I'm A Reagan Democrat.

[VolcanoJen]

Not in the traditional sense, of course.

In my wayward, young college years, I wasted my very first, most precious of votes, on Ronald Reagan. 1984, it was. A very weird year, any way you shake it. I was 18, so sue me. I haven't voted for a single Republican since.

Well... let's just say that a few years passed, and I became a dyed-in-the-wool-hardcore-marching-activist-Democrat.

And I have Ronald Reagan to thank for that.

Yes, I am a Ronald Reagan Democrat.

[notbush]

1. You were a Reagan Dem............

I've read your posts.........
Did you suffer blunt head trauma?????
What caused your affliction

[VolcanoJen]

5. I know it's a coward's way out, but I blame it on a boy.

My first love, cute Irish Catholic soccer-player. Loved Reagan as much as he loved God. He sucked in bed, and as soon as I figured out what I was missing, I dumped him, as well as his bullshit political ideology.

It didn't take long, really. But when you're 18, you hardly know up from down. It took me until about '86 to understand the error of my ways... that's the year I plugged in and became politically active.

Haven't looked back since... but I always thank Reagan for motivating me to become a Democrat, and to basically fight against him, and his kind.

Some people learned their ideology from their parents; some figured it out all on their own. I learned mine from the error of voting for Ronald Reagan. And that's the way I'll always remember him. I kinda like it that way. :-)

[WindRavenX]

2. Man...

If I voted for Reagan, I don't think all the soap in the world could clean my soul...:scared:

[I thought so.]

27. Oh Please!

We all make mistakes. I, myself and me have been suckered more than once. (many times). Learning is hard,but it has a fine destination.

Congratulations you are human!

[TankLV]

30. Not me - never, ever, would consider voting for that bastard.

I knew better - always have.

My record of voting is spotless. I vote on the side of good and light, not darkness and corruption.

Fortunately, I can always see thru the bullshit.

Could never understand why other people were so clueless.

[JayS]

3. I did the same thing during my first year in college way back...

...in '84 and I had just turned 18 also. Reagan did run a strong campaign...

[elperromagico]

7. A strong campaign,

which even his campaign manager Ed Rollins essentially admitted was issueless.

Reagan ran on jingoism, and people were suckered in by it. "Morning in America" was brilliant - but it didn't mean a damned thing then and it doesn't mean a damned thing now.

[JayS]

10. I meant a strong campaign from a marketing standpoint. n/t

n/t

[VolcanoJen]

12. Exactly. I imagine Kerry and Bush both study "Morning in America."

n/t

[elperromagico]

16. Reagan helped turn Presidential candidates into products.

I don't think that's a particularly good legacy. Do you?

[VolcanoJen]

18. Of course not! Nobody is arguing that it's an honorable legacy.

But it was an unmatched campaign, unmatched by Mondale, most certainly.

Mondale's heart was in the right place... but he didn't tell Americans what they wanted to hear. Reagan's team did, lies and all. And that's what led to the landslide.

You'd be a political fool NOT to study Reagan's '84 campaign, be it good, be it bad, be it evil.

Regardless, I don't think anyone here is saying that Reagan ran a clean campaign. It indeed sowed the seeds of what we see today... evidenced by the nastiest presidential campaign in history, Dukakis vs. Bush, 1988.

[JayS]

22. Speaking of Presidents as products...

...read the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I love the President in that book. He was made electable by an advertising agency that got bored, was an aging Las Vegas crooner, became the first President to swing the microphone Vegas style at his Inaugural Address and use "boss" as an adjective. He ran on a campaign to make America clean enough to eat off the ground. To do this he gave a chunk of land to Canada so we would have a place to throw our trash that was not American soil. He consulted The Dictators Guide To Iron-Fisted Spin for his speeches.

[JI7]

4. i was a kid when reagan was president

i was 2 years old when he came into office as president. i don't feel hatred towards him. i can say i know he did bad things as president. but i don't feel hatred for him as i do with bush. i don't know if it's because i was too young to be aware of things going on when he was actually president. but the fact is that he was pretty popular based on his election numbers.

[Skittles]

6. that bastard Reagan ushered in the decade of greed

and America has never recovered. I was never fooled by such a disgusting, incompetent puppet. Not then, not now.

[VolcanoJen]

11. How old were you in 1984?

I can certainly say, in my 30's, that I've never been fooled by that Chimpy King. But at 18... I wasn't so sure about the world.

How old were you in 1984? And although I know you weren't responding to me directly, I gave a small fortune to Mondale when he ran in place of Wellstone... I considered it to be a debt that needed paying, and I felt as if the weight of one thousand years had been lifted from my shoulders after doing so.

[Skittles]

13. I was still in my 20's

and when I was 18 I was in the military. Suffice it to say I grew up well before I turned 18.

[VolcanoJen]

17. Wish I could say the same.

Hey, I'm not proud of my first, and only, wasted garbage vote. If I could take it back, I would. Believe you me, I worked my ass off to help Dukakis defeat King Bush I in '88... too bad the national campaign didn't work as hard as those of us in the field did. :-(

I learned more about the world in those two years between 1984 and the beginning of 1987 than I have since, really. Well... then came King Bush II...

[Skittles]

20. oh, you're forgiven Jen

You're a solid DUer now. :)

[VolcanoJen]

23. I still feel kinda bad, ya know?

DU is like a 12-Step Program, only they still let you drink and smoke. That's probably why I'm so good at it! :D

[Skittles]

25. LOL

AMEN!!!! :D

[I thought so.]

28. Oh!

Your self righteous piety overwhelms us. Oh could all of us be as perfect as you. Can you permit that? Tell us we are not doomed.

Its shit like this is why we lose.

[TankLV]

31. Hey - we tell it like it is - if you can't stand the truth, "get out of

kitchen".

What can I say, some of us have minds and can read and hear.

Then there are the clueless.

We're sorry you can't be as well-informed as us, too. And we've all suffered because of it, unfortunately.

The only good thing is, you learned from your mistake.

Still have a way to go in the condescending attitude department, which we can throw back at ya, with relish.

[JayS]

8. Here is a good study of his campaign for you young'uns. :)

http://it.stlawu.edu/~quack/seminar/home.htm


The 1984 presidential election represented a landmark point in the United States. During his first administration, Ronald Reagan implemented policies that cut social programs and negatively effected many Americans. Because a majority of Americans opposed Reagan's policies, the Democratic Party believed it had a legitimate shot of defeating Reagan. However, Reagan understood the Americans' confidence in the nation was severely undermined because of domestic and foreign crises during the 1960s and 1970s. Instead of defending his unpopular policies, Reagan embarked upon a massive image oriented campaign, the central mission of which was to reassure Americans that their country had returned to its position as leader of the free world. Although the facts disputed Reagan's claim, the American people embraced the message they most wanted to hear. As a result of this, Walter Mondale's focus upon rationality and issues was an enormous failure. In the election, Reagan won by the largest electoral margin in US history. This paper studies the Reagan campaign's use of media, in the form of paid advertising and news coverage. This is then contrasted with Mondale's approach, in order to demonstrate how different the campaigns truly were.

*SNIP*

[fujiyama]

9. It's ok

As lng as you've reptented :evilgrin:

As long as ya despise Bush, then it's all good. You learned fro, ur mmistakes and that's all tha matters.

[VolcanoJen]

14. I've repented, and then some.

And I'll always thank Reagan for making me a Democrat. I'm a Reagan Democrat, but not in the way they would like. :D

[TankLV]

32. Amen to that.

nt

[bluestateguy]

15. My grandmother voted for him twice

Never to vote Republican ever again.

[Senior citizen]

19. I think that election was rigged

Sure, there were Reagan Democrats, but there were also pukes who crossed party lines because they couldn't vote for Ray-gun. I think they pretty much cancelled each other out.

But Democrats won all the other seats on the ballot in my area, so I was supposed to believe that people who voted a straight Democratic ticket, voted puke for the top slot. I never believed that and I never will.

I think the pukes messed with the vote in certain areas to ensure that Ronnie got in, but didn't dare mess with all the other races because there would have been demands for recounts everywhere, which might have exposed their misdeeds. Then they did a big public relations campaign to make us believe that it was all the fault of the miniscule and mostly mythical Reagan Democrats.

Not that it matters any more, but it is their karma that in this coming election there will be a large number of very real and very vocal Kerry Republicans.


:kick:

[VolcanoJen]

21. Reagan won 525 electoral votes, and 58% of the popular vote, though.

If that election was rigged, then I'm quite positive Rove is meeting with the riggers as I type this. If not, he should be.

May I also add this, because I don't want to be misunderstood... I voted, as an independent, I guess, for Reagan. I became a Democrat because of that vote, and because of Reagan. I'm no "traditional" Reagan Democrat... I just thought the subject line was kinda catchy.

:D

[RoyGBiv]

26. Rigged?

Not in the traditional sense of rigged. It didn't need to be rigged. Mondale might have lost to Hoover in '32, his campaign was so bad.

And the 1980's so-called Reagan Democrats were a very real phenomenon.

I'll probably take some heat for saying this, but oh well. Democrats are as responsible for Reagan and his legacy as any other group. Democrats in the early 80's ate themselves alive. The potential of a deal between the Republicans and the Iranians notwithstanding, the Democratic Party did nothing but aid the Republican machine by warring with itself. In hindsight, the outcome of the '80 and '84 elections are so predictable they're not even interesting.

Republicans may have had some influence on that, just as they have an influence now with the Kerry-bashers and four years ago with the Gore bashers among Democrats. But Democrats are the ones who swallowed the story and are responsible for their actions, or lack of.

I don't, btw, mean this as a criticism of VolcanoJen or any others who did what she did. I'm talking about the party leadership.

[RoyGBiv]

24. I feel your pain, sorta...

I wasn't old enough to vote for Reagan, but I fear I might have simply because I couldn't stand Mondale. My grandmother, a yellow dog if ever there was one, hated Reagan but at the time even said that she thought Mondale was an idiot. I took my early political views directly from my grandmother.

But, anyway, Reagan is a weird subject for me. I've been having a back-and-forth e-mail chat with an old friend of mine tonight, about Reagan. We "grew up" with him as our President and pretty much every political thought we have was in some way influenced by that era. As my friend put it, our political indoctrination was during the Reagan years, and everything we are is a result of what we saw or experienced at that time, good and bad. He and his policies in a sense created us. It's probably true that he and I became friends at least in part because of Reagan. We were the neo-Hippies in high school who stood against everything he represented. Geez....never thought of myself as a reactionary until just now.

I dunno...dunno if this relates to anything you just said, but since reading earlier tonight the thread about his imminent death, it's been on my mind. This is how the discussion with my friend started.

[Crunchy Frog]

29. Don't feel too bad.

The guy who ran our local Kucinich meetups voted for Reagan in 1980. I think it's a mistake that alot of people made, and you were very young.

My first Presidential election was also in 1984, although I was a little bit older than you. I voted proudly for Mondale, even though I had desperately wanted Gary Hart to get the nomination. I think the Democratic party has had real problems with nominating viable candidates for a long time.

I'm happy that I have never voted Republican in a Presidential election, but then, I come from a heavily Democratic family. I did however, vote for Nader in the last election and I'm pretty ashamed about that.

I'm glad that you took the right lessons from your youthful indescretion, and ended up a strong Democrat.:)

[union_maid]

33. That's why I compared Reagan and Nader in 2000

In early arguments with a Nader voter/promoter I said that the Nader vote reminded me of the Reagan vote. He got really mad, of course. I remember a lot of people who voted for Reagan who wouldn't have wanted any of the the things that Reagan actually did, but it was the sexy new politics and it was a vote for change, they thought. I saw a lot of the same with the Nader vote - young people who weren't old enough or experienced enough to think out the results of what they were doing. They just wanted to vote for something different. Well, in both cases, they got something different, all right.

[Rebellious Republican]

34. I am a Jeb Bush Democrat! Jeb and his arrogant toadies that is.

When Jeb took over down here, I could not believe the things that were happening. Florida had become a mecca for corporate corruption long before George was installed. How do you think George got installed?