Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was key to the 1994 rout of congressional Democrats. Under his leadership, Republicans broke 40 years of Democratic control over the House and delivered the GOP a substantial Senate majority.
How did he do it? I’ve heard him speak several times about campaign messaging. He likes to talk about identifying issues where 80% of the population agrees with you and then just stand next to those and look pretty. You may have a wide range of messages that your base likes, but the ones you choose to spend your time and money on during the campaign are those people like most.
Almost everyone is against crime, so you promise to get tough on crime. People want a lower tax bill? Promise them a tax cut. People want to cut bureaucracy? Ban flag burning? Secure the border? Hold Congress to the laws it passes? Ban race-based preferences? Then you promise to vote on those things when you win your majority, and you constantly run on that promise. You never deviate from your message in your stump speeches and campaign ads. This is, more or less, how the Contract came to be and why it succeeded.
Democrats also do this, at least when they’re being smart. Their version is obviously different. It might include free healthcare, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, etc. But there is something Democrats are currently focused on, almost to the exclusion of everything else — yet the public just doesn’t share their opinion. You hear it every time they repeat their dark-money-funded buzz phrase, “Our democracy,” which has become so ubiquitous that it’s almost becoming a joke in Washington.
The problem is that people just aren’t buying their allegation that today’s Republican Party or its legislators pose a unique threat to the nation’s small-R republican character and their right to vote.
Democrats spent months talking up the election bill they just failed to pass. The media sanitized it for them and dressed it up as nicely as possible, referring to it repeatedly with the misleading label of “voting rights bill” and refusing to point out its unpopular aspects, such as its ban on voter identification. Then we had the Jan. 6 anniversary, the ideal moment to exploit fears about “our democracy.” Democrats did everything they could to bring back the bad memories, and the media did everything to help them out. Biden’s over-the-top speech on the subject in Georgia was an ideally panicky communication of this message: Are you with me, or are you with Jefferson Davis?
And now the jury has returned on the question of whether anyone is convinced. A Quinnipiac poll of registered voters, taken in the four days following the spectacle of the Jan. 6 commemoration, found that 45% of respondents believe the Democratic Party is the better party for protecting their vote. That’s just slightly more than the 43% who think the Republican Party, which just filibustered Biden’s “voting rights” bill, is the better party for protecting their vote. So, how successful do you think the Democrats’ message was?
Now, remember, Democrats have been talking about this stuff ad nauseam. They have literally insinuated that if they lose the next election, we’ll end up with some kind of dictatorship. Leftist media outlets have run multiple editorials or columns exaggerating or just plain lying about supposed threats to the right of citizens to cast a ballot in the next election. The New York Times went so far as to insinuate that state-level Republicans are passing legislation tantamount to sedition, describing as a virtual coup d’etat the passage of laws they don’t like by officials who voters elected.
They could hardly get more hysterical about all this. They could hardly have talked about it any more than they have. And yet, given every advantage, this issue is still a dog. It is definitely not one of those 80-20 votes that Gingrich talks about — not even close. In fact, 66% of respondents in this poll were “confident” their state legislators would protect their right to vote.
If you’re a conservative, you were probably upset to hear President Joe Biden say you’re a racist because you don’t support his agenda. You should be — even Barack Obama never said anything quite that overtly insulting. But you should actually be happy that Biden is making such a fool of himself so ineffectually.
Consider what all the other polling says. Biden is getting his clock cleaned on overall approval. He is underwater on every important aspect: the economy, immigration, foreign policy, and now, at last, on the pandemic as well. Pretty much on everything that affects people day to day, people think Biden is making it worse. They don’t even believe he’s any use when it comes to their right to vote, and it’s not for lack of effort on his part.
Right now, Democrats may not even have an 80-20 issue to campaign on. This phony-baloney message about “our democracy,” no doubt cooked up behind the scenes by people far too clever for their own good, is not going to save Biden’s backside from the swift kick that’s coming.
