On this day in 1984, President Ronald Reagan won 49 of 50 states and 525 of 538 electoral votes, winning reelection in an historic landslide. His Democrat challenger Walter Mondale carried Minnesota, Mondale’s home state, and Washington DC for a total of 13 electoral votes.
[Image via ElectoralMap.net]
Watch Reagan’s January 1984 announcement of his candidacy for a second term:
Upon accepting the Republican Party’s nomination, President Reagan made some observations that resonate today. He said:
America is presented with the clearest political choice of half a century. The distinction between our two parties and the different philosophy of our political opponents are at the heart of this campaign and America’s future.I’ve been campaigning long enough to know that a political party and its leadership can’t change their colors in 4 days. We won’t, and no matter how hard they tried, our opponents didn’t in San Francisco. We didn’t discover our values in a poll taken a week before the convention. And we didn’t set a weathervane on top of the Golden Gate Bridge before we started talking about the American family.The choices this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties. They’re between two different visions of the future, two fundamentally different ways of governing — their government of pessimism, fear, and limits, or ours of hope, confidence, and growth.Their government sees people only as members of groups; ours serves all the people of America as individuals. Theirs lives in the past, seeking to apply the old and failed policies to an era that has passed them by. Ours learns from the past and strives to change by boldly charting a new course for the future. Theirs lives by promises, the bigger, the better. We offer proven, workable answers.
Watch Reagan’s full acceptance speech for the 1984 Republican nomination:
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