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United States News Title: Democrats’ “Blame Bush” and “Go Forward, Not Back” Message Driving Voters to GOP (They Aren't Buying The Bullshit Any More) The White House has no plans to give up on its blame-Bush strategy. A White House adviser says that George W. Bush and his policies created “the hole we’re in,” and President Obama will keep reminding the country of the economic “mess” he inherited.” — US News & World Report, February 9, 2010 “We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward. And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward.” — Barack Obama, June 2, 2010 Forward not backward: That’s the mantra President Obama wants to drill into voters’ heads between now and November. – ABC News, July 9, 2010 Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg has been conducting extensive polling on Democratic messaging in advance of the election. His similar work in 1998 helped craft the Democratic message about Ken Starr’s overreach on impeachment, which, as I mentioned yesterday, resulted in the first time since 1822 that the non-presidential party failed to gain seats in the mid-term election of a President’s second term. On Wednesday Greenberg and James Carville released a research report summarizing the results of their extensive polling on messaging that is working for Democrats in this election cycle. It won’t surprise most people to learn that protecting Social Security, creating American jobs and opposing NAFTA-like free trade agreements are the messages most likely to persuade people to vote for Democrats. But curiously, they left something out of their summary that set off red flags for a lot of Democratic insiders when they issued it as a Democracy Corps”Alert” on September 20. The Alert said quite emphatically that Democrats needed to change their framework in order to win in November. Greenberg buried the lede, but his polling reached a very clear conclusion: Obama’s “go forward, not backward” message actually moves voters over to the GOP: Not All Democratic Messages Work – and Some Make it Harder The weakest messages assert we should “go forward, not back.” Voters are not moved by Democratic messages that say ‘go forward, not back,’ mention President Bush, compare then and now, or even that hint the economy is “showing signs of progress.” No matter how dramatically these messages set out the record of Republican obstructionism, their work for the wealthiest and Goldman Sachs, the millions of jobs lost and Democrats’ support for jobs, small business and new industries – these messages falter before the Republican attack. The messages get lower scores and lose voters. After hearing this battle of Republican and Democratic messages, 8 percent shift their vote to support the Republican, while only 5 percent move to the Democrats. We lose ground. These messages are helping the Republicans. But, as we can see in the rank order summary of the different messages tested, this is the weakest way to go into the election. This framework provides the least help to Democrats running in this election, indeed, leaves the Democratic congressional candidate a net 2 points weaker, which we can hardly afford. This is the only framework tested in this project that leaves the candidates in a weakened position. When listening to people react to this message in focus groups or watching them react to video clips of this message, they respond with a common sense that we should heed. People are intensely dissatisfied with the economy and are looking for solutions – anything less sounds like excuses or some political blame game. Though voters agree the economy was an “inherited” problem, they do not like to hear politicians blaming Bush or looking backwards. For some, going back to four years ago does not look so uninviting right now: “I was doing a heckavah lot better under Bush.” “Who wouldn’t want to go back to 6 or 8 years ago? There was less unemployment back then. I’d rather go back. I’d go back to 8 years ago. I would rather go backwards than forwards right now.” White non-college female. Because a “go forward” framework implies that Democrats and Congress have made progress those voters do not feel, the message re-enforces the Republican framework for the election – a referendum on the Democrats’ performance on the economy. In the experiment described above (where voters read the two Republican messages and the two Democratic ‘go forward, not back’ messages), votes shifted to the Republicans not only on which party can best handle the economy but also on the congressional vote. The 5 percent who shifted to the Democrats was exceeded by the 7 percent of voters who moved to the Republicans – a net negative 2-point worsening of the race. That’s a pretty remarkable thing for Democratic insiders like Carville and Greenberg to write: that the core message being delivered by the President actually persuades people to vote for Republicans over Democrats. I spoke with several Democratic pollsters and consultants to get their impressions of the Democracy Corps findings. They said that their own polling, as well as that of other pollsters have confirmed Greenberg and Carville’s conclusions.
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
The American People have a very high tolerance for political bullshit. Owe-bama exceeded that very high threshold about six months ago. 24 days....
Obama's first all-by-his-lonesome budget, btw, calls for a $1.17 trillion deficit.
Buck Fush!
“There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
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