Alternate History

Take off your reality caps for a minute and suspend your disbelief. What if Jimmy Carter won the 1980 Presidential election and was re-elected?

Carter would have been President until January 1985 and that would caused an entire different dynamic on the 1980s.

How would the '80s have looked? Would it remain mostly the same as we currently know the '80s or would it have been wildly different?

What if Jimmy Carter won re-election in 1980?

The joke in Back to the Future wouldn't make sense

Mr. Gorbachev would not have torn down that wall.

Less peanuts would have been sold?

The Americans held in Iran would be incarnated for another four years at least, and that war with Iraq would have been even more severe and cause the US to beef up their military spending not long after Vietnam drained it out. The already high inflation would grow even higher, potentially morphing into hyperinflation and Japan (with South Korea and China not far behind) truly would have been the new superpower by buying out bankrupt parts of the West, and the relative loss of wealth would easily have matched the Great Depression. The US also would likely be a fully metric nation and communism would also make further inroads. Even Margaret Thatcher would have been voted out sooner. We'd still have video arcades, new wave music, and MTV though.

The joke in Back to the Future wouldn't make sense

Which joke?

What would've become of Ronald Reagan? ???

What would've become of Ronald Reagan? ???

Nobody knows. He would still be a prominent figure in the GOP but he would be out consideration for presidential nomination in 1984.

If Carter beat Reagan in 1980, then Reagan would have failed to become President in both 1976 and 1980. The conservative movement in the Republican Party would have been led by someone other than Reagan. Bob Dole or Jack Kemp would have come to the forefront of the "Conservative Revolution".

Mr. Gorbachev would not have torn down that wall.



Not necessarily. I think the USSR was ripe for tearing down the wall. Reagan just made a publicity stunt. Yeah, it sounded good-and many believed that Reagan was the cause of the collapse of the USSR.


If Carter won re-election, the White House would have had solar panels longer because Reagan took them off-and maybe the U.S. would have led the way in renewable energies. 



Cat

Not necessarily. I think the USSR was ripe for tearing down the wall. Reagan just made a publicity stunt. Yeah, it sounded good-and many believed that Reagan was the cause of the collapse of the USSR.


If Carter won re-election, the White House would have had solar panels longer because Reagan took them off-and maybe the U.S. would have led the way in renewable energies. 



Cat

I agree.

The Soviet Union's collapse was inevitable by the 1980s. Maybe, Reagan sped it up a bit with his rhetoric but Reagan wasn't THE reason why the Soviet Union ended like how many conservatives and Republicans think.

Which joke?


The legendary one that is in the movie

I'd say the US would probably be more like Western Europe is today. More of a social democracy. The USSR would have died anyway, I think it's propaganda that Reagan took it down. The GOP would be more normal and the far right would be much weaker. Reagan is what really originally empowered the far right after the '60s/'70s set them off and that's ultimately why we have Trump today.