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For as long as I have been writing about politics, which is longer than I would like to admit, I have had certain rules drilled into me. Three above all.
Rule No 1: All other things being equal or equal-ish, voters will choose the candidate with whom they would rather have a beer. This applies mostly to presidential elections – though gubernatorial, Senate and House races are not exempt – and is thought to explain George W Bush’s political success, his father’s political limitations and Richard Nixon’s uphill slog and need for trickery. What you wanted to have with Nixon wasn’t a beer, it was hemlock.
Rule No 2: Voters thrill to confidence and optimism. This explains Ronald Reagan. His cup wasn’t merely half full, it was effervescent, with jelly beans on the side.
Rule No 3: Voters vote their pocketbooks. The party that seems to be the surer route to three days at Six Flags is the party in clover. In 1992, James Carville boiled this down into a political catchphrase so endlessly repeated and boundlessly revered that it will probably be engraved on his tombstone: It’s the economy, stupid.
Except it’s not – at least not always and probably not for the 2018 midterm elections.
Unemployment is below 4 per cent. In the second quarter of the year, the gross domestic product grew 4.2 per cent. The stock market under president Donald Trump has been as bullish as Pamplona.
But his approval rating remains stuck below 45 per cent. In many recent polls, Democrats enjoyed a double-digit advantage over Republicans when voters were asked the “generic ballot” question of which party they prefer.
And over the past month, handicappers have grown increasingly confident that Democrats will flip more than the 24 seats that they must to gain control of the House of Representatives. The words “blue wave” are being used more often, with less timidity.
Part of that is about a customary swing of the pendulum in midterms. Part suggests that the most frequently cited economic measurements do not reflect how most voters are really faring. But part explodes the idea that we Americans are irredeemably materialistic creatures, fixated on our possessions. What happens on 6 November may demonstrate that we care about more than that. It may bring our better angels into play and best values into relief.
“It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid!” was the headline on a recent column by CNN’S
Chris Cillizza. In Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg, a veteran analyst of congressional races, went with, “Why It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid”.
The uppercase letters – theirs, not mine – capture the gusto of their assertions that the midterms may hinge on such issues as health care, respect for women, treatment of minorities and, yes, Trump’s pugnacious and petty style.
Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, told me that what is happening is actually bigger than Trump. A new pattern has emerged whereby voters respond less to economic winds than to a tribalism fostered by demographic changes, social media and more.
“Identity politics has really become the ecology you’re operating in,” he said. “Economics aren’t as dispositive as they used to be.” He added that many voters evaluate the vigor of the economy in terms of whether the person or party responsible for it is aligned with their tribe.
Lyn Ragsdale, a professor of political science at Rice University, noted that significantly more voters profess satisfaction with the economy than with Trump’s management of it, and she attributed much of that discrepancy to their qualms about his conduct and character.
In polls, she said, many voters indicate that they do not deem Trump fit for his office. “And if he’s not fit for office,” she said, “how could he be doing a good job on the economy?” Or so their thinking goes, and that is why they are so down on the job he is doing, though the stock market is up. His approval number, she said, is the better harbinger of what will happen on 6 November.
Gallup released a poll two weeks ago in which the percentage of Americans who mentioned one or another aspect of the economy when asked about the most important issue in the country was 12, the lowest since Gallup began posing that question in its current fashion more than 25 years ago. In contrast, 29 per cent mentioned “dissatisfaction with government/poor leadership”.
“People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on,” Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, said in an article last month by my Times colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin. “They’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”
If that is so, maybe there is a bright side to this dark presidency. It is reminding us that we are not what we own – we are what we disown, including the sexism, racism, jingoism and other ugliness to which Trump and his enablers merrily play midwife.
There is something above dollars. It is called decency.
©2018 New York Times News Service
The US economy is doing well, but it looks like decency will beat dollars in the mid-term elections, writes Frank Bruni