As fucked up as the economy is right now, it doesn’t hold a candle to the 70s. People freak about 7% mortgage rates right now, they started there in the 70s and went up to 13%-ish by the time Reagan was elected. The shit show started under Nixon, but people seem to blame Carter. Probably because of the time he had the audacity to ask Americans to turn their thermostats down. (I was just a bit too young for all this, so this is all filtered through what my parents told me.)
Combine that with the Iran hostage crisis, and the fact that Carter was too honest for his own good, and he didn’t stand a chance in 1980 against a charismatic opponent who wasn’t afraid to bend the truth now and then.
I found this link to a good overview of it all. It seems to be part of some course (there is a quiz at the end)
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/jimmy-carter-and-the-malaise-speech
I read that URL as the Bill of Frights. I figured it was some fringe mob running an “institute” for tax breaks and brainwashing. I gotta go to bed. 🤦
Maybe Bill O’Frights is Bill O’Reilly’s cousin
This is a fun but easy question. I’m sorry.
The military industrial complex literally sabotaged the Iran hostage negotiations in order to drag it out to cost Carter the White House, just to make sure they would get some tax cuts in the next administration.
Meanwhile, Trump has the conservative rage media machine operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with an unlimited budget and a never-ending Army of Internet trolls who are either evil enough to say anything or dumb enough to believe anything. He also has the literal KGB (FSB/GRU) looking out for him with a steady stream of free money, intelligence, and all manner of honeypotting, extortion schemes, and outright violence. Trump has Fox News and Twitter literally tripping over themselves to try and make sure he wins. Fox spent $787 million to settle a lawsuit so they could lie their asses off for Trump. Carter never had help anywhere even close to that.
Agreed
Jimmy Carter lost by like 10x Reagan’s electoral college votes, and more than 10x the number of states; I’d say he had it worse.
Why?
I wasn’t there, but my understanding is that Reagan was much more of a populist while Carter tried to be more evidence-based and treat the electorate like rational adults (which is generally a terrible idea for a politician)
