Bryan Bennett of Loft Beck Strategies released a national survey on April 27 that asked Democrats and independents which mattered more in evaluating a candidate, fight or policy agreement. Sixty-nine percent picked fight. He asked whether fight or authenticity mattered more. Sixty-eight percent picked fight. Liberal Democrats picked fight over policy by twenty-eight points. Double haters, voters who hold an unfavorable view of both parties, picked fight over policy by twenty-six. Across every category Bennett tested, voters did not care about platform. They cared about willingness to fight. Which is Idiocracy-level reasoning, but we are here to win, and when we bring this sort of data into our calculations we win more elections. When we don’t, we don’t.

Other recent polling found the same thing in different words. The Harvard Youth Poll asked young voters for one word to describe Democrats. Fifty-eight percent chose a negative one. The most common, generated without prompting, was weak. The Strength in Numbers/Verasight survey asked Democratic voters in their own words what their party did recently that upset them. The largest category of response, thirty percent, said the party was too weak, too cautious, or not fighting hard enough.

SNIP

Voters read strength when a politician names the opponent out loud, takes an aggressive posture rather than a conciliatory one, uses language that signals willingness to use power to its fullest extent. Voters read strength when a politician refuses to back down publicly when backing down would be easier, violates norms of decorum when the situation calls for it, doesn’t mince words, doesn’t ask the public to wait for the next election, and demonstrates capacity for aggression on behalf of voters against the people harming them.

Voters read weakness when a politician retreats into process language, appeals to norms and institutions as the response to norm violations, hedges visibly, announces fights and then does not fight them, treats the opposition as good-faith partners while voters perceive them as adversaries, and prioritizes decorum over outcome.