Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America By John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck Princeton University Press This article appears in the Spring 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . With more than 20 candidates and expanded sources of both news and disinformation, the 2016 presidential campaign was a cacophonous circus. And with a result that hinged on razor-thin margins across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, post-election analyses have been equally disorienting. They have pointed to meddling by the Russian GRU and the American FBI; white people, black people, brown people; Hillary Clinton’s hubris, her charity, her wardrobe; widespread racism, misogyny, piety, fear, and desperation. With the luxury of hindsight and analytical acumen, political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck have produced an exceptionally well-researched and insightful postmortem that soberly isolates...