"What shocks me about neoliberalism is how utterly unapologetic it is about the misery it produces."

[JHB]

71. Actually, he started the neoliberalism, with early deregulation...

...though Reagan added rocket boosters to that trajectory. And weird as it seems given what we have to deal with today, he used to be considered the moralizing prick who wore his religion on his sleeve.

But you're correct that the hawkish and "pro-business" side of the party didn't like him and didn't like the way he implicitly ran against them in 76, using changes in the primary structure to "run up the middle" and win the nomination without their support. He and his "Georgia mafia" didn't have good relations with the Democratic establishment in Washington.

There were rumblings of a Moynihan challenge in 1980, which may have been the factor that convinced Kennedy to do it, and once Kennedy was in Moynihan bowed out.

Let's also not forget the "Ed Koch wing", those voters who would single-issue vote on whether someone "helped" or "hurt" Israel, and they considered the Camp David accords a raw deal rammed down Israel's throat. Koch was quite gleeful at the electoral harm he did to Carter.

Finally, any discussion of the 1980 election that doesn't put the words "hostage crisis" at the forefront is more about grinding a favorite axe than discussing the election. Despite everything, Carter and Reagan were nearly neck and neck until late October. It was when it became clear to everyone that there would be no last-minute deal to release the embassy hostages, no "October surprise", that the numbers started the big shift to Reagan.