“Office Park Dads” always seemed to be one of the sillier entries in the swing voter sweepstakes, so obviously manufactured to make a pollster’s (in this case, Mark Penn’s) political point, that one could reasonably hope it would just fade away once its initial purpose had been served. And it more or less has, but OPDs make a (hopefully brief) return appearance in an otherwise fairly interesting research report from the New Democrat Network and Penn.
DR’s advice: just ignore the OPD stuff, as well as most of the tedious “message-testing” findings, and check out the more straightforward parts of the report where, for example, they urge Democrats to “take the initiative on issues with unrealized potential” like protecting civil liberties and the environment; homeland security and closing corporate loopholes. Much of the demographic and targeting analysis is also useful.
At times, NDN seems on the verge of breaking out of its orthodox New Democrat straightjacket and this research report suggests continued cautious movement in this direction. DR welcomes this and hopes to see more of the same.