A very interesting article about one of the best political analysts

And pollsters in American politics... he was involved with almost every election between 1968 and 2016. He passed away in February, 2019... he was a southern conservative Democrat and economic nationalist and he was considered one of the best pollsters and analysts in electoral history... he actually became disenchanted with the Democratic Party when Obama was President because he saw the party becoming more of a group of technocrats then politicians who could make effective change

In 2013 he writes a political article about a theoretical candidate who he calls "Smith"... after the movie "Mr Smith Goes to Washington"...Cadell started advising Bannon about how to advise Trump... and he decides to run Donald Trump as this theoretical, Smith, who is a politician who is neither liberal nor conservative... he was quoted as saying that he didn't think that Donald Trump was a very good Smith but he was the only Smith that Cadell had... everything that he did was Data driven. He basically looked at the polls before an election he looked at the exit polls during the election and he watched how the voting changed over the evening on Election Day. With his candidate going up and down at different times of the day. By 8:00 on Election Day 2016 he simply said that Trump had won the election. Even Trump didn't believe it.


Steve Bannon reads this article and he strikes up a friendship with this person who was named Pat Cadell... Cadell starts doing interviews on Fox News where he is called Fox News resident Democrat....

After decades advising about a dozen largely Democratic politicians, Caddell spent his last years as a regular on Fox News, railing against Democrats, who, he now said, were all elitists who hated regular Americans. And he had Trump’s ear, sharing research and designating the media as “the enemy of the American people,” a phrase the president gleefully adopted...


At Harvard (the ultimate establishment university, of course) Caddell started a polling firm, and a friend introduced him to future senator Gary Hart, then the campaign manager for presidential candidate George McGovern. Caddell told McGovern to amplify his anti-establishment messaging in advance of the New Hampshire primary. The candidate shocked people by coming in second. Caddell instantly became coveted Washington property.


The number of leaders Caddell linked with—from McGovern, Biden (they fell out over Caddell’s volatility during Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign), Carter and Trump to Hart, Walter Mondale and Ross Perot—reveals the attractiveness of his ideas. But there was a downside for elected officials who adopted Caddell’s thinking. Once the speeches were delivered and the votes were counted, leaders still had to lead—and Caddell had nary a thought about how it should be done.

In 2004 he plays a small but important role in Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination for president...

After Howard Dean loses the Democratic nomination Cadell walks away from polling and campaigning to teach Political Science at Charleston University in South Carolina.

As the Washington Monthly put it in 1987, “Caddell understands polling, public opinion, and campaigning, but his knowledge of and interest in government is scant.”

Carter found this out the hard way. After helping to guide the Georgia peanut farmer to an unlikely victory in 1976, Caddell sent the president a memo instructing him to pose as an anti-politician, suggesting he take symbolic acts to differentiate himself from the establishment.

It was Cadell who wrote what became known as the Malaise Speech... about how Americans had lost their way and had also lost their independence and self-reliance especially with regard to being dependent on other countries for things like oil...

The president’s proposed solutions to what he called “a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will” were underwhelming. He urged Americans to have faith in each other and the country’s potential; he set import quotas on foreign oil and suggested a conservation program.




He was extremely effective in helping people get elected but he really didn't have a good idea of how people should lead after they got elected...

He was a lifelong Democrat and his political Heroes were Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harry Truman, and Martin Luther King. He remained a Democrat until the day that he died.


It's believed that he felt extremely disenchanted with getting Donald Trump elected because Trump did not turn out to be the president that he expected...Neither Liberal nor conservative...
Trump simply takes a very hard turn to the right.

I have always thought that the reason Donald Trump 2020 because Cadell died in February 2019...

Cadell was, in my mind, the primary reason that Trump won in 2016, and his absence was why Trump lost in 2020


This article is basically his obituary: after reading it I'd like to know what other people think about my idea that Trump lost 2020 because Cadell was not available...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/magazine/2019/12/29/patrick-caddell-pollster-obituary-086490