Comparing Mondale vs. Reagan to 2020

The infamous 1984 presidential election in which Americans had their first chance to repudiate the Reagan revolution of massive tax cuts for the wealthy to spawn equally massive budget deficits and income/wealth inequality, and failed miserably, should be studied this year with a cringe. Now that Joe Biden is the the presumptive nominee (ironically he got a vote at the same 1984 nominating convention) we have to consider what happened the last time a former Vice President of a Democratic administration that was tasked with cleaning up a Republican mess (Watergate in Jimmy Carter's case, EVERY ASPECT OF DUBYA'S DISASTROUS MISADMINISTRATION/ GRIFT/ CRIMINAL SYNDICATE for Barack Obama) faced an incumbent Republican who was unqualified and extreme. History has a way of rhyming and the stakes are just too damn high to let doughfacedonny steal another term.

These numbers should seriously unsettle Democrats. pic.twitter.com/d73kU2mQbB

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) April 21, 2020

This is the picture and tweet that got me thinking about possible rhymes in 2020 of the 1984 presidential election. In the latter year it was possible for people to go about their daily lives without politics affecting every aspect of them. This year, one has to retreat pretty far into themselves to escape the ramifications of authoritarian rule by incompetent gangsters. There was however, another epidemic concerning a novel disease that was little understood. AIDS had killed over 5,500 people prior to the 1984 election and it was still a joke to the republicans in office. Reagan left office with over 89,000 deaths under his belt from this joke and did nothing to help slow or stop the spread. We're already over halfway to that mark after about 3 months from COVID-19 and doughfacedonny has done worse than the nothing that Reagan did, in 2020 the republicans are actively trying to undermine containment and mitigation efforts for partisan gain and profiteering.

And the main reason that the awful, extremist republican got into office in the first place in both years is due to ratfcking and treason. In both instances the unqualified hack republicans denied just how much they cheated to manipulate voters. The Smithsonian magazine refers to “'individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages,' promising Tehran a cache of Israeli weapons in return" as a conspiracy theory. But historian Kai Bird wrote in the LA Times about a memo supporting the theory that future CIA director William Casey did in fact travel to Madrid, Spain to pass along the wink and nudge to an Iranian operative that the Islamic Republic would get a better deal for releasing hostages from Reagan than from Carter. Just as evidence now exists that Nixon sent envoys to South Vietnam in 1968 arguing practically the same thing, that he could get a better deal for Saigon than Humphrey if they dragged out peace negotiations until after the election.

Amazingly, the republican-controlled senate intelligence committee released a report on April 21 that concluded that the Russian government did in fact interfere with the 2016 election to help elect doughfacedonny. So for all the detractors on the right and the far left who claimed that Russian interference was a hoax and it was Hillary's bad campaigning and general ineptitude that lost her the election this would be a body blow to their confidence. But as we know nothing means anything anymore. Denial can be super-extra bulletproof when one's ego is on the line, though I rarely see Berniebros gloating about what a bad candidate Hillary was anymore. And MAGA republicans are basically unchallengeable because mainstream political press outfits only interview them on their feelings, trying to capture and scoop each other on when they finally flip on donny to see the real world. Never, ever do republicans get shamed for supporting this moron. 

In a decent world, the political press would be able to frame this election realistically but we don't live in that world. What will they do to give republicans an unearned even playing field this year? Joe Biden doesn't have a secret email server and doughfacedonny isn't a political outsider who refuses to release his tax returns. How will they frame reality this time? How will the Russians and other authoritarian regimes who love to see the US hobbled from within work to keep the game show host in office? Americans had the chance to arrest the Reaganite republican neoliberal agenda in 1984 as we have the chance to arrest the cancer of authoritarianism, treason, and incompetence this year. In case you forgot how Americans reacted to reaganism (republicanism) then:

The electoral college has been a broken system for much longer than when Dubya's Supreme Court pals gave him the win with a popular vote minority. Mondale won his home state by 0.18% to keep the map from being entirely red though he 40.5% of the popular vote. Four years ago, through voter suppression and Russian propaganda with a big assist from the political press's desperate need for balancing an utter incompetent with a hypercompetent candidate, team evil was able to steal Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania's electoral votes by a razor-thin margin. Whatever happens this year, no matter how inept the Biden campaign is, no matter how the political press puts their thumb on the scales, no matter how much republican and foreign ratfcking and dirty tricks it is up to us to change the tune. Whatever your motivations, restoring the Supreme Court, flipping the Senate, just hating doughfacedonny with the heat of a thousand suns, or having Diamond Joe as president, that map above has to be inverted to the greatest extent possible.

Then the real work begins.