This is definitely the opposite of good news for Nancy Pelosi!
It can be a really disastrous way to use focus groups to “test the people’s opinion”, especially when you’re a Democrat, and about to use your influence to push your attitude and opinion, despite what the people think.
And it’s just a waste of the people’s money.
Dems wanted to see how moderate Dems and NeverTrumpers felt about the issue and how they can tweak their message to get them really outraged.
White House reporter by the name of Alex Roarty sat in on both focus groups and shared what happened in a series of tweets.
Overall, this was probably not the “passionate response” Pelosi and her fellow commies were hoping for.
Here’s what reporter Alex said:
“Watched 2 focus groups w/moderate voters last night, put on by a liberal group. Moderator asked 1st group (five women) about Jan 6th. A long pause followed before one of the women asked what he meant. Invoking “Jan. 6” didn’t immediately mean anything, even days after anniversary
The conversation didn’t get much better from there for Dems , in either focus group. Once the convo got going, it was clear Jan. 6 hadn’t been memory holed by the 1st group. But one woman said flat out it wasn’t she was worried about anymore compared to other concerns. And …
… two others, after agreeing how awful the attack was, said they thought Biden and Democrats had gone too far in the way they talked about last week on the anniversary. One of the women said she thought they had over-embellished it.
The 2nd group, this time five moderate men, had a similar reaction (though I’ll include one important caveat later). None of them mentioned Jan 6 when prompted broadly about what news they had been paying attention to lately, mentioning Manchin, Arbery verdict, etc … instead
Later, when asked specifically about how POTUS and Dems marked the anniversary, two men jumped in pretty eagerly to talk about how Biden had made a mistake looking backward instead of trying to move the country forward. They expressed a feeling he had politicized a tragedy
One of the participants would later add that they also resented how reporters who were there personalized their experienceHowever, cuz this is an important component: After the first two men agreed Biden had mishandled, another jumped in to say he thought Biden’s speech was appropriate, that he needed to call out the forces/people responsible for the attack. And that prompted a longer discussion …
about how terrible the attack was, and how people were worried about democracy. One man — who was clearly very far from a liberal — said he abandoned the GOP after Jan 6 and thought the way Biden handled the anniversary was fine. Tide turned a bit at this point …
with one of the first two men — who had been so forceful about Biden mishandling the anniversary — jumped back in to clarify that he thought the attack was terrible and worrying. Very broad, strong agreement on that point in both groups
So people thought what happened on Jan 6 was awful and raised serious questions about the country’s direction. But they didn’t all necessarily connect it with the GOP/Trump (tho tbc, some did)
the one point that kept coming up, across both groups, was a desire to find the person responsible for the attack. That person/people, the fg participants said, needed to be held accountable, and they weren’t sure they had been. That’s probably the point that will frustrate Ds the most
to clarify, these groups were labeled as either soft Biden voters — backed JB but not Clinton — or soft Trump voters, those who backed DT in ’20 but said they regretted doing so.”
He went on Twitter about this, and the responses he got were not looking good and bright for the Dem’s future.
Especially Pelosi.
Watched 2 focus groups w/moderate voters last night, put on by a liberal group.
Moderator asked 1st group (five women) about Jan 6th. Long pause followed, before one of the women asked what he meant. Invoking "Jan. 6" didn't immediately mean anything, even days after anniversary
— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) January 11, 2022