1984 US presidential election: No "Youth and inexperience"

There were two debates in the 1984 presidential election, held on October 7 and October 21. It is considered by virtually everyone that the first debate was a complete fiasco for Reagan. Reagan himself knew that he had choked. "As soon as he left the stage," reported Lou Cannon in President Reagan, "Reagan confessed to [adviser Stu] Spencer that he had flopped." According to Jack Germond and Jules Witcover, when Mondale left the stage, he confided to an aide that "This guy is gone" -- as in mentally not all there. A Newsweek/Gallup poll found 54 percent of debate-watchers giving the victory to Mondale, and only 35 percent to Reagan.

We know what happened at the second debate, of course. When Reagan used the "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience" joke he neutralized the first debate in one fell swoop.

But what if Reagan never utters that one joke, or mangles the delivery so badly that the punchline gets lost? How does this affect the election?
 
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I do think Mondale could have won in 1984, but it would require the removal of Paul Volcker. Even if Reagan lost that debate, he would have won if everything else is left the same.
 
Mondale gets a respectable defeat. Still a defeat.

Pretty much this. Mondale was facing a strong incumbent with excellent charisma. Removing one zinger doesn't turn it into a victory, only less of a rout.

Reagan losing in '84 takes something exceptional, like a big scandal or a massively botched campaign.
 
I do think Mondale could have won in 1984, but it would require the removal of Paul Volcker. Even if Reagan lost that debate, he would have won if everything else is left the same.
We have very different views. In my view, recovery from the '80 and '82 double-dip recession was caused by two things:

1) enough time for the down phase of the business cycle to recover on its own, although a lot of people were hurt in the process,

2) Reagan felt much more strongly about cutting taxes to get the economy going and to modernize and build-up the military, than he did about slowing government debt. That is, Reagan was a Keynesian!
 
We have very different views. In my view, recovery from the '80 and '82 double-dip recession was caused by two things:

1) enough time for the down phase of the business cycle to recover on its own, although a lot of people were hurt in the process,

That did play a role, yes.

2) Reagan felt much more strongly about cutting taxes to get the economy going and to modernize and build-up the military, than he did about slowing government debt. That is, Reagan was a Keynesian!

And so did that. He did, in a sense, do deficit spending by cutting taxes heavily (though regressively) and not cutting government programs to balance it out, and he ran a huge deficit even larger than during the Johnson years. It's a fucked-up kind of deficit spending, but it is deficit spending.

However, I think that would have led to a very slow Obama-style recovery if Volcker wasn't there. It would be a long walk up to recovery.
 
It's hard to imagine Reagan screwing up so poorly a second time in a row. Maybe there just isn't a second debate at all, leaving the initial bad taste in voter's mouths.

A few more traditional Dem states like Massachusetts still turn out for Mondale. Not much else. You need a further back PoD to save his candidacy.

For one butterfly though, I think the perception Reagan was already 'losing his mind' in office takes hold in the layer years after the Alzheimer's announcement. That's a controversial subject in some circles because it's often perceived as an attack on his credibility, but I think here, people remember it more.
 
There are two separate potential PODs here.

The first is that Reagan comes across as seriously gaga in the second debate. In that case he graciously bows out of public life the next week. The Republicans attempt to substitute GHW Bush on the top of the ticket, or they can't do that legally say that the Republican electors will vote for Bush, not Reagan. They will have to come up with a new Vice Presidential candidate. If its bad enough the 25th Amendment might be invoked, to get Bush some incumbency advantage.

This would be a mess and might well produce a Mondale victory. At any rate, the election would be very close.

The second POD is nothing that dramatic, Reagan is either flat in the second debate or there is no second debate. Reagan wins the popular vote by about seven or eight percentage points, about how much GHW Bush beat Dukakis. Maybe he gets the same ten point margin he got over Carter, but probably seven or eight points.

The historical popular vote margin was 18%. I would say this becomes 2% in the case that Reagan is so gaga that he has to be removed from the ticket. A flat performance that gives Mondale more momentum turns into about a 8% margin. And yes, in either case Mondale wins considerably more than one or two states.

Incidentally, not that this is very important, but the historical election had seven states which Reagan carried by less than a 10% margin, while winning by 18% nationwide. In 1980, Carter carried three of these seven, plus three others. In 1988, Dukakis carried five of these states, plus four others. This is easy enough to look up.

When incumbents run for re-election in American politics, particularly in the 1980s, its something of a pass fail thing. If Americans think they are doing OK, they re-elect them, often by large margins, though the large margins don't happen as much now with heightened partisanship. Sometimes you get the same effect if the challenger is not viewed as credible. But incumbents will be dumped if they are though to be not up to the job in some basic way.
 
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