"In a way, (Ronald) Reagan was to (President Gerald) Ford (in the 1976 election) what Bernie Sanders was to Hillary Clinton or Eugene McCarthy was to Hubert Humphrey (in the 1968 election) or...Ted Kennedy to Jimmy Carter (in the 1980 election): a charismatic figure who won the hearts of many and whose popularity failed to translate to the eventual nominee."
A great parallel between Hillary Clinton (vs. Trump) and Jimmy Carter (vs. Reagan) is drawn in the following:
"(President Jimmy Carter's) 1982 memoir 'Keeping Faith' tells the story of the 1980 general campaign almost exclusively through the prism of his efforts to free the American hostages in Iran. To borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, Carter 'misunderestimated' Reagan, and Carter has never tried very hard to conceal his contempt for the man who crushed his bid for re-election. Carter wrote that he was 'pleased that Governor Reagan was the nominee,' adding: 'With him as my opponent, the issues would be clearly drawn. At the time, all my political team believed that he was the weakest candidate the Republicans could have chosen. My campaign analysts had been carefully studying what he had been saying during the Republican primary elections, and it seemed inconceivable that he would be acceptable as president when his positions were clearly exposed to the public.'
"This inability to discern an opponent’s elemental appeal recurred in 2016. While Trump was making his unconventional but effective appeals to just enough of the country to win in the Electoral College, Clinton admits that she was focused on how she was going to govern — working through Cabinet choices and even buying a neighboring house in Chappaqua to house her White House staff during the coming administration. Like Carter, Clinton could not conceive of a world in which the voters would buy what the Republican nominee was selling. 'I did not realize then,” Carter wrote of the summer of 1980, 'that the press and public would not believe that Reagan actually meant what he was saying — although we tried to emphasize the radical nature of his departure from the policies of my administration and from those of my predecessors in the White House.'"
What are your thoughts on any or all of the above?
If you are interested in history, I recommend reading the entire piece, which also includes fascinating bits on Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others here - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/books/review/jon-meacham-hillary-clinton-what-happened-presidential-election.html?mcubz=0&_r=0
Benedict Arnold 