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Originally Posted by Abbaddabba
You mean more popular, not better (or maybe more charismatic). Mondale was a much more reasonable candidate if we're comparing resumes.
Sure, when looking through a liberal lens. Which is what you and the NYT are doing. I don't have a problem with that, but just be aware of it. You're not a centrist. Reagan won by almost 20 million votes. That's a whole lot of centrists saying who they preferred.
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It's impossible to judge what a centrist would choose based on policy since the spectrum, in terms relative to that era, is effectively defined by the two parties in question.
No, it wasn't defined by two parties. About a third were dems, about a third were reps, and the remainder were independents. Reagan got the vast majority of the last group, and a lot of the centrist dems as well. He even took Massachusetts. lol
Reagan did a lot of scummy things, but in 1984, he was a proven president. He made Americans proud to be American again after two decades of war and economic failures. The change from 1980 to 1984 was one of the biggest in our nation's history. Mondale was unproven, and even though he might have had a better personal philosophy than Reagan, he was not the better candidate for America in 1984. And the centrist voters made that very clear at the ballot box.