Elizabeth Suhay, "Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2025)

Summary

New Books Network Podcast Summary

Episode: Elizabeth Suhay, "Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics"
Date: December 26, 2025
Host: Stephen Pimpair
Guest: Elizabeth Suhay, Professor of Government, American University

---

Episode Overview

This episode features a deep-dive conversation between host Stephen Pimpair and Dr. Elizabeth Suhay about her new book, Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics (Russell Sage Foundation, 2025). The discussion probes how Americans’ beliefs about the causes of inequality shape their perceptions of the American dream and, crucially, how these beliefs drive political polarization along demographic and especially partisan lines.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Framing the American Dream – Ideals vs. Reality

[05:04–08:26]

• The “American Dream”—that hard work should translate into success—is a concept that unites Americans regardless of background.
• Dr. Suhay asserts, “Americans are absolutely united in this idea that we ought to have the American dream… meritocratic abundance… But what people really disagree about is whether or not we have reached the American dream.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 06:00)

2. How People Explain Inequality

[05:40–08:26]

• The research examines causal attributions—whether people believe inequality is due to individual effort, structural barriers, discrimination, access to education, or other factors.
• Suhay conducted two national surveys, asking fine-grained questions about why wealth and success are unevenly distributed.

3. Demographic Differences in Perceptions of the American Dream

[08:26–13:18]

• Suhay reviews common demographic predictors:
  • Women, and Black and Latino Americans are more pessimistic about the American dream’s attainability than men and White Americans.
  • Rural and religious people tend to be more optimistic.
  • More educated Americans are actually more skeptical—a surprising result.
• “Educated people… express some of the most skeptical views… It’s more of a socially constructed point of view for many people.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 10:28)
• Income plays a surprisingly small role.

4. Partisanship: The Main Source of Polarization

[13:18–14:10]

• Once partisanship is accounted for, the differences are “two to three times the size” of demographic gaps.
  • Republicans: “Way more optimistic about people’s ability to be upwardly mobile through hard work.”
  • Democrats: “Much more skeptical that people can be upwardly mobile.”
• This divide holds across explanations for inequality (economic, racial, gender).

5. Changing Party Coalitions and Polarization Over Time

[15:26–20:58]

• The gap between Democrats and Republicans on “American dream optimism” has widened in recent decades.
  • Somewhat counterintuitively, as the GOP has become more working-class, its base remains more optimistic than Democrats.
  • “If you look over the last 20 years, you’ll actually find polarization… views in those party coalitions… have moved farther apart, which is I think pretty counterintuitive.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 16:46)

6. Not All Inequalities Are Politically Charged

[17:15–20:58]

• The deepest partisan divides are found when discussing economic, racial, or gender inequality—topics heavily amplified by party elites.
• For inequalities lacking partisan “script”—like rural vs. urban or White vs. Asian American earnings gaps—public explanations are less polarized. Parties don’t emphasize these divides, so the public follows suit.
  • “People were much more likely to agree across that partisan boundary on the reasons for rural urban inequality… because this is not a part of partisan debate.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 18:29)

7. Origins of Americans’ Beliefs about Mobility and Opportunity

[22:14–27:17]

• Suhay suggests people’s formative environments (family, community, political culture) supply the frameworks for their beliefs, reinforced by attention to party cues over time.
• Political parties shape narratives in ways that serve their core interests and powerful coalitions:
  • Democrats’ messaging is closer “to the economic interests of ordinary Americans” but can sometimes be overly negative.
  • Republican narratives are influenced by big donors and business interests, resulting in consistent “rah rah American dream” messaging even when the base is struggling.

8. Cognitive Dissonance and Political Identity

[27:17–30:57]

• Pimpair asks why people persist in optimistic beliefs about mobility even when their lives tell a different story.
• Suhay offers explanations:
  • Hope: “I’m gonna make it so a couple years from now, things have been great.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 28:18)
  • Displacement of Blame: Focus on immigrants or globalization to explain hardship without demanding redistribution.
  • Internal Variation: Some Republicans recognize the gap—and become more progressive on policy as their skepticism grows.
  • The “Trump Effect”: Trump’s willingness to declare “the American Dream is dead” resonated with disaffected Republicans and independents, but his subsequent optimism has a potential cost: “I think right now [Trump]… is actually losing… some support over it.” (Elizabeth Suhay, 30:36)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On universal ideals vs. reality:
  “Americans are absolutely united in this idea that we ought to have the American dream… But what people really disagree about is whether or not we have reached the American dream.”
  (Elizabeth Suhay, 06:00)

• On partisanship eclipsing demographics:
  “…you bring partisanship in, and it’s two to three times the size of the demographic divide.”
  (Elizabeth Suhay, 13:02)

• On surprising educational trends:
  “Educated people… express some of the most skeptical views… It’s more of a socially constructed point of view for many people.”
  (Elizabeth Suhay, 10:28)

• On polarization:
  “…over the last 20 years, you’ll actually find polarization… views in those party coalitions… have moved farther apart…”
  (Elizabeth Suhay, 16:46)

---

Important Timestamps

• 01:36 – 02:02 | Host/guest introductions and background
• 05:04 – 08:26 | Defining and measuring the American Dream
• 08:26 – 13:18 | Demographic analysis of views on inequality and opportunity
• 13:18 – 14:10 | The impact of partisanship on perceptions of inequality
• 15:43 – 20:58 | Partisan polarization over time; discussion of “scripted” vs. unscripted inequality
• 22:14 – 27:17 | Where do these polarized views come from?
• 27:17 – 30:57 | Resolving the cognitive dissonance between lived reality and optimistic/partisan belief

---

Tone & Style

The conversation is analytical but approachable, weaving in both the latest political science and clear, concrete examples. Suhay mixes academic restraint with willingness to draw meaningful causal connections, while Pimpair is candid about his own “biases” rooted in policy evidence. The tone is respectful, reflective, and occasionally wry.

---

Summary Takeaway

Suhay’s research shows that most Americans hold fast to the ideal of the American Dream, but their beliefs about whether that dream is a reality—and the causes of contemporary inequality—are sharply divided, above all along partisan lines. These divisions are not only reflections of lived experience but are deeply shaped by political messaging and elite rhetoric. The polarization is growing even as parties’ demographic coalitions evolve, complicating prospects for consensus on addressing inequality—unless and until the American political script itself shifts.

Transcript

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Shopping is hard. I can never find anything in my size. I don't even know my size. I buy my clothes the same place I buy my groceries. There's a better way. Make it easy with Stitch Fix. Just share your size, style, budget and done. Your personal stylist sends pieces picked just for you. That was easy. Stitch Fix Online Personal styling for everyone. Free shipping and returns. No subscription required. Get started today@stitch fix.com.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try [e-mail] copilot this is a real.

Good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, Real United Airlines customers.

[Stephen Pimpair]

We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

That's Andrew, a real United pilot.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight.

[Stephen Pimpair]

Deck will stick with us forever.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

That's how good leads the way. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Stephen Pimpair]

Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Stephen Pimpair, host of the Public Policy Channel, and we are joined today by Elizabeth Suhay, who is the author of Debating the American How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics from the Russell Sage Foundation. Liz, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Stephen Pimpair]

So I wonder if you might kick us off by telling folks a little bit about who you are and what you do and what brought you to this book.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Sure thing. So I'm a Professor of Government in the School of Public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. and I've been there for a little over a decade. I have a PhD in Political Science and I have long focused on public opinion and political psychology, focusing on American politics. I'm actually currently co Editor in Chief of the Journal of Political Psychology, which is well suited to what I've been up to. And recently I have gotten very interested in people's perspectives on socioeconomic inequality. And I shouldn't say recently I Guess I'm speaking in like academic years, right? Everything takes very long, so at least a decade. But I didn't, I actually focused on something else when I got my PhD, but this leads to what got me interested in this book project. So I became very interested myself in the causes of inequality. So why some people in our nation succeed, do so well, economically especially, and why other people struggle. As a political scientist, I, I have to say my expertise is not in digging into those explanations themselves in any direct way. I'm not an economist, I'm not a sociologist, you know, I'm not a developmental psychologist, that sort of thing. So I thought about, you know, how I can bring my expertise to this question and that really would involve public opinion and how these beliefs about inequality become so politicized. So, you know, I went into this book with an open mind. I really wanted to understand how Americans thought about the causes of inequality. Why some people are rich, why some people are poor, why some groups do better and worse than others. And, you know, I wanted to learn myself what their, their views were, and I wanted to link those views up with the political system. I went into this with a fairly open minded, exploratory kind of framework and let the data speak to me. And I was really surprised, and we'll get more into this. I was really surprised by what I found, which is really how polarized the American public is around this issue of whether or not the nation delivers the American dream to everybody equally. So very polarized between Democrats and Republicans in terms of how people think about the quote, unquote, reality of the American dream.

[Stephen Pimpair]

Right, so why don't we start there? What are we talking about? Right? What is, what is this notion of the American dream? What is it that folks seem to have in common in the way they understand what those words mean? And then what is it that you wanted to know about it? How did you come to frame this through that particular prism?

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Sure. So, so when we think about the American dream, first of all, this term has been around for at least a century and there have been all kinds of definitions of what the American dream means. I use what I think is the most common definition of the American dream, which is essentially boils down to if you work hard, you ought to have some reasonable amount of success, like the proverbial house with the white picket fence. Some people might get very rich, some people might reach more of a middle class lifestyle, but you should be able to live a comfortable, good life if you're working hard, putting in effort. So that's the idea of the American Dream and what I argue in the book, I think there's very good evidence for this, is that Americans are absolutely united in this idea that we ought to have the American dream, right? We all think this is a great idea. We should have what I call meritocratic abundance. We should have plenty, and that plenty should be shared in a meritocratic way. But what people really disagree about is whether or not we have reached the American dream. So it's an ideal, right? But have we reached it? And, you know, I look at this in a lot of different ways. So I'm focused mostly on public opinion, although I do look at the political parties in terms of essentially the leadership of our parties. And I'm wondering, well, what people think about this. And you can ask kind of general questions about whether people who are born poor are able to succeed. You can ask general questions about how much opportunity there is in the United States. And I look at some of those kinds of questions. A lot of them are publicly available in surveys. But when I did my own survey, so I did two different surveys for this book, I looked at beliefs about the causes of inequality and whether there's equal opportunity, et cetera, in a much more fine grained way. And I mean, to get kind of wonky about this, I looked at people's causal attributions for inequality. So there you ask very specific questions like, so you ask people, we know some people have more money than others. Why do you think that is? Do you think that is because some people work harder than others? Do you think that's because some people face more discrimination than others? Do you think that's, you know, because some people don't have access to good schools? So those are the kinds of. I kind of walk the people through a series of those questions to see where they land. And then sometimes in the book I'm looking at those questions individually and sometimes I combine them together in measurement scales, as surveyors often do, to get a sense for kind of on average, how are people thinking about inequality? To what extent do they think essentially economic outcomes are unfair? To the extent that they're unequal or fair in essentially the outcome of meritocratic processes.

[Stephen Pimpair]

So we've got general consensus that this American Dream thing should be a thing. We've got some different disagreement as to the extent that it is actually a thing, and different kinds of explanations for why that might be the case. Walk us through what you learn about where those divide lands. Who are the different groups that wind up most identifiably having different ways of thinking about this.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's really where so much of the book is. So what I wanted to do with this book, I'm entering a huge academic literature here. I mean, people have written about this in economics and sociology and psychology and political science and probably other disciplines. So as I think about this, I want to think about this not only as a political scientist. So I actually began by thinking about kind of simple demographic differences in terms of who might be more optimistic or pessimistic about the reality of the American Dream. So I look at things like people's racial identity, I look at people's sex, I look at their age, I look at where they live, whether they live in a rural area or an urban area. I look at people's level of religiosity, and I also look at people's education levels. So when you put all of that in and you use those, I don't know how academic we should get here, use those as predictors of people's views on the American dream, you definitely see some differences, right? And so here I'm kind of mapping the sociology literature. So you see that, for example, women are more pessimistic than men about the American Dream. You see that black and Latino Americans are more pessimistic than white Americans. You see, this is one of the surprising things about the book. You see a little bit of an income effect where people who are lower income are more pessimistic about the American dream. But it is a very small effect, surprisingly. And so I'll kind of tick down my list here. Rural people are more optimistic about the American dream. Religious people are more optimistic about the American Dream, and more educated people are more pessimistic about the American Dream. So some of this is probably going to accord with, you know, your listeners expectations. And some of this might be surprising. For example, the fact that educated people, the ones who are, we would think, you know, have the most ability to be upwardly mobile in our economy. They actually express some of the most skeptical views. What I take away from this is that, you know, these demographic differences matter. People are reflecting their own lived experience to some extent when they think about the American dream. But also the fact that things like religion matter and education matter and they matter a lot and they sometimes go in the direction against what you would expect. That's leading me to think that a lot of what people think about the American dream actually relates to their kind of the culture and the release of socialization, essentially. So it's, it's more of a socially constructed point of view for many people. Okay, so that's where we are with the demographic differences. Then I bring partisanship into this and I look to see. Well, you know, we know that the parties differ in terms of their demographics, so it would make sense that some of this will show up in partisan differences. But we also know that if you look at partisan rhetoric of our elected leaders, the Democratic leaders tend to be more skeptical of the American dream, say that there are a lot of structural barriers, et cetera. And Republican Party leaders for a long time have been, you know, the American dream optimists, you know, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and everything will be okay. So if we bring people's partisan identity into this analysis. So I'm just thinking about this as just the general public. You know, I'm asking people, are you Republican, Democrat, how strong are you in terms of these, your partisanship? Now we see enormous divides. So we saw kind of small to moderate divides with those demographic characteristics that I told you about in terms of people being more or less optimistic. And you bring partisanship in, and it's two to three times the size of the demographic divide. So you have a Republican members of the public way more optimistic about people's ability to be upwardly mobile through essentially hard work.

[Stephen Pimpair]

And.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

And you have Democratic members of the public much more skeptical that people can be upwardly mobile. And this is true whether we ask people about the reasons for economic inequality in general, you know, kind of the contrast between the poor and the rich. And it's also true if we ask people about the differences between racial groups, in particular black and Latino Americans, why they're earning less on average than white Americans. Finally, the partisan divide also shows up a little bit less strongly if we think about the gender gap in earnings. So Democrats much more likely to say essentially that there's some sort of underlying structural inequality that's unfair to women. Right? And Republicans are less likely to say that. So I hope that's clear. There's a lot, a lot going on.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Think your lashes have hit their limit? Discover limitless length and full volume with Maybelline Sky High Mascara. The Flex Tower Brush bends to volumize and extend every single lash from root to tip. And the lightweight bamboo infused formula makes lashes feel weightless. Now in eight bold shades so you can take your lashes to new heights every day. Visit maybelline.com to shop Sky High Mascara now.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Hablas Espanol Spritz du Joy nosq if.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

You used Babbel, you would Babble's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking. Speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers. Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Deck your home with blinds.com. Diy or let us install. Free design consultation plus free samples and free shipping.

[Stephen Pimpair]

Head to blinds.com now for up to 45% off with minimum purchase plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply. That's that partisanship, that valence there reasonable to say, fairly consistent over time.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

You asked exactly the right question. So I would say two things about this consistency. The first is that this partisan divide has actually grown over time and it is so strange. I did not necessarily expect that because we're living in the age of Donald Trump. We're living in the age when the the Republican Party is more, somewhat more of a working class party, at least than it used to be. And people call it a populist party. So you would think that that would be the party that is more skeptical. So what I would say about that is that Republicans, if you trace this over time Republican members of the public have become somewhat more skeptical of the reality of the American dream. But what's important is that Democrats faith in the American dream has fallen in recent decades. It has just sunk. So it's moved much faster in a skeptical, pessimistic direction, if that makes sense. So if you look over the last 20 years, you'll actually find polarization. So even though the parties have gotten more similar economically, again with this kind of more working class Republican party views in those party coalitions on the American dream have moved farther apart, which is I think pretty counterintuitive. So that's the one thing that is I would say about a lack of consistency or difference is that over time difference. The other thing I would say is that there is a real difference when it comes to what kinds of inequalities we're talking about in American society. So I call the inequalities between economic classes, between racial groups, between men and women as I call that the inequality trio. It's something we talk about a lot, poor versus Rich, men versus women and Especially black Americans versus white Americans. It's something that the Democratic Party talks about a lot. And so there you see these really big partisan divides. And I'm sure we'll get to this. They're very important in terms of. They appear to be important in terms of shaping people's policy preferences. However, if you ask people about what I call less scripted inequalities, and rural versus urban Americans is a good example of that. The statistics, I think a lot of people don't realize this. The statistics on income divides between rural and urban Americans have become really shocking. So rural America really is suffering economically. When I asked people in my surveys, like, well, what are the reasons for this rural urban inequality? People had lots of interesting things to say. First of all, they had definitely maybe given this some thought, but the differences were much less partisan. So people were much more likely to agree across that partisan boundary on the reasons for rural urban inequality. And this is, you know, a kind of post hoc explanation on my part. I wasn't necessarily expecting to find this, but I argue that this most likely is, frankly, because this is not a part of partisan debate. Our party leaders aren't talking about it. Our party leaders don't talk about it, in part because for Democrats, rural Americans are not a part of their coalition. Right. Chuck Schumer is not thinking a lot about rural Americans. I don't know, actually, specifically. So we should ask Chuck Schumer, but that's my guess. And so you don't hear a lot about that from. From Democrats. And then Republicans just don't talk much about inequality, period. And they don't talk much about, you know, the causes of inequality, period, at least these days. So this is just not a part of our partisan discussion. And therefore the public is not polarized along those lines. And the other inequality that I think about, and this is one that is not talked about much at all. It is perhaps, you know, somewhat controversial, as, you know, we even discuss it. But white Americans on average earn significantly less than Asian Americans on average. And again, if you go and look at those statistics and I report them in my book, those are very large differences. And this, again, is a divide that is not talked about in our party politics. Now, I'm not arguing that we should necessarily be normally concerned about this because white Americans have above median incomes, but it is a difference that people might want to think about, explain. It is a difference, frankly, that might be implicitly coming into some of our debates over immigration. Maybe it will become more of our politics in the future. But at the moment, it's not. And I do not find big partisan differences at all in how people explain that difference between how much white Americans are earning on average and how much Asian American are earning on average.

[Stephen Pimpair]

So we got a complex picture here. We got a lot of moving parts. We've got sort of causal arrows, it seems, going in multiple directions depending on what we're talking about and who we're talking about and maybe when we're talking about. So for the listener who's trying to say, well, what do I do with all of this? How do I make sense of this? Right. You clearly have identified wide variation in people's ideas about whether the American dream is actually a thing. Thing. How then do we understand that? And if we. I'll betray my own biases here. Right. I think as a public policy guy, I think the evidence clearly points in one direction, that working hard and playing by the rules does not necessarily guarantee you upward mobility. And you would have much better opportunities for upward mobility in literally dozens of other countries around the world where mobility is less tied to. To your position or place in birth. So that's sort of my own biases of what. What I people think I think ought to think, given what I understand reality to be. How do you understand where people are getting these understandings of the world from?

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Yeah, yeah, no, it's. I, and I agree with you in terms of what you just said, your perspective. So, you know, I want to kind of, you know, be clear. This is an academic podcast. My data are what we would call observational. I don't have experiments. I don't have, over time data where I follow people along and I'm able to see how they change in reaction to their environment. I'm looking at just a series of patterns, and I'm interested in those patterns. You know, it's good to know where the differences are between our parties in particular. But I still want to tell a causal story because I feel like it's more meaningful to try to do that. And then I'll leave it to others, right, to come back around and maybe some others will pick this up and test it more carefully. But my view on the causation is that, and this is a very actually traditional political science view, is that people are essentially getting a lot of these ideas through the cultures that they grow up in and the families that they grow up in. Right. This is, you know, you often get your partisanship and your ideology in the home. And so that's kind of the starting point. And it orients you to be paying More attention to the Democratic side and those Democratic leaders, or the Republican side and the Republican leaders. Now, all of this is complicated and it's all tempered again by your economic reality and, you know, racial identity, et cetera. So. So this is a partial explanation. It's not meant to be a complete explanation, of course, but anyway, so. So, you know, kind of your political culture essentially matters a lot. What is important, I think, and here I am not testing this directly, I'm. I'm borrowing from other research is, is like, well, why do these political cultures differ in the first place? Is it just kind of random, right? Or might there be some organization behind it? And essentially, I'm going to argue there's some organization behind it. So our political parties are coalitions, but they're unequal coalitions. There are some people in political parties who have a lot more power than others to shape the agenda and then to shape the message that justifies that agenda. On the Democratic side, I may be betraying some biases, but I've got some academic literature to back me up on this. It is a somewhat more egalitarian party. It has very strong interest groups and activists. So they're going to drive the agenda and the message, and sometimes that can kind of get off base and get away from where the center of the party is. But essentially that agenda of the Democratic Party, I believe, is going to be closer to the economic interests of ordinary Americans. And so the stories they tell to justify it are going to be closer to the stories of ordinary Americans. Now, it is not perfect. We can get into this. I think that there are biases on both sides, right? But if we're kind of talking about sort of on average on the Republican side, I think it's a different story, especially in times of massive economic inequality like the one we're in right now. So this is not necessarily at all times, but when there's a lot of inequality within the Republican Party, you get a lot of power among what many pundits would call the donor class, again, affecting the Democratic Party, too, but affecting the Republican Party more. And those individuals is kind of in conjunction with big businesses, are really going to be shaping that Republican agenda. And their interest is going to be in less regulation of businesses, for example, and their interest is going to be in less redistribution. So that's the agenda now. They have to sell it. And the selling is the kind of rah rah American dream parts. And you're going to want to be careful about this because I certainly think that there's nuance Here I think sometimes a Democratic Party can go too far in being too negative and as I mentioned before, paying maybe too much attention in their agenda and message to some groups, maybe not being as broad based as they should be. But on the Republican side, I think there's more of a lopsidedness, especially today, for example, if we just think about something. Very recently in the news, Republicans have refused to extend Obamacare subsidies, which is something that their base very much needs. Why? My speculation would be, well, the deep pocketed donors really not interested in extending those subsidies. Right. But now we have to tell a story about it. Right. And the story can take lots of forms, but one of those stories is that we have a meritocratic system. You land where you should land and you should be able to pay for your own damn healthcare. So, yeah.

[Stephen Pimpair]

So as we work our way toward conclusion, I want to ask a question that may be a little bit outside the four corners of the book, but I suspect is squarely within the things that you think about. I'm wrestling with how it is that people make sense of what could be cognitive dissonance. Right. If their own material lived experience is they are working hard, they are playing by the rules, they are doing everything right, and they are falling further and further behind but still identify with that story. They still identify as Republicans. I know that's messy and complicated and looks different in different places for different people, but is there sort of a shorthand to help us think about what the heck is going on inside the psychology of someone who. Whose ideas about the world are so in conflict with their experience of it?

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Sure. I think that that's a first of all great question. I think that some of the way we resolve this cognitive dissonance, and this would be, you know, for example, like Republicans who are really struggling financially is by saying, you know, I'm gonna make it so a couple years from now, things have been great. You can hear that actually now with the president and the vice president's messaging, next year is going to be much better. So that's a piece of it. I also think that there can be a little bit of criticism, and we've seen that at different times from Trump in particular. But the way it's framed is that the nation as a whole is struggling and we're going to find people to blame that will allow us to kind of avoid pushing redistributive policy so we get blame of immigrants, for example, globalization, et cetera. Now that does come with some real policy change, as we've seen with Tariffs. And that's like a big important caveat here. But ultimately it's not redistributive. The other thing I want to say, though, is sometimes people do reach their limit. And within the Republican Party, there is variation in terms of how pessimistic people are. So on average, they are more optimistic than Democrats. But there is variation within the Republican Party. The people who are most skeptical within the Republican Party are actually fairly progressive on policy, even though they might be voting Republican. Right. So you see that push. And the last thing I would say about this is I think, think a lot of this, frankly, explains Donald Trump. So Republican presidential candidates are members of Congress, et cetera. For so long, they refused to really acknowledge that economic reality that a lot of people were struggling. And Donald Trump came along in 2015, and he was the first to say, he literally said the American dream is dead in one of his first speeches when he was announcing his run for the presidency. Now he became president, and then he said the American dream was all better and solved, but he capitalized on that cynicism. There were a lot of people within the Republican Party who were kind of waiting to hear that message, and they jumped on it. And then there were a lot of independents, too, I think, who were frustrated, who jumped on it as well. And I think that helped propel him. But I think right now he's in a different situation, right, where he's trying to tell us that everything's okay. And I think that he's actually losing. He won't lose the most hardcore Republicans, but I think he'll lose some support over it.

[Stephen Pimpair]

You're listening to the Public Policy Channel of the New Books Network, and we have been speaking with Elizabeth Suhay, who's the author of Debating the American How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics from the Russell Sage Foundation. Liz, thank you so much for joining us today. Much appreciated.

[Elizabeth Suhay]

Thank you for inviting me on.