TOPEKA — Two prominent Republican and Democratic strategists who worked together for decades on the bipartisan Battleground Poll said former President Donald Trump’s dedication to vitriolic campaigning was a symptom of deeper problems of political incivility among Americans inhaling distortions of social media and cable news.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and GOP strategist Ed Goeas, who wrote “Questions of Respect: Bringing Us Together in a Deeply Divided Nation,” said the nation’s slide into distrust and disrespect preceded Trump’s run for president in 2016 and his campaign for reelection. However, they noted Trump set a high bar by exploiting division for political gain.
“I tell candidates, don’t get into a food fight with him,” Goeas said. “The guy has no shame. He will pick the food off his face and throw it right back without thinking twice.”
Lake, who shared a stage with Goeas this week at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, said Trump illustrated how a skilled authoritarian political figure could convince two-thirds of Republicans to accept an unproven theory the 2020 election was stolen from him and fraudulently awarded to Democratic President Joe Biden.
“I definitely believe he’s a symptom, not the cause. He has really accentuated things. What is sobering is he really does hold 38% to 43% of the public,” Lake said.
Gerald Seib, former executive Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal, moderated the conversation with Goeas and Lake and pointed to Battleground polls asking participants to look one year into the future and rate intensity of public discourse. A score of zero equated to no division in U.S. politics, while a score of 100 indicated the nation was on the edge of civil war.
Here is the trend line: October 2021, score of 74; January 2022, 68.3; November 2022, 68.4; and September 2023, 73.6.
“We’re basically three-quarters the way to a civil war,” Seib said. “That’s pretty chilling.”
Key ingredient: Respect
Lake serves as president of Lake Research Partners, which was one of two main Biden pollsters in the 2020 election cycle. She worked as a pollster to the Democratic National Committee and dozens of Democratic incumbents and challengers. Goeas helped found the Tarrance Group, a Republican survey research and strategy firm.
Their book outlined why they believe the degree of disagreement among Americans on political issues and in campaigns was a threat to the nation. They argued factors shaping fault lines included influence of social media, gerrymandering of political districts, reliance on small campaign donations and rise of opinion journalism on cable news.
“We both firmly believe for people to get along and come to common solutions you have to respect each other. You have to listen,” Lake said.
Goeas said anger and incivility boiling into political life was built on the belief that people felt repressed by others.
“As voters have become more cynical, they’ve become more susceptible to demagoguery,” he said. “That causes much more headbutting because everyone is looking at someone else saying, ‘I’m at the back of this list because of you.’ As opposed to saying, ‘We’re all in this thing together. How do we lift ourselves up?’”
Their combined list of potential remedies included government regulation of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to limit misinformation and hate speech driving people into narrow political silos, reversal of the 2010 Citizens United court decision tilting political influence to wealthy donors and corporations and requiring independent and nonpartisan commissions to set political district boundaries to end ramifications of gerrymandering.
Goeas said candidates had to take control of their messaging to limit the destructive influence of attack advertising, drive turnout in primary elections and nominate candidates who weren’t extremists on the right or left. Lake recommended use of ranked choice voting and to limit election reform to bills designed to boost participation.
Kansans helping Iowa
Lake said the Republican and Democratic parties depended on gerrymandering to retain influence in government, but voters greatly disliked the practice of formally disenfranchising minority voters.
“Meanwhile, the system rots out at the middle,” she said. “People aren’t represented and huge numbers of voters have no say because nobody has to listen to them.”
In Kansas, for example, the Republican-led Legislature placed the Democratic stronghold of east Lawrence into the 1st congressional district held by conservative GOP U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann. For the next decade, the district will extend to the Colorado border and blend Garden City, Dodge City, Hays, Salina, Hutchinson, McPherson and Lawrence.
“The solution I love the best actually came from voters in Iowa,” Lake said. “They said, ‘Why don’t the voters of Kansas draw our lines and why don’t we draw their lines?’ I thought that was very creative.”
Goeas suggested primary elections be conducted in September so information provided voters would be fresh in their mind when casting general election ballots.
He said the U.S. election system would benefit from unlimited contributions to individual candidates because people running for office would have the cash to better control communication with potential voters. Candidates should be required to instantly report campaign contributions, he said.
The GOP analyst offered a peek into how the Republican presidential primary could evolve away from Trump, who has become tangled in a series of criminal indictments.
Goeas predicted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who tried to be Trump without the drama, would fall flat in Iowa and New Hampshire. That would create an opportunity for a surge candidate, he said. He indicated the role could be filled by Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s selection to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
