John Kerry leads George Bush 50-47 percent of nation-wide LV’s, according to a Democracy Corps Poll, conducted 10/17-18.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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January 26: Republicans Can’t Specify a Debt-limit Ransom
It’s one of the more comical aspects of the deadly serious game of chicken that House Republicans are playing on the debt limit, but it’s worth pointing out, as I did at New York:
As the United States lurches toward a possible debt default thanks to House Republican hostage-taking on legislation needed to extend or suspend the debt limit, it’s increasingly evident that (as my colleague Jonathan Chait observed) the hostage-taker is strangely reluctant to name a ransom. Indeed, the initial Democratic strategy in this complicated chess game was simply to force House Republicans to say exactly what kind of spending cuts they propose to make in exchange for allowing a debt-limit measure to wobble its way to Joe Biden’s desk.
It’s easy to mock GOP lawmakers for the brainlessness, or maybe cowardice, of their effort to make Democrats identify the spending cuts their opponents want. The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell tans the elephant’s hide with considerable panache:
“Republicans have Very Serious budget demands. Unfortunately, they can’t identify what any of those demands are.
“They say they want to reduce deficits — but meanwhile have ruled out virtually every path for doing so (cuts to defense, cuts to entitlements, wiping out nondefense discretionary spending, or raising taxes). …
“Republicans say they want lower deficits — in fact, they have pledged to balance the budget (that is, no deficit at all) within seven or 10 years. But they have not laid out any plausible mathematical path for arriving at that destination. They promise to cut ‘wasteful spending’ … but can’t agree on what counts as ‘waste.’”
In so quickly reaching this predictable dead end in answering the world’s easiest math problem, Republicans have one plausible line of defense: It’s how much of the public feels about fiscal matters as well. They really don’t like deficits and (especially) debt. But they really don’t like the kind of spending cuts that Republicans are talking about either (tax increases, of course, are categorically off the table for the GOP and have been since the George H.W. Bush “Read my lips: No new taxes” debacle).
A September 2022 poll from the deficit scolds of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation found that Americans are up in arms about all the borrowing:
“A 31-month high of 83% of voters are urging the president and Congress to spend more time addressing the national debt, with the biggest jump among those under age 35 (8 points to 85%).
“More than eight-in-ten voters (81%) also said that their concern about the national debt has increased. Nearly three-in-four voters (74%) feel the national debt should be a top-three priority for the president and Congress, including 65% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 86% of Republicans.”
From 40,000 feet, all that red ink looks pretty alarming, it seems. More recently, this very week, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal found a majority of Americans stamping their feet about it:
“Most Americans oppose raising the federal debt ceiling without accompanying cuts to federal spending, a new RMG Research poll finds.
“Sixty-one percent of 1,000 registered voters in the survey said Congress should either raise the debt ceiling with spending cuts (45%) or refuse to raise the ceiling at all (16%). Only about a quarter (24%) said Congress should raise the ceiling without accompanying spending cuts.”
To House Republicans, the great symbol of runaway spending is the “monstrous” $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in December. Many of them claimed during the fight over Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership bid that “the American people” were outraged by the measure despite the fact that it cleared the Senate, House, and White House. Perhaps they were thinking of a Twitter poll conducted by Elon Musk that showed that 75 percent of respondents opposed the omnibus bill.
The sad truth is, however, that the more specific you are in identifying items in one of those “monstrous” bills, the more support they command from the public. In 2021, Gallup published a summary of public-opinion research on what was then a $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Democratic budget-reconciliation proposal (soon whittled way down to $2.2 trillion and then to a net-negative figure in the ultimately enacted Inflation Reduction Act) and found that its provisions were very popular despite the debt they required:
“[S]everal recent polls … ask about the bill in a broad, umbrella fashion, and all find majority support. A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, ‘Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?’ and found 62% support, 32% opposition. A Monmouth University poll conducted July 21-26 asked about both the initial infrastructure bill and the new $3.5 trillion bill, describing the latter this way: ‘A plan to expand access to healthcare and child care, and provide paid leave and college tuition support.’ The results were similar to the Quinnipiac poll, with 63% in favor and 35% opposed …
“A progressive think tank, Data for Progress, conducted an online poll among likely voters July 30-Aug. 2, with a much more detailed 130-word description of the bill, including in the question wording a bulleted list of six specific proposals in the plan, the $3.5 trillion price tag and even a description of the ‘reconciliation’ procedure necessary to pass it. All of this (and the online mode, and the sample of likely voters as opposed to national adults) also didn’t seem to make much difference; 66% of likely voters in their sample supported the plan as described, while 26% opposed it — similar to the Quinnipiac and Monmouth results.”
So the minute you get into the particulars of Democratic-proposed spending bills, public concerns about debts and deficits tend to fade. And oh — there’s another problem for Republicans on the fiscal front: voters like the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to pay for popular spending measures.
The lesson for Republicans is clear: Their crusade for fiscal discipline is popular, so long as it is very general and you exclude higher taxes on the rich as a possible solution. No wonder politicians like McCarthy want Democrats to be the ones who name the GOP’s price for letting the U.S. economy get through the year without calamity.
Fellow donkeys,
If the good news from this DCorps poll isn’t enough to boost your spirits, I strongly recommend heading over to democracycorps.com and checking out their Public Polling chart (right column, about halfway down), which provides a superb summary of the state of the polls right now, both nationally and at the state level (and it includes our favorite statistic: the D/R split). In it you will find that the average of polls for this past several days has GWB with 47% support. Not only that, but the number has been remarkably static close to a month now. By contrast, JFK’s support has risen gradually and steadily, from 43-44% pre-debates, to 45% after debate #1, 46% after #2, and 47% after number 3. This really confirms what all of us thought must be the case all along: the majority of the country is pretty unhappy with Bush, and was just waiting all along to be convinced that Kerry was the right man to replace him. Most of them have now been convinced, and them who haven’t will be on November 2nd.
We all know that Bush at 47% is toast — but if you’re still pessimistic, consider the following:
1. The polls summarized by DCorps are all for LVs — if it were RVs then Kerry would be doing even better, as has been the case in almost every poll during the entire campaign season.
2. We have had positive documentation from the NY Times that the Dems kicked some serious a** in new vote registration — so much that even the pachyderm’s shredding forms & denying applications won’t be enough to counteract it.
3. With Kerry poised to win this race 51-47, we really don’t even have to sweat the Electoral College, but in case you want to do that, DCorps’ report has similar summaries for all the state polls, showing — shock of all shocks — Bush’s support running at 47% or lower in essentially EVERY battleground state that is still being seriously contested: PA, OH, FL, MI, MN, IA, WI, NH, NV, CO. Right now, Kerry stands poised to win EVERY ONE of these states!! Even if Jeb & Co. steal FL, we got room to spare.
The absolutely stability of Bush’s 47% is actually very good news — it means that nothing he’s done for the last month has garnered him any extra support. This race appears to have entered a static phase, and may change very little over the next 2 weeks. So rejoice! We are hurtling toward victory!
Now prepare for a very late night on November 2nd — to see if we take back the Senate!
Most interesting question in the survery:
“In last election, did you vote for Bush or Gore?”
Respondents said they voted for Bush by 50-44.
If the respondents are reporting accurately (a big ‘if’), then this describes the polling bias. If the polling bias is +6 for Bush, we can expect good things in 2 weeks.
I think that one of the most telling aspects of this poll is that it is based on a polling population that voted 55 for Bush to 44 for Gore in 2000 and now favors Kerry by 50 Kerry and 47 for Bush.