A string of senior Democratic Party voices is warning that the rise of the Squad and a lurch towards more progressive policies is alie...
A string of senior Democratic Party voices is warning that the rise of the Squad and a lurch towards more progressive policies is alienating voters who care more about pocket issues than 'defund the police.'
The concerns emerged this week after months of polls showing Democrats lagging far behind Republicans in congressional polling, triggering fears of a midterm bloodbath.
Taken together, they suggest a push to defund the police, tear down down statues and rename schools is getting in the way of Democrats holding the House and the Senate.
'It's what we've been screaming about for a year,' Matt Bennett, co-founder of center-left Third Way, told the Axios news website.
'It's a huge problem.'
The latest sign of a backlash, according to the report, was the recall this week of three San Francisco school board members.
They faced criticism from parents that they were more focused on renaming public schools that honored Abraham Lincoln and George Washington than getting children back into classes during the pandemic.
It's just the latest example of the public face of the party being out of step with voters and other Democrats, according to figures such as Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
'What I'm hearing at home — and what I'm focused on — are commonsense, bipartisan solutions — from tackling grocery and gas prices, to cutting taxes and fixing our infrastructure, to investing in law enforcement and fighting crime,' he told the site
Mainstream Democrats are warning that the high profile of the so-called Squad - clockwise from top left: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, - and their hard-left policies is costing the party with voters
An average of generic polls shows Democrats dropped below Republicans at the end of last year and now lag almost five points behind when it comes to voting for Congress
New internal documents spelled out the problem earlier this week.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) told members that in order to increase standing going into the 2022 midterms, Democratic candidates need to respond more fervently to Republican attacks, documents obtained by Politico detail.
A poll of generic ballots of swing districts from late January commissioned by the DCCC shows Republicans ahead of Democrats in battleground districts by 4 percentage points on average.
But the same polling shows that Democrats could regain a lot of that ground if they offer strong rebuttals to political hits.
Republicans' lead jumps to a whopping 14 points if Democrats completely ignore their attacks, party operatives warned in the report. But when voters heard a response from Democrats to these attacks, the GOP's advantage narrowed down to 6 points.
The report suggests to Democrats that when faced with attacks that they support defunding police, they should respond by reiterating their support for law enforcement, Politico notes.
When facing an attack on the illegal immigration crisis, the documents tell Democrats to deny that they support 'open border or amnesty' and instead talk about their efforts to keep the southern border safe.
Party officials and operatives using polling and focus group findings argue Democrats can no longer ignore attacks.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) headed by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney commissioned internal polls and focus groups that found swing district voters think the party is 'preachy', 'judgmental' caught up in 'culture wars'
The report's findings reveal Democrats need to push back more on Republican attacks to gain a bigger advantage in the midterms – including on claims they are in a 'culture war' with supporting 'defund police' and Critical Race Theory teachings
One of the slides reads: 'Democrats need to demonstrate they fully understand and care about stressors in people's lives… without stoking divisive cultural debates.'
The internal found that Republican attacks are most effective with center-left, independent and Hispanic voters, which are all demographic groups Democrats have struggled to attract in recent years.
This latest round of DCCC commissioned polling was conducted with an online panel of 1,000 likely general election voters in battleground districts. It was taken from January 26-30 and the margin of error was 3.1 percentage points.
Global Strategy Group, Impact Research, HIT Strategies and BSP Research all conduct polling for DCCC.
In the 2022 midterms, Democrats can only afford to lose a handful of seats if they want to hang onto their majority in the House – and 30 of their caucus members in the lower caucus have already announced they will not be seeking reelection this year.
Thirty Democrats bowing out of reelection bids is causing panic in the caucus.
House Speaker Pelosi, 81, will run for an 18th term and hasn't ruled out holding onto her leadership position to keep consistency in the party for the last two years of President Joe Biden's first term.
A new poll reveals that only four states have a higher approval rating for Joe Biden than disapproval – Hawaii, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland. None of those states, however, reach the 50% approval threshold
The party not in power historically has an advantage over the in-party in midterm elections, and as the president's poll numbers fall amid a worsening pandemic and fast-rising inflation, Republicans could seize an even greater advantage.
Biden continues to show dismal favorability across the country with only four states giving him a higher approval than disapproval score and key swing states ' approval averaging in the low 30s.
The president's approval rating nationally sits around 40 percent, according to several tracking averages, but a new poll released this week showed it sitting at 34 percent.
His disapproval is at 57 percent and 9 percent neither approve nor disapprove in the dire poll results revealed on the day new data showed wholesale inflation surged by 9.7 percent last month.
The DCCC, led by chief Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, has pushed for members to counter GOP's attacks since the last election, but that message has garnered urgency as Biden's approval tanks.
No comments