Archive for March, 2010
The angry Rorschach movement
The Republican leadership, such as it is, seems to have settled on a strategy of “repeal and replace” for healthcare reform and the coming election. I’m sorry to have to tell them, but even with gains in November, they won’t be able to overcome a veto. The best hope for repeal is if the incumbent president is defeated in 2012 and both the Senate and House are in Republican hands. Good luck with that.
Still, that’s the strategy they’re going to pursue. Not so much because Republicans have any principles, as Dan has been pointing out, but because they want to tap into the anger and discontent that’s manifesting as the Tea Party movement. What I’m afraid of, though, is that the Republicans, and the broader “liberty movement” in general, have little idea of what the Tea Party is all about.
In his latest column, Ron Brownstein describes skepticism about the health care bill, and big government in general, as centered in the white non-college-educated middle class:
Obama has already been hurt by the perception, fanned by Republicans, that the principal beneficiaries of his efforts to repair the economy are the same interests that broke it: Wall Street, big banks, and the wealthy. The belief that Washington has transferred benefits up the income ladder is pervasive across society but especially pronounced among white voters with less than a college education, the group that most resisted Obama in 2008. Now health care could threaten Democrats from the opposite direction by stoking old fears, particularly among the white working class, that liberals are transferring income down the income ladder to the “less deserving.”
Without commenting on the validity of the perceptions he describes, think Brownstein’s right about the demographic provenance of the Tea Party folks. This reminds me of two things.
One is an essay by Michael Brendan Dougherty about the late radical right-wing writer Sam Francis. It was in that article that I first learned about the anti-elitist social commentary of Francis and James Burnham. The gist is that democracy is a sham masking control by a managerial class of elites at the expense of the traditional (read white) working class. Michael’s article is worth a read, and I’ll probably plumb Francis’s and Burnham’s work as I look more into the Tea Party movement.
The other thing I’m reminded of is the 1993 Michael Douglas movie Falling Down. It’s probably not a coincidence this movie came out when it did, sandwiched between the Perot candidacy and the Republican Revolution in Congress. The movie is a garbage heap of cliches, but it anticipates the directionless anger that I see in the Tea Party today.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but let’s just say that it’s a general unease with the siren song of a relatively successful mass movement. I see it luring not just the Republican Party, but the somewhat more intelligent parts of the free market movement as well.
I think I can be forgiven a lack of specificity in my unease since there’s no one who can tell me what exactly the Tea Party is about. Someone recently told me quite astutely that the Tea Party is like Barack Obama’s candidacy, a blank canvas on which we can all project our hopes and aspirations. And that’s what I’m worried about. Well-meaning folks are trying to co-opt the movement for their more-identifiably-pro-liberty ends, but I’m not sure it’s going to be a fit.
The Tea Party seems to be an anti-elite, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, populist grab bag of emotion. And while I can’t blame them for the sentiment given how Washington’s been performing as of late, I’m not crazy about the amorphousness of it all.
Good for the goose…
Good thing a few nutty anti-war protesters never broke any windows, spat on people, espoused racist ideas, or compared the president to Hitler. Or attacked government buildings. Or shot fireworks at cops.
Because if they did, surely the New York Times editorial page would have inferred that the bad apples spoiled the whole bunch.
Really, Herbert and Blow and Rich? You sound as unhinged now as Michelle Malkin did just a few years ago talking about the anti-war movement. The difference is that Malkin is a provocateur, while you’re ostensibly Serious Columnists for a Serious Newspaper.
With everything that happened in the world this week — from the 
UK budget, to the Greek bailout, to Venezuela’s continued crackdown on dissent — the best you can do is all write the same column asserting that because a few crackers behave poorly at a Tea Party rally that everyone concerned about fiscal policy is racist?
It was obnoxious when right-wing provocateurs took a few examples of puerile or offensive behavior by anti-war protesters and used it to paint the entire (amorphous, decentralized) movement. But when the Gray Lady publishes three columns in a week using the poor behavior of a few tea party types to paint an entire (amorphous, decentralized) movement in a negative light, that borders on journalistic malpractice.
I suspect you know better, but decided it was too easy and fun to score a few quick points to avoid the temptation.
Do Tea Partiers Support BIG Government?
WSJ reports on a Bloomberg poll released today that shows Tea Party activists support big government too:
about half of Tea Party sympathizers surveyed said the federal government should do more to rein in executive bonuses in the financial industry. At the time same time, more than 80% said expansion of the government’s role in the economy is a high threat.
With a movement as loose and fluid as the Tea Parties, some incoherence is to be expected. But I’m suspicious. Bloomberg says that 26% of the American public are Tea Partiers. Really? One quarter of America? That seems like an awfully large group. I’d like to see what the exact question text Bloomberg used to identify Tea Party members, as I suspect their question is overly inclusive. Bloomberg hasn’t released the question text yet, so we’ll have to see.
Libertarian Vote
At Foundation for Economic Education, I talk with Mike Van Winkle about the libertarian vote, libertarians uneasy relationship with conservatives and Republicans, and the prospects of libertarians becoming a political force in the 2010 elections and beyond.
For listeners who are joining us from FEE’s website, I’d welcome your comments and thoughts here.
The GOP, standing athwart history yelling “A Gallup poll of 1,033 Americans indicates…”
I wrote earlier this week about why I thought that Republican rallying cries against the health care bill showed a decidedly anti-conservative willingness to allow angry mobs and whims reflected in public opinion polls to dictate public policy. Well, as we see now, they also rest on very shaky foundations.
A USA Today/Gallup poll released on Tuesday shows that a plurality of Americans, um, now support the bill:
By 49%-40%, those polled say it was “a good thing” rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms — as “enthusiastic” or “pleased” — while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as “disappointed” or “angry.”
The largest single group, 48%, calls the legislation “a good first step” that needs to be followed by more action. And 4% say the bill itself makes the most important changes needed in the nation’s health care system.
So, I suppose in the GOP world of polling-led policy analysis, this must mean that Congress acted as an opinion leader rather than an opinion follower. And presumably, since today Americans now tell pollsters that they support the bill, it’s a fine thing. The conservative Media Research Center plays into the hands of the Administration by keeping the debate about polling numbers going. (Curiously, the post never used the phrase “margin of error.”)
Well done, GOP. You staked your claim against health care not on the merits of the bill but on the assertion that the American people didn’t want it. And that rationale has fallen apart just hours after the president signed the bill into law. The ink was hardly dry from the 22 ceremonial signing pens before your rationale for opposing the bill evaporated. You engaged this debate on process and procedure rather than substance. You lost on the first count and didn’t have much meaningful to say about the second.
The result is that the “repeal and replace” agenda is dead. Unless, of course, the polls shift again.
Either way, the GOP has decided to stand athwart history yelling, “A recent poll shows 53 percent of likely voters want history to stop or slow down!”
Inspiring.
On questioning motives
Why do [dermatologists] say that [you should avoid all sun exposure]?
They are heavily invested, I think, with the cosmetics industry. The American Academy of Dermatology just had their annual meeting in Miami Beach. It was huge. Many of the major cosmetic companies were there, and they were spending thousands of dollars just to be out there and promote their products to the dermatologists.
[...]
In 2004, you were fired from Boston University’s department of dermatology by Dr. Barbara Gilchrest, who was head of the department.
She called me into her office and said that she couldn’t have somebody in her department recommending sun exposure.
At the time, she also questioned whether your findings had been compromised by money you received from the tanning industry. You received research money from the Indoor Tanning Association.
That’s not true. The money came from the UV Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the Indoor Tanning Association.
From a NYT interview with Dr. Michael Hollick. When is it proper to question motives? Only after you’ve made a strong case on the merits?
Tumblr: Autism for the rest of us
The American Prospect has a great profile of Tumblr as a medium:
It’s this built-in community — a more formal linkage than most traditional blogs have — that leads to Tumblr’s focus on curation. According to Tumblr’s Web site, each month the average user creates 14 original posts, half of which are photos, and reblogs three. If you follow someone because you love her impeccable taste in vintage photos of Stevie Nicks, you might find that she is frequently reblogging from another Tumblr — and then start following that tumblelogger, too. It’s akin to the way that taste organically develops; you like a band, and you hear them mention an influence, and then you go out and buy that record, too.
If you don’t know what Tumblr is, I suggest you check it out. Here is my tumblr, here is Dan Rothschild’s, here is Robert Reich’s and here’s Merlin Mann’s. The article makes the point that the unlike blogs, tumblelogs are not about original content so much as about curation of other people’s content. My tumblr is an idiosyncratic collection of things I like or find amusing. If you share my tastes, you’ll enjoy it. Other tumblrs curate a particular topic. There are many “Fuck Yeah” tumblelogs, such as Fuck Yeah DC, Fuck Yeah Lost, Fuck Yeah Leonard Nimoy, and one of my favorites, Fuck Yeah Owls. It therefore surprises me that the ratio of original to reblogged content is so high.
Reading Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy a while back, I thought he might as well have been writing about Tumblr. The (autistic) notion of breaking down culture into tiny fragments and then ordering them however makes sense to us is basically what Tumblr is about. In many ways Marginal Revolution is a lot more like a tumblelog than a typical blog.
The community aspect of Tumblr that the American Prospect article lauds is possible because Tumblr combines the best parts of the open web and walled gardens like Facebook. Unlike Facebook, your tumblelog is visible to the wider web and anyone can view and link to you. You could visit a tumblelog and not realize that it’s hosted at Tumblr. However, if you are a Tumblr user, you will know that you’re looking at a Tumblr site and you can choose to “follow” or subscribe to the site. You then experience the content inside of Tumblr’s interface, which makes much easier and enjoyable to consume lots of content, much like Facebook’s news stream. And like with Facebook’s interface, it’s easy to “like” and reblog content, and that’s where the community forms.
Other great tumblelogs: Soxiam, Westworld, Stare Hard, Yeah, I Was in the Shit.
Political future of Millennials uncertain
Much has been written about Pew’s recent study on Milliennals, showing a generation that is more ideologically liberal and pro-government than previous generations. But a counter narrative seems to be emerging, reported at the Fiscal Times:
[Millennials are] collecting unemployment, signing up for food stamps, moving back home, and growing increasingly concerned about the future. A New York Times/CBS poll showed that 46 percent of Americans think the younger generations will be worse off than their parents, up from 32 percent last year. The Millennials — people born around 1980 and coming of age at the turn of the century — are the largest generation in the history of the country, about 80 million strong. In The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace, Ron Alsop wrote, “If there is one overriding perception of the Millennial generation, it’s that these young people have great — and sometimes outlandish — expectations.” Described as confident, tech-savvy and optimistic, they are now seeing the American dream they once felt entitled to slipping through their fingers.
What will be the impact of this trend? Will Millennials become dependent on government or disillusioned with government? As David Boaz and I argued in our Cato study, “Libertarian Vote in Age of Obama,” Millennials seem prone to disillusionment, given the evidence of 9/11 and the Iraq war. And it is also true that there is a larger percentage of libertarian-leaning Millennials than in previous generations. But the ideological outlook for this generation seems very much uncertain.
Regardless, this is an opportunity for us in the business of educating about free markets. We should connect the dots for this generation, between the world of limitless opportunities they have come to expect and the structures of a free society that produce them.
That’s not quite right
Did passing healthcare reform help or hurt the chances of Republicans taking over the House? Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight looks at the relationship between the two Intrade contracts:
The chart below tracks the daily close of the ‘Obamacare’ contract at Intrade — which has been live since January 21st — and compares it against the contract representing a GOP takeover of the House. The correlation is positive (and statistically significant) but the magnitude of the effect is small: Intrade infers that Republicans would have had a 40 percent chance of taking over the House had the Democrats not passed Obamacare, but about a 47 percent chance now that they have.
I agree that you can say the correlation is positive. But you can’t conclude from this data that the magnitude is small. We’re humble here at SometimesRight. But, Nate, that’s not quite right.
Prediction markets aggregate knowledge at a particular time. And the key piece of knowledge to track here is sort of a hidden third variable–call it “potency of healthcare as an election winning issue for House Republicans” or “healthcare potency” for short. You’d be interested in measuring the slope of this line–that would tell you whether the magnitude is small or large. Of course, there isn’t an Intrade contract for healthcare potency, so you’re left to guess like everyone else.
But as long as we’re guessing, we can likely infer that both of these contracts would be positively correlated to healthcare potency. The Democrats effort to pass healthcare reform certainly kept the issue in the public eye. And House Republicans are more likely to go with a “repeal” campaign on health care reform, adding to the potency of healthcare to their overall election chances.
But how much more potent is the issue between January and today? Because when Scott Brown won Massachusetts, it was already obvious that the issue would be potent. The question is this: given our knowledge today, what is the relative additional contribution to healthcare potency–given the economy, jobs, Afghanistan, Iran, and the many other potentially potent election issues–to Republican’s chances of taking the House?
The fact that you could see any relationship at all between these two contracts implies that the movement in healthcare potency is fairly large, not small. That’s counter to Nate’s wisdom for Democrats: “if you told the Democrats that the price of passing their health care bill was to go from having a 40 percent chance of losing the House for two years to a 47 percent chance, do you think they would have done it?”
