From James Pinkerton’s column on “The Emerging Trumpian Majority”:
Those of us with long memories have seen this dynamic before. Back in 1980, I was a junior staffer on Ronald Reagan’s campaign against Jimmy Carter; in that year, too, Americans wanted sweeping change, but they were uncertain about Reagan, mostly because they were told, every day, by Walter Cronkite & Co., that he was either an incompetent old coot or a crazy warmongering cowboy. In fact, it wasn’t until the one presidential debate that year, on October 28—just a week before the election—that Reagan made the sale. As he said so famously, as Carter repeatedly flailed away, “There you go again.” In that instant, watching the challenger smile as the incumbent once again bared his fangs, the country said to itself, Reagan’s not so bad. And so the Gipper won in a landslide.