Why did the Democrats nominate Walter Mondale in 1984?

[bluestateguy]

Maybe some of you who were voters during that pathetic election can help me out with this.

I am aware that nobody was going to beat Ronald Reagan that year, but it seems to me that at least Gary Hart could have made a race out of it. Maybe instead of losing 49 states, as Mondale did, Hart would have lost about 40, as Dukakis did in 1988.

In 1980, voters pretty resoundingly repudiated the Carter Administration. So why then would Democrats nominate, just 4 years later, the Vice President of that Administration for the presidency in 1984?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

1. The Democrats in power generally knew they had no chance that year

Mondale was a likeable elder statesman. It was a pat on the back pick.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Wasn't that the year Gary Hart did all his stupid stuff

with Donna Rice on a boat called "Monkey Business?"

Like, the guy was a total idiot, defying the press to catch him with his paramourt and then made it easy for them to do so.

Personally, I thought a lot of Mondale, but then I'm another upper-Midwest Scandinavian who doesn't like too much excitement.

Mondale carried 90% of the vote in Lake Wobegon, remember.

[dsc]

4. No that was 88 race

[bluestateguy]

5. No, that was in 87-88

And in magical counterfactual hypothetical land he would have been a fine candidate against George HW Bush in 1988 had he not been involved in Monkey Business.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

7. Nope. That was 1988

There was a sense it was Fritz' turn, even though Hart was (IMO) the more impressive candidate through the primaries. And I was/am a big fan of Walter Mondale. If Hart hadn't been so arrogant, he probably could been nominated and have beat Boosh I in '88. Still, he's one smart SOB.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Wow. It doesn't take long to get straightened our around here.

Thanks everyone.

[WI_DEM]

30. but had Hart actually been nominated in '84 I'm sure the republicans would have spread rumors of his

affairs which were an open secret in Washington. They didn't have to in '87-88 because Hart invited the press to watch him and he got caught.

[yurbud]

3. Since McGovern, GOP has helped Dems pick their candidates

by smearing or other dirty tricks on whoever they perceive would be the toughest opponent.

A case in point was taking down Howard Dean with that stupid scream business in 2004 (although they had some Dem help with that).

[bluestateguy]

8. You know, a lot of states have open primaries. We could "help" the GOP pick their candidate in '12.

Ideally the master plan would have to be to keep the primaries going as long as possible and the party as divided as possible. It would take a coordinated strategy, but it could be done.

[KharmaTrain]

10. Fun To Play If It Doesn't Matter...

I've lived in areas where there was no Democratic party (this was the 80's and early 90's), thus the only election was the GOOP primary. I was always like a kid in the candy store...look for the most unelectable candidate, and where there wasn't one, write one in. Ralph Nader got a vote one year, Nelson Mandella another...I could just imagine the look on the pollwatcher who had to count the vote.

If you're in a deep blue or red area where there isn't a contested Democratic primary, I say what the hell...have some fun. They made open primaries for a reason, why not have some fun with them.

[yurbud]

19. like Rush tried to do

[bluestateguy]

20. Yes

Any questions?

[karynnj]

25. Dean was not "taken down" by the scream

Dean spent a fortune, thanks to Trippi in Iowa, and lost badly BEFORE the scream. Dean was already losing steam in NH BEFORE the scream - mostly with voters switching to Clark and undecided. Immediately before Iowa, Clark started to implode with many going to undecided and to Kerry. Let's consider a world with no Dean scream because it didn't happen.

Kerry pulled off a very big upset victory and John Edwards did far better than expected. Dean, the frontrunner and presumptive winner got just 18% of the vote - less than half of Kerry's 38%. That is simply historical fact. http://www.rhodescook.com/primary.analysis.html

Not to conjecture. What would the TV coverage be? My best guess is hours explaining what Kerry did right and what Dean did wrong. I would imagine this would include many replays of Kerry's speech, surrounded by veterans and fire fighters, accepting victory. In addition, there would be replays of the incredible TV footage of Kerry meeting the man he saved in Vietnam for the first time since the 1960s. There would then be a montage of all the low moments of Dean's campaign - that would be painful to see. (Dean, red faced telling a 70 something heckler to sit down and the whining comment that he didn't want to be a pin cushion from one debate.) Any extra time would go to John Edwards. The message - Gephart and Dean are over, the new contest is Kerry and Edwards.

The next state was NH. Looking at the polls before Iowa and after - it is not so much that Dean lost people, though he did lose some - but that Kerry, well known to NH, got most of the undecided and a chunk of Clark's. He had been only 10 points behind. (Obama was MUCH further behind in NH pre Iowa) Now the polls never include Markov matrices where you can see who moved from where, but it would seem that many of the people who flowed to Kerry had already moved from Dean pre-Iowa. I can't thing of any reason to expect people, who previously left Dean to move to him rather than to Kerry. Like any candidate winning, Kerry was jubilant and charged in his victory speech - Dean was dealing with a major blow to his ego and campaign. That is why momentum exists.

After losing NH, 38% to 26%, Dean announced that he was not competing in the upcoming 7 state day, but would concentrate on later states. My guess is that his hope was that Kerry would do poorly in the mostly Southern, Southwestern and rural states, with Edwards and Clark splitting the states. This would then leave no clear front runner and Dean could than triumph in the next few races and become the frontrunner again. What doomed any hopes was that Kerry,a MA Senator, won 5 of the states (DE,NM,AZ,MO,ND) and Edwards (SC) and Clark (OK) each won only one each. In OK, a super red state - Clark and Edwards each got 30% and Kerry 27%. This is likely the real moment when Kerry became unstoppable barring a major problem - which didn't occur. He had 7 wins - 5 in states that a NE liberal was not favored in. Dean then did not do well in the next group of states - and it was over.



I think the people hurt by the hours spent on the scream were really Kerry and Edwards, who lost some of the positive coverage they otherwise would have had. (Not to mention, it left people like you less willing to see his loss as fair.

[dsc]

6. Mondale had the machinery behind him

and was able to hold on. Gary Hart also messed up at the end by insulting New Jersey (last primary) which was the nail in his coffin.

[Ardent15]

9. Mondale was the only one who had a slight chance

He was popular among unions, who had endorsed Reagan in 1980.

I think the hope was to win back some of the Reagan Democrats and make it at least somewhat close.

But Reagan was unbeatable in 1984. He was that popular.

[Smarmie Doofus]

11. Mondale is underrated.

Among other things he was quick on his feet and an excellent debater. Rocked Reagan good in the first debate. Reagan memorized a few snappy lines for the second , so the media portrayed him as the winner.

It was a difficult year for the good guys. Reagan's anti-communist demagoguery was hugely popular and the economy was starting to come out of the recession. Gov't deregulation of everything in sight was suddenly popular with the perrenially short-sighted.

[Ardent15]

13. Agreed. Mondale is a very strong liberal in the Hubert Humphrey tradition.

Why else did the Democrats pick him when Wellstone died for the Senate seat in 2002?

[Joe Bacon]

12. The Whore Press tore Hart and Glenn to pieces in 1984

1) Newsweek magazine has their knives out for John Glenn. They tore him to pieces and lied about his reaction to the film The Right Stuff. They alleged that Glenn said some insulting things to producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler at a Beverly Hills fundraiser. I was there with Senator Glenn and he NEVER said those things. That did not stop the Press Whores from fucking Glenn over the same way they fucked Al Gore over in 2000 over the Love Story lies that Frank Rich made up

2) I still remember the night of the Pennsylvania primary when Roger Mudd (then with NBC) tricked Gary Hart into coming to the NBC studio and Mudd just ridiculed him and the rest of the Press whores joined in Hart's character assassination.

[Yavin4]

14. That Was My First Presidential Campaign

Mondale ran a brutal primary against Hart. I was in college at the time, and several of my friends worked on the Gary Hart campaign. Mondale was the established, veteran with long ties to labor unions. Back then, labor unions pretty much ran the Democratic party.

The real reason why the DLC was formed was to limit the power of the labor unions in the party.

[mix]

21. my first election too

i remember taking my apolitical mother to a ferraro rally

mondale seemed like the institutional party pick

[WI_DEM]

32. I don't know I didn't think that "Where's the beef" was especially brutal

and if Hart were any kind of politician he could easily have come back (remember he was also George McGovern's campaign manager in '72 and they ran the worse general election campaign in modern history).

[moundsview]

15. Pretty much for the same reason the GOP ran

Bob Dole in '96. I think they knew nobody was going to beat Clinton, so it was Bobs turn.

In 1984 the Democrats were still a little stunned by the Carter defeat and many of us were still more than a little pissed at Kennedy for beating Carter up in the 1980 primary race. You usually don't throw a heavy weight against a sitting President, but I guess Ted did what he had to do.

[leftstreet]

16. And the same reason they ran McCain

Although they probably initially believed it would be Hillary, not Obama.

(Gawd! I remember the nastiness of Kennedy v Carter. Makes me feel old though.)

Welcome to DU

[moundsview]

17. Thanks, and your absolutely right about McCain

If I look back at the Presidents since I was born under FDR, it sure looks like the Democrats and Republicans have a deal to trade the White House pretty much every 8 years. I think both the Dems and The GOP got a little whipsawed by Obama, neither one saw that coming.

[Ardent15]

18. I don't think too many people saw Reagan coming either

[SoCalDem]

22. It was his turn..

:(

[WI_DEM]

33. Ted really should have waited until '84 instead of challenging Carter in '80

[surrealAmerican]

23. It wasn't necessarily a bad move.

If Hart hadn't ruined his own chances in '88, losing badly in '84 would have made him a weaker candidate in '88.

[Still Sensible]

26. Same reason Bob Dole was the GOP sacrifice in '96

The party knew it was extremely unlikely to win so they went with an elder statesman that had "earned" a shot to lead the party IMO. If they made a race of it, great. If they could possibly get some breaks and pull off an upset, even better. But in any event the party's debt to that elder statesman was forever more off the table.

[WI_DEM]

31. For a brief moment after he announced Ferarro, Mondale actually led Reagan by 2-points in Gallup

and then there was an opening after Reagan's bad performance in the first debate, but then Gipper comes back and said a quip in the second debate which was enough to reassure the people and media.

[rolltideroll]

27. Sacrificial Lamb n/t

[saltpoint]

28. Mondale won the primary. I voted for Gary Hart.

A lotta times my people lose in primaries.

[WI_DEM]

29. Mondale won where he needed to: NY, PA, IL, OH, and key southern states

which is why he won the nomination. Mondale was a great liberal and served his party well, and I supported him in '84. Gary Hart had his own problems, and there is no evidence that Hart would have done substantially better than Mondale did against Reagan in '84.