This is a joke, right? You ARE aware that Jimmy Carter lost because of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and, probably, the October Surprise? Or are you so young that those are merely history lessons and not part of your life experience. Everybody in American had yellow ribbons all over the place and there were daily updates with news reports on how many days "America" had been held hostage. It was the biggest news story since Watergate. It engaged the entire nation - even the youngest kids were involved. Carter was not initially an unpopular President even though he had inherited some very bad economic conditions and had made some very bad decisions about how to deal with them, until the "America Held Hostage" crisis started. By November he couldn't have been elected dog catcher. Well, maybe dog catcher.

Many Americans, including yours truly, believe that Reagan officials (including George HW Bush) negotiated with the Iranians to keep the hostages until after the election in exchange for our sending them weapons (against the will of Congress) to use in their war (with Iraq? that part is a bit dim). Coincidentally, we did send them weapons, purportedly to raise funds to support the Contras (see Iran Contra Affair). Also "coincidentally", they released the hostages within minutes of Reagan being inaugerated.

we had a really nasty recession then as well. Uneployment rate 10%+, inflation 13%+, fed funds 20%+. Those were tough times. I would hope Obama doesn't need economic numbers like that to win.

I second the opinion that the Iranian hostage crisis was stage-managed by the Republicans and the Iranians to defeat Carter, in exchange for weapons.

Jimmy started his first term in a somewhat liberal mood, but by the end of it, he'd broken the coal miners strike with troops, and declared the Middle East a a 'vital' region to U.S. interests, justifying intervention. It was called the "Carter Doctrine. That was the basis for the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, which gave us Bin Laden. And, later, other presdidents used it to intervene in Iraq.

Now, as to how I feel as a consumer...

If I'm paying more for gas and food, if my house is worth much less, if my job is threatened, or I'm trapped in the job because layoffs are going up, if my retirement 401K is sinking, if my CD savings are now getting less interest due to the Federal Reserve, or if the index fund is tanking, and if the dollar is worth less due to the Republican deficit, and if my kid's college costs more, or I have higher medical co-pays -what's to like? And it is all happening to me.

Please give me a silver lining. (Thank god for Social Security! I like to bike.) I don't mind living on less. In fact, I kind of enjoy spoiled people screaming. I love to watch them thrash about. But still ...

In 1980, there was a significant third-party candidate (John Anderson) whose support came mostly at the expense of Jimmy Carter.

In 1980, there was the Iranian hostage crisis that many blamed on Jimmy Carter.

In 1980, the US economy had been in tough shape for several years due to two energy crises and bad policies going back several presidents.

In 1980, US athletes and TV boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of the USSR's war in Afghanistan.

But the biggest factor was simply how people felt wrt the candidates.

The Carter Administration faced the energy and economic problems head-on, and had called for hard work and serious changes in dealing with them. The "moral equivalent of war" was needed to make the USA less dependent on cheap imported energy.

The Reagan approach was to talk about "Morning In America" and "getting the government off your back" and building up the military. Energy problems were to be dealt with by "supply side economics", which another prominent Republican called "voodoo".

It was the difference between a Churchillian call for blood, sweat and tears and Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

And now we're dealing with the problems from 1980 that weren't solved by the replacements.

Reagan took power 1981. What happened in 1980?

The end of the Carter stagflation and the peak of the Keynesian madness. In the midst of this, our third stagflation cycle, are we still all Keynesians now?

Just sayin...

Oh no wait, there is no defense of Carter, although the efforts are laughable. I see the same talk about third party candidates from the right who always try to say that Perot gave the election to Clinton. While I believe it is true Perot was out to get Bush and it worked, the fact remains that if the first Bush had any good policies, he would have won and the same is for Carter. Carter didn't just lose, he lost big. Anderson had nothing to do with that and New York was one of the few places that he may have been a factor but only if you give every Anderson vote to Carter. But a weak President like Carter or the first Bush just can't survive and neither did. But the article is more implying that it is the economy, not a war, not some October surprise and not some third party that will be the demise of a party just like it will be this election cycle.

Anyone who wants to go back to the glorious days O Carter can just hop on a plane to Zimbabwe.

Donut44: your history is sloppy. First, your implied claim that even if you gave every Anderson vote to Carter the only extra state he would have carried is New York is flatly wrong. Anderson hit Carter hard in the South and the Northeast. If you award every Anderson vote to Carter (and keep Ed Clark's votes where they are), Carter carries: Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Not enough to win, but it would have brought the electoral college totals to 334-204, by my count. That would have taken a lot of the juice out of the Reagan "landslide" with possible implications on how he governed. Now, it's unlikely Carter would have taken every Anderson vote, but it does seem that Anderson pulled heavily from Carter's base. And a few of those states (New York, Massachusetts and Tennessee) would have needed only a slight break in the Anderson votes in favor of Carter to swing, brining their hefty 65 EVs over.

Plus you have to factor in the demoralizing effect the Anderson campaign had on Carter more broadly, in terms of discouraging Dem turnout etc. (Turnout was down in 1980 over already-low 1976 levels).

That's certainly enough to change the tenor, if not the outcome, of the election. And that latter was definitely seriously effected by the October nonsense, as suggested by other posters.

This isn't a defense of Carter--he wasn't a great president and had moved far to the right by 1980. Indeed, Carter's failure should have been a lesson for the DLC-types: moving to the right doesn't work for a Dem candidate. Clinton was the exception, for which we have Perot to thank.