Oh, and another spin on this: Because Dems are the party of believing in observable reality and the Rs are the party of believing whatever unsubstantiated nonsense you feel like believing, there is a strong tilt in all age groups toward education. Getting education and learning things about the world weirdly seems to make people stop believing conservative mumbo jumbo. Anyway, less than 40% of Americans under 25 have a college or other post secondary degree.
An uneducated population is a Republican population.
All of that stuff was on the 6 oāclock news and wasnāt that far out of the mainstream. Iran-Contra was extensively and accurately covered. Shopping malls were widely hated. āGreed is goodā came from the movie Wall Street in 1987, the same year as Platoon, Robocap & Full Metal Jacket. Michael Dukakis won 45.7% of the vote in 1988 and carried 10 states.
Minority views, sure. But it was a sizeable minority and the views were hardly radical or esoteric.
If I had to guess why my cohort is more deplorable than others today Iād say weāre just uniquely bitter in our middle age. Our youth is gone and the future sucks. Might as well vote for the people who feed our angry nihilism.
Probably Nixon was an outlier in American politics and most major scandals will play out like Iran-Contra or Jan6. How many votes would they have had to boot out Nixon if heād refused to resign? Plus Nixon probably gets away with it without recordings of him blatantly doing crimes.
Yeah, I agree with this. But weāre trying to understand a 60/40 tilt. The minority views are not as explanatory as the āaverageā view, which was what I was trying to articulate.
" A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me thatās true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not ."
Ronald Regan
You just have to believe , in spite of facts and evidence.
I donāt really know. It may have been down to just how likeable Reagan was? Here he is trying to explain it all away. This was broadcast on every station during prime time.
The 80s and 90s were also periods where the countryās economic prosperity was undoubtedly improving compared to the 70s. Reagan (wrongly) gets a lot of credit for that. I think people in there 40s, 50s and 60s largely care way more about their pocketbooks than social issues. Reagan is basically the poster boy for the economic gains at any cost mentality and so people idolize him for that.
Nixon was widely hated, even by many Republicans. Nixon was a truly detestable human being.
Reagan was widely loved, even by many Democrats. Reagan was a truly nice human being (though he did many detestable things and I personally despised him) .
There was also a deeply held narrative belief that the perceived economic boom was deeply connected to the inherent superiority of capitalism as compared to communism, Reagan was the symbol of Defeating Communism, etc.
It canāt be understated how much non political people (the significant majority though less so nowadays) will attribute the quality of their life, where driven by a great economic situation, to the government. Especially right wing ones which are, with zero evidence, considered better at running an economy. This then drives what little political views they have (ie. Loving Reagan or Thatcher - and nostalgia/time makes the heart grow fonder)
In case anyone is curious, my mother, who again is more left than Iād say 60-65% of America, doubled down on the Reagan narrative and said the article supports the claim because the talks didnāt actually get finalized until the day Reagan won which shows they were afraid of him
The āYouāre wrong aboutā podcast has an episode about Iran-Contra and they talked about how Oliver Northās performance in full uniform before congress left quite an impression and probably strongly influenced the public perception.
