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[yellowcanine]

80. My point is that Mondale was not seen as the "inevitable" nominee. It was a competitive primary.

Also I do not remember polls showing that Mondale was going to trounce Reagan. As I recall, the only polls showing Mondale ahead of Reagan were after the first debate when Reagan looked flat and befuddled. Reagan did better in later debates and pulled away in the polls. Hart did very well in some of the primaries - particularly in the West but he never really recovered from Mondale's parody of a Wendy's ad directed at him in a debate - "Where's the beef?" In fact, Hart did little except talk about "new ideas" without much in the way of specifics. And as the front runner in 1988 he completely imploded with the Donna Rice scandal. You don't taunt the media and tell them to "follow me around" and then shack up with a woman who is not your wife. That is stupid and it fed into the notion of Hart being something of a flake. He had changed his name, he lied about his birth year, making himself one year younger for some reason. That kind of behavior will sink you in a national campaign and it would have sunk Hart in 1984 just as it did in 1988.