Nevada Turnout Note
I've seen a lot of people comparing Nevada turnout to 2008. Careful! Remember, context matters. Several issues...in 2008, Nevada had just moved up in the process, and so it was sort of a first-time thing, which might have increased turnout over this year. It was also essentially earlier in the process. In 2008, Nevada went on the same day as South Carolina, and before Florida -- although Michigan had squeezed in between New Hampshire and Nevada/South Carolina. Between the calendar and the way the process played out, the nomination was far more up for grabs when Nevada caucused in 2008 than it was this time around. In fact, there were still three viable candidates at that point (McCain, Huck, and Romney), and the press was still treating Fred Thompson and Giuliani as viable candidates, although they really weren't. And Ron Paul was Ron Paul.
I have no idea how to adjust for any of that, but at least in my view it's silly to do a straight year-to-year comparison without keeping the context in mind.
I have no idea how to adjust for any of that, but at least in my view it's silly to do a straight year-to-year comparison without keeping the context in mind.
Read Stuff, You Should
Hey, it's Babe Ruth's birthday! February 6, 1895. Did you know that Fenway Park was, when he played there, an extreme pitchers' park and HRs were almost impossible to hit there? He did okay at Yankee Stadium though.
The good stuff:
1. I sort of like this NYT initiative to crowdsource obscure campaign finance reports. I'm more in favor of campaign finance disclosure than, I think, the evidence suggests it's worth...that is, I'm not really convinced that in real life disclosure actually does make that much difference, but I think in theory it's important to protect the potential of disclosure. So good for the Times.
2. We all know that the press has an interest in keeping the nomination battle going; Erica Fry on reporters actively rooting for it.
3. OK, I'm not going to stoop to giving Seth Masket a Catch of the Day for this one, but go ahead and click it.
4. Could have also given a CotD to Harold Pollack for this one on tax whiners.
5. And Sarah Kliff reports from inside Komen.
The good stuff:
1. I sort of like this NYT initiative to crowdsource obscure campaign finance reports. I'm more in favor of campaign finance disclosure than, I think, the evidence suggests it's worth...that is, I'm not really convinced that in real life disclosure actually does make that much difference, but I think in theory it's important to protect the potential of disclosure. So good for the Times.
2. We all know that the press has an interest in keeping the nomination battle going; Erica Fry on reporters actively rooting for it.
3. OK, I'm not going to stoop to giving Seth Masket a Catch of the Day for this one, but go ahead and click it.
4. Could have also given a CotD to Harold Pollack for this one on tax whiners.
5. And Sarah Kliff reports from inside Komen.
Sunday Question for Conservatives
Is Newt Gingrich helping or hurting his future ability to profit in the conservative marketplace? I'm not really talking about the whole campaign -- just post-Iowa, when he started bashing almost certain nominee Mitt Romney.
Nevada Caucuses
It's hard to come up with something meaningful to say at this point..about the only suspense remaining is at what point everyone will concede that there's no longer any doubt about the nomination. Well, I suppose there's suspense about what wild accusations Newt Gingrich will make next. I'm hoping that he'll turn against Rick Santorum, because I'd like to hear what kind of sneering disdain Newt can come up with for the Keystone state (to join his sneering disdain for Massachusetts, San Francisco, Chicago, New York...am I missing anything? That's 18M+ Americans that Newt regularly sneers at if we confine it to city limits, quite a few more if we look at metro areas. It's true that there are liberals who do bash GOP-dominated states, but I'd be surprised if anyone could find an example of a Democratic national politician doing so, especially not as part of his or her regular public rhetoric).
Anyway, the biggest disappointment last night was in our TV pundits. I didn't watch all of it, of course, but I did have the TV on quite a bit on the cable nets, and despite the fact that Romney obviously had Nevada won with something around half the vote, I was terribly disappointed that the TV pundits didn't immediately move to create artificial suspense by deciding that Romney had to break 50% in order to "really" win the state. This shows an appalling lack of creativity in our TV pundits! We'll no doubt be overtaken by pundits from Japan or China or India or wherever it is that we're worried about being overtaken by these days.
What Mattered This Week?
I'll start with the economic news, including of course the good jobs news for January. Remember as always that these numbers get revised, so everything is tentative, but certainly good economic news.
One week ago, I wasn't willing to rule out a realistic (but slim) chance that Mitt Romney could still lose the nomination. Now, it would take some sort of external shock. So that's something.
In international stuff, Syria again, and Iran, contain plenty of trouble for the US; meanwhile, we got the further confirmation that the US and coalition members are winding down Afghanistan a bit quicker than previously believed.
What am I missing, or wrong about? What do you think mattered this week?
One week ago, I wasn't willing to rule out a realistic (but slim) chance that Mitt Romney could still lose the nomination. Now, it would take some sort of external shock. So that's something.
In international stuff, Syria again, and Iran, contain plenty of trouble for the US; meanwhile, we got the further confirmation that the US and coalition members are winding down Afghanistan a bit quicker than previously believed.
What am I missing, or wrong about? What do you think mattered this week?
Plum Line: GOP House Follies
My post over at Plum Line today looks at the two strategies under consideration by House Republicans: repeating last year's excellent results (can they get their approval ratings under 5%?), or Not Being Seen.
The key question, as I say over there, is about the Members who last year appeared to be far more concerned about being labeled RINOs than they were about the general image of the party, or even about how their own votes (such as, for example, the crusade against Planned Parenthood) would play with general election swing voters. I do wonder what they'll make of the presidential nomination battle. On the one hand, Mitt Romney's nomination should tend to reassure them that perhaps the threat of Tea Party primaries against incumbents has ebbed. On the other hand, the various manias of the past year -- Newt, Prince Herman, Bachmann, and even Trump -- might scare them even further, since their own nomination contests are almost certainly far less structured to avoid the crazy than is the high-profile sequential presidential nomination process. I'm not sure how that all shakes out, but it's a good story for reporters to dig into, I'd think.
The key question, as I say over there, is about the Members who last year appeared to be far more concerned about being labeled RINOs than they were about the general image of the party, or even about how their own votes (such as, for example, the crusade against Planned Parenthood) would play with general election swing voters. I do wonder what they'll make of the presidential nomination battle. On the one hand, Mitt Romney's nomination should tend to reassure them that perhaps the threat of Tea Party primaries against incumbents has ebbed. On the other hand, the various manias of the past year -- Newt, Prince Herman, Bachmann, and even Trump -- might scare them even further, since their own nomination contests are almost certainly far less structured to avoid the crazy than is the high-profile sequential presidential nomination process. I'm not sure how that all shakes out, but it's a good story for reporters to dig into, I'd think.
Health Care Was Never Going to Save the GOP
Following this morning’s excellent jobs numbers, conservative Philip Klein tweeted:
But what’s really wrong with Klein’s point is that he misunderstands the relationship between the economy, approval of Barack Obama, and the popularity of Obama’s initiatives. The real “Oh, wait…” here isn’t that Mitt Romney is unusually poorly positioned to take on Obama on health care. It’s that if the unemployment rate continues to drop, Obama’s approval ratings will rise, and if Obama’s approval ratings rise, “Obamacare” is going to be more popular.
Of course, Republicans pushed this even farther by personalizing the issue: one would have to guess that “Obamacare” is even more dependent on what one thinks about Barack Obama than “ACA” or a generic “health care plan” would be. But really, this isn’t something that Republicans have much control over. If it turns out that the economy is really getting healthy – and don’t forget, a few months of better jobs numbers is no guarantee at all of how things will look by mid-summer – then about the only thing the outparty can do is to find an Eisenhower, and unfortunately for the GOP those are in very short supply. That’s why if you want to know who will win in November, you can mostly ignore the primaries and caucuses – watch the economic numbers, the Fed policy, and the progress of the payroll tax cut and UI extender bill through Congress this month. But it’s not just that; those are also the indicators you should watch if you want to know how popular ACA will be in the fall. Overall, I think Jonathan Chait has it about right: economic pessimism is probably Mitt Romney's best bet, and either it will pan out or it won't.
With economic #s improving, good thing GOP will nominate a candidate who can run a credible campaign against unpopular Obamacare. Oh, wait..Here’s what’s wrong with that…well, actually, beyond the inconvenient fact that many Republicans who have been in public office since before 2009 have supported major sections of ACA, including the individual mandate – it’s not just a Mitt Romney problem.
But what’s really wrong with Klein’s point is that he misunderstands the relationship between the economy, approval of Barack Obama, and the popularity of Obama’s initiatives. The real “Oh, wait…” here isn’t that Mitt Romney is unusually poorly positioned to take on Obama on health care. It’s that if the unemployment rate continues to drop, Obama’s approval ratings will rise, and if Obama’s approval ratings rise, “Obamacare” is going to be more popular.
Of course, Republicans pushed this even farther by personalizing the issue: one would have to guess that “Obamacare” is even more dependent on what one thinks about Barack Obama than “ACA” or a generic “health care plan” would be. But really, this isn’t something that Republicans have much control over. If it turns out that the economy is really getting healthy – and don’t forget, a few months of better jobs numbers is no guarantee at all of how things will look by mid-summer – then about the only thing the outparty can do is to find an Eisenhower, and unfortunately for the GOP those are in very short supply. That’s why if you want to know who will win in November, you can mostly ignore the primaries and caucuses – watch the economic numbers, the Fed policy, and the progress of the payroll tax cut and UI extender bill through Congress this month. But it’s not just that; those are also the indicators you should watch if you want to know how popular ACA will be in the fall. Overall, I think Jonathan Chait has it about right: economic pessimism is probably Mitt Romney's best bet, and either it will pan out or it won't.
Nevada, Nevada, The Helper and the Pal
The Nevada caucuses are tomorrow; the polling has all-but-certain nominee Mitt Romney way out in front.
Is there any reason to pay attention? Sure. Two things to keep an eye on. First, of course, the better Romney does, the more the press will treat the race as a done deal (as, in my view, they mostly should); the less likely that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum will have yet another surge; and thus the more likely Romney can ignore them and focus on bashing Barack Obama. At least once he gets his lines straight.
And then there's the much-anticipated Ron Paul "delegate" strategy, which is supposed to show up in the caucus states. As I've said, I don't think there's really much to this; on the one hand I doubt that Paul's delegate haul overall will be even as high as his vote share, let alone higher, while on the other hand I don't think that his leverage at the convention is particularly related to how many delegates he has there. But still, it's going to be something of a story, and Nevada is a test to see how that goes.
I suppose there's also the question of when Rick Santorum will finally drop out...it's certainly possible that a blowout Romney win in Nevada could finally push Santorum over the edge.
So while the whole contest has certainly become a lot less dramatic, there's still some relevance to at least the first of the February contests.
Is there any reason to pay attention? Sure. Two things to keep an eye on. First, of course, the better Romney does, the more the press will treat the race as a done deal (as, in my view, they mostly should); the less likely that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum will have yet another surge; and thus the more likely Romney can ignore them and focus on bashing Barack Obama. At least once he gets his lines straight.
And then there's the much-anticipated Ron Paul "delegate" strategy, which is supposed to show up in the caucus states. As I've said, I don't think there's really much to this; on the one hand I doubt that Paul's delegate haul overall will be even as high as his vote share, let alone higher, while on the other hand I don't think that his leverage at the convention is particularly related to how many delegates he has there. But still, it's going to be something of a story, and Nevada is a test to see how that goes.
I suppose there's also the question of when Rick Santorum will finally drop out...it's certainly possible that a blowout Romney win in Nevada could finally push Santorum over the edge.
So while the whole contest has certainly become a lot less dramatic, there's still some relevance to at least the first of the February contests.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to the great Maura Tierney, 47. You know, I think I've seen almost nothing she's done other than, of course, NewsRadio. Except, that is, for something else I can highly recommend: Scotland, Pa. Great idea, great execution, especially for the first first hour or so -- and she's terrific throughout.
OK, the good stuff:
1. Katie from Feministing on Susan G. Komen. Excellent. For more on that and other things, by the way, I did the roundup over at Greg's place yesterday evening, so lots of links there.
2. Larry Bartels checks out how those lucky "very poor" are getting along. Someone better tell Mitt Romney that he doesn't quite have it right.
3. If you ask me, sane conservatives are nuts to embrace (or in any way tolerate Ann Coulter just because they happen to agree with her on Romneycare; sane conservative David Frum obviously disagrees.
4. Spencer Ackerman on Afghanistan, 2013, and Mitt Romney.
5. And I think Ezra Klein has much the better of the argument about budget deficits, Obama, and George W. Bush, but I think he's overly generous to Keith Hennessey.
OK, the good stuff:
1. Katie from Feministing on Susan G. Komen. Excellent. For more on that and other things, by the way, I did the roundup over at Greg's place yesterday evening, so lots of links there.
2. Larry Bartels checks out how those lucky "very poor" are getting along. Someone better tell Mitt Romney that he doesn't quite have it right.
3. If you ask me, sane conservatives are nuts to embrace (or in any way tolerate Ann Coulter just because they happen to agree with her on Romneycare; sane conservative David Frum obviously disagrees.
4. Spencer Ackerman on Afghanistan, 2013, and Mitt Romney.
5. And I think Ezra Klein has much the better of the argument about budget deficits, Obama, and George W. Bush, but I think he's overly generous to Keith Hennessey.
GOP War On Budgeting Update
Via Brian Beutler, a wonderful quote from John McCain, showing exactly how Republicans think about budgeting:
Let’s not let a domestic issue such as tax increases interfere…with our nation’s security.
That, in a nutshell, captures exactly how Republicans deal with the budget, and it explains almost all of the structural deficit. I have no idea whether they really believe it or if it's just the way they talk for political reasons, but it's as if there's just no recognition at all that revenues and expenditures have anything to do with each other. Which in and of itself is tough enough to defend -- but from a group of politicians who claim that "the deficit" is important, it's, well, breathtaking.
As I've argued several times, the way to square the circle is to assume that what they mean by "the deficit" has nothing whatsoever to do with, you know, the difference between federal government revenues and spending, and that in fact those two totals have nothing to do with each other. Read through Beutler's story; he gets Jon Kyl to admit that the spending cuts they support to pay for a payroll tax cut are simply spending cuts they support, regardless. Which is really what every budget argument I've heard Republicans give in the last few years boils down to: they have plenty of spending they're for and plenty they're against, and taxes they're against and more-or-less taxes they're for, but they just reject the idea of trade-offs designed to bring revenues and expenditures together. Even for someone such as McCain who presumably really cares a lot about military spending, it's as if he's entirely unaware that taxes have anything at all to do with how much spending is available.
Romney as a General Election Candidate
Over at Plum Line, my post today is a speculative one about Romney's strengths and weaknesses as a general election candidate. I've been saying he's mostly a generic Republican candidate, but I find some pluses and minuses around that -- with the strong caveat, of course, that the out-party candidate against an incumbent president just isn't all that important.
I downplayed over there the issues having to do with Romney's wealth and his business background...perhaps I should explain that a bit. My feeling is that every presidential candidate brings baggage to the campaign which is available for the other side to exploit. Figure out what the average level of baggage is, and that's what I'd compare Romney with when assessing him as a candidate. So: is it awkward to have a rich guy as your nominee during a deep recession? Sure. Does Romney seem to have some trouble learning how to talk about his own wealth on the campaign trail? Yes, that too. But is it more baggage than Barack Obama or John McCain had in 2008, or John Kerry had in 2004, or Al Gore and George W. Bush had in 2000? I think it's hard to make a case for that.
So I'm not saying that Romney won't be attacked over these things, or even that those attacks won't lose some votes for him (remembering that all such effects, of course, are only around the margins). I'm just saying it's always something, and so far what we know about Romney's wealth and business background doesn't strike me as above par.
I downplayed over there the issues having to do with Romney's wealth and his business background...perhaps I should explain that a bit. My feeling is that every presidential candidate brings baggage to the campaign which is available for the other side to exploit. Figure out what the average level of baggage is, and that's what I'd compare Romney with when assessing him as a candidate. So: is it awkward to have a rich guy as your nominee during a deep recession? Sure. Does Romney seem to have some trouble learning how to talk about his own wealth on the campaign trail? Yes, that too. But is it more baggage than Barack Obama or John McCain had in 2008, or John Kerry had in 2004, or Al Gore and George W. Bush had in 2000? I think it's hard to make a case for that.
So I'm not saying that Romney won't be attacked over these things, or even that those attacks won't lose some votes for him (remembering that all such effects, of course, are only around the margins). I'm just saying it's always something, and so far what we know about Romney's wealth and business background doesn't strike me as above par.
Ignore Those Polls! (Influence on the Vote Edition)
This has come up twice already this week, so I guess it's time for a reminder: people usually don't know why they vote for the candidates they choose to vote for, and are not particularly good at assessing how something influenced that vote -- let alone how some hypothetical future event would influence them.
Today's installment was from one of the sillier events on the campaign trail: Donald Trump's endorsement, which apparently is going to go to Mitt Romney today. Now, in real life no one is going to care one way or another that Donald Trump endorsed a candidate. About the only effect would be a very short blast of publicity, but leading presidential candidates get plenty of that anyway. This isn't something that will be forgotten by November; this is something that will almost certainly have been forgotten by Saturday, when Nevadans caucus. In other words, it's not going to affect vote choice at all. And yet if you ask voters, it turns out that some will tell you that they would be more likely, and a somewhat larger number will tell you that they'll be less likely, to vote for someone with a Trump endorsement. Hey, reporters: don't believe those polls! You can take it as a measure of what respondents think about Trump, if you care about such things, but there's no reason to believe that this kind of self-reporting about vote choice is meaningful at all, and it shouldn't be included in stories about a Trump endorsement as if it was meaningful.
Similarly, there was a ton of coverage about exit polls in Florida that asked about whether ads or debates had influenced vote choice (sorry, no links; most of what I heard was on TV and radio). Hey, reporters: don't believe those polls! People have no real way of knowing how they were influenced in these sorts of things even if they try real hard, and there's no reason to believe that exit poll respondents did any such self-examination. Don't believe me? Ask a room full of people if they vote based on political party. You'll get only a handful of people who believe that they do -- and yet we know very well that party is far and away the biggest factor in partisan elections.
The bottom line here is that polling is a really good tool for reporters to use in many cases, but remember: what polling tells you for sure is only what people will say if they're asked a question by a pollster. We can be confident (if it's a competent pollster) that the answer can be extrapolated out to the full relevant population, but only to the extent that we can be confident that everyone would give similar answers to those questions when asked by pollsters. It's the reporters job to stop and think whether those answers have anything to do with real attitudes or real behavior. They might -- polling about vote choice the day before the election is usually very accurate! But in cases when there's no good reason to think the poll is telling us something meaningful, it's a disservice to readers to report those poll results.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday today to Pat Tabler; he's 54. 109 PAs with the bases loaded: .489 BA. OBP/SLG of 505/693; that's an 1198 OPS, which is just a bit higher than Babe Ruth's career number. Alas, we don't know what the Babe did with the bases loaded. I wonder who the guy is who was the Pat Tabler of, say, runner on second base?
The good stuff:
1. Sasha Issenberg noticed that Newt's campaign in Florida was a mess. Amy Gardner noticed that Newt's campaign in Nevada is a mess. Hmmm. I sense a theme.
2. Rick Hason on Super PACs and Citizens United. My general sense is that the big thing you want to do if you want publicity for something is to get it called "Super" whatever. Seems to just mesmerize reporters.
3. What Matt Yglesias said about Romney's "very poor" gaffe: it's the policy that matters.
4. But it's also true that we could use some better journalism. Greg Marx explains.
5. Suddenly a lot less interested in supporting Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation? Over at Good, Nona Willis Aronowitz suggests five alternatives for supporting women's health.
6. And Seth Masket reports that redistricting doesn't seem to matter much in state legislatures, at least not on electoral competition and polarization. I know, it seems like the way districts are drawn should matter a great deal, but it just doesn't seem to.
The good stuff:
1. Sasha Issenberg noticed that Newt's campaign in Florida was a mess. Amy Gardner noticed that Newt's campaign in Nevada is a mess. Hmmm. I sense a theme.
2. Rick Hason on Super PACs and Citizens United. My general sense is that the big thing you want to do if you want publicity for something is to get it called "Super" whatever. Seems to just mesmerize reporters.
3. What Matt Yglesias said about Romney's "very poor" gaffe: it's the policy that matters.
4. But it's also true that we could use some better journalism. Greg Marx explains.
5. Suddenly a lot less interested in supporting Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation? Over at Good, Nona Willis Aronowitz suggests five alternatives for supporting women's health.
6. And Seth Masket reports that redistricting doesn't seem to matter much in state legislatures, at least not on electoral competition and polarization. I know, it seems like the way districts are drawn should matter a great deal, but it just doesn't seem to.
Plum Line: Giving Money (and a Question for Political Scientists)
Over at Plum Line, I reprise an argument I've made over here before: that the worst place to give your money if you want to affect the outcomes of campaigns is in presidential general elections. Still, in my view at least, a very important message.
Which brings up a question. Hey, political scientists! Especially those of you who study US politics and campaigns and elections. If you give money to candidates, where do you put your money? Do any of you give to presidential candidates for the general election? It seems to me that this is something on which the research implications for political action are absolutely clear: do you all follow them?
Which brings up a question. Hey, political scientists! Especially those of you who study US politics and campaigns and elections. If you give money to candidates, where do you put your money? Do any of you give to presidential candidates for the general election? It seems to me that this is something on which the research implications for political action are absolutely clear: do you all follow them?
The Debate Coach Story
The most overrated element in Mitt Romney's big Florida win? Has to be his new debate coach. Sure, you can make an interesting story of the fact that Romney had access to the best that the conservative network has to offer. Indeed, you could talk about how former Liberty U. coach Brett O'Donnell's willingness to work for the Mittster is a good example of how Romney won the nomination: basically, he managed to dominate moderate conservatives while being competitive among social conservative, Tea Partiers, and other more extreme groups. The specific effects O'Donnell may have had on Romney's rhetoric are interesting, too.
However. As far as actual coaching is concerned, Romney was widely seen as the best debater among Republicans right up through the New Hampshire primary; a lot of the debate reviews, especially in the fall, were along the lines of "well, Romney of course was the best, but let's find something else to write about because it's boring to keep pointing out how much better he is at this than the rest of the field." The one thing that Romney seemed to really have problems with -- and here I'm very much agreeing with what I think was the conventional wisdom -- was talking about his wealth. And in my view, at least, that didn't change in the Florida debates.
Remember, one of the reasons people think that Romney got to the point he was at in the GOP race is through crushing his most serious opponents, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry, in debates. I don't know whether O'Donnell helped Romney on the margins or not, but the idea that his coaching was a major factor in Florida seems extremely far-fetched to me.
However. As far as actual coaching is concerned, Romney was widely seen as the best debater among Republicans right up through the New Hampshire primary; a lot of the debate reviews, especially in the fall, were along the lines of "well, Romney of course was the best, but let's find something else to write about because it's boring to keep pointing out how much better he is at this than the rest of the field." The one thing that Romney seemed to really have problems with -- and here I'm very much agreeing with what I think was the conventional wisdom -- was talking about his wealth. And in my view, at least, that didn't change in the Florida debates.
Remember, one of the reasons people think that Romney got to the point he was at in the GOP race is through crushing his most serious opponents, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry, in debates. I don't know whether O'Donnell helped Romney on the margins or not, but the idea that his coaching was a major factor in Florida seems extremely far-fetched to me.
What Will Newt Do?
Will Newt fight on to the convention? Will he continue attacking Romney, or will he back off? What are the incentives at play here?
As Ed Kilgore notes, party leaders will presumably now lean on the disgraced former Speaker to "get out of the race—or at a minimum, to play nice." Will he listen? Especially if, as Steve Kornacki argues, at least part of the whole point of his candidacy is to sell more books (and movies, and lectures, and whatever else he can come up with).
One set of questions here is whether GOP leaders would really be willing to threaten to cut Newt off from the institutions that combine to produce conservative respectability, and whether they have the clout to do so. I don't really know the answers to that, but I suspect they mostly can't or won't. It's almost certainly a solid marketing move by Newt, Inc. to attempt to grab the title of The Conservative Leader...and even if those portions of the GOP that care a lot about winning elections may wind up upset with him, those portions which care most about purity and full expressions of conservative "ideas" are going to be very happy with him. It's almost certainly win-win, too: if Romney loses conservative purists will claim that it was because he wasn't conservative enough (and Newt can cash in) while if Romney wins then conservatives will complain that he's betraying them with his moderate policies. And Newt can cash in. (Not saying that Romney will attempt to be a moderate in office, but conservative purists will naturally be disappointed in the results because purists on both sides are always disappointed in the results and almost always blame the president).
Another issue, however, is about market sizes. Remember, you need an enormous number of votes to be elected President of the United States, and quite a few votes to be nominated for that office. But you can make a very good living off of a fairly small number of dupes, as long as they're rich enough and willing to keep shelling out for every new product you come up with.
So all in all I'm not really sure where Newt's incentives lie, other than to say that I'm quite certain that he really, really knows his marks and what works with them.
As Ed Kilgore notes, party leaders will presumably now lean on the disgraced former Speaker to "get out of the race—or at a minimum, to play nice." Will he listen? Especially if, as Steve Kornacki argues, at least part of the whole point of his candidacy is to sell more books (and movies, and lectures, and whatever else he can come up with).
One set of questions here is whether GOP leaders would really be willing to threaten to cut Newt off from the institutions that combine to produce conservative respectability, and whether they have the clout to do so. I don't really know the answers to that, but I suspect they mostly can't or won't. It's almost certainly a solid marketing move by Newt, Inc. to attempt to grab the title of The Conservative Leader...and even if those portions of the GOP that care a lot about winning elections may wind up upset with him, those portions which care most about purity and full expressions of conservative "ideas" are going to be very happy with him. It's almost certainly win-win, too: if Romney loses conservative purists will claim that it was because he wasn't conservative enough (and Newt can cash in) while if Romney wins then conservatives will complain that he's betraying them with his moderate policies. And Newt can cash in. (Not saying that Romney will attempt to be a moderate in office, but conservative purists will naturally be disappointed in the results because purists on both sides are always disappointed in the results and almost always blame the president).
Another issue, however, is about market sizes. Remember, you need an enormous number of votes to be elected President of the United States, and quite a few votes to be nominated for that office. But you can make a very good living off of a fairly small number of dupes, as long as they're rich enough and willing to keep shelling out for every new product you come up with.
So all in all I'm not really sure where Newt's incentives lie, other than to say that I'm quite certain that he really, really knows his marks and what works with them.
Read Stuff, You Should
OK, here goes; I'm going to try this daily, for a while at least.
And I'm not sure if this will be fun or dopey, but I'm going to try out a new feature as part of it -- birthday greetings. The idea is that it'll always be someone I like in some way, sometimes from politics, usually not. I have no idea whether I'll wind up keeping it; most likely, if you all seem to like it, I'll keep going. If not, it'll probably drop out. So:
Happy Birthday to the great Terry Jones, who is 70 today. No, not the crazy guy from Florida. I've been meaning to see his "Wind in the Willows," but haven't got around to it yet -- and I did not realize, until just now, that he was credited with the screenplay for Labyrinth, but wikipedia says (for whatever that's worth) that he didn't have much to do with the final movie. Well, there's their mistake, right there.
Ready for the good stuff?
1. Celebrity endorsements! I'm a big fan of following these. KRS-One for Ron Paul? Yikes!
2. Good nomination postmorten of Mitt Romney from Jonathan Chait.
3. Seth Masket looks at the Florida exit polls, with chart.
4. Lots of data about ads in Florida from Erika Fowler and the Wesleyan Media Project.
5. Away from the campaign, you'll want to see the evidence that ACA is actually working well so far, from Harold Pollack and Greg Anrig.
6. And I thoroughly agree with Stan Collender: you don't balance the budget by changing the budget process.
And I'm not sure if this will be fun or dopey, but I'm going to try out a new feature as part of it -- birthday greetings. The idea is that it'll always be someone I like in some way, sometimes from politics, usually not. I have no idea whether I'll wind up keeping it; most likely, if you all seem to like it, I'll keep going. If not, it'll probably drop out. So:
Happy Birthday to the great Terry Jones, who is 70 today. No, not the crazy guy from Florida. I've been meaning to see his "Wind in the Willows," but haven't got around to it yet -- and I did not realize, until just now, that he was credited with the screenplay for Labyrinth, but wikipedia says (for whatever that's worth) that he didn't have much to do with the final movie. Well, there's their mistake, right there.
Ready for the good stuff?
1. Celebrity endorsements! I'm a big fan of following these. KRS-One for Ron Paul? Yikes!
2. Good nomination postmorten of Mitt Romney from Jonathan Chait.
3. Seth Masket looks at the Florida exit polls, with chart.
4. Lots of data about ads in Florida from Erika Fowler and the Wesleyan Media Project.
5. Away from the campaign, you'll want to see the evidence that ACA is actually working well so far, from Harold Pollack and Greg Anrig.
6. And I thoroughly agree with Stan Collender: you don't balance the budget by changing the budget process.
Florida
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, but after tonight's blowout for Mitt Romney, I can't see any path to the nomination for anyone else. Over at Plum Line, I put it this way:
At this point, Romney essentially has the nomination wrapped up. Yes, people will point out that only a very small portion of delegates has been selected, but most of these contests are usually long over when the winner finally hits the mark that technically clinches it. Realistically, only some sort of external and utterly unexpected event could derail Romney now.
As far as I'm concerned, that's just about it. Newt will almost certainly stay in and fight through Super Tuesday in early March, although we don't know yet whether he'll continue going negative or not. And there's nothing wrong with that; to the extent that it was a real presidential campaign in the first place, there's no reason for him to drop out at this point. It's just that we, as observers, can tell that he continues to have no realistic chance of winning -- and if anyone doubted that, it's pretty obvious by now that he's just as vulnerable to attacks as anyone familiar with his record would have anticipated.
More comments on Florida and the GOP race tomorrow, most likely. For now, congratulations to Mitt Romney.
Worst Excuse Ever For Opposing Buffett Rule
Is the Buffett Rule -- that rich folks should pay at least as much in taxes as the middle class -- a good idea? I'm sure there are reasonable arguments pro and con. But you won't find any good ones in Douglas Holtz-Eakin's Bloomberg column today; it's an advanced class in hackery (via Wonkbook).
I'll start right off with a brilliant piece of misdirection Holtz-Eakin puts at the center of his case against the Buffett rule: that comprehensive tax reform is better. This is, even if you accept every benefit that he claims for tax reform, about the worst excuse I've ever heard for opposing a tax change. Here's the thing: comprehensive tax reform is really, really hard to get done. Impossible? No; after all, we do have one case of it happening, although that was 25 years ago and most of it unraveled rather quickly, which is why it's supposedly needed again. That's because comprehensive tax reform eliminates lots and lots...and lots and lots and lots of particular benefits in favor of general benefits. And that's something that a Madisonian political system doesn't do very well (nor, for that matter, do other democratic systems, but the US is perhaps especially prone to that one). So "comprehensive tax reform would be better" is a dodge. You don't get that choice.
And at any rate, the Buffett rule is hardly something that would make future tax reform more difficult. The essence of bipartisan-style tax reform is to eliminate deductions and lower rates. The Buffett rule doesn't exactly do that (and it's not revenue neutral), but it is, essentially, anti-deduction, isn't it?
So what else does Holtz-Eakin have? Well, he claims the problem "doesn't exist" because the millionaires are already paying, on average, a 30% rate. That, of course, hardly shows that the fundamental unfairness (as Barack Obama argues, at any rate) of some millionaires paying low rates doesn't exist; it just means that not all millionaires do so. So nothing there.
He also notes that the Buffett rule would be, in effect, a new Alternative Minimum Tax, and that the AMT we have has been a constant source of trouble because it's not indexed for inflation. True! Solution: index the Buffett rule for inflation. That wasn't tough! And again, he throws the "comprehensive tax reform would be better" attack at a permanent AMT fix. Now, it's true that an AMT fix would be heavy lifting and would be a waste of energy if comprehensive tax reform was on the menu, but the AMT fix is heavy lifting only because it's a revenue loser (at least the way CBO scores these things). The Buffett Rule, on the other hand, is a revenue raiser, so it doesn't have that problem at all.
Which brings us to yet another specious argument: that the Buffett Rule wouldn't balance the budget. Holtz-Eakin complains that it would only bring in $35B a year, which is, he points out, under 3% of recent deficits. Of course, the answer here is: so what? Again, he's trying to frame the question as either-or (that is, either the Buffett Rule or comprehensive tax reform), but there's just no good reason to believe that tax reform is going to happen anytime soon, or that passing the Buffett Rule this year would delay it in any way. Beyond that, saying that something wouldn't eliminate the deficit is hardly a reason to oppose it.
And then, finally, Holtz-Eakin argues that cutting entitlement spending for rich people would be better than the Buffett Rule. Perhaps so: but it's hard to see why the one would rule out the other. We should cut spending isn't an argument against the fairness claim that Buffett, and Barack Obama, are making.
Again, I'm not arguing here for or against the Buffett Rule. But if that's the best the opponents have, I'm guessing the case really boils down to Rich People Want Money, and that's not much of a case at all.
I'll start right off with a brilliant piece of misdirection Holtz-Eakin puts at the center of his case against the Buffett rule: that comprehensive tax reform is better. This is, even if you accept every benefit that he claims for tax reform, about the worst excuse I've ever heard for opposing a tax change. Here's the thing: comprehensive tax reform is really, really hard to get done. Impossible? No; after all, we do have one case of it happening, although that was 25 years ago and most of it unraveled rather quickly, which is why it's supposedly needed again. That's because comprehensive tax reform eliminates lots and lots...and lots and lots and lots of particular benefits in favor of general benefits. And that's something that a Madisonian political system doesn't do very well (nor, for that matter, do other democratic systems, but the US is perhaps especially prone to that one). So "comprehensive tax reform would be better" is a dodge. You don't get that choice.
And at any rate, the Buffett rule is hardly something that would make future tax reform more difficult. The essence of bipartisan-style tax reform is to eliminate deductions and lower rates. The Buffett rule doesn't exactly do that (and it's not revenue neutral), but it is, essentially, anti-deduction, isn't it?
So what else does Holtz-Eakin have? Well, he claims the problem "doesn't exist" because the millionaires are already paying, on average, a 30% rate. That, of course, hardly shows that the fundamental unfairness (as Barack Obama argues, at any rate) of some millionaires paying low rates doesn't exist; it just means that not all millionaires do so. So nothing there.
He also notes that the Buffett rule would be, in effect, a new Alternative Minimum Tax, and that the AMT we have has been a constant source of trouble because it's not indexed for inflation. True! Solution: index the Buffett rule for inflation. That wasn't tough! And again, he throws the "comprehensive tax reform would be better" attack at a permanent AMT fix. Now, it's true that an AMT fix would be heavy lifting and would be a waste of energy if comprehensive tax reform was on the menu, but the AMT fix is heavy lifting only because it's a revenue loser (at least the way CBO scores these things). The Buffett Rule, on the other hand, is a revenue raiser, so it doesn't have that problem at all.
Which brings us to yet another specious argument: that the Buffett Rule wouldn't balance the budget. Holtz-Eakin complains that it would only bring in $35B a year, which is, he points out, under 3% of recent deficits. Of course, the answer here is: so what? Again, he's trying to frame the question as either-or (that is, either the Buffett Rule or comprehensive tax reform), but there's just no good reason to believe that tax reform is going to happen anytime soon, or that passing the Buffett Rule this year would delay it in any way. Beyond that, saying that something wouldn't eliminate the deficit is hardly a reason to oppose it.
And then, finally, Holtz-Eakin argues that cutting entitlement spending for rich people would be better than the Buffett Rule. Perhaps so: but it's hard to see why the one would rule out the other. We should cut spending isn't an argument against the fairness claim that Buffett, and Barack Obama, are making.
Again, I'm not arguing here for or against the Buffett Rule. But if that's the best the opponents have, I'm guessing the case really boils down to Rich People Want Money, and that's not much of a case at all.
Catch of the Day
While I'm not a fan of the 60 vote Senate, I generally can't fault Mitch McConnell for doing what he can to gum up the works in that chamber. It's true that the minority party has a choice to make between all-out obstruction versus cooperation, and that the latter has a lot of real advantages (basically, that their constituencies can be considered in policy-making), but at least in my view the choice was made for McConnell by the overwhelming preference of his conference, and he's just been carrying out what they want over the last few years.
Whatever you think of McConnell and the GOP strategy, however, it's certainly clear that he and the Republicans have successfully implemented the 60 vote Senate on all bills and nominations, something that never existed before (and only began to be a real possibility in 1993, the last time before 2009 that Democrats won unified control of both branches). This is a real accomplishment for McConnell, and one he can brag about.
Or pretend that it never happened, as Sahil Kapur notes over at TPM: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has embraced the argument that President Obama was able to pass every bit of his legislative agenda in his first two years thanks to large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. " Or, as McConnell puts it: Obama "got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years."
Yikes! Kapur lists several of the items which Obama wanted but were blocked by the 60 vote Senate, including climate change legislation, the public option on health care (at least a weak form would have had 50 votes), the DREAM Act, the elimination of Bush-era tax cuts on upper income taxpayers, and more. The stimulus almost certainly would have been larger. Moreover, the odds are good that a simple-majority Senate would have passed significant follow-up aid to the states, not to mention more timely unemployment insurance extensions. Now, it's worth remembering that the historic 111th Congress did pass a whole lot of legislation, including a whole lot of what Obama wanted, but "every bit of his legislative agenda" isn't a stretch; it's a flat-out lie.
Oh, and: Nice catch!
Whatever you think of McConnell and the GOP strategy, however, it's certainly clear that he and the Republicans have successfully implemented the 60 vote Senate on all bills and nominations, something that never existed before (and only began to be a real possibility in 1993, the last time before 2009 that Democrats won unified control of both branches). This is a real accomplishment for McConnell, and one he can brag about.
Or pretend that it never happened, as Sahil Kapur notes over at TPM: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has embraced the argument that President Obama was able to pass every bit of his legislative agenda in his first two years thanks to large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. " Or, as McConnell puts it: Obama "got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years."
Yikes! Kapur lists several of the items which Obama wanted but were blocked by the 60 vote Senate, including climate change legislation, the public option on health care (at least a weak form would have had 50 votes), the DREAM Act, the elimination of Bush-era tax cuts on upper income taxpayers, and more. The stimulus almost certainly would have been larger. Moreover, the odds are good that a simple-majority Senate would have passed significant follow-up aid to the states, not to mention more timely unemployment insurance extensions. Now, it's worth remembering that the historic 111th Congress did pass a whole lot of legislation, including a whole lot of what Obama wanted, but "every bit of his legislative agenda" isn't a stretch; it's a flat-out lie.
Oh, and: Nice catch!
But If We Did Have A Deadlocked Convention...
It's not going to happen this year, but it could happen sometime: a deadlocked convention. Or, an open convention. Or, an undecided convention. I'm pushing deadlocked, but any of those are fine. And I have no problem talking about it as long as we don't pretend that it's likely this time around...there are good reasons to believe it's highly unlikely, but it isn't impossible at all.
Rachel Weiner over at WaPo wrote a good piece about what would happen should we ever reach a point in which no candidate has half the delegates after the last primary or caucus; she talked to me and to Josh Putnam, and I think she did a good job. I'd emphasize, however, that there's considerable uncertainty about what would actually happen if we really had an unknown nominee when the convention opened.
For example, consider this comment from Solracer to a previous item of mine about deadlocked conventions:
Just to remind everyone: if we really got as far as the first day of the convention without resolving the nomination, there's a good chance for major chaos. Everything, from which delegates are seated to the procedures under which the nomination is considered, would be up for grabs. Delegates, and party factions generally, are unlikely to trust anyone to be a neutral referee. Party politicians and others with a major stake in the November election results will have a powerful incentive to keep things looking happy, but the candidates and many party factions may not. Of course, all of this is one reason why the system has been designed to reach a resolution in spring, and I believe that the parties have done a reasonably good job in doing so. But if it every fails...well, it certainly would be fun for political junkies, but it could easily get very ugly for the party.
Rachel Weiner over at WaPo wrote a good piece about what would happen should we ever reach a point in which no candidate has half the delegates after the last primary or caucus; she talked to me and to Josh Putnam, and I think she did a good job. I'd emphasize, however, that there's considerable uncertainty about what would actually happen if we really had an unknown nominee when the convention opened.
For example, consider this comment from Solracer to a previous item of mine about deadlocked conventions:
I was a Dean delegate at the 2004 DNC and in that case Howard Dean asked us to vote for Kerry in a sign of unity which most all of us did. So there is still an ability for candidates to deliver their delegates. The big wild card this time however is time itself. In the old days the delegates were party insiders who could afford to take weeks to come to a conclusion. Today the delegates are likely common people with real jobs who are paying their own hotel bills and who have non-refundable tickets to fly home. So either everyone will vote for a single candidate at the last minute just to be able to go home or even worse they will leave anyway and there won't be enough delegates left to put anyone over the top. IMHO the latter is the real disaster scenario and I really don't know what could be done in that situation.I'm certainly not a historian of 19th century conventions, but my memory is that this was in fact an issue at times: who is actually in the room may well have a major effect on who wins. Whatever is true about then, it's an excellent point about what would happen now. Of course, it's quite possible that things would get resolved before the delegates actually met. After all, communications are somewhat more reliable now than when the Whigs were doing the nominating.
Just to remind everyone: if we really got as far as the first day of the convention without resolving the nomination, there's a good chance for major chaos. Everything, from which delegates are seated to the procedures under which the nomination is considered, would be up for grabs. Delegates, and party factions generally, are unlikely to trust anyone to be a neutral referee. Party politicians and others with a major stake in the November election results will have a powerful incentive to keep things looking happy, but the candidates and many party factions may not. Of course, all of this is one reason why the system has been designed to reach a resolution in spring, and I believe that the parties have done a reasonably good job in doing so. But if it every fails...well, it certainly would be fun for political junkies, but it could easily get very ugly for the party.
Whither Santorum? And Other Florida Questions
Florida primary day. I wrote something over at Plum Line arguing that it matters whether Romney wins by a narrow margin or by a landslide because it will influence how he behaves over the next five weeks, through Super Tuesday.
The other question, I suppose, is whether this is the end of the line for Rick Santorum. I think so, although as usual I'll remind everyone not to trust immediate candidate reactions. After South Carolina, I thought that it made sense for Santorum to stay in for a week because of the possibility of a third-candidate effect: I thought that it was possible that with Mitt and Newt attacking each other full force, it was possible that Santorum might benefit even if he didn't have the money to run much of a campaign of his own. It appears that it didn't pan out, and I can't see any point in Santorum continuing on.
So why did Santorum fizzle after Iowa? That he did well there was, I still think, somewhat of a low-probability fluke. But once he emerged as a potentially viable conservative opponent to Romney, why didn't he do better? I guess I have four theories I can think of. One is that Iowa is no longer very important. Or, more likely: that Iowa has produced a sufficiently long string of social conservative surprises (Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee) that the press heavily discounts any social conservative who does well there. That's silly; Iowa is not, in fact, a social conservative outlier within the GOP. But it might be true anyway. The second theory is a press bias in favor of Newt Gingrich. He's easy to write about, and many members of the elite press have always been easy marks for the snake oil that he peddles. So instead of writing him off after his lousy finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, the press continued to treat him as a top-tier candidate, thus taking time away from Santorum. So I have two press-centric theories, and I'll add one voter theory: Santorum doesn't seem to do resentment particularly well; the best he can manage is a sort of whine, such as when he wasn't being called on enough in early debates.
And then there's theory four, which is party-based. It appeared, through Iowa, that party actors were willing to accept Romney but were not sold, which meant there was room for a non-Romney to emerge. It's certainly possible, however, that either party actors don't much like Santorum for whatever reason -- or, more likely, that they really were a lot happier with the Mittster than they let on. If that's the case, the nomination was probably a done deal well before Iowa, even though on the surface (compared to, say, 2000 in both parties) there seemed to be reason for uncertainty.
I have no idea which, if any, of those theories explains it, but I do think it needs a bit of explaining.
The other question, I suppose, is whether this is the end of the line for Rick Santorum. I think so, although as usual I'll remind everyone not to trust immediate candidate reactions. After South Carolina, I thought that it made sense for Santorum to stay in for a week because of the possibility of a third-candidate effect: I thought that it was possible that with Mitt and Newt attacking each other full force, it was possible that Santorum might benefit even if he didn't have the money to run much of a campaign of his own. It appears that it didn't pan out, and I can't see any point in Santorum continuing on.
So why did Santorum fizzle after Iowa? That he did well there was, I still think, somewhat of a low-probability fluke. But once he emerged as a potentially viable conservative opponent to Romney, why didn't he do better? I guess I have four theories I can think of. One is that Iowa is no longer very important. Or, more likely: that Iowa has produced a sufficiently long string of social conservative surprises (Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee) that the press heavily discounts any social conservative who does well there. That's silly; Iowa is not, in fact, a social conservative outlier within the GOP. But it might be true anyway. The second theory is a press bias in favor of Newt Gingrich. He's easy to write about, and many members of the elite press have always been easy marks for the snake oil that he peddles. So instead of writing him off after his lousy finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, the press continued to treat him as a top-tier candidate, thus taking time away from Santorum. So I have two press-centric theories, and I'll add one voter theory: Santorum doesn't seem to do resentment particularly well; the best he can manage is a sort of whine, such as when he wasn't being called on enough in early debates.
And then there's theory four, which is party-based. It appeared, through Iowa, that party actors were willing to accept Romney but were not sold, which meant there was room for a non-Romney to emerge. It's certainly possible, however, that either party actors don't much like Santorum for whatever reason -- or, more likely, that they really were a lot happier with the Mittster than they let on. If that's the case, the nomination was probably a done deal well before Iowa, even though on the surface (compared to, say, 2000 in both parties) there seemed to be reason for uncertainty.
I have no idea which, if any, of those theories explains it, but I do think it needs a bit of explaining.
Read Stuff, You Should
Lots of good stuff today, so getting right to it:
1. Very interesting study from Lynn Vavreck and Ryan D. Enos about how candidates can affect voters' perceptions of reality, centered on Newt's rhetoric about food stamps. A point off, however, for beginning the last paragraph with "In what is sure to be a close contest."
2. Fun from Nate Silver: the Reagan count. Also, Tim Murphy reviews the actual history of Newt and Reagan. Conor Friedersdorf collects some of his recent unorthodox positions. And John Pitney thinks Newt would lose if he debated Barack Obama.
3. Moving on to Romney...Sarah Posner was watching when Romney talked religion at the last debate; and, yes, Romney lies a lot, says Jonathan Chait.
4. Joshua Huder had a very nice post, sort of pegged to Santorum, about "insiders" and "outsiders" and reform. Hint: Richard Bolling is mentioned.
5. How's that austerity working out for you? David Leonhardt has a chart.
6. Here comes the 2012 edition of the Wesleyan Media Project. Bookmark, now.
7. Sarah Binder is doing some Fed -- and Congress -- watching.
8. Are liberals using anti-Semetic language to talk about (very legitimate) policy positions on Israel? Spencer Ackerman makes the case.
9. Stan Collender argues that OMB director is a good path to the Oval Office -- but only for one side of the big desk.
10. Adam Serwer, very good as always, this time on Leon Panetta's account of extrajudicial executions of American citizens accused of terrorism.
11. And Alyssa Rosenberg on Spike Lee, George Lucas, and Hollywood.
1. Very interesting study from Lynn Vavreck and Ryan D. Enos about how candidates can affect voters' perceptions of reality, centered on Newt's rhetoric about food stamps. A point off, however, for beginning the last paragraph with "In what is sure to be a close contest."
2. Fun from Nate Silver: the Reagan count. Also, Tim Murphy reviews the actual history of Newt and Reagan. Conor Friedersdorf collects some of his recent unorthodox positions. And John Pitney thinks Newt would lose if he debated Barack Obama.
3. Moving on to Romney...Sarah Posner was watching when Romney talked religion at the last debate; and, yes, Romney lies a lot, says Jonathan Chait.
4. Joshua Huder had a very nice post, sort of pegged to Santorum, about "insiders" and "outsiders" and reform. Hint: Richard Bolling is mentioned.
5. How's that austerity working out for you? David Leonhardt has a chart.
6. Here comes the 2012 edition of the Wesleyan Media Project. Bookmark, now.
7. Sarah Binder is doing some Fed -- and Congress -- watching.
8. Are liberals using anti-Semetic language to talk about (very legitimate) policy positions on Israel? Spencer Ackerman makes the case.
9. Stan Collender argues that OMB director is a good path to the Oval Office -- but only for one side of the big desk.
10. Adam Serwer, very good as always, this time on Leon Panetta's account of extrajudicial executions of American citizens accused of terrorism.
11. And Alyssa Rosenberg on Spike Lee, George Lucas, and Hollywood.
Unleash Chiang/Chang/Shang!!!
By far the funniest thing of the day is the revelation that, through the Bush family, Chiang Kai-shek has morphed into "a mythical conservative warrior." That's a link to Dan Larison's fine discussion, which will also link you way back to Brad DeLong's original catch on this from way back in 2005. There's some question as to whether Jeb Bush knew the origin of the phrase "unleashing Chiang" or not, with Tim Noah believing that Jeb did but Marco Rubio didn't. Click over and read the whole, wonderful, story.
All I can say is: Shaka, when the walls fell.
I'll also add, for whatever it's worth, that Li Shang is a hero in the excellent 1998 Disney movie "Mulan." He's not exactly a mythical conservative warrior, but he is a warrior, and it is a myth, although Jeb's kids were a bit too old to have gone with him to see it. Despite singing like Donny Osmond. Could Disney's Shang have somehow combined with G.H.W. Bush's Chiang? I sure am curious.
Less relevantly, I see that Grandmother Fa in that movie was voiced by June Foray and sung by Marni Nixon. Wow! You're not going to get better than that...my sense is that Mulan hasn't quite been as successful as some of the others of that era, but in my view it's right in the first tier with Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid.
All I can say is: Shaka, when the walls fell.
I'll also add, for whatever it's worth, that Li Shang is a hero in the excellent 1998 Disney movie "Mulan." He's not exactly a mythical conservative warrior, but he is a warrior, and it is a myth, although Jeb's kids were a bit too old to have gone with him to see it. Despite singing like Donny Osmond. Could Disney's Shang have somehow combined with G.H.W. Bush's Chiang? I sure am curious.
Less relevantly, I see that Grandmother Fa in that movie was voiced by June Foray and sung by Marni Nixon. Wow! You're not going to get better than that...my sense is that Mulan hasn't quite been as successful as some of the others of that era, but in my view it's right in the first tier with Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid.
Plum Line: Nominations (plus some Housekeeping)
Over at Plum Line today: an update on the next steps with exec branch and judicial nominations, in light of Senator Mike Lee's threat to put holds on everything.
Meanwhile: it's a record-breaking month for traffic here at Plain Blog, and I want thank each and every one of you. Also, thanks to everyone for links and tweets, and to those readers who use the "share" button. Thank you!
With traffic up, I'm thinking of switching to short daily links posts, instead of the once-a-week or so with an irregular schedule that I've always done. I might try it out for a while and see if it takes...among other things, I've recently switched over to doing a morning school drop-off for one of my kids, and I've noticed that I'm finding it hard to get a first substantive post up early, so that might work. I might also fold in links to new stuff that I've written elsewhere...I'm not really sure. Anyway, I'm happy to take suggestions about any of this if you have them. I might even come up with a different title for my links posts, but I am sort of fond of my traditional one, so I'm not sure about that yet.
Meanwhile: it's a record-breaking month for traffic here at Plain Blog, and I want thank each and every one of you. Also, thanks to everyone for links and tweets, and to those readers who use the "share" button. Thank you!
With traffic up, I'm thinking of switching to short daily links posts, instead of the once-a-week or so with an irregular schedule that I've always done. I might try it out for a while and see if it takes...among other things, I've recently switched over to doing a morning school drop-off for one of my kids, and I've noticed that I'm finding it hard to get a first substantive post up early, so that might work. I might also fold in links to new stuff that I've written elsewhere...I'm not really sure. Anyway, I'm happy to take suggestions about any of this if you have them. I might even come up with a different title for my links posts, but I am sort of fond of my traditional one, so I'm not sure about that yet.
Final Word (I Hope!) on Late Entrant
The final word, I hope, on the impossibility of a late entrant into the GOP nomination battle at this point goes to Josh Putnam, who has a data-filled post detailing all the filing deadlines and other technical problems with a new candidacy at this point.
The only think I want to add to this, other than you should definitely use his info and not the stuff that I've been citing in previous posts, is that there's a danger here of getting too caught up in the technicalities of all of this. I know -- I've been contributing to this a bit. And it's worth knowing the technical stuff, to be sure.
But step back, and you'll realize that it's been too late for months. When I was talking about this in 2010 and 2011, I speculated that the real window closed for most candidates in spring 2011, and for the most well-positioned candidate on the sideline -- presumably Jeb Bush -- sometime in the summer or late summer. Oh, a candidate certainly could have technically entered the race in September 2011. But a true new entrant at that point would be starting with an enormous disadvantage in resources, whether we're talking money, or organization, or candidate experience on the campaign trail. We saw some of that with Rick Perry, who wasn't really a complete new entrant (remember, he had already published a campaign book before he got in, and certainly had been prepping for the race for some time). It would have been that much worse for a real new entrant.
One of the reasons Mitt Romney has done so well this cycle is precisely because he's been running for president nonstop for about seven years. You don't have to do it that way; Barack Obama really did enter fairly late in the process, as far as I know. It sure helps, though.
The only think I want to add to this, other than you should definitely use his info and not the stuff that I've been citing in previous posts, is that there's a danger here of getting too caught up in the technicalities of all of this. I know -- I've been contributing to this a bit. And it's worth knowing the technical stuff, to be sure.
But step back, and you'll realize that it's been too late for months. When I was talking about this in 2010 and 2011, I speculated that the real window closed for most candidates in spring 2011, and for the most well-positioned candidate on the sideline -- presumably Jeb Bush -- sometime in the summer or late summer. Oh, a candidate certainly could have technically entered the race in September 2011. But a true new entrant at that point would be starting with an enormous disadvantage in resources, whether we're talking money, or organization, or candidate experience on the campaign trail. We saw some of that with Rick Perry, who wasn't really a complete new entrant (remember, he had already published a campaign book before he got in, and certainly had been prepping for the race for some time). It would have been that much worse for a real new entrant.
One of the reasons Mitt Romney has done so well this cycle is precisely because he's been running for president nonstop for about seven years. You don't have to do it that way; Barack Obama really did enter fairly late in the process, as far as I know. It sure helps, though.
Is Florida About Money or the Party?
One of the things that you're going to hear a lot of is that Mitt Romney's big win in Florida tomorrow -- and per the polling, it looks certain -- wasn't caused by debates or Newt's crazy moon rhetoric or the support of party leaders, but by Romney's money advantage. Jonathan Chait, for example:
It's not just that a significant number of GOP opinion leaders were bashing Newt. What's probably more important is that as far as I can see absolutely no one -- with the exception of Sarah Palin, I guess -- hit Romney for running a vicious attack campaign against a fellow Republican. Meanwhile, Newt was severely disciplined by those same opinion leaders when he (and Rick Perry) attacked Romney's business practices.
Imagine, for example, if Rick Perry had done well and it was a Romney/Perry race, with party leaders splitting between them but believing both were acceptable. I strongly suspect that if Romney went all scorched earth against Perry in that scenario that many neutral party leaders would start talking about how Ronald Reagan never ran a negative ad in his life (doesn't matter if it's true or not) and about how Romney should dial it back some. They might also quietly warn Romney that if he didn't cut back that he'd feel the consequences in fundraising and other resources. Meanwhile, Perry would have plenty of surrogates to go on every Fox News program to knock the ads down, and those surrogates would have a very sympathetic hearing much of the time.
Remember, we're talking here about GOP primary voters. That's a relatively high-information group. Virtually all of them, I'd guess, watch Fox News instead of CNN (or, obviously, MSNBC). Quite a few of them listen to Rush Limbaugh or other conservative talk radio hosts, and some of them read conservative blogs. Remember too that most of them are inclined to like all of the candidates: after all, they're all on Team GOP. So they may tend to resist stuff they're hearing in ads if they also hear evidence to the contrary from their favorite talk radio show. After all, we expect each and every one of them to completely discount the attacks they'll be seeing from Barack Obama in a few months. But if party leaders are inviting Romney to continue, even if that's just by staying quiet, well, that's going to make a difference.
It's also worth mentioning that fundraising is connected to party support, so the fact that Romney has such a large lead is at least to some extent a function of party choice, and not Romney's abilities.
On the whole, then, I suspect that what's happening in Florida is very much a party story, and even less of a candidate story than one might think.
Mitt Romney is pulling away in Florida, which has less to do with a “more focused message” or increased “swagger,” or any other narrative the press reads into it, than a simple ability to spend Newt Gingrich into the ground. (The television ad disparity has been about four to one.)I agree with this to some extent, but there's another major factor involved, which is the spin control exercised by party leaders.
It's not just that a significant number of GOP opinion leaders were bashing Newt. What's probably more important is that as far as I can see absolutely no one -- with the exception of Sarah Palin, I guess -- hit Romney for running a vicious attack campaign against a fellow Republican. Meanwhile, Newt was severely disciplined by those same opinion leaders when he (and Rick Perry) attacked Romney's business practices.
Imagine, for example, if Rick Perry had done well and it was a Romney/Perry race, with party leaders splitting between them but believing both were acceptable. I strongly suspect that if Romney went all scorched earth against Perry in that scenario that many neutral party leaders would start talking about how Ronald Reagan never ran a negative ad in his life (doesn't matter if it's true or not) and about how Romney should dial it back some. They might also quietly warn Romney that if he didn't cut back that he'd feel the consequences in fundraising and other resources. Meanwhile, Perry would have plenty of surrogates to go on every Fox News program to knock the ads down, and those surrogates would have a very sympathetic hearing much of the time.
Remember, we're talking here about GOP primary voters. That's a relatively high-information group. Virtually all of them, I'd guess, watch Fox News instead of CNN (or, obviously, MSNBC). Quite a few of them listen to Rush Limbaugh or other conservative talk radio hosts, and some of them read conservative blogs. Remember too that most of them are inclined to like all of the candidates: after all, they're all on Team GOP. So they may tend to resist stuff they're hearing in ads if they also hear evidence to the contrary from their favorite talk radio show. After all, we expect each and every one of them to completely discount the attacks they'll be seeing from Barack Obama in a few months. But if party leaders are inviting Romney to continue, even if that's just by staying quiet, well, that's going to make a difference.
It's also worth mentioning that fundraising is connected to party support, so the fact that Romney has such a large lead is at least to some extent a function of party choice, and not Romney's abilities.
On the whole, then, I suspect that what's happening in Florida is very much a party story, and even less of a candidate story than one might think.
Sunday Question for Liberals
Same question that I asked of conservatives. With the debates winding down for this cycle, what lessons if any should Democrats learn for 2016 about the way they were organized? What worked? What didn't?
Of course, the incentives of individual candidates and of the potential sponsors of debates may well differ from those of the party as a whole. But to the extent that the party could change things, what should be changed and what should be retained?
Of course, the incentives of individual candidates and of the potential sponsors of debates may well differ from those of the party as a whole. But to the extent that the party could change things, what should be changed and what should be retained?
Sunday Question for Conservatives
We may be done with the debates, so it's perhaps a good time to look back: what about the debates worked? What didn't work? What should Republicans, as a party, attempt to do differently next time around?
Junior Jobs Post #2
See previous threads for standard boilerplate about what goes here.
Wanted to get this up earlier, but personal business and technical problems with Blogger intervened. Sorry.
Wanted to get this up earlier, but personal business and technical problems with Blogger intervened. Sorry.
What Mattered This Week?
Seemed like an eventful week to me in Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan...that's a lot.
The 4th amendment case decided this week, US v. Jones, seemed important to me.
I don't really think there's much left of importance in the nomination fight. Romney moved ahead of Newt in Florida, but that just means (assuming it holds up) that there will be less irrelevant hype after Tuesday. Romney is going to have to pretend it's a contest through Super Tuesday at this point no matter what happens in Florida. Watch to see if Rick Santorum has a late surge into second place, but so far it's not happening. There were also some new unflattering details about Romney's finances and background; not a plus for him, but unlikely to matter much.
What else? What do you think mattered this week?
The 4th amendment case decided this week, US v. Jones, seemed important to me.
I don't really think there's much left of importance in the nomination fight. Romney moved ahead of Newt in Florida, but that just means (assuming it holds up) that there will be less irrelevant hype after Tuesday. Romney is going to have to pretend it's a contest through Super Tuesday at this point no matter what happens in Florida. Watch to see if Rick Santorum has a late surge into second place, but so far it's not happening. There were also some new unflattering details about Romney's finances and background; not a plus for him, but unlikely to matter much.
What else? What do you think mattered this week?
Friday Baseball Post
Grumble grumble Sabean grumble grumble.
There's no shortstop. There's really no LF. I've been reading all winter about how Aubrey Huff is in terrific shape and all, but we all know that guys who are 35 and coming off a terrible year and have only been good two of the last five years aren't going to return to peak, and are probably going to be awful, no matter what they say in January.
Sabean has some real strengths as a GM, but there's really no reason for this team to not be gearing up for a serious pennant run this year, and as of now he's just not doing it. You just don't want to waste peak years of major stars because you leave massive holes in your lineup.
One of the things that Sabean has always been terrible at is figuring out when there are windows of opportunity and acting on them (or, on the other hand, realizing that it's not the right year and using the time to improve for the future. I hate to just complain about the guy -- again, he has some serious strengths. But it sure is frustrating rooting for his teams.
There's no shortstop. There's really no LF. I've been reading all winter about how Aubrey Huff is in terrific shape and all, but we all know that guys who are 35 and coming off a terrible year and have only been good two of the last five years aren't going to return to peak, and are probably going to be awful, no matter what they say in January.
Sabean has some real strengths as a GM, but there's really no reason for this team to not be gearing up for a serious pennant run this year, and as of now he's just not doing it. You just don't want to waste peak years of major stars because you leave massive holes in your lineup.
One of the things that Sabean has always been terrible at is figuring out when there are windows of opportunity and acting on them (or, on the other hand, realizing that it's not the right year and using the time to improve for the future. I hate to just complain about the guy -- again, he has some serious strengths. But it sure is frustrating rooting for his teams.
"Establishment"
Andrew Sullivan took aim earlier this week at the notion that there's any "Republican establishment" out there to stand up to Newt Gingrich:
I try very hard not to use the word "establishment," precisely because I have no idea what it means. Nor do I think that "insider" vs. "outsider" is usually a useful category. In normal politics, people use those labels as part of the rhetoric of intraparty (and interparty for that matter) competition, which is interesting in terms of political culture and public opinion but tells us little about influence within parties. What I talk about are party actors, and (less often and more problematically) party leaders. I can't speak for all political scientists on this one, but that's who we should be talking about, in my view. These party actors include a lot of people: politicians, campaign and governing professionals, activists, formal party officials and staff, leaders of party-aligned interest groups, and the partisan press.
Some of those may be in the working majority of the party; some may not be. There's no theoretical reason to believe that everyone within any category will agree on anything, nor that people will agree across categories. That is, a party may have a situation in which the activists lean one way and the Washington-based politicians and others lean the other, but it's equally possible that activists will be split, or campaign professionals will be split, etc. Nor is there any theoretical expectation, in my view -- and here I differ from others who think about parties, I believe -- that one or another of these groups will be the most influential. In other words, I don't think that parties are "really" their politicians, or "really" the interest group which align with them, or "really" their formal organizations. Instead, I believe that any of those are possible, and that it's an empirical question which portion of the party is most influential in any particular time and place.
With me so far? What I'm saying is that influence within political parties is at least potentially contested, and nominations -- especially for the highest office -- are where those fights, fights which define what the party is, take place. Of course, sometimes there's no fight because everyone, or most everyone, agrees. When that's the case, it's very hard for us to see who is actually more influential. At other times, there are fights, and then we can get a better sense of who wields influence, but it can be extremely hard to study this stuff, because it's not a simple matter of casting votes or other easily counted indicators. Some party actors give money. Others make public endorsements. But some exert their influence in less visible ways, such as by spreading overall impressions of candidates within the party network. That's the kind of thing that's hard to get at without a lot of careful work. Remember, even the people involved may have inaccurate perceptions of who has the most influence.
Now, back to "Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin." Are they the most powerful players in the Republican Party? We don't know! We certainly know that if the GOP-aligned partisan press is united against a candidate in a nomination fight, that candidate will lose; after all, most GOP primary voters get most of their information from the partisan press, and believe what they hear. But that's not enough to tell us that Rush and Ailes are the critical players here. We don't know how much autonomy any individual talk show host, or even the head of Fox News, has, and it's very difficult at best to figure it out. I'm certain that they're not all-powerful, that there are at powerful constraints preventing them from just choosing on their own. After all, there's a death sentence that the party can pronounce on any of them: Not Conservative. RINO. But of course that's begging the question: who gets to declare someone else Not Conservative? Who can do it and have it stick?
So: certainly, Rush and Fox News are highly visible actors within the GOP, and certainly, they do a lot to originate or spread the ways that Republicans talk about things. Who exactly has the most influence within the party, however, is a much more complicated question. It's not best answered, in my view, by focusing only on the most visible actors, nor by positing that there's an "establishment/insurgent" split -- the latter just doesn't seem to fit very well.
When it comes to claims from me and others that (as Cohen et al. put it) The Party Decides, what we're saying -- at least what I'm saying -- is not that a party establishment trumps other party actors. It's that party actors are more important than the other players in the process: the (neutral) press; rank-and-file voters; and the candidates themselves, at least thought of as individual actors outside of the party (one way that the party controls things is through the transformation of self-interested candidates into party-oriented candidacies). That wasn't especially true for a variety of reasons, in my view, in the immediate post-reform era, at least on the Democratic side (that is, in the 1972 and 1976 cycles), which among other things reminds us that it doesn't always have to work that way. But by the 1984 cycle and going forward, it seems to be the case. It just isn't plausible these days for a candidate who is opposed by a sufficient number of sufficiently important party actors, whether individuals or groups, to get a nomination, no matter how able that candidate is at appealing to voters. The party, collectively, just controls too many resources that are needed to win nominations, whether it's money, or positive publicity, or personnel.
Again, that doesn't preclude intraparty fights, or predict who will win those fights. And it doesn't mean that the views of rank-and-file voters are irrelevant: those voters are often the constituents of party actors, who therefore care what they want (they also are used by party actors as clues to a candidate's electibility, for better or worse). Recall, too, that parties are permeable; it's generally very easy for rank-and-file voters to become party actors, although of course how influential they'll be depends on lots of things. But when we try to figure out what's up in these contests, the place to start is by thinking about where the party is. Not the mythical "establishment," whatever that is, but all of the party -- that is, all party actors. That's going to get us a lot farther down the road than any other form of analysis.
I'm not sure what this phrase means or represents any more - the Chamber of Commerce? John Boehner? The Bush family? But the concept of a responsible, sane, pragmatic party leadership able to corral or coax or manage a party's base is, it seems to me, a preposterous fiction on its face, as we are seeing. The Republican Establishment is Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin.Andrew Sprung called this "a crowbar to the political scientists' notion of a Republican 'party establishment.'" I should take a minute to explain where I stand on this.
I try very hard not to use the word "establishment," precisely because I have no idea what it means. Nor do I think that "insider" vs. "outsider" is usually a useful category. In normal politics, people use those labels as part of the rhetoric of intraparty (and interparty for that matter) competition, which is interesting in terms of political culture and public opinion but tells us little about influence within parties. What I talk about are party actors, and (less often and more problematically) party leaders. I can't speak for all political scientists on this one, but that's who we should be talking about, in my view. These party actors include a lot of people: politicians, campaign and governing professionals, activists, formal party officials and staff, leaders of party-aligned interest groups, and the partisan press.
Some of those may be in the working majority of the party; some may not be. There's no theoretical reason to believe that everyone within any category will agree on anything, nor that people will agree across categories. That is, a party may have a situation in which the activists lean one way and the Washington-based politicians and others lean the other, but it's equally possible that activists will be split, or campaign professionals will be split, etc. Nor is there any theoretical expectation, in my view -- and here I differ from others who think about parties, I believe -- that one or another of these groups will be the most influential. In other words, I don't think that parties are "really" their politicians, or "really" the interest group which align with them, or "really" their formal organizations. Instead, I believe that any of those are possible, and that it's an empirical question which portion of the party is most influential in any particular time and place.
With me so far? What I'm saying is that influence within political parties is at least potentially contested, and nominations -- especially for the highest office -- are where those fights, fights which define what the party is, take place. Of course, sometimes there's no fight because everyone, or most everyone, agrees. When that's the case, it's very hard for us to see who is actually more influential. At other times, there are fights, and then we can get a better sense of who wields influence, but it can be extremely hard to study this stuff, because it's not a simple matter of casting votes or other easily counted indicators. Some party actors give money. Others make public endorsements. But some exert their influence in less visible ways, such as by spreading overall impressions of candidates within the party network. That's the kind of thing that's hard to get at without a lot of careful work. Remember, even the people involved may have inaccurate perceptions of who has the most influence.
Now, back to "Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, and their mainfold products, from Hannity to Levin." Are they the most powerful players in the Republican Party? We don't know! We certainly know that if the GOP-aligned partisan press is united against a candidate in a nomination fight, that candidate will lose; after all, most GOP primary voters get most of their information from the partisan press, and believe what they hear. But that's not enough to tell us that Rush and Ailes are the critical players here. We don't know how much autonomy any individual talk show host, or even the head of Fox News, has, and it's very difficult at best to figure it out. I'm certain that they're not all-powerful, that there are at powerful constraints preventing them from just choosing on their own. After all, there's a death sentence that the party can pronounce on any of them: Not Conservative. RINO. But of course that's begging the question: who gets to declare someone else Not Conservative? Who can do it and have it stick?
So: certainly, Rush and Fox News are highly visible actors within the GOP, and certainly, they do a lot to originate or spread the ways that Republicans talk about things. Who exactly has the most influence within the party, however, is a much more complicated question. It's not best answered, in my view, by focusing only on the most visible actors, nor by positing that there's an "establishment/insurgent" split -- the latter just doesn't seem to fit very well.
When it comes to claims from me and others that (as Cohen et al. put it) The Party Decides, what we're saying -- at least what I'm saying -- is not that a party establishment trumps other party actors. It's that party actors are more important than the other players in the process: the (neutral) press; rank-and-file voters; and the candidates themselves, at least thought of as individual actors outside of the party (one way that the party controls things is through the transformation of self-interested candidates into party-oriented candidacies). That wasn't especially true for a variety of reasons, in my view, in the immediate post-reform era, at least on the Democratic side (that is, in the 1972 and 1976 cycles), which among other things reminds us that it doesn't always have to work that way. But by the 1984 cycle and going forward, it seems to be the case. It just isn't plausible these days for a candidate who is opposed by a sufficient number of sufficiently important party actors, whether individuals or groups, to get a nomination, no matter how able that candidate is at appealing to voters. The party, collectively, just controls too many resources that are needed to win nominations, whether it's money, or positive publicity, or personnel.
Again, that doesn't preclude intraparty fights, or predict who will win those fights. And it doesn't mean that the views of rank-and-file voters are irrelevant: those voters are often the constituents of party actors, who therefore care what they want (they also are used by party actors as clues to a candidate's electibility, for better or worse). Recall, too, that parties are permeable; it's generally very easy for rank-and-file voters to become party actors, although of course how influential they'll be depends on lots of things. But when we try to figure out what's up in these contests, the place to start is by thinking about where the party is. Not the mythical "establishment," whatever that is, but all of the party -- that is, all party actors. That's going to get us a lot farther down the road than any other form of analysis.
Catch of the Day
To Ed Kilgore over at Washington Monthly, who read the WSJ editorial page, and so he deserves some sort of compensation. In this case, it was the WSJ's crazed support for the idea that the only reason anyone is concerned about climate change is immediate self-interest. As Kilgore says:
Gee, you’d think in all this tough-minded truth-telling about those with a financial stake in the climate change debate the Journal might have noted in passing that the most powerful economic interests on the planet have an interest in doing nothing about it.Oh well. Kevin Drum piles on:
Climate change isn't merely wrong — that would be boring — it's an immense conspiracy being waged by a group of nerdy scientists (who want funding) and tree huggers (who are desperate to control everyone else's lives). And it's a damn successful conspiracy, too. Despite the fact that it requires thousands and thousands of participants from nearly every country in the world, with new collaborators earning PhDs every month, not a single one of them has broken the climate omerta yet and blown the whole thing open. But someone will, any day now. Just you wait.Just to try to add a bit of value of my own here...while Drum, I think correctly, talks about long-term conspiracy theorizing on the right, I would add that a lot of the way conservatives talk now is very much driven by embarrassing presidential candidate and failed and disgraced Speaker Newt Gingrich. The other thing I'll say, and I should mention that this is purely speculative, is that in my view this kind of rhetoric is utterly ineffective at persuading anyone, and if anything tends to hurt with undecideds; what it's mainly good for is manipulating people who are already inclined to agree with you. Which is great if your goal is to squeeze more money out of your marks, but not particularly useful if you actually want to achieve policy goals.
Hey, Reporters! (Debate Edition)
I've seen a few commenters (see for example here) treat the Florida debate audience last night as autonomous actors, neutral (between candidates) partisans who were honestly reacting to what they heard from the stage. I also read my brother the expert Romney-watcher's tweet during the action:
Pundits watching: be careful. And, I guess, I have to recommend this of all things: be more cynical. Please don't assume that debate audiences are a random cross-section of party voters. It's possible -- but campaigns rarely leave to chance those things that they can control, and if you don't know, it's safest to assume that an enthusiastic crowd is that way for a reason.
Strange that it took the Romney campaign 19 takes to realize that they should pack the debate hall.I'm inclined to believe that it was a packed hall, and not spontaneous reactions -- but I don't know! Hey, reporters: first of all, we really should know whether Romney packed the hall or not last night. Second, and more basically: the audiences at GOP debates this year were a big story, and one that was underreported throughout. I know a lot of reporters are at this things live; who is packing the audience and how effectively should be a standard part of every debate story.
Pundits watching: be careful. And, I guess, I have to recommend this of all things: be more cynical. Please don't assume that debate audiences are a random cross-section of party voters. It's possible -- but campaigns rarely leave to chance those things that they can control, and if you don't know, it's safest to assume that an enthusiastic crowd is that way for a reason.
The Number of New Jobless Benefit Claims for the First Week of 2012
How many people filed for new unemployment insurance benefits in the first week of January 2012?
We'll find out the answer to that question later this morning, but in the meantime, we can make a pretty good guess using our updated forecast chart for the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims filed each week!
Assuming the trend established since 9 April 2011 remains intact, and that the variation of individual data points with respect to that mean trend line follows a normal, bell-curve kind of distribution, we can give the following odds that the number of seasonally-adjusted new jobless claims for the week ending 7 January 2012 will fall within the indicated ranges:
- There is a 50% chance the number will be above 384,593. Likewise, there is a 50% chance the number will be below 384,593.
- There is a 68.3% chance that the number will be between 372,552 and 396,634.
- There is a 95.4% chance that the number will be between 360,510 and 408,676.
- There is a 99.7% chance that the number will be between 348,469 and 420,717.
Using our statistical control chart-inspired methodology, should the number of seasonally-adjusted initital unemployment insurance claim filings for the week ending 7 January 2012 come in either below 348,469 or above 420,717, it would be an indication that the trend established since 9 April 2011 is potentially breaking down.
As you can see though, it's been going pretty strongly for nearly eight full months now. If it continues through the end of March 2012, it will be very unlikely that we'll see the number of new jobless claims climb above the 400,000 mark, where it spent much of 2011.
In looking deeper at the chart, we see some indications that the established trend may indeed be breaking down. Here, in going from 17 September 2011 to 24 September 2011 and then again from 26 November 2011 to 10 December 2011, we see that the volatility in the number of new unemployment benefit claim filings being recorded each week has increased.
If that continues, the big unknown for us right now is that we don't know yet which way the numbers will break!
Update (12 January 2012, 9:36 AM: Here's the updated chart, incorporating the data from today's report:
Today's new jobless claim value of 399,000 was just outside our 68.3% probability range. Given the BLS' track record in under-reporting the actual number of new jobless claims each week, we can reasonably expect that the figure for the week ending 7 January 2012 will be revised upward in the next report to be 400,000 or higher.
Today's number also underscores the increasing level of volatility in the data - when the current trend was establishing itself, it was characterized by relatively small changes in the number of new jobless claims being filed from week to week.
Today new data marks the fourth time in the last six weeks in which the size of the change in the reported numbers from week to week has exceeded one standard deviation. That's specifically what we're looking at when we suggest that the established trend may be beginning to break down.
Cavalcade of Risk #148
Welcome to the 148th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk!
For our readers who see our posts through sites that pick up its RSS news feed, the Cavalacade of Risk is a throwback to the early days of social media on the web, where individual bloggers (aka "the host") would solicit other bloggers to contribute posts to which they would link, usually related to a given theme (such as personal finance, or to use today's example, risk.)
In those old days, blog carnivals were a way that new or little known bloggers could attract more traffic to their sites. The bloggers who would host a particular carnival would change with every edition.
Today, blog carnivals are essentially obsolete - they've fully been replaced by what might be described as Social Media 3.0 - where sites like Facebook or Twitter rule in driving traffic to what people might find interesting to read.
Now, since it's fallen to us to host the 148th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk, we should point out that the risk of finding your endeavors becoming obsolete is a very real risk - we can't count the number of blog carnivals that have fallen by the wayside just because no-one thought they were worth continuing.
But the Cavalcade of Risk is a bit different - it has benefited from an organizing force in the form of Insureblog's Hank Stern, who has managed to make it last 148 editions.
Or 149, if you count the next edition, which will be hosted in two weeks time at the NotWithStanding blog!
But to get back to our contribution to this week's Cavalcade of Risk, having a solid organizing force behind an endeavor then is essential for sustaining it over the long term - thus, reducing the risk of obsolescence and having your endeavor fall by the wayside!
Now, onto the Cavalcade of Risk - all those who contributed posts for consideration to this 148th edition of the cavalcade are presented below for your reading pleasure!
| Cavalcade of Risk #148 |
|---|
| Date Contributed | Post Title | Blog Name | Rating | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-01-03 | How Much of Your Investment Portfolio Can You Afford to Lose? | Arbor Asset Allocation Model Portfolio | Bb2 | Ken Faulkenberry argues that all investors need to have a plan for controlling their investment losses, as a way to avoid losing money! |
| 2012-01-05 | Insurance Regulation 2012: Reading the Tea Leaves | Insurance Regulatory Law | Bb2 | Van R. Mayhall, III outlines the many ways that insurance regulation will dominate governmental affairs in 2012, particularly at the state level. |
| 2012-01-05 | Pollution Coverage in the New York Business Auto Policy | Ask Tim | Bb3 | If you're a fuel dealer in New York state, Tim Dodge's contribution will be of special interest to you - for everyone else though, not so much! (Somebody needs to ask Tim more interesting questions....) |
| 2012-01-05 | The Year in Review: Weird Claims in 2011 | Risk Management for the 21st Century | Aa2 | Nancy Germond reviews the wacky year that was to identify the most unexpected risks that resulted in big settlements! |
| 2012-01-05 | Insurance Policies to Avoid at All Costs | Free Money Wisdom | Bb3 | Jon the Saver really doesn't like three different kinds of insurance: extended warranties, credit card life insurance and ID theft insurance. That's pretty much it.... |
| 2012-01-06 | Health, Risk and History | Insureblog | Bb2 | Hank Stern points to a blog post at Frank Jacobs' wonderful Strange Maps blog, which features a map dividing 19th century American into medical insurance underwriting zones. |
| 2012-01-07 | The Ineffectiveness of Asset Testing for Public Health Insurance Eligibility | Colorado Health Insurance Insider | Bb2 | Louise Norris protests against state legislators' attempts to apply means testing to Medicaid recipients, which would keep people with millions in assets, but not in the form of income, from drawing Medicaid benefits, arguing that the federal government's grants to the state prohibit the practice. |
| 2012-01-08 | Geographical Areas for Insurance Underwriting | Chatswood Consulting Limited | Ba2 | Russell Hutchinson picks up on Hank Stern's map pointer, and reveals that what seems to be a strange concept from history to Hank in the U.S. is not so strange elsewhere in the world (and provides examples!) |
| 2012-01-09 | Health Wonk Review, OSHA, State Reports, and the Single Best Thing for Your Health | Workers' Comp Insider | Ab2 | Julie Ferguson offers her own homemade blog carnival expansion for the Cavalcade of Risk, complete with links to a number of workers' comp-related links from around the web and blogosphere! And best of all, a video that describes the single best thing you can do for your health in 2012! |
Say, What Are Those Ratings?
| Blog Post Rating System for Blog Carnivals | ||
|---|---|---|
| Topicality [Capital Letter] | Information Quality [Small Letter] | Readability [Number] |
| A - Fully On Topic B - Related Topic C - Way Off Topic D - Spam | a - Makes You Smarter b - Makes You Informed c - Makes You Stupider | 1 - Highly Readable 2 - Average Quality 3 - Potentially Painful |
Every so often, the Cavalcade of Risk's hosts have to deal with the problem of people contributing posts that are either totally unrelated spam or that don't have much to do with the concept of risk. Normally, they ignore those kinds of posts, but still have to go to the time and trouble of reading and reviewing them only to find out that they wasted their time because the contributor chose to ignore the guidelines for contributing posts to each edition of the Cavalcade of Risk.
So, back when we first hosted the Cavalcade of Risk (Edition #66), we concocted the idea of adapting the rating system for bonds and other debt instruments to evaluate the quality of posts contributed to the Cavalcade! The table showing our Blog Post Rating System for Blog Carnivals describes how to interpret the ratings we've awarded above!
Apparently, the message got out this week, because we didn't have to downgrade any contributions to the dreaded Dc3 rating. But then, others weren't so lucky for the previous editions of the Cavalcade of Risk we've hosted:
- Cavalcade of Risk (#66!)
- Cavalcade of Risk 102
- Cavalcade of Risk 117
- Cavalcade of Risk #133
- Cavalcade of Risk #148