Jay Cost: Obama 2012=Mondale 1984

Jay Cost blogs for the Weekly Standard.

...In both cases, we see the same basic argument: increase taxes to lower the deficit and engage in more social welfare spending. Mondale campaigned in 1984 as an unabashed Great Society liberal, looking to rally the old groups of the Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy/Johnson coalition – working class whites, union workers, middle class Catholics, and so on.

Will a similar strategy work for Obama?

No.

To start, it never worked for Mondale. Not only was the former vice president road kill on Ronald Reagan’s triumphal march to reelection, he got shellacked among the core New Deal groups. Reagan won 60 percent of those born before 1924 (and thus experienced the Great Depression first hand), 70 percent of Southern whites, 58 percent of working class whites, 51 percent of Catholics, and even 47 percent of union workers. In other words, Mondale’s old time liberal message of higher taxes and more social welfare spending did not work on any level in 1984....