Here's a good one for you. Stop me if you've heard it before. Doug Schoen (a favorite!) and Pat Caddell (who totally nailed voter sentiment when he threw his lot in with Ross Perot) want you to know...
We are Democratic pollsters who argued against the health-care legislation ["Democrats' blind ambition," Washington Forum, March 12] that the Obama administration chose to pursue. Instead, we advocated incremental health-care reform. With the passage of health reform, some harsh political realities have emerged.
Recent polling shows that despite lofty predictions that a broad-based Democratic constituency would be activated by the bill's passage, the bill has been an incontrovertible disaster. The most recent Rasmussen Reports poll, released on April 12, shows that 58 percent of the electorate supports a repeal of the health-care reform bill -- up from 54 percent two weeks earlier.
So here it is: these two pollsters argued against the health-care legislation, and now cite a poll showing 58% of the electorate supports a repeal. So what do you think these two pollsters would recommend to their prospective clients?
To turn a corner, Democrats need to start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate. It should be somewhat familiar: It is the agenda that is driving the Tea Party movement and one that has the capacity to motivate a broadly based segment of the electorate.
Hmm. Well, OK. So, what does the Tea Party movement recommend with respect to the health-care legislation? Well, they recommend repeal, of course.
So again, what do the two political professionals recommend to their clients?
The swing voters, who are key to the fate of the Democratic Party, care most about three things: reigniting the economy, reducing the deficit and creating jobs.
Hmm, again. Didn't you think you'd be seeing a recommendation for repeal, by this point? Or at least some mention of the health-care legislation?
So where is it? Where is the bold suggestion that follows from their trust in Rasmussen polling (maybe the last professionals who really do claim to trust it) and their fascination with the idea that teabaggers are mainstream (that comes not at all from both having been shut out from and defeated by the Democratic faction that won the White House)? Clearly the only conclusion possible from the facts (?) they've chosen to focus on is that Dems must support repeal. And yet... they don't say so. It never comes.
What comes instead is this:
Winning over swing voters will require a bold, new focus from the president and his party. They must adopt an agenda aimed at reducing the debt, with an emphasis on tax cuts, while implementing carefully crafted initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation. This is the agenda that largely motivated the Clinton administration from 1995 through 2000 and that led to a balanced budget and welfare reform. It promoted a modest degree of social welfare spending. This agenda is enormously popular with the electorate and could eventually turn around Democratic fortunes.
Democrats can avoid the electoral bloodbath we predicted before passage of the health-care bill, but in one way: through a bold commitment to fiscal discipline and targeted fiscal stimulus of the private sector and entrepreneurship.
That's the nut of it. Caddell and Schoen are too cheap to simply buy ad space like everyone else. ("Are you a Democratic curmudgeon? Need a pollster? Call us!") Instead, they publish this pitch memo disguised as an op-ed, insisting that the only sure path to victory next November is for Dems to hire them to engineer campaigns mirroring those that Dems adopted once relegated to the minority in 1995 after failing to pass health-care reform -- that is, reducing the deficit and stimulating job growth and the economy. Which, by the way, is pretty much where most Dems already think they're going from here on in, with or without Caddell and Schoen's awesome insight.
So that's it. That's how you trade on a name you made for yourself years ago, and get the Washington Post to print your 850 word "situation wanted" ad for free (or even pay you for it). Hope you enjoyed today's installment of "How Washington Really Works."