Just what are voters buying?
“Repetition is really important. And so is repetition.”
Donald Trump knows the value of repetition. Debunking his lies has no stopping power on his relentless repeating of them. It’s a habit that the press has come to accept from Trump and from Republicans when they repeat lies, but sees as futile, even pathetic, when Democrats repeat facts.
Linda Muñoz is scared about the economy. She dipped into her emergency savings this year. And she doesn’t believe President Joe Biden feels her pain.
The retired teacher from Channelview, Texas, worries about paying $4 for cereal and $3.38 for gasoline in her state.
“According to him, everything’s perfect,” said Muñoz, a Republican. “He just doesn’t live in reality.”
As Biden tries to sell Americans on an economic rebound, most Americans aren’t buying it, according to an exclusive poll from the Suffolk University Sawyer Business School and USA TODAY that reveals major concerns about the state of the economy and little hope of people’s outlook improving. What’s worse for the incumbent president, Americans say they trust Donald Trump − not Biden − to fix it.
The Google link headline is “Biden is selling an improving economy. Americans don’t buy it.” The subtext is that when the president repeats upbeat news about Bidenomics he is failing to connect with Real Americans™. Maybe he ought to stop (before his message sinks in). Would Trump?
People think what they think and feel what they feel. Until they think and feel something else.
One problem Democrats have is a lack of persistence when it comes to messaging. If a message is not sinking in rapidly, they’ll drop it and try something else before the public opinion needle has a chance to move. That’s not a problem for Republicans. They’ll lather-rinse-repeat until their base is repeating their message without remembering where it came from.
Yes, often Democrats’ messaging stinks. But they change it so often who can say for sure?
As for the Suffolk poll, Democrats should be reluctant to change course too early. President Joe Biden’s “It’s never a good bet to bet against America”‘ is a signature message. He’s not going to stop saying it. He’s not going to stop promoting what his policies have done for people. Just as Trump is not going to stop lying about what his didn’t.
“Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it,” Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote in 2017. It’s one area where Democrats could learn from their political adversaries.
Republicans did not “start by polling and finding out that Virginia parents were natively concerned about critical race theory,” David Roberts prompted Shenker-Osorio during a 2021 interview:
Anat Shenker-Osorio:
Because they weren’t. They were like, what is that? Is that the name of a coffee shop? A new kind of NASCAR race? What is that?
They decide where it is they want to take people, and then they use message testing to figure out the articulation that is going to be most effective of the path that they have already decided to walk. They do message testing to try to change the temperature; they don’t do testing to take it.
The question Biden’s advisers should be asking is if his message is reaching people on a subconscious level that polling doesn’t reveal. Don’t rely on your gut.