Ronald Reagan delivered two of the most devastating remarks ever during two different presidential debates.
The first was in 1980, when he was running to unseat Jimmy Carter. That's when candidate Reagan looked straight into the camera and asked voters, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
The second was in 1984, when then-President Reagan said this about his opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience." Not only did the audience laugh, so did Mondale.
Today, the Biden campaign is asking the same question Reagan did 44 years ago. In the long run, the president's team is betting that images of isolated COVID patients in hospitals, body bags of the dead stacked in refrigerated trucks, and video of Donald Trump touting his disinfectant cure, will remind voters how devastating things were in 2020, and how much better off they are today.
In one-on-one conversations and in focus groups coast to coast, people typically answer yes or no to the Reagan-style question. While they do that for obvious reasons, some campaign advisors are beginning to wonder if the question they should be asking is "How are you different today than you were four years ago?" instead of "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
The genius behind the subtle change is this: Voters can't respond to the question about their differences with a yes or no answer. I'm not a gambling man, but I'll bet there will be some useful nuggets in people's replies. So much so, their responses could end up being the real difference-maker in this year's presidential election.
As always, I hope you will send me your comments.
-DF
Good idea!