Put down your New Yorker… here’s the bottom line!

Although:

It’s a bit hazy, but the yellow bar shows approval rates for the last six presidents among Whites.  It suggests that Whites are being unduly hard on a president!  The continuing significance of race indeed! Unless you really buy this socialist thing! It suggests that race and the economy have an interaction effect. When the economy is bad, race becomes salient and perhaps amplifies negative perceptions of the president among Whites, when things are good economically, race is less salient?