Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 made him appear invulnerable. He wasn’t. (Cindy Yamanaka/MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images)
Maybe you’ve been asking yourself:
1. “How could Donald Trump have won 51 percent of the popular vote?”
2. “How hard is it to immigrate to New Zealand?”
3. “What the actual fuck?”
Fair questions.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Could Tuesday’s election results have been any worse?
Well, what if, instead of 51 percent, the Republican nominee had won 59 percent? Or 61 percent? And what if he had won 49 states?
Those aren’t hypotheticals. Those were the results of the 1972 and 1984 landslides that reelected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
With thumping victories like those, what could possibly go wrong for the winners?
If history’s any guide, some nasty surprises await Donald Trump.
In 1972, the Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, won just 37.5 percent of the vote, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 Electoral College votes. He didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota.
In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale did carry his native Minnesota, but that was as good as it got for him. In the Electoral College, he fared even worse than McGovern, with a whopping 13 votes.
In the aftermath of these thrashings, the Democratic Party lay in smoldering ruins, and Republicans looked like indestructible conquerors.
Now, some might argue that those GOP victories, though statistically more resounding than Trump’s, weren’t nearly as alarming, because he’s a criminal and wannabe autocrat.
But Trump’s heinousness shouldn’t make us nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. They were also criminals—albeit unindicted ones. And they were up to all manner of autocratic shit—until they got caught.
The Watergate scandal was only one small part of the sprawling criminal enterprise that Nixon directed from the Oval Office in order to subvert democracy. For his part, Reagan’s contribution to the annals of presidential crime, Iran-Contra, broke myriad laws and violated Constitutional norms.
The hubris engendered by both men’s landslides propelled them to reckless behavior in their second terms—behavior that came back to haunt them. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency; Reagan was lucky to escape impeachment. (continued on page 2)
Thank you Jim and Borowitz! And for his parting line: “Now the work starts.”
You may have heard Tim Alberta, a staff writer for The Atlantic, on PBS’s Washington Week last Friday. He capped a discussion of propaganda used by the Republicans with a reminder of the propaganda used by the Democrats:
“Tim Alberta: As someone who has stowed (ph) a lot of ink on Donald Trump’s lies over the past decade —
Jeffrey Goldberg: A couple of books worth.
Tim Alberta: A couple of books worth. I just want to say this when we talk about propaganda. Arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. Number one, Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be president for another four years. He wasn’t. Number two, the border is closed. It’s under control. There’s nobody coming in. That was not true. And number three, hey, don’t worry about inflation, prices are fine, Bidenomics. Everything’s great. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape. This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said, none of that is true, and therefore, I don’t trust you. They might not trust Trump, but they don’t trust Democrats either.”