Reagan's biggest hurdle to overcome was that people thought of him as too "scary/extreme". So even though Carter was not popular, they were hesitant to support him. But Reagan ran a very smart general election campaign intended to show voters that he really wasn't all that freaky, and would be responsible. His optimism and non-insulting humor really helped that, as exemplified by his somewhat understated, chuckling "there you go again" line to Carter in the debate.
But I just haven't seen any evidence that Trump is capable of doing the same "ratcheting back/calming" thing that Reagan did so well. So as I said, someone's got to keep him and his Twittering fingers under control if he's going to have a shot.
Everything you had said I find plausible.
But I also kind of find it plausible that his complete twitter weirdness and crudeness is actually a benefit, depending on how mad everyone who is going to bother to vote in the general actually is. I can see a lot of folks maybe thinking ‘hey he has pulled back, I like when he was outraging everyone and making them clutch their pearls, so maybe he is just like everyone else, I’ll just not vote again.’ Do you think the average voter cares enough about that crudeness stuff as much as they did in 1980? Maybe, especially the women thing. But the ones that never got involved before, and are only in now to vote Trump? I don’t know.
Freegards