Reagan's Coattails
Reagan’s coattails refers to the influence of Ronald Reagan’s popularity in elections other than his own, after the American political expression to “ride in on another’s coattails.” Chiefly, it refers to the “Reagan Revolution” accompanying his 1980 election to the U.S. Presidency. This victory was accompanied by the change of twelve seats in the U.S. Senate from Democratic to Republican hands, producing a Republican majority in the Senate for the first time since 1954.
The most stunning defeat was that of U.S. Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.), a prominent liberal Democrat who had been the party’s nominee for president in 1972. McGovern lost his bid for a fourth term in the Senate by a resounding 58% to 39% margin to U.S. Rep. James Abdnor (R-S.D.).
Read more about Reagan's Coattails: 1980 Senate Democratic Losses, 1986 and Beyond, Other Races
Famous quotes containing the words reagan and/or coattails:
“So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)