Heimdal
HenryH
Jr. Member
Posts: 289
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« on: February 16, 2014, 09:00:24 AM » |
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Dukakis early lead can probably be attributed to several factors.
One being the fact that the Republicans had been in power for the last eight years. Even though the economy was healthy and Reagan was popular, a lot of people wanted new leadership in the White House. In that respect there are similarities to the election in 2000.
Another factor was that George H. W. Bush didn’t have the “People touch” like Ronald Reagan. Bush was an old fashioned patrician Yankee. That wasn’t an issue for FDR (who had a similar background), but the electorate of the late eighties was less deferential, and more drawn to candidates with (real or imagined) hardscrabble backgrounds. The genius of the 1988 campaign was of course that the GOP managed to define the son of Greek immigrants as an out of touch elitist. If the Democrats had been able to run a decent campaign they could probably have countered that.
A third factor was the Iran-Contra affair. I am not certain how implicated George Bush was in that scandal. He was however associated with it, simply because he was the Vice President.
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