In response partly to Trump, and partly to demands from the party base, the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders are talking more explicitly than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 about “systemic racism” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg), “institutional racism” (Sen. Kamala Harris of California) and “institutional segregation” (former Vice President Joe Biden).
In 2016, the studies found, the more likely voters were to say that racism and sexism are no longer problems in American life, the more likely they were to vote for Trump. Recent surveys have likewise found that Trump runs far better among voters who believe that discrimination against minorities is not a major problem than those who do; Trump supporters are also far more likely than other Americans to maintain that discrimination against whites is a significant problem, the surveys have found.
Attitudes toward these dynamics “is something that has divided the parties for quite awhile,” says Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts University who conducted some of the research about the impact of attitudes toward racial and gender discrimination in 2016. “But there’s something Trump has added to this … Trump and his rhetoric just make these divisions more explicit.”
Rhetoric is raising issues’ profile
That means both parties are now framing the debate over America’s changing identity in a manner that seems likely to elevate the role of these issues in sorting voters between the two sides.
Schaffner thinks these divisions could grow more pronounced in 2020 whether Democrats nominate a woman or racial minority to face Trump, or pick a white man.
If Democrats select a woman or racial minority, that candidate, like Clinton and Obama, will personify social change in a way likely to provoke the core Republican voters who are most uneasy about it, he notes. On the other hand, if Democrats nominate a white man, that candidate will likely feel pressure to respond to the party’s increasingly diverse electoral coalition by talking more explicitly than past nominees about “structural” or “systemic” racism.
“If Democrats nominate a white male, that person on one hand might seem less threatening to moderate voters who maybe have somewhat conservative racial views,” says Schaffner. “On the other hand, that candidate, given what the Democratic Party base looks like these days, is going to have to campaign somewhat more explicitly on issues that matter to minority groups.”
That dynamic was evident in the sort of charged language that O’Rourke used at last week’s Democratic debate about slavery’s role in shaping American society. Major components of the Democratic coalition might consider such bracing talk long overdue, but it is also virtually certain to make “racially conservative voters feel more resentful,” notes Schaffner.
Attitudes have bigger role in shaping votes
The heightened pressure on the Democratic field is also evident in the fierce blowback from many liberal nonwhite writers and political activists to Biden’s comments during last week’s debate about sending social workers to help low-income parents raise their children (in part by using a “record player” at night).
Detailed studies of public opinion during the Trump era have almost universally concluded that there has not been significant change in the share of Americans who believe or dispute that discrimination against minorities and women is still a problem in American society. What’s changed under Trump is that attitudes on those questions have become more important in shaping how Americans vote.
In their 2018 book “Identity Crisis,” for instance, political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck reported that multiple post-election surveys found that “whites’ attitudes about race, ethnicity and religion came to play a larger role in 2016 than in other recent elections.”
An array of recent public opinion surveys has found that a huge chasm persists between the Democratic and Republican coalitions on whether minorities still face discrimination in America.
An August national Quinnipiac University survey found that voters who support Trump are much more likely than those who don’t to believe that whites face significant discrimination in America today and African Americans and immigrants do not, according to detailed figures provided to me by the pollsters.
In the Quinnipiac survey, fully 57% of voters who approved of Trump’s job performance said that discrimination against whites was a very or somewhat serious problem today, according to those previously unpublished results. Only 34% of voters who disapproved of Trump’s performance agreed.
Conversely, while 94% of voters who disapprove of Trump’s performance say discrimination against African Americans is a problem, just 41% of those who approve of him agree. The gap is similar for immigrants: While 95% of voters who disapprove of Trump say immigrants face discrimination, just 45% of Trump supporters agree.
Put another way, more Trump supporters say whites face discrimination (57%) than say immigrants (48%) or African Americans (41%) do. A solid majority of Trump supporters say African Americans do not face serious discrimination (55%) and a plurality say the same about immigrants (48%).
Among voters who don’t approve of Trump, the pattern is inverted: Two-thirds of them say whites don’t face discrimination, while only about 1 in 20 say the same about blacks or immigrants.
2020 polling reflects the trend
These attitudes loom over preliminary vote choices for 2020, according to the Quinnipiac findings. In the survey, Trump held a 49% to 44% lead over Biden among the roughly two-fifths of voters who believe that discrimination against whites is a problem; Biden led Trump by 64% to 28% among the majority who said it is not.
Conversely Trump held an 81% to 13% advantage among the quarter of the electorate who say discrimination against African Americans is not a problem, while Biden led by 70% to 22% among the nearly three-fourths who say it is.
Attitudes about gender relations divide Trump supporters and opponents in similar patterns.
For many Trump supporters, “they don’t see a problem” with how women or minorities are treated, says Undem, whose firm polls mostly for nonprofit organizations and liberal advocacy groups. “Then, they are supersensitive to being called racist and sexist,” she continues. “I just get the sense they have fused their own identity … in Trump, so to attack Trump is to attack them. (They are saying,) ‘No, I’m not a racist, and there’s no racism.’ “
Anna Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who conducted that research, says Democrats could find sturdier ground by accusing Trump of using race to divide the country — rather than personally harboring racist beliefs — and by talking about structural racial inequities.
“A wonky conversation about institutional racism and solutions to it I don’t think is threatening to most people,” she says. The tripwire for Democrats among some white voters, she believes, is when they frame policies to expand opportunities for minorities as a kind of penance for whites. “The difference is if you are saying, ‘This is your fault and you must pay the price of your ancestors,’ that’s when I think you start getting in a little bit of trouble with voters.”
Navigating that line isn’t likely to be easy for the eventual Democratic nominee. That’s especially true because Trump routinely portrays any criticism of his behavior as an attempt to brand his preponderantly white supporters as racist. From the other direction, as the fierce blowback against Biden’s “record player” comments signal, Democrats face more pressure than ever to explicitly denounce racism and to portray it as the predominant force shaping life in America for minority groups, even if that formulation antagonizes some white voters.
Those dynamics are two trains, gathering speed, on track for a head-on collision before November 2020.
Source : CNN