Top Dem pollster has eerie prediction for Democrats if they don't abandon socialism, 'defund the police'

Doug Schoen, the longtime Democratic pollster who has worked for the Clintons, has a warning for the Democratic Party if they want to be competitive in upcoming elections: abandon the far-left progressive agenda.

Speaking with the New York Post, Schoen said his data show that Democrats will suffer massive losses in the 2022 midterm elections if they "go the progressive route."

"The data says to me that if the Democrats go the progressive route they can lose the House and the Senate overwhelmingly in 2022," Schoen explained.

"The incoming Biden administration has to understand that unless they take a moderate path, that is a likely potential outcome for the Democrats," he added.

Following last month's election, Schoen's polling firm, Schoen Cooperman Research, spoke with 1,000 voters. The respondents overwhelmingly said a Joe Biden presidency should embrace moderate Democratic politics, not the progressive agenda pushed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her far-left friends.

"The hardcore activists, they like AOC. The rest of the country outside of hardcore party activists are not so keen on AOC or her agenda," Schoen told the Post. "The question for the Democrats is how to keep the progressives on the reservation without fracturing the party."

Anything else?

Schoen's post-election survey found that one policy, in particular, has hurt Democrats: the push to "defund the police."

This, of course, is no surprise given how angry moderate Democrats, many of whom narrowly won re-election when they thought a "blue wave" was coming, were after the election.

In a post-election House Democrats conference call, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) excoriated the faction of her party that embraces socialism and the "defund the police" agenda.

"We need to be pretty clear. It was a failure. It was not a success," Spanberger reportedly said of the election. "We lost incredible members of Congress."

"We have to commit to not saying the words 'defund the police' ever again," she added. "We need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again. It does matter, and we have lost good members because of that."

"If we run this race again we will get f***ing torn apart again in 2022," Spanberger predicted.

Even former President Barack Obama has criticized the embrace of "defund the police," explaining this week that advocating such policy turns off a large swath of the country.

"If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like Defund the Police, but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done," Obama said.

He continued, "But if you instead say, Hey, you know what? Let's reform the police department so that everybody's being treated fairly. And not just in policing, but in sentencing, how can we divert young people from getting into crime? And if there was a homeless guy, can maybe we send a mental health worker there instead of an armed unit that could end up resulting in a tragedy?"

"You know, suddenly a whole bunch of folks who might not otherwise listen to you are listening to you," Obama said.