2010: Dems still blaming Bush, everyone else is moving on

posted at 2:24 pm on August 3, 2010 by Karl

That’s the message buried in a polling memo from the New Democrats at Third Way:

Less than two years after leaving office, only 25% of Americans believe that if Republicans return to power in Congress their economic agenda will mean a return to former President Bush’s economic policies. 65% say that a Republican Congress will promote a “new economic agenda that is different from George W. Bush’s policies.” Even Democrats and liberals are unconvinced that a Republican Congress means a return to Bushanomics. And moderates and Independents, the key swing blocs in all major policy debates, have completely divorced congressional Republicans from the economic philosophy and failed policies of President Bush.

WaPo blogger Greg Sargent reports that “[t]his has some Dems worrying that the central Dem message has yet to sink in with voters,” but noting that the poll shows “if the public is persuaded that voting Republican would be a return to Bush policies, it has a dramatic impact on voter attitudes.”

Actually, the word needing emphasis in that sentence is if — the biggest two-letter word in the English language. The Third Way poll is broadly consistent with the new Rasmussen poll showing that voters now see Obama as equally to blame as Bush for the country’s current economic problems. Can key voter blocs be persuaded otherwise?

The Dem theory seems to be to try to re-tie the GOP to Bush by staging fights over the Bush tax cuts, and so on. But what if voter intent is not driven by their perception of Congressional GOP candidates? What if the reverse is true?

For example, in 1994, the Congressional GOP knew they were likely to win a majority before the end of July. Although we cannot know whether 2010 will have a 1994-sized wave, we can hypothesize that many indie/moderate voters have already looked at the current state of the economy — and the current state of the war in Afghanistan — and decided they don’t like what they see very much. And that the Democrats’ passage of unpopular legislation may have them yearning for gridlock, which does not even require a high opinion of the GOP. Perhaps they form an anti-Democrat voting intent from the basics, and their opinion about the Congressional GOP follows, rather than the other way around.

The Democrats’ message of “We May Be Incompetent, But They’re Crazy” may work in provable cases (and perhaps depress indie/moderate turnout) but not in general. Some voters seeking a divided government won’t care if the GOP candidate is “crazy,” “extreme,” etc. Others want to believe things can get better, and will convince themselves the GOP is a suitable alternative. That’s Hope and Change returning to bite the Donks in the rear.

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