I think Mondale believed he could beat Reagan. Firstly, it is almost certain that he resolved to run against the new president shortly after he and Jimmy Carter lost in 1980. When Mondale launched his campaign on February 21, 1983, he did so following more than 2 years of preparation. It's unlikely he committed so much time and effort to a race he knew was unwinnable.

Secondly, there was reason to believe that Reagan was vulnerable when Mondale began his bid for the White House. The early 80s recession was difficult for the president and hurt his popularity. The fact that Reagan enjoyed a strong revival with the electorate makes one liable to forget this, especially given the magnitude of the Republican victory.

With regard to my first contention, Mondale himself described the genesis of his presidential aspirations in his autobiography. In recounting his experience attending Reagan's inauguration, he writes of his reaction to the new president's speech

What pained me most about the ceremony was Reagan's acceptance speech. I didn't begrudge the new president his chance to address the nation. He had won the election and it was his turn to lead. But when Reagan uttered the phrase "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," I was stunned. Reagan's central idea - the notion that government never succeeds, that only the unfettered market can solve our problems - I found profoundly misleading and destructive. I probably decided in that moment that I had to run against him in 1984.

I do not believe that someone would resolve to run for the presidency on the first day of his prospective opponent's term if he believed he had no chance of winning.

While it's good to get some perspective from the man in question, Mondale's recollection here is nothing new. The notion that he committed to run for the presidency just as his vice presidency ended was public record a full year before the 1984 landslide. In a piece published November 6, 1983, the Washington Post reported the following

[Mondale aide James A.] Johnson said Mondale's first decision after the 1980 election was a "working presumption" that he would run for president in 1984. "That would be one of the things that would guide him as he decided what kind of personal and business relationships he should develop," Johnson said.

The piece also cited no less an authority than Walter's daughter Eleanor Mondale

Mondale's daughter, Eleanor, was quoted recently as saying her father told the family of his plans the day after the 1980 election, when he and President Carter lost their bid for a second term.

The broader thrust of the article in the Post is how Mondale had been able to organize following his departure in 1981. Like fellow former vice president Richard Nixon, he joined a DC law firm (the DC office of the Chicago firm Winston & Strawn) and began to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign. Combined with some corporate directorships, Mondale was able to secure himself financially while freeing up his time to prepare his campaign. In a January 1983 piece, the Atlantic noted that his role at the firm was to bring it prestige, not to do time consuming legal work. This meant he had more time to plan his White House bid than potential competitors who still held elected office.

Mondale was very much aware that his tenure in the unpopular Carter administration would hurt him politically. In his autobiography he states that

I knew that if I got into a campaign dwelling on the Carter-Mondale years, I was probably doomed as our administration was not remembered with much affection.

Wanting to distance himself from his difficult years in the executive branch and understanding the need for a fresh agenda, Mondale undertook a process aimed at what his book calls "restocking my intellectual capital." At the time he called it a "re-education" that dominated his activities in 1981. The Atlantic described it thusly in the same piece referred to above

Shortly after signing on with Winston & Strawn, Mondale began his first round of travels—what he called a "re-education" campaign in a New York Times Magazine piece he wrote about himself. Through most of 1981. Mondale moved around the country and overseas, meeting businessmen, professors, military officers, and political leaders and seeking "new ideas." His aides worried that if Mondale failed to find new ideas—if his "re-education" had no clear result—the episode would come to be seen as an especially windy publicity stunt. Instead, however it was intended, it has turned out to be a political masterstroke. In 1981, when Reagan was at the height of his power in Congress, many Democrats made panicky conversions to supply-side and other conservative programs, conversions they soon began to regret. But by announcing a "re-education" period, Mondale was able to appear to be open-minded, weighing the Administration's arguments, so that he could endorse supply-side theory in the remote event that it did work without committing himself to it in the meantime. His conclusions wouldn't come until his "re-education" was complete—that is, until the public's verdict was in on Reagan's policies. And whichever way it turned out, there would be a "New Mondale," disassociated from the discredited liberal programs and, perhaps, from Carter.

This continued into 1982 as Mondale got involved in campaigning for that year's mid-terms and rounding up support for 1984. Again, the Atlantic gives us a primer on this

By early 1982, Mondale quietly dropped his "re-education" theme and began to campaign in earnest for local Democratic candidates and, of course, indirectly for himself. Other Democratic contenders, such as [Massachusetts Senator Edward] Kennedy and California Senator Alan] Cranston, were already doing the same, but, being senators, they could not invest as much time as Mondale could. Candidates to campaign for were chosen, Mondale's aides say, on the basis of who and what areas would be essential to the 1984 nomination (by last September, Mondale had already made fifteen appearances in Iowa) and, simply, on the basis of who would accept his assistance. Because the Democratic contenders had to compete for local platforms to share and for local candidates to embrace as "my old friend" Mondale, Kennedy, and the rest often found themselves bidding against each other. "Mondale's people called me up and said, 'Buzz, we'd really like to come out and help you,'" says Anthony Andrezeski, a congressional candidate from Erie, Pennsylvania.

Walter Mondale may have lost in a landslide against Ronald Reagan, but it cannot be said that it was because he hadn't put the work in. Stunningly unsuccessful though it may have been, his campaign was the product of 2 years of careful preparation and planning. As the campaign wore on, Mondale may well have doubted his chances at victory, but all the work he put into ensuring he was his party's nominee suggests that he started off with a sincere belief in his own chances.

Turning to my second point outlined at the beginning of this answer, the magnitude of Reagan's victory does not mean he was always viewed as politically invincible. July 1981 to November 1982 marked a period of prolonged recession in the US economy and Reagan's popularity took a hit. In March 1982, the unemployment rate reached 9% and ticked up to a recession peak of 10.8% that December. The House GOP lost 26 seats in that year's mid-terms (although their Senate colleagues did retain their majority with only one Democratic gain). At the beginning of 1983, Gallup recorded a dismal 35% approval rating for the president. Of course his fortunes reversed dramatically, but when Mondale was planning his campaign from 1981 to early 1983, I think there was some reason to believe that Reagan could be beaten.

Now of course I don't think any serious Democrat believed that Reagan was going to be easy to defeat. He was a gifted politician and had a way of instilling hope in people. Gallup made an interesting observation about Reagan's difficult year when it opined that

Throughout the year [1982] a solid majority of Gallup's respondents have taken the position that Reaganomics will worsen, rather than improve, their own financial situation. Yet, Gallup consistently has found somewhat more public faith that Reaganomics will help the nation as a whole and even more faith in the president's program when the question is posed with regard to the long run. Surveys also indicate that the public has more confidence in Reagan than approval ratings of his performance would suggest. While only one third approve of the way he is handling the economy, close to half express some degree of confidence that he will do the right thing with regard to the economy.

It really was hard to keep Reagan down. Mondale acknowledges in his book that the president had a way of calming anxieties about foreign and domestic policy questions, as his "simple answers were so reassuring." He also acknowledges Reagan's effective messaging on social policy that revolved around "welfare queens" taking advantage of the state, not to mention how the GOP would work hard define him by his tenure during the Carter years.

Still, it would be a drastic oversimplification to say that Reagan was on track for assured re-election when Mondale launched his campaign. He was certainly going to be a tough opponent, but not an invulnerable colossus. He sure looked like one come election night, but that was not always the case.

I'm not terribly familiar with the Mondale campaign or it's internal views, but I am familiar with the history of polling and I think your premise is a bit off. By the time the election neared it was pretty clear Reagan was likely to win in a landslide, but it wasn't always that way.

Reagan's approval rating with Gallup was below 50% from 1982 till the end of 1983. By election day it was closing in on 60%, but at the time decisions about running were being made he looked pretty beatable. When Mondale announced in Feb of 1983, Gallup had his approval in the 30's.

The race still looked close into that summer, with Reagan seen as rather weak. For example, this Harris Poll from July of 1983 suggested a close race between him and his likely challengers:

Thus, Ronald Reagan, who now holds slight margins over both Democratic frontrunners -- former Vice President Walter Mondale and Senator John Glenn -- seems far less to be leading an ideological crusade that will reshape American politics than to be faced with a scrambling race for survival in 1984 where he'll need every break just to squeak into a second term. The 10 point margin by which Reagan won in 1980 seems to have completely disappeared, and he has been reduced to running what can best be called a dead-even race.

While an improving economy and other factors would cause his approval rating to rise into 1984 and beyond, there were polls that had them close well into 1984. And of course more that didn't, but you could craft a reasonable narrative that Mondale had a chance. Even in the summer of 1984 when he actually accepted the nomination Gallup, in a poll for Newsweek, actually had Mondale up by 2. These were mostly outliers as the balance of polling was very favorable to Reagan. If they had polling aggregators like 538 back they would have shown a strong likelihood of a Reagan win throughout the actual campaign. But not a 100% certain win.

The 1980 election had also been an interesting one for pollsters. Carter had been more or less leading in the last month or two of the campaign by a decent margin. But the only debate between Carter and Reagan occurred a week before the election. After that Reagan would move into the lead and win by 10. While that kind of swing is rare, having only happened a couple times since polling has been around, it would have been fresh in people's mind having only been 4 years ago. While I think the debate, the Hostage Crisis, and other things in that final week moved a number of voters, many did argue that it was a sign that polling was flawed. You could also look at 1968 where Humphrey was down double digits to Nixon in September. And while he would lose, in the end it was by less than 1%.

Hopefully someone else can chime in with how Mondale and his people saw all this, but I just wanted to provide some context for the race. The blowout might look highly predictable in hindsight, but at least through the summer of 1984 there was enough counter evidence to believe that Mondale at least had a chance. Even after that when the polls became very pro-Reagan, you could still point to examples when events led to rapid shifts in support.

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