During Carter's presidency one of the values he championed were civil rights. He did many things to show this like hire African Americans to his cabinet and even hire the first African American ambassador to the U.N. While these policies were popular with much of the Democratic party, not all were left pleased. A large portion of the Democratic party's voters at the time were White, blue collar workers. With the prevalence of the civil rights movement, many of these working class whites felt as if they were being forgotten about by the Democratic party.
Another reason for the Reagan Democrats is the poor economy felt during the 1970s. Reagan campaigned with a very optimistic tone regarding economics, and proposed his economic ideology of lower taxes and an unrestricted free market, which was coined with the name "Reaganomics". Reagan also advocated for very conservative takes on national security and immigration, which many white moderate democrats resonated with.
All of these reasons combined, contributed greatly to Reagan's two terms as president, but the influence of "Reagan Democrats" does not stop there. Republican Presidents like George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., and Donald Trump have all claimed to have received support from "Reagan Democrats", although most of the supposed "Reagan Democrats" who voted for President Trump were already Republicans. One could even argue that the there are many parallels between "Reagan Democrats" and Nixon's Silent Majority. While Reagan has passed, the relevancy of Reagan Democrats has not, and has proven to be a relevant term even up to the present.
Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-myth-of-the-reagan-democrat/475608/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/16/democrats-ronald-reagan
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0906-berman-carter-civil-rights-20150906-story.html
This post was very interesting because I didn't know anything about Reagan Democrats before. After further research, I found that many people claim Reagan Democrats support Donald Trump, but in reality, this is most likely a myth. Looking at the statistics, the average white man who was 40 in 1980 was likely to live another 34 years, meaning he would be dead by the 2020 election. Although it is possible that a few of the original Reagan Democrats are alive, it is unlikely that they play a major role in Trump's support. The more probable occurrence is that when people talk about Reagan Democrats today, they are talking about people who resemble them demographically, not actual Democrats who voted for Reagan.
ReplyDeleteI had not heard about the term Reagan Democrats before but I enjoyed reading your blog post. I think it is interesting that there are large amounts of people who at one time, called themselves Democrats but still did not vote for the Democratic nomination for president. After Reagan and Bush left office, President Clinton campaigned in the Election of 1992 to appeal to Reagan Democrats and other Democrats who had either turned to the Republican party or lost faith in their own party. Clinton called himself a New Democrat, which is a term that refers to a centrist Democrat who holds mostly liberal cultural/social views but leans more conservative regarding fiscal/economic views. I thought it was interesting that the influence of Reagan Democrats was so strong that President Clinton felt the need to make a specific effort to bring them back. Both Reagan Democrats and New Democrats are still around today, influencing the complex political landscape.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats