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Today's column is drawing some predictable outrage from the Reagan cult, even though both the economics and the political science are really straightforward 1/ nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opi…
One thing the Reagan story really illustrates is the extent to which voting reflects recent economic growth, not the absolute level. At the time of the 1984 landslide, Americans were significantly WORSE off than they had been in the late 70s 2/ 
But things were getting better, and that's what determined the vote -- even though the main reason for the 1983-4 boom was the reversal of the Fed's extreme tight-money policy 3/
Another thing we learn from Reaganolatry is the right's ability to rewrite history -- not just about RR, but about Clinton. By every measure -- GDP growth, job growth, and family incomes -- the Clinton-era boom surpassed the Reagan experience 4/
Was that due to Clinton's policies? No, not really -- but neither was whatever good stuff happened under Reagan. But the Reagan myth couldn't survive the acknowledgement that good things happened under a president who raised taxes. So Clinton went down the memory hole 5/
Actually, it goes beyond forgetting to completely rewriting history. It may seem incredible that Republicans can now characterize the Clinton years as a bad time economically -- but they can 6/
I guess another important lesson here is that the GOP disdain for facts didn't start with Trump. In fact, the party's whole doctrinal structure depends on believing in things that aren't true and didn't happen 7/
