The first slide shows strong support for three narratives, about the country being in decline, "while countries like China have a vision to succeed," about "entrenched special interests that finance both parties' campaigns," and about politicians "pursuing their own party's agenda - ignoring the needs of regular citizens and the country." The first narrative is relatively rare as a message in the elite media, and is generally bad for conservatives, the second two are increasingly more common, and tend mask a fairly significant asymmetry between the two parties.
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The second slide shows only slightly lower levels of support for three more narratives: that middle class families played by the rules, and got screwed, while Wall Street, big banks & CEOs destroyed the economy and got bailed, that America's prosperity was built on a growing middle class that's now in decline, while the government serves CEOs instead, and that "Politicians have spent the country into bankruptcy." The first two narratives are relatively rare in elite media, and damaging to conservative ideology, while the third is fairly omnipresent in elite media, and quite useful for conservative elites, even though they are responsible for the vast majority of the debt:
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Collectively, these views represent a fairly substantial net potential advantage for liberals and Democrats, if they chose to mobilize and message based upon them.
Polling on three potential Democratic messages showed how those pre-existing narratives might well be tapped into by two powerful messages that Democrats might have used--Democrats are committed to a "Made In America" policy path, as opposed to Republican "free trade" and outsourcing, anhd Democrats are pledged to change Washington to benefit the midddle class, while Republicans are committed to protect those special interests--in sharp contrast the message that Democrats did use--Democrats want to move forward, while Republicans want to take us back. Here's the dramatic difference in how people responded to these messages:
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Here's how the "Made in America" message played across different demographic groups, particularly the white working class:
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And here's how the "Middle Class" message played across different demographic groups, again, particularly the white working class:
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Compared to the messages Democrats actually used:
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You can see that everyone except Republicans had nearly identical perceptions about the decline of the middle class, but even Republicans were more likely to see things like this than not:
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And finally, you can see that despite heavy messaging calling for reduced spending and virtually no messaging for infrastructure investment, and a significantly more conservative electorate, there was virtually no change from 2008 to 2010 in the balance between these two competing outlooks:
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There could not possibly be a more stark Demonstration of how consistently the Democrats have turned their backs on a sure winning political vision and strategy--one that brought them political dominance in the past for a period of roughly four decades. Such long-term dominance is right there at their fingertips once again, if only they chose to reach out and take hold of it.
Here's the last slide from my first diary, just to drive that point home one last time, the 80% support for a "rebuild America" Agenda:
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