Happy Birthday to Jonathan Frakes, 61. Fire at will! Directed an excellent episode of Dollhouse. On the other hand: Sub Rosa. Fire at will!
Another week, another load of good stuff:
1. International treaties banning weapons...actually seem to work pretty well. From Charli Carpenter.
2. Ed Kilgore remembers Bert Lance.
3. Ezra Klein on young healthies and health insurance.
4. David Roberts on climate and conservatives.
5. Philip Klein is right about debates.
6. Josh Putnam on what, if anything, the RNC can do about debates it doesn't want.
7. And Reid Wilson introduces GovBeat. Excellent.
I don't think Klein is right about the debates. I don't have data to back up perception, but it seems to me likely that the extended GOP freak show may have put off some voters w/out strong party affiliations, and that Romney's "self-deportation immigration position and embrace of massive tax cuts may have hurt him in the general. 20 Dem debates didn't hurt Obama because Democrats can discuss policy without insulting tens of millions of Americans at a throw or sounding like frauds and paranoiacs.
ReplyDeleteSo your argument is that Democrats discuss policy, while Republicans compete to sound more conservative then the other guys? I don't think that that's inconsistent with what Klein said.
DeleteKlein's argument was that after the fact of the election, it's clear that the debates made Obama better prepared for the general. Which was why Republicans agreed to have so many debates in 2012! It didn't turn out so well for them.
While JB has argued that the RNC has marginal control over how many debates they have, they've apparently come to the conclusion that Romney was in too many of them.
I think that when there are more than one legitimate, qualified candidate, debates serve an important purpose: to explain who the candidates are so that the voters can choose. When there's enough support in the party to maintain a "freak show," then the debates serve the exact same function.
p.s. I suppose that some poli scientist's "it doesn't matter data" might convince me I'm wrong...I added this caveat because I'm so pleased with my phrase. What do political scientists bring to our debates about campaign earthquakes like the Etch-a-Sketch or even the first debate in Oct '12? "It doesn't matter data."
ReplyDeleteJohn Sides has written about this, but I'm too lazy to look it up. I think it's going to be very difficult to find any effect from primary election debates to general election results. Not enough people watch those primary debates, and those who do are going to be the most intense partisans. That, plus the passage of time, just makes it highly unlikely there's any real effect.
DeleteIt makes sense to say that swing voters weren't sitting around in 2011 watching the Republican debates to make up their mind on which party to support the following year. But several of Romney's remarks during those debates generated a lot of publicity and continued to be quoted throughout the next year (partly thanks to Dems who wanted to keep reminding voters of what he had said), and I'd like to see some evidence that it contributed nothing to creating or reinforcing a negative perception of Romney among certain voters--for example, that his "self-deportation" remark had nothing to do with the low support he got from Latinos in the fall.
DeleteJohn would not doubt point to the data that Romney wasn't seen as more ideologically extreme than Obama.
DeleteI think more generally: in a contested primary, you're going to get the eventual nominee saying some things that might theoretically hurt him or her in the general election. The question, beyond whether those things really do hurt in November, is whether debates make those things more likely or worse. I think it's very unlikely.
What did Obama say to Clinton during their primary that hurt him in the general election?
DeleteI'm aware that polls showed the public didn't perceive Romney as ideologically extreme, but that doesn't prove to me he wasn't hurt by particular stands he took during the primaries, among specific voting blocs. I'd be especially interested to see research into why he did so poorly among Latinos. If it had anything to do with his being perceived as unfriendly to the interests of Latinos, then it seems to me quite plausible that the "self-deportation" remark contributed to this impression.
DeleteBut then the question is whether it was a debate comment per se mattered. I'd think it's a stretch; Romney's comment wasn't some sort of gaffe, but logical position-taking within the context of the 2012 GOP and the field of candidates.
DeleteMy guess, anyway, is that Romney's vote among Latinos is fully explained by the normal Latino vote plus Obama's record plus other fundamentals plus the general GOP behavior on immigration (the AZ law, etc) during the cycle. I'd be very surprised if Romney's position in particular contributed much, and even more surprised if it was a specifically *debates* factor.
So is Roberts is trying to reach the patrons of conservatism, who care whether there might be a future for the planet or their children?
ReplyDeleteRoberts is silly. What he doesn't understand is that to get something, you have to give up something. Yes, some Democrats are willing to make a carbon tax "revenue-neutral," but their idea of revenue neutral is always handouts to the (word I'm not allowed to say), not much-needed lower tax rates for job-creators.
ReplyDeleteYou could get even the most extreme Tea Partier to sign up for a revenue-neutral carbon tax paired with a flat tax, a balanced budget amendment, and abolition of the EPA. So there is a middle-ground somewhere, if Democrats want to find it. But foolish sky-is-falling rhetoric and false compromise will not get you an iota of support.
A flat tax, for income and capital gains, with zero deductions?
DeleteYou really think Mitt Romney pays that much in taxes?
Flat tax, no more than 8%. And obviously capital gains shouldn't be taxes, that's double-taxation of the same income.
DeleteEzra's column is pretty interesting, in that it ends up an appeal for the young healthies to "do their part for Mother Russia" and pay into an ACA that isn't in their interest, but stay tuned, someday it will be. I think his argument may point to something larger, i.e. there may only be two rational ways to manage health care in the modern world: the current American system and single-payer. Everything else is - well, we'll see - perhaps a disaster.
ReplyDeleteAs we all no doubt know, insurance works by getting the non-consumers of the service to subsidize the consumers. For homeowners or automobile insurance, its relatively hard to tell, beforehand, who the non-consumers are. For health insurance its much easier.
Klein's answer is well, maybe you don't know (true, but its pretty easy to calculate the risk-reward of paying the small ACA penalty for non-compliance). Even if you do know, please play along, make America great, support the ACA, pay in more than you get out.
Getting back to the open, the reason why the current large-group part of the American health care landscape may end up being preferable to the ACA (at least for the "health care landed gentry" who have access to it) is that there is a pretty significant barrier to non-compliance for large group, corporate consumers: human resources. I would guess that any number of young healthy professionals realize during annual enrollment that the cost of the company's large group plan doesn't pay out for them; 100% of those folks don't want "refused health care" in their personnel file. Fear of HR is pretty compelling in that context.
The thing that compels the ACA to succeed is 'don't disappoint Ezra Klein'. We'll see, I guess.
For what it's worth...I liked most of Ezra's column, but not the part you highlight. I think asking people to make health insurance decisions for the greater political good is pretty silly in either direction.
DeleteThat doesn't take away from the big point: arranging the market so that young healthies get a somewhat worse deal than they would in some other health insurance regime is hardly oppressive and unjust.
Now, IMO, most rich young healthies eligible for the exchanges would be nuts not to get health insurance. Yet, it's almost certainly a negative expectation play, but a smart one nevertheless because you really don't want that downside risk. But, yeah, I don't think anyone should make health insurance decisions based on their desire to see ACA succeed or fail.
I can't recall where I saw this, but I read somewhere recently that a shockingly small (I think...60?) percentage of eligible employees sign up for their company's large group health plan each year. Beyond the HR stigma, it would seem that the company's subsidized health care is 'good' for those folks - which makes their lack of compliance concerning.
DeleteI think I agree with your assessment about the rich young healthies; perhaps they will see health insurance similarly to how someone like a Koch Brother views umbrella insurance (i.e. I'm building a bit of a nest egg, and the whole house of cards might tumble down). That motivation is offset somewhat by the hospital's requirement to treat emergency cases (thus leaving the young healthy really only terribly at risk for the onset of a chronic disease). Also offset by wherever the rates shake out. Plus the "going" length of open enrollment.
Oh, and the fact that the 99.99999% of us who are poorer than a Koch are often really bad at planning this type of stuff on our own.
CSH - if you don't mind my asking, do you have health insurance? I do, and have since the day I was born, first through my parents then through my employers. Until all the brouhaha over Obamacare, it was my impression that most people who could get health insurance did, and were grateful to have it. For one thing, it would be supremely irresponsible, imo, to refuse to get health insurance - tax free with my employers picking up part of the tab - in the belief that if I happened to get really sick or injured, my parents or perhaps charity care would bail me out.
DeleteGeoff G, my health insurance story sounds about the same as yours. Further, my personal view of the value of health insurance is probably pretty similar to yours. I guess you could read that into the use of "shockingly" to describe the apparent low rate of compliance with corporate group health insurance.
DeleteI'm not certain, but I believe I have not made any normative or ideological arguments about the ACA back here. If anyone cares, I'm personally nervously supportive of the legislation.
I just can't imagine why anyone would care what my personal preference is.
Actually, Geoff, if we are getting a little personal, I had a terrible health care experience when I was 19, wholly unexpected and where I was quite fortunate to have the advances of modern American medicine to save me - and my parents' health insurance to underwrite the whole thing.
DeleteThis is entirely anecdotal, obviously, but my impression then, and since, is that my fellow-traveller "young healthies" didn't then, or since, have much of a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I reaction to my situation. I was much more the weird guy with the illness that uncomfortably challenged the delightful illusion of immortality.
Based solely on my own anecdote, I don't feel terribly confident that young healthies (who are wealthy) will internalize what's at stake in signing up in the exchanges.
Thanks, CSH. I hope I didn't offend you by asking what your personal preference is, that was not my intent. I was mostly curious as to whether I'm some kind of outlier because I wanted the security of health insurance even when I could plausibly be considered "young" and healthy.
DeleteI can see where young healthy wealthies might want to forgo insurance, but I don't know if there are enough of those folks to impact the risk pool.
Geoff, absolutely no offense taken. If anything, I should probably apologize for the pretentiousness of claiming to wall off my preferences from comments here. I try to, but sometimes the line is thin between 'how I think the world is' and 'how I want it to be'.
DeleteThis ACA stuff is pretty fascinating. I think that over the next 12-18 months, the transition might either be totally smooth or a total train wreck, and either way we'll say after the fact that we knew it all along. Interesting times, indeed.