By Dave Andrusko
We’ll have a separate post later today about the withdrawal of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) from the competition to be the Democrats’ challenger to pro-life President Donald Trump. What happened to her prospects is worth pondering.
Meanwhile, this got me to thinking about several related developments of late related to the 2020 presidential election specifically but also to how the Democrat Party—body and soul the property of the Abortion Industry—is faring with the larger public.
The only one I saw who commented at length over a new Gallup poll showing a downward plunge in the percentage of people identifying as Democrats is Dick Morris.
The headline to his post read “Democrats Have Lost One in Ten Followers Since 2016.”
Examining the Gallup numbers (which you can read for yourself here), Morris notes that on Election Day 2016, 30% “considered themselves Democrats” while in July 2019 the percentage had dropped to 27%.
By contrast, on Election Day 2016, 27% considered themselves Republicans, a figure that had climbed to 29% now.
“So, the Democratic Party went from a 30-27 edge on Election Day [2016], to a 29-27 deficit [today],” Morris summarizes. In a country where the margin of victory is often razor-thin, this is very important.
Two other items. Democrats in Congress, along with their supporters in the blogosphere, alternate between crowing that Mr. Trump is already toast and Jeremiah-like lamentations that all is lost. A story this week in The Daily Beast tacked strongly in the direction of a possible impending electoral apocalypse.
Writing under the headline, “Dems Sound Alarm: Trump Is ‘Carpet-Bombing’ Us in Key Battlegrounds,” in Hanna Trudo’s first two paragraphs, we’re told
Several Democratic National Committee members have a message to their organization’s top leadership: President Trump is crushing us.
After pledging to compete everywhere ahead of the next election, multiple DNC members told The Daily Beast they have privately sounded alarms about the organization’s strategy heading into 2020, emphasizing what they view as Chairman Tom Perez’s inability to reach swing voters in Midwestern battleground states who voted for the president. A handful of Midwestern targets were critical to Trump’s general election success in 2016.
To be clear, this could be just normal jitters, a shot at DNC chair Tom Perez, something else altogether, or a combination. But the most telling paragraph is an insistence that Democrats and Republicans have switched places. What do I mean?
The “chief concern” of Jim Zogby, who co-chairs the DNC’s ethnic counsel, and “raised by several other current DNC members who spoke with The Daily Beast—is that the Trump campaign is already reaching swing voters while the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly focused on expanding their existing base.”
In other words we are always, always, always told that President Trump is focused on “energizing” and “getting out his base,” as opposed to enlarging it. In fact, Mr. Trump is reaching out to other constituencies which traditionally have not been in love with Republicans. The critique here is that Democrats are not reaching out to the Midwest states which were key to Trump’s win, such as Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and Pennsylvania.
“Our permanent, data-driven ground game never left in these battleground states and we already have triple the amount of staff in these states than we did at this point during the 2016 cycle,” a senior RNC official said about the Republican Party’s investment specifically in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Trudo also writes about the fundraising gap:
The national party’s fundraising woes continue to present a problem when up against the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign’s significant advantage, multiple members said.
“The DNC is cash-strapped right now,” one member said plainly.
In June, the Republican National Committee more than doubled the DNC’s fundraising haul, totaling $20.7 million to $8.5 million, respectively. The DNC also spent nearly as much money as it brought in, burning through $7.5 million during the same month it hosted its first presidential debate in Miami.
One other item, the elephant in the room, so to speak. In winning two terms, President Obama enjoyed massive support from the African-American community. Yet only Joe Biden, his vice president, talks glowingly about his old boss. Most of the other competitors either ignore the former President or are close to disdainful of his “achievements,” which to a party that is lurching further and further to the Left, are both paltry and inadequate in the first place.
“To my fellow Democrats. Be wary of attacking the Obama record,” said Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general.“Build on it. Expand it. But there is little to be gained, for you or the party, by attacking a very successful and still popular Democratic president.”
Fat chance of that. While Obama was near pitch-perfect in selling himself, “the men and women selling his policy agenda were being tossed from their seats in droves,” writes David Harsanyi. “Over a thousand Democrats met this fate during the Obama years. The president would surrender the House, the Senate, and countless state houses during his term. Democrats are still sifting through the rubble.”
We’ll keep tabs on all that and share what we find.