WI: 1982 Recession Lingers, Reagan Falters

Cuomo only really got a national image after his excellent speech at the 1984 DNC.

That said, Hart being the nominee is extremely possible in this scenario.

I have trouble seeing Hart beat Reagan, even with a bad economy. He'd just get beaten into the dirt on crime, national security, abortion, and the idea that his resume is too thin.
 
I have trouble seeing Hart beat Reagan, even with a bad economy. He'd just get beaten into the dirt on crime, national security, abortion, and the idea that his resume is too thin.

I do disagree. Those issues would keep it from being a total sweep for Hart, but he can contrast his youth with Reagan's old age and his moderation would would appeal to a lot more people than Mondale's left-wing politics would.
 
Mondale had establishment support, union support, name recognition and the money. He's the candidate to beat and I do not see a reason for him to lose the nomination any more so than actually occurred. Could Hart have beaten Mondale even in the OTL? Perhaps. Could he have done so in this scenario? Perhaps. But he did not in reality, and it remains Mondale's nomination to lose in this scenario.
 
I do disagree. Those issues would keep it from being a total sweep for Hart, but he can contrast his youth with Reagan's old age and his moderation would would appeal to a lot more people than Mondale's left-wing politics would.

And then Reagan would trot out his "youth and inexperience" line and it suddenly doesn't matter. Remember, brand, not policy, and the Democratic brand was dead for a decade.
 
When all else fails, run on crime. Maybe abortion, too.

It's hard to see Reagan not running on some type of star-spangled optimism. Perhaps he would have to run a campaign more akin to what Bush ran in 1988, being dirty toward the opponent, but it seems in character to be more positive. "The need for recovery remains, but we have made progress on that journey. We're all working towards the same America. It is a city upon a hill, where everyone can share in their hopes and dreams, and create a better, more decent life for themselves and their children. It is a sense of ourselves and our possibilities, which we had forgotten four years ago, and which we have begun to rediscover. We have not yet reached that city upon the hill, but I know we can continue this journey together. Blah Blah Blah, Nancy."
 
It's hard to see Reagan not running on some type of star-spangled optimism. Perhaps he would have to run a campaign more akin to what Bush ran in 1988, being dirty toward the opponent, but it seems in character to be more positive. "The need for recovery remains, but we have made progress on that journey. We're all working towards the same America. It is a city upon a hill, where everyone can share in their hopes and dreams, and create a better, more decent life for themselves and their children. It is a sense of ourselves and possiblities which we had forgotten four years ago, and which we have begun to rediscover. Blah Blah Blah, Nancy."

Eh, that's what campaign surrogates are for. And in person at debates, it doesn't seem too hard to imagine him taking passive-aggressive swipes at "liberal permissiveness" with a smile on his face.

And if Mondale doesn't come up with the Wendy's reference, Reagan just might.
 
Eh, that's what campaign surrogates are for. And in person at debates, it doesn't seem too hard to imagine him taking passive-aggressive swipes at "liberal permissiveness" with a smile on his face.

And if Mondale doesn't come up with the Wendy's reference, Reagan just might.

The difficulty of imagination is we have never experienced a Reagan who ever really had to fight that hard for anything. Reagan ran over Brown in 1966, he ran over Unruh in 1970, he ran over Carter in 1980, he ran over Mondale in 1984. He ran against weakened Democratic incumbents who were embattled and had lost their popularity, and then made himself a popular (enough) established incumbent that easily defeated their designated successor. I don't know what this Reagan would do. Would he keep optimistic but pleading? Would he return to his former 1960s firebrand, railing against socialists and dangerous, seditious hippies and leftists? I do think that he would take passive-aggressive swipes, make it a narrative that the Carter years had been even worse, make it a narrative that Mondale's liberalism was going to hurt the economy, and make it a narrative that America still has far to go, but we're already on the road to recovery and we've already made progress and Reagan is the man to lead us through it. Maybe he'd make the analogy that Franklin Roosevelt took four terms to fix the economy (inaccurate, but how Reagan would phrase it), and the Depression was not over by 1936, nor would the recession be over by 1984, but it will be over, and it will be over under Reagan when it would not be under Mondale. And then liberals can prod him, saying WW2 ended the Depression, and WW3 would end the recession, which is why Reagan is working so hard for it.
 
The difficulty of imagination is we have never experienced a Reagan who ever really had to fight that hard for anything. Reagan ran over Brown in 1966, he ran over Unruh in 1970, he ran over Carter in 1980, he ran over Mondale in 1984. He ran against weakened Democratic incumbents who were embattled and had lost their popularity, and then made himself a popular (enough) established incumbent that easily defeated their designated successor. I don't know what this Reagan would do. Would he keep optimistic but pleading? Would he return to his former 1960s firebrand, railing against socialists and dangerous, seditious hippies and leftists? I do think that he would take passive-aggressive swipes, make it a narrative that the Carter years had been even worse, make it a narrative that Mondale's liberalism was going to hurt the economy, and make it a narrative that America still has far to go, but we're already on the road to recovery and we've already made progress and Reagan is the man to lead us through it. Maybe he'd make the analogy that Franklin Roosevelt took four terms to fix the economy (inaccurate, but how Reagan would phrase it), and the Depression was not over by 1936, nor would the recession be over by 1984, but it will be over, and it will be over under Reagan when it would not be under Mondale. And then liberals can prod him, saying WW2 ended the Depression, and WW3 would end the recession, which is why Reagan is working so hard for it.

That would be one hell of a campaign.
 
This is a scenario that is tailor made for a President John Glenn. Glenn's OTL campaign was a mess and Glenn frankly wasn't a great national candidate, but he was a genuine American hero and someone against whom the Reagan spin doctors would have had a most difficult time painting as a prissy pantywaist liberal with a pink aura about him and questionable patriotism. In a situation where Democrats really smell blood in the water and want badly to win, Glenn was just sufficiently liberal to be nominated and a cinch to carry Ohio in the fall.

While we tend to think of Reagan as some kind of unstoppable political force, the reality at the time was quite different and in a recession continued scenario, he would have been very vulnerable; the recession was quite severe and Reagan had taken on a bit of the aura of failure through the 1982 midterms. In this scenario, it isn't hard to see a lot of "Reagan Democrats" and New Deal era voters going back to their ancestral voting habits in 1984 as many did in 1982.
 
Here's something from the neoconservative high water mark year of 2004, which I find interesting purely because it is a snapshot of an era. It gives a neocon perspective on how the Mondale administration could be viewed by that movement. And the additional interest is that it is like those 1950s anticommunist pieces that proved devastatingly ignorant.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/8019
 
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