Posted on 05/01/2017 12:26:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the Democratic Party rebuilds itself for the 2018 and 2020 elections, Democratic strategists have been preoccupied with a pressing question: why did so many voters who backed Barack Obama in 2012 switch to Donald Trump four years later, and what can be done to win them back?
Top Democratic pollsters have conducted private focus groups and polling in an effort to answer that question, and they shared the results with me.
One finding from the polling stands out: a shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favour the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump. I was also permitted to view video of some focus group activity, which showed Obama-Trump voters offering sharp criticism of Democrats on the economy.
Priorities USA, the super PAC that is working to restore Democrats to power, conducted focus groups of Obama-Trump voters in Wisconsin and Michigan — two states that Trump snatched from Democrats — in late January and polled some 800 Obama-Trump voters nationally at around the same time. The pollsters also conducted focus groups with so-called drop-off voters — people who voted for Obama in 2012 but didn’t vote in 2016 — in the same states and polled 800 drop-off voters nationally.
“Clinton and Democrats’ economic message did not break through to drop-off or Obama-Trump voters, even though drop-off voters are decidedly anti-Trump,” Priorities USA concluded in a presentation of its polling data and focus group findings, which has been shown to party officials in recent days.
The poll found that Obama-Trump voters, many of whom are working-class whites and were pivotal to Trump’s victory, are economically losing ground and are skeptical of Democratic solutions to their problems....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
Any Obama voters who voted for Trump probably did so in their belief that Trump would f*^@&$ up America even worse than Hitlery could.
Did they not notice they lost 1000+ seats in 8 years?
So now its that their "message" did not get through? (as usual) Even though they own all the media and all the networks, their message did not get through.
Social issues matter even if President Trump isn’t brave enough to talk about them.
Did democrats abandon their party to vote for Trump?
Or did the DNC believe it’s own propaganda polls so completely they just failed to cheat as hard as usual?
The article says the Democrats failed to get their economics policies across to the voters. I disagree. I think the non-grevance voters understood their economic policies just fine. That’s they voted for Trump.
Incidentally, implicit in the above is that the people who are Trump voting Democrats are too stupid to understand what’s good for them.
Hill wouldn’t listen to Bill. It’s the economy, Stupid.
Because the black voters did NOT come out for Hillary. That’s it - plain and simple. It was the only reason Obama won his second term and why the GOP shellacked the DNC in the house and senate on off years (because Obama wasn’t running)
The DNCs ideology has not been the reason for winning any races or gaining voters - it’s all been racism and bigotry in their candidates. Vote for the black guy because he’s your color. Vote for the woman because she deserves it. Otherwise DNC policy has been nonexistent and while clandestinely communist and insurrectionist. That’s not a winning strategy no matter who is pushing it.
There’s your analysis in plain and simple terms and all this hand wringing is the DNC trying to figure out what lip service to America they need to adopt to split off enough votes to start winning again.
I got it, Greg. Lie to them better and offer more free stuff.
Greg Sargent typically understands precisely nothing about anything of importance.
So it wouldn't be smart to put much stock in his reporting, whether it's on this subject or on any subject whatsoever.
For me that's the big question right there. Not only can 0bama claim to be the best firearms salesman in history, he can claim to have elected more Republicans than any Republican since Reagan. These things do matter.
It can be difficult for those of us who have loathed Hillary since the 90's to separate our own reasons for it from those of the last election's voters, but part of it, I think, is that she reinforced negative perceptions and did nothing to re-incorporate the voters they'd clearly alienated. 0bama, perhaps the most racist and divisive President in history, never ran as a racist or a divider, but Hillary made no bones about stating that you were either for her or were going to be crushed as a class enemy. That she was happy that coal miners were out of a job and would deliberately make it worse. That men needed to shut up. That whites needed to be lectured to about race. That the country was deficient and dishonorable in all the categories to which she intended to apply a corrective in terms of policy. 0bama never made that mistake, nor did her husband. Add that to an overweening sense of entitlement and all the personal warmth of a rattlesnake in a Texas arroyo and you simply don't have a very palatable candidate.
But it goes beyond that. The Dems were and remain fatally devoid of self-awareness. Even in this article the underlying attitude is that the Dems are traditionally the "party of the little guy" despite eight years of clear evidence that the little guy didn't think so, and a strange conviction that the problem is that the little guy was stupid and "fooled" by Trump. That position is so dense it bends light and they will not budge from it. And if they conclude, as some already have, that the remedy is a wild swing toward Bolshevism then all the analysis in the world can't help them.
Never correct your enemies. They should never be allowed to realize their missteps. It's better that they think Trump won because of Russians.
Democrat policies that favor the rich elected Trump.
Failure to talk to working-class white voters elected Trump.
Wikileaks elected Trump.
FBI investigation elected Trump.
Email scandal elected Trump.
Men elected Trump.
Misogyny elected Trump.
FBI Director Comey elected Trump.
Lower-level FBI agents pressuring their Director (because that’s how professional relationships work) elected Trump.
Tim Kaine gave Hillary Virginia, but he also elected Trump.
White women elected Trump.
The Russians elected Trump.
Racists elected Trump.
Sexists elected Trump.
Rural voters elected Trump.
The working class voting against their own interests elected Trump.
Fake news elected Trump.
Facebook elected Trump.
Supermarket tabloids elected Trump.
Celebrity (The Apprentice) elected Trump.
White male resentment elected Trump.
Over-shaming Trump supporters elected Trump.
Rejecting Bernie elected Trump.
Reagan democrats elected Trump.
Gary Johnson and Jill Stein voters elected Trump.
Backlash against political correctness elected Trump.
There are many terrible reasons for President Trump’s victory, but there are two things that were not a factor. First, Hillary was the perfect candidate; nothing she did harmed her candidacy in any way. Second, President Trump was the worst candidate imaginable; nothing he did helped his candidacy at all, except with racists, sexists, bigots, and the rest of the basket of deplorables.
Well said. Parts of this remind me of 2000 and the rear kickings they got at the ballot box in 2002 and 2004. They believed their own nonsense and had the self awareness of a cardboard box.
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