Reagan's electoral success is a fact. It is, however, intextricably tied to his methods and goals [View All]

October surprises, dirty tricks, excoriating Jimmy Carter on a very unfair basis, making corrupt alliances with corporations to obtain media cover, providing a facade of platitudes to cover up unpopular right-wing economic policies, the list goes on. To hold up his symbolizing of "hope" and "change" as an example, one can't ignore what allowed that to happen. It wasn't simply that he declared himself to represent "hope" and "change," as almost every politician tries to mine those buzzwords for all they're worth. His disingenuous campaign strategy and his collusion with the money centers of politics via a very regressive platform allowed that PR blitz to succeed. To claim his "hopefulness" existed wholly outside of all this Machiavellian backdrop simply isn't plausible. To emulate Reagan's brand of image-marketing, you'd have to throw a lot of progressive values under the bus. It isn't repeatable otherwise, though the DLC have been trying to repeat it with a more half-hearted sell-out position for a very long time.