In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Even in 1980, the incipient Reagan landslide seems to have taken Democrats, or at least those speaking for public consumption, by surpise. In 1972, especially after the Eagleton fiasco , there was never any serious expectation that McGovern could beat Nixon, so that election is an outlier -- but even then, the real pessimism didn't even take hold until McGovern was nominated. In the 2024 cycle, we're seeing gnashing of teeth and rending of garments a full year before the election. The closest equivalents to the current environment that I can remember were in 1988 over Dukakis and 2004 with John Kerry, when, after the Democrat conventions, "sources" spoke to reporters without attribution about how badly those campaigns were going. But again, this was during the summer and early fall before those elections, not during the fall a full year ahead, and few people are now publicly trying to maintain a happy face. And the Democrat insiders aren't just talking on backgr...