Is this why Dem’s Approval Rating Polls are so bad?

[altmin]

If Democrats ever get the messaging thing down (yeah yeah, I know…and if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle), I’m not sure Republicans would win many national elections ever again. As it stands, the Democrats manage to fumble their way into a win every 4-8 years or so after Republicans hold the federal government and run it into the shitter, explode the national debt, send our troops off to die on foreign soil, cause an economic recession, or some combination of the above. But if the Dems ever figure out how to actually talk like, and talk to, the average American or even just the average voter, they’d win almost every national election moving forward. Americans are clear that they “want” progressive-style economic policy, and that they don’t necessarily always want progressive-style social policy.

Unfortunately for Democrats, they can’t seem to figure out how to actually help average people recognize that Democratic economic policy aims are a true rising tide that lifts all boats (or a life preserver extended to a person drowning), and that Republican economic policy aims are a boot on the top of the head of a drowning person. I’d challenge anyone to name one singular Republican economic policy proposal that directly improves the lives of lower class and middle class Americans where the opposite Democratic policy proposal does the inverse. Conversely, I’d challenge anyone to name one singular Republican economic policy proposal that helps the lower class and middle class at the expense of the upper class.

When Republicans hold the federal government, lower class and middle class Americans lose their social safety net. They pay more in taxes. They get their veterans benefits cut. They get disability benefits cut. They get SNAP benefits cut. They lose worker protections. They lose breakfast and lunch for lower-income schoolchildren. They lose affordable childcare. They lose health insurance coverage. They lose all of the above so that the top 1% of the 1%, and the top multi-billion dollar corporations, get their taxes cut.

The fact that Democrats have some inexplicable party-wide failure of imagination in being able to succinctly successfully articulate the above to the average American is why the electoral beatings will continue until morale improves (or until this cycle of Republican leadership inevitably leads to economic recession, whichever comes first).

Edited to add: I say all of the above as someone for whom many Republican economic policies are a financial benefit. I’m not trying to reflexively bash the Republican Party for the sake of doing so, but rather trying to point out that when it comes to actually boosting the lower and middle classes (which comprise the large majority of electorate), it’s not even a contest which party’s policy aims are a hundred fold more beneficial and which party’s aims are directly punitive.

Messaging is a lot easier when you can lie with impunity.

 

[Paine]

Messaging is a lot easier when you can lie with impunity.

True. But the left doesn’t lose because we tell the truth. We lose when we tell it badly, with no story, no conviction, no emotional weight. Facts don’t move people on their own. Meaning does.

 

[superrific]

If Democrats ever get the messaging thing down (yeah yeah, I know…and if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle), I’m not sure Republicans would win many national elections ever again. As it stands, the Democrats manage to fumble their way into a win every 4-8 years or so after Republicans hold the federal government and run it into the shitter, explode the national debt, send our troops off to die on foreign soil, cause an economic recession, or some combination of the above. But if the Dems ever figure out how to actually talk like, and talk to, the average American or even just the average voter, they’d win almost every national election moving forward. Americans are clear that they “want” progressive-style economic policy, and that they don’t necessarily always want progressive-style social policy.

1. If Americans were clear that they want progressive economic policies, wouldn't they act on it? I don't put much stock in single-issue polling. It is too artificial, because it doesn't involve tradeoffs. In a poll, you don't have to consider costs or the effect on the deficit. You don't have to consider opportunity costs. You can pick a la carte the things you want, when in reality only one or two major pieces of legislation can be done at once. Do you want Medicare for All, or more investment into industrial policy, or a higher minimum wage? Things get more complicated when people have to choose.

2. Polls also don't necessarily capture the full range of effects. Who doesn't want a higher minimum wage if it were a free lunch? I've not seen that these issue polls put real descriptors on the described policies (and there are polling-related reasons not to; the wording muddles the data); but imagine if people were asked, "do you support a higher minimum wage, knowing that it might cause unemployment to rise among low-wage workers?" For us, that automatically comes with the territory; we've internalized much of the policy debate and understand, at least a little, the tradeoffs. Not sure that's true across the board. What I've observed seems to be the opposite.

3. Also, the polls I've seen rarely mention military spending. Lots of Americans say, sometimes, that we should spend less on the military. But when push comes to shove, they don't want that.

4. But most importantly, do we live in an age of national drained-pool politics? I think we do. I think there are millions of Americans who are angry about perceived favoritism for the "other" that they are happy to accept less if it means slapping them down. That's what the attacks on universities are all about. That's certainly what the immigration nonsense is all about. It's what welfare reform has always been about.

I tend to put more stock in revealed preferences (though it's not hard to get carried away with that sort of thing). When I look at politics today, I see a lot of people answering polls in one way and then voting in another. One interpretation, I suppose, is that Dems are bad at messaging. Another is that people talk a different game than they actually play. It's like Carmelo Anthony, in pregame talking about the need to shoot more 3s and then in the game launching four times half a step inside the line.

 

[superrific]

It’s interesting to me that Jackson has such support from among the conservative posters on this board, and it’s kind of a “case in point” of what I was talking about above in regard to a broad majority of Americans supporting progressive economic policy.

1. I don't think the conservatives on the board know much about Jeff Jackson's economic policies. Hell, I don't know much. I don't live in NC, so that's part of the reason for me. In any event, I don't interpret the support for Jeff Jackson as support for progressive ideas.

2. I have my doubts that the conservative posters on this board would actually vote for Jeff Jackson. It's a way of broadcasting, "I'm not a party line ideologue -- see how I like some liberals if they are decent." Like Mitt Romney for liberals. Yeah, we liked that Mitt voted to convict Trump, and criticize MAGA. Would we vote for him? I can't imagine a world in which I would.

 

[lawtig02]

1. I don't think the conservatives on the board know much about Jeff Jackson's economic policies. Hell, I don't know much. I don't live in NC, so that's part of the reason for me. In any event, I don't interpret the support for Jeff Jackson as support for progressive ideas.

2. I have my doubts that the conservative posters on this board would actually vote for Jeff Jackson. It's a way of broadcasting, "I'm not a party line ideologue -- see how I like some liberals if they are decent." Like Mitt Romney for liberals. Yeah, we liked that Mitt voted to convict Trump, and criticize MAGA. Would we vote for him? I can't imagine a world in which I would.

Agree on #2, but I don't think we can discount the importance of "likeability" in politics. We obviously have to take race and gender into consideration. In a rational world, Kamala was immensely more likeable that Trump. But Jeff checks all of the likeability boxes. So I wouldn't be shocked to see people like HeelYeah and ramrouser supporting Jeff over an unlikeable Republican, even if Jeff is objectively to the left of Kamala on most issues.

 

[superrific]

True. But the left doesn’t lose because we tell the truth.

Mondale did.

 

[superrific]

Agree on #2, but I don't think we can discount the importance of "likeability" in politics. We obviously have to take race and gender into consideration. In a rational world, Kamala was immensely more likeable that Trump. But Jeff checks all of the likeability boxes. So I wouldn't be shocked to see people like HeelYeah and ramrouser supporting Jeff over an unlikeable Republican, even if Jeff is objectively to the left of Kamala on most issues.

Likeability absolutely is important; I think we can put the observed gender bias for candidates like Kamala and HRC into this box. HRC was legitimately not likeable at times (I've seen her up close and personal in private events; she came across to me as quite arrogant and well, you know). Kamala was absolutely likeable but black and female.

I have no idea what the Tillis voters would do when given Jeff Jackson as a choice. I'm not going to predict that with confidence. I'm just confident that a lot of the conservative love for JJ is phony, perhaps only subconsciously. In a swing state, it doesn't take all that much cross over to make a difference, so again I'm not discounting any possibility. It's just that they are possibilities.

 

[Paine]

Mondale did.

Mondale is exactly the type of politician I’m talking about in the second part of the post. He told the truth, but he told it badly.

He lost because he had no emotional theory of change. He told voters it would hurt and offered no vision of why that sacrifice was worth it, no moral horizon to rally behind. You can’t just say “belt-tightening is coming” and expect people to cheer. Facts without meaning don’t win elections.

 

[Zoo_View]

Mondale did.

Mondale was losing in 1984 regardless. His being honest about tax increases just helped him lose by an even greater margin.

 

[superrific]

It is also worth remembering that our political messaging is the way it is in large measure because of campaign finance laws. The idea that Democrats don't know how to message seems implausible to me. Democrats could ask Aaron Sorkin or the other liberal creative talent to do its messaging, and maybe Dems have never asked but I think it's more likely that the messaging project is much harder than people think (if it's even the main problem).

Campaign finance laws, however, limit what individual campaigns and even political parties can spend on messaging. It does not limit what outside dark money can spend, though it limits the coordination between that outside dark money. The result is that most messaging is negative. It appears that negative messaging is more popular and effective, but even if it wasn't, the financial structure makes it so difficult. The outside groups can't coordinate the positive, hopeful messaging everyone is talking about here -- and they don't necessarily agree on what that messaging should look like. But everyone can agree that the other side needs to lose, and you don't need to coordinate to launch attack ads on every way the other candidate is bad. So that's where the money goes.

This is why so-called "earned media" is so important and of course we know that Trump is a master of that. But is that type of thing even in the Democrats' DNA? Most of us have shame. We live in reality. We don't want to make asses of ourselves on a daily basis with increasingly outrageous and preposterous claims. We don't have too many pathological liars in our party. So method #1 is difficult for Dems. Maybe we need to get better at it, but would our voters even reward it? Would a left version of MTG win a Dem primary? I doubt it. We expect our left flank to be serious people. Again, maybe that can change.

 

[superrific]

And that brings me to method #2 of earning the type of media that would be necessary to broadcast that sort of message: physical attractiveness. There's a reason why AOC is by far the most famous of "the Squad" and the one that Dems send out for TV purposes. And our winning candidates tend to be heart throbs. Clinton, Obama, JFK. The sex appeal matters. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does.

GOP women almost never appear frumpy, at least not these days. If they aren't good looking enough, they get cosmetic surgery. They all have shampoo commercial hair, wear tons of makeup, etc. In other words, they are made for TV. And if someone is just watching a bit of Fox News with the sound off in a waiting room, and they see AOC, Noem and Katie Porter on TV -- I mean, we know how this goes. Katie Porter flopped in her primary campaign for Senate in CA. I knew she would. People don't really like frumpy women lecturing them with white boards.

This is a sucky state of affairs. Liberal feminists often reject it, thinking that there's no reason that a female candidate should have to wear more makeup, be thinner, etc. than a male candidate. I sympathize, and I also reject it when thinking about policy and fitness for office. But I think it's a real effect.

This isn't an entirely fair comparison because they weren't running for the same office, but compare Elissa Slotkin and Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer coasted to victory twice; Slotkin barely squeaked out a victory. Whitmer wears makeup and looks attractive. Slotkin has gained like 30 pounds in the past five years and refuses to wear makeup. Slotkin is the type of woman who would be described to a would-be blind date as having a great personality, right? It's stupid that we have to go through this bullshit all the time, but these are important factors that Democrats have resisted.

For a very long time, the taller presidential candidate would always win. I think it was, at one point, 11 of 12 consecutive elections. Obama could have slept with a thousand women in 2008 had he wanted to, right? He was (and remains) a very handsome man. This is how politics works. I honestly think Biden's entire trajectory would have been different if they would just put some makeup on him. We make fun of Trump for being orange, but when he's on TV he looks 10 years younger than he is, or more. Might that contribute to voters thinking he's not senile when clearly he is?