Posted on 09/05/2017 5:19:30 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Center-left think tank Third Way on Tuesday urged the Democratic Party to rebrand itself as “the jobs party” in a report that warns of the risks of adopting the policies and rhetoric of the far left.
Landing as the left wing of the party claims ascendancy, the report wades into some of the philosophical disagreements now dividing the party, which is further from power than it has been in decades. Based on extensive, three-day online focus groups with battleground-state voters, the publication aims to diagnose Democrats’ current problem. But it also knocks the kind of economic populism often pushed by prominent figures like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The study, conducted by polling firm Global Strategy Group, involved interviews with persuadable voters who backed Barack Obama and then Donald Trump, as well as with persuadable African-American, Latino and millennial voters. Third Way’s resulting document warns that key voters believe Democrats prioritize poor citizens and some rich ones — but not the middle class.
It says voters intuitively see the Democratic Party as standing against business, and it urges party leaders to put less emphasis on social issues and “recognize that voters want to see a rebalancing of the Party’s priorities.”
“Even as the economy approaches full employment, there remains a real economic anxiety, and people will always aspire to new and better job opportunities. Trump spoke to this — and voters responded,” the report reads. “To rebuild the Party and regain the power to enact their priorities, Democrats need to craft a broad path that’s inclusive of a diverse coalition and sustainable across election cycles. Reclaiming its status as the party of jobs is a unifying way to do just that.”
Voters in the focus groups repeatedly insisted that Trump was focused on jobs after his rhectoric on the campaign trail about securing more, better jobs for Americans, write authors Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, Third Way’s vice president for social policy and politics, and Ryan Pougiales, the group’s senior political analyst. “Almost without fail, focus group participants in both groups identified the issue as Trump’s top priority. There’s a lesson in this for Democrats,” the report states.
To remedy that situation and the related belief that Democrats work for “somebody else,” the report recommends that party officials avoid proposals that can be branded as “handouts,” in addition to staying away from attacking business.
“Rallying around proposals like free college or universal basic income just exacerbate[s] this resentment,” the authors warn, referring to the education policy pitch at the center of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “Effective policy solutions to bolster economic security are vital, but they must begin with job creation and be tethered to the values of hard work and earning your way that underscore America’s economic compact.”
The entire Democrat Party is already far left.
Didn’t Mussolini sell Fascism as a “third way”?
Notice how none of this is about what they really think, or what really motivates them. It’s all about how they can falsely characterize themselves.
And for the same reason.
The Democrats have owned far-left populism since Woodrow Wilson; they’re not going to change a thing.
Here we go again. New Democrats. Already been there, done that with Clinton.
“begin with job creation and be tethered to the values of hard work and earning your way that underscore America’s economic compact”
This is what the marx-o-crats oppose.
Enough said.
From ‘GIMME MORE FREE STUFF’ to ‘everyone should get a job’? Pffffft. Not gonna happen.
Kind of clever to brand oneself as the jobs party right smack dab in the middle of what will probably be one of the greatest economic expansion in decades. NOT!
The study will fall on closed RAT eyes and ears.
And that is a good thing.
Never mind. They won’t listen to reason. They have let Antifa define them and their Party. And the people, Left and Right, see through Antifa now. Dems have been forced to come out and say a few negative words about Antifa, but they have not disavowed them......and Leftists are still pretending the Trump supporters are ‘violent’, too. Which we all know isn’t true.
The only hope the Democrats have in 2018 and 2020 is for traitorous RINO scum to sabotage what should be an unprecedented victory for Trump and his supporters.
Which is to say that in spite of the absurdity of the American Communist Party (which is what the Democrats have become) trying to re-brand itself as a “jobs party” they still have some hope.
Yes, the leftists always march like totalitarians they are towards their evil goal while the only thing that changes are the lies and slogans that they sing.
Precisely. It isn't about change, it's about changing posture. The fundamentals will still be hard Left.
This only one of three areas where the Dems have to change and won't. Those three are:
1. Middle and working class jobs. The political class either does not realize how existential those jobs are or hold the middle and working classes in contempt for allowing them to be. Having the media claim that 0bama solved it when he had not was deadly; having them claim that Trump has not improved things when he has is worse.
2. It's the racism, stupid. Not that of any fictional White Supremacists, that was always a stupid made-up story and everybody they're trying to reach knows it. It's their racism. And they deny it exists.
3. Love of country. The Dems are still stuck in that adolescent Left attitude that the country is terrible but that they and they alone know how to turn it into utopia. The country is not terrible. It is a triumph of the human condition. Love it first, improve it next, and respectfully.
It's safe advice to give because absolutely nobody on the Dem side will listen to it. Their loss.
The radical leftist dem party isn’t a bag of chips they can repackage to sell more of to the dumbed down leftist leaning population.
Oh wait!
The Republicans need to start branding the Democrats as the party of the “far Left”.
Day in and day out keep referring to them as the party that hates the middle class and is in debt to special interests.
That the Democrat party is endorsed by AntiFa and the Communist party and wants to tear down American history like the Taliban does with Christian history in the ME.
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