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Notes -
Reporting from Politico describes the polling conducted for the Democrats, by the Democrats (source poll now released here). It's interesting stuff. When asked (all voters) about the Democratic response to Trump so far:
Pretty damning. If you lump in the "not sure" with those that actually explicitly say the Dems have no strategy at all, that's a good 2/3rds of voters, and even less than a third of those who think the Dems do have a strategy think it's a good one! And that's before the State of the Union, which seems to only have reinforced this impression. They tested a handful of opinionated claims about what direction the Democrats should go, presented in pairs and asked about which were, relatively speaking, more persuasive if they were to go that direction. Specific matchup data or party affiliation breakdowns wasn't published but overall, some notes about what did particularly well or poorly:
I found the contrast pretty interesting. Voters seem to think that a moderate, mainstream Democratic party would be most effective, but at the same time didn't think that talking down to people was necessarily an issue. Of course, all these reasons were relative to others, not framed in absolute terms, but still. The fact that "Democrats have no message" was found to be MORE persuasive than many of these other reasons, yet a statement calling them to double down on explicitly leftist policies seems to suggest that the Democrats are in a bit of a hole beyond just identity. A lot of people here seem to think that woke language is the millstone, but many voters don't seem to agree. If there's a big takeaway here, it's that voters are probably increasingly favoring short-term, domestic results in their motivations to vote. They don't think the messengers are that flawed, only the message itself, which is super interesting. As such, if I were the Democrats, I'd lean hard back into restoring CFPB-like programs and putting in to place better health care reform as midterm messages. After all, I think a lot of voters still look favorably on the Obamacare reforms. A final note is that this Democratic-aligned polling outfit didn't even bother to include an immigration-specific message! Perhaps because on their version of a Trump approval poll, Border Security and Immigration both received top marks at +10 and +8 favorable. Inflation and healthcare got -10 and -10, emphasizing my point about good points of focus.
A message via polling & committee is not a viable path to victory. Democrats need an actual leader with charisma and conviction, truly alien since Obama. In the ongoing Year of the Trump, the salient messages have been “resist”, “not Trump”, “woke” to a lesser extent, and “mumbling” at the moment. Somehow, I came out of the SotU shit show with a more favorable view of Trump even though I vehemently dislike every one of his policy positions or how he is implementing them. Democrats somehow came away looking even more effete. Resist: for a Congressperson to hold a placard or coordinate attire for an opposition speech.
I would go for accountability, the general acceptance of reality, and a clear, positive message for the future of the country. This bold proposal would require the Democratic Party to both run a primary and respect the outcome so it’s unlikely.
That may well be your opinion and you may well be right (voters don't always know what they want), but still I think it's worth pointing out that voters surveyed disagree. Specifically, one of the tested messages was:
which sounds very similar to your claim... but it tested smack dab in the middle of the pack, a perfect 50% score. The only "committee" aspect of the polling was that the surveyor is strongly Democrat-aligned, and the specific set of 10 messages were crafted by the pollsters themselves.
I think the element that you highlight that was very strongly supported however was that voters want a clear and pro-action "we want to do X" message, not a "we're against Y" message.
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