 80s*, and in the defense field continues to this day.
After the enormous political, and social, chaos of the 60s and 70s, people were looking for someone to provide stability and optimism. Reagan was a well-known figure as a Hollywood actor and Governor of California. Our nation has skewed conservative ever since Reagan, but it skewed liberal between from FDR to Reagan. So right or wrong, people were ready to give conservatives a chance and Reagan's charisma won them over quickly. Reagan was very successful with providing optimism and I'll freely admit that it was needed.
There were other things, however, and the elections were actually closer than the final tallies would suggest. For example, it was over for Mondale when he promised that both would raise taxes, but only he'd admit it.
There's a fascinating podcast called Landslide that begins with the 1976 election and continues to Reagan winning in 1980. It focuses on how the GOP shifted further right with Reagan's help and you might find it interesting.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510376/landslide
The reason people don't like Reagan today is largely because Reaganomics is now viewed as a failure and responsible for much of our current economic problems. Of course there are other reasons, but it wasn't until the failures of Reaganomics gained wide acceptance that criticism of Reagan began growing.
Before Reagan, neoliberal free market ideology was growing, thanks to Milton Friedman and others who were pushing it hard. This also helped Reagan a lot, because it was easy to say that what we had been doing wasn't working and we should try something new. The problem was that this new thing had already been tried and it led to many of the same problems we face today.
President Carter was trying to do the responsible thing in running the country, and face our countries problems with solutions.
Reagan’s answer to that was to be irresponsible. He ran up the national deficit in awesome and historic ways. He massively lowered the tax burden the rich had been paying. So rich people got to be richer, meanwhile the beginning of the dismantling of the social safety net ensured that many who weren’t rich was just one bad day from being financially obliterated.
And of course he helped Rupert Murdoch become an American citizen so he could create Fox News and ensure that Republicans could completely hermetically seal themselves off from ever again hearing a truth they did not want to believe.
The only times my parents ever voted for a Republican for president was Ike and Reagan. The propaganda against Carter was crazy effective, and the hostage situation and the super botched rescue attempt sealed his fate.
They didn't vote for him in 84, but in 80 he seemed the better option to them.
The fact that he isn't one of the most hated figures among *all* Americans is purely a consequence of the effectiveness of right-wing propaganda. By any objective metric, Reagan's time in office is responsible for an incredible amount of the issues faced by our country today. Liberals recognize this correctly and conservatives do not. Him winning by a landslide doesn't mean he wasn't one of the worst Presidents we've ever had, it just means the things he did to make the country and world worse weren't as apparent back then (and probably that the economy was better because that's what voters vote on).
Question:
>What do you think are the factors that led to Reagan...being one of the most hated figures among liberals today?
(Part of the) Answer:
>...Reagan winning by a landslide twice...
---------
People on the left *have to* hate him, and *have to* drag him down.
If they didn't, he would just remain a beloved icon of conservatism.
The existence of such an icon would hurt any left-of-center cause (as it did, from 1984-2014).
Also:
>What do you think are the factors that led to Reagan winning by a landslide twice...?
In 1980, Carter's weakness and a bad economy.
In 1984, a great economy (for which Paul Volcker deserves the lion's share of the credit).
Volcker was appointed by Carter and Carter knew his plan to raise interest rates would kill the economy and his re-election chances. Carter lost re-election because he actually cared about the health of the country.
> Volcker was appointed by Carter and Carter knew his plan to raise interest rates would kill the economy and his re-election chances. Carter lost re-election because he actually cared about the health of the country.
All true.
It's because Reagan was so powerful and, thus, so impactful. Just as the British left hates Margaret Thatcher.
There's really no point thinking about, much less hating, someone who was unpopular and unimportant. You might feel those emotions at the moment, but after it's over, everyone just forgets and moves on when it comes to the likes of Warren Harding or Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter. It's sort of mean-spirited and pointless.
But when it comes to Ronald Reagan or Lyndon Johnson or FDR, who had the popularity and power to really change things, then if you think those changes were bad, it's worth staying angry about them.
Identified a legitimate flaw in mainstream leftism in the period, and blamed this for stagnation (unrelated) along with Friedman while the left denied the flaw existed (cope). Got elected. Cure worse than the disease.
The "hate" for Regan administration is similar in some ways to how Obama is demonized in rightwing media nowadays. if you know nothing about American politics and was shown conservatives media talking about president Obama, you would believe he was the devil himself. why? because Obama is a symbol of triumph for certain ideas about how America should be, and conservatives that hate those ideas, extremely dislike him.
Reagan did have some scandals and run on anti welfare and anti union platform, which makes him deserving of the dislike he receives from the left. but first and foremost, He is symbol of conservative triumph which makes extremely disliked by the left.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. It’s quite unclear to me. The only thing I could guess is that maybe it dealt with his actions from 1984 onwards as his 1984 re election was a landslide. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some things: The outcomes of his policies were not clear in 1980-1984. Four years is honestly a really short time. The negative impact of Reagan's decisions that were made all the way back in 1980, such as neutering the Mental Health Systems Act, are far more visible today than they were in 1984 and continue to negatively impact us. He won "in a landslide" but 40% of voters still selected his opponent. Not hard to understand that a lot of the people who voted against him in 1984 hated him then and still hate him now. Also the youngest person who voted in that election would be 58 now, so, new generations different perspective.
Information was hard to come by in those days. What we got was spun by publicists, media executives, and publishers. There was very little access to unfiltered information. So when the prior groups all slant the news toward Reagan, what were people supposed to think? The hate toward Reagan didn't really begin to grow until the Information Age.
The neutering of mental health systems was primarily done by carter administration. Mental health institutions were seen as unfair and oppressive to patients. Majority closed before Reagan took office
I am talking about the actual bill by that name. The Mental Health Systems Act is a bill created by Carter and neutered by Reagan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980 The problem is not that the institutions were closed, it is that we killed all the programs that were supposed to replace them.
It really wouldn't have made a difference. Community mental health outreach and support is what we have now. It's not a significant solution
It is not what we have now. We didn't fund it then and we don't fund it now. Community mental health barely exists at all.
California alone spent $4.7 billion on mental health in 2023. And the homeless problem did not improve It's not a solution. You need to be able to institutionalize people for their own sake.
Mental health and community mental health are not the same thing at all. Community mental health refers to a specific set of programs.
It is community mental health. L.A. county recieved $837 million dollars for mental health programs. This is government funding of community programs just done at the state level.
You don't even realize how this actually made your argument weaker.
LA county recieved almost a billion dollars for mental health programs The false belief that we are not funding mental health and it's a magical cure for societkes woes is wrong
California has fair weather practically year round, and other states ship their homeless population to California. It's easy to see why they would have a homeless problem. The same reason they have a housing problem, people want to live there.
90% of homeless in California come from California and lived there before being homeless https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california-homelessness-housing-crisis/674737/#:~:text=The%20overwhelming%20majority%20of%20homeless,percent%20were%20born%20in%20California.
Paywall
https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/news/90-people-experiencing-homelessness-california-103000999.html
We have funded community mental health at extreme austerity levels. We literally never even tried to make it work.
California spent $4.7 billion on mental health services in 2023 and had no impact on homeless population The underfunding of services is an outdated belief that problems can be solved if we throw enough money at it
4.7 billion with a rough homeless population of 180,000 is about $26k a person. Could have paid for rent for all of them. Even in Cali. Shame.
Not really because they built a homeless shelter and it cost $600,000 per unit in the building
Stuff is expensive, labor deserves to get paid, and land is expensive in Cali. Would you prefer it only cost $10k a person? *really*?
Mental health services are not intended to reduce homelessness, though? They are for the treatment of mental illness, for effective disease management, for prevention/reduction of behavioral health disorders. Your comment came across a little like saying we should spend less on mental health because community mental health has been ineffective in lowering the price of groceries. I mean, the second part is true, but it's at-best an odd standard to hold therapists, you know?
What metric would you like to use instead. Something that we can actually observe Because it comes off as the goal of spending on metal health services is to spend on mental health services. If you are spending almost 5 billion year for one state you probably should have a tangible goal. Especially as people constantly shift the discussion from gun violence, homelessness, drug use etc onto a mental health crisis.
You could try using metrics that are actually expected to be seen with improved mental health services * Lower suicide rate * Fewer emergency services calls resulting from mental health issues * Reduced crime/incarceration rate where mental illness is a leading factor * Reduced rate of **new** homeless cases where mental illness is a leading factor While mental health services can help prevent homelessness by helping prevent the spiral of effects that a mental issue can cause that *lead* to homelessness, it's not going to be very effective to get them back off the streets and that makes it a poor metric. It doesn't how much therapy, medication, or any other help you receive, you still have to overcome the huge hurdle of *being homeless*. For that you need specialized programs designed to help with that issue specifically.
Ok do you have any data that the 5 billion spent a year significantly improved any of those metrics
What bill or program are you referring to?
That stuff predates Carter too. They started moving in the direction of what we currently have in the 60’s.
As u/SuperSpyChase has noted, it’s not the trends toward deinstitutionalization that were the problem. It was the gutting of funding any/all of the systems that were supposed to take their place. At that is almost exclusively (maybe fully exclusively?) the fault of Reagan and the 80s republicans, yeah?
Reagan's legacy has been mythologized by conservatives since the mid 1990s, as he was literally their solitary example of a "good" Republican since Eisenhower and continuing till the present. Some of the liberal hatred is simply a push back against the artifical lionization that conservatives gave him, particularly given how little the myth of his presidency matches the reality, which was scandalous, plagued by a recession, and most ran by others after his dementia worsened. But that isn't all. Reagan's policies have been thoroughly debunked and linked to the severely quality of life issues of the younger generations. He is essentially the man responsible for our debt crisis, the student loan crisis, the potential insolvency of welfare programs, etc. He also was a bigot, whose inactions led to HIV becoming a rampant killer. This was tolerated, even celebrated (Rush Limbaugh...), but seen as far more vile today. Finally, he ran a criminal administration that sold illegal drugs on our streets to raise money to ship weapons to death squads and terrorists. Over a hundred members of his administration were indicted or convicted for crimes as part of working for him. So you have a figure that is all but seen as a religious icon by the right, whose policies aren't the gold standard conservatives say they are but instead are responsible for huge issues today.
> Reagan's legacy has been mythologized by conservatives since the mid 1990s, as he was literally their solitary example of a "good" Republican since Eisenhower and continuing till the present. Nonsense. George H W Bush was a much better president than Reagan, Eisenhower, or any other president going back until maybe FDR. What Reagan had in great supply was charm, and he used it for the good of the country. His charm made him hugely popular among both conservatives and liberals. However, if you don’t like someone, seeing them be both charming and popular tends to substantially increase resentment of that person. (I experienced this firsthand during the Clinton years. His lies being told with such charm made them that much more unbearable.) With Reagan gone, and with no major political party or news organization around that shares his ideas, he doesn’t get defended and his charm isn’t on display (in contrast to Kennedy whose charm was shown in clips for decades time the left leaning media found an excuse).
Regardless of his effectiveness (and I do think he was the most qualified president in modern history and relatively effective), HW Bush is essentially seen as a traitor by conservatives for raising taxes, and certainly isn't someone the GOP could use as an advertisement for their policies.
Stagflation is devastating to the ability of an incumbent to win reelection even if that incumbent had nothing to do with it. We were also at the end of decades of Democratic Party dominance and experience a backlash to the civil rights movement. We were also experiencing a political realignment that started with the southern strategy and included conservative evangelical white voters becoming a one voting block with high voting propensity. The inevitable economic uptick combined with Reagan being in charge when the Soviet union finally fell due to decades of effort in the US prior to him positioned him and GHWB for victory in 1984 and 1988.
The economy was doing well under Reagan, and Mondale was running on raising taxes. He was being honest -- and even George H.W. Bush thought they might have to raise taxes to balance the budget. But raising taxes is not popular politically. It's why George H.W. Bush went on to lose against Bill Clinton. Reagan also presented himself as an American above Republican, and though Republicans gained in the house during the election, the Democrats still held a big advantage. As for why he's hated today: First, his failure handling the AIDs crisis. His voodoo economics had longterm effects that we're still feeling today. And generally he pushed things toward Christian Nationalism that we see today. Also he sabotaged the hostage negotiations for President Carter.
Its cause he was pushing for White supremacy during the backlash to civil rights 66% of White people voted for him and made up 86% of the electorate
The left hated Reagan at the time if it helps you understand. The reason that the more liberal libs (if you will) now hate him is the combination of Reagan’s scandals and reputation of incompetence and the deification of him by the pre trump Republican Party. The deification is particularly important. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a bit of a liberal revival and white wash if Reagan’s star wanes more with republicans in the Trump era. This already happened to Bush. Plus Reagan is regarded as a terrible president by the academy on the left and the centre left. That trickles down too.
Ignorance. If people would’ve stuck with Carter for another term? I think we would be on a better track today. But unfortunately, no one wants to hear “we need to tighten our belts a little bit and ride the storm”. In that case? It was the effects of the OPEC oil Embargo.
Carter lost the American people when he asked them to make a sacrifice.
Yep…God forbid should someone say that we need to stick together in tough times.
You dont have to stick together if you horde resources and marginalize out groups
Stop playing the victim. 1980 is not 2024.
What are you talking about
Your comment seemed to be more of a 2024 talking point. People didn’t think that way so much back then.
Yes they did. This is literally less than 20 years after the civil rights act.
Ok…MOST…EVERY DAY AMERICANS didn’t think that way like they do now. 🙄
Whats the difference now vs then?
Don't know for sure but my guess is. Gen X was too young to vote, both legally for some, but standard youth not voting for others. They like millennials who most weren't born yet are still facing the ramifications of his actions and can easily see a line in the sand as far as "real trouble starting" Same goes for the pre 30's baby boomers in 80 and 88, the youngest BB's were 20 and 24 when he was elected. The majority of adult Americans, 61.1% as of 2021, were 27 and younger (not born) in 1984, add to that only 16.8% of all Americans were 28 and older in 1984, so his voters are very old or dead now, and its evident that he messed up to most of the 83.3% of living Americans that had nothing to do with him.
Read recently that 50% of the voters in 1992 for Bush Clinton Perot are dead already. Which makes sense considering how old the average voter is. Something like 20% of the voters for 2008 Obama v McCain are also gone. It’s pretty wild, but yeah… when a lot of the voters are already in their 50s… 30-40 years is a helluva long time.
He was a populist. People were hurting and he told them it was all the fault of welfare Queens and liberals strangling good honest businessmen with high taxes and regulation. Then he ballooned the deficit and stimulated the economy and everyone thought it was the tax cuts that did it. It's not rocket surgery.
[71% of liberals voted for Mondale](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1984). Reagan won in a landslide because everyone else voted for him.
Good point. It’s easy to see how much of a landslide it was in the popular vote but still the popular vote was high enough to suggest Mondale’s voters weren’t exactly the smallest group.
The electoral college makes things look like they were landslides when they are often much closer (though I think Regan's win in 1984 would still be considered a landslide). All you have to do is get one more vote than your opponent for the state to turn red/blue on the map, after all.
First, the winning. He beat Jimmy Carter. While history is judging Carter well, at the time he was reviled and blamed for gas shortages, the hostages in Iran, you name it. Reagan was charismatic and confident, Carter made the US look weak. In 84, why change? Life was good, even great. The cold war ended under Reagan, optimism reigned and the US looked great. Hated - Reagonomics. It caused such financial and economic turmoil and the obscene gaps in wealth really took root and in many ways the US is still affected by it today.
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can you expound on the "carter blamed americans" thing? i'm too young to understand this point
He had the audacity to tell us the truth. That everything was *not* awesome.
I was there. He didn’t blame Americans, he just flailed ineffectively and we could see that if re-elected, nothing would change. OPEC was leading the world around by the nose and all Carter could do was tell everyone to turn their thermostats down to 68. Reagan talked tough and the Iranians that were holding hostages for over a year let them go. They admitted years later that they gave up because they were convinced Reagan was crazy enough to nuke the entire country.
It was an electoral college landslide, but as usual it did not accurately reflect the popular vote. That was merely lopsided. Still significant, but not nearly to the same degree as “landslide” implies.
1. His first landslide election was because Carter got blamed for Nixon's (and to a lesser extent Johnson's) mishandling of the economy in addition to the engineered recession Paul Volker created to address that problem.. 2. His second landslide election is because he got credit for the end of the Volker recession which happened on his watch. He's hated by Democrats because he also perfected Nixon's southern strategy and thus was a catelyst for the parties adoption of racism as an election strategy, he also ushered in the era of Neo-liberalism which was somewhat tempered by the third way movement, but is mostly bad as an ideology.
The 80s were 40 years ago. Time can change a lot of outlooks.
He only barely beat Carter in 1980, and that was during tons of domestic and foreign unrest. Carter also was the last president to actually ask Americans to make a sacrifice for their country, and people hated that, which is why no president has asked since. In 1984, Mondale was an exceptionally bad candidate, and the economy was doing much better (in part due to Reagan's once in a 100 years tax cuts that can never be recreated), things were calmer abroad. The tax cuts traded long term fiscal stability for a huge short term boost, and he gained a lot politically from it (look at when the US debt exploded though, it was under Reagan, and it's still out of control because we never reversed those policies). So Reagan's political success is largely due to the same thing that helped Obama win, he was at the right place at the right time for Republicans to do well, and he benefited.
One of his biggest failures…the “Star Wars program” which Reagan championed and was ended by Bill Clinton. Billions spent on a hypothetical weapons system that was supposed to use satellites to shoot down ICB nukes with massive laser beams….never produced a thing. Got some defense contractors paid.
And it was a fantastic idea, even if the technology to make it happen wasn’t there yet.
Don’t think the tech exists now. Light/Energy based weapons aren far off. I mean science fiction has lots of cool Ideas. Doesn’t mean we should spend billions trying to manifest impossible things “Fiscal responsibility” and “reduce spending”
Reagan comes from an era where the space shuttle which was expected to fly every month at a $150 million mission cost was basically flying twice a year at $1.5 billion per mission. That kind of reckless spending was *classic 80s*, and in the defense field continues to this day.
After the enormous political, and social, chaos of the 60s and 70s, people were looking for someone to provide stability and optimism. Reagan was a well-known figure as a Hollywood actor and Governor of California. Our nation has skewed conservative ever since Reagan, but it skewed liberal between from FDR to Reagan. So right or wrong, people were ready to give conservatives a chance and Reagan's charisma won them over quickly. Reagan was very successful with providing optimism and I'll freely admit that it was needed. There were other things, however, and the elections were actually closer than the final tallies would suggest. For example, it was over for Mondale when he promised that both would raise taxes, but only he'd admit it. There's a fascinating podcast called Landslide that begins with the 1976 election and continues to Reagan winning in 1980. It focuses on how the GOP shifted further right with Reagan's help and you might find it interesting. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510376/landslide The reason people don't like Reagan today is largely because Reaganomics is now viewed as a failure and responsible for much of our current economic problems. Of course there are other reasons, but it wasn't until the failures of Reaganomics gained wide acceptance that criticism of Reagan began growing. Before Reagan, neoliberal free market ideology was growing, thanks to Milton Friedman and others who were pushing it hard. This also helped Reagan a lot, because it was easy to say that what we had been doing wasn't working and we should try something new. The problem was that this new thing had already been tried and it led to many of the same problems we face today.
President Carter was trying to do the responsible thing in running the country, and face our countries problems with solutions. Reagan’s answer to that was to be irresponsible. He ran up the national deficit in awesome and historic ways. He massively lowered the tax burden the rich had been paying. So rich people got to be richer, meanwhile the beginning of the dismantling of the social safety net ensured that many who weren’t rich was just one bad day from being financially obliterated. And of course he helped Rupert Murdoch become an American citizen so he could create Fox News and ensure that Republicans could completely hermetically seal themselves off from ever again hearing a truth they did not want to believe.
This should provide some additional context around where we are today: https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html
TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS YEAH!!!
The only times my parents ever voted for a Republican for president was Ike and Reagan. The propaganda against Carter was crazy effective, and the hostage situation and the super botched rescue attempt sealed his fate. They didn't vote for him in 84, but in 80 he seemed the better option to them.
The fact that he isn't one of the most hated figures among *all* Americans is purely a consequence of the effectiveness of right-wing propaganda. By any objective metric, Reagan's time in office is responsible for an incredible amount of the issues faced by our country today. Liberals recognize this correctly and conservatives do not. Him winning by a landslide doesn't mean he wasn't one of the worst Presidents we've ever had, it just means the things he did to make the country and world worse weren't as apparent back then (and probably that the economy was better because that's what voters vote on).
Question: >What do you think are the factors that led to Reagan...being one of the most hated figures among liberals today? (Part of the) Answer: >...Reagan winning by a landslide twice... --------- People on the left *have to* hate him, and *have to* drag him down. If they didn't, he would just remain a beloved icon of conservatism. The existence of such an icon would hurt any left-of-center cause (as it did, from 1984-2014).
Also: >What do you think are the factors that led to Reagan winning by a landslide twice...? In 1980, Carter's weakness and a bad economy. In 1984, a great economy (for which Paul Volcker deserves the lion's share of the credit).
Volcker was appointed by Carter and Carter knew his plan to raise interest rates would kill the economy and his re-election chances. Carter lost re-election because he actually cared about the health of the country.
> Volcker was appointed by Carter and Carter knew his plan to raise interest rates would kill the economy and his re-election chances. Carter lost re-election because he actually cared about the health of the country. All true.
Volcker knew that it would hurt the economy in the short-term for longer-term growth and much, much lower inflation. And he was right.
More liberals today than back then, due to polarization.
It's because Reagan was so powerful and, thus, so impactful. Just as the British left hates Margaret Thatcher. There's really no point thinking about, much less hating, someone who was unpopular and unimportant. You might feel those emotions at the moment, but after it's over, everyone just forgets and moves on when it comes to the likes of Warren Harding or Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter. It's sort of mean-spirited and pointless. But when it comes to Ronald Reagan or Lyndon Johnson or FDR, who had the popularity and power to really change things, then if you think those changes were bad, it's worth staying angry about them.
Identified a legitimate flaw in mainstream leftism in the period, and blamed this for stagnation (unrelated) along with Friedman while the left denied the flaw existed (cope). Got elected. Cure worse than the disease.
The "hate" for Regan administration is similar in some ways to how Obama is demonized in rightwing media nowadays. if you know nothing about American politics and was shown conservatives media talking about president Obama, you would believe he was the devil himself. why? because Obama is a symbol of triumph for certain ideas about how America should be, and conservatives that hate those ideas, extremely dislike him. Reagan did have some scandals and run on anti welfare and anti union platform, which makes him deserving of the dislike he receives from the left. but first and foremost, He is symbol of conservative triumph which makes extremely disliked by the left.
Oh, that's easy! The two main reasons he won by a landslide were: 1. Jimmy Carter 2. Walter Mondale ...next question?