As Hillary Clinton came to the podium to deliver her acceptance speech, a well-run Democratic convention had already accomplished a number of important political tasks.  Careful preparation, especially the incorporation of platform planks that Bernie Sanders had pushed into the Party’s platform, helped heal the breach between Sanders’ supporters and the Clinton campaign.  Well-crafted speeches by leading Democrats laid out the stakes in this year’s election and sharpened the case against Donald Trump. 

Still, Hillary Clinton faced a number of challenges.   The first is the inescapable reality that she was running to succeed a two-term incumbent of her own party whose administration she served as a senior official.  In a year dominated by vocal demands for change, she could not escape being the candidate of continuity.

This did not mean that she was compelled to run as the defender of the status quo, however.  She was obligated to defend the record of the past eight years, but not to claim that all the problems Barack Obama inherited have been solved.  Her task was to achieve a credible balance between continuity and change—to argue that President Obama created a firm foundation for the change we must build together during the next decade.  George H. W. Bush’s 1988 acceptance speech is a model of how this balance can be struck successfully, albeit in circumstances very different from what Hillary Clinton faces.      

Her second challenge was to drive a wedge between change in the abstract, which 7 in 10 Americans favor, and the kind of change Donald Trump is offering, which is ill-informed, misguided, and much too risky to be worth the gamble—or so she must argue.

We’ve seen this before.  In 1980, Americans registered deep discontent with the direction of the country at home and abroad.  Although there was no doubt that Ronald Reagan represented a dramatic change of course, the Carter campaign kept the election close for months by contending that Reagan’s program was a leap in the dark and worse, that he lacked the temperament to be president and would place the country at risk.  It was only Reagan’s reassuring demeanor in the presidential debate that allowed him to surmount the people’s doubts about him and win a substantial victory.

Her third challenge, on which much ink has been spilled, was to begin the task of reversing negative perceptions of her character—most important, that she cannot be trusted—that have deepened during the course of the campaign at the hands of supporters of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  This is not a task that one speech could hope to accomplish.  Indeed, her campaign manager speculated recently that the entire campaign might not suffice to do so and that people would come to trust her only when they saw her carrying out her duties as president.

Part of the problem is that Hillary Clinton is a person who values personal privacy in a confessional culture that demands self-disclosure.  To be sure, her husband’s and daughter’s convention speeches helped provided a more rounded picture of the kind of person she is.  But although she could choose to allow more of her emotions and commitments to show in her own right, she was bound to maintain a measure of reserve that is decidedly out of fashion.  Her challenge was to make a virtue of necessity by underscoring the principles (and the faith) that have guided her public life.  This strategy could also help counter a related accusation, that she is a cold-blooded pragmatist, moved by burning ambition, who lacks a moral core and changes direction in response to shifting political winds.  In the end, trust rests on authenticity.   

So measured against these three core challenges, how successful was Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech?

It was not an oratorical masterpiece, but it was a sturdy, workmanlike presentation of who she is, how she thinks, and what kind of president she would be.  She acknowledged being a public servant who has always been more comfortable with the “servant” rather than the “public” dimensions of her work.  She affirmed the obvious: she is a policy wonk who sweats the details, as she insisted a president should.  She set forth her guiding principles and quoted the Methodist credo.  She praised the accomplishments of the Obama-Biden administration while making it clear that she is far from satisfied with the status quo.  She laid out her plans for building on the foundation the incumbent has created. 

And she raised questions about Donald Trump that go to the core of his candidacy.  Does he know enough to be president?  Does he have any plans to fulfill his grand promises?  Is he a man of character?  And most pointedly: does he have the temperament to serve as commander-in-chief?  She quoted one of his self-congratulatory utterances—“I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”  After a pause to let his words sink in, she replied, “No, Donald, you don’t.”  One suspects that even Americans who do not support her nonetheless agreed with her.

In one of the speech’s most notable lines, she said that “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”  To drive home the point, she recalled one of the Cold War’s most dangerous moments—the Cuban missile crisis—and President Kennedy’s reflection that weak, reckless men could have dragged us into catastrophe.  The contrast she sought to underscore was clear: her cool, experienced steadiness versus Trump’s shoot-from-the hip instability.            

By itself, a single speech cannot solve a candidate’s problems.  But it can set a sense of direction and mark out a way forward.  Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech was a good beginning—an honest presentation of self.  In that sense, it was completely authentic.  And authenticity is the basis of trust.

It is hard to see what else—or what more—she could have done.  Now she must ensure that her campaign drives home the message of this speech.  And then it will be up to the American people to decide whether to accept what she is offering.

      

 

 

Editor’s note: This week the Democrats gather in Philadelphia to nominate a candidate for president and adopt a party platform. Given that there are no minority reports to the Democratic platform, it is likely that it will be adopted as-is this week. And so we can begin the comparison of the two major party platforms. For those who say there are no differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, just read the platforms side-by-side. In many instances, the differences are—as Donald Trump would say, yuuuge. But in one surprising instance, the two parties actually agree. This piece walks readers through one of the biggest contrasts, while an earlier piece by Elaine Kamarck detailed a striking similarity.

When it comes to Republicans and the environment, black is the new green. In addition to denouncing “radical environmentalists” and calling for dismantling the EPA, the platform adopted in Cleveland yesterday calls coal “abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource” and unequivocally opposes “any” carbon tax.

Meanwhile, Democrats are moving in the opposite direction. By the time the party’s draft 2016 platform emerged from the final regional committee meeting in Orlando, it contained a robust section on environmental issues in general and climate change in particular. One of the many amendments adopted in Orlando contains the following sentence: “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals.” In plain English, there should be what amounts to a tax (whatever it may be called) on the atmospheric emissions principally responsible for climate change, including but not limited to CO2.

As Brookings’ Adele Morris pointed out in a recent paper, this proposal raises a host of design issues, including determining initial price levels, payers, recipients, and uses of revenues raised. It would have to be squared with existing federal tax, climate, and energy policies as well as with climate initiatives at the state level.

But these devilish details should not obstruct the broader view: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the platform of a major American political party has advocated taxing greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists, including some with a conservative orientation, will applaud this proposal. Many supporters and producers of fossils fuels will be dismayed.

It remains to be seen how the American people will respond. In a survey conducted in 2015 by Resources for the Future in partnership with Stanford University and the New York Times, 67 percent of the respondents endorsed requiring companies “to pay a tax to the government for every ton of greenhouse gases [they] put out,” with the proviso that all the revenue would be devoted to reducing the amount of income taxes that individuals pay. Previous surveys found similar sentiments: public support increases sharply when the greenhouse gas tax is explicitly revenue-neutral and declines sharply if it threatens an overall increase in individual taxes.

Once this plank of the Democratic platform becomes widely known, Republicans are likely to attack it as yet another example of Democrats’ propensity to raise taxes. The platform’s silence on the question of revenue-neutrality may add some credibility to this charge. Much will depend on the ability of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee to clarify its proposal and to link it to goals the public endorses.

      

 

 

After the longest convention speech in modern history, the big question is: which Donald Trump will show up during the final 14 weeks of this election season? Will it be the man who forcefully delivered a carefully scripted speech to a national audience, or the one whose interview just the day before with the New York Times threw a hand grenade into the Republican foreign policy establishment and the NATO alliance?

Donald Trump faced two main political challenges in his acceptance speech—unifying a badly divided party and expanding his support beyond the passionate minority that has rallied to his cause.

How did he do?

On the first challenge, pretty well. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t attack other Republicans, although it must have been tempting to say something about Ted Cruz. In fact, he has flipped his campaign in recent weeks to focus on security and law and order issues that tend to bring Republicans together, and they dominated the first and longest part of the speech. He endorsed the policy concerns of the party’s major interest groups, including the NRA.  His promise to repeal the decades-old ban on political speech by tax-exempt religious organization was well received in the convention hall.  Only the corporate and financial communities came away empty-handed.  The party of business could not have been happy about Trump’s repeated opposition to almost every trade deal that has been negotiated in the past quarter century—or his declaration that the era of multilateral trade agreements is over. 

Turning to the second challenge, he and his warm-up acts did in fact reach out beyond the base. Much of Ivanka Trump’s introduction sounded like it was straight out of a Hillary Clinton speech on women, family, and workplace issues. Preceding Ivanka was Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, who is an entrepreneur and, as he told the Republican convention, proud to be gay. But perhaps the most surprising outreach came from Trump himself when he talked about protecting the LGBTQ community against Islamic terrorism after the hateful attack in Orlando. And then Trump followed up with  an unscripted comment meant to emphasize the point: “As a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.”

Nonetheless, his Nixonian invocation of “law and order” gave no ground to the many African-Americans who experience contemporary policing as oppressive and unfair. His stated determination to enforce the law against illegal immigration could not have swayed the millions of Latinos whose families will be directly affected. And while his daughter’s speech rang a responsive chord with women and millennials, the positions she espoused have yet to come from the candidate himself.

Trump’s acceptance speech matters because his support in the electorate has remained stuck in the low 40s for several weeks. The gap between him and Hillary Clinton has narrowed during this period, but only because her support declined in the wake of FBI director James Comey’s criticism of the handling of her State Department emails. No one believes that Mr. Trump can win with 41 percent of the vote, even if the Libertarian and Green Party candidates do much better than ever before. So he needs to move some voters in groups not naturally inclined to back his candidacy.

And while he mostly stuck to the teleprompter and avoided the egocentric musings that have characterized so many of his past speeches, his suggestion to the New York Times that he might not honor our NATO commitment to come to the aid of threatened member states who didn’t pay their fair share raised new questions about his grasp of the issues with which a president must deal.  Although Trump made an impromptu stab at explaining his position during his acceptance speech, his effort probably did little to calm those who wonder if he knows what he’s doing.

The broadest question is whether Trump’s dark picture of a country under threat, in decline, and undermined by elite corruption is shared by a majority of his fellow-citizens.  While most Americans are frustrated, many fewer are as angry as were most of the Republican delegates in the hall.  Are the American people prepared to lurch from hope and change to fear and loathing?

All in all, Trump’s acceptance speech left Republicans more reassured and unified than they had been during the first three days of their convention, but it is less clear that it laid the foundation for a successful general election campaign. 

Elaine C. Kamarck is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates. She is a superdelegate to the Democratic convention.

      

 

 

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared in Democracy Journal.

Successful acceptance speeches at national party conventions accomplish two tasks: they lay out what is at stake in the forthcoming election in clear, unmistakable terms; and they do what is necessary in the circumstances of the times to build majority support, not only for the nominee personally, but also for the nominee’s strategy for surmounting the most urgent and important problems of the day. Although not every presidential candidate enters the general election contest with realistic prospects of victory, each has the opportunity to play the hand they’ve been dealt either well or badly, and, typically, we can judge which is which.

There are, then, three possible political situations nominees can face as they craft their acceptance speeches. They may enjoy the luxury of already existing majority support, in which case their task is to mobilize their supporters and maximize their victory. They may face a closely divided nation, in which case they must decide on the best course for building a majority and structuring their address to reinforce their strategy. Or they may know, even if it is imprudent to admit publicly, that their chances of success are minimal. Their task then is to do the best they can for their party, to prevent personal defeat from turning into a broad-based electoral rout that leaves all institutions of government in the hands of the other party.

The best example I know of the first case is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech at the 1936 Democratic convention. The central issue, FDR declared, was to move the country from political equality to economic democracy, and overcome the opposition of the captains of industry and finance he dubbed “economic royalists.” At one time, small businessmen, workers, and farmers could enjoy independence through their own efforts, but, in a mass production society, this was no longer possible. As the colonists overthrew the dominion of the British to achieve self-governance, so the citizens oppressed by concentrations of capital must overthrow the economic royalists to regain control over their own destiny. “These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,” FDR said, but their real complaint is that “we seek to take away their power.” This is a war for the future of democracy, and there can be no compromise: If the people are to win, the economic royalists must lose. And finally, he promised, “I am enlisted for the duration of the war.”

President Roosevelt could not have drawn a brighter line. In doing so, he mobilized an unprecedented outpouring of public support and achieved what was, at the time, the largest landslide in American history.

As for the second case—a majority to be forged rather than mobilized—the best example is Ronald Reagan’s acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican convention. Reagan and his advisors knew that he was perceived as narrowly ideological, even threatening. Although President Carter had lost his grip on the American people, it was anything but clear that Reagan could seize the Oval Office.

Reagan responded to this challenge with a masterfully constructed address. Explicitly addressing Democrats and independents, as well as Republicans, he talked in soothing tones about national unity. In the face of widespread pessimism about our economy and our global leadership, he insisted that America’s best days still lay ahead while promising to restore the “values and virtues handed down to us by our families,” as well as the American spirit of “voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative.” Countering the Democrats’ effort to depict him as a reckless warmonger, he—in terms reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address—responded by saying: “We must always stand ready to negotiate in good faith, ready to pursue any reasonable avenue that holds forth the promise of lessening tensions and furthering the prospects of peace.” Rather than offering an astringent doctrine of limited government, he remarked that “we must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable” and then “the courage to bring our government back under control and to make it acceptable to the people.” Beyond a bracing critique of the Carter Administration’s performance on every front, he outlined a set of alternative policies consistent with his vision of America’s society and government.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Reagan’s acceptance speech secured the victory he went on to achieve in November; it took the presidential debate to do that. But the speech did much to strengthen, and nothing to undermine, the image of reasonableness and common sense that he drove home in his eventual fateful encounter with Jimmy Carter. In so doing, it laid the foundation for the substantial margin of victory he eventually achieved.

Contrast these two successes with Barry Goldwater’s spectacular failure to cut his party’s losses in 1964. With Lyndon B. Johnson wrapped in the shroud of his martyred predecessor, the Arizona Senator had no chance of prevailing. But by doing the opposite of what Ronald Reagan would do 16 years later, by turning an ideological candidacy for the presidential nomination into a hard-edged general election campaign, he ensured that his party would remain divided and that few Democrats or independents would join forces with him. The result was one of the epic electoral defeats in American history.

Many Americans of a certain age can recall the most notorious lines from Goldwater’s address: “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice…[and] moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” But few of us remember that these phrases came at the end of a speech littered with overwrought and divisive rhetoric. Following a root-and-branch rejection of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration’s policies as statist denials of individual liberty, he warmed to his task: “Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.” Translation: the difference between contemporary liberalism and Communist despotism is one of degree and not of kind. At the very least, liberal Democrats are culpably indifferent to the fate of oppressed peoples around the world. “And I needn’t remind you, but I will,” said Goldwater, “it has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.”

Just seven years before Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing, the conservative hero was still invoking the “Who lost China?” debate of the late 1940s and early 1950s. This message helped turned what was sure to be a substantial defeat into the smallest share of the popular vote a candidate in a two-person race has ever received—and one of the biggest across-the-board defeats for his party, opening the door to the transformative legislation of the Great Society.

Today, Donald Trump faces a divided Republican Party and uncertain prospects for an electoral majority. His task is not to mobilize his core supporters, but to heal his party and to broaden his support beyond its usual ranks. He cannot do that by recycling the rhetoric of his primary campaign. Instead, he must present his signature issues in their least threatening and most persuasive light.

Suppose, for a minute, he were to grasp the nettle and say:

My fellow Americans, I know my views on trade and immigration have created some consternation, and I know that I’ve depicted my views in ways many of you find too vivid. Despite what you may think, it has given me no pleasure to describe the situation as starkly as I have. But I had had no choice. We were drifting in the wrong direction, and no one was standing up to resist. I had to get your attention, and I guess I did. If I thought that the trade treaties of the past quarter-century had served the interests of American workers and manufacturers, I would never have spoken up. But they haven’t, and more and more Americans are becoming aware of this fact every day. Because I have helped destroy the elite consensus that was destroying our economy, we can begin discussing how to negotiate more strongly for trade agreements that create jobs and raise wages here at home.

And yes, I know my famous wall on our southern border seems harsh and divisive. But let me ask you: What is the alternative? How else can we halt—not just slow down, but stop in its tracks—the illegal immigration that threatens American jobs and America’s security? We’ve tried everything else, and nothing has worked. If anyone has a different idea, the presidential campaign would be a great time to debate it. Believe me, I’m ready for that debate. But I will not settle for phony solutions that leave things as they are. And you know what, I don’t think most Americans will either.

It is in any way conceivable that his speech could resemble something like this? Well, we will soon learn whether Donald Trump has the foresight and self-restraint to present himself to the American people in such a way as to expand his support beyond the 40 percent of the population that already supports him, and will continue to do so, come what may. If he doesn’t, the Republican Party had better be ready to wander in the wilderness for quite some time.

      

 

 

Over the past half-century, the relationship between research centers and governing authorities in the United States has undergone a profound transformation. Increasing polarization between the political parties has reduced demand for nonpartisan research while sparking a proliferation of think tanks with overt links to specific parties and ideologies. Rising public skepticism about policy expertise, changes in funding patterns, and a far more complex media environment also have played important ant roles.

This is a familiar if important litany. Less familiar are the changes in the U.S. government itself—in particular, its increased analytical capacities at the national and state levels and in some of our major municipalities as well, claims Senior Fellow William Galston in this essay examining the history and future of the Brookings Institution. 

According to Galston, these changes have reshaped the relationship between Brookings and our public institutions. From the 1920s through the 1960s, the federal government often asked Brookings for direct help in crafting policies and mechanisms of governance. For example:

• Shortly after what became the Brookings Institution was founded, one of its scholars, William Willoughby, took the lead in making the case for a unified national budget. The chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations asked him to draft a bill to that effect, which he did. Willoughby then testified before the committee and wrote its report. The House and Senate subsequently passed the bill with only minor amendments. The final result, the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, created the president’s Bureau of the Budget (the precursor to today’s Office of Management and Budget) and the office of Comptroller General.


• During the 1920s, studies on international debt issues by Harold Moulton, Brookings’s first president, deeply influenced the Dawes Commission. In a press conference, an unhappy Commerce Secretary, Herbert Hoover, blamed Moulton for a major write-down of the French debt. Other Brookings studies on international debt led to the adoption of uniform standards for reporting international financial statements.


• A Brookings book developed the system of apportioning congressional representation among the states that was embodied in the Congressional Apportionment Act of 1941.


• In December of 1947 a perplexed Senate Foreign Relations Committee reached out to Brookings for advice on how to organize and administer the Marshall Plan. In transmitting this request, the committee’s chair, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, noted that “the deep and universal respect which the Brookings Institution richly deserves and enjoys would make your recommendation of tremendous value to those of us who are struggling in the trenches with this conundrum.” A team led by Leo Pasvolsky, the head of Brookings’s International Studies Group, completed this assignment in three weeks. Brookings’s work provided the blueprint for the Marshall Plan. In the floor speech, Senator Vandenberg noted the Senate’s “great obligation to the Brookings Institution for the masterly job it did. The provisions in the pending bill largely follow its recommendations.”


• Brookings research on presidential transitions led to papers prepared by Brookings staff and transmitted to the Nixon and Kennedy campaigns in 1960. In a memoir, Ted Sorenson described how these memoranda defined the agenda for JFK and his team during the transition and stated that Brookings “deserves a large share of the credit for history’s smoothest transfer of power between opposing parties.” A few years later, a Brookings researcher, Laurin Henry, made a compelling case that transition expenses should be publicly financed. Acting as a consultant to the Bureau of the Budget, he drafted a bill to this effect, which was enacted into law and signed by President Johnson in 1964.

Over the past five decades, such requests from government have become less frequent. Galston explores the consequences of this shift, explaining that as a result, Brookings has sought, and to some extent found, new modes of influence. It works to raise public awareness of previously ignored issues, to shape the public agenda, and to offer policy advice, privately as well as well as through an increasingly diverse menu of public communication. When Brookings’s scholars are invited to join administrations, moreover, the impact of their ideas on public policy can be direct and consequential.

"Throughout its history, the Institution has reposed its confidence in the long-term ability of high-quality, independent research to shape the environment within which public policies are debated and to influence policy choices when circumstances permit,” says Galston. “Today, this stance of strategic patience is more important than ever. This focus on long-term outcomes, which I believe to be necessary as well as wise, will require forbearance from the individuals, foundations, and corporations on whose support institutions such as Brookings must increasingly depend as well. The demand for rapid, measurable, direct impact on policy outcomes is bound to frustrate donors and recipients alike.” 

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It is time to broaden the national dialogue about educational opportunity for incarcerated students. At a recent event at the Center for American Progress, Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. spotlighted the administration’s Second Chance Pell initiative, a program that will allow eligible prisoners to receive Pell Grants to pursue higher education opportunities at one of 67 two- or four-year institutions nationwide. Touted as a strategy for reducing recidivism, facilitating re-entry, and rebuilding communities affected by incarceration, the program represents an evidence-based approach to securing public safety and promoting social mobility.

The administration’s actions are limited because the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act expressly prohibits individuals incarcerated in federal or state prison from receiving Pell grants. Although the act passed with broad bi-partisan support in 1994, the peak of the tough-on-crime era, it has since become the subject of scrutiny and criticism from reformers on the left and right.

In an attempt to improve criminal justice reform with evidence-based policy, Congress created the bi-partisan Charles Colson Task Force (CCTF) in 2014. After two years of research and inquiry, the CCTF issued a report that urged Congress to repeal all “federal collateral consequence laws, regulations, and practices that, without a public safety basis, bar civic participation and access to programs.” The task force specifically identified a repeal of the prohibition on Pell grants for incarcerated students.

This recommendation is rooted in a body of solid, social scientific research. One oft-cited study from the RAND Corporation found that on average, inmates who participated in correctional education programs had 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than inmates who did not. The study also found that among inmates who participated in academic or vocational correctional education programs, the odds of obtaining employment post release were 13 percentage points higher than for those who had not participated.  Although the report suggests that receiving correctional education while incarcerated reduces an individual’s risk of recidivism, the authors identify a need to collect additional evidence and call for studies that “identify the characteristics of effective programming in terms of such variables as curriculum, dosage, and quality.”

Expanding educational opportunity to incarcerated students is just as much a matter of rehabilitating individuals as it is a matter of fostering safe communities. Current rates of recidivism in the United States stand at over 75 percent after five years of release.  As we’ve discussed elsewhere, given that the majority of incarcerated individuals will one day be released, high recidivism rates pose a substantial risk to public safety. 

The twin goals of reducing recidivism and securing public safety with evidence-based policy should unite Republicans and Democrats. Although available evidence indicates the value of expanding educational opportunities to incarcerated students from a public safety perspective, implementation of the Second Chance Pell program will provide additional data that inform an evidence-based approach to criminal justice reform.

      

 

 

Event Information

With the violence in the Middle East continuing, and further attacks on American soil in the name of Islam, the election campaigns have paid significant attention to policy issues related to the Middle East. But as both Republicans and Democrats prepare for their national conventions, how do Americans prioritize Middle East issues compared with other global priorities? Have public attitudes shifted in light of recent ISIS-inspired attacks overseas and at home and in response to heated campaign rhetoric? If so, in what direction?

On July 11, Brookings launched two new public opinion surveys focusing on American attitudes towards the Middle East, conducted by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami: One was conducted just two weeks before the Orlando shooting, the other taken two weeks after—thus providing an opportunity to evaluate any shift in public attitudes. In addition, some of the same questions were asked in Telhami’s polls the previous two years, thus providing a further opportunity to evaluate trends. One of the polls also includes a significant oversample of millennials (18-34) for further demographic analysis.

Telhami was joined in discussion by William Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at Brookings. Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

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In his new book, “The End of White Christian America” (Simon & Schuster, 2016), Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), discusses the stark demographic and cultural changes occurring in the United States. As the book’s title boldly states, white Christians are no longer the American majority, and the cultural and institutional world they built no longer sits at the center of American public life. How has this shift contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and increasing feelings of nostalgia and unease? Jones draws upon decades of polling data to explain how the political dominance of white Protestant Christians has waned in recent decades and the larger effect this decline in influence will have on the American populace.

On July 11, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted Jones alongside Brookings Senior Fellows William A. Galston and E.J. Dionne, Jr. to examine what it means for America to no longer be a majority white Christian nation, and what influence this will have on the upcoming 2016 presidential election. How are the recent demographic and cultural changes shaping concepts of inequality, fairness, and religious freedom for future generations?  

Join the conversation @BrookingsGov.

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As even casual observers of elections know, raw public opinion is only modestly instructive about likely results. If people don’t go to the polls, their views will not affect the outcome. Turnout always matters, and in close elections it can prove decisive.

So what do we know about likely turnout in 2016? The Pew Research Center has just released a comprehensive study of this year’s electoral terrain that sheds a great deal of light on this question. It also poses a puzzle.

Here are some of the key findings:

• 80 percent of respondents say they have thought “quite a lot” about the election, the highest share measured in the past quarter century.

• 85 percent report that they are following the news about the presidential candidates very or fairly closely, also a quarter-century high.

• 74 percent believe that when it comes to making progress on important issues facing the country, it “really matters” who wins the election. This measure began in 2000, when it stood at only 50 percent. In 2004, when the controversy over the Iraq war was at its height, it rose to 67 percent. In 2008, it fell slightly to 63 percent, where it remained in 2012.

• 60 percent say that they are more interested in politics than they were four years ago, second only to 63 percent in the precedent-shattering 2008 presidential election.

• These four trends apply to both political parties, with  Republicans enjoying slightly higher shares overall.

It is tempting to conclude that if interest in the election is high and most people think the outcome matters a lot, then turnout is likely to surge, all the more so because it fell by 4 points—from 62 to 58 percent—between 2008 and 2012. There is, it appears, plenty of room to grow.

On the other hand, voters strongly disapprove of the tone and substance of this year’s campaign, and they don’t much like the presidential candidates either. This could turn voters off and suppress turnout in November.

• 68 percent find the tone of this year’s campaign “too negative,” compared to 47 percent in 2004, 50 percent in 2008, and 53 percent in 2012.
• Only 27 percent say that the campaign has focused on important policy issues.
• And only 40 percent say they are very or fairly satisfied with the presidential candidates, compared to 64 percent in 2000, 65 percent in 2004, 60 percent in 2008, and 56 percent in 2012. There is little difference between the parties this year—43 percent satisfaction for Democrats, 40 percent for Republicans. Amazingly, satisfaction with the candidates among voters 18 to 29 years old, which averaged 66 percent between 2000 and 2012, now stands at only 23 percent!
• A record 41 percent of voters say that neither major party candidate would make a good president. This negative evaluation is more widespread for Republicans (46 percent) than for Democrats (33 percent), suggesting that many backers of other Republican primary candidates are not yet persuaded that Donald Trump is fit to be president.  

So here’s the puzzle: which matters more for turnout, voters’ interest in the election or their satisfaction with the candidates?

I put this question to Pew’s researchers, and they responded with the following table:

It appears that turnout can be relatively high even when voter satisfaction with the candidates is low, and vice versa. On the other hand, turnout tends to rise and fall in tandem with measures of voter interest and involvement. We would need a serious statistical analysis over a longer period of time to confirm these generalizations. Still, it is plausible that the Pew findings are pointing toward a higher turnout in 2016 than in 2012, perhaps as high as in 2008, although it is hard to be confident of that.

This conclusion raises another puzzle: why should turnout be high if enthusiasm for the candidates is low? Answer: voters who care a lot about the outcome (and as we have seen, three quarters of them do) will turn out in droves to vote against the candidate they despise.

According to the Pew study, 60 percent of George W. Bush’s supporters in 2000 said they cast their ballots for him, compared to only 33 percent who were voting against Al Gore. This year, fully 55 percent of Trump’s supporters say they will be voting to express their antipathy to Hillary Clinton compared to only 41 percent to signal approval for Mr. Trump. On the Democratic side in 2000, similarly the division between approval and antipathy was more than two to one (64 to 30 percent) compared to a nearly even split (48 to 50 percent) this year.

In this era of high polarization, we have become accustomed to high levels of mutual disapproval between political partisans. This year, disapproval is high within as well as between partisan ranks, setting the stage for what promises to be one of the most negative campaigns that any of us has ever experienced.  

      

 

 

The vote by the people of the UK to leave the European Union ensures years of turmoil and uncertainty as Britain and the EU negotiate the terms of separation and as the pieces of the UK struggle with the consequences.  Scotland may well seek to remain in the EU by voting for independence from the UK. 

In the short to medium term, this is bad news for both Britain and Europe.  And it is bad news for the United States as well.

First, and most obviously, it is bad for our economy.  The instability the vote creates will be bad for global investment and global growth, which was already slowing significantly.  Slower global growth means weaker demand for commodities and especially energy, impeding the recovery of the US energy industry from the collapse in oil prices.  Moreover, the inevitable rise in the value of the dollar will depress US exports and deal a further blow to our manufacturing sector.

Second, it is bad for our diplomacy.  We have worked with closely with the EU on a range of important international endeavors, all the more so since a rearmed Russia began throwing its military weight around in Georgia and Ukraine.  But the EU must now turn its attention more to its internal affairs—not just the UK’s exit, but also a reconsideration of its stated goal of deepening the political integration among its member-states.  There is a widening gulf between the aspiration of pan-European elites and the sentiments of the peoples of European nations, and the vote in the UK means that a response to the lack of public support for further integration can no longer be postponed.

Despite Winston Churchill’s famous quip that the United States and Great Britain are two nations divided by a common language, we do continue to have a special relationship based on a shared outlook in many areas.  Britain’s membership in the EU has amplified the voice of the United States in the intra-European economic and security dialogue, and Britain’s withdrawal is bound to diminish our influence.

And finally, it is bad for our politics—unless you think that Donald Trump is good for our politics.  Watching the UK election returns last night, I was struck by the extraordinary parallels between the demographic underpinnings of that contest and our presidential election.  The British vote—especially in England—pitted young against old, educated professionals against lower-skilled workers, cities against small towns and rural areas, those who welcome immigration and diversity against those who fear it.  There as here, economic decline and rapid demographic change have combined to produce a surge in ethno-nationalist sentiment.

Speaking from Scotland this morning, Mr. Trump hailed the Brexit vote and urged his own country to follow suit.  While he is there, he may want to talk with the Scots, more than 60 percent of whom voted to remain in the EU and who may well pursue this objective by severing their ties with the United Kingdom.  

The politics of division will not benefit either the UK or the EU, and it is hard to see how it will benefit the United States either.  At the same time, it is further warning—if such were needed—that the winners from economic and demographic globalization can no longer ignore the entirely justified complaints of those whom it has left behind.  As the “Remain” campaign has learned to its sorrow, citing aggregate economic statistics cuts no ice with people who have lost all confidence in the experts who produce those statistics and the elites who promulgate them as Holy Writ.

The liberal internationalist project of economic and political integration has hit a wall, and politicians in the United States who are broadly sympathetic to this project must adjust.  The alternative is that over time, the domestic voices who sympathize with the sentiments of UK’s “Leave” campaign will carry the day.

      

 

 

Although a few political analysts have been focusing on the white working class for years, it is only in response to the rise of Donald Trump that this large group of Americans has begun to receive the attention it deserves. Now, thanks to a comprehensive survey that the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) undertook in collaboration with the Brookings Institution, we can speak with some precision about the distinctive attitudes and preferences of these voters.

There are different ways of defining the white working class. Along with several other survey researchers, PRRI defines this group as non-Hispanic whites with less than a college degree, with the additional qualification of being paid by the hour or by the job rather than receiving a salary. No definition is perfect, but this one works pretty well. Most working-class whites have incomes below $50,000; most whites with BAs or more have incomes above $50,000. Most working-class whites rate their financial circumstances as only fair or poor; most college educated whites rate their financial circumstances as good or excellent. Fifty-four percent of working-class whites think of themselves as working class or lower class, compared to only 18 percent of better-educated whites.

The PRRI/Brookings study finds that in many respects, these two groups of white voters see the world very differently. For example, 54 percent of college-educated whites think that America’s culture and way of life have improved since the 1950s; 62 percent of white working-class Americans think that it has changed for the worse. Sixty-eight percent of working-class whites, but only 47 percent of college-educated whites, believe that the American way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences. Sixty-six percent of working-class whites, but only 43 percent of college-educated whites, say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In a similar vein, 62 percent of working-class whites believe that discrimination against Christians has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups, a proposition only 38 percent of college educated whites endorse.

This brings us to the issue of immigration. By a margin of 52 to 35 percent, college-educated whites affirm that today’s immigrants strengthen our country through their talent and hard work. Conversely, 61 percent of white working-class voters say that immigrants weaken us by taking jobs, housing, and health care. Seventy-one percent of working-class whites think that immigrants mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages, a belief endorsed by only 44 percent of college-educated whites. Fifty-nine percent of working-class whites believe that we should make a serious effort to deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries; only 33 percent of college-educated whites agree. Fifty-five percent of working-class whites think we should build a wall along our border with Mexico, while 61 percent of whites with BAs or more think we should not. Majorities of working-class whites believe that we should make the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States illegal and temporarily ban the entrance of non-American Muslims into our country; about two-thirds of college-educated whites oppose each of these proposals.

Opinions on trade follow a similar pattern. By a narrow margin of 48 to 46 percent, college-educated whites endorse the view that trade agreements are mostly helpful to the United States because they open up overseas markets while 62 percent of working-class whites believe that they are harmful because they send jobs overseas and drive down wages.

It is understandable that working-class whites are more worried that they or their families will become victims of violent crime than are whites with more education. After all, they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder and criminal behavior. It is harder to explain why they are also much more likely to believe that their families will fall victim to terrorism. To be sure, homegrown terrorist massacres of recent years have driven home the message that it can happen to anyone, anywhere. We still need to explain why working-class whites have interpreted this message in more personal terms.

The most plausible interpretation is that working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability. On every front—economic, cultural, personal security—they feel threatened and beleaguered. They seek protection against all the forces they perceive as hostile to their cherished way of life—foreign people, foreign goods, foreign ideas, aided and abetted by a government they no longer believe cares about them. Perhaps this is why fully 60 percent of them are willing to endorse a proposition that in previous periods would be viewed as extreme: the country has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is prepared to break so rules if that is what it takes to set things right.

     

 

 

Event Information

As the 2016 election draws near, issues related to immigration and broader cultural change continue to dominate the national political dialogue. Now, an extensive new survey sheds light on how Americans view these issues. How do they feel about the proposed policy to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country? The survey of more than 2,500 Americans explores opinions on these questions and others concerning the current immigration system, immigrants’ contributions to American culture, and the cultural and economic anxieties fueling Donald Trump’s success among core Republican constituencies.

On June 23, Governance Studies at Brookings and the Public Religion Research Institute released the PRRI/Brookings Immigration Survey and hosted a panel of experts to discuss its findings. Additional topics explored in the survey and by the panel included perceptions of discrimination against white Americans and Christians, and the extent to which Americans believe that the uncertain times demand an unconventional leader.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #immsurvey and @BrookingsGov

Video

• The battle over the border: Public opinion on immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the election

Audio

• The battle over the border: Public opinion on immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the election

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160623_prri_jones_presentation
• 20160623_immigration_prri_transcript

     

 

 

Proponents of criminal justice reform are cautiously optimistic about prospects for a sweeping statutory overhaul to the federal prison system by the end of the 114^th Congress. Several bills, including the Recidivism Reduction Act of 2016 (H.R. 759) and the Sentencing Reform Act (H.R. 3713), have passed the House Judiciary Committee, earning the support of Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (VA-6) and Ranking Member John Conyers (MI-13). House Speaker Paul Ryan has embraced criminal justice reform and pledged to bring reform legislation to the floor for a vote this Congress.

The legislative landscape in the Senate is a bit more complicated. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (S. 2123) sailed out of the Judiciary Committee last fall, with the full-throated support of Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the Committee Chairman and Ranking Member. The bill is cosponsored by senators spanning the ideological gambit from conservative firebrand Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to Democratic whip Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). Shortly after the bill emerged from committee, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) led a small but fervent group of Republican lawmakers to oppose the bill. Although the senators’ key objections are certainly subject to interpretation, concerted opposition in the upper chamber temporarily stymied legislative momentum.

At the end of last month, proponents breathed new life into the bill, announcing revisions to certain sentencing provisions and the support of six additional senators—two Republicans and four Democrats—and the influential National District Attorney Association. Largely absent from the national conversation, however, are the bill’s extensive provisions to reduce recidivism and promote successful prisoner re-entry.

Recidivism in the United States

In addition to holding individuals who commit crimes accountable, correctional facilities should work hard to rehabilitate individuals and prepare them to rejoin society. Currently, the nation’s astronomical rates of recidivism indicate that correctional facilities are failing to equip prisoners with tool for successful re-entry. Given that the vast majority of incarcerated individuals will one day be released, ensuring that correctional facilities have the resources to rehabilitate incarcerated individuals is a public safety imperative.

According to estimates by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over a quarter of individuals released from state prison are rearrested within six months. As the figure below illustrates, recidivism rates increase steadily after each additional year of release; after five years, more than seventy five percent of formerly incarcerated individuals have been rearrested. This striking trend is consistent across demographic categories.

In a recent report to Congress, the bi-partisan Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Correction outlines evidence-based strategies to reduce recidivism. Numerous studies have shown that identifying and targeting individuals at greatest risk of re-offending based on key factors such as criminal history, employment prospects, and familial relations can have a significant impact on recidivism reduction. Once at-risk inmates are identified, research indicates that prioritizing these individuals for programming can positively impact rehabilitation, reduce recidivism, and improve public safety.

Based on these academic insights, the Task Force urged Congress endow the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) with the resources to deliver adequate and appropriate in-prison programming and services based on individual risk for recidivism and other identified needs. The Task Force also recommended that Congress create incentives for inmates to participate in rehabilitation programs by authorizing eligible individuals to earn up to 20 percent off time served for successfully completing their programs.

Legislative redress

The recidivism reduction measures outlined in the Senate bill closely track the recommendations of the Task Force. The bill’s corrections provisions require the Attorney General to develop a system to determine the recidivism risk and programmatic needs of every prisoner, and the BOP to make statistically validated recidivism reduction programming available to all eligible prisoners, commensurate with an individual’s risk status. The bill authorizes eligible prisoners to earn time credit for successful program completion, and it allows prisoners at low or moderate risk of recidivating to serve earned time credits in residential reentry centers, on home confinement, or on community supervision.

McConnell’s calculus

With several Republicans facing tight re-election bids in November, the Senate Majority Leader faces an uphill battle to retain a GOP majority. Although any number of factors could determine which bills McConnell decides to bring to the floor, the politics of the 2016 election will be chief among them. On the one hand, the criminal justice reform bill could showcase Republicans’ ability to enact sweeping statutory change on an issue that voters generally support. A recent poll conducted by the Mellman Group and Public Opinion Strategies, for instance, indicates that voters across demographic groups and party lines strongly support an array of significant changes to federal criminal justice laws, especially those pertaining to drug offenses.

On the other hand, McConnell is unlikely to bring a measure to the floor if it would further fragment a fragile GOP majority, and the bill has hardly been uncontroversial. In remarks at the Hudson Institute just last week, Senator Cotton opined, “the criminal-leniency bill in the Senate is dead in this year’s Congress. And it should remain so if future versions allow for the release of violent felons from prison.” As we have argued elsewhere, sentencing reform is the linchpin of GOP debate—specifically, which federal offenders should be eligible for targeted reductions to mandatory minimum sentences.

Expanding debate on the reform bill to include the evidence-based recidivism reduction provisions in the Sentencing Corrections and Reform Act may prove to be good politics. By highlighting the urgent need to contain astronomical recidivism rates, the Majority Leader has the opportunity to showcase his party’s commitment to public safety and to demonstrate that the GOP is capable of working with Democrats on an issue of great public concern.

     

 

 

The rise of Donald Trump should inject a dose of humility into those of us who practice political science or political journalism (I plead guilty on both counts). With a few honorable exceptions, we didn’t predict what was coming, and we couldn’t believe the evidence of our own senses as it was happening. The simple truth is that we didn’t understand our country—or its politics—as well as we thought we did.

In part, this was a conceptual error. We conflated the rise of partisan polarization—a genuine and increasingly important phenomenon—with increasing distance between the parties on a left-right ideological continuum.

We were not alone: so did the Republican Party leadership, which assumed that their rank-and-file voters were furious about their elected officials’ failure to deliver smaller government, big cuts in annual spending and marginal tax rates, reductions in Social Security and Medicare outlays, and effective resistance to the Obama administration’s social liberalism. Along came Mr. Trump, who proved that a plurality of the Republican electorate didn’t much care about the classic Reagan-era agenda because it no longer addressed their fears and met their needs.

The larger error was empirical, not conceptual: we underestimated the extent of the mounting frustration in the large parts of the country left behind since the end of the 20^th century, when incomes began to stagnate well before the Great Recession and a slow recovery made matters worse. “Flyover country” describes more than the travel patterns of bi-coastal elites; it depicts the mindset as well, along the lines of Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover.

This is where first-rate journalism can help. Journalism as “scoop”—getting the story first—is decreasingly important. But in an era of information overload, journalism that helps us understand what’s going on has become essential. It goes where we don’t have time to go, and it makes us confront abstractions and statistics as lived realities.

Eli Saslow’s recent Washington Post article on the announced closure of a United Technology manufacturing plant and the loss of 800 good jobs in Huntington, Indiana is a perfect example. Saslow tells the story through the eyes of one of these workers, Chris Setser, who has worked at the plant for 13 years. He is facing the loss, not only of a job, but also of the stable and decent life it has provided for his family. His 16-year old daughter is afraid she won’t be able to attend college. His 10-year old son is worried that the family will have to follow the plant to its new location in Mexico.

Right before our eyes, we can see a lifelong Democrat morphing into a Trump supporter. “Life always evens out” has been Mr. Setser’s mantra. Now he’s not so sure. “Pretty soon there won’t be anything left,” he says. “We’ll all be flipping burgers.” His wife objects: Does that means we just turn the country over to “the guy that yells the loudest”? He retorts: “They’re throwing our work back in our face. China is doing better. Even Mexico is doing better. Don’t you want someone to go kick ass?”

This is more than an anecdote. During the past decade, Mr. Saslow reports, Indiana has lost 60,000 middle-class jobs and has replaced them with low-paying jobs in health care, hospitality, and fast food. The state’s median household income has fallen by $4700—almost nine percent—since 2005, and the gap between middle-income households and top earners has soared.

Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that workers in the Huntington plant are responding to the impending closure with vehement outbursts against corporations and their wealthy managers. “It’s pure greed,” said one. “They wanted to add another six feet to their yachts,” added another. And more broadly, “This is how it feels to be sold out by your country.”

It’s hard to disagree with their assessment. United Technologies Corporation is a highly profitable firm that has raised its dividend by nearly nine percent annually in recent years. The division of the corporation in which the Huntington Plant is situated has done particularly well, with profits of $2.9 billion on sales of $16.7 billion in 2015. Moreover, UTC’s Indiana operations have received millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies in recent years, much of it to keep the plants operating in the state.

No wonder Indiana’s conservative Republican Senator Dan Coats termed the plant closings and relocations “disgraceful,” adding “I think that’s very unfair . . . we were there giving you the support you said you needed in order to keep this plant here.”

There is another side to the story, of course. In the wake of the Washington Post article, I read all of UTC’s press releases about this episode and spoke with three senior representatives of the corporation. To justify its decision, UTC points to the continuing migration of its competitors to Mexico, ongoing cost and pricing pressures driven, in part, by “new regulatory requirements,” and the opportunity to make more effective use of existing infrastructure and supply chains across the southern border. The corporation also emphasizes its commitment to the wellbeing of workers in plants selected for closing, including severance pay, medical insurance continuation, and its Employee Scholar program that pays employees’ college tuition, fees, and book costs for up to four years. And finally, UTC will not avail itself of tax breaks to which it is legally entitled and will repay, incentives it received to remain in the United States.

When I pushed for additional details on cost pressures stemming from regulation and other factors, however, I received only a reiteration of what was included in the press releases. I was given no reason to believe that the Indiana plants were unprofitable or in imminent danger of becoming so.

This episode points to a larger truth: Corporate America stands at the proverbial fork in the road. Justified as preserving competitiveness, its decisions have generated a political backlash in both political parties. Continuing down this road will undercut whatever remains of the support for tax, trade, and immigration policies that corporate leaders have long advocated. Corporate leaders must strike a better balance between maximizing shareholder value for the short-term and maintaining the political environment they need to operate successfully in the long run.

During his confirmation hearings in 1953, Charles Wilson, the president of General Motors who had been nominated to serve as Secretary of Defense, professed his long-held belief that “What was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Although intellectuals mocked this statement, it contained a substantial truth about the economy of the post-war era. It is harder today to offer this assertion with a straight face, because there is more evidence suggesting that what’s good for corporate managers and highly educated professions may not be good for the full range of U.S. corporate stakeholders.

We have reached a dangerous moment. If American workers come to believe that what’s good for corporations is bad for them, today’s turbulent populism will look like a walk in the park. Corporate leaders will come to regret that they failed to act with far-sighted statesmanship while they had the opportunity.

     

 

 

The election is nearly six months from now. And yes, it’s risky to place too much weight on any one poll. But the just-released Quinnipiac survey of three key swing states—Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio—challenges complacent assumptions and suggests that the election will be closely contested.

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is massively unpopular among women and minorities. The Quinnipiac poll indicates that this is true. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee trails Hillary Clinton among non-white voters by 43 points in Florida, 60 points in Pennsylvania, and 62 points in Ohio. Mrs. Clinton leads among women by 13 points in Florida, 19 points in Pennsylvania, and 7 points in Ohio.

These findings are consistent with another piece of conventional wisdom—that Mrs. Clinton will comfortably defeat Mr. Trump this November. Unfortunately for her, that’s not what the survey finds. The two candidates are essentially tied in Florida and Pennsylvania; in Ohio, the New York billionaire holds a small 43-39 lead. It looks like a tough fight.

What’s going on?

In the first place, Mr. Trump enjoys a sizeable lead among white voters in all three states: 19 points in Florida, 11 points in Pennsylvania, and 17 points in Ohio. Not surprisingly, his edge among white men is even larger: 36 points in Florida, 32 in Pennsylvania, 29 in Ohio. Within the white electorate, gender matters. Mrs. Clinton does 15 points better among white women than men in Florida and 17 points in Pennsylvania, but notably, only 7 points better in Ohio, which helps explain why her overall standing among women is lower there than elsewhere.

This leads straight to the second feature of the electorate that helps Mr. Trump challenge the conventional wisdom—men overall, where he leads by 13 points in Florida, 19 in Pennsylvania, and 15 in Ohio. There are two large gender gaps this year, and they mostly neutralize each other.

Third, most people think that while Hillary Clinton will lead a united Democratic Party into battle, Mr. Trump will head a Republican Party bitterly divided by his candidacy. If the Quinnipiac results are sound, only the first half of that proposition is true. Yes, Hillary Clinton is supported by 83 percent of Florida Democrats, 82 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats, and 81 percent of Democrats in Ohio. But Donald Trump’s numbers in these key states are comparable: 79 percent of Republicans in Florida, 82 percent in Pennsylvania, and 80 percent in Ohio. In none of these states do intra-party defections reach double digits—for either candidate. One plausible interpretation is that in an era of intense partisan polarization, members of each party find it harder than before to break ranks and support the other party’s nominee.

The two presidential candidates have something important in common: they are both deeply unpopular with the electorate in these key states. In Florida, 37 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, versus 57 percent unfavorable; Trump’s numbers are identical to hers. Pennsylvania is much the same—37 to 58 for Mrs. Clinton and 39 to 55 for Mr. Trump. In Ohio, she stands at 34-62, compared to his 38-61 rating in the Buckeye State. Neither candidate is rated honest and trustworthy in any of the states surveyed; neither is thought to care about “people like you.” In all three states, however, Mrs. Clinton is regarded as even less honest and trustworthy than Mr. Trump, suggesting that this may prove to be a potent line of attack for the Republican campaign.

Despite the voters’ negative evaluations of both candidates, they are perfectly capable of drawing finer distinctions. On the one hand, voters in all three states think that Mr. Trump would do a better job than Mrs. Clinton handling the economy and, by smaller margins, terrorism as well. On the other hand, she is regarded as being more intelligent than he is and possessing higher moral standards.

It is in the area of temperament that Mrs. Clinton enjoys her greatest advantage. By large margins, voters in these three large swing states think that Mrs. Clinton has the right temperament to handle international crises. By even larger margins, they believe that Mr. Trump does not. Indeed, his negative ratings in this respect are eye-poppingly large. Only 34 percent of Florida voters think that his personality will enable him to handle international crises, compared to 62 percent who do not. Matters in Pennsylvania are much the same, with 33 percent in the affirmative column and 62 percent in the negative. In Ohio, it’s even worse, with a 29-63 rating. By underscoring this deficit, an updated version of the “red phone” commercial could do substantial damage to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

Voters are flashing warning-lights to both candidates on their signature issues. On the one hand, voters in all three states—minorities as well as white—support requiring photo identification cards to vote. Although many Democratic leaders regard this requirement as an effort to suppress minority votes for their candidates, rank-and-file members of these groups seem to disagree. It is far from clear that emphasizing this issue during the fall campaign would yield net gains for the Democratic nominee.

Matters are more troublesome for Donald Trump, because the survey yields scant evidence for a surge in nativist sentiment in the electorate as a whole. Building his famous wall splits Florida voters down the middle, while voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio reject it outright. And when voters are asked about how to treat illegal immigrants, the option of allowing them to remain and eventually apply for citizenship is the runaway winner, with 57 percent support in Florida, 58 percent in Pennsylvania, and 54 percent in Ohio. Only small minorities in these three states believe that these immigrants should be required to leave the United States. It will be remarkable if the issue that propelled Mr. Trump’s remarkable rise during the Republican primary contest turns out to be his Achilles heel in the general election.

Despite the tumultuous campaigns of the past year, the balance of sentiment in these pivotal states has barely budged. Last August, Mr. Trump led Mrs. Clinton by a statistically insignificant 43 to 41 percent in Florida; now she leads by an equally insignificant margin of 43 to 42 percent. In Pennsylvania, she led by 45 to 40 percent last August and by 43 to 42 percent today. In Ohio, a 43 to 38 Clinton advantage has flipped to a 43 to 39 edge for her opponent.

Now, as the general election begins in earnest, each candidate enjoys universal name recognition, and both have etched clear profiles in the minds of the voters. This suggests that it will not be easy to engineer large shifts in public opinion. The quality of the respective campaigns could make the difference, and so could events that neither candidate can control.

     

 

 

Donald Trump’s emergence as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee represents a frontal challenge to every building-block of Ronald Reagan’s conservative coalition—limited government, social conservatism, and democratic internationalism.

Trump’s departure from longstanding conservative tenets is especially pronounced in foreign policy, where he advocates an assertive unilateralism with an isolationist tinge.  Deaf to its historical resonance, he recently adopted the slogan “America First,” the motto of the isolationist movement that opposed America’s entrance into World War Two until the attack on Pearl Harbor. He may now be tempted to believe that the American people as a whole want to move in this direction. The facts suggest otherwise.

This morning, for example, the Pew Research Center released its latest survey on Americans’ attitudes concerning foreign policy and the country’s role in the world.  The survey revealed important areas of continuity, some dramatic changes, and deep divisions between and even within the political parties.

Let me begin with the continuities.  Americans believe, as they have for decades, that it is more important to focus on our domestic problems than on foreign policy.  Still, the poll’s findings show that the people are no more likely now than in the past to embrace unilateralism or isolationism.  By a margin of almost 2-to-1, they reject the proposition that we should go our own way in international matters without worrying what others think.  While they believe that the United States should remain the sole superpower, they do not want us to be the single world leader, preferring instead to share leadership with other countries.  And they continue to favor close relations with Europe and involvement with NATO and the United Nations. In a similar vein, they are more likely than they were just a few years ago to regard the United States as the world’s leading economic and military power—putting them more in the Hillary camp than in the Trump camp.  The concern sparked by China’s dramatic rise has noticeably eased.

But while Trump may be out of step with many Americans, in pushing an America First position, he is speaking for a substantial portion of his own party.  Sixty-two percent of Republicans say that we should let other countries deal with their own problems, while only 42 percent think that we should compromise to take our allies’ interests into account.  Republicans regard with disfavor every dimension of our efforts to assist developing nations, from direct aid to trade and investment.  Only 37 percent of Republicans think our global economic involvement is a good thing because it expands markets and boosts growth, compared to 55 percent who think it’s a bad thing because it eliminates jobs and squeezes wages.  By contrast, 49 percent of Democrats favor our current global economic engagement, compared to 44 percent who question it.

In short, we now have a Trump-led nationalist party facing off against an internationalist party that will be led into battle by a former secretary of state.  Internationalism represents the path of continuity, while isolationist-tinged unilateralism is a radical change. 

No doubt Americans want us to focus on our problems here at home.  As Pew’s findings show, they almost always do.  But Americans have longed believed that we can meet our domestic challenges without turning our back on our allies and alliances.  There is no evidence that they have suddenly changed their minds and are willing to take a chance on going it alone.  Sober internationalism is good policy, and it is likely to prove good politics as well.

     

 

 

Event Information

The A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy
 

Charter schools, introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, were conceived as laboratories of experimentation in instruction, integration, and school leadership. Over time, they have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional public schools. As of this year, charters account for approximately six percent of all public school students, and President Obama’s proposed budget includes $375 million for charter schools—a 48 percent increase from the previous year. What does the future hold for this model in American schooling? What are charter schools doing well and where do they need to do better?

On April 26, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a forum to examine charter schools in America. This event, the seventh in the A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy series, convened leaders from various perspectives to explore the role, effectiveness, and future of charter schools in the U.S. education system.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #CharterSchools and @BrookingsGov

Video

• Past, present, and future of charter schools
• The research evidence on charter school effects, academic and otherwise
• The role of charters in public education and communities

Audio

• Examining charter schools in America

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160426_charter_schools_transcript

     

 

 

There are three possible outcomes in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination (assuming that there are no major changes in the party’s draft rules for the convention.)

Outcome #1: Donald Trump wins the required majority of 1237 delegates outright by June 7, when voters from California and New Jersey weigh in;

Outcome #2: Trump gets so close that he can close the deal by negotiating with unpledged delegates between June 7 and the beginning of the Republican convention in mid-July;

Outcome #3: Trump fails to enter the convention with a majority and must bet everything on a first-ballot victory (no one thinks he would be stronger on the second ballot than on the first.)

For some time, most observers have thought that the third outcome—a convention fight—is the most likely. They should reconsider. A state-by-state analysis suggests that even if Mr. Trump doesn’t go over the top on June 7, he will come close enough that he can pick off the necessary number of unpledged delegates pretty quickly. Consider the following:

By winning about 90 of New York’s 95 delegates on Tuesday, his delegate count now stands at 845. The remainder of the April contests—in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—are likely to go his way as well. Taken together, these states will award 60 delegates to the state-wide winner and another 39 to the winner of congressional districts. Rhode Island goes its own way, dividing its statewide delegates proportionally and its congressional district delegates to candidates who clear a 10% threshold. And only 17 of Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates will be pledged; the state will also select 54 unbound delegates who will be free to exercise their own judgment, at or before the convention. That said, Mr. Trump seems sets to end the month of April with about 925 delegates—more if his statewide victory margins are big enough to sweep most of the congressional districts.

The pace slows considerably in May, with only five primaries and a total of 199 delegates at stake. Four of those primaries are easy to predict. Nebraska is Cruz territory; Trump should run the table in West Virginia; Oregon and Washington, which divide their statewide delegates proportionally and (in the case Washington, congressional districts through a complex formula) should yield delegates for all three candidates. The central case projection: Trump wins 63 delegates in these four primaries.

That leaves Indiana, now the object of much attention. Indiana will award 30 of its 57 delegates to the statewide winner, while the winner of each of its 9 congressional district receives 3 delegates. The state’s demographics point to a very close race between Trump and Cruz. Depending on how the statewide contest goes, Trump could gain either 12 or 45 delegates.

So putting all the May contests together leaves the New York billionaire with between 1000 and 1033 delegates.

Then comes June 7, when the final five primaries and 303 delegates are up for grabs. As in May, four of the five are pretty easy to project. New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota are winner-take all states. Based on trends so far, Trump should come away with New Jersey’s 51 delegates; Cruz with Montana’s 27 and South Dakota’s 29. New Mexico divides its 24 delegates proportionally, with a 15% threshold; Trump and Cruz should divide the lion’s share, with Kasich in the running to collect a few if he clears the threshold. Given these assumptions, Trump would have between 1061 and 1094 delegates.

That leaves California, with its massive haul of 172 delegates. Only 13 are awarded to the statewide winner; 3 delegates go to the winner of each of the state’s 53 congressional districts. For what it’s worth, the most recent CBS/YouGov survey, with a large sample of 1012 likely voters, gave Trump 49% of the vote, compared to 31% for Cruz and 16% for Kasich. If Trump wins a plurality on June 7, he should receive well more than half the delegates. How much more of the delegates he gets will depend not only on his victory margin, but also the geographical distribution of his votes. Given these assumptions, he should come away from the Golden State with a minimum of 109 delegates (13 statewide plus 96 from 32 congressional districts).

This result would leave him with a minimum of 1170 delegates, only 67 short of outright victory.

The bottom line: making conservative assumptions about the two states—Indiana and California—whose outcome is least predictable, Trump comes close enough to be in a strong position to negotiate his way to 1237. If he does better in one of those states, his negotiating position will be even stronger. If he exceeds the baseline in both, he goes over the top on June 7. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the delegates, once assembled, could find a way to deviate from the primary vote. In that case we’re in for an historic convention.

     

 

 

Across partisan, ideological, and racial lines, Americans are rethinking the country’s criminal justice system. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (S. 2123) and the Sentencing Reform Act of 2015 (H.R. 3713) have passed out of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees respectively and earned support from a bipartisan group of elected officials, the White House, and advocacy organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and Koch Industries.

Criminal justice reform must strike a balance between reducing the federal prison population and safeguarding the public from crime. The Senate bill, as well as its House companion, would reduce mandatory minimum sentence length for certain offenders and expand recidivism reduction programming. According to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act addresses “legitimate over-incarceration concerns while targeting violent criminals and masterminds in the drug trade.” Recently, however, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has led a cadre of conservatives in objecting to criminal justice reform. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Cotton declared the legislation a “massive social experiment in criminal leniency…[that] threatens to undo the historic drops in crime we have seen over the past 25 years.”

To understand the state of the nation’s criminal justice system and evaluate the challenges and opportunities of the proposed reform, let us first consider the magnitude of the U.S. incarcerated population.

The prison population buildup

The combined local, state, and federal prison populations in the United States totaled 2,306,117 in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available. Although the states incarcerate the greatest number of people collectively, the federal prison system is the nation’s single largest jailer [Figure 1].

Between 1980 and 2013, the most recent year for which comprehensive time-series data is available, the combined federal, state, and local prison populations ballooned, increasing 340% from 503,600 to 2,200,300 individuals. In this time period, the federal population expanded most rapidly, with an increase of 786% from 24,363 to 215,866 individuals [Figure 2].

The increased prison population is the cumulative result of decades in which the number of individuals admitted to prison outpaced the number of individuals released [Figure 3]. The steep increase in the rate of admission is attributed to a number of factors including prosecution, investigation, and sentencing rates. The sharp decrease in the release rate is the product of policy choices to increase sentence length and decrease parole. A striking report by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that the average length of time served by federal inmates more than doubled from 1988 to 2012 [Figure 4].

The population of individuals incarcerated in the United States is unique among western, liberal democracies, and this has deleterious social and fiscal consequences for taxpayers and even more, for those imprisoned. As the bipartisan, blue-ribbon Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections concluded after months of rigorous, evidence-based policy examination, the status quo of incarceration in the United States is unsustainable. It is against this backdrop of necessity that we evaluate reform measures in the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.

Low-level drug offenders

Sections 101, 102, and 103 of the bill pertain to federal drug offenders. Drug offenders comprise an estimated 50% of the incarcerated population—the single largest category of federal felons. This means that reducing sentence length for certain types of drug offenders has the potential to significantly reduce the prison population.

Senator Cotton has expressed concern that these reforms would “reduce sentences not for those [prisoners] convicted of simple possession, but for major drug traffickers.” As we argue in another post, the Senator’s claims are subject to interpretation. The statutory definition of “drug trafficker” pertains to an estimated 95.4% of individuals incarcerated at the federal level [Figure 5], but the term is broad in that it encapsulates a number of low-level offenders, including street-level dealers, brokers, couriers, and mules [Figure 5].

To address mass incarceration in a way that targets low-level offenders, lawmakers must distinguish between the offenders who played an organizational role in the drug trade versus those who played a relatively low-level role in drug distribution. Critically, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act makes this distinction, specifying that sentence reduction would not apply to drug offenders who served as importers, exporters, high-level distributors or suppliers, wholesalers, or manufacturers.

Firearms

Sections 104 and 105 of the legislation would reduce sentence length for some firearm offenders. Roughly 16% of federal prisoners were weapons offenders, the second largest category after drug offenders. This is a substantial part of the prison population, so sentencing reform for key categories of offenders could make a meaningful impact on the size of the federal prison population. When it comes to squaring the impetus to reduce incarceration with concern for public safety, however, the politics become especially tricky.

For instance, a provision of Section 105 would reduce enhanced mandatory minimums for “armed career criminals” from 15 to 10 years. This would reform the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924 (e), which requires imposition of a minimum 15-year term of imprisonment for recidivists convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm, as defined by 18 U.S.C. 922 (g), if they have three prior state or federal convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses. In this instance, a “serious drug offense” is one punishable by ten years imprisonment; a “violent felony” is one that (1) has an element of threat, attempt, or use of physical force against another or (2) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves the use of explosives, or otherwise involved conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.

In this case, there is little question that the offenders who would stand to benefit from sentencing reform committed several serious crimes. The proposed legislation, however, would not exonerate these individuals—far from it, in fact. The legislation maintains ten years of compulsory sentencing and permits judges a modicum of discretion to review the facts of an individual’s case and recommend additional years behind bars if they deem it appropriate.

If lawmakers are serious about reducing the federal prison population, reforms that target low-level drug offenders and certain weapons offenders will have the greatest impact. As lawmakers assess criminal justice reform in the Senate and in the House, they must recognize the gravity of the over-incarceration epidemic and look to the facts as they consider the offenders who would be affected by reform.