What Is the Number One Issue for Democratic Voters?

Pollster Kirsten Soltis Anderson’s Echelon Insights has just released a survey showing the top issues of voters in both parties.

I can do no better than Matt Margolis in summing up the concerns of the Democratic voters:

What do you think the Democrats’ number one issue of concern is? Jobs? Poverty? COVID-19? The environment? Health care?

Pfft. You’re not even close. According to Kristen Soltis Anderson, the cofounder of Echelon Insights, Democrat voters’ number one issue is none of those issues. Nor is it police brutality or LGBT issues. In fact, the number one issue for Democrat voters isn’t even a public policy issue at all. Democrat voters are more concerned about “Donald Trump’s supporters” than anything else.

I kid you not. According to their survey, a stunning 82 percent of Democratic voters are Extremely/Very Concerned about “Donald Trump’s supporters.”

According to the survey, 82 percent of Democrats in the survey regarded Trump supporters as the number one issue.

White nationalism came in second, at 77 percent.

The issues are closely associated. Democrats often regard Trump supporters as racists. This, despite the fact that Trump reduced black unemployment to a historic low and increased Republicans’ electoral percentages of black and Hispanic voters.

But the very existence of Trump voters is apparently an affront to all decent-thinking people. I believe that this animosity is closely tied to something very distressing we saw this week on Capitol Hill: Democrats targeted conservative media outlets.

A Wall Street Journal editorial described the depressing proceedings of last week, unfolding in a hearing:

On Monday Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney sent letters pressing 12 cable and tech CEOs to drop contracts with right-of-center media outlets including Fox News. Two days later the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing about “disinformation and extremism” in conservative media. The only notable extremism on display was the majority party’s appetite for regulating and policing the free press.

Rep. Mike Doyle, chair of the subcommittee on communications and technology, declared in opening remarks that “it is the responsibility of this subcommittee to hold these institutions”—meaning press outlets he doesn’t like—“to a higher standard.” He said later that “more free speech just isn’t winning the day over the kind of speech that we’re concerned about.” . . .

Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone generously conceded that the First Amendment protects speech that is “controversial” but distinguished “misinformation that causes public harm.” Apparently Mr. Pallone wants someone, perhaps the government, to determine what constitutes public harm and when speech causes it. Would two years of false Democratic narratives about Russian collusion with Mr. Trump qualify as public harm? How about apologias for riots in the streets last summer? …

Progressives seem to believe that they are in a position to dictate the terms of what is acceptable speech in a more controlled media environment. As committee witness Emily Bell of Columbia Journalism School put it, “there has to be a will among the political elite and the media elite and the technology elite to actually do the right thing, as it were.” That means tightening speech restrictions. To borrow another progressive cliche, this is a dog whistle for tech companies and other businesses to censor or block conservatives if government can’t.

This thinking is dangerous at any time, but especially so now as the Democratic Party runs both Congress and the executive branch with the power to punish companies that don’t oblige. The danger is worse since most of the media are abdicating their role as defenders of the free press because they aren’t the political targets. The First Amendment dies in media darkness.

Kimberly Strassel had an alarming column on this move to impose restrictions on the First Amendment:

What was new this week was Democrats’ brazenness: their shocking and open targeting of news organizations. The left has long worked to shut down speech with which it disagrees, but officials in the past did it with more subterfuge. It came via legislation for “campaign finance reform,” or via their successful effort to push the IRS to target conservative nonprofits; or via Sen. Dick Durbin’s campaign to pressure companies out of funding free-market nonprofits. Liberal activists have honed intimidation campaigns, threatening boycotts and other actions against companies that advertise on disfavored platforms or donate to right-leaning groups.

Congress’s engagement this week is an acknowledgment of the limits of that activist effort. As Angelo Carusone, president of the left-wing outfit Media Matters keeps noting, activists have discovered that their campaign against Fox’s advertisers isn’t enough, since Fox gets much of its revenue from subscription fees. So the only way to kill it off is to bully cable companies into dropping the network. Activists began a grassroots effort to do that last year but haven’t made headway. Enter Ms. Eshoo and Mr. McNerney. (Disclosure: Fox’s and the Journal’s parent companies share common ownership, and I am a Fox News contributor.)

There is probably some basic human instinct towards quelling dissent. Our Founders wisely protected dissenting speech in the First Amendment. But I think that there is now something new and atypical in play in the current quest to limit freedom of speech: disgust for Trump supporters. Hardworking Americans, whose views are different from the elites, are now seen as dangerous. Their views are so deplorable that, if the First Amendment protects their speech, then the First Amendment must be rethought. No effort to understand the concerns of Trump supporters, many of which are economic, will be made.

Interestingly, Republicans surveyed by Soltis Anderson cared more about issues. Illegal immigration topped concern at 81 percent; lack of concern for support of the police was second, and higher taxes was third. Disdain for a significant portion of the American electorate defines our elites.

And they want to silence them, regardless of their constitutional rights.