Dialing up the speech
by digby
Greg Sargent has a piece up today about a dial session he observed during last night’s speech and it’s illuminating. It consisted of:
[M]ore than five dozen voters, all of them white, from the following groups: “Weak partisans” who had a history of voting for both parties; non-college voters; unmarried women; and independents.
These folks (who were from all over the country, and dialed in remotely) were the types of voters who will be the target of an epic argument in the next presidential race over which party has real solutions to stagnating wages and rising inequality — over which party has the more convincing story to tell about what has happened to the American economy, and how far government can and should go in acting to make it work better for everyone.
He noted some of the responses:
* They reacted more positively to Obama’s articulation of the economic challenges they still face than to general claims that the recovery is underway. The responses to Obama’s claims that we are “turning the page” and that “the shadow of crisis has passed” were not as quite enthusiastic as he surely hoped. This is in keeping with the fact that polls suggest many of these voters think the recovery is leaving them behind.
I think this is unsurprising. There are more people employed these days but wage stagnation means that even more people are just stuck. It’s doubtful that many of them feel confident enough in the recovery to change jobs or even ask for raises and there’s little evidence that employers are feeling the need or obligation to offer them. It takes time for attitudes to shift on this — and the slump was long and painful.
I worried that he might be seen as blowing smoke with all that triumphalism. But on the other hand, you do need for leaders to tout their accomplishments and the president’s “this is good news, people” line was probably the best way to communicate it. Still, until working people see improvement in their personal lives they aren’t going to react to calls for them to applaud a recovery they don’t feel.
Sargent says they preferred specific proposals to cheerleading:
* Specific policies were received very enthusiastically — more so than general suggestions of a more activist government role. The phrase “middle class economics,” and Obama’s definition of the values that concept embodies, were generally well received by independents and non-college voters, but they did not generate the enthusiasm that such applause lines were designed to elicit.
By contrast, the call for a minimum wage hike generated a big spike among independents; the promise of subsidized child care and more infrastructure investments energized unmarried women; and the call for subsidized community college and an equal pay law generated an enthusiastic response from non-college voters (many of them women). The call for closing loopholes to tax inherited wealth elicited a spike, but notably not as large as the above policies.
We already know that people actually prefer specific Democratic policies. The problem is that they simultaneously buy into the larger rhetorical framework about government being the problem and have internalized the idea that Democratic Party “values” are in contrast to their own. So it’s important for the president to lay out a different way of thinking about this and work to reverse some of the economic propaganda promulgated by the right since the Reagan revolution. That’s going to take some time but it won’t happen if nobody ever challenges their narrative about government and “values.”
* Obama’s trade pitch and Iran rhetoric were not received all that well. Obama’s effort to reframe the argument over the trade deals he is negotiating — he sought to cast them as allowing Americans to write trade rules and open foreign markets to exports — did not generate much enthusiasm, even when he tried to speak to people’s residual anger over past trade deals. His discussion of diplomacy to curb Iran’s nuclear program sparked a notable dip among independents.
I can certainly understand why working class people don’t like free trade deals. They’ve been scammed for a long time. But Democrats seem to still be all-in on them anyway. There is no more revealing economic issue than this one.
Iran? See Republican propaganda, above. Years of demonization have an impact.
* Core liberal priorities were not received all that enthusiastically. The strong applause line about the GOP “I’m not a scientist” dodge did not generate a big approval spike among these voters, and nor did his effort to paint a lurid picture of the profound perils climate change poses. His effort to humanize the plight of immigrants, and call for strong unions, also failed to generate terribly enthusiastic responses.
It doesn’t matter. They aren’t just liberal priorities. These are issues of grave importance to the Party, the nation and the planet. And whether or not Democrats win the next election on these issues is irrelevant. They have to keep pounding away on them anyway.
It will be interesting to see if the Democrats will embrace this agenda going forward. It’s more risky than they’re used to…
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