"At issue were remarks Mr. Obama made last week to The Reno Gazette-Journal.
While he spoke positively of Reagan and described the Republicans as “the party of ideas,” he did not say that he admired Reagan.“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Mr. Obama told the newspaper. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
At the debate, Mr. Obama said that Mrs. Clinton had “provided much more fulsome praise” of Reagan in Tom Brokaw’s new book, “Boom!,” in which she is quoted as saying: “When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22truth.html?_r=1&oref=sloginObama is accurately describing history. The country was ready for Reagan's ideas in 1980, as I for one was shocked to find when he won overwhelmingly. It was not just Carter who lost that day, all over the country prominent liberal Senators lost. It was a completely unexpected tidal wave. (Coincidently, this weekend, a friend of my husband's who volunteered for Culver was talking to us of how devastated they were watching the defeat of so many outstanding Senators.)
Here is the summary from Time. (their joy is way too apparent, but it does give the list of who lost):
"The results surprised even the most optimistic Republicans. They had counted on a gain of maybe four or five seats in the Senate. They ended up with an eleven and possibly twelve—enough to give them control of the chamber for the first time since 1954. And victory was all the sweeter since the election toppled most of the Senate's leading Democratic liberals: George McGovern in South Dakota, Frank Church in Idaho, Birch Bayh in Indiana, John Culver in Iowa, Warren Magnuson in Washington, Gaylord Nelson in Wisconsin, and John Durkin in New Hampshire. Only a few liberals managed to keep their seats: California's Alan Cranston and Missouri's Thomas Eagleton won easily, while Colorado's Gary Hart barely beat back his Republican challenger, Mary Estill Buchanan and Vermont's Patrick Leaky seemed to have won by a hair. Two other Democrats refused to concede defeat on Election Night: Elizabeth Holtzman of New York and Incumbent Robert Morgan of North Carolina."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950490-1,00.html