Good luck with that, Democrats: NPR poll indicates voters detest their agenda
Democratic presidential candidates are operating a strange inward-curving groupthink world, each focused on his rival, each trying to out-left-wing the next guy in order to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
At last month's debates, when the MSNBC moderator asked how many of them wanted free health care for illegals, every hand went up in unison.
It was the defining picture of today's Democrats: obedient, lockstep, peer-obsessed, and each of them as eager to please as schoolboys. What voters think is kind of a second thought.
Now some reality kicks in. According to Matt Vespa, writing at Townhall:
If you're President Donald Trump, you're feeling pretty good. While polling hasn't been your best friend, Mr. President, you should take note of the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. It nukes the core of the 2020 Democratic agenda. Two of the Left's major pieces for their 2020 election goodie bag, Medicare for all, health care for illegals, and slave reparations, totally trashed.
This isn't some IBD/TIPP poll, which is famous for its careful accuracy of sampling; this is an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll, which is almost certain to slant left. And its findings are devastating for Democrats. The public doesn't want free health care for illegal border-crossers. It doesn't want slave reparations. It doesn't want socialized medical care run by the government charmers.
All of this is common sense.
Yet the Democrats have ignored it, looking instead at how to out-left-wing each other instead of win votes. And the particulars are absolutely devastating for Democrats, according to Vespa's report:
On health care for illegals, 62 percent say it's a bad idea, including 47 percent of moderate Democrats and 67 percent of independents. That's a kryptonite issue. Sixty-seven percent are opposed to the Democratic plan to decriminalize illegal border crossings, with 47 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents, and 63 percent of minatory voters opposing the left-wing push for open borders. Oh, and 37 percent of progressive Democrats, the Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez wing, also agree; decriminalizing border crossings is a trash idea.
Even the far left has quite a significant faction that doesn't favor open borders.
Yet the Democrats cannot get a grip on themselves and try to do something to signal some kind of common sense to the voters. The whole group has swung so far left on the issues that matter to voters that they are going to have a hard time coming back. They're going to be left stuck selling a program that has a utterly bad smell to the vast majority of the voters, including even their own.
It signals that this might just be a cruise for President Trump. How fine it is when Democrats make an incumbent president's job so much easier for him.
Image credit: MSNBC shareable video screen shot via Real Clear Politics.