Back to the 1980s - Landslide

Photo by Tomasz Zielonka on Unsplash

I’ve said it many times on this blog: 1984 was unequivocally the best year music-wise.

But music wasn’t the only thing that peaked that year.

Do you remember what else was remarkable about 1984?
(I don’t. I was too young, and frankly too uninterested in politics.)

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won a true landslide: 49 states, 525 electoral votes, and nearly 59% of the popular vote. I’ll get to the one dissenting state in a minute.

Up until the Trump era, the word landslide meant exactly one thing to me: a natural disaster. A mass of rock, earth, and debris crashing down a slope, usually caused by heavy rain, erosion, or earthquakes. Unfortunately we’ve had more than our share of those in the Swiss Alps.

Then came 2016.

Despite losing the popular vote, Donald Trump declared a landslide victory. In 2024, he went even bigger, calling it “a political victory that our country has never seen before.” So let’s look at numbers, because numbers are refreshingly unimpressed by rhetoric.

Trump won 312 electoral votes.
For comparison:

• Bill Clinton won 370 in 1992 and 379 in 1996

• Barack Obama won 365 in 2008 and 332 in 2012

Impressive? Sure.
But 1984?

Reagan, a former actor best known for playing cowboys, walked away with 525 electoral votes. How on earth did that happen?

When Reagan first took office, the U.S. economy was in terrible shape. Unemployment climbed above 10%, the economy shrank, and Republicans took a beating in the 1982 midterms. Reagan’s approval rating crashed into the mid-30s, and by early 1983 polls showed him trailing Democrats like Walter Mondale and John Glenn.

Then something changed.

By 1983, the economy rebounded sharply. Jobs returned, growth picked up, inflation eased, and by 1984, many Americans felt the improvement in their everyday lives. Add Reagan’s calm, confident leadership style and a renewed sense of American strength abroad, and voters focused less on the painful start and more on where the country seemed to be headed.

By the time of the election, Reagan’s message was perfectly in sync with the mood of the country. His campaign ad summed it up beautifully: 

“It’s morning again in America. The sun is rising. Our country is stronger, our economy is growing, and our national pride is high. It’s morning again.” 

It wasn’t just a slogan, it was a mood, a bit like the perfect hook on an ‘84 pop anthem: instantly catchy, impossible to ignore, and leaving you humming it long after the first listen. In that sense, optimism became the year’s unofficial soundtrack, and voters danced along. In 1984, optimism beat memory, and a troubled presidency turned into a historic landslide.

Which brings me to the obvious question:
What about the opponent? Was he weak? Did he do something wrong?

Not really.

Mondale ran an earnest, competent campaign that was almost perfectly mismatched to the national mood. While Reagan sold optimism (“Morning in America”), Mondale leaned into honesty about hard choices, most famously admitting he would raise taxes. He wasn’t wrong, but voters who were finally feeling economic relief didn’t want realism; they wanted reassurance.

Mondale also struggled to escape Reagan’s shadow. As a former vice president under Jimmy Carter, he felt like the past at a moment when the country felt it was moving forward. Reagan projected warmth, confidence, and stability and even turned concerns about his age into a joke rather than a liability.

Mondale won 13 electoral votes: 10 from his home state of Minnesota and 3 from the District of Columbia, which has always voted overwhelmingly Democratic.

And now an important side note. (“Important” in quotation marks.)

Show of hands: who remembers Brandon Walsh?

Anyone?

Brandon was one of the main characters on Beverly Hills, 90210, played by Jason Priestley. He moved with his parents and twin sister Brenda from Minnesota to Southern California, which promptly became his nickname at school. “Hey, Minnesota!”

Brandon drove a classic 1965 Mustang convertible. It had a name, too. He called it Mondale.

Brandon was the moral compass of the show: principled, idealistic, allergic to shortcuts. He was interested in politics, became student body president at university, and when he left the series in an episode titled “Mr. Walsh Goes to Washington,” it wasn’t to run for president, but to take a job at a major newspaper. Journalism. The honorable route.

Why is this important? It isn’t.

But it is a clever little detail by the writers. In contrast to his flashy Beverly Hills friends, Brandon always stood for decency and doing the right thing. And without ever having known Walter Mondale, I like to think he quietly carried on his legacy.

And just to wrap this all up with the proper 1984 soundtrack: while Reagan was selling “Morning in America,” the country was metaphorically walking on sunshine. If you squint, you can almost hear the energy of a pop anthem like “We Built This City”: optimism, pride, and a little bit of unstoppable momentum, all rolled into one unforgettable year.

If you could pick one 1984 pop song that perfectly captures the mood of Reagan’s landslide, which would it be and why?