To me those films where anti-Reagan imho..
Most definitely. The "message" was that the "warmonger" Ronnie "Raygun" was the instigator, by his words and by the crime of bolstering America's defenses.
But, my argument is that the Soviets would have launched against a weak Carter, and the end results would have been what we saw in those movies.
The least we could have expected to see was probably something falling along the lines of Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" (still his best work, IMHO.)