Salon.Com managing editor has a factually challenged blog post about Reagan’s 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter inaugurating a “dark age” in America,
I was a senior in college when Reagan was elected — in a very close election which he’d probably have lost had it not been for the participation of a third party candidate (John Anderson) — and that moment was like the start of a dark age. As a fiery young writer of editorials for my college paper I’d railed against Carter for his compromises with conservatism, and proudly chose to cast my first vote for an American president not for Carter against Reagan but for Barry Commoner.
It was a stubborn gesture, and in retrospect a dumb one. Too much was at stake to throw my vote away just so I could feel consistent. (Naderites, take heed.) America would have been a lot better off if Ronald Reagan had never been president. This was true while he was alive, and it is no less true now that he is gone.
The dark age comment is just silly, but his analysis of the 1980 election is a typical example of Salon.Com’s dedication to the facts.
The 1980 election was hardly close. Reagan earned 51 percent of the popular vote to Carter’s 41.1 percent and John Anderson’s 6.6 percent. The electoral college was a landslide with Reagan defeating Carter 489-49. Carter carried only Georgia, Minnesota and West Virginia.
Apparently, Rosenberg paid as much attention in college as he does as Salon.Com’s Managing Editor.
Source:
Scott Rosenberg Blog Post. June 6, 2004.