From the Pew Research Center: A Divided and Pessimistic Electorate

More evidence that Trump and Clinton supporters live in two different worlds, and see the problems facing the nation in two different ways.

- Click here for the article.

Beyond their disagreements over specific policy issues, voters who supported President-elect Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton also differed over the seriousness of a wide array of problems facing the nation, from immigration and crime to inequality and racism.

And while voters generally said little progress has been made over the last eight years across major areas, Trump backers said things had gotten worse across the board, while Clinton supporters saw more improvement, especially on the economy.

The national online survey was conducted in the two weeks leading up to the presidential election (from October 25 through the morning of November 8) among 3,788 registered voters who reported they had already voted or planned to vote. The survey was conducted on Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel.

From The Dish:What Really Doomed Cantor? Ctd

This post should help shine light on what I want you to do with your essay.

- Click here for it.

It's yet another look at why Eric Cantor lost the primary this week, but this time it looks at what issues were more important to the voters in his district as opposed to voters across the nation.

Notice what this graph is telling us:



Nationally, the dominant issue is jobs and the economy, and it has been that way for the past two electoral cycles. As majority leader, Cantor focused on these issues - as he should have - since they were what his party overall had to concentrate on.

But the voter sin his district were focused on spending/debt and Obamacare (but not so much on immigration). Cantor obviously did not see that while his opponent did. That's why Cantor lost - if true. He lost touch with what was important to voters - or more specifically Republican primary voters - his district.

Think about this as you develop your paper topic. Are the elected officials on the same page as their constituents?

Partisan differences in priorities on public matters

The Pew Research Center reports on the public's priorities, and includes a table contrasting what Democratic and Republican identifiers see as most important. It reinforces the key differences in the ideological viewpoints of each party's identifiers. Democrats are concerned with the environment, the poor and education. Republicans with the military, the deficit and moral breakdown:



Here are the overall numbers. The economy and terrorism dominate.

From the Texas Tribune: What's the most important problem facing Texas today?

Here goes: 



And for good measure:

Opinions on the environment inverserly related to those on the economy

Why do people change their opinions about what sorts of problems are important years after year?

Currently, very few people tell pollsters that the environment is a top concerns for them, but this has not always been the case. In 2000, a high percentage of people claimed to be worried about the environment, but not now. What's changed is the economy. When the economy does well, people tend to worry about other things - like the environment. When it isn't, the more immediate pressing concerns drive out those that won't materialize until sometime in the future.

What Issues Are The Parties Running On?

A nice breakdown from the NYT's Nate Silver.

What Can a President Really Do?

Charlie Cook says, not as much as you think, and its best to think small. The problem is that there's lots that needs doing:

A breathtaking array of problems will immediately demand the attention of the next president.

One of the smartest guys in Washington is political economist Tom Gallagher, who monitors the intersection of economics, policy, and politics for the ISI Group, a Wall Street advisory firm. On the subject of budget deficits,

Gallagher is fond of quoting the late economist Herb Stein, who said that the problem isn't that wolves are at the door, it's that termites are in the foundation. Some of our country's problems are termites, not wolves. Unfortunately, as Gallagher warns, our system is geared more toward dealing with wolves.

Many of the problems gnawing away at the United States are rooted in our "$53 trillion 'real' national debt," the term coined by former Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson and former Comptroller General David Walker to describe our actual national debt, including unfunded liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. Exacerbating these problems is a gradually retiring Baby Boom Generation twice the size of the current senior population. The crush of debt being passed on to future taxpayers is unconscionable, prompting Peterson, now chairman of the Blackstone Group, to hire Walker and commit $1 billion of his fortune to raising public awareness and prodding policy makers to find solutions.

Beyond Medicare, the constellation of health care problems includes funding Medicaid, covering the uninsured, and dealing with rising insurance costs that are increasingly hurting U.S. competitiveness.

Then there is energy--its cost and availability, and the implications of our dependence on foreign oil. Closely related is the need to shift to renewable-energy sources that don't exacerbate global warming or ravage the environment.

Both political parties are playing ostrich. Many Democrats are dragging their feet on responsible offshore drilling and on nuclear power. Republicans are resisting tougher fuel-efficiency standards and, in some cases, development of alternative-energy sources. Until we acknowledge that the solution to our energy problems is all of the above, we are unlikely to get out of the current mess.

Next on the list are the mounting U.S. trade imbalance, our lack of competitiveness, and our dependence on foreign investment to prop up our credit markets. Even as our global interdependence grows, schools continue to turn out too many students who are ill-equipped to compete in the international economy. And don't forget the entrenched underclass, enslaved in a cycle of poverty from which few escape, and immigration policies that bar some of the brightest minds in the world from American graduate schools.

This month's one-year anniversary of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis is a reminder of our national infrastructure crisis. In a recent meeting with editors and reporters at National Journal, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that his city's officials are afraid to shut off the water to allow close inspection of some fragile pipes because the water pressure might be the only thing keeping them from collapsing.

The list of national woes wouldn't be complete without mentioning the home mortgage debacle and the related credit crisis. These problems--which will take years to fix--are choking off the ability of businesses large and small to obtain credit to expand or hire workers, and they are making it difficult for people to buy homes and cars. When a credit-driven economy reduces access to credit, that is a real crisis.

A common denominator of many of these problems is government revenue, with the day growing closer when we will need to shift to some form of consumption tax, perhaps as a replacement for the personal and corporate income-tax structure. A consumption tax is a more efficient method of tax collection, and it would boost our trade competitiveness.

Finally, in the area of foreign policy, the United States faces threats posed by terrorism, a nuclear-armed Iran, and an increasingly belligerent Russia.

Clearly, a host of complex challenges will demand our next chief executive's time. But another of the really smart folks in Washington, ViaNovo lobbyist and policy strategist Billy Moore, argues, "History shows that new presidents can usually only accomplish three or four big things in their first term, and that reaching beyond this number results in fewer, not more, achievements."

So, John McCain and Barack Obama, don't say we didn't warn you.

Paris Hilton v. Habeas Corpus

I always get a kick out of monitoring which posts get the most responses and which get little or none. The Paris Hilton post is gaining on the record holder: Caveman's Crib. A handful of you seem to be actually worked up about her current situation, but no one seems upset by the shaky status of habeas corpus, an issue of far greater importance since it keep us free from the indiscriminate, arbitrary actions of the state (ie., being randomly hauled off by the police).

There may be a valid reason for this imbalance though. I want you to explain it to me.

Why do you get worked up over Paris Hilton and not expansive police powers?

Added: I'm still getting comments about Paris Hilton and only Paris Hilton! Does the potential of unchecked police power bother anyone more than how she is being treated by the justice system? Maybe I'm not being clear. Tell me.

Most Important Issues

According to the most recent Gallup Poll, these are the top responses they received from a representative sample of the American population when asked: "In your view, what one or two issues should be the top priorities for the president and Congress to deal with at this time?"

69%--Situation in Iraq/War
24%--Immigration/Illegal aliens
17%--Fuel/Oil prices/Lack of energy sources/The energy crisis
16%--Poor healthcare/hospitals; high cost of healthcare
10%--Economy in general
4%--Education/Poor education/Access to education
4%--Terrorism
3%--Environment/Pollution
3%--National security
3%--Federal budget deficit/Federal debt
3%--Social Security
2%--Unemployment/Jobs
1%--Taxes
1%--Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness
1%--Lack of money
1%--International issues/problems
1%--Medicare
1%--Foreign aid/Focus overseas
1%--War/Conflict in the Middle East
1%--Abortion

The answers are open ended, meaning that they weren't given a list to choose from. Respondents picked whatever happened to be on their minds when they were asked. Gallup points out that though both Republicans and Democrats cite Iraq as being important, Republicans are twice as likely to mention immigration and Democrats twice as likely to say healthcare.