Internal Democratic polling published Thursday shows that GOP attacks on the liberal party’s handling of COVID-19, crime, immigration and other issues have “alarming credibility” with key voters.
SO WHAT
The Democrats are scrambling to pivot ahead of the midterms, but it may already be too late.
WHAT THE VOTERS ARE SAYING
On Thursday morning, SFGATE reported, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee officials were presented with the results of a poll they commissioned of the 60 most competitive House districts.
These were six of the most damning numbers from the slideshow:
1. COVID-19: 57% of the voters — including 66% of self-identified “swing voters” — agree with the statement, “Democrats in Congress have taken things too far in their pandemic response.”
2. CRIME: 64% of the voters — including 80% of swing voters— agree with the statement that “Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street.”
3. IMMIGRATION: 62% of the voters — including 78% of self-identified “swing voters”— agreed with the statement, “Democrats in Congress have created a border crisis that allows illegal immigrants to enter the country without repercussions and grants them tax-payer funded benefits once here.”
4. SPENDING: 61% of the voters agree with the statement, “Democrats in Congress are spending money out of control.”
5. “CRT”: 61% of the voters agree with the statement, “Democrats are teaching kids as young as five Critical Race Theory.”
6. CULTURE WARS: 59% of the voters agree with the statement, “Democrats are too focused on pursuing an agenda that divides us and judging those who don’t see things their way.”
HOW THE DEMOCRATS ARE REACTING
Based on the same polling and focus groups data, the DCCC has been warning swing-district Democrats that Republican criticism of the party as out of touch and divisive is “alarmingly potent” with their voters and could lead to a blue bloodbath in the 2020 midterm elections, Politico reported Tuesday.
- “It’s what we’ve been screaming about for a year,” said Matt Bennett, a prominent center-left activist, echoing other top Democrats in an Axios report published Friday. “It’s a huge problem.”
- Axios described Tuesday’s landslide recall of three uber-woke San Francisco school board members as “part of a barrage of evidence that the progressive activism of the Squad pushed the party’s image way left of where most voters are — even most Democratic voters.”
After spending months on voting rights reforms and the Build Back Better spending package, Democratic leaders have belatedly given up on those failed efforts and turned to an issue most Americans actually care about, The Hill reported Thursday.
- “We are focused on getting costs down, and you’re going to see a lot of activity in March from us on that issue,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, previewing the party’s new inflation-fighting message.
- Sen. Dick Durban, Schumer’s No. 2, said: “We want to help these families make ends meet but we don’t want to make inflation worse. We’ve got to come up with a plan that addresses that.”