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The state of affairs in the US going into the 1984 election season

I felt the need to do a summary post as we approach 1984. It's canon, so I'll threadmark it, but it's not really a story post. Also might be a good time to ask any questions you've been holding back, assuming I'd get to them in a post at some point. If I haven't gotten to it by now, it's not coming, so ask away!


The US economy remains shaky. The recovery has reached those most in need, and government policy has seen the back of inflation and stabilized prices for consumer goods and commodities. In the lofty salons of high finance, the picture is less rosy. The monied classes are in a worried mood; investor confidence is low, the national outlook and political situation leading to a very (small-c) conservative brand of decision-making.

What’s more, there are signs of trouble in the ark of the middle-class: homeownership. Mortgages are less generous these days, housing markets varying wildly from place to place. Many homeowners aren’t seeing the kind of appreciation of their primary asset that their parents or even older siblings saw. Average savings are on the rise as many put aside the prospect of buying a first home or moving out of a starter for at least a few more years.

Societally, changing living patterns are spooking people. Old voting patterns are losing coherence, while new coalitions are as yet embryonic. While those keyed to take advantage of these changes are doing very well- from first-time homeowners to minorities to more generally those living in cities and small towns- those caught out in the cold are starting to feel bitter.

Public unrest is on the rise. This can be seen most notably on the right, where social and economic resentment seems to increase by the day. Attacks against government officials in rural areas have slowly grown commonplace. Teenage and early adult delinquency built around so-called “Identitarian” clubs is being called an epidemic in the press. And everywhere there are marches and rallies by hard-right religious groups, anti-integrationists, and those left out of the nation’s weak recovery.

Counteracting the rise of the Angry Right, a new centrist coalition is emerging around the Republican Party. This is made up of old liberal elites (who have come to almost fetishize what they would term their own rationality in the wake of Watergate), white collar workers, wealthier minorities, and a healthy slice of moderating Christian Evangelicals and their mainline Protestant and Catholic counterparts. The Republicans have not shaken their conservative wing entirely, though even these politicians feel the pressure to moderate their tone or to find at least one issue where they can cast themselves as a “maverick.”

Action has been slower on the left, but their influence has seen an uptick in the Democratic Party. Given the somewhat lower threshold for participation in a three-party system than a two-party system, progressives and even outright leftists have begun to organize. They saw moderate electoral gains by 1982 and are hoping to make a concerted push in 1984. But factionalism, lack of a unifying vision, and resistance from the Democratic Party establishment continues to hamper those efforts.

Legislatively, the early days of grand bargains and bonhomie have given way to a much more granular, transactional kind of politics. Beyond the substantial legislative packages of 1981, no attempts at sweeping changes have proven successful in congress.

That’s not to say the chambers are deadlocked, merely that the leadership- more like a committee than ever- seeks to keep necessary bills as “clean” and simple as possible, while midwifing a few ad-hoc chimeras chock-full of penny-ante amendments fostered by cobbled together coalitions intent on mutual back-scratching. The chambers have learned to devote more time to the budget reconciliation process than they used to, as more and more this is seen as the prime chance for politicians to provide for their constituents.

Meanwhile, the president has learned to govern by executive order. After failing to achieve major legislative progress to promote his new Civil Rights agenda, he finely diced the proposals into amendatory chum and had them scattered through several dozen different bills on a rolling basis. In the meantime, he's used the executive authority of the Justice, Treasury, Labor, and HUD Departments to enforce the most thorough desegregation effort the nation had ever seen.

The reputation of the Anderson administration is decidedly mixed. His brand of sober professionalism has won him a lot of credit with the press and a claim to represent something like Nixon's old "Silent Majority." Certainly no one would say he isn’t a competent manager. He’s given credit for stabilizing the economy, though people are starting to note that there’s a difference between stable and growing. High unemployment and under-employment are growing concerns.

Many trumpet his wide-ranging detente with the Soviets. But some believe he’s gone too far. Hawks say he gives up too much for each victory. Latin America is stabilized, but Cuba’s role there is legitimized and put on something like an equal footing with the US. An Israeli-Palestinian peace deal has finally been reached, but at the cost of Soviet dominance across the upper Middle East, from Lebanon to Iran. The Soviets are at the nuclear negotiating table, but only after the US slashed its defense budget, hobbling the military. There are counterarguments to all of these, of course, but this is how the president is attacked.

And then there is Anderson’s social policy. While integration in schools and housing has been rolled out as smoothly as possible, the backlash was always a certainty. So far legislative pushback at the state level has been hampered by the fact that the efforts are being led by the ACP. Those anti-integration laws that have been enacted have found themselves struck down in court for the time being.

But while the legislative channel is dry, the court of public opinion is overflowing with negative sentiment. It’s estimated that as many as one in five white voters is ready to make opposition to integration their sole litmus test for the 1984 election. Almost half of whites hold a negative opinion of the process.

The general mood at the start of presidential primary season is one of uncertainty. It’s felt that in a two-way race, Anderson would be toast. In a three-way race he could be walking on air. Different pundits try out different predictions. Some think he’s primed to be everyone’s second choice and thus miss the mark. Some think pragmatism will dominate in the voting booth and he’ll be the swing voter's least of three evils. Some gleefully predict a chaotic non-result thrown to Congress.

Much will depend on who his opponents are.