How The Democrats Lost Dixie, Part 5:What Carter And The Democrats Got Wrong About Reagan Reflects Their Biggest Weakness to This Day

 

It is during the recollection of Carter's fall campaign against Ronald Reagan in The Outlier where we see by far the greatest amount of rewriting of history by Kai Bird.  Because Reagan has always been the greatest representation of everything the Democrats and the left get wrong about electoral politics as well as being their biggest supervillain Bird does everything possible to argue that Carter  and his campaign always took Reagan seriously

That's not what is reported in Camelot's End Jon Ward's more objective retelling of Carter and the 1980 campaign. According to Carter in that book: "At the time, all of my political team believed that Reagan was the weakest candidate the Republicans could have chosen." He was contemptuous of Reagan's speaking style and in his diary said: "He has his memorized tapes. He pushes a button, and they come out." He calls Reagan 'dumb and incompetent.' None of this is in Bird's book.

The reason is transparent. Ronald Reagan represents everything that the left and much of the Democrat party loathe about politics, the so-called intelligentsia that George Wallace said made up the party as far back as 1972. Then and now the left wing of the party is full of the intellectual snobs Wallace warned about and at a basic level they are either unable or unwilling to accept how much of politics is about how the average voter reacts emotionally to a voter rather than about intellectual policy.

The Democrats had been making mistakes like this repeatedly over the past thirty years. They had preferred Adlai Stevenson's intellect even though Eisenhower trounced him twice. They could never accept how Nixon's emotionally angry appeal had a hold on a certain level of the electorate and how television only enhanced it.  Reagan, however, was by far the biggest mistake they ever made and even more than half a century after he took the political world by storm, most of them refuse to acknowledge it.

They couldn't take seriously the way he regaled his audiences, nor understand how his folksy optimistic delivery registered with them. Reagan's ability to brush off remarks and asides with humor was something none of his opponents on the Democrats could ever understand, primarily because by and large liberal candidates rarely had the ability to emotionally connect with the masses the way conservative Republicans can. In large part this is because of the intelligent nature of the left who does feel inclined to look down on the very working people that felt isolated by much of the way candidates like Kennedy and McGovern were campaigning. And when they did try to speak emotionally they frequently did in terms of a jeremiad much like Carter would during the fall campaign and how much of his 'meanness' was always present.

Bird bends over backwards to try and argue that Carter was cheating out of victory, bringing up all the old standards: the briefing books that a Kennedy insider supposedly gave to Reagan an edge in their only debate, the idea that Southern Baptists rejected a 'real Christian like Carter' for political power (ignoring that many Americans at the time had thought Carter's Christianity off-putting) the idea that Reagan's team might have engaged in backchannels in Teheran to stop an 'October surprise' from happening. All of this ignores some very clear realities that were apparent at the time.

For one thing Reagan had locked up the nomination early, clinching it after the Michigan primary. For another, unlike Reagan, he had a united party behind him that had every intention of defeating Carter. Reagan himself did much to add to that unity, healing old wounds with Gerald Ford and offering him the Vice Presidency and eventually, though reluctantly, taking his biggest rival for the nomination George H.W. Bush as his Vice President. And on the night of his convention acceptance speech Reagan made it clear he rejected the idea America was in decline (what many had taken away from his crisis of confidence speech) and ended with a bit of stagecraft by ending with a moment of silent prayer.

 Reagan had an ability to regain control of events and master television that Carter simply did not, as his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention demonstrated repeatedly even before the debacle with Kennedy. His speech was stiff, sounded like he was begging for Kennedy's approval and when he tried to give a cheer to Hubert Humphrey, he referred to him as 'Hubert Horatio Hornblower!" before he corrected himself. When Reagan saw the final minutes of the convention his remark was simple: "If that's there idea of unity, they have a long way to go."

Even before the fight with Kennedy became a bigger debacle Carter was bleeding from numerous wounds. The first was a third party run from John Anderson, a Republican Congressman from Illinois. Anderson had been a member of the House leadership for a while and for a time in the 1980 primaries had thrown a scare into Reagan, nearly winning both the Massachusetts and Vermont primaries before Reagan regained momentum. After it ended in late April Anderson announced a third party run.

Anderson was particularly popular on college campuses and the platform he had was fairly radical. He proposed a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax to reduce consumption, wanted to slash social security tax in half, modest gun control reform, supported the ERA and was vociferously in favor of abortion. He also believed in a moratorium on new nuclear energy plants. He considered first Walter Cronkite, then Edward Brooke, the first African-American elected to the Senate in history as his running mate. He would eventually settle on Patrick Lucey, the former Democratic governor of Wisconsin as his vice president.

By this point Anderson's liberalism was far out of touch with where the GOP was and pretty extreme for where Democrats were at the time. One can see his campaign for the Presidency as a prototype for similar left-wing runs for the White House such as Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders. The Carter team took him seriously. In July Anderson was shown with 23 percent of the vote in California, more support than Carter had in the state.

Anderson knew what his role was and who he was taking votes away from. On July 31^st he met with Kennedy and emerged saying he would consider dropping out if Carter would not stand for reelection. When that failed Anderson managed to get on the ballot in all fifty states and managed to achieve enough support to qualify for the first Presidential debate in Baltimore. Carter refused to attend, saying that he viewed Anderson was 'primarily a creation of the press." Anderson had indicated he would drop out if Carter debated him but when he didn't he chose to stay in the race.

Increasingly this made Carter look churlish and childish. There had been an idea of an empty chair at the debate to represent Carter (the idea was dropped) and the political cartoonist Oliphant drew the debate stage with a baby's high chair to stand in for Carter.  Reagan by contrast agreed to debate him which gave him the moral high ground and an opportunity to appear before a national audience who didn't see him as the boogeyman Carter and the Democrats made him out to be. It also robbed Carter of a chance to make a case for himself as President which he wasn't doing a good job of.

It didn't help that before the convention his campaign pitched up more baggage, this time from his own family. On July 14^th the Justice Department filed a civil complaint against Billy Carter for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Carter's younger brother had failed to report to the government services he had rendered to the Libyan government by waging 'a propaganda campaign' on behalf of the nation's foreign policy objectives. Considering that at the time the Libyan government was deeply hostile to America this was bad enough but the fact that the President has written his younger brother and told him not to travel there anymore, yet Billy had continued to do so, was even worse.

Worse on that very day Billy Carter registered as an agent of Libya, meaning the President's brother was officially working for a country whose citizens had just a few months earlier stormed and set on fire the American embassy in Tripoli.

On July 15 the Justice Department complaint hit the front page of the New York Times, sharing space with Reagan's promise to 'make America great again'. One week later, new reports came possibly linking Billy to a plot by Libyan operatives in the U.S. to bribe American officials. And worst of all it was announced that Brzezinski had used Billy as a go-between to start talks with the Libyan government to see if they would be helpful in getting the Iranians to release the hostages.

By this point Carter was trailing Reagan in the polls by anywhere from 25 to 30 points. He made up much of a difference by the end of the convention but he was facing a far bigger problem. And its worth noting the key difference between The Outlier's perspective on Carter's reelection and reality because it's by far the biggest way the book is revisionist.

According to Camelot's End going into the fall campaign Carter was facing an anger over a stagnant economy, high inflation and rising unemployment.  Yet if one read The Outlier you'd be hard press to know any of this was a problem during Carter's term or for that matter the 1970s. Stagflation the term that became the downfall of Carter's administration is mentioned exactly once on one page in regard to Carter's Presidency. Nelson Rockefeller, by contrast, is mention three times over three pages. The 'economic situation is mentioned less than 20 times in the 628 pages that make up the bulk of Bird's book. David Rockefeller, by contrast, is mentioned 17 times, a ridiculous disproportionate amount. (Bird seems to believe he is mostly responsible for much of what happened with the Shah of Iran coming to America.)

To be clear Bird claims to have done extensive research, read transcriptions of Carter's diaries and most of the aides were still living as well as Carter himself. The bibliography is 20 pages long as opposed to the mere 8 of Ward's book which is significant shorter. Yet Ward mentions inflation no less than 17 times in his book and unemployment 7 times.

This is not a small matter but it is clear what the reason is. Having spent much time among so many progressives of which Bird demonstrates more than a few times he clearly is, the reason for the economic problems of America today is solely the fault of Ronald Reagan and Reagan alone. Most discussion of economics among progressives (and Bird I should mention makes it clear that he agrees with it) goes from the unprecedented economic growth from the New Deal to the Great Society and then jumps to Reagan having ended it, basically ignoring the entire 1970s as well as Carter's Presidency.  In a sense this is a rewrite of what progressives themselves believed during Carter's administration,, that Carter rejected the rules of liberalism causing them to first support Kennedy's candidacy and then later John Anderson's third party run.  The whole reason for the plan to unseat Carter was a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party and what it stood for. Carter clearly understood that the country had moved to the right but not even in a biography of the President is someone who is fundamentally progressive willing to acknowledge this reality.

So much of the fall campaign is spent bashing Ronald Reagan. And its clear the biggest difference comes about one of the most famous lines in debate history. At the end of the second debate Reagan famously summed up by asking the voters: "Are you better off then you were four years ago?" The book also talks about Carter's generally miserable debate performance against Reagan and details how the campaign thought they knew they'd lost.

Very little about Carter's fall campaign is mentioned in The Outlier. And when Reagan gives his famous line, Bird says: "And many voters concluded that they were not."  He also says Carter knew he had performed badly on TV. But they give no reason why voters might have had any reason to think things were bad for them and takes another opportunity to take a swing at Reagan's better performance.

So much of The Outlier is clearly done as much a swing at Reagan than anything else. They take an opportunity to say that Carter had more press conferences in one term then Reagan did in two for the sole purpose of saying Reagan avoided the press. They devote an entire chapter arguing that many of Reagan's staff may have worked to stop an October surprise that would have allowed an early release of the hostages. And they do everything in their power not to say that Reagan won the White House but Carter was cheated of it which simply ignores the real economic realities which had been  one of the reasons the Democrats had not wanted Carter to run for reelection in the first place. It's like trying to write about why Lincoln was facing grim prospects for reelection and then ignoring how badly things were going for the Union in Atlanta and Richmond during the summer of 1864.

And this ignores the biggest problem with Carter's reelection campaign: he couldn't come up with any real reason for people to vote for him again. So instead he spent the entire fall campaign attacking Ronald Reagan so viciously that he was guilty of overkill. No more was this more clear then at the Al Smith Dinner, a tradition since 1945 where the two would meet in person for the first time.

Reagan, who spoke first, was brief, funny and self-deprecating. He joked about his age (he was about to turn 70) multiple times including: "There's no truth to the rumor that I was at the original Al Smith Dinner." By contrast Carter skipped the dinner and arrived merely in time for the speeches, unlike Reagan. He was tone-deaf, didn't joke about himself and only took shots at Reagan. Then he delivered a speech within a speech, talking for ten minutes about the need for religious tolerance.

A columnist pointed out Carter's biggest problem: "There is no fun in Jimmy Carter. He has acted as if his job were a pious duty. He has uplifted practically no one." He did have successes to tout, but his lack of vision prevented him from doing so.

In hindsight the biggest surprise about the 1980 Presidential election was that the polls tightened to the point that Reagan was actually concerned that Carter would win and agreed to drop his request Anderson appear in any debate in order to debate Carter before election day. And from the start of the October 28^th debate millions of viewers saw what Ham Jordan did: "Reagan looked relaxed, smiling, robust; the President, erect, lips tight, looking like a coiled spring, ready to pounce, an overtrained boxer, too ready for the bout."

And it showed in another famous moment. When Carter accused Reagan of campaigning against Medicare, the moment Reagan was allowed to speak, he paused, looked askance at the President, and said with a practiced chuckle: "There you go again." That famous moment is not in The Outlier at all, nor is Ted Kennedy's reaction to it. He turned to a campaign advisor and said: "He just got killed."

The stunning thing in hindsight about the 1980 election was that for much of it Carter actually thought there was a chance of winning.  On the eve of the election Carter received notice from Jody Powell saying that internal polling said not only was his lead gone but the break was so great that it was going to be a devastating loss. Which is was, of course. Reagan won by a margin that stunned even him winning with 51 percent to Carter's 41 percent (Anderson received less than 7 percent) and carrying 44 out of 50 states for 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49. Carter only carried his native Georgia, Mondale's home state of Minnesota, Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island and West Virginia along with DC. Anderson did take votes from both candidates but most of it was greater than Reagan's margin of victory in fourteen states. Yet even had Anderson dropped out it would still have been a resounding defeat according to the statistics: Reagan would have gotten 321 electoral votes to Carter's 217.

But far worse consequences occurred down ballot, most dreadfully in the Senate. In what was one of the worst defeats for an incumbent party in the history of the 20^th century and by far the most recent the Democrats would lost 12 seats to the Republicans giving them control of the Senate for the first time since 1954. And much of this must be laid at the foot of Carter, though some was more about the rightward trajectory of the country.

Many Democrats who'd been in the Senate for years were in states that had been Republican strongholds for longer. Birch Bayh of Indiana, George McGovern of South Dakota and Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin (at that point the state was fundamentally Republican) had managed to buck the trend for years. In 1980 Reagan's coattails were long enough to get them out. Another loss may have come from the decision of a liberal Republican. Jacob Javits of New York had lost his Senate primary to Al D'Amato but rather than leave the race he chose to run on the Liberal Party ticket. Many Democrats were afraid that he would syphon off enough votes for Elizabeth Holtzman, the Democratic nominee and that D'Amato would win. This fear was well-founded. D'Amato won his first election to the Senate by less than 1.5 percent in a race where Javits took eleven percent of the vote. It was a Democratic opportunity for a pickup that someone closer to their own politics had thwarted.

A larger problem may have come when Carter chose to concede at 9:50 pm, Eastern Standard Time. At that point polls on the West Coast and in some states that were in the Central and Mountain time zone were still open. This would outrage many Democrats at the time who later thought Carter's politically tone-deaf decision might have cost them in down-ballot races in these states. There is evidence to back this up in some states.

Frank Church of Idaho had been fighting the political headwinds of his state for years. But he ended up losing his election to Steve Symms by less than one percent of the vote. It's a tougher argument to make with Warren Magnuson, who lost by nearly nine percent and was already in ill-health but an argument could be made. That decision might have also cost the Democrats a chance for a pickup in a critical seat.

 Barry Goldwater was running for his third term for the Senate since 1968. One would think the man whose campaign was considered the inspiration for Reagan's would have floated to victory in the Senate.  Instead, he only managed to win over Bill Scuultz by little more than one percentage vote, meaning had polls not closed the Democrats might have taken some measure of revenge. (The narrow margin would later convince Goldwater to retire after this term.)

There was also a chance, albeit a more remote one, for a pick up in Oregon. Republican Bob Packwood was expected to have an easy victory over Democratic challenger Ted Kulongoski. He led by double digits in most polls but the Democratic incumbent closed the gap as the race went on. Packwood made no real blunders but it's not impossible. Still it is at least possible Carter's early concession might have allowed the Democrats to hold the Senate, even if they suffered major defeats across the country.

The party did face some losses in the South as well. Jeremiah Denton narrowly won the Senate in Alabama over Jim Folsom Junior. Herman Talmadge of Georgia lost by a similar slim margin to Mark Mattingly in Georgia. Robert Morgan of North Carolina lost to John Porter East, making North Carolina have both members of the Senate as Republicans.  And Democrat Richard Stone lost his primary to Bill Gunter in Florida only to lose to Paula Hawkins. However Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Russell Long of Louisiana, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, Wendell Ford of Kentucky  and Tom Eagleton of Missouri all kept their seats even though Reagan would carry all of these states by enormous margins. Not even the enormous coattails of Reagan's landslide could completely dethrone the New South.

The clear lesson of the 1980 election was that the coalition the Democrats had relied on since the New Deal, made of union members and ethnics in the big cities, poor rural voters, racial minorities, Catholics and the South – had splintered for good. It was an event that led to political realignment that we are still feeling the repercussions of to this day. For the next decade the Democratic Party would try to rebuild and learn lessons from this massive defeat – lessons, it should be noted, that certain parts of that coalition are still in denial about even now.

In the next article I will deal with how the Democratic Party began to adjust to the new political realities during the 1980s and how by contrast the left wing of the party basically chose to ignore them.