I’m willing to admit a blind spot on Reagan. I lived through it and experienced the huge change in our national malaise that he seemed to usher in to my 11-19 year old mind. I did go to the 1988 convention and volunteer for Dukakis. But mostly we just partied. Somehow we talked our way into staff badges which got us into every bar and open-bar party.
Even as a 10-year-old I can tell you the late 70s was a miserable time. Music sucked. Architecture sucked. NYC was a hell hole. The economy sucked. Ballparks were ugly astroturf nightmares. Watergate, Vietnam hangover, hippies turning into a-hole boomers, Iran hostages and rescue disaster. The Hollywood sign was crumbling. We just didn’t seem to care anymore. Only movies were good. The one place you could escape.
Carter got attacked by a rabid swimming rabbit while president. That’s your microcosm of the 70s.
Also to my other point - you can easily do a post-morten that just eviscerates almost any modern US president. They all suck.
I don’t know if that’s more or less strange than Vermont.
President - D+25
US House - D+38
Lt Governor - D+9
Treasurer - D+22
Sec of State - D+31
Att General - D+38
State House - D veto proof majority
State Senate - D veto proof majority
Governor - R+40
Phil Scott is just insanely popular here. I’m legit worried he might try for Leahy’s seat in 2022.
Let’s assume this happens (bwahahaha). I assume the Rs are still favored in both races? Further, I assume both races will be seen more or less as the same by voters given the circumstances?
My hot take is dems did pretty well in house but underperformed expectations from polls, leading to unreasonable butt hurt. Can’t expect to be that close to an off-year result in a presidential election. See 2006 for D and 2010 for R. Dems just convinced themselves that more Trump supporters would be rational and less motivated. We were wrong, but not excessively so.
Definitely some truth to this. Libs win and move forward because there is always more to do. But they have mainly been winning for the last 90 years. We forget this too often.
on the one hand a lot of the “democrats are so dumb for wasting resources in X” takes are dumb because they’re extremely results-oriented, but yeah, this race was lol dumb
I grew up in Scotland during the Reagan times. Iran pulled the fu Carter Iranian hostage thing, which helped usher in Reagan and the modern GOP.
Well done Iran, well done [sarcastic applause]. Now Iran is living with that also.
Even as a semi dumb kid in Scotland I knew Reagan was a nasty POS.
AOC did worse in her own district than two years ago (currently 10 points but some votes left to go), but I’m sure you’ll have more excuses for that too because everything is always someone else’s fault in your world.
