Could Mondale have done better with a different campaign?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Well certainly , he could have done better then he did(I mean he only barely won one state, and electorally did worse then McGovern). The best he can do in my opinion though is this:

[OSR stands with Israel]

Well certainly , he could have done better then he did(I mean he only barely won one state, and electorally did worse then McGovern). The best he can do in my opinion though is this:

This actually looks like a fairly realistic "best case" scenario for Mondale, maybe throw in a few random states like New York, West Virginia, Washington, Hawaii into the mix....

The problem with Mondale was that only did he somehow seem to appear to be older than Reagan in terms of optics, but additionally he was widely seen as an establishment Democratic candidate, as the former Veep of unpopular President Jimmy Carter (Who only won six states in 1980) running against an extremely charismatic and personally popular Ronald Reagan.

Although Reagan's personal favs were high in '84, many of his economic and foreign policy platforms were not....

Certainly we would not expect Mondale to perform well in the "Deep South", compared to Carter in '80, however it appears that in '84 Reagan was able to bag a huge chunk of John Anderson '80s voters, which sealed his fate in the Suburbs of Northern States.

Now, back in the days when TV campaign commercials were much more influential than today, this classic Reagan '84 ad does a compare & contrasts, but with an upbeat and optimistic theme...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY

The Democratic establishment selection of Mondale as their candidate in '84 was an awful choice that reminded voters of the economic pains of the late '70s ("Stagflation") rather than hitting Reagan on the economic austerity regime that caused widespread recession and poverty throughout our great country.

The country experienced major economic growth in 1983 and 1984 and the recession ended in late 1982(when Reagan economic policies started to really take affect). The Major economic recession under Reagan happened in 1981-1982(which by the way was way to early for it to be his fault). The idea that saying the countries economy was better in 1980 then 1984 is just not even close to being true.

On poverty here are the numbers(from 1976): https://www.infoplease.com/business-finance/poverty-and-income/persons-below-poverty-level-us-1975-2010


1976: 11.8%
1977: 11.6%
1978: 11.4%
1979: 11.7%
1980: 13%
1981: 14%
1982: 15%
1983: 15.2%
1984: 14.4%


As you can see from those numbers once Reagan policies started to take affect the poverty rate started to drop ( and for 1983 grow slower the previous year).

oh and here's the numbers the rest of his admin

1985: 14%
1986: 13.6%
1987: 13.4%
1988: 13%
1989: 12.8%

[OSR stands with Israel]

Not much. The timing was just bad, because the economy improved by late 1983/early 1984. Had the election been in 1982, it would have been a toss-up.

What sunk Mondale as well as his ineffectual debate performance was the fact that Geraldine Ferraro's husband's ethics got the best of the campaign.  Mondale would had to dump Ferraro and thus he would have angered women voters and they got him through the primaries.

Actually I disagree on that one. The only really strong debate moment of Reagan was the age joke in the foreign policy discussion. His performance in the domestic debate was awful. Probably Reagan was already in the early stages of Alzheimer's by 1984. He often seemed confused and it took him relatively long to give a response. He was far more vital and agile in the 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter.

Dont most incumbent presidents to bad in the debates:


I mean both bush and obama did significantly worse in 04 and 12 debates then 00 and 08 debates.