Few Candidates Saw Deficit Reduction as a Major Issue

[LongTomH]

Interesting op-ed at Huffington Post: Pollster Reveals: Few Candidates Saw Deficit Reduction as a Major Issue. While the talking heads of the Cable Noise Networks continually talk up the necessity of reducing deficits before focusing on jobs, even if that deficit reduction means draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, the electorate still doesn't agree:

The administration has already announced a forthcoming freeze in both discretionary spending and federal worker salaries. And with a more heavily GOP-tilted legislative branch in the offing, this topic appears to be the best (and perhaps only) hope for a governing consensus.

There's a sound argument to be made on economic grounds that this makes little sense. But increasingly it has become clear that there is scant political upside as well, at least for Democrats. A CNN poll released earlier this week found that while a wide swath of respondents thought spending was a problem, only one in five believed "that deficit reduction should be the main goal of government today." That number mirrors other polling data that sets deficit reduction as a second-tier priority, as far as the public is concerned.

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The Huffington Post reached out to half-a-dozen major Democratic pollsters to ask them what topics not only resonated most with the voting public but occupied their clients the most as the election approached. The deficit wasn't on the list.

"Deficit reduction was more a DC-driven narrative during the elections," said John Anzalone, a partner at Anzalone Liszt Research. "I think it will be a more salient issue in the next twelve months, but the reality is that if the deficit is the most important issue for a voter there is not much of a chance a Democratic candidate for Congress is going to get them anyway."

The CNN poll referenced above showed that only one in five respondents thought deficit reduction should be the main goal of government. A November CNN poll showed that holding the line on Social Security and Medicare trumped deficit reduction as an issue.

Of course, we all know why the chattering heads are talking doom on deficits and calling for draconian cuts to Social Security and Medicare; this is just another chapter in the decades long transfer of wealth upward to the richest 1% of the population.

This issue is a minefield for Democrats. If they go along with budget cuts to the programs that so many older Americans rely on, it will spell doom for the Democratic party, and the damage may not be undone for decades.

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