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You can see the contradictions there. The people who were concerned about the economy should have voted for the guy who pledged to fix it, not the guy who was clueless about the problem and insisted it didn't exist. My feeling is, that some of the people who blamed Carter for the state of the economy simply didn't turn out to vote at all. They were among the 75% of registered voters who didn't show up.
They should have voted for the guy who.. As far as they were concerned, was the one who screwed it up? Or the guy who hadn't fixed it for the past 3 years?
In a way, you have to look at this like taking your car to the shop. After you take it there 3 times and the problem still exists.. you go to a different shop.
The debate was when the momentum really started to shift. At the end of the day, the voters were too eager to throw Carter out. The bar was set very low for Reagan. All he had to do was not come out as an extremist, not come out as a racist, not come out as a warmonger who wanted to bomb half the world, not come out as a mean old man who wanted to throw old people out in the streets. He easily met the threshold of a credible alternative. Then it was Game Over for Carter.
I had just turned 13 a week before the 1980 election, but I remember enough about it that (especially living in what's now a blue state and was then too, but a state that voted for Reagan twice) many many people did think and fear he was these things (especially the bombing warmonger with his finger on the nuclear button). It would've been close because countering had the hostages been freed earlier was all the inflation etc. that made Carter look weak, but there was enough of that concern about Reagan that it'd been close, kind of a "lesser of two evils" election.
Moderator cut: Current Events remark removed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
I was in second year of law school in the fall of 1980. I went down to the vending area shortly after 8:00 p.m., Boston time. I heard a rational law student yell "it's over." I asked what was over and he said "the election." I asked what he meant, and said "did Carter win already"? He said "Reagan's got Massachusetts and New York already, what do you think"? I said "well there's Texas and California." Of course I now know that those two states leaned Republican then.
Didn't Texas (like the rest of the South) flip to permanent Republican in the late 60s/Nixon?
And of course, Reagan was from (at least as an adult/politician) California (not that "home field advantage" is absolute; Gore in 2000 and Trump in both 2016 and 2020 didn't win their home states either).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
Democrats always leave things better than when they came in. If Carter had served two terms, oh man. So they couldn't let that happen. The economy was not disastrous under Carter. It was on the way back after the disastrous Republican administration that preceded it. Still, DURING the very Democratic administrations that clean up the mess that is made after Republican wealth transfers and austerity measures the Democratic administration will be lambasted in mutually exclusive terms. I doubt Biden would be reelected even if he were going to be 70 in 2024. I imagine stronger words than 'weak' will be used to describe his leadership style. History has exonerated Carter. God help us, you know who is in with a chance in 2024 and it will be precisely the same tensions as with Carter/Reagan. And there is nowhere to run ...
The thing is, the 2024 election is still almost 3 years from now and a LOT can happen. To put that in perspective, flip the time between now and November 2024 backwards and we're pre-COVID.
Moderator cut: Remarks about Current Events, Politics, and the current and immediate past President removed. Read the History forum rules.
Last edited by mensaguy; 03-02-2022 at 05:00 AM..
Reason: Keeping the forum focused on History.
Didn't Texas (like the rest of the South) flip to permanent Republican in the late 60s/Nixon?
Actually Texas was the only state west of the Mississippi to vote for Carter in 1976.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 7 Wishes
And of course, Reagan was from (at least as an adult/politician) California (not that "home field advantage" is absolute; Gore in 2000 and Trump in both 2016 and 2020 didn't win their home states either).
California tended to be a slightly red shade of purple all the way through the 1988 Bush-Dukakis election. Edmund and Jerry Brown aside, their governors were usually Republican for most of the 1900's, and through Schwarzenegger. And California had a serious conservative streak. Think the John Birch Society. As far as Presidential races, Truman won California in 1948, ironically with a big boost from Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower and Nixon took California presidentially in 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968 and 1972. Ford took California in 1976.
Moderator cut: Remarks removed from the quoted post were removed, along with the responses.
Last edited by mensaguy; 03-02-2022 at 05:02 AM..
Reason: Hisory forum rules
I was 20, a junior in college. Everyone I knew under 30 hated Reagan and loved Carter. Why? I doubt they could have articulated a reason, other than vague fears that “Reagan was going to get us into World War Three”.
Everyone over 50 was enthralled with Reagan, and in those days, there were a lot of that generation still around, the ones born around 1920 or so, who remembered the Depression and the War.
Carter was a major screwup. A brilliant man, perhaps, and highly accomplished, but a terrible leader. When his team botched the hostage rescue, Cyrus Vance quit, and the Europeans moaned, “The Carter Administration has lost its only professional!”
Declaring America to be in a malaise wasn’t very smart. Americans traditionally have looked to their President to be an inspiration and a role model, not a “Debbie Downer”.
I was living in Idaho at the time and fairly liberal. I did live in California while Reagan was Governor and was not impressed. I voted against Reagan twice in California.
I could not vote for Reagan in 1980. And I could not vote for Carter. He was an awful President. So I ended up voting for Anderson.
BUT, I remember filling my little Datsun pick-up truck and thinking I can't afford this!! And I bicycled to work!! And when I got there I drove a FS or BLM truck!!
That is why gas prices have politicians running scared. It really does have an impact.
Even from somebody that only drove his pretty efficient truck on weekends and lived in a small town. And since I lived in a tourist town, once the tourists quick coming we had plenty of gas without lines, but it was expensive.
The Democrats climate change policies will die from high gas prices and 55 MPH which is necessary if you believe in man-caused climate change.
Last week I drove down I-5 for 400 miles in California on Saturday. What a zoo!!! We do use a lot of oil, particularly, in environmental states like California!!!
All I remember is that there was sort of a "par for the course" reaction when the rescue attempt failed and the helicopters crashed. Simply put, people didn't think Carter was a "winner" and that hostage rescue debacle just reinforced that narrative. At that time there were still some yellow dog democrats alive and so Carter had a pretty good base who stuck with him.
Meanwhile Reagan was like Trump in that his TV background gave him more of a larger than life persona. Style wise he wasn't like Trump but he certainly seemed to have that same kind of celebrity attractiveness. Certainly something Carter did not have by any stretch of the imagination.
So I tend to agree that Reagan still would have won due to his charisma.
This doesn't quite make sense, though. Carter campaigned mainly on the need to address the economy, while Reagan pooh-poohed the idea constantly, and insisted the economy was fine. He found out otherwise, after getting into office, then had to back-pedal, and made a speech about how the economy was in trouble.
You can see the contradictions there. The people who were concerned about the economy should have voted for the guy who pledged to fix it, not the guy who was clueless about the problem and insisted it didn't exist. My feeling is, that some of the people who blamed Carter for the state of the economy simply didn't turn out to vote at all. They were among the 75% of registered voters who didn't show up.
And btw, "stagflation" was a worldwide phenomenon back then. Even Russia, an oil-exporting nation, was experiencing economic stagnation relative to the 60's, and that's really saying something for Russia.
OK, it's been over 40 years since the 1980 election, so I might be fuzzy on the details. But my memory has it that Reagan addressed the economy repeatedly, mainly to hammer home the notion that Carter had messed it up. Certainly, the voters blamed Carter for the lousy economy and decided that he could not be trusted to fix it.
And would you please post a source to support your claim that turnout was only 25%? Upthread, I posted a source that said that turnout was 52.6%.
Carter desperately needed the rescue mission to go off smooth, raid on Entebbe type of smooth. He needed something like that to restore his weak image, when the helicopters crashed in the desert, his presidency was doomed. Earlier in 1979 before the hostages were taken, he did have a notable accomplishment in getting Egypt and Israel to sign peace agreement. He put a lot of work into that, but we needed him to be working on domestic problems with the same kind of zeal. Reagan asked the magic question, Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? Hell no, nobody was better off, it felt like a sinking ship going into 1980. As another poster mentioned, I too was 13 years old for that election, but I knew plenty of people my age and people under 30 who liked Reagan and knew he was the right man for the job. More would follow in 1984 when the economy recovered. I remember the term "Reagan Democrat" being used quite a bit in those days, HW Bush rode into office on Reagan's coat tails, but he lost those Reagan Democrats by 1992.
Carter's Iran policy with the Shah was horrible, but we didn't know how horrible until the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. Khomeini duped everybody into thinking he was going to be so much better than the Shah, the press praised him and condemned the Shah at every opportunity, until the hostages were taken, a very fateful turn for Iran and Middle East affairs in general. Reagan's policy with Iran was also horrible, arms for hostages was stupid and it only encouraged Iran to take more hostages and fuel terrorism. He did make Iran shed a lot of blood, however, with the Iran - Iraq war, in the building a monster known as Saddam Hussein, whom fought Iran for 8 years.
This doesn't quite make sense, though. Carter campaigned mainly on the need to address the economy, while Reagan pooh-poohed the idea constantly, and insisted the economy was fine. He found out otherwise, after getting into office, then had to back-pedal, and made a speech about how the economy was in trouble.
You can see the contradictions there. The people who were concerned about the economy should have voted for the guy who pledged to fix it, not the guy who was clueless about the problem and insisted it didn't exist. My feeling is, that some of the people who blamed Carter for the state of the economy simply didn't turn out to vote at all. They were among the 75% of registered voters who didn't show up.
And btw, "stagflation" was a worldwide phenomenon back then. Even Russia, an oil-exporting nation, was experiencing economic stagnation relative to the 60's, and that's really saying something for Russia.
Reagan's campaign was all over the economy. Here is his closing statement from the 1980 final debate:
Quote:
Yes, I would like to add my words of thanks, too, to the ladies of the League of Women Voters for making these debates possible. I’m sorry that we couldn’t persuade the bringing in of the third candidate, so that he could have been seen also in these debates. But still, it’s good that at least once, all three of us were heard by the people of this country. Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have. This country doesn’t have to be in the shape that it is in. We do not have to go on sharing in scarcity with the country getting worse off, with unemployment growing. We talk about the unemployment lines. If all of the unemployed today were in a single line allowing two feet for each of them, that line would reach from New York City to Los Angeles, California. All of this can be cured and all of it can be solved. I have not had the experience the President has had in holding that office, but I think in being Governor of California, the most populous state in the Union – if it were a nation, it would be the seventh-ranking economic power in the world – I, too, had some lonely moments and decisions to make. I know that the economic program that I have proposed for this nation in the next few years can resolve many of the problems that trouble us today. I know because we did it there. We cut the cost – the increased cost of government – in half over the eight years. We returned $5.7 billion in tax rebates, credits and cuts to our people. We, as I have said earlier, fell below the national average in inflation when we did that. And I know that we did give back authority and autonomy to the people. I would like to have a crusade today, and I would like to lead that crusade with your help. And it would be one to take Government off the backs of the great people of this country, and turn you loose again to do those things that I know you can do so well, because you did them and made this country great. Thank you.
To make it easier to comprehend, I bolded the parts about the economy. Even as a pre-teen, I remember the campaign speeches about the economy. Here's one:
On topic, I doubt Carter could have pulled off a win even had the hostage rescue attempt succeeded. There were far too many other areas where he was perceived as ineffective - the economy being the main one.
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