A thing people don't much remember about Jimmy Carter's run in 1976 is how contradictory it was: he was running to get the votes both of sixties liberals who had voted for George McGovern and southern segregationists who had voted for George Wallace. It wasn't a sustainable coalition and started falling apart as soon as Carter got into office. Carter had some uniquely bad luck with the economic problems continuing that had started under Nixon and Ford, and the Iranian hostage crisis.
@DavidSalo It would have been better for Ford to have won in 1976 and have had all that mishegoss land on him.
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And a Reagan administration in the 80s would have been unlikely.