Patrick Caddell, Pollster to
Jimmy Carter, Dies at 68
by Will Lest [truncated and emended by FT]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Patrick Caddell, the pollster who helped propel Jimmy Carter in his longshot bid to win the presidency and later distanced himself from Democrats, has died, a colleague said Saturday night. He was 68.
Caddell died Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina, after suffering a stroke. …
After working with Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s, Caddell eventually drifted away from the Democratic Party and began advising supporters of Republican Donald Trump. He was also a contributor to Fox News for a time.
Caddell worked for 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, then joined with Carter in the mid-1970s to develop a campaign strategy to overcome the cynicism spawned by the Vietnam War and Watergate. … Caddell said Carter’s best bet was to present himself as an outsider who could help heal the country.
As a student at Harvard, Caddell had studied Southern politics and was helpful to Carter and his close advisers …
Caddell, a native of Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Carter found they had many ideas in common. …
“Caddell said …“Essentially, what he was running on in the campaign was the country’s having been psychologically devastated by the previous decade
of involvement in Vietnam. Carter was offering himself as a healer…”
Carter won the presidency, but Caddell… preferred to advise the president from outside the White House.
Caddell warned Carter of the dangers of getting out of touch with the voters …
Caddell wrote a memo warning of a crisis of confidence Americans were experiencing, and urged Carter to address them directly … That became known as the “malaise” speech, though Carter, himself, never used that word.
He lost re-election a year later … Ronald Reagan, the winner,offered an optimistic vision of the future. …
In explaining his eventual break from Democrats, Caddell said he thought the party was no longer “a party of the people” but had been hijacked by Ivy League educated elites, Wall Street, and special interest groups.
He noted in a 2016 speech to students at Michigan’s Hillsdale College … Caddell said he considered the Democrats to be guilty of “stifling dissent.”
He commended Trump for reaching out to people directly, … and Trump’s willingness to take on “the political class.”
Caddell died early Saturday at the hospital. He had not been ill, so hid sudden death was a surprise to those who knew him.
Among his many projects, he was a guest lecturer at the College of Charleston and the Citadel, she said. …
“These past years he had been consulting, conducting research and writing on the state of voter … dissatisfaction with the political system. … A spokrdmsn said, “He was a passionate man who wanted nothing more than to leave his grandchildren a better country.”
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- ... Meanwhile ...
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| Mueller's Evil Spirit Stalks DC |
Pat Caddell was a rarity: An intellectually-honest political pundit, and his diagnoses were on-target.
ReplyDeleteHe nailed today's Democrat party:
"no longer “a party of the people” but had been hijacked by Ivy League educated elites, Wall Street, and special interest groups."
"...he considered the Democrats to be guilty of “stifling dissent.”
SF,
DeleteYes, he was a realist and saw the facts for what they were. So refreshing!
even MORE refreshing was his ACKNOWLEDGEMEnt the TRUTH –– in PUBLIC.
DeleteThat, of course, is why he LEFT the DemonRats, and moved over to the side of the angels. ;-)
Ronald Reagan did the same.
By the way I must assert yet again that "FACTS" are NOT synonmous with TRUTH.
Meanwhile, Jessica Tarlov continues to comment for the Democratic Party -- on Fox, of course. In my view, she contributes zero of value, while Caddell always contributed something of value -- something thought provoking and grounded in reality.
ReplyDeleteMay Pat Caddell rest in peace.
Poor Jessica! She SOUNDS as though her VOICE BOX must have been crudely fashioned from a Rusty Drain Pipe filled with thin, tangled wire and rusted steel wool.
DeleteAOC suffers from a similar fault –– as do increasing numbers of women today. the whey-faced, washed out blonde Kirsten Gellibrand is another
How did tihs veritable ARMY of bossy, shrieking Child-Women arise?
I don't believe it possible to overemphasize the need for public figures who wish to be our leaders to SPEAK WELL.
Along with the increasing loss of basic literacy, use of proper grammar, elegant syntax, enriched vocabulary, and reading comrehansion, we are losing ALL sense of REFINEMENT in both Diction and Voice Production.
I see this as The Mark of a Moribund Civilization.
Her employment of the glottal fry appears to be pathological.
DeleteHer voice = fingernails on a chalk board.
DeleteNo instruction in diaphragmatic breathing.
The Malaise speech was a disaster. Anybody who recommended that Carter make it should have been horse-whipped. It proved that there was no "fight back" in Jimmy Carter. And after the disaster in the desert, the Iranians proceeded to walk all over him.
ReplyDeleteAt Instapundit this morning:
ReplyDeleteDID PAT CADDELL FORESEE TRUMP’S VICTORY?: We are in “pre-revolutionary moment,” he said in 2015.
Pat Caddell: The Pollster Who Foresaw and Helped Shape Trump’s Victory
ReplyDeleteNational Review Online
by John Fund
Pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell died from a stroke on Saturday at the age of 68. Few people had more to do with Donald Trump’s amazing victory in 2016. The Washington Post concluded that Caddell “first wrote the instruction manual” for Trump when, entirely on his own, he conducted polls showing that the public “was ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House.” No one I know in public life better grasped the angry voter mood that lifted both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016. ...