The Era of Fear is Ending: 1980 Played Backwards

I've been saying for several weeks that this election reminds me a lot of 1980, which was the most shocking election of my lifetime, and the one that changed the country the most almost overnight. I don't really think of 2016 as that shocking---only for those that were living in denial of reality,

But 1980 was different. J is a ten years younger than I am. She doesn't remember that election. I tell her how it blew everyone's mind. It was like we became a different country almost overnight. People knew Carter might lose re-election, but they had no idea it would be that big. The magnitude of Reagan's victory stunned everyone. 

Interesting to note that Reagan got barely over fifty percent of the national popular vote that election, but he won 44 states. Carter got wiped out in the Electoral College. This is because even though Reagan didn't really rack up the votes that time, the bottom fell out of Carter's support right at the end. Anderson got seven percent (which by itself was smaller than the margin between Carter and Reagan). What Anderson did is give people an excuse to abandon Carter.

We recently watched the entire NBC broadcast from the night of 1980 election. I did not watch the election returns live that year. I was at the dress rehearsal for the school play. I remember it very well. The play was Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  It was my first ever role in a play. I played the editor and publisher of the town newspaper, Mr. Webb. At one point I get to go out on stage and explain the local politics of the town to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. 

I remember the moment that I heard about the election. I was literally waiting in the wings, to go on stage, in costume. One of the other cast members, a senior with a small part in the scene with me, told me that Carter had already conceded. I was shocked, stunned. "That's terrible," I said, stammering my reply.

The other cast member got a puzzled look on his face. "Why, Matt? What's wrong with that?" 

I'll note the senior was a tall guy and very effeminate. Years later he came out as flaming gay. No one in 1980 really noticed that very much.

For years that moment backstage stuck in me, as did the play itself, as for years many of my close friends were people I had met at the audition in September 1980, even including the director, whose husband was a physicist and whom I wound up working with at Argonne Labs in Illinois, because he coincidentally knew one of my professors in Oregon.

On Election Day 2008, after touring around the country to see the ground-level experience, as I have loved to do so much, I drove my BMW to Peterborough, New Hampshire, which is the town where Wilder lived to observe New Hampshire life, and walked around, absorbing the atmosphere, and feeling like the cycle was now reversed. It felt like a massive joyful day. I sent a postcard of celebration to my drama teacher from high school, who had directed the play, and who had moved back to New York City. How little I knew what lay ahead, and that within a year I would come to see things so differently about Obama.

The biggest insight I gained from the 1980 broadcast was not the presidential race but the Senate. When John Chancellor signed off at the end of the evening, they knew Reagan had won a big victory. They predicted that the Republicans would gain a few Senate seats, cutting slightly into the Democrat's big lead in that chamber. They had no idea what would happen overnight. By the next day, when the smoke had cleared, the Republicans had gained 12 Senate seats. This was as stunning as the Reagan victory. Together it meant we were in a whole new political era. The Seventies came to a screeching halt. 

"There has been nothing like it in my lifetime," I told J. "The biggest before-and-after moment in the nation." 

I had thought 2016 would be the same. It wasn't. Now I am thinking this year is the anti-1980. The incumbent will be re-elected in a massive landslide that will shock the world. And even though the presidency will not change, everything will change overnight.

"People forget how traumatic 1980 was," I said. "It felt like everything in the world was coming unglued. America was literally 'held hostage' the entire year."

"This year it is as if we are living in the reverse-time version of 1980, with some weird ironic twists. It seems like the world is ending, but it is not. It is going to have a happy ending. It's going to be just as shocking and transformative, but it's going to end with a big party this time."