Warren, public opinion, and inequality

Paul Rosenberg has a good response to Amitai Etzioni’s rather lame attempt at a hatchet-job on Elizabeth Warren at The Atlantic:

Taking Norton and Ariely’s results seriously, we can say that the American people want a much fairer society than they live in, but that the means for articulating this desire—the stories, concepts, policy proposals, etc.—are in scandalously short supply, a de facto example of hypocognition thwarting what people want. Elizabeth Warren is particularly popular precisely because she provides some of the missing means that people are so hungry for—an antidote to the hypocognition that thwarts their desire for a fairer, more just vision of America, which respects both their hard work and their compassionate values. There may be relatively little polling to support this view (though there’s considerably more than you’d expect) but that’s partly just another example of how elites dominate the landscape of acceptable thought to protect their interests, as underscored by recent research by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. Warren represents a clear alternative to this narrow-minded view. Her popularity derives in large part from her ability to shape narratives that reflect the hidden majority’s shared values and articulate them in policy terms, reversing a decades-long trend by which elites of both parties have turned their backs on the welfare of ordinary Americans.

While Rosenberg offers a much more accurate portrait of American public opinion than does Etzioni, there are reasons to think this offers an overly optimistic account. He’s right, of course, that Americans want a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and income than they’ve got. But it’s almost certainly the case that partisan identity is likely to significantly diminish the ‘hidden majority’ support for redistribution when it turns into an actual plan promoted by and associated with Democratic politicians (as the continued unpopularity of something called “Obamacare” demonstrates). Raising the minimum wage manages to remain broadly popular despite the partisan divide, so it’s important not to be too fatalistic about this. (I suspect one reason for this is the simplicity of the policy; it’s harder to spin or dissemble the basic fairness of it away.) But the lack of specific policy proposals cuts both ways–lots of inequality-reducing proposals could be quite popular in the abstract, but once they become “Democratic” proposals support is likely to conform to a more familiar partisan pattern.