Why read another account of the 2016 campaign? Haven’t all the lessons been learned? The answers to these questions are pretty simple: this is the best account of 2016 and all the lessons have not been learned.
In quite convincing prose which is backed up by lots of data, Sides, Tesler and Vareck demonstrate that the 2016 campaign was driven by the question of identity and not economic anxiety. The authors make a subtle argument that while economic issues matter, these issues are now perceived through a racial lenses. This perspective makes issue that were controversial and hard to deal with simply explosive.
A key point of Identity Crisis is that Trump is more of a cause than effect or as his detractors would a symptom not the disease. The issues which Trump ran on were in the GOP playbook — Trump simply turned up the volume.
Given all of President Trump’s anti-news media rhetoric, we have forgotten how positively essential they were to Trump’s rise to power. Sides et al present data to back up their point. They also share a quote from former CBS CEO Les Moonves that is simply devastating: “It [media coverage of Trump] may not be good for America, but its damn good for CBS.”
There are more than enough “horse race” and inside politics tidbits in Identity Crisis to keep the political nerd in all of us happy. The authors also raise a tactical question that has real implication for the Democrats in 2020. Instead of highlighting Trump’s character issues the authors argue that Clinton should have focused on issues. How the Democrats answer this question for 2020 is a work in progress.
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