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This week we are featuring our special report on the importance of
fixing family care in America. Keep scrolling for Today's On Tap!

Family Care: Good Policy, Good Politics

Advocates believe that universal coverage for care work doesn't just
make economic sense but is also a political winner. BY RACHEL M. COHEN

Washington: The Caregiving State

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In the Pacific Northwest, lawmakers have acted to help defray the
exorbitant costs of family caregiving. More needs to be done. BY
GABRIELLE GURLEY

Building Movements Around the Care Economy
The
case study of child care politics over the past five years offers
lessons for how to build a movement around Universal Family Care. BY
DORIAN T. WARREN, SETH BORGOS

What the U.S. Can Learn About Caregiving From the World

Most developed countries offer some form of family care coverage. Here
are some of the best models. BY BRITTANY GIBSON

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**OCTOBER 22, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

How Racist Are Republicans? Very.

Among the most respected and revelatory of polls is the annual survey of
Americans' opinions from the Public Religion Research Institute, which
released this year's survey

earlier this week. It contains few surprises, but its detailed
questioning of different subgroups confirms just how starkly we're
divided-above all, on issues of race.

First, to the one question uppermost in everyone's mind, the poll
found that Americans favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 56 percent
to 42 percent margin, when those "leaning" to one or the other candidate
were factored in.

The one attitudinal (that is, not directly candidate related) question
on the poll that produced the answer most at variance with the same
question's answer on a previous (2016) poll asked respondents whether
they believed that "God granted the United States a special role in
human history." Every time that question had been previously posed, most
Americans answered Yes-in 2016, by a 57 percent to 40 percent margin.
This year, those figures were just about reversed: 58 percent said No,
while just 40 percent said Yes (64 percent of Republicans still said
Yes, but only 32 percent of Democrats did). We can only surmise that the
cumulative effects of the pandemic, the natural disasters, the
realization of police anti-Black violence, and the Trump presidency have
made it harder for most Americans to believe we retain the favor of the
Almighty.

On questions of both race and gender, the partisan differences are vast.
Asked whether American society "has become too soft and feminine," 39
percent of Americans agreed, but 59 percent disagreed. Among
Republicans, 63 percent agreed; among Democrats, 24 percent. I suspect
that this is one issue on which the support Trump has among
working-class men of all races is based.

PRRI also asked respondents whether they believed that, "It always makes
the country better when all Americans speak up and protest unfair
treatment by government." Then, it asked the same question, but
substituted "Black Americans" for "all Americans." Democrats made no
distinction between the two questions: 71 percent answered Yes to both.
Among Republicans, however, 49 percent believed it made the country
better when all Americans spoke up and protested unfair governmental
treatment, but just 24 percent believed it when Black Americans spoke up
and protested. Among Republicans whose most trusted news source is Fox
News, the gap was 47 percent Yes for all Americans, and a bare 10
percent for Blacks.

Indeed, 57 percent of Republicans believed that whites face "a lot of
discrimination," while just 52 percent believe that Blacks do. Among
Democrats, 13 percent said whites encounter a lot of discrimination; 92
percent said Blacks do.

The euphemistic encapsulation of the above is that Republicans have
consolidated the traditionalist vote. A somewhat clearer encapsulation
is that the Republicans have become a rats' nest of sexists and
racists.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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