Im-Politic: More Reasons to Think Americans Aren’t So Divided

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abortion, affirmative action, college admissions, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, education, gender, higher education, Im-Politic, LGBTQ, minorities, polarization, politics, polls, public schools, race relations, social issues, Supreme Court

RealityChek regulars know that a theme to which I keep returning centers on intriguing evidence that Americans’ views on supposedly polarizing social issues aren’t nearly as polarized as the positions taken by activists on all sides.  Indeed, the public’s views are a triumph of both common sense and a spirit of compromise that’s continually overlooked by the political class across the spectrum. (See, e.g., here on the overall national mood, and here on abortion – a subject of special interest lately given the Supreme Court’s June decision to reject the idea of a Constitutional right to privacy and therefore to abortion.)

So I’m pleased to report new findings of equally surprising and encouraging consensus on two other supposedly divisive wedge issues.

The first is affirmative action in higher education admissions, whose future (for the time being) will be decided by the Supreme Court beginning later this month, when cases challenging such racial preferences will be heard.

If the public opinion has anything to do with the final outcome, however, these programs will clearly be toast – at least according to research summarized in this Wall Street Journal column. As noted by the author, retired University of California, Santa Cruz literature professor John Ellis,

“A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.”

Most stunningly, even the African Americans who are the main intended beneficiaries of race-influenced admissions policies now strongly oppose the practice – along with three-fourths of the entire country.

Further, Ellis cites referendum results showing that uber-liberal California is off the affirmative action boat, too.

The second set of findings concerns the emotionally fraught matter of whether subjects like gender identity, sexual orientation, gay rights, and trans rights should be taught to pre-college students, and whether such materials on these “LGBTQ” topics belong in these students’ assigned reading.

A national survey from the University of Southern California (brought to my attention in this Washington Post article) makes clear that Americans are strongly opposed to these subjects in elementary school education, but much more open to bringing them into high school classes.

Specifically, the share of respondents agreeing that primary school students should learn about these subjects was only between 28 and 30 percent. But roughly twice as many Americans were fine with including LGBTQ subjects in high school curricula.

Somewhat oddly (at least to me) support for assigning LGBTQ-themed books was a good deal lower for both grade school students (18 percent) and for high school students (38 percent).

All the same, though, a strong consensus view – and one that should make intuitive sense as a starting point for making policy – shines through: Little kids just aren’t ready to be exposed to new challenges to longstanding ideas about gender identity and such. High school students? Much more so.

Of course, as we learned earlier this year with the Supreme Court’s latest abortion ruling, the fact that the public has figured out pragmatic ways to view complex social issues (simply put, supporting a broad right to an abortion early-ish during pregnancies and increasing restrictions as the pregnancy proceeds) is no guarantee that American leaders will be able, or want to, agree.

But as I pointed out in the above-linked abortion post, a powerful lesson taught by U.S. history has been that the Supreme Court “is most successful when it pays attention to public opinion, and runs into its greatest troubles when it gets too far ahead of or too far behind these attitudes.” The same surely applies to elected politicians and activists. Let’s just hope that all of them can get with the common sense approaches favored by Americans before further inflammatory actions really do produce dangerous and lasting national divides.

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Im-Politic: Maybe Americans Aren’t Hopelessly Polarized After All

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bipartisanship, consensus, Election 2014, Im-Politic, polarization, public opinion

Just when you think you have some clear sense of American public opinion, and especially get depressed about abundant signs that the country has turned into Polarization Nation at least for the time being, the nation throws you for a loop – in this case an especially encouraging one. At least that’s how I interpret these new Gallup findings about voters’ priorities as the home stretch of Election 2014 approaches.

Some of the data confirmed widespread assumptions. For example, only 19 percent of registered voters who describe themselves as Republicans or “Republican-leaners” viewed climate change as an “Extremely/Very Important” issue. Sixty-one percent of Democrats or “Democratic leaners” put the subject in this category. Three quarters of self-identified Democrats and leaners regarded income inequality as a major concern, versus only 54 percent of their Republican counterparts. And an even wider gap separated the two groups on the question of equal pay for women.

But the data for the last two categories also contain some of those hopeful surprises. Would you, for instance, have believed that more than half of Republicans and leaners are worked up about income inequality? In principle, of course, those Republicans could be fretting about too great a prospect of inequality-reducing policies being launched. But what about the 58 percent of Republicans mentioning equal pay for women (versus 87 percent of Democrats)? Is it really possible that many or most think women have made too much progress on this front already?

Similarly, it was entirely predictable that 77 percent of Republicans and leaners would regard “taxes” as a crucial issue – presumably because they’re supposedly too high. But what about the 63 percent of Democrats and leaners putting taxes on this list? Could many or most think they’re too low?

Other pleasant surprises: The Democrats’ top concern was “the availability of good jobs”; 89 percent called it an “Extremely/Very important” issue. And although Republicans and leaners viewed it as their third leading concern, 83 percent of them agreed with this characterization. Curiously, Gallup keeps presenting “the economy” as an issue separate from jobs. Nonetheless, 91 percent of Republicans described it as a major issue (ranking it Number One in the process), and 86 percent of Democrats assigned it comparable importance (ranking it third).

International crises have caught the attention of both groups of voters, too. Republicans were somewhat more concerned: ISIS advances in the Middle East were their second highest priority issue, with 85 percent calling them “Extremely/Very Important.” And 73 percent of that camp attached this label to “foreign affairs.” But Democrats were hardly blasé. Seventy-two percent regarded ISIS’ rise as a high priority, and 64 percent agreed re foreign affairs.

Gallup also asked voters the similar, but not identical, question of which issues would be major influences on their actual vote. And the results were pretty much the same.

Back in the mid-1990s, I was part of a group of liberals and conservatives who met informally once a month to discuss the chances of creating a “new synthesis” in American politics. The aim was combining the best and most politically appealing positions from each camp. Lots of common ground was discovered, but the renewed partisanship triggered by the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment campaign seemed to cool everyone’s interest. These Gallup results – and my own continuing confidence in the common sense of a critical mass of the American people – indicates that discussions like that 1990s group need to be restarted.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Media Misses Jackson Hole Trade and Jobs Angle

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artificial intelligence, automation, Federal Reserve, Jackson Hole, Jobs, machines, Mainstream Media, middle skill, polarization, robotics, Trade, wages, Yellen, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s been completely taboo in the national economic policy establishment to acknowledge that the freest possible trade flows might not always benefit the U.S. or global economies over significant stretches of time – so maybe it represents progress that one paper commissioned for the big Federal Reserve Jackson Hole conference mentioned the possibility prominently. But when you look at Fed chair Janet Yellen’s keynote speech to a gathering focused on employment issues, and in particular to the Mainstream Media’s coverage of the study, it’s clear that the progress has been minimal.

At least if Yellen’s treatment of the subject was confined to a single mention, it departed from the conventional wisdom. Research, she observed “suggests that the decline in real unit labor costs may partly reflect secular factors that predate the recession, including changing patterns of production and international trade….” That’s anything but a ringing endorsement of Washington heading further down the trade liberalization road, as President Obama and Congress’ Republican leaders seem determined to do with their pursuit of a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in particular.

The media’s treatment of MIT economist David Autor’s study of forces shaping labor markets in recent decades ignored the subject even more studiously. It’s true that Autor’s subject was the impact of technological change. It’s also true that his skepticism about the employment effects of recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence contradicted the reemerging conventional wisdom in a newsworthy way. But what virtually no reporters told their readers was why Autor was skeptical that the latest stage in automation deserved so much blame in particular for destroying middle-skill American jobs, and for leaving labor markets polarized between very high-wage and –skill jobs and very low-wage and-skill positions.

As he stated in his conclusion, these developments seem “more closely associated with two other macroeconomic events. A first is the bursting of the ‘dot‑com’ bubble, followed by the collapse of the housing market and the ensuing financial crisis, both of which curtailed investment and innovative activity. A second is the employment dislocations in the U.S. labor market brought about by rapid globalization, particularly the sharp rise of import penetration from China following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.”

Economists are often – rightly — accused of clinging to outmoded or just plain wrong theories long after the facts debunk them. But today’s Jackson Hole reporting makes clear that the Mainstream Media can be even more blindly dogmatic.