I wasn’t voting age in 76, but I wanted Carter to win then.
Yep, I was young. I had much to learn.
Most people forget that Carter positioned himself as a conservative Democrat in the 1976 election. It wasn’t true, but Georgians were about the only ones who knew better.
Gerald Ford was a Republican moderate. Reagan had challenged Ford from the Right for the Republican nomination, but it’s hard to knock off an incumbent.
It took Carter’s weak and inept governing to convince the country to vote for Reagan, over the objections of the GOP establishment.