WASHINGTON – Politics is not only about competing views on issues. It is also, and often most importantly, about which problems come to the forefront in the public conversation and in the minds of citizens and voters.
The battle over what matters most could determine the outcome of the 2016 election. One set of concerns, related to race, immigration and attitudes toward Islam, divides the country deeply. Another group of issues, involving economic inequities and the difficulties many Americans are having getting ahead, has broad reach across party lines.
Republicans want the first agenda to be paramount. This reflects both the attitudes of their supporters and a rational (if debatable) assessment of how they might win. It also explains the eagerness of Republican politicians to make blocking Syrian refugees from our shores the centerpiece of their initial response to the terrorist attacks in Paris. Casting Democrats as insufficiently mindful of the nation’s security – and charging them with being too responsive to the rights of religious and racial minorities – are among the oldest calls in the GOP political playbook.
Democrats, by contrast, have every interest in an election organized around core economic concerns. Economic growth has not been fairly shared and middle-class and less affluent families alike need relief on matters ranging from wages to college access to work/family balance. It is no accident that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have largely structured their campaigns around these themes.
The importance of who gets to set the agenda was brought home by a poll released on Tuesday by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The survey, for which I played an advisory role, was conducted in cooperation with the Brookings Institution, before the attacks in Paris.