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Originally Posted by sleepyjeff
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Reagan and Carter were running neck and neck until the end, when Reagan won in a landslide.
One pundit's mention of this:
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...but the fact is that this election resembles nothing so much as the 1980 race between Carter and Reagan — with Obama as Reagan. By the summer of that year, voters were so down on Carter and the Democrats that they desperately wanted to send them packing, but weren’t sure they could afford to do so.
Carter actually led in most polls through the summer and into the early fall because voters didn’t know if they could actually vote for Reagan, who’d been framed by his opponents as a bomb-throwing lunatic who might plunge us into war if he ever got near the button. By fall, however, as the results of the debates and the opportunity to take Reagan’s measure had settled in, voters finally got comfortable with the idea of him in the Oval Office. When that happened, the bottom fell out, Carter was gone and a lot of Democratic senators and congressmen got sent packing along with him.
This year is shaping up the same way, only this time it’s the Republicans voters want to fire. And this time, it’s the Democratic nominee they are not quite sure they can put in the Oval Office.
I would maintain that Obama has a higher mountain to scale than did Reagan, but the challenge is the same. If at any point between now and Election Day voters decide they can actually trust him as president, they’ll give him the job and the close race today’s polls seem to be predicting will turn into a Democratic landslide.
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Yes, just punditry, no claims to prescience from me. We'll see how it goes...