WI The Economy doesn't Recover during Reagan's First Term?

What if the recession was still going on in 1984? Would Mondale still have been nominated? Would Reagan still have been re-elected?
 
I can't see Mondale win. He's just too left-wing for 80s America.

Hart on the other hand, would likely beat Reagan.
If the economy is bad enough in 1984, I could see Mondale narrowly beating Reagan. With that said, this could produce enough of a butterfly to give the nomination to Hart, or other candidates who didn't run OTL for fear that Reagan was unbeatable might jump in and take the nomination.
 
I think this was kicked around in a fairly recent thread. If the economy continued along late 70s/early 80s levels of awful, Reagan would probably have lost as "Reagan Democrats" returned to their ancestral voting patterns. Beating Mondale would have been tough, but Hart came close. In a "Democrats smell blood in the water" scenario where Reagan looks very vulnerable, John Glenn might have gotten a closer look as he was, at least on paper, the Democrats' strongest general election candidate. 1980s electoral vote math was tough for Dems, though. They almost have to win California, which would not have been easy then. The only other path isn't an easy one: the whole Northeast and Midwest (except Indiana and Missouri), Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and either (a) Kentucky and Tennessee or (b) Florida. Possible in a bad enough economy, but far from a slam duck certainty.
 
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