I don't quite buy into the notion the country shifted leftward in 1992 - but then again, I don't buy the notion it "really" moved to the right in 1980, either. For starters, Clinton did an outstanding job of keeping the extreme left elements at arm's length in 1992 - in a way that would never work in the age of the internet.
I think one thing the average person never grasps is that even in MOST landslide Presidential elections, a few votes here and there in the right states change the equation.
Look at 1988:
Bush 426
Dukakis 112 (note: one elector cast a ballot for Lloyd Bentsen as President in the official vote)
Margin 7.8 points in popular vote.
Coming in the context of 1972-84, when the GOP regularly routed the Democrats, it was interpreted as a continuing Republican dominance at the White House level (with concurrent Democratic dominance at the Congressional one).
But look a tiny bit closer (with 1992 EVs in parentheses)
Illinois - 2% (22 EVs)
Pennsylvania - 2.3% (23 EVs)
California - 3.5% (54 EVs)
Maryland - 2.5% (10 EVs)
Vermont - 3.6% (3 EVs)
Just a TINY BIT of a better candidate would have doubled (112 EVs above) Dukakis and made it a contest. Remember - if you lose by 2%, you only have to pick up a tiny bit more than 1% to win.
Then there's this:
Ohio - 5.8% (21 EVs)
Win the Buckeye state and now you're at 245 and in closing distance. You need 25 more to win.
My point being Dukakis did not lose nearly as badly as assumed; indeed, a better candidate in 1988 might well have beaten Bush despite the booming economy and peace agreements with the Soviet Union.
Now let's look at another one that would shock some people if you told them "it was closer than you think", 1980
Reagan 489
Carter 49
Margin 8.5 million popular votes
(Note: John Anderson got 5.7M votes as an independent)
But again - look a little closer (again with 1984 EVs)
Massachusetts - .15% (13)
Tennessee - 0.3% (11)
Arkansas - 0.5% (6)
Mississippi - 1.3% (7)
Kentucky - 1.4% (9)
Alabama - 1.3% (9)
Kentucky - 1.5% (9)
SCAR - 1.5% (8)
NCAR - 2.1% (13)
Delaware - 2.3% (3)
New York - 2.7% (36)
Maine - 3.4% (4)
Wisconsin - 4.5% (11)
So imagine Carter runs a tiny bit better race - and Anderson isn't in the picture, so he takes those states. What does it look like then?
Reagan 350
Carter 188
Reagan still wins - but it's a win along the lines of Obama's triumphs in 08 and 12, not exactly landslide wins. In all honesty, Anderson probably did cost Carter the state of Massachusetts (he got 382K votes and Carter only lost by 3800) and possibly Maine and Vermont.
Then you have:
Michigan - 6.5% (20)
My point is NOT that Carter could have won, he most likely couldn't have without Reagan making a complete fool of himself (which he did in August). But that it was some sort of major "shift to the right" doesn't seem to be accurate. And while - yes - the GOP DID pick up 12 Senate seats to support that idea, four of those lost in 1986 (another committed suicide, James East) and a few who stayed were hardly conservatives (Warren Rudman is the one who snuck David Souter past GHW Bush knowingly).
The hard left and hard right want us all to think that "they" are "winning" but the reality is that the winner has little choice but to govern from somewhere near the center or else he (or she, when it happens) is toast. Nixon was not some great shift. Neither was Reagan nor Clinton nor Obama.
Nor Trump - not in ideological terms, no.
