Taxing the Rich: The (Politically) Smart Way to Pay for Health Care

The big news on the health care front this weekend is that House Democrats are prepared to call for a tax increase on the highest-earning Americans in order to pay for expanded health insurance. Although accounts of the exact details differ slightly, it appears that the tax hike would take the form of a "surcharge" of 1 percent on incomes from $280,000 to $400,000, 1.5 percent on incomes of $400,000 to $800,000 and 3 percent on incomes of $800,000 and above. This means that someone making $500,000 would pay about an extra $2,700 in taxes each year, and someone making $1,000,000 would pay an extra $13,200. The burden, in other words, would fall disproportionately on those who earn not just in the six figures, but rather in the seven figures, for whom much more of their income would become subject to the 3 percent rate.

I applaud the House for recognizing that the world doesn't end at $250,000 or $357,700 (the beginning of the top marginal income tax bracket as of last year). Throughout most of American history before Reagan, the top tax bracket kicked in at figures much higher than $357,700 in today's income: the equivalent of about $75 million in today's dollars, for example, during portions of FDR's presidency.

I also think the House has probably found the path of least resistance in terms of marshaling public support for financing health care. In June, the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll asked Americans about seven different mechanisms to pay for health care. The one solution that Kaiser missed was that of a national sales tax, so for that I use data from Rasmussen Reports instead, who ran a May poll indicating that 40 percent of Americans would support a national sales tax if it paid for health insurance. Increasing taxes on incomes of $250,000+ was supported by 68 percent of Americans in the Kaiser poll, tying it with increased cigarette and booze taxes for the most popular option:



Why pick the income tax hike rather than higher cigarette and alcohol taxes, which are just as popular? For one thing, it's not clear that higher cigarette and alcohol taxes alone would be enough to finance health care; they were generally being considered along with other funding mechanisms. For another, alcohol and particularly cigarette taxes would be quite regressive. For a third, we have to consider the political fallout from a tax once it actually hits taxpayers, and not just when it's in the proposal phase. Joe Six Pack might not think it's a horrible idea in the abstract to increase the price of beer, but when he's actually paying extra for his case of Michelob Ultra, he might not be so happy about it.

We should point out that raising taxes on the wealthy is probably not the most economically sound way to pay for health care, which would be to limit or remove the benefits tax exemption and tax benefits like all other types of earned income. This alternative, however, is considerably less popular and is opposed by many unions, who have generally negotiated very attractive benefits programs for their employees. In a perfect world, of course, these things wouldn't be mutually exclusive: you could remove the benefits tax exemption and make the tax code more progressive. But practically speaking, trying to do both those things might just give more people a reason to be unhappy. The surcharge proposed by Charlie Rangel and the House Democrats at least has the benefit of being simple.

The one thing the Democrats ought to be aware of, however, is that if this proposal is passed, it will probably become more difficult later on to repeal the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners. Raising taxes is always difficult, and I'm not sure the Democrats will get more than one bite at the apple, at least until/unless Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012 and has some fresh political capital. But this proposal, overall, is probably more attractive than repealing the Bush tax cuts, since it focuses more of the burden on $800K+ earners.

I'd expect the Republicans to begin arguing more vociferously that the right way to pay for health care is indeed to remove the benefits tax exemption. As I mentioned, they are on somewhat solid economic grounds for doing so. In reality, however, removing the benefits tax exemption is more of a political poison pill, a fairly unpopular policy which the Democrats would probably be blamed for later on.

Whether the Democrats can get enough Blue Dog votes to pass health insurance is another matter. The Blue Dogs tend to be split into two camps: the populist Blue Dogs, who usually hail from rural areas, and who are generally somewhat socially conservative but more economically liberal; they will probably have no great problems with this. Then there are the corporatist Blue Dogs, who tend to represent wealthier, suburban districts and are more libertarian in their ideology. Some resistance from that latter group is likely, although that would probably be the case regardless of what mechanism was selected to finance health care.

The bottom line is that the House wants to pay for health care in a way that almost 7 in 10 Americans can live with. That doesn't mean its passage is going to be easy -- but the bill won't fail for its lack of public popularity.

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Obama Leading Pawlenty by 11 Points in His Own Back Yard

Minnesota continues to make news this week. Following word from Ohio that Barack Obama's approval numbers have edged down into mere mortal range, a new survey from Public Policy Polling of Minnesotans--those lucky souls now boasting a full contingent of two US senators--shows Obama beating Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a potential head-to-head presidential matchup, 51 percent to 40 percent. Obama beat John McCain in Minnesota last year by 10 points, carrying 45 counties.

Speaking of governors in the news, in the same poll Obama bests soon-to-be-former Gov. Sarah Palin in a hypothetical 2012 presidential matchup by an even wider margin, 56 percent to 35 percent. The fuller poll results show that Palin receives lower net approval from Minnesota women (34 percent approving, 56 percent disapproving) than men (44 percent, 49 percent).

The bad news for Obama is that his overall approval in the state has dipped; in fact, his approval/disapproval margin in Minnesota is just half (54 percent to 39 percent, net 15) what it was in April (60 percent to 30 percent). Independents approve of the president by just an 8-point margin, 49 percent to 41 percent. Like many Americans, Minnesotans are growing impatient.

PPP also polled respondents on Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. She has a solid approval/disapproval margin of 26 points (56 percent approving, 30 disapproving), on the strength of 68 percent to 18 percent edge among self-described moderates.

UPDATE: Our own Ed Kilgore posted some thoughts of his own about this poll over at his home site, The Democratic Strategist. Worth a look.

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In Illinois, Dems Dodge Bullet; GOP Shoots Selves in Foot

Friday afternoons seem to be bringing good news for Democrats.

Just when it looked like Republicans had some momentum in their battle to gain ground in the 2010 United States Senate elections comes word from the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza that Mark Kirk, a moderate Republican who represents Illinois' 10th Congressional District in Suburban Chicago, will not vacate his House seat to run for the Senate:

Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk (R) will not run for the open seat of Sen. Roland Burris (D) in 2010, a stunning reversal from just 48 hours ago when Kirk signaled to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) that he would make the race.

Kirk's decision [...] followed a meeting of the Illinois Republican congressional delegation on Thursday in which his colleagues refused to back Kirk in a primary against Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna due, in large part, to his vote in favor of President Barack Obama's climate change bill.

Kirk had polled about evenly against Alexi Giannoulias, the most likely Democratic nominee, in an April survey conducted by Public Policy Polling. As I've stated before, I think Kirk would ultimately be a slight underdog in that race, as most of the undecideds in that poll were Democrats or independents and as Giannoulias is a reasonably formidable candidate. But clearly, Kirk would have at least a significant chance of claiming Barack Obama's old seat for Republicans, whereas a generic Republican like McKenna would seem to have almost none. If Kirk is out -- and Cillizza cautions that there are efforts being made to get him to reconsider -- the Republicans' chances of winning the seat goes from perhaps 35-40 percent to 5-10 percent.

Kirk has split his vote on the two most important measures that the the House has considered to date, voting against Barack Obama's stimulus package (as, of course, every House Republican did) but for Henry Waxman's climate bill. He is a moderate Republican, and he probably has to be given the parameters of his district, which has a PVI of D+6. While that PVI number slightly overstates the difficulty that Republicans face in this district -- wealthy, suburban districts like IL-10 tend to be relatively more red in Congressional elections than in Presidential ones -- this is not someone who can afford to be a bible-thumping, party-line conservative, especially if he goes on to represent the entire state of Illinois, which is three points more liberal than Kirk's district alone.

By no means is it always the case that every time a party is sacrificing electability for ideological fealty, it is making a mistake. In Florida, for instance, I have argued that Republicans supporting Marco Rubio rather than Charlie Crist are taking a perfectly justifiable risk: the ideological distance between the candidates is large, and Florida is conservative enough that Rubio would probably still be at least even-money to get elected against a frankly fairly weak Democratic field. Illinois, though, is 10 points to Florida's left, and the Democratic nominee there should ultimately be pretty strong.

It's also possible, of course, that there's something further behind this story. Kirk waffled for a long time on whether to enter the Senate race, only doing so earlier this week when Illinois AG Lisa Madigan said that she wouldn't. Perhaps he's worried about the risk he'd be taking in giving up his House seat to run for the Senate. Although there have been a few cases where a candidate won back his House seat after losing an election for the Senate -- Tennessee's Jim Cooper is one such example -- in most cases losing one's incumbency advantage plus being branded with the "loser" label has proven to be difficult to overcome, and running a losing race for the Senate is often a career-ender. It's also possible that Kirk wouldn't want to open up his personal and professional life to the sort of scrutiny it would face in a Senate run, as these things can get fairly nasty in Illinois.

The whole story, indeed, is a little bit strange. Why should Kirk particularly care what a lightweight like McKenna thinks about him when he'll presumably have the enthusiastic backing of John Cornyn and the NRSC? We'll simply have to wait and see whether there's anything more to develop. For the time being, however, this race looks like something of a casualty of the Republican leadership and tactical vacuum and would be a significant opportunity bypassed.

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Third and Unfortunately Last Poker Update

Last poker post. I promise. Then it's back to "normal" around here.

I was eliminated from the World Series of Poker late yesterday evening after more than 15 hours of play over two days. The hand on which I managed to eliminate myself was oddly and almost emblematically reflective of the declaration I made earlier, which is that I was "willing to gamble chips in certain somewhat marginal situations that mostly boil down to luck." But first, a note on how I got there -- warning: nerdy, detailed poker content follows!

I started the second day with about 60,000 chips. I ran this total to as high as 105,000 about an hour or two after the start of play, as I picked up some decent hands early and won some medium-sized pots. But that number was grdually whittled down over the course of the afternoon -- not in any one particularly dramatic fashion, but rather via a number of hands where I might put 5,000 or 10,000 into the pot as the aggressor and ran into opponents who either caught some kind of hand or were willing to pretend that they did. I don't think I played these hands badly -- if you raise before the flop with KQ (king-queen), get a caller or two, and the flop comes down something "dry" like A82, it is usually correct to put at least one more bet into the pot when checked to. Your opponents will have a very difficult time continuing unless they have an ace or a set (three of a kind) of 8's or 2's, and you will win the pot right there against both better and worse hands.

But sometimes your opponent will in fact have a decent ace or something stronger and this "good" gamble will turn out badly -- this is just one of the hundreds of forms of bad luck in poker. Of course, matters can be complicated greatly if your opponents are willing to pretend that they have an ace even when they don't -- and I may have been running into a little bit of that too. From a 'meta' perspective, my play may have appeared to lack finesse and veer too much toward the tight and predictable side. This wasn't entirely the case -- in fact, I had in fact run a couple of moderately gutsy bluffs -- the problem was that they were successful so my opponents never saw my hand. I could have showed the bluffs after my opponents folded, of course, which is usually a beginners' move, but may have been correct in this instance. In any event, it's one thing to say in the abstract that, say, "against opponents who are capable of bluffing, you sometimes have to re-bluff the bluffer", and another thing to actually find the right time to apply that principle in any particular hand at the poker table -- and another thing still for that play to work to your advantage later in the afternoon.

In any event, by the time I got to the elimination hand, I was down to slightly under 50,000 chips. I think the number was closer to 45,000, in fact, but we'll call it 47,500 because it will make the math work out conveniently down below. I was not exactly a short stack, but was well below the average of about 80,000 chips and was going to be fairly happy to take an opportunity to gamble. This was especially so after a loose, extremely poor opponent to my right had been eliminated -- I had been playing somewhat conservatively before that because I knew there was a decent chance of getting all my chips in against him as a heavy favorite.

The hand that I picked up was pair of red 9's. A fairly loose opponent -- a young kid with hairy arms and sunglasses -- made a "standard" raise of about 2,500 chips ahead of me. I re-raised him to 7,500. I'd be happy to have this opponent either fold, in which case I'd pick up a few chips at no additional risk, or call, in which case I'd have position on him after the flop with a hand I felt pretty good about. The only thing I didn't want to see was a re-raise, because my stack was short enough that I'd probably be making a decision for all my chips.

But Hairy Arms didn't get a chance to re-raise. Instead a third opponent in late position did. This was not someone I wanted to see get involved in the hand -- he was a good, fairly tight, respectful player with a big stack in late position. Moreover, with two other players already involved in the hand, both of whom had raised, it was unlikely that he was making some sort of squeeze play. This was in all probability some kind of very good to outstanding hand, and the amount of the raise was large enough as to effectively put me all-in. The hairy-armed kid folded, which left the decision up to me.

I knew I was behind the good player's range of possible hands. The question was exactly how far behind, because the pot was offering me a bit of a discount. I had roughly 40,000 chips left. If I gambled those, I had a chance to win 60,000: the 47,500 the good player had committed to the pot, the 7,500 I'd bet earlier and could now only recover by remaining in the hand, the 2,500 that Hairy Arms had abandoned, and another roughly 2,500 in blinds and antes. That meant I only had to wind up with the best hand 40 percent of the time for a call to be correct from the standpoint of maximizing my chips.

Against a larger pair like kings, queens, or aces, I'd be a heavy underdog -- winning the pot only the 20 percent of the time or so that I pulled one of the two remaining 9's out of the deck (without his hand also improving). On the other hand, I was a slight (roughly 53-55 percent) favorite against any unpaired hand like ace-king, and it's a lot easier to have an unpaired hand than a paired one. There was also a slight -- although probably extremely slight -- chance that he'd make this re-raise with a smaller pair like 88, in which case I'd be the 4:1 favorite.

The question is exactly how tight the tight player was. About the tightest I could imagine him being in this spot would be to re-raise with AA, KK, QQ, AK, and half the time with JJ and AQs (a "suited" ace queen). Against that range, I was only about 35 percent to win the pot -- less than the 40 percent I needed. (You can run these numbers yourself by downloading this program). On the other hand, suppose that his range was just slightly looser, and consisted of all pairs 88 and higher, plus AK, AQ (whether suited or not) and a suited KQ. In that case, I'd win the hand 43 percent of the time and would probably want to continue with the hand.

I recognized immediately that the decision was very close -- I needed 40 percent of the pot to play on, and had somewhere between 35-43 percent. There were a couple of additional things that I thought about. First, there is some information in the fact that the hairy-armed kid had initially raised, and then folded. Odds are that did this with a hand consisting of two unpaired high cards -- like AJ or KQ. Suppose, for instance, that this player had flipped over AJ as he'd folded. This is excellent news for me -- it means that the good opponent was only half as likely to have AA and JJ, two of the hands that I didn't want to run into -- and also, that if he had AK, he'd be less likely to hit an ace on the board and improve to beat my pair. Of course, we don't know that the hairy-armed kid had *exactly* AJ. But overall, his range of hands is worth an extra point or two's worth of equity for me by deadening my opponent's cards.

The other, more important thing I started to think about was how much "life" in the tournament was worth to me. This isn't like a cash game, where if you go bust, you can reach into to your wallet and buy more chips. Once you go broke, you have to wait a year to play again.

There are a lot of good players that would never take this sort of gamble -- their philosophy is that so long as you have a chip and a chair, you have a chance to win, and that being good players, they'll find better spots to get their money in than what is essentially a breakeven decision. There are a couple of others -- Chris Ferguson, for instance -- that treat tournament chips almost exactly as they would cash game chips and aren't willing to sacrifice very much equity at all for survival.

If I folded and opted for guaranteed survival, I'd have 40,000 chips left -- not a cripplingly low amount, but enough that I'd probably have to make another all-in decision fairly soon. There has been very little work done on the relative values of different stack sizes -- is an 80,000-chip stack worth exactly twice as much as a 40,000-chip stack? Less than twice as much? More than twice as much? Most of the theory points toward the "less than" answer, and this is almost certainly the case late in a tournament once everyone is in the money. But we were far from the cash bubble, and there is a lot more work to be done on what it means at this stage. Having a smaller stack limits your options in certain ways, but there are also elements of zugzwang in poker where having a limited set of options is helpful.

What was a little more tangible is that if I folded the hand, it probably meant I'd have to come back on play on Friday (after an off-day today) since there was only half an hour to go before that evening's session ended. There is an opportunity cost to my being out here in Vegas -- the time I spend at the poker tables is time I can't spend working on the blog, working on my book, or doing consulting projects, all of which are very demanding on my time. Moreover, the fact of the matter is that even in my off-time, it's just harder for me to get work done here than it is back at home in New York. With roughly 40,000 in chips, which is what I'd have if I'd folded, I'd probably have to at least triple and probably quadruple my stack to get into the money at the end of Day 3 -- which meant that odds were I'd wind up staying for two additional days with little tangible return to show for it.

So let's say, for instance, that I'm 38.5 percent to win against my opponent's actual range of hands when I need 40.0 percent to continue; that means my decision would be incorrect by about 1,500 tournament chips. The cash value of 1,500 tournament chips is about $500. If folding means, say, 10 additional hours of lost productivity on average, that is worth quite a bit more to me than $500.

However, it's easy to poke holes in this logic. For one thing, playing in the tournament is fun -- otherwise I would not be doing it in the first place. And while I value my time highly, it is worth nowhere near as that of some top-flight professionals like Phil Ivey, who can make literally thousands of dollars an hour on average playing cash games. For the vast majority of players, both professional and amateur, playing the tournament is more of a lifestyle decision than a cash decision.

But for better or for worse, I was thinking about these things. If things had been just slightly different -- if I had another 10,000 chips (or 10,000 fewer!), if the bad player on my right hadn't busted on the previous hand, if my hand were tens rather than nines, I wouldn't have had to think about them -- my decision would be (comparatively) easy. Maybe I was thinking about them wrongly and maybe I shouldn't have been thinking about them. But I was.

After about two minutes of contemplation, I called and went all-in for my few remaining chips, instantly regretting it, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. My opponent flipped over pocket queens, the board bricked off, and I shook his hand and went to get a beer.

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Democrats do Better Among the Most and Least Educated

This is not newsworthy, but I think it's good to have the numbers along with our vague impressions of how young/old people and more/less educated people are voting.

These are based on raw Pew data, reweighted to adjust for voter turnout by state, income, and ethnicity. No modeling of vote on age, education, and ethnicity. I think our future estimates based on the 9-way model will be better, but these are basically OK, I think. All but six of the dots in the graph are based on sample sizes greater than 30.

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Coleman for Governor?

Now that the endless recount battle between Al Franken and Norm Coleman for Minnesota's senate seat is over, Coleman is a private citizen. He's also, of course, eligible to run for governor next year. Might he?

Minnesota-based blogger Joe Bodell reports results from a new Public Policy Polling survey of Minnesotans that shows Coleman competitive against potential Democratic-Farmer-Labor gubernatorial nominees. He's trailing but within the margin of error in potential matchups against Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and former senator Mark Dayton, and leading beyond the margin of error against House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. But, given Coleman's name recognition, Bodell thinks the results ought to discourage Coleman from running.

Via email, Bodell told me: "This poll contains some really bad news for Norm Coleman. Universal name-recognition can be a blessing, but when a legal process gets stretched out as tortuously as the recount and court challenge did, Minnesotans start getting tired of the players really quickly -- especially those seen to be obstructing the People's business. Could Coleman overcome the bad taste left by his obstruction of Sen. Franken's seating? Probably. Eighteen months is a lifetime in politics. But losing to two of the three leading DFL candidates, including one who isn't yet tremendously well-known in Greater Minnesota, is a really bad sign for his chances at a political resurrection."

Indeed, according to PPP, 52 percent view Coleman negatively, just 38 percent positively. Moreover, 54 percent say the way Coleman handled the recount against Franken makes them less likely to vote for him in the future, more than twice the 26 percent who say it makes them more likely to do so.

For the record, although Minnesota has no constitutional term-limit provision for governor, Republican Tim Pawlenty has already announced he will not seek a third term. Coleman is out of work now, and he's not exactly an unknown in the state. Though he has to deal with those negatives, he might be Minnesota Republicans' best chance--if, that is, he's willing to risk the possibility of another close, or even not-so-close, but painful defeat.

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Is Obama Improving America's Global Image?

In 2008, Barack Obama presented himself as a fresh face on the scene not only to Americans but to citizens of the world. Given his racial identity and name, he certainly wasn't the kind of president people around the world expected to win the presidency. Traveling in four very different countries on behalf of the State Department last year to talk about the presidential election--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and South Africa--most people I met expressed two sentiments: one, that they wanted Obama to win; and two, they were convinced Americans would never elect him.


Now that we have, has global opinion about Obama and the United States changed accordingly? According to a new poll of citizens from 20 countries (including the United States) by World Public Opinion.org, the respective answers are "yes" and "no": Obama is viewed mostly positively, but attitudes toward America generally are not improving much, if at all, in most countries.

Not surprisingly, views about the role the United States plays in the world are generally more favorable in the African and western European countries surveyed. Equally unsurprising is the fact that citizens in Muslim nations view us warily. Among non-Muslim countries in Asia, citizens in South Korean, Taiwan and India view America's role quite favorably, with the Chinese slightly unfavorable overall.

The report summary reads, in part:

Asked whether they have confidence in Barack Obama to "do the right thing regarding world affairs," for all nations (excluding the US) an average of 61 percent say they have some or a lot of confidence.

But asked how the US treats their government, few--on average just one in four--say it "treats us fairly," while two-thirds say that it "abuses its greater power to make us do what the US wants." Overall, these views are no better than they were in 2008. Only three countries diverged from this view (Kenya, Nigeria, and Germany).

In all nations polled, majorities say that the US "use(s) the threat of military force to gain advantages." Majorities range from 61 percent in India and Poland to 92 percent in South Korea and include America's close ally Great Britain (83%). On average, across all nations polled, 77 percent perceive the US as threatening. Even 71 percent of Americans agree.

Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org comments, "Most people around the world seem to have a positive view of the young new captain at the helm of the American ship of state, though many people see this huge ship as still carrying forward domineering policies."

Of course, a favorable view of the American president is neither necessary nor sufficient to creating a favorable view of the United States. But it doesn't hurt. And surely Obama cannot be expected to change global opinion in just six months. Considering how much damage George W. Bush did to global attitudes toward the United States, if there's any chance for these numbers to improve, Obama's global popularity is a start.

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A Republican Hot Streak?

A full update to our Senate race rankings is going to have to wait another day or two, but for the first time since we started this project, five of the top ten races will consist of Democratic-held seats. That's because of the turn of events which has unfolded in Illinois, where Lisa Madigan now says she won't run for Senate (this isn't that surprising; that she won't run for governor either is) and IL-10 Republican Mark Kirk, who was none-to-subtly waiting for Madigan's decision, now says he will.

Kirk is probably still an underdog against the eventual Democratic nominee -- most likely State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a 33-year-old friend of Barack Obama's who has considerable political upside. But the race is now going to be competitive, whereas if Madigan had run, or Kirk hadn't, it probably wouldn't have been. And this isn't the only recruitment coup that the Republicans have had of late. Earlier this weak, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said she'd challenge Paul Hodes for Judd Gregg's seat in New Hampshire, which substantially improves the Republicans' chances of holding on. And of course, Charlie Crist is running in Florida (even if half of Republican establishment wish he weren't). Meanwhile Roy Cooper, the Democrats' preferred candidate in North Carolina, won't be running there.

By no means have Republicans batted 1.000. They missed a big opportunity in Pennsylvania when Tom Ridge declined to run. Meanwhile, it looks like they may get a serious race in Louisiana when they were hoping to avoid one, with U.S. Rep. Charlie Mealncon apparently set to challenge David Vitter.

Increasingly, however, the Republicans have a bit of momentum in the Senate picture. And the White House's decision to recruit both Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius into their cabinet -- two women who were uniquely qualified to mount competitive races in Arizona and Kansas, respectively -- is looking increasingly suspect.

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Palin the Polarizer

The Obama campaign's response to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate was to argue that the Arizona senator had ruined his narrative of being the seasoned, experienced candidate by coupling himself with an unseasoned novice. An online article in Religion Dispatches written this week by Robert Jones and Daniel Cox confirms the Obama camp's assertion that McCain ruined his story, but suggests that it had less to do with the Arizona senator's experiential claims than his ability to present himself as a non-polarizing, post-partisan politician.


Using numbers from a post-election poll, Jones and Cox conclude that Palin damaged McCain's brand because her style evoked the kind of polarizing politics that Americans had grown sick of--and to which, not coincidentally, Barack Obama offered himself as an antidote.

Noting that her selection only had a net positive effect on support for the Republican ticket among white evangelicals, with a net negative effect among white Catholics and Independents (as depicted above), Jones and Cox ask:

So what explains the large gap for many between identifying with Palin’s values and supporting her as a candidate? Part of the explanation certainly has to be her many now-famous stumbles, public gaffes, and lack of knowledge about key policies. But there is another important explanation. There is mounting evidence that the American electorate is turning away from so-called “values voter” wedge politics that Palin represented (recall that Palin launched her career by using an anti-abortion rights hit piece against her opponent in the Wasilla mayoral race, an historically non-partisan position).

In our post-election survey, an overwhelming majority (73%) of American voters agreed that “people of faith should advocate for policies that protect the interests of all and promote the common good” compared to only 22% who preferred pursuing “policies that protect their values and way of life.” By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, those favoring a common good politics said Palin’s addition made them less likely to support the GOP ticket (27% less likely vs. 15% more likely).

One might quibble with these results on (at least) two grounds. First, the poll was taken after the election McCain-Palin had just lost, so it's possible that respondents overstated their negative views of her. The second thing that's hard to ignore is the fact that at least half the voters overall, and within each subgroup, say Palin made no difference to their decision. In short, she either didn't matter, or if she did Palin evoked a polarizing sentiment that, on balance, hurt McCain more than it helped him.

"The avalanche of coverage since Palin’s resignation indicates that pundits are likely to continue their conjectures about Palin’s motives and political future," write Jones and Cox. "But the numbers reveal her limitations as a national political figure, and her serious liabilities among virtually every religious and demographic group outside of the GOP base. Moreover, the numbers reveal that voters across the political spectrum are looking not only for candidates who share their values, but for candidates who can ably serve the common good."

As I said yesterday, whatever her plans, I think Palin's ambitions in presidential politics were significantly if not irrevocably damaged by the sudden announcement of her resignation. Her type of politics may sell in Alaska--though Jones and Cox note that Palin's approval numbers have plummeted at home, too--but she just doesn't sell nationally. She's not merely fighting the last war, but the last generation's war. And that generation and today's generation have largely grown tired of fighting.

But Palin will continue to serve as an icon for those still fighting those wars. Which is why I'm betting she will end up as a television or radio personality, a position ideally suited to her style of politics and her specific appeal to a small and shrinking, yet rabid and animated segment of the American public. Palin may not have a lot of governing experience, but she does have enough experience (and appetite) as a national polarizing agent, a role that seems to come to her naturally. Once Palin gets out of Alaska, does her book tour and, presumably, abandons her presidential ambitions--or even if she runs and fails miserably in 2012--she will be free to make the transformation into her truer, more natural political self.

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Oh No, Ohio?

A Quinnipiac poll today has Barack Obama's approval rating tanking in Ohio: he's now at 49 percent approve and 44 percent disapprove in the Buckeye State, according to Quinnipiac, whereas back in May, they had him at a healthy 62-31.

Obama's approval ratings have declined nationwide by perhaps 3-5 points since early May. I have little doubt that this has mostly to do with the flagging economy. Each day, a few more voters are going to blame Obama for the economic troubles that we're in. If the economy seems to be showing some "green shoots", as it did in March and April, then Obama will be fine -- voters don't expect the economy to turn around overnight. But if the economy isn't showing any signs of life -- and most of the economic news for the past 45 days or so has been pretty grim -- he'll fail to keep pace with those modest, but ever-increasing, expectations, and his approval ratings will decline.

Ohio, of course, has suffered more than most states from the recession. It's employment rate, at 10.8 percent in May, is the eighth-highest in the nation, and has increased by 3.5 points (and counting) since Election Day:

States with Largest Increases in Unemployment Rate since November


What Ohio hasn't done, though, is suffer uniquely from the recession. It doesn't have it nearly as bad as its neighbor, my native state of Michigan, where unemployment is now at 14.1 percent. And what are Obama's approval ratings like in Michigan?

Not so bad. A Rasmussen poll in mid-June put Obama's approval there at 59-39, including 39 percent strongly approving (and remember, Rasmussen has tended to have very bearish numbers on Obama overall). An EPIC-MRA poll of Michigan in late May, meanwhile, had 61 percent rating his job performance as "excellent" or "pretty good".

The point is not that Obama's approval ratings aren't suffering because of the economy, nor that they might not be suffering more in states where the economy is worse. (Whoa, too many double-negatives there). I just doubt that there any problems Obama has that are so unique to Ohio that you wouldn't also see them manifested in Michigan or Pennsylvania (where Obama's approval numbers have also generally been fine). As such, I think the headlines this poll has generated have been a little overwritten. It's not that, "Oh no, Obama is going to lose Ohio in 2012!". It's more just another indication that voters won't have an infinite amount of patience with Obama on the economy, and if by 2012 the economy still hasn't improved (in which case, we'll be referring to the recession as "GD2"), or has double-dipped, or has improved sluggishly at the cost of a huge run-up in the national debt, Obama is going to be in trouble in Ohio as well as most of the other 49 states.

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Poker Update: I'm #441

As you may know, I'm in Las Vegas right now for the World Series of Poker. It's actually been quite a productive trip: I've met a lot of extremely well-known poker players as well as Congressman Barney Frank, who was very impressive. More on those and other things, including the usual business of politics that we cover around here, later on. In the meantime, for of you who feel like indulging me, there's a bit more on my experience in the poker tournament below the fold.

* My experience yesterday can be broken down into three phases:

- In the first phase, I got poor cards but played pretty well, and made a little bit of money.
- In the second phase, I got poor cards and played poorly, and lost a fair bit of money.
- In the third phase, I got terrific cards and played well enough, and made a lot of money.

The bottom line is that things turned out pretty well. Everyone starts out the tournament with 30,000 chips. I finished the day with slightly over 61,000 chips -- fewer than Los Angeles Lakers point guard Jordan Farmar, who is apparently a very good poker player and was briefly among the chip leaders, but more than Ray Romano, who lost all his chips and busted out of the event. This means I'm currently in 441st place (or thereabouts) out of the 6,500 or so players who entered the tournament. Half the field continues play today; I have the day off and then resume tomorrow.

* Playing ten hours of poker -- with 2+ hours of breaks in between -- as I did yesterday, is absolutely exhausting. I'm not sure if that makes poker a "sport", but it's closer than you'd think. Physical stamina is more of a consideration in an event like the "Main Event" of World Series of Poker than is generally understood, the eventual winner of which will have played something like 90 hours or cards to claim his or her title.

* I know that I'm not the best player in the field of 6,500 or so that entered. I'm certainly not among the 100 best, and maybe not among the 1,000 best. My poker aptitude, mind you, is plenty high. But ability is the sum of aptitude and experience, and I just don't have very much experience at all in these live, big-money tournament settings. Nor is no limit hold 'em, the game played in this tournament, my best one; back when I was playing regularly, I made most of my money from another variant known as limit hold 'em, where all bets are of a fixed size.

But this is true in many aspects of life: the best player/person does not always win. What makes poker somewhat unique is that understanding one's limits can significantly affect (and improve) one's strategy. For instance, I'm willing to gamble chips in certain somewhat marginal situations that mostly boil down to luck, because those chips are less valuable to me than they might be to a world-class player who can find a better spot to deploy them. On the other hand, when I got myself in trouble yesterday, it was usually because I played my hand in such a way that forced me to try to "outplay" a top-level opponent. This doesn't mean that such confrontations can be entirely avoided -- in spite of what it might seem like if you watch the the (highly-edited) version of the tournament on ESPN, you can't win a tournament like this one just by pushing all-in every hand. And there are times when I feel like I definitely have an edge -- even against great players. But I have to be realistic about the fact that, when there is a point when a superior player and I each think we are outplaying one another, I'm going to be the one getting pwned more often than not.

The point is, though, that of the 6,500 people who entered the tournament, I'd guess that as many as half of them really do think deep down that they're the best (or one of the best) poker players in the world. Of course, only one (or a few) of them can be right. But the rest are liable to take the wrong sorts of opportunities against the wrong sorts of opponents.

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Sarah Palin (R, Asterisk)

I really didn't want to spend the Fourth of July weekend thinking about the personal-slash-political saga of Sarah Palin. But the thing about Palin, whether you adore or despise her, is that she forces you to deal with her--which, when you think about it, is a quintessentially American trait.

The reasons for her resignation, whatever they turn out to be, will matter to the present and unfolding story, but not to her larger fate. The fact that Palin resigned now--no less the elliptical and sometimes eerie way she announced her intentions--likely signals the end of her career as a national politician to be taken seriously and the start of her transformation into a political novelty. Yet Palin's personal saga will continue to attract attention and garner headlines. Maybe she'll become a television personality, a career she pursued at one point in her life. So, yes, we may still have to deal with Sarah and all that she represents.

Why? What is it about Palin that we find so compelling, even fascinating? Why is her every move scrutinized? Why can we not look away?

The short answer may be that she is a late-stage warrior in a culture war that, while still ongoing, has diminished into something more of a skirmish. Abortion aside, many of the polarizing issues of the past two generations--Vietnam, race, sexual mores, feminism, popular culture--have lost a lot of their capacity to galvanize and divide us. For those still fighting that war, in 2008 Palin emerged as an icon and a vessel for restoration; for those who had grown tired of that war she was like a political burr, an uncomfortable reminder of a political time thought to be happily put behind us.

The longer answer has to do with the fact that she is young and a woman, which only magnifies sentiments on both sides of the Palin divide. It was easy to dismiss with a polite smile or a roll of the eyeballs the late-stage career grumblings of Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond; you knew their days were numbered, that they were walking anachronisms slated to join other curiosities in the museum of post-war American politics.

Not so with Sarah. She is younger than Barack Obama, after all. She is attractive. (I stopped counting how many women have mentioned to me, unsolicited and unprompted, Palin's cheekbone structure.) And so we have in her a woman cheerily and cheekily railing against the Great Society even though she was still in diapers the day Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. As colleague Phil Klinkner and I have argued, the 2008 coalition that beat her and John McCain was in many ways LBJ's revenge for the politics that devoured his presidency by 1968 and set into motion the culture war that dominated American politics for the next 40 years. All of which makes Palin the oddest of political hybrids: the spritely scold, the young curmudgeon.

I don't like to talk about politics at social functions with family and friends, especially during holidays. But of course Palin's name was on many lips this weekend. Hearing people speak at length about her for the first time since last autumn, I was reminded just how strongly people feel about her. Other than perhaps Ted Kennedy, I cannot think of another living politician who generates such passionate, unambivalent opinions. (And yes, I include George W. Bush and Barack Obama in that accounting.) It's cliche to say so, but she really is a one-woman American political Rorschach test. And just as I find it painfully difficult to converse with Palinites, I can see them looking back at me like I'm some alien as I explain why she so offends me.

Palin's decision to resign may push her off the presidential election stage, but not out of our collective consciousness. She will soon become an asterisk in presidential politics, even as her grip on the national psyche persists.

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How Can the Climate Bill Get to 60 Votes?

Last week, we commissioned an analysis of voting on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the Senate, which was narrowly approved by the House with a relatively high amount of crossing of party lines: 44 Democratic nay votes, and 8 Republican yeas. The model used several variables, including lobbying contributions, per-capita carbon emissions in each state, and a Congressman's ideology, to attempt to explain/predict their vote on the climate bil. Today, we'll take that same analysis and apply it prospectively to the Senate.

But first, a few assumptions:

1. Al Franken has now jointed the Senate but we do not have any votes for him on which to form an ideology score. I am going to give him the numbes of his idol, Paul Wellsone. Does anybody really have a problem with my assuming that Franken, like Wellstone, is going to be very, very liberal? Didn't think so.
2. Lobbying contributions are scaled to reflect the fact that Senators raise more on average than Representatives do.
3. A more controversial assumption is that we're assuming that there won't be nay votes from the left, of which there were almost certainly three (DeFazio, Kucinich, Stark) in the House. In other words, the model as I've run it here treats those three as yea votes. The reason I'm making this assumption is because: (a) it's not so clear that DeFazio, Kucinih and Stark would have voted against the poll if their votes were needed for passage, and (b) this is just not something that seems to be in the gameplan of the progressives in the Senate; Russ Feingold of Wisconsin every once in a blue moon winds up being far enough to the left that he votes with the Republicans, but that's juts about it.

And a few caveats:

1. The Senate will be voting on a different bill than the House's version. The Senate's version might be more or less favorable to, say, farm-state interests than the House's, which could in turn alter the percentages.
2. The overall political tides may have shifted by the time the Senate considers the bill because of changes to the economy, Obama's approval rating, gas prices, and perhaps even the weather, etc.
3. The key vote in the Senate is not really the vote on final passage, which this model would seem to get at, but rather the vote on cloture, or breaking the filibuster, which would require 60 votes. It's not all that uncommon for a senator to vote for cloture and then against the underlying bill, or vice versa, although it seems to happen less often for major issues like climate change legislation.
4. These percentages are based on the relatively limited amount of knowledge embodied in the seven variables in the model; that should not be read to imply that there aren't other factors, both tangible and intangible, that wouldn't have a significant impact.

With all of that said, here are how the 100 senators rank in order of most to least likely to vote for the bill.



The only way any of these senators would vote against the climate bill is if they're opposing it from the left, a possibility which we're specifically ignoring for this analysis for the reasons described above. Diane Feinstein can be weird, I guess, but is unlikely to be so on climate legislation sponsored by her colleague Barbara Boxer -- plus California is a low-carbon state that already has some alternative-energy infrastructure in place and could be a big net beneficiary from this bill.



There are a few bullets for the Democrats to dodge here, but none of them would seem to be fatal:

* Joe Liberman is Joe Lieberman. But he also sponsored a cap-and-trade bill last year, takes no money from the coal industry, and lives in a deeply blue, low-carbon state.
* Tom Carper relies pretty heavily on corporate donations, but the coal industry isn't really one of his suitors and he usually falls into line on major Democratic policy priorities.
* Harry Reid takes a lot of coal money, although he also takes a lot of nuclear and alternative energy money and is, of course, the Majority Leader. And hard as it is to believe considering all the carbon that must be consumed to air-condition the Vegas Strip (it's 2 in the morning here and still 90 degrees outside), Nevada is not a particularly carbon-intensive state. So I don't think Reid's yea vote is in much doubt, but the one way he could be problematic is if he's unwilling to compromise on nuclear energy -- a big chip the Democrats have in their arsenal -- because of concerns over Yucca Mountain.

A much more serious concern for the Democrats is Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who voted against cloture on last year's bill. Brown's public statements have generally indicated lukewarm support for the bill, but also that he and the two senators from Michigan -- Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow -- are going to require some compromises to protect the auto industry. At the end of the day, a lot has already been done to assist the auto industry, and Brown, Levin and Stabenow are mainline liberal Democrats -- their votes can probably be whipped, and their demands for compromise probably revealed to be bluffs. But their votes on the climate bill aren't as certain as the analysis indicates.



Now we get into a set of Democrats who can occasionally be conservative, sometimes in order to protect corporate interests. But the overall combination that befalls each one breaks down in favorable enough ways that the Democrats probably have nothing really to worry about. Mark Warner, for instance, while taking a lot of money from coal, also takes some money from alt/nuclear and lives in a fairly low-carbon state.



These six votes would get the Democrats to 50, which would allow Joe Biden to break the tie -- if not for that whole filibuster thing. You're probably seeing some names here that you're a bit surprised to see. Montana consumes a fair amount of carbon, and Max Baucus is pretty conservative, which seems like a bad combination -- until you see how much money he's getting from alt/nuclear PACs -- the most of any senator on a per-cycle basis. Arlen Specter was generally thought to be sympathetic to cap-and-trade legislation -- and that was before he turned into a Democrat. North Carolina's economy is fairly low-carbon, which should help to prevent Kay Hagan from defecting. The other two senators on this list, however, could be more problematic for the Democrats, as Claire McCaskill has already tweeted her concerns about cap-and-trade, and as Tim Johnson voted against cloture last year -- although South Dakota's economy, for whatever reason, is much less carbon-intensive than North Dakota's.



These are three senators for whom the percentages tended to move quite a bit based on relatively small tweaks to the model. Snowe and Collins are almost certainly going to be necessary parts of any path to 60 votes and are almost certainly going to be easier gets than at least half a dozen Democrats. And I tend to think the model has erred a bit pessimistic on them here. But that doesn't mean their votes are assured.

Mark Begich, in Alaska, might be the more interesting case. Alaska is such an outlier in so many ways in terms of energy production that it's hard to know exactly how all the incentives line up, but Begich claimed on his campaign website that he was a support of cap-and-trade, and Alaska also has its doses of environmentalism. If the Democrats decide to pull some trigger to get Lisa Murkowski's vote -- ANWR drilling, for example, which is highly popular in Alaska -- they'll undoubtedly be safe on Begich by that point.

To this point, even if everything has gone perfectly for the Democrats, that would still only put them up to 53 out of the filibuster-breaking 60. They'd then need to find 7 votes out of this group of 9, none of which are going to be easy:



North Dakota, West Virginia and Louisiana rank 2nd through 4th in per-capita carbon emissions. Five of their six senators also happen to be Democrats. If the Democrats could swap, say, Rockefeller and Byrd for two seats in Arizona, the going would be significantly easier on this issue. Byrd in particular: let's face it -- it's not clear how many more votes Robert Byrd is going to cast in the Senate period, and at the end of the day, I don't see one of his final ones being something that could significantly impair the coal industry in West Virginia. The path of least resistance to 60 votes probably lies elsewhere. Rockefeller, though, voted aye on cloture on last year's bill and is probably attainable.

Mary Landireu and Byron Dorgan, on the other hand, voted 'no' on cloture last year. Dorgan chairs the Democratic Policy Committee and could perhaps be more vulnerable to peer pressure than certain other senators, but I don't know what you do with the more conservative Landireu, unless you can spin some offshore drilling compromise to her liking or persuade her of the linkage between global warming and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Then there's Ben Nelson, who's a problem for the Democrats on nearly everything, plus Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, who can probably expect a few late-night phone calls from Rahm Emanuel.



One pattern we've seen this year, but which might be too recent to be picked up by DW-NOMINATE scores, is that the House Republicans seem to be sticking much more to the party line than the Senate Republicans. That could make these votes a bit more gettable than the numbers above indicate. Martinez voted 'yea' on cloture last year and Florida is a low-carbon state which might suffer significantly from a sea-level rise or an increase in Atlantic Hurricanes, but the fact that he's retiring may actually harm the Democrats, since I'd gather that cap-and-trade is reasonably popular down in Florida (which passed a statewide permutation on the policy last year). Speaking of which, I'd love to see some polling on cap-and-trade in New Hampshire, which is both pro-business and pro-environment. John McCain pushed for a cap-and-trade policy on the campaign trail but has since claimed Obama is going about doing it in the wrong way. Perhaps he could be persuaded to vote to break the filibuster even if he votes no on the underlying bill. The one case where the model seems to be pretty clearly out to lunch is that of Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has already struck a highly skeptical tone about cap-and-trade.



The two names you sometimes hear mentioned from this list are Lindsay Graham and Lisa Murkowski. Graham has not been as "bipartisan" on core issues as he seems to want to make himself out to be, however, and lives in a state with very high unemployment. Perhaps you could get him if you added some offshore drilling provisions, which would probably benefit South Carolina, but I wouldn't expect it to be easy. Murkowski, likewise, sounds basically skeptical but perhaps open to a compromise; again, the permutations of the way the bill might refract onto Alaska's economy are complicated, and so I won't feign complete knowledge here.

* * *

Overall, this is a slightly better assessment than I expected. Although the model considers only 52 Senators to be more likely than not to vote for the bill, there are somewhere between 62-66 votes that are perhaps potentially in play. But Joe Mauer-like precision will be required in targeting the undecided, and further compromises would almost certainly be needed, some of them designed to placate as few as one senator. The question is how many ornaments the Democrats could place on the Christmas Tree before it starts to collapse under its own weight.

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Obama & Palin: Carpe Diem

In many ways, electoral politics is like any other career: you enter as a grunt and "pay your dues" for many years before you eventually have the chance at the big-fish posts. Leaders around the world have made their way in this manner, slowly gaining credibility inside and outside the political establishments within which they reside. Boxes need to be checked and experience accrued, with the issues of security, economy, and social understanding at the top.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel was elected in 1990 to serve as a backbencher for the Christian Democrats, before in 1994 becoming Minister of Environment, and CDU opposition party chair in 2000. She spent five years in this leadership post before finally becoming chancellor following the 2005 federal elections. Similarly, Gordon Brown has spent more than 25 years as a MP from the Scottish council area (county) of Fife, rising from opposition spokesperson on trade issues to Chancellor of the Exchequer, before becoming PM in 2007.

In the U.S., classic examples of the slow-but-steady pol include Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who both served for many years in their respective state houses and in the U.S. House of Representatives before getting an opening to run for the Senate.

Two politicians in the US in recent years have been able to buck this trend, however, through the time-tried method of aggressive and opportunistic carpe diem. Rather than methodically trudging through the ranks, both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin managed to catapult themselves ahead at a rapid, almost precipitous, pace. The former leapt from the Illinois State to the White House in just four years, after less than one term in U.S. Senate, while the latter transformed from small-town Wasilla, AK mayor in 2002 to vice-presidential hopeful in 2008, with a half-term stopover as Governor of Alaska.

Palin's fascinating, if not bizarre, decision to step down as Governor on Friday after a bruising post-election period, therefore, might indicate that her star has risen to its peak. The decision seemed to be made out of frustration with the overwhelming attention on her family, a thirst for something sexier than the post of top executive Alaskan, mixed with a twist of characteristically impulsive ("you can't blink") day-seizing. While Palin's public towel-throwing has signalled a capitulation, if temporary, to the allegations against her, including unethical behavior and incompetance, perhaps the more interesting question is why her rapid-rising opponent has managed not to stumble in the same fashion.

Since he annouced his intention to run for President in early 2007, Obama was dogged by allegations that his thin national public record, including no executive experience at any level, overly intellectual style of argumentation, and Chicago Democratic machine roots would bring him down. Rather than hamper his administration, however, questions of experience, qualification and fitness for office almost completely dissolved following the election. Today, only wing-nut argumentation has persisted, such as the conspiracy theories about Obama's secret birth in Kenya, rather than Hawaii as his birth certificate verifies.

Perhaps this is in part the winner's spoils, with the benefit of the doubt going with the White House turf. Since Obama managed to win with a resounding 365 electoral votes, and has a amassed a formidable and experienced team, the proof will be in the pudding. Palin, however, has continued to play a starring role in the "what if" game of the 2008 election, with highly divergent tales of her, alternatively as a charismatic ticket boost and as a moronic non-team player.

Nonetheless, the key for Obama has been a combination of shark-like opportunism, combined with a level of brand and image control that puts GM and Microsoft to shame. Palin, while a master of the first component, never has been able to discipline her messaging in a way that clearly defines her in a positive and transformational light, as testified to by Friday's rambling resignation. It is likely that a minor reboot is in store, with Palin reemerging to focus at the national level to rebuild her reputation and financial resources, with an eye towards better branding whether 2012 is the diem she wants to grab.
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Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

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