Boy, Ernst really knows how to pick her friends.
Remember when Republicans were smugly insisting that the Kochs had such a low profile that it was a total waste of time for Democrats to focus on them, that Harry Reid was just grasping at straws (and being a big bully about two, fine patriotic Americans)? Yeah, not so much. Turns out, the Koch brothers are toxic to a swath of voters who care about the economy, according to research culled from pollsters Anzalone Research, Benenson Strategy Group and Hart Research, and the data analytics firm Civis.
Chris Lehane, an adviser to the NextGen group, synthesized the data for a memo exploring how climate change issues play out with voters and found one key group that really has a problem with the Kochs. Lehane calls them Super Shifters. These are voters with children who make less than $100,000 and are registered or self-identified independents, though they do tend to vote one party. In this election, Lehane finds, they are truly persuadable—against the Kochs. Politico reports:
The Super Shifters "believe that the system is rigged against them—and that there are powerful interests, the corporate 'fat cats'—a phrase that came out of a focus group—who exercise undue influence over the political process," Lehane adds.
He goes on to say the attacks against the Kochs work because they are tethering Republicans to a sense of a rigged system, and that that is overriding President Barack Obama's own weak poll numbers.
"One of the most intriguing findings in the polling is that the Koch brothers have emerged as a negative signifier for Republicans aligning with these powerful self-serving corporate fat cats," Lehane writes. "Given these findings, various Democratic candidates and organizations are effectively deploying the Koch Brothers as a symbol of Republicans being the party of the Fat Cats (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid knew exactly what he was doing when earlier this year he elevated the role of the Koch brothers)."
That's backed up by huge unfavorable numbers against the Kochs in Colorado—negative 14 points—and Michigan, where they're at a negative 23 percent favorability. In Iowa, Joni Ernst has a problem after
telling the Kochs she owes her whole campaign to them. That's because 71 percent of voters in Iowa are "less likely to support a candidate if he or she was being bankrolled by the Koch brothers."
Democrats have the advantage of this one in that it's true. The Kochs are "self-serving corporate fat cats" and they are bankrolling the GOP. They are trying to buy the whole Congress. Mitch McConnell is groveling before them. None of that is deniable, nor is the fact Republicans in Congress have done everything to block any progress for the majority of Americans.