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“As much as I like her she is....un-electable.

Her voice alone drives me nuts.”

Nation: But Can Reagan Be Elected?

In the fall of 1979, California pollster Mervin Field felt the same about Reagan as did nearly all the pros. As late as March 1980, after he clinched the nomination, he was about 25 points behind Carter. People were acknowledging that he had a chance, but it was a long shot:

“But to say that Reagan can be elected is by no means to say that he will be. On the contrary, he looks very much the underdog. Some party operatives are plainly unhappy with his selection. In Massachusetts, where both Bush and Anderson defeated Reagan, party leaders are not yet reconciled to the Reagan candidacy. Says one: “There’s a vacuum of leadership at the national level; and what appears to be the Republican Party’s response? A 69-year-old man who has done virtually nothing for years. We’re at the same stage the Whigs were. There’s no choice.”

Reagan has a history of committing rhetorical blunders that drive away voters. His quest in 1976 was damaged when he suggested vaguely, without proper research and consideration, that $90 billion in federal programs should be turned back to the states. He then spent months explaining that the affected programs would not be eliminated, only transferred. As Governor, Reagan was outraged by student unrest and once proclaimed: “The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”

Worse perhaps than the verbal gaffe is Reagan’s relentlessly simple-minded discussion of complex problems. He is aware that he is charged with this failing, and in his 1967 inaugural address on becoming Governor of California, he asserted: “We have been told there are no simple answers to complex problems. Well, the truth is there are simple answers, just not easy ones.”

Reagan was seen as an “amiable dunce”, “too old”, “too ill informed and too simplistic” and he was a dangerous lunatic who couldn’t wait to start a nuclear war with the Russians. And he was 25 points behind just seven months before the election. From that vantage point, he looked so completely unelectable.

BTW, you may not like her voice, and you may not like “hopey changey.” That is a matter of taste. I doubt that you want to have socialism served for the next 6 years with Obama’s soothing baritone.