A Democratic Majority?

Photo Credit: WhiteHouse.gov

Yesterday, Democrat Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as U.S. President. His party, in fact, has won at least a plurality of the votes in five of the past six presidential elections. On average, Democrats have received about 4.5 million more votes than Republicans in every presidential election since George H.W. Bush won decisively in 1988. Was that the end of the Reagan era?

The Democratic party has also controlled the U.S. Senate since the 2006 midterm elections. Indeed, in the fifteen years between January 2001 and January 2015, Democrats will have controlled the Senate for all but four and one-half years. That's roughly two-thirds of the years to-date of the twenty-first century.

Republicans currently control the U.S. House of Representatives, but this is thanks largely to gerrymandering and quirks of political geography. Democratic candidates in the 2012 elections received one million more votes than did Republicans. Indeed, FairVote.org has estimated that Democrats were actually preferred roughly 52-48% by the electorate in the most recent elections. The Democrats controlled a majority of the House from January 2007 until January 2011, which means they have won a meaningful majority of votes cast in three of the past four congressional elections.

Why mention these facts? Well, it is interesting how quickly political reality can change. Remember when some pundits and insiders were predicting a "durable" majority position held by the Republican Party?

That alleged majority was built largely on the Republican control of the south and the exurbs. To get a taste of the era, consider the following analysis that I found while going through old drafts of posts that were never posted on this blog. The piece was written by Ronald Brownstein in the February 2006 issue of The American Prospect. The columnist was reviewing four contemporary books about the South and American politics:

The South now furnishes the decisive votes for Republican control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. Outside the South, Democrats still hold the advantage in the competition on all three fronts. But the Republican dominance of the South has grown so pronounced that it swamps the Democratic strengths elsewhere and provides the GOP with its margin of majority for both Congress and the White House.

Consider the Senate. In the 11 states of the old Confederacy plus Oklahoma and Kentucky -- the generally accepted political definition of the South -- Republicans hold 22 of the 26 Senate seats. In the rest of the country, Democrats control seven more Senate seats than the GOP....

The same is true in the House. Outside the South, Democrats hold a 152-140 edge in House seats....The imbalance is even more pronounced in the race for the White House. In 2000, Al Gore won just over 70 percent of the Electoral College votes at stake outside the South. But George W. Bush narrowly won the White House because he swept all 165 Electoral College votes in the 13 southern states. Four years later, John Kerry won 68 percent of the Electoral College votes outside the South. But Bush won because he again swept the 13 Southern states -- this time worth 168 Electoral College votes after population growth measured in the 2000 Census.

In my review of the 2004 presidential election results, I noted some "ongoing demographic changes" that were already influencing voting patterns in Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia. I described these as a "good sign for Democrats for 2008 and beyond," even though they had just experienced their most disappointing election of the past quarter century.

I suspect, somewhere, Republican analysts are looking at the most recent voting and demographic data in an effort to find some pathways to victory in 2016.


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2020 Presidential Election: A Blue Blowout?

Photo credit: Troy McCullough (Idle Type)

Last Friday, Congress certified the 2012 Electoral College results and Barack Obama was officially reelected by a tally of 332 to 206. Unofficially, the Associated Press counted the number of individual votes the candidates received in nationwide balloting. In the AP's final election result, Obama got 51.1% of the vote, while Mitt Romney received 47.2%.

Many analysts have already highlighted the startling vote percentages Barack Obama achieved in 2012 among Latino and Asian voters. Here's how the Boston Globe framed it on November 9, 2012:

Exit polling by The New York Times showed Asian-Americans voted for Obama over Romney 73 percent to 26 percent, after backing him against John McCain 62 to 35...

Obama’s 47-point advantage among Asian-Americans on Election Day was bigger than his edge among Latinos, 44 points, or women, 11 points.

In 2008, Obama beat John McCain among Latinos by about two-to-one: 67% to 31%.  Romney managed to win only 27% of the Latino vote in 2012, while Obama won 71%. That's a bit better than 2.5 to one.

Given demographic changes, Latinos are expected to be an even greater electoral force in the coming decades. In 2010, there were about 50 million Hispanics living in the US, or about 13% of the population. By 2030, the numbers will be 78 million and they will comprise almost 22% of the population.

Asian-Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US. There were just over 17 million Asian-Americans counted in the 2010 census, constituting 5.6% of the population. If the last decade's population growth holds up, there will be more than 25 million Asian American in the US in 2020. The US government forecasts 20 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders living in the US by 2020. By 2050, they are expected to make up nearly 10% of the US population.

Unless Republicans can increase their appeal to these demographic groups, they are in for more electoral disasters. Republican election strategist Ed Gillespie pointed out in January 2012 that his party would be in big trouble by 2020 if even 2008 voting patterns held:

“If the Republican Party nominee in 2020—just two elections after this one--gets the same percentage of the white, African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American vote, according to current projections the Democrat will win the White House by 14 percentage points.”

In the policy realm, Vice President Joe Biden already predicts that the Republican party will recognize the reality and cooperate with Democrats to pass immigration reform in the new Congress.


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Turnout Unskewed?

I haven't blogged much about the presidential "horse race" this year. However, I've read a large number of articles about the state of the race and am generally convinced by the data and analysis presented by Nate Silver, Drew Linzer, Sam Wang, etc. Using primarily state-based polling data, these analysts see a solid lead for Barack Obama. In this work, the President's well-established lead in Ohio is a key firebreak that Mitt Romney cannot easily overcome.

Many conservative websites point to the Gallup likely voter national polling (temporarily suspended because of Hurricane Sandy) and challenge Silver et al. Romney has been winning handily in Gallup LV polling. One writer on Red State called the President "toast" because of his apparent failure to appeal to independent voters in 2012. Some conservatives ridicule the "Moneyball" election analysts. If national poll averages suggest a 50-50 election, then this is best seen as a coin flip like 2000 (or 2004), not a likely Obama victory.

Silver, famously, put the odds at an Obama victory at roughly 2-to-1 for many weeks and that ratio is now creeping past 3-to-1 towards 4-to-1. Wang thinks the President's chances are over 90%. Linzer is also confident that Obama will win.

If you read Silver consistently (or Linzer or Wang), they have at one time or another explained why all the conservative arguments are wrong. They don't employ ideology or wizardry, they use math.

For example, some critics and skeptics argue that Obama cannot win because young people and other enthusiastic 2008 voters are disillusioned with his presidency and will not vote next week. This will significantly depress 2012 turnout and pave the way for enthusiastic Republican anti-Obama voters to tilt the election to Romney. Silver responds analytically:

Suppose, for example, that you take the consensus forecast in each state. (By “consensus” I just mean: the average of the different forecasts.) Then you weigh it based on what each state’s share of the overall turnout was in 2008, in order to produce an estimate of the national popular vote.

Do the math, and you’ll find that this implies that Mr. Obama leads nationally by 1.9 percentage points — by no means a safe advantage, but still a better result for him than what the national polls suggest.
What if turnout doesn’t look like it did in 2008? Instead, what if the share of the votes that each state contributed was the same as in 2004, a better Republican year?

That doesn’t help to break the discord between state and national polls, unfortunately. Mr. Obama would lead by two percentage points in the consensus forecast weighing the states by their 2004 turnout.

Or we can weigh the states by their turnout in 2010, a very good Republican year. But that doesn’t help, either: instead, Mr. Obama leads by 2.1 percentage points based on this method.

Ohio polls close at 7:30 pm ET, though anyone in line at that time can still vote. Conceivably, the election could be effectively over if Obama clearly wins this key state at an early hour. On the other hand, there are going to be a large number of provisional ballots in Ohio-- perhaps more of them than the margin between Obama and Romney.  Since those ballots are not counted for 10 days, we might wake up next Wednesday without a clear winner. I find that unlikely, but these are the range of alternatives.

I would note that Obama will likely retain the presidency without Ohio, Florida,  and North Carolina (all states in won in 2008) if he holds on to the appropriate combination of Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin. Silver finds that Obama has a 1 to 4 point lead in each of those states.


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Staples and the 2012 Presidential Election

Mitt Romney claims that he is the superior choice for President because he has been a job creator thanks to his time in the private sector. Specifically, as the Wall Street Journal reported in July, Romney claims that he created "more than 100,000" jobs while running Bain Capital.

However, this figure seems to be overstated, as the WSJ noted:

Steven N. Kaplan, a finance professor at the University of Chicago who studies private equity, used another approach: counting 100% of the jobs gained and lost at Bain companies, but only until Mr. Romney left the firm in 1999. By that measure, Mr. Kaplan concluded that Mr. Romney had created "tens of thousands" of jobs....

"I don't think that an investor should get credit for the jobs created beyond the ones where an investor has a position in the company," said John M. Abowd, a labor economist at Cornell University who donated to the Obama 2012 campaign.

He suggests yet another way: Give Mr. Romney and Bain credit for a share of jobs created proportional to Bain's ownership stake in its investments at the time. Because Bain held minority stakes in all four firms, and sold out years ago, that method would produce a far lower total—less than 1,500.

By whatever counting method, it is clear that Staples figures prominently in Romney's jobs record. The Republican presidential candidate refers to Staples fairly frequently and the WSJ piece specifically evaluated Romney's contributions to the office supply company's success:

Mr. Romney includes in his tally the total Staples head count today, about 88,000 jobs. Securities filings show Bain owned 7.3% of the office-supply retailer when it went public in 1989 and had sold out by early 1992, when Staples had 5,300 employees.

Thomas Stemberg, Staples's founder and former CEO, said Mr. Romney's contribution to Staples came "from his personal advice, input and efforts, not his money." Mr. Stemberg, a major backer of the Romney campaign, said he would give Mr. Romney credit for 100% of Staples's 88,000 jobs.

By Mr. Kaplan's method, Mr. Romney should be credited with the 43,000 jobs Staples had when Mr. Romney left Bain in 1999. The weighted average count would be more like 250 jobs—a total Mr. Stemberg called "absurd."

Regarding Staples, the Journal does not address an issue that Mother Jones raised this past July:

Mitt Romney, who served on Staples' board of directors in addition to investing in the company when he was at Bain Capitol, likes to tout the chain as an example of private-sector success. But as the National Employment Law Project Action Fund points out in a new report, that success has not trickled down to employees.

The report lists Staples as one of the 50 largest low-wage employers in the US. The company has continued to turn high profits even in the recession, and its CEO made $8.8 million in 2011 (which was a 40 percent drop from what he made in 2010). And yet most of its nearly 33,000 employees make less than $10 per hour. 

The Mother Jones piece contrasts Staples to Costco, where employees earn $19 per hour, on average. Many (if not most) employees also receive health care benefits.

Readers might be interested to learn that the Costco CEO, Jim Sinegal, spoke at the Democratic National Convention:

“And that’s why I’m here, supporting President Obama, a president making an economy built to last,” Sinegal said in his prepared remarks. “See, in order for companies like Costco to invest, grow, hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires something from all of us.” And later: “here’s the thing about the Costco story: We did not build our company in a vacuum.”

The Washington Post story includes Sinegal's entire address, if you are interested. Incidentally, the Staples CEO, Stemberg, spoke at the RNC and often touts Romney in various media outlets.

I offer one note in closing for local readers: The cost-conscious University of Louisville Purchasing policy includes this opening paragraph in the section on office supplies:

"Office Supplies are to be purchased through the University's primary contractor, Staples Advantage. The cooperative effort between Staples and the Department of Purchasing continues to keep our University at the leading technological edge of procurement and together we are able to offer unprecedented discounts based on volume purchasing contracts. "

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Romney vs. Romney

Obviously, I haven't blogged as much about the 2012 election as I did the 2004 and 2008 campaigns. This does not mean that I am disengaged. Unfortunately, I simply have much less free time to blog than I did in those earlier years.

Also, I haven't focused too much attention on Mitt Romney because he seemed like such an obviously bad candidate -- a rich corporate raider running during an era when the Occupy movement brought new attention to decades of policies that spawned incredible inequality in the U.S. Even Romney's Republican rivals were bashing him about this record.

Moreover, Romney has demonstrably reversed his positions on many issues, apparently so that he could get elected in a Republican presidential primary system dominated by social conservatives and tea partiers.

The Romney that served as Governor of Massachusetts was more moderate than the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate versions and it appears that the relatively centrist Romney is back on the top shelf. However, this "new Romney" still has to reconcile his latest positions with the stands he took earlier in 2012. Hence, the Romney vs. Romney debate:




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Bill Clinton and the Facts at the DNC 2012

I did not watch Bill Clinton's speech at the 2012 DNC last night because I'm trying to catch up on a few missed episodes of "Breaking Bad." However, I've now listened to all of the address (and watched some of it) thanks to C-SPAN's complete 49 minute video:





The NY Times has the full transcript.

According to Bloomberg News, Clinton's big early applause line about the huge advantage in jobs created during Democratic versus Republican administrations is true:

since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs.

So what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million; Democrats, 42 (million). (Cheers, applause.)

Actually, Bloomberg didn't really find any significant factual errors in Clinton's speech. That's partly because he didn't do what many other Dems did last night. Consider Elizabeth Warren's address, as the Times reported it:

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Senate candidate, summed up Mitt Romney’s tax plans this way: 

“He wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires,” she said. “But for middle-class families who are hanging on by their fingernails? His plans will hammer them with a new tax hike of up to $2,000.” 

The Times noted that this charge "is not entirely accurate." That is odd phrasing, but easily explained. The problem is that Warren, like other Democrats, correctly calculated that the Romney tax "reforms" (including significant rate cuts and unidentified reductions in "loopholes") cannot possibly be revenue-neutral, as intended. As Clinton aptly noted on many occasions, the arithmetic just does not work.

Thus, Warren and others assume that the lost revenue would be made up primarily by closing loopholes that benefit the middle-class, such as the mortgage tax deduction or other benefits related to payment of college tuition.

The Times explains the problem with Romney's vague plans for the budget and taxes:

Many tax experts — from the left, the right and the center — do not think there is any way to do all of those things. 

When you cut tax rates that much, rich families’ tax liability falls considerably. For the tax plan to raise the same amount of money as it does now, someone would need to pay more. 

But it is not clear that Mr. Romney would raise taxes on the middle class. Instead, the plan might add to the deficit, make smaller cuts to marginal tax rates or take away preferential rates on investments and savings.

Former President Clinton avoided this problem, as Bloomberg noted, because "he showed the possible choices that Romney’s constraints would force."

It does seem a bit unfair that Democrats would be criticized for stretching the truth about Romney's tax and spending policies precisely because his plans are so slippery and unworkable. 

Incidentally, the Times also called out some Democrats for repeating the Romney line I've discussed about him allegedly liking to fire people. Fair point. Then again, the Republicans made a similar untruth the organizing theme of the convention.

Also, Democrats are essentially accused of hypocrisy for claiming that anti-terrorism initiatives will not "run afoul" of civil liberties or constitutional protections. Again, fair point. The drone war is deeply unsettling.

Unfortunately, the problem is primarily that President Obama has not reversed all of the egregious policies initiated by George W. Bush and other predecessors in the Oval office.


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"I like being able to fire people..."

In the interest of fairness, here's some information about that famous Mitt Romney line. The context is not always reported, but PolitiFact has it:

Romney was specifically talking about the ability to get rid of your health insurance provider when you aren’t satisfied with its services.

"I want individuals to have their own insurance," Romney said. "That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me."

So Romney wasn't referring to his work at Bain Capital -- or to the more general question of serving as a boss who has decided to fire employees of his company -- but rather the notion of switching service providers. He might as well have been talking about switching cellphone carriers or cable TV companies.

That's from January 11, 2012, so the main line has been percolating for some time. In fact, it was really more of an item during the Republican primary season.

Of course, this contextual information does not excuse the Romney campaign from its distortions of Obama's "You didn't built that" line.


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Bear cam

Have you wasted any time viewing Bear cam? This Wired story explains:

Media company Explore has teamed up with Alaska's Katmai National Park to install webcams that will deliver live video feeds of brown bears catching salmon in a popular feeding ground.

Each year, around a hundred bears travel to a stretch of Brooks River to fill their bellies with salmon. Now anyone with an internet connection can witness this gathering thanks to four high-definition cameras that have been set up in this remote part of Alaska. 

One camera is positioned at Brook Falls, where the larger male bears fight it out for salmon that are desperately trying to leap their way upstream.

This is the link to that camera: Brown Bear & Salmon Cam - Brooks Falls - Bears - explore

Warning: this is highly addictive.

Compare that to this 1980 Reagan campaign commercial to see how far we've progressed in our tolerance for bears (right?):




Yesterday, I watched as two bears postured somewhat violently towards one another. Meanwhile, a nearby bear was dining on salmon. This demonstrated that the two in the foreground learned nothing from the 2012 Republican primaries.


Note: Cross-posted at Duck of Minerva.

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Property Rights

The Nation recently published a book review by Princeton historian Hendrik Hartog that addresses a new work on property rights: American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own by Stuart Banner.

These are the key paragraphs in the review:

Central to the secret knowledge of property law is the recognition that property rests on the state. Most of the land that white America first lived on had to be expropriated—whether purchased or taken more or less violently—from Native America. Expropriation required an active and militarized state. To know what one owned, to be recognized as a legitimate possessor of property, relied on a series of steps usually including the payment of taxes and the recording of title in the county records office. Ownership usually involved the protection of the local police, and sometimes the state militia or the army. Even when a property owner exercised what property law calls “self-help”—for example, by evicting a tenant, pulling a gun on a trespasser or hiring Pinkertons—he or she knew (or should have known) that it was necessary to follow the rules of self-help set out by the state; otherwise, legitimate self-help would be redefined as criminal violence. Over the course of the past two centuries, the realm of legitimate self-help has dramatically narrowed. Meanwhile, throughout the twentieth century, the value and use of what one held increasingly depended on engagement with zoning boards and a variety of regulatory agencies.

The presence of the state is pervasive throughout Banner’s narrative. There is no period in American history that lies “before” regulation or public vexations. Private property has always found its origins, its recognition and its security in the largesse of the state, even as much of the sentimental claptrap that passes for historical understanding continues to deny that truth.

Obviously, the section at least indirectly speaks to some of the key issues in the current trumped up controversy being stirred by the Romney presidential campaign. As I discussed a few days ago, President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark, in context, was clearly referencing the underlying social contract.

As Banner and Hartog emphasize, every bit of private property in the U.S., even a private business, is deeply embedded in the power of the state.

Incidentally, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama largely agree about the government's role in promoting business, as Jon Stewart's The Daily Show has been illustrating the last couple of nights. This quote used by Stewart tonight is taken here from Think Progress:

ROMNEY: I know that you recognize a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the bank, the investors. There is no question your mom and dad, your school teachers. The people who provide roads, the fire, the police. A lot of people help.

Compare the highlighted text (from Think Progress) to the Obama speech I quoted the other day.

Update: Here's The Daily Show bit on this from Wednesday, July 25: 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democalypse 2012 - Do We Look Stupid? Don't Answer That Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

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The Underlying Social Contract

By now, these lines from Barack Obama have been burned into the 24/7 news cycle by the American right: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen." Mitt Romney on the campaign trail and Fox News in its programming (presuming you see a difference) have apparently been using it relentlessly.

Here's the video for those who have missed the uproar:



Here is the wider context from the White House website:

     I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them.  So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way.  We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.  (Applause.)  And, by the way, we’ve tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it.  We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine.  We created a lot of millionaires.

     There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

     If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

     The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people

Typical socialist, eh? He's talking about how government can promote free enterprise to grow the economy for everyone. Not exactly how Marx and Lenin mapped the future.

As others have noted, these words from Obama echo those of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (starting about 0:50):



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ACA Today

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Surprisingly, Chief Justice John Roberts voted in the majority and was thus the swing vote. Many court observers expected he would vote to uphold the act only if Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote. But Kennedy dissented. Roberts got to assign himself the task of writing the majority opinion, but few expected this to occur in favor of ACA unless the vote was 6-3.

Did Roberts abandon his fellow conservatives altogether? No. Roberts, in fact, did not agree with the four more liberal justices that the ACA could be justified by the Commerce Clause of the constitution. Readers might recall the back-and-forth about whether consumers might be required to purchase a product like broccoli under the interpretation of the Commerce Clause offered by the President's lawyers in the courtroom. Incidentally, while Roberts may have been quite concerned about forced broccoli purchases, Justice Ruth Ginsberg destroyed that argument in her concurring opinion.

In any event, Justice Roberts ruled with the liberal justices that Congress had the authority to implement an individual mandate via its power (from Article I and in the Sixteenth Amendment) to tax individuals. After all, both the House and Senate versions of the ACA enforced the individual mandate using the Internal Revenue Service to impose a modest fine -- or tax: 

Since the ACA’s fine for failure to carry insurance is very low (and statutorily calibrated to the price of insurance so that no one will ever pay more for refusing insurance than for buying insurance), since the fine applies regardless of whether the individual knew she was uninsured, and since the fine is assessed and collected exclusively by the IRS, the Court held that it is a tax rather than a penalty under the long-standing constitutional test.

Many conservatives are hotly claiming that the mandate was NOT explicitly sold as tax policy. Some even point to this video of Barack Obama vehemently denying that ACA is a tax. However, if you watch the video, Obama denies that the law is a tax increase, he doesn't say it is not a tax. His argument is that people who don't pay for health insurance effectively force taxpayers to expend their resources when the uninsured seek medical care for emergency care that they cannot otherwise afford.

Certainly by mid-July 2010, as this New York Times story demonstrates, the Obama White House was arguing that the law was constitutional as a tax even in the face of Tea Party opposition to higher taxes and more spending. Incidentally, that Times story also claims that Obama argued ACA was not a tax, but it then quotes from the same ABC-TV interview where he says it is not a tax increase. The newspaper cut short an exchange and make it appears as if the President directly challenges the idea.

"ObamaCare" will likely become a major issue in the presidential election, though Democrats have some powerful arguments to counter the likely Republican attacks. After all, as Ezra Klein and others have demonstrated, the Obama health care law was grounded in ideas borrowed from Republican think tanks over the past two decades. In the Heritage Foundation Lectures, Dr. Stuart Butler argued in  1989 for the government to simply "Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance." http://IBa BBack in 2010, left-leaning critics of ACA who favored the "public option" charged that this was a boondoggle for the private insurance companies as they would be getting millions of new customers thanks to this policy change.

In any case, conservative critics are also in trouble because Mitt Romney supported and helped pass a very similar bill in Massachusetts ("RomneyCare") during his tenure as governor. The Massachusetts individual mandate is enforced via the tax code. Thus, how can he, in particular, argue effectively against the ACA? I guess we will all find out in time.



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Meanwhile...

I have made a couple of blog posts elsewhere that may interest you:

On February 20 at the e-IR Climate Politics blog, I posted, "To Santorum et al: What would Reagan do?" I examine the climate comments of the remaining Republican candidates for President and compare then to Ronald Reagan's environmental record.

On February 9 at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "Walmart Still Isn't Green."


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Socialism is more popular than Rick Perry

Today, in a New Hampshire debate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, borrowed some rhetoric from Sarah Palin:

“We have a president who is a socialist,” Perry said in response to a question at the early-morning eye-opener GOP debate in Concord, N.H.

“I reject the premise that Obama reflects our founding fathers,” Perry said. “He doesn’t.”

I've dealt with this kind of labeling many times in the past, so there's no need to address the substance of the charge.

Instead, let me make a different point. Socialism is more popular in the United States than is Rick Perry. A Gallup poll from 2010 found that 36% of Americans had a favorable view of socialism. Granted, few Republicans share this view and Perry is first trying to win their nomination for President.

A Pew Research Center Poll from a bit later in 2010 found that 29% of Americans had a positive response to "socialism." Among people aged 30 and younger, both socialism and capitalism scored 43% positive. A Rasmussen survey from 2009 likewise reflected ambiguous results when comparing socialism to capitalism.

The latest Pew Research results from late December 2011 show socialism with a 31% positive response.

Among all Americans, in a number generated by averaging his poll results, Rick Perry has a favorability rating of just under 25%. He's getting drubbed by socialism.


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Around the web

Sorry for the silence lately. We traveled for Thanksgiving and I'm really making a push on the book project since the current sabbatical ends in four weeks.

Meanwhile, over at Duck of Minerva, you can read my post from November 30 on "Comprehending Gingrich." Does he have a Belgian pro-colonial worldview?

November 7 on the Duck, I posted "Hans Beinholtz: Europe For Sale." That post is basically a funny Stephen Colbert video about the Euro-crisis.

At the e-IR Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "The US is Not a Climate Outlaw?" on November 21. It is part 2 about my October talk at Cardiff University in Wales.


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Obama and Wall Street

Is Occupy Wall Street fueling a populist political movement on the left that can pave the way to new economic stimulus, dramatic economic reforms in the tax code, or whatever else they might seek? I'm not trying for cheap snark -- but they have been somewhat unclear about their goals.

Could the protest movement even help energize voters on the political left, in the same way the tea party did on the right in 2010, and thus help Barack Obama and other Democrats find victory in November 2012?

Or, as my Duck of Minerva colleague Megan MacKenzie argued today, should the White House be ashamed for ignoring (and thereby "insulting") the anti-Wall Street populism for the past 10 days?

I have to disagree with Megan on this one.

Sunday, Obama blasted Bank of America for its $5 fee on debit card users. "You don’t have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit, if your customers are being mistreated,” he said. Later, he added, “this is exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by.” Was that a nod to the protesters? It sure sounds like they are on the same side.

The National Journal today criticized the President for his overt "tax the rich" populism -- an approach some of his advisors apparently think will fail in key swing states. Steve Benen dismissed that take, however.

A month ago, independents sided with the GOP by a five-point margin on creating jobs, but now we independents siding with Obama by 13 points. That’s a pretty dramatic swing in a fairly short period of time, suggesting that those arguing that the president is driving independent voters away with his new economic message have this precisely backwards.

Google the White House website for "Wall Street" and you learn that the President or his chief spokespersons have been demonizing Wall Street in some way almost every day -- and pointing out that their reform law was aimed at tightening regulation. Here's a sample from September 30:

frankly, we had seen the rules tilted against ordinary folks in favor of those who were well connected in Washington or powerful on Wall Street.

And we argued in 2008 -- and we captured I think the imaginations of a lot of people -- that we could bring about some fundamental change if we got past some of the partisan rancor and the constant politicking that had come to characterize Washington.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today emphasized "shock" that Wall Street itself has turned against President Obama -- and he expressed (somewhat incoherent) sympathy for the concerns of those who Occupy Wall Street. For the new populist Obama, it is desirable for Wall Street to hate you. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," right?

And finally, Politico reported this additional evidence today:

“He [Obama] gets genuinely pissed off at the banks; it’s not an act,” said Jared Bernstein, a former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, who participated in Obama’s daily economic briefing in the Oval Office for the first year of the administration.... “The angriest I ever saw the president was when we found out about those bonuses,” he said. [The banking industry] is like a Doberman he found by the side of the road, nursed back to health, only to have them jump up and bite him.

Our newly populist president has seen his poll numbers drop month-after-month. I do not know if his new economic message will reverse those trends, but it does appear as if he's rolled up his sleeves for a fight with Wall Street. And in doing that, he's with the Occupy Wall Street crowd.


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Election 2012: Early Analysis

Photo source = whitehouse.gov

Today, I've been participating in a discussion at Outside the Beltway about Barack Obama's reelection prospects in 2012. It is still very early in the election cycle and much can change before next November.

One basic fact stands out, however, regardless of polling showing the incumbent President's vulnerability in specific states he won in 2008. Obama can win reelection in 2012 merely with the Kerry states plus Florida. That means (a) the incumbent can lose Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Omaha; and (b) Republicans could be in big trouble regardless of the economy if they select a candidate who tells Florida’s retirees that their Social Security benefit is built on an unconstitutional ponzi scheme.

If the Republican’s spend most of the next year talking about the deficit (and more tax cuts), then it’s pretty easy to imagine that Social Security would seem vulnerable under their leadership -- regardless of candidate. Everyone recalls the first major policy initiative Bush pursued after his 2004 victory, right?

Despite the concessions I make above, there are long-term demographic issues working against Republicans in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

Finally, it must be noted that campaign Obama proved a lot more effective at his job than governing Obama has. Think of the jobs bill (and related tax cuts/increases) as part of the campaign instead of as a meaningful policy initiative that is likely to gain traction in the current Congress. That perspective reveals it to be an essentially populist proposal aimed at attracting swing voters — especially when pitched directly against specific Republican counter-proposals in a two-way race, namely, additional corporate tax cuts and deregulation.


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Palin in Iowa

Photo credit: Dave Davidson (2008 campaign)

Who writes Sarah Palin's speeches? Saturday, in Iowa, she spoke out against crony capitalism:

Sarah Palin did not say whether she would seek the Republican presidential nomination, but...in a 40-minute speech before a Tea Party rally here, which was one of her most expansive addresses since she accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination three years ago, she railed against “crony capitalism” in both parties.

“I want all of our GOP candidates to take the opportunity to kill corporate capitalism that is leading to this cronyism that is killing our economy,” Ms. Palin said.

Does she understand the meaning of "crony capitalism"? From Investopedia:

What Does Crony Capitalism Mean?

A description of capitalist society as being based on the close relationships between businessmen and the state. Instead of success being determined by a free market and the rule of law, the success of a business is dependent on the favoritism that is shown to it by the ruling government in the form of tax breaks, government grants and other incentives.

In Iowa Saturday:

[Palin] outlined economic proposals for creating jobs, including the elimination of all federal corporate income taxes. She said the cozy relationship between political contributions and government favors needed to be exposed and eliminated.

And as a reminder, consider Sarah Palin's multi-million dollar job working for Rupert Murdoch at Fox News. From The Nation's Eric Alterman in the September 5 edition:

One key factor must always be kept in mind when discussing Rupert Murdoch: he has a lot of money ($7.6 billion, according to Forbes) and makes even more for other people. Between 1977 and 2001, News Corporation outearned every other blue-chip company save Berkshire Hathaway and Walmart. And while money might not buy you love in America, it does buy a great deal of special favors and improper indulgences from powerful people.

Being a billionaire media mogul is even more fun when it comes to politics. Not only do politicians need your cash; they need your newspapers, magazines and TV networks too. It is this unholy nexus that Murdoch has mastered...

Murdoch regularly uses book deals, television contracts and columnist gigs as bribes to the powerful, just as he uses these same properties to punish those who refuse to go along. Don’t forget that until recently, Murdoch had four potential Republican presidential candidates on the Fox payroll. One of them—Sarah Palin—even got a state-of-the-art studio built in her home, gratis. And each of these powerful people has a pretty strong incentive to look the other way every time one of Murdoch’s properties or employees feels it necessary to break a law here or there in the service of the great man’s power, profits and influence.

Either Sarah Palin is a brilliant ironist, or she represents the dénouement of a horrifying Orwellian nightmare.


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Popular will

Photo credit, christopher j. dorobek

Andrew Hacker has an interesting piece in the August 18 New York Review of Books, explaining why Barack Obama's chances for reelection are much better than recent poll results would suggest:

The 2012 electorate will differ from 2010’s in a crucial respect: it will contain nearly 50 million additional voters. Some will be new, but most of them will be people who supported Obama in 2008. Compared with the 2010 House electorate, they will be younger, more ethnically diverse, with fewer identifying themselves as conservatives, and a higher proportion will be women. Most of them would not have voted for the Republicans who now make up John Boehner’s House.

Hacker, by the way, discusses a number of recent political books in the article, including one on the 2010 election edited by Larry Sabato. That volume includes a chapter on Kentucky's junior Senator, Rand Paul, written by my colleague Laurie Rhodebeck.

Hacker credits Sabato with pointing out that election outcomes are "determined by the people who show up" to vote. In midterm elections, about 40% of voters turn out to vote, while presidential elections draw substantially more voters -- about 55 to 60% of the electorate in the past quarter century.

This column in yesterday's Guardian succinctly summarizes the importance of this difference:

...the sweeping Republican gains in Congress in the midterm elections of 2010 were on the usual 40% turnout; Obama was elected in 2008 on a 61% turnout. Yet it is the Republicans who think they have a mandate from the American people.

Perhaps, in hindsight, Democrats should have tried harder to convince non-voters that the 2010 midterms were a referendum on Obama that required their attention. Republicans certainly made that case to the likely voters -- who are older, more affluent, less diverse, and more likely to vote in midterm elections. Instead, Democrats often ran away from their successes (health care reform, the stimulus) and distanced themselves from the President.

In any event, despite the poor economic numbers, it would appear that President Obama stands a pretty good chance of reelection -- so long as his 2008 voters actually show up to the polls.


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Palin vs. Perry

There are already a number of Republican candidates for President, but it is difficult to take most of them very seriously. For example, Newt Gingrich's staff quit en masse this past week, basically because of his comment that Paul Ryan's Medicare plan amounted to "right wing social engineering." Then, Steven Colbert destroyed Herman Cain's idea that Congress should only pass bills limited to 3 pages in length.

Many Republicans are likely hoping that more promising candidates will declare their intentions to pursue the presidency, such as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin or Texas Governor Rick Perry.

This weekend, I read two interesting pieces about these politicians and came away somewhat surprised about their relative strengths and weaknesses.

Joshua Green has a fairly sympathetic story about Sarah Palin in the June 2011 Atlantic Monthly. As Green notes, Palin genuinely did face down special interests during her truncated term as Alaska governor. Specifically, she confronted oil companies by proposing and getting both a new gas pipeline ("bid out" without oil company cooperation under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act) and a new oil resource tax -- dubbed Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share (ACES). The latter has meant billions of dollars for the Alaskan Treasury, though Sean Parnell, the Republican Governor that followed Palin, is working to gut it. Palin seemed to support the oil tax because of a populist urge -- the oil belonged to Alaskans, but they were not getting their fair share.

Green points out that Republican legislators in Alaska were opposed to Palin's ACES plan, so she had to turn to Democrats to get a bill passed. And thanks to that effort, the resulting law was more progressive than the one she originally proposed (and Republicans already opposed). It generates more revenues because of a higher base rate and accelerates that rate more quickly when oil prices surge.

That actually sounds like the achievement of a bipartisan maverick.

By contrast, Bob Moser has a devastating story about Perry in the May 30, 2011, issue of The Nation. While Texas has significant oil resources, Texas under Perry's leadership has taken the standard Republican line these days -- business deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy (and for business), and a conservative social agenda. This has meant huge deficits followed by gutting public services -- $23 billion cut in this case, which is about a quarter of the state's spending.

Worse, in comparison to Palin, Perry's "tax swap" reform plan led directly to $5 billion in structural deficits. Moser even quotes some Republicans in Texas who think the state has gone too far. Critics have not been kind at all, referencing some very disturbing data:

It makes little sense that for all of Texas’ abundant wealth and corporate bling, the state would rank thirty-eighth in per student spending, forty-fifth in SAT scores, third in teen pregnancies and dead last in the percentage of adults with high school diplomas. “Texas is setting a new standard by setting new lows,” says East Texas blogger Susan DuQuesnay Bankston....

“If you wanted to destroy an enemy,” says former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby, a Democrat, “you would do exactly what the Republicans are doing to the State of Texas.”

Moser points to a Business Insider piece by Joe Wiesenthal and Gus Lubin that refers to Texas as "America's Ireland." It originally looked like neoliberal economics was going to create an impressive economic leader, but then the state's wealth collapsed.

One shouldn't read too much into this comparison of Palin and Perry. It is certainly possible that a President Perry could govern as a "uniter, not a divider." Moreover, Green's piece is called "The Tragedy of Sarah Palin" because the Fox News talking head has basically rejected all that she achieved in Alaska in order to build on the image she developed in the 2008 campaign -- as a hard-right Republican ideologue. She may occasionally refer to herself as a maverick, but she does not trump her record raising taxes or working with Democrats. Also, many other observers have noted her problems with the truth.


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