Why does everyone consider the 1984 US election an inevitable win for Reagan?

No matter who the Democrats might have nominated, everyone here assumes they'd have lost to Reagan - and not only lost, but lost in a landslide. And I'd like to know why. Why does everyone here seem to acknowledge the inevitability of the Great Reagan Mojo?

I'm asking especially because everyone here also seems to think Reagan was guaranteed a big win, no matter what. It's never considered that Reagan might win narrowly, or win comfortably - it's always landslide. So again, why?
 
Because 1984 was one of the three biggest electoral landslides in US history. Reagan won the popular vote 58.7% to 40.6% and garnered the biggest electoral college vote in US History. Mondale only won his home state of Minnesota by 0.18%. Reagan won Massachusetts (extraordinarily) by 2.8%, the next closest margin of victory in any state that year. Part of this was Reagan's affability, his projection of confidence, and his tremendous skills as a communicator/symbol and part of this was the recovery of the economy: after the rather sorry decade of the 1970s with scandals, poor economic performance, and slip-shod confidence emanatating from Washington, Reagan oozed confidence and prosperity. Many observers around the world noted that even most Europeans favored Reagan, because Mondale was talking about absurd promises vis-a-vis the Soviets [which ironically Reagan would probably have made given the chance in 1985]. It's a pretty good starting point.

What's more mutable is the piss-poor nature of the Democratic race that year. The Democrats had a large field of candidates, with no obvious front runners: this was the year of the most chaotic Democratic race...until 2008 came along. Jesse Jackson made a strong showing initially, but made some ethinc/racial gaffes; nevertheless, the party's primary election rules meant that even though he got 20% of the popular vote in the primaries, he only got about 8% of the delegates. The more heated race was between Carter's VP Walter Mondale and Colorado Senator Gary Hart. The latter had a lot of populist enthusiasm -- "new ideas" and the latter a lot of expereince, leading the epic line "Where's the beef?" Mondale ultimately won, but it was very close. It's part of why the changed the rules for the primaries to incorporate superdelegates. Oh, and John Glenn also made a go of it. The tight contest meant that the Democrats were low on enthusiasm and money while Reagan didn't have to campaign at all until the general.

Nonetheless, the dissarray in the Democratic party wasn't a new thing that year. It was a sign of the fraying of the old Democratic coalition, with "youth" / reformist progressives vying against old labor New Deal liberal against Southern / conservative values. It was also a legacy of Carter's run in 1976, which upset the balance of power as it were between these coalitions; and of Ted Kennedy's primary run against Carter in 1980.

None of the candidates running that year were charismatic, politic, or adept enough to garner wholesale Democratic support, unite the Party, and then reach out to myriads of voters who preferred Reagan. To change the nature of the race, you'd probably need a POD before 1980: Paul Volker not being appointed to the Fed, EMK dying of a heart attack and/or not running in 1980, Carter choosing a more charismatic running mate. Such a POD would / could change so much that's it isn't really changing the election alone, it's changing the whole game.
 
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Excellent post, Nicomacheus.

The most that I can add to it is this neat little chart showing that there's a very high correlation between election-year GDP growth and the success of the incumbent (apparently people have short memories, and don't blame the incumbent for the previous 3 years). The economy was on an absolute tear in 1984 -- an almost unprecedented 7.2%, made even more dramatic by the 2% contraction in 1982. If you want an ATL where Reagan wins in 1980 and loses in 1984, start by having the 1982 recession continue for another 2 years. If you wait until the 1984 primaries for your POD, for the reasons Nicomacheus gave, the Democratic Party is toast.
 
By 1984, the economy was reasonably good, and Americans generally don't throw out an incumbent president if the economy is good, even if there was trouble elsewhere. See also: 1996 and 2004.
 
Couple the prosperity and economic growth of the first Reagan term with the contrasting memories of sacrifice, limited expectations, and failures of the Carter years, and it would have been difficult for Reagan to not win in a landslide.

Concerning Mondale: talking to a number of natives of Minnesota, I've come to the conclusion that they'll elect out-there liberals like Mondale and Wellstone cheerfully, but that they'll often turn against them when they get anywhere close to wielding real power. They must like the talk but that's all: as senators, they have to deal with 99 other massive egos, and the chances of their programs getting enacted are pretty slim.
 
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