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Jon Alter's latest column--calling for health care to be treated as a "civil right"--brings up an underdiscussed question: In a single payer plan, would health care be treated as a constitutional entitlement that couldn't be taken away without "due process" under the Warren Court's so-called "New Property" doctrine? My Con Law knowledge is a few decades out of date--but the doctrine covered welfare benefits, guaranteeing a hearing to individuals before they could be denied. Why not health benefits? ...
Isn't it possible, then, that rules produced by Orszag's cost-cutting IMAC board preferring some treatments over others, or some patients over others, would be hamstrung by constitutional proceduralism? Maybe sick patients who want disfavored Treatment X would sue and demand an individualized hearing before their "right" to that treatment could be denied.
And if the "New Property" operated to constitutionalize treatment rights in a single payer system, would the same doctrine apply to a so-called "public option" plan that competed with private plans in a health insurance "exchange"? If not, maybe a government-run "public option" would have an efficiency advantage over government-run single-payer. It wouldn't have to worry about all those hearings.
In fact, the more I think about the "public option" idea, the more it appeals to me--not because it's the "thin end of a wedge that will move the system" towards single payer, as Clive Crook summarizes it, but because it seems superior, in some respects, to single-payer.
1) Obama sells the "public option" as a way to "keep the private insurers honest." But the converse effect might be more important: the private insurers in the "exchange" would keep the "public" plan honest. Sure, in this marketplace the government plan will probably get the lion's share of customers. It will offer more security, for one thing. But if it starts to provide lousy service, or excludes too many treatments, the private plans might start to lure some of those customers away. Private insurers would provide an escape valve--an "exit"--unavailable in single-payer government monopoly. The obvious analogy is to private "charter" schools competing with public schools.
2) Likewise, if the public insurers managed succumbed to cost-bloat--if all the people who washed the laundry in hospitals became unionized, for example, and politicized government plans blithely passed the giant resulting bill on to their customers (not wanting to anger the SEIU and other good Dem supporters)-- the private sector might underbid the public plan and 'bend the cost curve' down! Again, that's something that probably wouldn't happen in a single payer scheme; and
3) As discussed, "public option" might help avoid having every "we won't pay for this treatment" decision become a constitutional issue in a way a universal, single-payer entitlement couldn't.
I'm not saying all the differences between the two sorts of plans would cut against single payer--some days it seems completely appropriate to handle treatment decisions as a constitutional matter, since lives are at stake. If a single payer plan is, as a result, less able to deny treatments, that could be a feature, not a bug.
I'm just saying the differences between the two forms of "government" plan have been blurred (mainly by the right), that some of those differences may favor the "public option," and that Obama may be missing a bet in failing to defend the "public option" by pushing off against government-run single payer plans of the left rather than by pushing off against the greedy, evil private insurance companies.
Triangulation--something that lets Obama seem a centrist--helps at this point, right? Or are voters worried that he's insufficiently fond of unchecked government dominance? ... 3:18 A.M.
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If you unimmerse yourself in the Ricci commentary, including Richard Thompson Ford's smug, reified** apocalypticism, and just look at John Rosenberg's solution for the vise-like conflict between preventing reverse discrimination and stopping non-reverse discrimination in cases of "disparate" racial impact ... well, what's wrong with it?
[T]he solution to this dilemma is conceptually (if not politically) easy: demote disparate impact to its proper role, which is suggestive evidence of the possibility of disparate treatment, a possibility that can be successfully refuted by an employer's production of credible evidence that the challenged test, policy, or procedure bears a reasonable relationship to the organization's activities. (Of course, credible evidence that an employer adopted even such a reasonable test for a discriminatory purpose would also be barred as disparate treatment.) [E.A]
Would that be so terrible? We couldn't live with that? We'd be racist if we did? Note that there would still be race discrimination suits, presumably plenty of them. They would just be easier to defend against. ... P.S.: Ford worries about an explosion "disparate impact" of lawsuits from disgruntled whites--but this rule would make those suits less easy to win too, along with suits by disgruntled blacks (and other minorities). Everyone would have to calm down! ... P.P.S.: Rosenberg notes that his solution is similar to one adopted by the EEOC in 1989, but then overruled by Congress (and the first President Bush). ...
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**--Why "reified"? Because it falsely treats the circumstances that gave rise to "disparate impact" law as more or less permanent. In reality, the arc in which race preferences are initially regarded as a necessary remedy and then gradually regarded as toxic and stigmatizing and finally as unconstitutional seems like a natural one. ... Reification #2: In predicting a hellacious gridlock of discrimination litigation from whites and blacks, Ford also seems to assume that Congress can't or won't relax the "disparate impact" test along the lines suggested by Rosenberg and the 1989 EEOC case. ... 5:38 P.M.
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Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center reports that Sen. Baucus
is floating the following trial balloon: Congress would fund fund part of health reform with a cap on the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance but only at a level "significantly above" the cost of the standard plan offered to federal employees. The measure would also exclude policies bargained under current union contracts. ... [E.A.]
Why exclude policies negotiated by unions but not policies negotiated by individuals? Politics, I assume. Unions wouldn't stand for anything else. Fine. But here's the thing--the provision appears to be more than a simple "grandfather" clause that protects current union contracts. A kf source says that the new tax will not take effect until 2013. Does this mean that labor contracts agreed on between now and that date would also be protected? If so, Baucus has just given a big tax incentive for workers--perhaps encouraged by labor signature collectors under a "card check" bill--to form unions and bargain for lavish health benefits that will then be exempted from his tax on lavish benefits. Join a union, get a tax break! (A break the rest of us would have to pay for). ... If Dems start lavishing IRS advantages on union members, maybe organized labor won't even need the "card check" bill to reverse its declining membership numbers. ... 9:53 P.M.
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Mitosis in the Faster Electorate: Conor Friedersdorf notices that the fast twitter-driven news out of Iran has divided his fellow citizens and friends into two groups: 1) Those who keep up to the second with what is happening and how the U.S. should react; and 2) Those who take the weekend off and only know the vaguest details (i.e. " that Ahmadinejad won"). I'd say that Friedersdorf has stumbled upon Jerry Skurnik's "Theory of the Two Electorates"--except it's a peculiarly accelerated version of the Skurnik theory, because Friedersdorf's two groups are both made up of people who would normally be part of the better informed of Skurnik's two electorates:
And those out of the know? They aren't any longer just grandmothers, the apolitical, and the middle manager in Scranton who gets all his news at 11 o'clock after the game. Now people who watch The Daily Show, subscribe to The New Yorker, and read the CNN subtitles as they run on the 24 Hour Fitness treadmill possess radically less information than a self-selecting group of their fellow citizens, granting that they mostly catch up on any given piece of information in a matter of days.
Will this make a difference, Friedersdorf asks?
Are we approaching a point where political information is processed so fast that an event happens, information elites weigh in to shape the discourse surrounding it, the conventional wisdom is communicated to Congress, and elected leaders formulate reactions based on public opinion... all before most of even the formerly plugged in members of the public ever learn what on earth is going on, or have a chance to form an opinion?
I could see Congress, spooked by twitter, overreacting in this fashion--if, say, a draft of Senator Baucus' health care plan comes out that displeases the left, which reacts by shutting down various switchboards before the David Broders of the world can even get to their typewriters keyboards. ... It's hard to believe it will have an effect on official U.S. Iran policy.** (Friedersdorf agrees.)
Of course, to the extent it does empower Friedersdorf's first group, including the fastest bloggers, it would empower Andrew Sullivan-- which (as Obama has learned) is always a dangerous thing. ...
**--That doesn't mean it hasn't had a big effect on the events in Iran itself--the events that the U.S. government must react to--or on the unofficial reaction of American activists to those events. ... 8:53 P.M.
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Alert reader J: "Interesting that the WaPo could write an entire article on the decline of public housing in NYC without ever mentioning the words "ACLU," "liberalism," and "Lindsay." [Link added] ... True! The piece--on Sotomayor's childhood--makes it seem as if the projects were just suddenly swamped by waves of drugs ("Then heroin surged through the projects ... Then came crack ...") as opposed to, say, an increasingly concentrated culture of fatherless dependence in which drug users and dealers and gang members couldn't be evicted because of misguided due process concerns about deprivation of "new property"! ... (I remember an excellent piece by WaPo's Blaine Harden on the difficulty of evicting bad actors from housing projects, but haven't been able to find it.). ...
P.S.: The Post's Robin Shulman does mention that in 1981 Congress "changed eligibility rules to give preference in public housing to the poorest households," which had the perverse effect of intensifying the culture of poverty by excluding middle class and working class tenants. But Shulman doesn't make that point--instead quoting an expert who simply says the change made public housing the "housing of last resort." And that was a problem because ...? ... 8:21 P.M.
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Matt Cooper calls "the idea that that the Clintons were unwilling to take half-a-loaf" on health care "total revisionism." Hmm. It sure seemed that way at the time! ... P.S.: Unless Cooper's talking about a specific early-on period when the Clinton plan was first being produced--he uses the vague qualifier "back then" .... 7:32 P.M.
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Obama vs. Slate: Obama cites "medical errors that lead to 100,000 lives lost unnecessarily in our hospitals every year." [E.A.] Walter Olson smells BS, and cites a Slate article to back him up. ... 7:25 P.M.
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"Clarence Thomas is a great justice. Sonia Sotomayor will be, too." Who wrote that subhed to Dahlia Lithwick's Slate piece? Make him or her get coffee for everyone else for the next month. Lithwick's piece doesn't argue that Thomas is a great justice. It argues he's not a "dim bulb," a "moron," a "dunce or a Scalia clone," and makes an ambiguous, unendorsed reference to the "more common" view that he has a "deeply reasoned and consistent judicial philosophy." ... It would be interesting if Lithwick thought Thomas was a great justice. I can't believe she does--especially after reading this piece. ... 6/1 Update: Subhed rewritten. .. 3:11 A.M.
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Here's another suspect rationalization from the Obama auto task force, as recounted by David von Drehle in TIME:
Task-force members counter that other unsecured claims have received even better deals than the union's. Warranties, for example, have been 100% guaranteed - no haircut at all. "We're trying to avoid liquidation, and so these claims have to be classified according to their importance to the future viability of the company," a task-force official explained. "Obviously you can't sell cars without warranties. You can't make cars without suppliers. So most of those claims are being paid. And you can't build cars without skilled workers." [E.A.]
How many of the UAW's members are skilled workers? I thought one of the big virtues assembly line work is that it can be done by unskilled workers. Even with all the fancy computer-assisted quality control systems, does most auto assembly work really require skills that can't be learned fairly quickly?
The unnamed "task force official" implies that Chrysler's work force (and GM's) is so precious that it must be protected from sharing in the sacrifice of bankruptcy. Is it? If UAW workers are so distinctly productive then why do virtually all auto manufacturers starting production in the U.S. try to get as far away from the union as possible? Is there any doubt that if all Chrysler's workers quit tomorrow they could fairly quickly be replaced by workers--from local communities--who were a) cheaper and b) just as good or better? .. .
The point isn't that the unsecured creditors who did worse than the union deserve a better deal. They don't, at least as long as they're doing as well as they would in a conventional bankruptcy (without the government's expensive intervention). But the lack of sacrifice required of the UAW, after it helped drive its industry into the ditch, is a problem in and of itself, given the billions in taxpayer funds that are being spent to prevent that sacrifice (and the billions more that will be required over the next few years as GM and Chrysler fall short of the inflated expectations set by the Obama task force). Why should the government tax unskilled workers making $18 an hour, who haven't bankrupted their employers, in order to protect unskilled workers making $28 an hour, who have bankrupted their employers, from having to take a pay cut? The press' focus on creditors (because they are the ones whining loudest at the moment) is what is allowing the Obama administration to duck that question. When the question does get asked, I don't think Marc Ambinder's initial suggested answer--"The Obama administration supports the union movement"--will cut it. ... 2:57 A.M.
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Jeffrey Rosen pitches what he says is the latest fashion in "progressive" constitutional theory, "democratic constitutionalism." How is it different?:
While a Warren Court liberal might counsel the Supreme Court to leap ahead of public opinion and provide constitutional protections for gay marriage today, and while a minimalist might urge state and federal courts to wait until public opinion has shifted decisively, a democratic constitutionalist would embrace bold state court decisions but hold back at the federal level.
a) Wow. Inspiring, no? b) Rosen's whole framework seems to be: "How much change can we cram down the throat of the American people?" Maybe that's the problem. Are there any changes Rosen's progressives want that they admit just can't be found in the Constitution? (And, once "public opinion has shifted decisively" in the direction of those changes, why do they have to find them in the Constitution anymore anyway?) c) What's all the talk about "consensus" and not "getting too far ahead of the will of the people"--and about how "Constitutional change ultimately flows from the bottom up, not the top down"? Isn't the more important judicial role to violate consensus and stand athwart the will of the people in defense of individual rights--and to enforce them from the top down? ... 2:48 A.M.
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Saturday, May 2, 2009
"Kids don't have a union": What it takes to fire a lousy teacher in the Los Angeles public schools--a chart. ... From the LAT's accompanying story:
Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. ...
When teaching is at issue, years of effort -- and thousands of dollars -- sometimes go into rehabilitating the teacher as students suffer. Over the three years before he was fired, one struggling math teacher in Stockton was observed 13 times by school officials, failed three year-end evaluations, was offered a more desirable assignment and joined mentoring programs as most of his ninth-grade students flunked his courses. ... [snip]
Meanwhile, said Kendra Wallace, principal of Daniel Webster Middle School on Los Angeles' Westside, an ineffective teacher can instruct 125 to 260 students a year -- up to 1,300 in the five years she says it often takes to remove a tenured employee.
It's worth saying again: If the twittish, PC L.A.Times is now going after the teachers' unions, those unions have lost the PR battle in the mainstream press. Does President Obama ("We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers") know this? Do the Republicans who are desperately looking for an issue to use against the Dems? ... [via NewsAlert] 5:57 P.M.
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The Dish is a revenge best served cold: President Obama's reliance on the excitable Andrew Sullivan has predictably led him into embarrassing error. Even NPR felt it necessary to correct Obama. ... Note to NPR's Robert Siegel: In interviewing the Guardian's Ian Cobain about the London Cage interrogation center, you say
President Obama was quoting Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. Do we know that Churchill, when he made those remarks, knew very well what was going on in the interrogation centers? [E.A.]
Huh? Do we have any evidence that Churchill ever made those remarks? (Obama's version: "And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' ..."). As far as I can see, the evidence is Sullivan, which is perilously close to no evidence at all. ... P.S.: Sullivan's characteristically vigorous post-error backpedaling and ass-covering focuses on whether Churchill knew about the torture at Britain's interrogation centers. The claim that Churchill not only didn't know about the torture but actually banned it--or that he said (or even thought) anything like "We don't torture"--has seemingly been left by the wayside. ... 3:38 P.M.
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Friday, May 1, 2009
We'll know the Chrysler bankruptcy is in trouble when the press starts reporting that Steve Rattner really had nothing to do with it. ... 5:40 P.M
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Faced with the prospect that it might have to balance interests and act responsibly as a new owner of Chrysler, the U.A.W.'s Ron Gettelfinger desperately tries to recreate an adversary system. (The UAW's VEBA health care fund is "independent"! Controlled by "outside ... directors"! We can go on strike against them anytime we want, really we can!) There's something infantile about this, as if a teenager were given the keys to a new car and said, "I'd rather you kept the keys and I'll throw tantrums when I need it." ... If you were a neoliberal from the 1980s you might say the Wagner Act has given them permission to be singleminded, legalistic, and irresponsible--and that's the only role they know. Luckily there are no neoliberals around anymore to make this annoying point. ... 5:38 P.M.
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Despite its CEO's appearance on David Letterman, electric car startup Tesla is looking a little more granfalloonish today than yesterday. ... 5:37 P.M.
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I was waiting for the first undocumented-immigrant-legalization advocate to declare that the Mexico-centered flu epidemic required the immediate passage of "comprehensive immigration reform." I figured Tamar Jacoby would win. I was wrong. The winner appears to be the Southern California Immigration Coalition, which wants President Obama to simply legalize all illegals by executive order:
To deport all these people to Mexico would create an emergency crisis in their own economy. And that's the crisis we would have in Mexico. Coupled with the drug wars that are going on, the problem that we have with the virus, the flu, it would just create great havoc for Mexico in its economy.
5:33 P.M.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Some conservatives are troubled that the UAW is getting a huge ownership share in GM (about 40%) and Chrysler (over 50%): For example, Larry Kudlow:
What is going on in this country? The government is about to take over GM in a plan that completely screws private bondholders and favors the unions. Get this: The GM bondholders own $27 billion and they're getting 10 percent of the common stock in an expected exchange. And the UAW owns $10 billion of the bonds and they're getting 40 percent of the stock. Huh? Did I miss something here?
The union's ownership so does not seem a problem. It seems a virtue. Let the UAW, as new owner of GM, pay the price for the overgrown work rules of its locals. Let the UAW demand above-market raises from itself. Let the UAW try to raise money from new lenders after the previous round of lenders has been royally screwed (thanks, in part, to the UAW). And then let the UAW try to sell the cars that result.
The most efficient way to balance competing interests, as Michael Kinsley noted years ago, isn't an adverserial system where various singleminded interests duke it out--either in court or on picket lines--but in the head of a decisionmaker who will feel the relevant consequences. As long as the government steps out of the financing picture, the UAW will feel the consequences of its own excesses. Just don't bail them out again! ...
P.S.: One sign that the WSJ's Holman Jenkins may actually be impressed with Obama's "apparent willingness to drive a hard bargain with the UAW" is that in order to attack the union Jenkins had to write a column about the government's hidden subsidies for Detroit in previous decades. ...
Update: The Cult of Bartley complains that
At the next labor contract bargaining session, the union would sit on both sides of the table.
And the problem with that is ...?
The otherwise estimable Paul Ingrassia applies a blanket condemnation of worker-ownership derived from his study of the University of Wisconsin student store. "There's an inherent conflict between the cost discipline required of owners and the understandable desire of employees to make more money for less work (hey, why not?)" There is. It's a conflict we freelancers face every day! Somehow we manage. A "clean and well-run union such as the UAW" should be able to do it too. ...10:26 P.M.
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I meant "benign" in a good way! Jeez, you call Atlantic owner David Bradley a "benign sucker" and all sorts of people want to rush to his defense! Here's what I meant: Practically every magazine I've ever written for has lost money.** That usually doesn't bother the owner, who is typically rich and willing to take a loss in exchange for the prestige or enjoyment of owning a magazine, or the access and influence it brings. It's an ancient and honorable arrangement. Hence "benign." But at various times, Bradley has sounded as if he actually intended to make The Atlantic and its website a going business concern (noises that are still being made). From a 2003 piece by David Carr:
["]There has been a 50-year tradition at the magazine of older male businessmen like myself managing The Atlantic as a philanthropy,'' Mr. Bradley said. ''It was largely subsidized and dependent on finding the next Mort Zuckerman. I think it's possible I may be the last member of that generation, and we have to find a way to make this wonderful magazine support itself.''
I suspect he is disappointed. Also, he's overpaying his writers.*** Hence, "sucker." I'm all for it. (I could use someone like that.) ...
**--Original text left out the "Practically." I forgot about Newsweek, which probably was making some money when I was there. But not a lot.
***--"as high as $350,000 ..." 10:14 P.M.
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John Judis predicts that Obama's stimulus and budget will "lift overall government spending from the 30s to well over 40 percent of GDP," maybe even to 45 % of GDP in 2009-- a percentage
more like that of France and Sweden, whose non-crisis budgets total over 45 percent of GDP.
Hmm. If you put it like that, doesn't the Obama presidency begin to look a bit like a ripoff? If we're going to spend 45% of GDP like Sweden, I want a cradle-to-grave welfare state! It doesn't seem like much of a bargain to spend Swedish-style tax dollars for what will remain at bottom an American style fend-for-yourself society (even one with guaranteed access to health care). ... 10:01 P.M.
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No Ring. On to the DNA test! ... 1:22 P.M.
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Everybody's Pitching In (7)! Barbra Streisand is doing her part [in a non-profit, non-endorsement way of course] ... 1:15 P.M.
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Are we sure that when Obama was talking about judge-led "redistributive change" that "the real context" for his remarks was the inherently limited debate over Charles Reich's "New Property"--i.e. whether government benefits (like welfare) could be denied without various procedural safeguards like as hearings--as Emily Bazelon argues? Didn't Harvard Law Prof. Frank Michelman famously attempt to import into the Constitution John Rawls' Theory of Justice--in order to require the provision, not just of procedural rights, but of actual welfare benefits? My memory might be off, but I think he did! Obama was certainly talking broadly enough to include this ambitious, unsuccessful liberal effort:
[T]he supreme court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the warren court it wasnt that radical ... it didnt break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constituion at least as it has been interpreted and the warren court interpreted it generally in the same way that the constitution is a document of negative liberties
Since Obama is rejecting the idea of pursuing "redistributive change" through the courts, what difference does it make whether this change was narrow and procedural (Reich) or dramatic and substantive (Michelman)? Answer: It matters because Bazelon's version minimizes the extent to which liberal legal activists actually wanted to redistribute wealth through the courts--and might one day again if they think they can get away with it. That possibility seems very remote, I agree. But as David Bernstein argues, it can't be completely discounted despite Obama's criticism of judge-led redistribution, because Obama's criticism was largely pragmatic, and the pragmatic equation could change:
There are two basic possibilities. One is that Obama might believe that appointing far left Justices to the Court would be unlikely to accomplish much in the long-term, and could ultimately harm the progressive agenda, and his own presidency, by reviving "unelected judges imposing their will on the American people" as a Republican campaign theme. The other possibility is that Obama, intoxicated by victory, and having the very healthy ego that all successful politicians have, will decide that the election of a very liberal African-American president, along with large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, signals that the social and political winds have shifted sufficiently that the Supreme Court could successfully launch an activist liberal agenda, and he will nominate justices accordingly. But there is nothing in either Obama's radio remarks, his voting record in the Senate, or his public statements on judges to suggest that he objects in principle to the equalitarian "living Constitution" of Brennan, Warren, et al., and there is much to the contrary. [E.A.]
3:36 A.M.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Obama Infomercial: Effective! (And I hate Real People). ... Made Obama seem normal. .... Huge gap between what he says he'll do ("restore fairness") and his actual initiatives (tax credits). ... Was that Joe Biden or his SNL caricature saying "Whoa!"? .... 5:40 P.M.
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Who Let Rachael Larimore in? Slate's quadrennial exercise proving that just because you're open about it doesn't mean it's not embarrassing is up. Slate is voting 55-1 for Obama over McCain, with one additional vote for Bob Barr. With those numbers, it's getting hard to agree with founder Michael Kinsley:
No doubt it is true that most journalists vote Democratic, just as most business executives (including most media owners) vote Republican, though neither tendency is as pronounced as their respective critics believe.
Not "as pronounced" as our "critics believe"? You mean Sarah Palin thought it would be 56-1? How much more pronounced could it get? ...
Memo to Don Graham: As long as we're going with the O by a 55-1 margin, why not drop the now-ludicrous MSM-style pretense of non-partisanship and reap the financial rewards of partisanship that available on the Web-- like, say, the Huffington Post? ... P.S.: Slate itself is a bad name, in this respect, since it implies a blankness, a void of strong preferences that (fortunately) isn't there. But I guess it's too late to change that. ... 4:37 P.M.
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Shocked, Shocked for Barack! The cheapest out if your'e a previously McCain-friendly pundit who wants to endorse Obama is to say you like McCain but can't vote for him because you're revolted by his campaign. It's an out elaborately developed by Joe Klein at Time, and it's an out Anne Applebaum takes in Tuesday's WaPo. Applebaum claims she's not reacting against McCain's "campaign" but rather to "institutional" deterioration in his "increasingly anti-intellectual, no longer even recognizably conservative" party. But all the examples she cites come from his campaign (Palin) or campaigning that's not even his (Sean Hannity's anti-Obama telecasts).. ...
The problem with the "I'm repulsed" argument is that while it's eminently respectable it's unserious. The campaign will be over soon. There is no reason to think McCain has actually changed what he wants to do on, say, immigration. Applebaum doesn't offer even a speculative argument as to why, with the election safely behind him, President McCain would have to truckle to his party's anti-amnesty contingent. That's because he wouldn't. He'd be much more likely to make immigration the basis for his first and perhaps only foray into bipartisanship--in effect, truckling to the pro-legalization forces. Nor has McCain "spent the past four months running away" from his longstanding immigration position. He's spent the past two months reasserting it.
I think Applebaum knows this. She's not a fool. If she really thinks that McCain's pre-campaign immigration policies--or his budget policies, or his torture policies--are right for the country, then she should be for McCain. Even if he's trying to win by running anti-Ayers ads. Even if his supporters "repulse" her. It's hard to believe that this repulsion isn't a convenient cover for some unstated, perhaps unconscious, pro-Obama imperative (or maybe simply for the imperative to come to a decision). ... 2:54 A.M.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
If you're looking for evidence of a "Bradley"-like effect--in which preelection polls can be wildly off--one place to look is the polling on Ward Connerly's Civil Rights Initiative in Michigan. According to Connerly (in answer to an email query)
Some polls had us losing by 10 points the weekend before the election. We won by 16.
Results here. ... It seems clear, in that case at least, voters told pollsters the respectable PC answer they thought pollsters wanted to hear. ... Barack Obama was one of those campaigning (in radio spots) for the respectable PC side that lost. ... P.S.--Is McCain Yorty? Sherry Bebitch Jeffe argues (as have others) that there was no Bradley effect in Tom Bradley's 1982 gubernatorial race--the alleged ur-example. In Bradley's 1969 mayoral race against Sam Yorty, on the other hand .... 5:07 P.M.
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