Im-Politic: Economy/Election Poll Shows Surveys’ Strengths and Weaknesses

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2016 election, blue-collar workers, Cato Institute, consumer confidence, Democrats, Donald Trump, economy, Financial Crisis, Great Recession, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jobs, millennials, minorities, polls, recovery, Republicans, students, The Conference Board, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership

I was going to start off with today a post-mortem on last night’s presidential debate but decided to wait until we get what are billed as the complete TV ratings – which are scheduled to be released later today. In my view, until we get the first reliable polls, these will be crucial to answering the question of who won in the all important minds of the voters (as opposed to the chattering classes). I’ll explain what I mean in that post, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I was really struck by the results – and the interpretations – of a new poll on how Americans view the high profile issues of the economy and trade. All else equal, at this point, these seem to be the main determinants of both the upcoming presidential and Congressional election results.

The survey was commissioned by the publication Politico and the Harvard University school of public health. (Go figure!) And when it comes to Americans’ assessment of the country’s performance since the financial crisis peaked in 2008, the findings look like good news for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. That’s no major surprise. What was more unexpected was how bipartisan the downbeat views are, and how that finding was soft-pedaled in the summary article.

Respondents were asked whether they thought that the U.S. economy had gotten “better” since the downturn in 2008, “worse,” or “stayed the same.” “Better” won with a 41 percent plurality, “worse” came in at 32 percent, and “stayed the same” was the answer of 24 percent. So that seems fairly encouraging for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who served in the administration that’s been responsible for the economy since 2009. At least, it seems, there’s no mass political uprising brewing against the Obama record.

But think about 2008. That wasn’t the run-of-the-mill “downturn” suggested by the poll’s bland wording. That was perfect economic storm time, a period when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in particular nearly triggered a global financial and economic meltdown. In addition, the second half of the year in particular was also a time when Americans were losing not only their jobs but their homes in droves. So one in four respondents seeing no change since then is stunning enough. Even more so is the belief of nearly one in three that matters are worse.

Nor should you put too much stock in the article’s claim of “a clear partisan split on this question” with Democrats more upbeat than Republicans. It’s true that 67 percent of Democrats (versus only 21 percent of Republicans) perceived an improving economy since 2008. But 32 percent saw the situation just as bad or worse than during that crisis period. Just as important, a total of 62 percent of independents gave the expansion (which technically began in mid-2009) that kind of lousy grade.

The big questions that still arise, though, from these findings:

>How do Americans perceive their own economic and financial circumstances, as opposed to the country’s? Usually they feel much better about their own lots, and the latest Conference Board consumer confidence survey supports that proposition. It just hit a nine-year high.

>Which of these judgments will matter more in the voting booth?

>Will Americans who are down on the economy place more trust in Trump or Clinton to set things right?

>How will these and other economic poll results break down by state – which of course will influence the all-important Electoral College count?

Meanwhile, the Politico-Harvard survey produced several important results on the trade policy front. First, it found that although only 29 percent of the public has heard of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Pacific Rim trade agreement that’s currently before Congress, 63 percent of those familiar with the agreement oppose it. And 68 percent disagree that Congress should vote on the matter in a lame-duck session of Congress – which the president is pushing for.

At the same time, such trade soundings have been all over the board lately – see this poll released a little earlier from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs for some contrasting results.

Much more interesting to me was the genuinely partisan split – which both surveys found. As Politico described it, Americans who call themselves Republicans have swung not only to being sharply critical of U.S. trade policy, but decidedly more critical than self-identified Democrats.

In GOP ranks, the Politico-Harvard poll found that 47 percent of respondents said that free trade agreements have hurt their communities and fully 85 percent called them net job killers. The comparable results for Democrats? Only about 25 percent and 50 percent.

My big takeaway here: “The party of the common man” may now be a misnomer for the Democrats. And interestingly, an analyst from the Cato Institute, which disagrees with nearly all my views on trade policy and even politics, concurs. He told a Politico reporter that the trade shift 

“might also reflect a shift in party affiliation among voters [especially among] ‘less-educated white males, blue-collar folks who probably used to support Democrats, but who are now Republicans. For cultural reasons, I think they are more prone to subscribe to the characterization of trade that Trump likes to use, the sort of nationalist view of us versus them.’”

Conversely, more and more Democrats look to be college students and other younger Americans (who have relatively limited experience in the job market or who take more cosmopolitan views of the global economy); government employees and workers in low-wage service industries (who face no foreign competition); and minority citizens (who have never been terribly active on the trade front but who should be).

Of course, polls shouldn’t be taken as gospel, especially this year – even when they agree. But if you look at enough of them, and read a bit between the lines, you’ll probably wind up more informed about American politics, not less. So I’ll be keeping an eye on them for the rest of this campaign – and you should, too, if you’ve got the time.

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Im-Politic: Hillary Clinton Could Have a 1950s and 1960s Problem

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1950s, 1960s, 2016 elections, America First, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, minorities, Obama, Robert B. Reich, shared prosperity, The New York Times, Trade, women

Should the 1950s and 1960s in America be mainly remembered as a halcyon economic era of growth that was strong and whose benefits were widely shared? Or an age when increased prosperity was confined mainly to white males?

Whatever your own view, and whatever the merits, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s so-called victory speech last week revealed – no doubt unwittingly – that her party could be deeply divided on the question. In turn, this split could create major confusion about a campaign theme she’s apparently become taken with, and about what economic policies she genuinely supports.

In the June 7 speech declaring her historic victory in this year’s Democratic presidential campaign, Clinton clearly painted the early post-World War II decades in dark tones. In her view, her likely GOP rival Donald Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” is “code for, ‘Let’s take America backwards.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all, promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate.”

Nor has this been a one-off remark. At a Planned Parenthood event yesterday, Clinton repeated “When Donald Trump says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for ‘let’s take America backward.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all.”

What Clinton doesn’t appear to recognize is that many of her fellow Democrats have portrayed these years much more positively. Here’s one example: “In the decades after World War II there was a general consensus that the market couldn’t solve all of our problems on its own. …This consensus, this shared vision led to the strongest economic growth and the largest middle class that the world has ever known. It led to a shared prosperity. “ The speaker? President Obama.

Robert B. Reich stands further to the left than Mr. Obama on the political spectrum – and was also Labor Secretary during the presidency of Clinton’s husband. He’s even more all-in for the early post-war decades, terming the period, “The Great Prosperity” that was fueled by “what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.”

The New York Times Editorial Board is also pretty keen on these decades:

“Economic growth and rising productivity are needed for broadly shared prosperity, but rising living standards require policies that ensure regular increases in the minimum wage, which peaked in 1968; greater investment in the social safety net; full employment as a government priority; progressive taxation; and effective financial regulation to avoid overgrowth followed by collapse.

“These kinds of policies dominated from the late-1940s to the 1970s, a time of broadly shared prosperity and a strong middle class.”

In fairness, Clinton is absolutely right in contending that women and minorities didn’t generally prosper along with the rest of the population. And no knowledgeable liberals would disagree. Yet what’s the evidence that Trump wants to reserve all future gains made by the American economy to white males? Indeed, he’s repeatedly condemned numerous recent economic policies for leaving minorities behind, most recently in yesterday’s call to take federal funds currently targeted for refugee relief programs and use them instead to foster employment in inner cities.

This last point spotlights what might be the most politically important difference between Clinton and Trump on the legacy and lessons of the 1950s and 1960s. When the former Secretary of State accuses her Republican counterpart of “promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate,” she’s focused most tightly on his opposition to highly permissive immigration policies and amnesty for the nation’s current illegal population.

Clinton has recently voiced criticisms of current U.S. trade policies.  Yet her past record and – as I’ve noted – some of her recent rhetoric indicates that she’s also fundamentally OK with the great and overwhelmingly one-sided opening of the American economy to import competition that almost immediately followed the early post-war years. Interestingly, it’s a critique of Trump-ian views on immigration and trade that’s identical with that of America’s donor class and its hired guns in the Republican party’s establishment wing.

If Clinton keeps repeating her charge about Trump’s supposedly unrealistic and retrograde nostalgia, it would be relatively easy for his campaign to counter with the kind of “America First” response he outlined in his own “victory speech“. The argument? Clinton’s endorsement of the trade and immigration status quo amounts to a program of aiding workers abroad and foreigners living illegally in the United States at the expense of the nation’s legal residents – of all genders, races, and heritages.

And if the Republican candidate can stay on this message (an awfully big “if”), he’ll be able to show that prominent Democrats, including President Obama share this economic nostalgia, too – along with the confidence that restoring this kind of economic greatness (albeit with a somewhat different policy mix) is eminently realistic.

Im-Politic: Globalization and the Vanishing White Democratic Voter

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Clinton, Democrats, free trade agreements, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, immigration reform, Jobs, minorities, Obama, offshoring, Populism, Republicans, Trade, trade Deals, voters, wages, whites

Thomas Edsall of The New York Times is one of journalism’s most incisive writers about economics and political economy. (And no, that’s not a subtle put-down.) That’s why it’s so strange to review what he left out of his column today on “The Demise of the White Democratic Voter” and on Republican attempts to change this group’s long-time loyalties.

According to Edsall, one of the keys to understanding why Democratic office-seekers have done so poorly among white voters in recent elections is the Affordable Care Act. He does indeed do a good job of explaining how Obamacare “shifts health care benefits and tax burdens from upper-income Americans to lower-income Americans, and from largely white constituencies to beneficiaries disproportionately made up of racial and ethnic minorities.” The author also rightly noted the ever greater resentment of white voters about underwriting big government more generally with tax bills that seemingly never stop rising.

But what Edsall left out is important, too: First is the Democrats’ 20-year ambivalence on offshoring-friendly trade deals, and their dramatic shift to wholesale support for immigration reform proposals featuring sweeping amnesty proposals. Second is the Republicans’ nearly equally wholesale refusal to capitalize on voter anxiety stemming from the job- and wage-killing effects of recent U.S. trade policies.

Since the 1980s, it’s been clear that Democratic party ranks include a great many voters from union families in particular who closely identify with the so-called traditional social values typically pushed by Republicans (who candidate Barack Obama in 2008 condescendingly claimed were clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”). At the same time, this group still (rightly) associates the GOP with a business establishment that’s been happy to abandon Main Street for cheaper foreign workers (whether brought into the United States or working abroad) and fast-buck financial engineering-heavy business models.

Ronald Reagan successfully appealed to many of these voters by combining vigorous defense of traditional values (often only in rhetoric rather than with action) and a series of trade policy decisions that provided major protections to key industries like autos, steel, and machine tools with big blue-collar unionized workforces. But his GOP successors in the Oval Office, the Georges Bush, strongly rejected this political and policy formula.

Of course, so have Democratic Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – even as many of the House and Senate members elected by Democrats have staunchly opposed the last two decades’ worth of trade agreements and related policy decisions like coddling China’s currency manipulation. Small wonder that white men in particular – many of whom still relied on a shrinking manufacturing sector for their earnings and pensions – moved rightward.

Most middle class whites in particular have not been directly threatened at the work place by ever greater flows of legal and illegal immigrants (with exceptions in high tech fields flooded with H-1B visa holders). But unquestionably they have been turned off by the challenge to the rule of law and national security posed by the tacit encouragement of illegal immigration, by the use of their tax dollars to fund public services for illegals (which feeds into the broader hostility to high taxes), by the related sense of entitlement projected by the mass illegals’ demonstrations of the mid-2000s (which also included many legal immigrants and other supporitve citizens and residents), and by the multi-culturalist arguments so often used by champions of Open Borders.

Thus white voters face a choice nowadays that, if not entirely Hobson-ian, is decidedly uninspiring. On the one hand they can support a Democratic party that’s always taken the lead in creating the key economic protections crucial to creating a large, enduring middle class, but whose president is apparently determined to enact a mass amnesty by executive order, and only somewhat less determined to support more offshoring-friendly trade deals. On the other hand, they can continue defecting to a Republican party that, whatever its other perceived advantages, is only superficially united against looser immigration controls, and that’s even more enthusiastic than Mr. Obama about trade offshoring.

Some day, some national-level politician will figure out the advantages of fusing a populist economic platform with positions on social and cultural issues that can not only be called traditional, but that clearly emphasize the best of that tradition. Until then, however, it looks like winning the White House will depend heavily on whether the Democrats attract and retain enough non-white voters to offset continued loss of white supporters, and the converse for the Republicans – hardly a formula for a more harmonious and more unified nation.