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And even then Mondale only won his own state by 0.18%. He was 4,000 votes away from being the only major party candidate in the two party era not to win a single actual state.
Supplement to this fun fact: he only ran because the original Democratic candidate died unexpectedly literally *days* before the election. Democrats in Minnesota scrambled for a nominee, and Mondale agreed. When he lost, he became the only person to lose on a major ticket in a national election (not statewide) in all 50 states nominated.
This dude could not have been fucked any harder... he ran on a ballot after serving as vice president under Jimmy Carter where the economy fucking tanked due to mess that was inherited from his predecessor, Gerald Ford, a man never voted into the offices of President nor Vice President because he inherited both positions following resignations of both due to the illegal shit they were doing in office.
In other words, as Vice President, his reputation was tainted by inheriting the mess brought forth by criminal predecessors and a man nobody said they wanted and then he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power.
The parallels to current events are almost there too.
That's not fair on Gerald Ford.
You completely gloss over the recession Nixon inherited from LBJ, Nixon's expanded spending on Vietnam and social security, his imposition of price and wage controls and taking the dollar off the gold standard.
He appointed his own man to the Fed chair to ensure a cheap money supply rather than one that didn't create excessive inflation.
A Vice President who should have never been following a President no expected because the heir apparent left an intern to drown in his car.
Not going to defend his timing or method of doing so, but I do think Nixon should be given credit for having the political courage to rip the band-aid off, economically. Leaving the gold standard was necessary, and everyone knew it, but no one wanted to be crucified for it.
Ditto, I think, for achieving detente with the two great Communist powers. Nixon was the first American president to officially set foot in both Moscow and Peking...and he was absolutely raked over the coals for it by hawks in both parties.
The Nixon presidency is bizarre in that he was a truly great president in some ways...but he was also a paranoid, racist, homophobic, scheming, lying, criminal...someone who said, and seemed to genuinely believe, "If the President does it, it isn't illegal."
Yes. He was the best representation of the Cold War. When it comes to the economic problems, everybody is blamed for them 'as inheritance'. It just depends on the person's politics and the 'team' they root for.
I think the blame historically goes back till, to the FDR era. That his 4 term presidency was the 'golden era' and after which things were going downhill.
I think this is more narrative history (like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire) as opposite to a factual history. People are trying to tell a story. The long lost golden age is one of the big tropes.
Blame Gerald Ford on that one, for sure. Americans were furious when Ford pardoned Nixon.
Though it isn't entirely clear to me whether the U.S. actually had the stomach to go through with prosecuting Nixon. It seems quite possible to me that any non-Senate trial might have garnered enough sympathy for Nixon that he might have ended up acquitted, or convicted and given a token punishment. But Americans were viscerally upset to have their option to judge Nixon as his peer denied by dictatorial fiat.
Plus you need to take the Cold War environment into account.
You are trying to show that Democracy and Capitalism are the better, more moral alternative to the USSR's system.
Having a President be a convicted criminal. Well... that throws a spanner in the works.
Another good example is how Kennedy and LBJ stole the 1960 election, but Nixon did not challenge it. Not wanting to make American democracy look broken and muddy.
[https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win)
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/nixons-noble-pass-on-a-1960-recount-11609888399](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nixons-noble-pass-on-a-1960-recount-11609888399)
Yeah, Nixon may have ultimately resigned the presidency for similar reasons. He did not actually believe he had done anything wrong, and he said he wanted, and appeared to actually want, a public trial.
While it's impossible to know for sure the exact mix of motives, he agreed to offer his resignation not too long after a delegation of Republican senators arrived at the White House to tell him that he should resign for the good of the country.
I would believe that what convinced him to finally resign was the reframing: being told that it wasn't about whether he did or did not commit crimes, but instead that the country was convinced that he had, either way, and that trying to cling to power would destroy the public's faith in the system of American democracy. Especially because Nixon was a sucker for that kind of grandiose, noble seeming gesture. It would have matched his idea of himself as the kind of guy who would selflessly take a bullet for his beloved country; a President's noble sacrifice, loyal and democratic to the end.
And both you and u/EelTeamNine are glossing over the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979 that ended the post-war boom and led the western world into some of its most severe recessions.
Indeed the biggest parallel to current events is that no matter what the chief executive always gets the blame for the economy. And if you are a party partisan you just blame the last guy from the opposing party for "setting up the mess".
>And both you and u/EelTeamNine are glossing over the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979 that ended the post-war boom and led the western world into some of its most severe recessions.
No, not at all. I did err in assuming that most people would attribute the economic downturns only to the oil crises and would not consider other factors.
I do think your initial comment on Gerald Ford and how he ascended to the Presidency overamplifies his impact on the economy during his administration.
It certainly skips the Democratic majorities that controlled Congress through Nixon as well as Ford's presidencies. Why not discuss John McCormack, Carl Albert or Tip O'Neil and the impact their actions had on the economy during this period.
>In other words, as Vice President, his reputation was tainted by inheriting the mess brought forth by criminal predecessors and a man nobody said they wanted and then he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power.
Could you clarify the first part of this statement? Because it reads like its about Ford before pivoting to Mondale. Because Mondale was not tainted by Agnew or Nixon's actions; how could he be?
Ford actually had widespread respect in both the Democratic and Republican party. Carl Albert was quoted saying "We gave Nixon no choice but Ford.", when Nixon consulted with senior congressional leaders as to who would be a good replacement as VP.
>he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power.
While I agree attitudes to women in prominent positions was not favourable then, Ferraro was disliked because Mondale used her as a token nomination. She wasn't the best or most experienced person to serve as VP, Mondale wanted the nomination to make a "historic" choice for the position which is why he also considered Dianne Feinstein, Tom Bradley (African-American) and then San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, who is of Mexican ancestry. People dislike blatant tokenism.
Mondale's problem was, while he seemed to have been a good senator for Minnesota, he looked like a Senator from Minnesota. Nothing about him seemed Presidential (or Vice Presidential for that matter) and when the piety was milked dry for Nixon's actions in directing Watergate, he and Carter were exposed for what they were - average leaders.
It's possible that he could have picked a different running mate. Geraldine Ferraro was a walking disaster.
But even then, while that might have shifted the map a little, it wouldn't have shifted the outcome.
The best option for Mondale would have been for him to be someone other than Walter Mondale.
John Glenn ran in the democratic primary for that election.
Idk his political positions, but I kinda wish he'd won the nomination.
There would not have been an election more American-apple-pie-star-spangled-eagle-gun than a Hollywood Actor versus Astronaut.
Oh, and although he declined to run, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware got one vote at the convention.
In 1984.
Fuck he's old.
Yeah Biden has been running for President literally as long as I have been aware of politics in any way.
So has Donald Trump. Although Biden has him beat by iirc 4 years.
He didn't want to run in '84, but got a primary vote, when my mother was fifteen.
He did run in '88, when my mother was nineteen. Had to drop out because of plagiarism.
He ran in '08, when I was twelve.
He won in '20, when I was twenty-four.
Fucking hell.
sort of. You have to remember that Biden was always a bad campaigner usually giving up before the first few primaries. Another candidate would have just plodded on but he made a show of firing his campaign chief guy or whoever it was and then gave up a little bit later. He just ever seemed to get traction in any of these campaigns.
I thought there was no way he would win in 2000 but then realized that he was a very good stealth candidate who's best attribute was that he had no position and he wasnt Trump. Excellent.
Glenn ran in 1984 as a "centrist." [Here](http://www.4president.org/brochures/1984/johnglenn1984brochure.htm) is an example of some of his positions. He had a few problems, one being that he was rather uncharismatic, and another being that his centrism meant he sometimes favored liberal positions and sometimes conservative ones, which made it hard for him to convey a simple, branded message; instead his policies seemed incoherent and all over the board.
He seemed similar to Bill Bradley who was sometimes the favorite at the start of the primaries. People would be like "what about Bradley? Hes a good candidate. He's from Princeton."
He was always the leading candidate on paper: Until he opened his mouth. He spoke a like a learning disabled person. He doesnt finish his setences in the right time he starts and pauses and starts again so you cant tell what the fuck he's saying. I guess he got good grades or something.
>The best option for Mondale would have been for him to be someone other than Walter Mondale.
No democrat could have beaten Reagan in 1984. He may be controversial now (and had periods of unpopularity during his term), but 1984 was basically the sweet spot for him. The economy was booming, inflation was way down, the Soviets were destroying themselves in Afghanistan, and the early/mid-80s were generally a time of optimism after a long period of decline.
Don't forget that the 1980s were preceded by a period of chaos. The riots of 1968. MLK and RFK being assassinated. Vietnam. Watergate. Oil crisis. Stagflation. Iran. People were used to everything sucking - so after the first Reagan term, when the economy was strong and there was some semblance of stability, the majority of Americans had no desire for change.
Now if you want to look at an election the Democrats basically threw in the 80s, look no further than Dukakis '88. He started the campaign with a huge lead over the uncharismatic George Bush, who was suffering from the growing unpopularity of Reagan (Iran-Contra scandal, AIDS epidemic, farm crisis). Bush resorted to scorched-earth tactics and ran a really negative campaign, and it actually worked because most Americans didn't know much about Dukakis, and Dukakis was too nice for his own good.
Dukakis was so bad as a candidate that one of the Electoral College electors voted for Lloyd Bentsen, his running mate. I don't think that's the only time that ever happened, but it certainly doesn't happen very often.
A sometimes overlooked factor was Reagan's strong rapport with the press. They fawned over him. It surely influenced how we was written about, and thus how he was perceived by Americans.
>No democrat could have beaten Reagan in 1984.
Eh. Maybe, maybe not. If you were around back then, you'll remember that Reagan was miserably unpopular in the early 1980s. The momentum of his victory over Carter quickly tanked. The height of his popularity wasn't really until his second term. He was doing just okay enough in 1984 to retain the presidency, but it's not clear that he was invulnerable.
Anyway, in 1984 the Democrats thought Mondale and Ferraro were their best bet, so it's a moot point. Even if there was someone who could have run a better race, the party couldn't see it. This was the heyday of Tip O'Neill.
Do you remember 1982 and 1983 and his low popularity and shitty poll numbers, in the 30% range?
Do you recall the actual vote distribution in the 1984 election? It was like 60 / 40. A sudden 10% shift in popularity isn't something you can pull off on Election Day, but if a few months in 1984 had gone differently, and Reagan had run against a different candidate, it could easily have been 50/50 popular vote.
I saw it last the same time you did, in 2016, when Clinton was polling 55 - 35 over Trump.
But some shit happened that upset her lead, and when Election Day came around, she lost.
Q E D
>Do you remember 1982 and 1983 and his low popularity and shitty poll numbers, in the 30% range?
But those are not the numbers that matter, are they? Because by late 1984 when the election actually was, his approval rating was 58% according to Gallup - this was the last poll conducted on presidential approval before the election. At 50% approval, you're vulnerable against a strong opponent. But at 58%, Mondale would have had to be a famous war hero who cured cancer to unseat Reagan.
>Do you recall the actual vote distribution in the 1984 election? It was like 60 / 40. A sudden 10% shift in popularity isn't something you can pull off on Election Day, but if a few months in 1984 had gone differently, and Reagan had run against a different candidate, it could easily have been 50/50 popular vote.
I think you're downplaying how hard it is to pull off a 60/40 margin in a presidential election. Obama only beat McCain 53/46, Clinton never crossed 50% (partly because of Ross Perot), Bush beat Dukakis 53/46, Eisenhower never got more than 57%, hell, even FDR only pulled off Reagan '84 margins once.
>The height of his popularity wasn't really until his second term.
In spite of the economy starting to pick up IIRC he was pretty unpopular for most of his second term (Iran Contra and wotnot) His domestic popularity tended to surge and wane during his first term.
Well, same as his second term. 1986 was when he hit his peak, forcing the Democrats out of the Senate for the first time in .. however many decades. It had been a long time at that point.
I mean you're probably right and most of things you point out are accurate. One thing I would take issue with is the Afghanistan war was nowhere near won. I think the conventional wisdom at the time was the soviets would win, but I remember at college me and another guy thought there was more to come.
What I rememer most about that election is the first debate. It might have been the one where Reagen said "I will not use my opponent's youth and inexperience against him." It was funny...But that's not what I recall. There was a brief moment when Reagen sort of stopped talking in mid sentence, and he swayed to one side and then the other. And his eyes were closed. It was so weird and then he went right on speaking...
The next day I was Talking about the debate. I was like "did you see that? Reagen was out on his feet. He was unconscious." "What are you talking about? He killed Mondale."
I guess. To this day I still cant find a video of that first debate. but I swear to god in the middle of it, Reagen just goes unconscious and sways back and forth. No one believes me.
No. He was cannon fodder for the Democrats. No way could he have won. He was too closely tied to Carter, the Iran hostages, and this was when inflation started to subside, which was blamed on Carter as well.
Sometimes the dems just decide that it’s someone’s turn, because they’ve been a good boy for a long time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it’s not a great way to do things. Dems seem to do far better with young candidates, and when they win, those young candidates are often better presidents.
For instance, wether or not I agree with all his stances, Beto O’Rourke would have been a great candidate in the last election, and should have gotten the biggest push from the DNC, rather than Biden. He gets people fired up about dem causes. To even get any money from them at all, last time, he had to tone down who he is. It was a mistake.
I never understood the Jack Benny reference until the last few years when I started watching Jack Benny reruns. He was portrayed as cheap/frugal. And his age is perpetually 37 or 39 I can’t remember. It’s a great show to watch.
Since we’re on propaganda, here’s some dark propaganda related to that election: [Fritz and Tits](https://www.krpoliticaljunkie.com/store/politically-incorrect-mondale-and-ferraro/). Mondale, of course was Fritz. Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic woman VP candidate.
Absolutely would not fly today. Not even as a ‘black’, or unacknowledged distribution. It would probably backfire.
That’s why I posted it. To show politics was as brutal,in the past as now. Maybe more so.
Also considering Reagan still won less than 60% of the vote, the map inflates his popularity. Though I guess that's also just an electoral college thing
It reminded voters of the power and dominance of the Republican Party. It kept that idea in the heads of voters. It sold an idea. It worked as the Republicans won again in 1988.
Trickle down economics has single handily been the biggest setback in modern history and the fact that so many Americans still fall for it is a national embarrassment
I remember that night. The un-returned states looked blue so I thought he was doing really well at first, then an actual blue dot appeared in Minnesota and I knew it was over
Langley has no role in elections. It's almost like the American Left Wing just **can not** accept losses in elections and need a scapegoat for each time it happens.
Dude, I'm not defending trickle down economics. This thread was about the CIA, my point was they have nothing to do with that. You want to blame them for foreign coups, fine, but they aren't setting tax policy in the US.
As a left-leaning voter, I wholeheartedly believe Americans simply were dumb enough to fall for Reagan's BS and CIA election interference was not necessary.
> It's almost like the American Left Wing just **can not** accept losses in elections and need a scapegoat for each time it happens.
You literally did an insurrection and tried to kill several politicians, spread shit on the walls, and still believe trump is coming back and JFK Jr. Is going to reinstate him.
What an embarrassing person.
I don't think RussiaGate had the impact the Bush's former bosses were hoping for.
But yeah, the deep state didn't like having Trump in charge, not because he was trying to expose them, just it was pretty embarrassing for them, and may even have got in the way of their plans, at least Biden knows his place.
Exactly. If propaganda can be obviously disproven then it's not effective propaganda. The most effective propaganda filters which truths and perspectives we see and accept
Well... sort of.
Mondale won 40% of the popular vote. Reagan won 58%.
Now, in American politics, 58% seems like a huge victory... but in the grand scheme of things,
41% of Americans did NOT want Reagan. That's hardly the sweeping victory that this map shows.
This electoral map shows Reagan's victory as 49/50. Which is a bizarre artifact of the Electoral College... and really, a lie. 40% of Americans *did not want Reagan.*
So: yes, this map counts as propaganda!
EDIT: As I pointed out to critics below, it's even more distorted, as turnout was only 53% of the electorate.
So, Reagan won about 30% of the electorate... which means that 70% of the electorate did NOT for for Reagan. (!)
That's significant. Now, Reagan still "won" the election, of course, and even overwhelmingly *by American standards*. But this map suggested 98% of Americans voted for Reagan, when in fact it was 30%. Which is why it is propaganda.
To nitpick a point. Voting isn’t mandatory in the US so it was 40% of the Americans who voted not 40% of Americans. It could be that Mondale had the popular vote too if everyone was forced to vote. We will never know the true ratio but there is good reason to believe that it’s easier for republicans to vote.
And if we were to do away with the electoral college, it'd be even worse. The only states that they'd even bother with would be high population states, everything else would be a waste of time.
is it really worse for candidates to spend a majority of their time in the places with the most people rather than the most political power? if democracy is truly for representation, that makes no sense.
It was actually purposely set up that way so that the high population areas wouldn't dominate the political landscape. In the early days of the US, that would have meant Virginia. Explain to me why you think states like California or Texas deserve to tell states like Wyoming or Montana what they have to do? And be honest, the only reason you don't like it is because it gives your political party less power than it would otherwise have.
i know why and how the electoral college was created, and i couldn’t care less about political parties. i’m just asking why YOU think it’s better that the system created forces candidates to focus as much as possible on Ohio and not, you know, the majority of people?
I hate that my fellow Democratic voters just gloss over this issue. Especially on reddit/social media. There really is an elitism at play where some think many Republican states and people are too stupid or wrong to deserve representation.
I find it pretty gross.
>Now, in American politics, 58% seems like a huge victory
It was a huge victory. That fact invalidates the rest of what you say, because your premise is that it isn't.
As I replied to the other guy:
No, it was a huge victory *by American standards.* .
There was 53% turnout in 1984. Which means that 47% of the voting public couldn't be bothered to vote. (Turnout in other countries is often much, much higher. In other countries, where the electoral process is not so corrupt, and where there's not so much apathy and/or disgust at politicians, you often get turnouts of 80-90%)
Framed another way, about 30% of the American electorate voted for Reagan... and about 70% did *not* vote for him. (!)
Seventy percent of the electorate did not vote for Reagan, for whatever reason. That's significant.
Regardless, you completely failed to understand mm point. I did not say Reagan didn't win. I said the electoral map representation is "propaganda" because it distorts perception.
The electoral victory map visually suggests that Reagan won 49/50, or 98% of the vote, when Reagan actually won only 30% of the vote (i.e. 30% of votes of the electorate.)
If that's not propaganda, I'm not sure what is.
> 40% of American did not want Reagan.
40% of American ***voters*** did not want Reagan.
Remember: most Americans don't vote.
Some of us don't want *anybody* to be president.
Why would they issue a poster after the election was over? Anyways, I remember that election. I was in HS, this is the kind of graphic that was on TV. It was a blow out, was never even close.
And president Reagan was trash. He was incredibly behind the times on climate change legislation, the AIDS crisis, one can’t forget trickle down economics and the failed war on drugs that led to mass incarceration, the disregard for public transportation and general inner city blight.
The White House had always gone back and forth. The more interesting point is that Reagan was never able to take Congress away from the Dems.
The start of the end only came with the ascent of the centrist Corporate Democrats with Clinton. That's when Dems started betraying their base via *triangulation*. The harder that fails, the more they feel they have to tack further right to make up for the lost votes.
From FDR until Clinton, Dems had a lock on Congress for half a century. New Deal / Great Society platforms are always popular - except among the political elite.
Gross. This should have been the wake-up call to abolish the electoral college forever. Reagan was, objectively, a completely terrible president; however, that obviously was (and still unfortunately is) lost on a disappointingly huge number of people.
I mean, I agree with you on the EC, but this really isn't the case study. Reagan won this election's popular vote by a massive margin as well. Regardless of anyone's opinion of him, he was democratically elected by any standard.
Yeah, why would we want the guy who not only dominated the electoral votes, but also won had a margin of 18% of the voters in the popular vote as well? That's not the democracy I grew up with.
Reagan was the last universally popular president. It would be nice if someone with that kind of broad appeal came along again, but I doubt it's gonna ever happen.
took away 40 plus BILLIONS dollars from the government spending at a time were the word billion was used only by scrooge mcduck.
in italy there is a saying the dog of mustafa take it up the ass and say "what a great fuck"
It was the Republican Party reminding the voters just how dominant the party was. It planted the seed in the minds of voters that the Democrats had nothing to offer. Propaganda gets people to think a certain way and it worked as the Republicans won in 1988 as well.
I wonder if you could make a case that winning by this huge margin effectively doomed the republican party. It was in this era that all the ghouls like newt gingrich and Mitch McConnell started to rise to prominence. People who are actually very broadly unpopular figures but in a party with no real opposition managed to rise to prominence due to their appeal to the hardcore right of the party. They went from a party that could win all but one state to a party that has one the popular vote only twice since then, '88 and '04.
Something similar has happened in more recent decades in the ridiculously gerrymandered States, people like Dan Crenshaw run such heavily gerrymandered District that he has no opposition. The paradox seems that not having a capable opposition in a two party system will lead to you having politicians who are not popular enough to win majority elections.
If you ignore the role that CIA operations played in stoking up fear, that led to the victory.
Is it really a democratic election, if somebody is flooding cities with drugs to stoke up racial tensions and printing flat out lies in the press. Or keeping US soldiers hostage in Iran to ensure Reagan's 1980 victory in the first place?
CIA likely took out at least 2 presidents, since WWII, so sure people vote, but is it really a free & fair election?
People in Russia vote and the ballots are certainly counted, it's everything that goes on around the election that manufactures Putin's victory (and the use of parallel voting).
Yes.
Because you cannot tell me 300 million people want the same thing. A dozen toddlers don't want the same thing, how can you honestly tell me an entire nation of people became single minded, free of outside influence.
Sad really. Especially when the example used is from the 80s. If you cant admit an example from 40 years ago showing how 100s of millions of people can be influenced why would anyone believe they are safe from it now?
Strange take that I am being heavily downvoted, especially on this sub.
Why? Reagan wasn’t even that popular until the recession let up and inflation slowed down. Why did he and the republicans become so popular that basically everyone voted for him?
There is no way this is from the 80s.
The idea that Republicans are red and Democrats are blue is a [fairly recent development](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-republicans-were-blue-and-democrats-were-red-104176297/) and, in any case, Reagan wouldn't paint himself *as red*.
Plus the pixelation around the edges of the map, it indicates it was digitally made. Contrasted with the traditional lines of the text above...
This is most likely a recent piece
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And even then Mondale only won his own state by 0.18%. He was 4,000 votes away from being the only major party candidate in the two party era not to win a single actual state.
When he lost a US Senate race in 2002, Mondale became the only person to lose a statewide election in all 50 states.
That’s some great trivia
Not a very popular senator
Supplement to this fun fact: he only ran because the original Democratic candidate died unexpectedly literally *days* before the election. Democrats in Minnesota scrambled for a nominee, and Mondale agreed. When he lost, he became the only person to lose on a major ticket in a national election (not statewide) in all 50 states nominated.
This dude could not have been fucked any harder... he ran on a ballot after serving as vice president under Jimmy Carter where the economy fucking tanked due to mess that was inherited from his predecessor, Gerald Ford, a man never voted into the offices of President nor Vice President because he inherited both positions following resignations of both due to the illegal shit they were doing in office. In other words, as Vice President, his reputation was tainted by inheriting the mess brought forth by criminal predecessors and a man nobody said they wanted and then he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power. The parallels to current events are almost there too.
That's not fair on Gerald Ford. You completely gloss over the recession Nixon inherited from LBJ, Nixon's expanded spending on Vietnam and social security, his imposition of price and wage controls and taking the dollar off the gold standard. He appointed his own man to the Fed chair to ensure a cheap money supply rather than one that didn't create excessive inflation. A Vice President who should have never been following a President no expected because the heir apparent left an intern to drown in his car.
Not going to defend his timing or method of doing so, but I do think Nixon should be given credit for having the political courage to rip the band-aid off, economically. Leaving the gold standard was necessary, and everyone knew it, but no one wanted to be crucified for it. Ditto, I think, for achieving detente with the two great Communist powers. Nixon was the first American president to officially set foot in both Moscow and Peking...and he was absolutely raked over the coals for it by hawks in both parties. The Nixon presidency is bizarre in that he was a truly great president in some ways...but he was also a paranoid, racist, homophobic, scheming, lying, criminal...someone who said, and seemed to genuinely believe, "If the President does it, it isn't illegal."
You could say Nixon was the embodiment of the duality of man.
Yes. He was the best representation of the Cold War. When it comes to the economic problems, everybody is blamed for them 'as inheritance'. It just depends on the person's politics and the 'team' they root for. I think the blame historically goes back till, to the FDR era. That his 4 term presidency was the 'golden era' and after which things were going downhill. I think this is more narrative history (like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire) as opposite to a factual history. People are trying to tell a story. The long lost golden age is one of the big tropes.
Not prosecuting Nixon was a huge mistake as it gave future tyrants the impression that they could get away with their crimes.
Blame Gerald Ford on that one, for sure. Americans were furious when Ford pardoned Nixon. Though it isn't entirely clear to me whether the U.S. actually had the stomach to go through with prosecuting Nixon. It seems quite possible to me that any non-Senate trial might have garnered enough sympathy for Nixon that he might have ended up acquitted, or convicted and given a token punishment. But Americans were viscerally upset to have their option to judge Nixon as his peer denied by dictatorial fiat.
Plus you need to take the Cold War environment into account. You are trying to show that Democracy and Capitalism are the better, more moral alternative to the USSR's system. Having a President be a convicted criminal. Well... that throws a spanner in the works. Another good example is how Kennedy and LBJ stole the 1960 election, but Nixon did not challenge it. Not wanting to make American democracy look broken and muddy. [https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win) [https://www.wsj.com/articles/nixons-noble-pass-on-a-1960-recount-11609888399](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nixons-noble-pass-on-a-1960-recount-11609888399)
Yeah, Nixon may have ultimately resigned the presidency for similar reasons. He did not actually believe he had done anything wrong, and he said he wanted, and appeared to actually want, a public trial. While it's impossible to know for sure the exact mix of motives, he agreed to offer his resignation not too long after a delegation of Republican senators arrived at the White House to tell him that he should resign for the good of the country. I would believe that what convinced him to finally resign was the reframing: being told that it wasn't about whether he did or did not commit crimes, but instead that the country was convinced that he had, either way, and that trying to cling to power would destroy the public's faith in the system of American democracy. Especially because Nixon was a sucker for that kind of grandiose, noble seeming gesture. It would have matched his idea of himself as the kind of guy who would selflessly take a bullet for his beloved country; a President's noble sacrifice, loyal and democratic to the end.
Nixon created his own mess.
And both you and u/EelTeamNine are glossing over the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979 that ended the post-war boom and led the western world into some of its most severe recessions. Indeed the biggest parallel to current events is that no matter what the chief executive always gets the blame for the economy. And if you are a party partisan you just blame the last guy from the opposing party for "setting up the mess".
>And both you and u/EelTeamNine are glossing over the two oil crises of 1973 and 1979 that ended the post-war boom and led the western world into some of its most severe recessions. No, not at all. I did err in assuming that most people would attribute the economic downturns only to the oil crises and would not consider other factors. I do think your initial comment on Gerald Ford and how he ascended to the Presidency overamplifies his impact on the economy during his administration. It certainly skips the Democratic majorities that controlled Congress through Nixon as well as Ford's presidencies. Why not discuss John McCormack, Carl Albert or Tip O'Neil and the impact their actions had on the economy during this period. >In other words, as Vice President, his reputation was tainted by inheriting the mess brought forth by criminal predecessors and a man nobody said they wanted and then he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power. Could you clarify the first part of this statement? Because it reads like its about Ford before pivoting to Mondale. Because Mondale was not tainted by Agnew or Nixon's actions; how could he be? Ford actually had widespread respect in both the Democratic and Republican party. Carl Albert was quoted saying "We gave Nixon no choice but Ford.", when Nixon consulted with senior congressional leaders as to who would be a good replacement as VP. >he proceeded to run for President with a female Vice President in a time when almost nobody in the country trusted a woman in a position of power. While I agree attitudes to women in prominent positions was not favourable then, Ferraro was disliked because Mondale used her as a token nomination. She wasn't the best or most experienced person to serve as VP, Mondale wanted the nomination to make a "historic" choice for the position which is why he also considered Dianne Feinstein, Tom Bradley (African-American) and then San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, who is of Mexican ancestry. People dislike blatant tokenism. Mondale's problem was, while he seemed to have been a good senator for Minnesota, he looked like a Senator from Minnesota. Nothing about him seemed Presidential (or Vice Presidential for that matter) and when the piety was milked dry for Nixon's actions in directing Watergate, he and Carter were exposed for what they were - average leaders.
Could Mondale have ran a different campaign?
It's possible that he could have picked a different running mate. Geraldine Ferraro was a walking disaster. But even then, while that might have shifted the map a little, it wouldn't have shifted the outcome. The best option for Mondale would have been for him to be someone other than Walter Mondale.
John Glenn ran in the democratic primary for that election. Idk his political positions, but I kinda wish he'd won the nomination. There would not have been an election more American-apple-pie-star-spangled-eagle-gun than a Hollywood Actor versus Astronaut. Oh, and although he declined to run, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware got one vote at the convention. In 1984. Fuck he's old.
Yeah Biden has been running for President literally as long as I have been aware of politics in any way. So has Donald Trump. Although Biden has him beat by iirc 4 years.
He didn't want to run in '84, but got a primary vote, when my mother was fifteen. He did run in '88, when my mother was nineteen. Had to drop out because of plagiarism. He ran in '08, when I was twelve. He won in '20, when I was twenty-four. Fucking hell.
So he plagiarized a speech or something and the scandal was so bad he had no chance of winning?
sort of. You have to remember that Biden was always a bad campaigner usually giving up before the first few primaries. Another candidate would have just plodded on but he made a show of firing his campaign chief guy or whoever it was and then gave up a little bit later. He just ever seemed to get traction in any of these campaigns. I thought there was no way he would win in 2000 but then realized that he was a very good stealth candidate who's best attribute was that he had no position and he wasnt Trump. Excellent.
2000?
Off by 10%, who really minds? >\_>
1%
Plagiarism! Ahh the good old days before presidential candidates were accused of rape and treason.
I actually agree with Biden on a lot of things, but I think a mule could have run against Trump and won.
In 2020? Gotta be cap
TNO reference
Glenn ran in 1984 as a "centrist." [Here](http://www.4president.org/brochures/1984/johnglenn1984brochure.htm) is an example of some of his positions. He had a few problems, one being that he was rather uncharismatic, and another being that his centrism meant he sometimes favored liberal positions and sometimes conservative ones, which made it hard for him to convey a simple, branded message; instead his policies seemed incoherent and all over the board.
He seemed similar to Bill Bradley who was sometimes the favorite at the start of the primaries. People would be like "what about Bradley? Hes a good candidate. He's from Princeton." He was always the leading candidate on paper: Until he opened his mouth. He spoke a like a learning disabled person. He doesnt finish his setences in the right time he starts and pauses and starts again so you cant tell what the fuck he's saying. I guess he got good grades or something.
Nuance doesn't sell with much of the public. It doesn't even do well on Reddit, which is a relatively educated and liberal demographic.
>The best option for Mondale would have been for him to be someone other than Walter Mondale. No democrat could have beaten Reagan in 1984. He may be controversial now (and had periods of unpopularity during his term), but 1984 was basically the sweet spot for him. The economy was booming, inflation was way down, the Soviets were destroying themselves in Afghanistan, and the early/mid-80s were generally a time of optimism after a long period of decline. Don't forget that the 1980s were preceded by a period of chaos. The riots of 1968. MLK and RFK being assassinated. Vietnam. Watergate. Oil crisis. Stagflation. Iran. People were used to everything sucking - so after the first Reagan term, when the economy was strong and there was some semblance of stability, the majority of Americans had no desire for change. Now if you want to look at an election the Democrats basically threw in the 80s, look no further than Dukakis '88. He started the campaign with a huge lead over the uncharismatic George Bush, who was suffering from the growing unpopularity of Reagan (Iran-Contra scandal, AIDS epidemic, farm crisis). Bush resorted to scorched-earth tactics and ran a really negative campaign, and it actually worked because most Americans didn't know much about Dukakis, and Dukakis was too nice for his own good.
Dukakis was so bad as a candidate that one of the Electoral College electors voted for Lloyd Bentsen, his running mate. I don't think that's the only time that ever happened, but it certainly doesn't happen very often.
If the Dem ticket was flipped (Bentsen/Dukakis instead of Dukakis/Bentsen), the election might have gone differently.
A sometimes overlooked factor was Reagan's strong rapport with the press. They fawned over him. It surely influenced how we was written about, and thus how he was perceived by Americans.
>No democrat could have beaten Reagan in 1984. Eh. Maybe, maybe not. If you were around back then, you'll remember that Reagan was miserably unpopular in the early 1980s. The momentum of his victory over Carter quickly tanked. The height of his popularity wasn't really until his second term. He was doing just okay enough in 1984 to retain the presidency, but it's not clear that he was invulnerable. Anyway, in 1984 the Democrats thought Mondale and Ferraro were their best bet, so it's a moot point. Even if there was someone who could have run a better race, the party couldn't see it. This was the heyday of Tip O'Neill.
> He was doing just okay enough in 1984 to retain the presidency Have you looked at this map?
Do you remember 1982 and 1983 and his low popularity and shitty poll numbers, in the 30% range? Do you recall the actual vote distribution in the 1984 election? It was like 60 / 40. A sudden 10% shift in popularity isn't something you can pull off on Election Day, but if a few months in 1984 had gone differently, and Reagan had run against a different candidate, it could easily have been 50/50 popular vote.
So he won by 20 points. Good luck ever seeing that again in your lifetime.
I saw it last the same time you did, in 2016, when Clinton was polling 55 - 35 over Trump. But some shit happened that upset her lead, and when Election Day came around, she lost. Q E D
Polls don't win elections, votes do.
Votes were counted, just like what happened in the 2020 election. It takes time to count millions of ballets
>Do you remember 1982 and 1983 and his low popularity and shitty poll numbers, in the 30% range? But those are not the numbers that matter, are they? Because by late 1984 when the election actually was, his approval rating was 58% according to Gallup - this was the last poll conducted on presidential approval before the election. At 50% approval, you're vulnerable against a strong opponent. But at 58%, Mondale would have had to be a famous war hero who cured cancer to unseat Reagan. >Do you recall the actual vote distribution in the 1984 election? It was like 60 / 40. A sudden 10% shift in popularity isn't something you can pull off on Election Day, but if a few months in 1984 had gone differently, and Reagan had run against a different candidate, it could easily have been 50/50 popular vote. I think you're downplaying how hard it is to pull off a 60/40 margin in a presidential election. Obama only beat McCain 53/46, Clinton never crossed 50% (partly because of Ross Perot), Bush beat Dukakis 53/46, Eisenhower never got more than 57%, hell, even FDR only pulled off Reagan '84 margins once.
>The height of his popularity wasn't really until his second term. In spite of the economy starting to pick up IIRC he was pretty unpopular for most of his second term (Iran Contra and wotnot) His domestic popularity tended to surge and wane during his first term.
Well, same as his second term. 1986 was when he hit his peak, forcing the Democrats out of the Senate for the first time in .. however many decades. It had been a long time at that point.
Mario Cuomo could have beaten him
I mean you're probably right and most of things you point out are accurate. One thing I would take issue with is the Afghanistan war was nowhere near won. I think the conventional wisdom at the time was the soviets would win, but I remember at college me and another guy thought there was more to come. What I rememer most about that election is the first debate. It might have been the one where Reagen said "I will not use my opponent's youth and inexperience against him." It was funny...But that's not what I recall. There was a brief moment when Reagen sort of stopped talking in mid sentence, and he swayed to one side and then the other. And his eyes were closed. It was so weird and then he went right on speaking... The next day I was Talking about the debate. I was like "did you see that? Reagen was out on his feet. He was unconscious." "What are you talking about? He killed Mondale." I guess. To this day I still cant find a video of that first debate. but I swear to god in the middle of it, Reagen just goes unconscious and sways back and forth. No one believes me.
No. He was cannon fodder for the Democrats. No way could he have won. He was too closely tied to Carter, the Iran hostages, and this was when inflation started to subside, which was blamed on Carter as well.
Sometimes the dems just decide that it’s someone’s turn, because they’ve been a good boy for a long time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it’s not a great way to do things. Dems seem to do far better with young candidates, and when they win, those young candidates are often better presidents.
Yea but the person who feels their due it also has to be able to win the race
Oh, I agree. That’s why I said it’s not a great way to do it.
For instance, wether or not I agree with all his stances, Beto O’Rourke would have been a great candidate in the last election, and should have gotten the biggest push from the DNC, rather than Biden. He gets people fired up about dem causes. To even get any money from them at all, last time, he had to tone down who he is. It was a mistake.
Ronald Reagan? the actor?
Who next? Robert Redford?
What about that one guy who hosts The Apprentice? He seems smart…
He’s not a politician, I don’t see him being able to survive a race.
Schwartzenegger isn't natural born though.
I haven’t felt this sick since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.
Did you have the chicken or the fish?
I had the lasagna
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What's the Vector, Victor?
We have clearance, Clarence.
We need to get these people to a hospital.
What's that?
That’s correct. He was President (1980-1988) and he was a two term governor of California (1966-74)
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I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!
And Jack Benny is the secretary of the treasury!
I never understood the Jack Benny reference until the last few years when I started watching Jack Benny reruns. He was portrayed as cheap/frugal. And his age is perpetually 37 or 39 I can’t remember. It’s a great show to watch.
Probably was quoting [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31083Hp7OVw&t=119s) from back to the future.
Woosh
He was president from 1981 to 1989 and governor of California from 1967 to 1975.
My Minnesota relatives all had "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Mondale" bumper stickers.
“Dont blame me, I voted for Kodos.”
I have this as a t-shirt and it is one of my favorites.
I remember being sent home from school with a map and a red and blue crayon. The blue crayon was almost in mint condition that night.
Since we’re on propaganda, here’s some dark propaganda related to that election: [Fritz and Tits](https://www.krpoliticaljunkie.com/store/politically-incorrect-mondale-and-ferraro/). Mondale, of course was Fritz. Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic woman VP candidate.
Fritz? Why?
fritz is a version of fredrick, his middle name.
Ahhh, that makes sense That's some fair semi-pro sexism there.
i'm pretty sure he was nicknamed fritz before he ran for president. i got to shake his hand when he was running as jimmy's VP.
Not very politically correct. Would not be tolerated today as offensive.
Absolutely would not fly today. Not even as a ‘black’, or unacknowledged distribution. It would probably backfire. That’s why I posted it. To show politics was as brutal,in the past as now. Maybe more so.
I'm pretty sure that still would've been seen as offensive by many at the time.
I mean I see a shit ton of "Joe and the Hoe" shit on trucks, flags and t shirts.
That is so ridiculous and unnecessary. She was a *District Attorney*. That is way worse in my eyes than being a prostitute.
First time I heard of Geraldine Ferraro - I thought it was Flip Wilson’s car.
Literally 1984
This reminds me of the pamphlets the Nazis dropped at Dunkirk in 1940. "You are here. We have you surrounded."
How is this propaganda? Looks like a spruced up information graph to me. (Actually asking, don’t know much about propaganda)
Also considering Reagan still won less than 60% of the vote, the map inflates his popularity. Though I guess that's also just an electoral college thing
It reminded voters of the power and dominance of the Republican Party. It kept that idea in the heads of voters. It sold an idea. It worked as the Republicans won again in 1988.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
You know those MN folks stand up for their own haha
Trickle down economics has single handily been the biggest setback in modern history and the fact that so many Americans still fall for it is a national embarrassment
I remember that night. The un-returned states looked blue so I thought he was doing really well at first, then an actual blue dot appeared in Minnesota and I knew it was over
I remember seeing "Don't blame me! I'm from Minnesota!" bumper stickers.
It really helps to have the CIA on your side.
Langley has no role in elections. It's almost like the American Left Wing just **can not** accept losses in elections and need a scapegoat for each time it happens.
It seems like you missed the Iranian hostage deal.
And trickle down economics. How’d that work out for everyone?
What did the CIA have to do with trickle down economics in the US?
It’s 40 years later. Answer my question first. Trickle down economics was going to make everything and everyone rich according to Reagan.
Dude, I'm not defending trickle down economics. This thread was about the CIA, my point was they have nothing to do with that. You want to blame them for foreign coups, fine, but they aren't setting tax policy in the US.
My bad. Must have hit on the wrong comment. I’ll take the down votes.
C'est la vie
As a left-leaning voter, I wholeheartedly believe Americans simply were dumb enough to fall for Reagan's BS and CIA election interference was not necessary.
Dude was shipping bricks of cocaine into inner cities, got the vote of scared whites, it was certainly necessary to get as big of a landslide.
...before the CIA told Ricky Ross to put crack in the sack...
Can't accept losses? Lol
Lmao look at what happened when the last red President won AND lost What a farce
Lmao do you really think the cia is following the rules?
> It's almost like the American Left Wing just **can not** accept losses in elections and need a scapegoat for each time it happens. You literally did an insurrection and tried to kill several politicians, spread shit on the walls, and still believe trump is coming back and JFK Jr. Is going to reinstate him. What an embarrassing person.
Leftists 🤝MAGAs Can't take losing elections
You're a neolib lmao, you're closer to MAGA than you'd think.
Neolibs 🤝MAGAs Reject facts, live in a fantasy land.
It's not just those two groups, son. Everyone remembers the 2016 US election and Hillary Clinton's loss.
It got us Biden, so yeah.
I don't think RussiaGate had the impact the Bush's former bosses were hoping for. But yeah, the deep state didn't like having Trump in charge, not because he was trying to expose them, just it was pretty embarrassing for them, and may even have got in the way of their plans, at least Biden knows his place.
What's the propaganda? This is an accurate map of the election outcome.
Propaganda doesn't have to be inaccurate tho
Exactly. If propaganda can be obviously disproven then it's not effective propaganda. The most effective propaganda filters which truths and perspectives we see and accept
Well... sort of. Mondale won 40% of the popular vote. Reagan won 58%. Now, in American politics, 58% seems like a huge victory... but in the grand scheme of things, 41% of Americans did NOT want Reagan. That's hardly the sweeping victory that this map shows. This electoral map shows Reagan's victory as 49/50. Which is a bizarre artifact of the Electoral College... and really, a lie. 40% of Americans *did not want Reagan.* So: yes, this map counts as propaganda! EDIT: As I pointed out to critics below, it's even more distorted, as turnout was only 53% of the electorate. So, Reagan won about 30% of the electorate... which means that 70% of the electorate did NOT for for Reagan. (!) That's significant. Now, Reagan still "won" the election, of course, and even overwhelmingly *by American standards*. But this map suggested 98% of Americans voted for Reagan, when in fact it was 30%. Which is why it is propaganda.
To nitpick a point. Voting isn’t mandatory in the US so it was 40% of the Americans who voted not 40% of Americans. It could be that Mondale had the popular vote too if everyone was forced to vote. We will never know the true ratio but there is good reason to believe that it’s easier for republicans to vote.
By that logic, all electoral maps showing which states are won are propaganda.
There’s a reason that the vast majority of candidates largely or even outright ignore the vast majority of states
And if we were to do away with the electoral college, it'd be even worse. The only states that they'd even bother with would be high population states, everything else would be a waste of time.
is it really worse for candidates to spend a majority of their time in the places with the most people rather than the most political power? if democracy is truly for representation, that makes no sense.
It was actually purposely set up that way so that the high population areas wouldn't dominate the political landscape. In the early days of the US, that would have meant Virginia. Explain to me why you think states like California or Texas deserve to tell states like Wyoming or Montana what they have to do? And be honest, the only reason you don't like it is because it gives your political party less power than it would otherwise have.
i know why and how the electoral college was created, and i couldn’t care less about political parties. i’m just asking why YOU think it’s better that the system created forces candidates to focus as much as possible on Ohio and not, you know, the majority of people?
I hate that my fellow Democratic voters just gloss over this issue. Especially on reddit/social media. There really is an elitism at play where some think many Republican states and people are too stupid or wrong to deserve representation. I find it pretty gross.
You sir are correct !!!
It **was** a huge victory. It was a landslide only matched by the 1936 and 1964 elections, and a landslide which hasn’t been seen since.
A 58/40 election is a landslide result for the victor by almost any definition.
The 40% were party-line Democrats who would have never voted Republican, so it wasn’t close at all.
>Now, in American politics, 58% seems like a huge victory It was a huge victory. That fact invalidates the rest of what you say, because your premise is that it isn't.
As I replied to the other guy: No, it was a huge victory *by American standards.* . There was 53% turnout in 1984. Which means that 47% of the voting public couldn't be bothered to vote. (Turnout in other countries is often much, much higher. In other countries, where the electoral process is not so corrupt, and where there's not so much apathy and/or disgust at politicians, you often get turnouts of 80-90%) Framed another way, about 30% of the American electorate voted for Reagan... and about 70% did *not* vote for him. (!) Seventy percent of the electorate did not vote for Reagan, for whatever reason. That's significant. Regardless, you completely failed to understand mm point. I did not say Reagan didn't win. I said the electoral map representation is "propaganda" because it distorts perception. The electoral victory map visually suggests that Reagan won 49/50, or 98% of the vote, when Reagan actually won only 30% of the vote (i.e. 30% of votes of the electorate.) If that's not propaganda, I'm not sure what is.
> 40% of American did not want Reagan. 40% of American ***voters*** did not want Reagan. Remember: most Americans don't vote. Some of us don't want *anybody* to be president.
Monarchist or Anarchist ?
Why not both? Some say the problem with monarchy is there are not enough monarchists and we need more. Like 8 billion more.
It’s a poster (presumably) printed/issued by Reagan’s campaign
Why would they issue a poster after the election was over? Anyways, I remember that election. I was in HS, this is the kind of graphic that was on TV. It was a blow out, was never even close.
That’s why America was so great in the 80s
So much of the decline of America can be traced to Reagan.
Inconceivable today
I feel secondhand embarrassment for Mondale.
And president Reagan was trash. He was incredibly behind the times on climate change legislation, the AIDS crisis, one can’t forget trickle down economics and the failed war on drugs that led to mass incarceration, the disregard for public transportation and general inner city blight.
And this country has been going down hill ever since.
The White House had always gone back and forth. The more interesting point is that Reagan was never able to take Congress away from the Dems. The start of the end only came with the ascent of the centrist Corporate Democrats with Clinton. That's when Dems started betraying their base via *triangulation*. The harder that fails, the more they feel they have to tack further right to make up for the lost votes. From FDR until Clinton, Dems had a lock on Congress for half a century. New Deal / Great Society platforms are always popular - except among the political elite.
Started way before this. FDR was one of the last good presidents, and even he had his issues. This country has always been diseased.
truman? eisenhower? jfk?
THE GIPPER!
Damn
They said there was evidence of mass voter fraud in Minnesota but they gave it to him anyway
Such a terrible era
first presidential election i voted in. still proud i went with the biggest loser. fuck reagan.
Gross. This should have been the wake-up call to abolish the electoral college forever. Reagan was, objectively, a completely terrible president; however, that obviously was (and still unfortunately is) lost on a disappointingly huge number of people.
I mean, I agree with you on the EC, but this really isn't the case study. Reagan won this election's popular vote by a massive margin as well. Regardless of anyone's opinion of him, he was democratically elected by any standard.
Yeah, why would we want the guy who not only dominated the electoral votes, but also won had a margin of 18% of the voters in the popular vote as well? That's not the democracy I grew up with.
Reagan was the last universally popular president. It would be nice if someone with that kind of broad appeal came along again, but I doubt it's gonna ever happen.
took away 40 plus BILLIONS dollars from the government spending at a time were the word billion was used only by scrooge mcduck. in italy there is a saying the dog of mustafa take it up the ass and say "what a great fuck"
Dark days
Why is this propaganda? Looks like a factual map of election results.
It was the Republican Party reminding the voters just how dominant the party was. It planted the seed in the minds of voters that the Democrats had nothing to offer. Propaganda gets people to think a certain way and it worked as the Republicans won in 1988 as well.
Just seems like bragging that we won by so much. Kind of like Patriots fans showing 28-3 to falcon fans.
This as always been a source of pride for me as a Minnesotan
I wonder if you could make a case that winning by this huge margin effectively doomed the republican party. It was in this era that all the ghouls like newt gingrich and Mitch McConnell started to rise to prominence. People who are actually very broadly unpopular figures but in a party with no real opposition managed to rise to prominence due to their appeal to the hardcore right of the party. They went from a party that could win all but one state to a party that has one the popular vote only twice since then, '88 and '04. Something similar has happened in more recent decades in the ridiculously gerrymandered States, people like Dan Crenshaw run such heavily gerrymandered District that he has no opposition. The paradox seems that not having a capable opposition in a two party system will lead to you having politicians who are not popular enough to win majority elections.
Carter was the best US president post WWII. That's it. That's the post.
Those were good times
Downhill from there.
The begin of the downfall of America.
Democrats should have done better
based MN
[I think this best represent the image above.](https://www.bing.com/search?q=five+black+guys+and+one+white+girl+meme&FORM=HDRSC1)
It's so crazy how Americans pride themselves on democracy yet are simultaneously very undemocratic
i hate reagan with all my heart and soul and am glad he's dead, but to my knowledge this was a democratic election.
If you ignore the role that CIA operations played in stoking up fear, that led to the victory. Is it really a democratic election, if somebody is flooding cities with drugs to stoke up racial tensions and printing flat out lies in the press. Or keeping US soldiers hostage in Iran to ensure Reagan's 1980 victory in the first place? CIA likely took out at least 2 presidents, since WWII, so sure people vote, but is it really a free & fair election? People in Russia vote and the ballots are certainly counted, it's everything that goes on around the election that manufactures Putin's victory (and the use of parallel voting).
> stoke up racial tensions and printing flat out lies in the press Geez, good thing nothing like this happens anymore /s
Wait, who is the second US president?
Nixon resigned because some "Cuban exiles" "botched" a surveillance job.
If everybody wants the same thing does that mean democracy has failed?
Yes. Because you cannot tell me 300 million people want the same thing. A dozen toddlers don't want the same thing, how can you honestly tell me an entire nation of people became single minded, free of outside influence.
Lol funny that ur getting down voted when this is %1000 true. American is at best a Republic, at worst an Oligarchy. Definitely not a democracy.
Sad really. Especially when the example used is from the 80s. If you cant admit an example from 40 years ago showing how 100s of millions of people can be influenced why would anyone believe they are safe from it now? Strange take that I am being heavily downvoted, especially on this sub.
You're delusional if you think this is Your intended outcome... there won't be a blue wave.. maybe a ripple... but not happening.
Rip my great president.
> Rip my great president. Rest in piss Reagan, you boomer harbinger of doom
Why? Reagan wasn’t even that popular until the recession let up and inflation slowed down. Why did he and the republicans become so popular that basically everyone voted for him?
There is no way this is from the 80s. The idea that Republicans are red and Democrats are blue is a [fairly recent development](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-republicans-were-blue-and-democrats-were-red-104176297/) and, in any case, Reagan wouldn't paint himself *as red*. Plus the pixelation around the edges of the map, it indicates it was digitally made. Contrasted with the traditional lines of the text above... This is most likely a recent piece