Something strange happened during our recent Times Opinion focus group, the 18th and final one of 2023. When we asked the participants (13 Democrats, Republicans and independents) how they felt about the economy, we didn’t hear the same chorus of complaints that our other groups pretty consistently intoned all year. Our participants were by no means cheery, but several were upbeat, and even the Trump voters in the group weren’t aggrieved about the economy — so much so that our focus group moderator, Frank Luntz, looked a little surprised and said, “OK, this is not that bad. In fact, this is reasonably good.”
Our intent with this focus group was to bring together people who voted for Joe Biden or Donald Trump in 2020 and explore areas where they agreed or disagreed about the year we just went through. The usual partisan divisions fell away in a few places: In addition to…
