The Solution to an Unpopular Bill? Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda!
The Washington Post is reporting this afternoon about a new White House/DNC initiative to bolster Democrats’ flagging political support before the midterm elections. Of particular note is the continued emphasis on health care, given that “White House advisers said their own polling showed the health care plan was still unpopular, with 47 percent of voters supporting it and 47 percent opposing it.” Democrats’ solution: “White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told Senate Democrats on Thursday that Obama would soon be hiring a ‘very senior official’ whose sole portfolio would be to sell the health care overhaul to the public in the months leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.”
To recap then: The President and Democrats in Congress, having run up trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see, and having defied the public’s will by passing a $2.6 trillion government takeover of health care, are now looking for yet another taxpayer-funded bailout – this one a propaganda campaign to bail themselves out of the political predicament they are in for passing a bill the public opposes. This again raises the question: How does promoting Democrat policies using taxpayer dollars classify as “reform?” And if Democrats are so desperate to get on the right side of the American people, why didn’t they listen to them in the first place, rather than passing a monstrous 2,700 page piece of legislation?
White House unveils $50 million plan to boost Democratic support
By Paul Kane and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 16, 2010; 12:18 PM
Amid fresh signs of Republican fundraising momentum, White House officials unveiled a $50 million plan to try to shore up Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill in advance of the November midterm elections, using a campaign theme of “defending the middle class.”Run out of the Democratic National Committee, the plan involves using paid media advertisements, new media outreach and traditional get-out-the-vote efforts to boost support from the millions of young and minority voters who cast their first ballots ever for President Obama in 2008 but whose energy has since waned.
White House officials cast the move as the first time that Obama’s massive online fundraising capacity will be brought to bear in a significant way to help the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Organizing for America, the entity created by the Obama political team in the wake of the 2008 presidential campaign, is also planning to send staff to the states with competitive races to help on the ground.
Republicans have outraised Democrats in many of those races, particularly Senate contests in key states such as Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports.
The outline of the DNC effort was first unveiled at a Senate Democratic luncheon Thursday also attended by half a dozen senior White House staff and outside consultants. The meeting was one in a series top Obama advisers are holding on Capitol Hill this week and next to reassure Democrats of their political standing in the wake of passage last month of the landmark health-care legislation. Despite predictions that the health-care law would grow more popular after Obama signed it, even internal White House polls show the public outlook toward the controversial law remains mixed, according to participants in this weeks’ meetings with White House officials.
Aware of concerns about messaging around the new law, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told Senate Democrats on Thursday that Obama would soon be hiring a “very senior official” whose sole portfolio would be to sell the health-care overhaul to the public in the months leading up to the Nov. 2 elections, according to participants in the meeting.
With national unemployment hovering around 10 percent for much of the past year, the public mood has remained sour, leading many independent political handicappers to suggest that the 77-seat majority for House Democrats is now in jeopardy. Substantial GOP gains are likely in the Senate, although Republicans appear to lack enough frontline candidates to pick up the 10 seats they would need to reclaim the majority.
The DNC’s $50 million effort on behalf of congressional campaigns is an unprecedented move from the national party committee, which in years past has focused almost entirely on presidential campaigns. Several sources indicated there was open laughter in the Senate meeting about the DNC’s planned involvement as compared with the 2006 midterms, when the Democratic architects of the House and Senate campaigns — Rahm Emanuel, then a House member, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — openly feuded with then-DNC Chairman Howard Dean over financing. Dean devoted just $2.4 million to 40 competitive House races that cycle.
In some cases, congressional Democrats will very much need the White House and DNC help this time around, according to a new batch of fundraising reports filed Thursday with the FEC, which show a sharp turnaround from the deflated political momentum Republicans felt as Obama took office last year.
“It’s much easier now than it was in January 2009,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said of his fundraising efforts.
Former Bush administration budget officer Robert Portman, running to replace retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), raised more than $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2010, four times more than the top Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. A year after switching parties, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) raised a little more than $1 million last quarter, a total that was doubled by his GOP challenger, former representative Patrick Toomey.
In the contest for Obama’s old Senate seat, Rep. Mark Kirk (Ill.), a Republican who currently represents Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, has executed a sharp campaign since winning the GOP nomination last month. Kirk raised $2.2 million in the quarter — roughly $1 million more than state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D). Kirk also has more than double Giannoulias’s cash on hand.
At gatherings in the Capitol this week, White House pollsters Joel Benenson and Geoffrey Garin have laid out a message campaign based around trying to paint Republicans as defenders of corporate interests, particularly in the fight over creating new regulations for financial services firms.
“We defend the middle class,” Garin told senators Thursday, according to participants.
The White House advisers said their own polling showed the health-care plan was still unpopular, with 47 percent of voters supporting it and 47 percent opposing it. That is a slightly more positive result than other public polls show. The Washington Post-ABC News Poll, in late March, found 46 percent supporting the new law, with 50 percent opposed.
Benenson and Garin, however, have urged congressional leaders to focus on the GOP effort to “repeal” the law, something they said did not sit well with most voters.
When asked if they wanted to “give the law a chance” or repeal it right away, 56 percent of voters favored giving the health-care law some time to see if it can be successful, while just 39 percent supported its immediate repeal.