A cogent, well-documented analysis of the 2016 election.
Racial and religious anxieties, more than economic worries, fueled Donald Trump’s victory.
Political science professors Sides (George Washington Univ.; The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, 2013, etc.), Vavreck (UCLA; The Gamble, 2013, etc.), and Tesler (Univ. of California, Irvine; Post-Racial or Most-Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era, 2016, etc.) counter some popular assumptions about the surprising outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which pitted two “historically unpopular presidential candidates” against each other. In a narrative replete with graphs and tables, the authors argue against the prevalent idea that Trump attracted white voters who felt victimized by loss of jobs and worries over economic insecurity, instead mounting abundant evidence for their contention that group identities mattered more to voters than perceptions of economic hardship or inequality. “Simple narratives about voter anger,” they write, “obscured who was angry and why.” They assert that in the Republican Party, “divisions centered on how voters felt about groups they did not belong to, including blacks, Muslims, and immigrants.” These groups generated strong emotions and activated white voters’ racial and religious identities, both of which had deepened during Barack Obama’s presidency and caused a backlash against diversity. The authors cite three main reasons for Trump’s victory: “fractured ranks” within the Republican Party that impeded party leaders from coalescing behind any candidate; outsized media coverage of Trump that made him appear to be the front-runner even when coverage focused on scandals; and “racialized economics,” in which racial attitudes “shaped the way voters understood economic outcomes.” Hillary Clinton had problems with both message and campaign strategy, never attracting enough support from diverse voters, including women. The authors doubt that Russian interference changed the outcome of the election. “Russian-sponsored content,” they conclude, “was an infinitesimal fraction” of tweets and posts, and although this content was “misleading and polarizing,” the campaign was already filled with similar incendiary content. Moreover, they maintain, “most voters are predictable partisans whose minds are hard to change.”
A cogent, well-documented analysis of the 2016 election.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-691-17419-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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