Three San Francisco School Board members were tossed in a recall this week. Some thought it was due to COVID overreach. That was partially true, as the board was dithering on reopening schools. They were more focused on renewing schools and instituting a lottery system for admission which did not bode well. Asian-Americans, who make up 34 percent of the city’s population, united and slayed these three. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver noted how it’s underappreciated how unpopular liberal positions are even among liberals which triggered some people. He was commenting on a now-deleted tweet from a New York Times writer who noted how hardcore COVID containment policy might be a political loser. The tweet shouldn’t have been deleted because new internal polling from Democrats shows exactly that; the party went way too far. The findings were brutal (via SF Gate):
The poll was conducted from mid-January to early February, had approximately 1,000 respondents and a 3.1% margin of error.
Findings from the poll were presented to DCCC officials Thursday morning. One slide in the presentation, which was shared with SFGATE by someone who attended the presentation and was granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst's ethics policy, states, "Many of the Republican attacks tested have alarming credibility," including Republican attacks on COVID-19 policy. (The presentation does not clarify what it means by "credibility.")
The poll found that that 57% of voters in competitive congressional districts agree with the statement, "Democrats in Congress have taken things too far in their pandemic response," and 66% of self-defined "swing" voters in competitive districts agree with that statement. White and Hispanic voters in competitive districts were equally as likely to agree (59%), while Black voters (42%) and Asian voters (46%) disagreed with the statement. The poll also did not define what "taken things too far" means.
The DCCC found that critiques of COVID-19 restrictions were slightly less potent than other issues. In swing districts, 64% of voters agreed with the statement that "Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street." The internal poll found that 80% of self-defined swing voters in competitive districts agreed with the same statement. Politico previously reported on the DCCC warning about the effectiveness of what they refer to as conservative "culture war attacks."
It's all sorts of bad for Democrats, fellas. The article added that Democrats are seen as the ones pushing an agenda that seeks to divide. Democrats are the ones who have created a border crisis. Democrats are the ones who are spending like drunken sailors. And Democrats are the ones who are enabling the teaching of Critical Race Theory to kids as young as five years old. There’s a lot to unload here but it’s clear: the Democratic Party is being attacked on all fronts—and they don’t have the messaging capacity to fight back effectively. They can’t. One-third of the House Democratic Caucus hails from three of the most liberal states in the country. Do you think they’re going to shake the ‘woke’ agenda? Hell no—they’re diehard followers of it. It’s sentient beings versus the lizard people. You which side is which here.