How could Jimmy Carter defeat Ronald Reagan for a second term in 1980? Reagan seemed to overcome the "extremist" label that people slapped on him in '68 and '76, and he won a historic landslide over Carter OTL. But how could Carter hold on for a second term and defeat Reagan and independent John Anderson in 1980?
AHC: Jimmy Carter Wins 1980
- Thread starter Tresckow
- Start date
Better handling of the economy is a must - people were pretty sick of the malaise and stagflation of the 70s, and they wanted answers.
Better handling of the Iran hostage crisis helps, as would preventing Reagan from getting his grubby mitts on Carter’s debate notes and making Carter look like a fool.
Better handling of the Iran hostage crisis helps, as would preventing Reagan from getting his grubby mitts on Carter’s debate notes and making Carter look like a fool.
After the Afghanistan invasion, if he could have found a way to state publically "I've just given the Soviets their own Vietnam", while staying JUST this side of claiming he wanted the invasion to happen, he prob'ly woulda been the biggest hero of the Cold War.
Carter declares war on Iran over the hostage crisis. Incumbent presidents during war usually wins
Carter is less like Kim Campbell and more like Franklin D. Roosevelt, in terms of governing.
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The OTL example of playing the avoiding-a/condemning-to-a Vietnam card shows it doesn't play well no matter how accurate. Also, Carter did not know it would play out like that. Nor did the Soviets.
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Eagle Claw would help Carter permanently since it was a complete failure and led to the hostage crisis continuing until the following year. If Eagle Claw succeeds, then the hostage crisis ends pretty quickly and does not dominate the 1980 election, though the stagnant economy would hurt Carter. It'll be close in either direction.
Also, if Carter wins, who does the GOP nominate? Would Bush be the frontrunner, now having been a running mate and a bigger national profile than before? I think he could be the "I told you so" candidate and run as a centrist, after all he did call Reaganomics voodoo economics.
Would Mondale be the 1984 nominee or would it go to someone else?
Would Mondale be the 1984 nominee or would it go to someone else?
Taking advantage of his Congressional majorities in 1977 and 78, not going out of his way to alienate Tip O'Neil, and keeping Ted Kennedy on his side, and passing healthcare reform is a good start. Governing as more of a New Dealer on kitchen table issues as opposed to a prototype "New Democrat" would help immensely too and would likely soften the economic blows of the late 70s. Getting Americans out of Iran as the revolution is starting would also prevent the Hostage Crisis, which was the biggest blow to his re election prospects in 1980. Granted, Carter would still likely struggle to win, after all he damn near lost in 1976, but doing a combination of what I and others in this thread have suggested might narrowly get him over the finish line in 1980.
Carter winning in 1980 likely means the GOP at minimum retakes the Senate in 1982 (they wouldn't in 1980 if Carter wins, it took a Reagan landslide for it to happen in OTL) and 50/50 chance they take the House with it. As for who's nominated in both parties, Mondale is most certainly the nominee in 1984, though I doubt Ferraro is his running mate, I could see it being someone like Gary Hart. For the GOP, the conservative wing will be somewhat discredited after a Reagan loss in 1980, and Bush will be tied to said loss after being Reagan's running mate, so it'd likely be someone else from the center right. Maybe Howard Baker builds himself a national platform being the leading Republican in the Senate and a stint as Majority leader after 1982 gives him what he needs to clinch the nomination. There are other moderate Republican senators/governors, likely from the northeast or midwest, that aren't on my radar that could also build a national platform for themselves in a second Carter term as well that could be nominated.
As for who wins it depends. Even a second Carter term, the first two years of it in particular, are gonna be bumpy. That, as well as any gridlock that happens after 1982 would help the GOP. However, if Carter can accomplish anything with Republicans controlling one or both houses of Congress and the economy is similar to OTL, so long as Mondale runs a half way decent campaign, he could pull it off. Regardless, whichever party wins the Presidency in 1984, is probably favored to keep it until 1992, barring some serious economic butterflies.
Carter winning in 1980 likely means the GOP at minimum retakes the Senate in 1982 (they wouldn't in 1980 if Carter wins, it took a Reagan landslide for it to happen in OTL) and 50/50 chance they take the House with it. As for who's nominated in both parties, Mondale is most certainly the nominee in 1984, though I doubt Ferraro is his running mate, I could see it being someone like Gary Hart. For the GOP, the conservative wing will be somewhat discredited after a Reagan loss in 1980, and Bush will be tied to said loss after being Reagan's running mate, so it'd likely be someone else from the center right. Maybe Howard Baker builds himself a national platform being the leading Republican in the Senate and a stint as Majority leader after 1982 gives him what he needs to clinch the nomination. There are other moderate Republican senators/governors, likely from the northeast or midwest, that aren't on my radar that could also build a national platform for themselves in a second Carter term as well that could be nominated.
As for who wins it depends. Even a second Carter term, the first two years of it in particular, are gonna be bumpy. That, as well as any gridlock that happens after 1982 would help the GOP. However, if Carter can accomplish anything with Republicans controlling one or both houses of Congress and the economy is similar to OTL, so long as Mondale runs a half way decent campaign, he could pull it off. Regardless, whichever party wins the Presidency in 1984, is probably favored to keep it until 1992, barring some serious economic butterflies.
Eagle claw would have been a roll of the dice. It was aborted because several of its units had mechanical failures and Carter made the decision that it was too risky given that. Had he rolled the dice and gotten at least a partial success, he'd probably have won reelection. I remember those days. People were REALLY pissed off about it, even in areas that were heretofore mostly Democrat areas. It's quite possible that it might delay or derail the realignment of the South to the Republicans.
Carter attends the debate between Reagan and Anderson with Anderson winning the debate by a bigger margin than he did in OTL with Carter in second leading to Anderson's poll numbers rising. One of the three wins the second debate and Reagan and Anderson split the Republican vote bad enough for Carter to win.
His legacy as President is much better than it is OTL, though he'd by no means be considered one of the greats and he's less of a liability for the Democratic party as well. He'd still go on to do much of the same things he did after his OTL Presidency.
This is extremely out of character for Carter. He was totally focused on the safety of the hostages. Some kind of military option to force the Soviets' hand was not out of the question - as we saw with Eagle Claw. But declaring war on Iran is simply a bridge too far with Carter in the White House.
The only way to get Carter to declare war on Iran is if they kill a hostage, and the Iranians knew this, which is a big part of why they didn't harm the hostages.
Kai Bird, who wrote The Outlier, doesn't think it was possible for success. The more I've read about, the more convinced I am that it was going to fail 8 or 9 times out of 10 - there were too many ways for it to go wrong. That said, there's a timeline out there in which it goes off without a hitch, everything falls together perfectly, and the hostages are rescued.
In order of their importance, there are three main reasons why Carter failed to win reelection. They are:
1. The Economy
2. The Hostage Crisis
3. Ted Kennedy's primary challenge
All three contributed to an image of Carter as an ineffectual president. The path to a Carter reelection is hard, but not at all impossible. Consider the following:
1. The Economy - The Volcker shock devastated the economy in a fashion almost perfectly timed with the 1980 election. There are several ways to get around this. The narrowest POD is that Carter appoints someone else to the Fed Chair spot. Advisers told him that Volcker was going to doom his electoral prospects. Carter wasn't persuaded by this and believed the economy needed Volcker. Carter is a man of paradoxes. He was intensely competitive and wanted to run the hardest campaign necessary, yet at the same time he was unwilling to manipulate presidential decisions to favor his reelection prospects. Carter considered Tom Clausen and was hesitant enough about Volcker that Carter offered Clausen the job. Clausen's wife, Peggy, didn't want to move to DC and so the job went to Volcker when Clausen declined. Another way around Volcker is to wave off the entire cabinet reshuffle. This is my favored version of events. Without the reshuffle, Carter's dip in the polls in the summer of 1979 is largely avoided and you avoid the opening at the Fed. Rick Perlstein argues that pretty much any other fed chair could've held things together enough to make sure the economy wasn't a total disaster in November of 1980.
2. The Hostage Crisis - The hard part about the Hostage Crisis is you need it for Carter to win the primaries over Kennedy, but you need to avoid it for him to win the general election. There are a number of military options, including a blockade or mining of Iran's ports, or a successful Eagle Claw that allow Carter to get the hostages home. You could hand wave the Crisis away altogether pretty easily - Carter never really wanted the Shah to come here, he could have increased the security around the embassy in the wake of the first hostage taking in February, or Thatcher (or some other world leader) could've offered to take the Shah instead as she almost did IOTL. But again, I think in this scenario, Carter is exceptionally vulnerable to Kennedy's challenge. The Crisis allowed Carter to reframe the primary fight away from the domestic issues where he was out of touch with the base and it also gave him an excuse to stay at the White House while Kennedy traipsed around the country and largely embarrassed himself until the second half of the campaign.
3. Kennedy's primary challenge - The Hostage Crisis and the disastrous Mudd interview happened on the same day. Kennedy announced his campaign (formally) days later. From the outset, Kennedy underperformed. His comments on the hostages backfired spectacularly and it seemed he lost himself votes every time he gave a speech, answered questions in an interview, or campaigned somewhere in the country. He lost badly in Iowa and New Hampshire - the NH defeat is especially embarrassing given the fact the state almost always goes to the candidate who lives nearest to it (Sanders in 20 and 16, Clinton in 08, Kerry in 04, Tsongas in 92...). All of this is to say, New York looked like the moment Carter would knock Kennedy out of the race altogether. Had Kennedy lost here, it's very hard to see him continuing and while it's easy to say "A Kennedy would never have dropped out!" Jon Ward in Camelot's End posits that's exactly what Kennedy was planning had he lost NY.
Carter lost NY largely because he pissed off the Jewish bloc of voters there. Of course a lot of things precipitated this. One was Andrew Young's meeting with the PLO in August of 1979. The second was when Young's replacement voted in favor of a resolution that condemned Israeli settlements. Carter asked McHenry to vote in favor of the resolution IF it didn't include any mention of Jerusalem. The preamble of the resolution still included mention of Jerusalem but McHenry voted for it anyway. Leaders in the American Jewish Community argued that this raised doubts about Israel's stewardship over the Holy City. This was not Carter's intent nor his administration's policy but McHenry's vote raised doubts. Instead, had McHenry demanded the language been removed as Carter had asked, and if the authors kept it in anyway and he instead abstained, the whole kerfuffle could've been avoided. That would likely have been enough for Carter to hold on to just enough of the Jewish vote to win the NY Primary, and therefore knock Kennedy out of the race. With Kennedy out earlier, the Convention can be a unifying experience targeted at Reagan instead of filling Democrats with a sense of buyer's remorse.
The other big potential POD here is that the Iranian Revolution doesn't happen, or is cut short, perhaps by a military coup in late 1978.
It's easy to talk about Iran, the Hostage Crisis, the economy, and the Volcker
(Obviously, no Islamic Revolution is itself an interesting TL, and has huge global impacts on its own.)
And honestly, with a solid economy, even with his lackluster in-party approval ratings, Carter is likely to win a comfortable reelection, especially as presidents in this era tended to win reelection by landslides.
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IRL in 1980 Anderson took more from Carter than from Reagan. To get Carter a second term you’d probably need to get Bush as the nominee (or maybe Ford, he was bandied about for a bit) to neuter some of the southern strategy (on top of a more successful Congress)