Civil libertarians have worried that some of President Obama’s comparatively hawkish national security policies are silencing “liberal” Democrats who would have opposed such measures under President Bush or another Republican. Now there’s new evidence that Obama’s support for such policies isn’t just silencing them — it’s winning them over.
That’s the finding of new research by Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler, who studies what he calls the “racialization” of political issues in the age of Obama: mainly, the way voters’ attitudes about race can make them more or less likely to support policies once they know those policies are supported by Obama. Last year he made headlines with an American Journal of Political Science article about the way racial attitudes shaped opinions on the Affordable Care Act.
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Examining almost 20 years of polling going back to President Clinton’s efforts at healthcare reform, Tesler found that white voters were less likely to support reform under President Obama than under Clinton, with whites who exhibited the most conservative racial views (more on what that means below) the least likely to back the ACA. With African Americans strong supporters of healthcare reform under both presidents, Tesler found that the racial divide between black and white opinions was 20 points greater in 2009-2010 than it was during the Clinton-backed reform push in 1993-94.
But Tesler learned something else interesting: white voters with liberal attitudes about race were more likely to support policies once they knew Obama backed them than they were without the president’s imprimatur, and so were African Americans. That was true not only on the ACA, but on gay marriage, the stimulus bill and taxes, among other issues.
