Here's the next political truism that Trump might overturn -- CNN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The 2020 election may test as never before one of the most enduring rules of presidential politics, the straightforward four-word maxim coined by Democratic strategist James Carville in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid."
Even amid record-low unemployment, robust economic growth and a roaring stock market, President Donald Trump has shown no signs of expanding his support beyond the roughly 46% of the vote that he carried in 2016.
National surveys now routinely find a huge falloff between the share of Americans satisfied with the economy and the percentage that approve of Trump's performance as President. And new academic research has concluded that attitudes about the economy were much less powerful in driving voters' decisions in 2016 and 2018 than their views about fundamental cultural and social changes, particularly race relations and shifting gender roles.
Each of these dynamics underscores how the economy's role in politics may be shifting as the basis of each party's political coalition has evolved. Increasingly, the parties are bound together less by class than by culture. As I've argued, the fundamental dividing line between the parties has become their contrasting attitudes toward the underlying demographic, cultural and economic changes remaking American society.
Democrats now rely primarily on what I've called the coalition of transformation, centered on the groups that mostly welcome these changes, particularly young people, minorities and college-educated white voters, all of them concentrated in major metropolitan areas. Republicans mobilize a competing coalition of restoration that revolves around the groups that are most uneasy about these changes: older, blue-collar, evangelical and rural whites.
Many political observers see clear evidence that attitudes toward these core questions of America's identity are overshadowing assessments of the economy in driving voters' decisions.
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Schaffner agrees. In a study of the 2016 election using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large-scale pre- and post-election national survey, Schaffner and two co-authors found that economic satisfaction and dissatisfaction was much less important in predicting support for Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton than attitudes about race and gender relations. The more likely voters were to believe that racial discrimination is not a systemic problem and that women complaining about sexism were actually seeking unfair advantage over men, the more likely they were to support Trump. (That pattern was as powerful among women as it was among men.)
The relationship between those attitudes about fundamental cultural change -- particularly views about racism -- dwarfed assessments of the economy in predicting the vote, Schaffner said, even when accounting for the tendency of Democrats and Republicans alike to view the economy more positively when their party holds the White House.
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Those results partly reflect the long-term movement toward a political system that revolves more around cultural attitudes than class interests. But they also measure the extent to which Trump has thrust these questions of American identity to the forefront of political debate by identifying so unreservedly with the forces opposed to social change across a wide array of issues, from immigration to the protests of African American National Football League players to transgender rights and the appointment of socially conservative Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
Schaffner says Trump's emergence hasn't significantly changed the share of Americans who express positive or negative views about changing race relations or gender roles. Instead, Schaffner believes, Trump's impact has been to make those attitudes a more powerful force in determining which party voters identify with. Political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck reached the same conclusion in their acclaimed recent book on the 2016 election, "Identity Crisis."
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In his meteoric political career, Trump has upended a succession of political rules and truisms. The next one may be views about the economy's primacy in determining the outcome of presidential elections.
That assumption was already eroding before Trump emerged, but if next year's election divides the country along the same lines that have shaped his presidency, political experts may settle on a new four-word maxim: "It's the values, stupid."
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Seeder's Note: Excerpts from article published by CNN. Click on the seed link to read the full analysis.
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The analysis provides a warning to both Republicans and Democrats. Questions of American identity are overshadowing traditional political issues.
How can a Republican Party promoting Christian values blindly accept immorality in its own legislative behavior? How can a Democratic Party promoting the idea of American inclusiveness condone blatant pandering and favoritism for small special interests in its own legislative behavior? Political government certainly has not been an exemplar model of mainstream American values. Both parties have politicized American values for their own self serving political benefit.
And what IS an exemplar model of mainstream American values?
yes, it will be interesting to watch how the next two years unfold. Some of what is changing is good and some if it is questionable. But what will win out in the end? Will we as a people change and grow and finally toss off some of the old issues that have dominated political discourse or have we become so tribal that we cannot see any value from the other side?
IMO voters (especially young voters) are expecting political slogans to mean something more than just winning elections.
Science and technology has outpaced ethical deliberation and value judgments. What is the value of privacy in an age of social connectivity? What is the value of knowledge in an age of Google or Bing? What is the value of individual choice in an age of big data? What is the value of work in an age of artificial intelligence? What is the value of education in an age of individual irrelevance?
If "It's the values, stupid", Trump will lose in a landslide. As it is it appears that the only thing that can save him is low turnout among millennials.
And then what? Democrats regained a House majority in 2018. What did that accomplish?
when have we heard that before? LOL
2016 maybe?
Well, that answers all doubts, doesn't it?