White Approval of Obama

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times pubbed a major piece by Peter Wallsten on the subject of Obama's growing "problem" with white voters. The article cites a series of developments since the president's 100-day mark in office--from the Van Jones episode to some comments by Congressman Charlie Rangel to a Ramadan dinner at the White House--as possible contributors to declining white support for the president and his agenda. Nate blogged about this article recently here.


Because Obama's support among blacks has held constant, white voter support levels more or less account for the president's declining overall numbers.

Wallsten writes:

New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites -- including Democrats and independents -- who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.

Among white Democrats, Obama’s job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It has dropped by 9 points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women -- all groups that will be targeted by both parties in next year's midterm elections.

There are (at least) two things to keep in mind when considering the potential political and (in 2010, 2012) electoral impact of Obama's white support. First, remember that Obama only received 43 percent of the white vote last November, according to exit polls.

Second, there is of course quite a bit of state variation in Obama's white support. The figure above reports white support from 13 statewide polls taken in the last week of August, as compiled by SurveyUSA. Though not a perfectly representative sample, the 13 happen to include states large and small; from the North and South; whose populations are largely white or mixed-race; featuring high median incomes and low; and that were swing states as well as blowouts in the 2008 presidential. For these 13, I then provided Obama's share of the statewide white vote last November. (CNN's link here for Alabama; you can use the menu bar at the top of the page to select any of the other 12 or all 49 other states.)

And guess what? The president's late-August approval numbers among whites aren't much different from his share of the white vote on Election Day. Approval rating is not a pure proxy for voting behavior; people who "approve" of Obama may not have, and may not again in 2012, vote for him, and vice-versa.

But the point I'm making is that Obama's white voter "problem" is a bit overstated. Yes, he seems to have dropped a bit in Virginia and Wisconsin, two states he won by a somewhat slim and very comfortable margin, respectively. And maybe he had better pay attention to New Mexico. But his numbers are actually up in some states, and overall they track pretty closely in all 13 states except Alabama--where his approval far exceeds his white vote share 10 months ago.

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Closing the Gap on Health Care

I had a brief discussion yesterday with a pollster, who asked me what I thought the chances were that Obama's speech on Wednesday night would increase approval for the Democratic health care package by 5 or more points.

I told him I'd give him even money. The pollster was quite a bit more skeptical, assigning not more than a 10 percent chance, and pointing out that it was mostly a Democratic audience that had watched Obama's speech -- an audience that presumably had supported the health care initiative already.

There is, indeed, some evidence that Democrats watched the speech in greater numbers than Republicans. And Democrats, of course, are more likely to have supported the President's health care plans in the first place.

But that doesn't mean that there are no swing votes are to be had among Democrats. On the contrary, they may be exactly the group that Obama had to persuade.

Take a look at the following:



On the one hand, we have Obama's approval ratings among the two major parties, as well as among independents, as taken from Pollster.com's latest partisan breakdown. On the one hand, we have approval ratings for the Democrats' health care bill, taken as a straight average of four recent (although pre-speech) polls -- Rasmussen, Pew, PPP and YouGov -- which provided partisan ID cross-tabs.

Although Democrats are quite naturally more inclined to have been supporters of the health care to begin with, their support -- about 70 percent -- lags well behind their overall approval of Obama, which still registers at about 85 percent. This 15-point gap is significantly larger than the one among independents (7 points) or Republicans (neglible).

The assumption I think we can make is the following: the most persuadable voters on health care -- the lowest-hanging fruit -- are people who still approve of the President but feel lukewarmly (or worse) toward his health care bill. Obama still has a lot of credibility with these people, and health care has become so central to his mission that it would seem that one or another of these things has to give: either their questions about health care will lead them to become disillusioned with Obama in general, or the health care numbers are due to bounce back.

After Wednesday night's speech, I think the latter possibility -- the health care numbers inching back toward Obama's overall approval rating -- is more likely. And the people with whom he has the biggest gap to close are not Republicans, not independents -- but Democrats.

These objections don't appear to be from liberal Democrats, by the way, who might think that Obama's health care bill is too weak. Rasmussen, in their most recent poll on the health care bill, looked not just at the partisan ID breakdown but also the ideological one. 87 percent of liberals support the plan, a far better number than the one Rasmussen showed (72 percent) for Democrats as a whole. It would seem, therefore, that it's primarily moderate-to-conservative Democrats who are most skeptical (relatively apeaking) about health care reform. If Obama has moved the numbers with this group, that would relieve a lot of the pressure on Democratic Congressmen in swing districts who fear that they're damned if they do support the President on health care reform, but also damned if they don't.

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Now What?

My initial reaction to reading and then watching President Obama’s speech last night was that it was a very strong speech, one even more effectively delivered than written. There were two notable “show, don’t tell” moments that I thought were particularly helpful on the President’s behalf.

First was the high-profile, notorious Joe Wilson moment, a serious breach of decorum (in the U.S.) that served to underscore the exact point Obama had been making: we’d like to have a substantive contribution from Republicans, not the lying – his word – histrionic nihilism we’ve been seeing. Cue Joe Wilson with lying histrionics. Well done, Joe. It pissed people off, made a money-bomb for his opponent Ron Miller, and was similar to the way Dems (although certainly not Republicans) reacted to Sarah Palin’s acid floor speech at the convention on Sept 2, 2008. We saw the few Republicans who were in field offices last year motivated by Palin’s presence on the ticket but not McCain’s; we also saw many more people showing up to Obama offices in part galvanized by opposition to her sneering speech (and overall Palinosity).

The second “show, don’t tell” moment was the one on the issue of tort reform that Republicans hold dear. When Obama mentioned this subject and suggested a practical approach that accounted for across-the-aisle concerns, Republicans cheered. Obama continued, engaged by their cheering, and within his body language and tone of voice it struck me that he seemed to have shifted into live negotiation rather than a one-way speech. Optically, it was a show of good faith that seemed to give truth to his offer of open-doorism. It was a visceral, good guy, higher ground moment.

Obama may have given the carrot, but he also seemed to give the stick, the one Obama we’re not used to seeing. That un-seen Obama is the one people who knocked on doors for him are dying to see when push comes to shove on this legislation, and the manner in which he closes this policy debate is already the most fluid piece of his eventual legacy. For all the criticism of George Bush, Obama could use a little Deciderism here in the endgame, and that’s the (not so) secret hope of his supporters. Obama reads books on Lincoln, goes out of his way to draw parallels and celebrate the 16th President at every available moment, and he clearly wants his lasting legacy to be one of Lincoln-scale greatness. The chances of that grow much smaller if he flubs this.

That – and badly misreading the mood of those who sweated for him all last year – are the two big danger points to Obama if there’s an ineffective or merely mild bill he gets to sign. There’s a fair amount of disbelief here. It’s not about the “left of the left,” it’s about my 60-something mom, who went knocking on doors last year for the first time because she believed that this guy was different and would deliver, but who sent me a note not long ago that read, in pertinent part: “Can't believe Obama would not follow thru on a public healthcare system. Has everyone who helped elect Obama gone fishing? Do you know who to write to?”

There is some monster cynicism hiding (not so subtly) around the corner for Obama personally if this reform effort is seen as a falling seriously short of what it could have been. Especially when we see glimpses of Obama as he was last night. That was The Obama of Promise. Obama is seen by many as one of those rare people who has the power to move people and overcome inertia with his rhetorical talent. These same people look at polls like the CNN one showing one in seven viewers switched support in the President’s favor and think: this guy could have made this happen if he’d gone all out for it from the getgo. If it doesn’t work out the way many of his supporters want, they will know he personally underachieved, they will blame him, and that will hurt his brand in a long-lasting, nagging way. Lincoln will be off the table; he’ll more likely be Bill Clinton, a guy who could and should have been so much more. Sometimes Obama has seemed tone-deaf to this danger, and that has been surprising. One of the things he’s notable for is an emotional intelligence that is specifically not tone-deaf.

Hence: “Now What?” Will it be a “game changer” speech, as Sen. Ben Nelson suggested? Or will it be what people who are cynical about Obama’s true commitment to the robust public option fear: more of a political-gain speech for Obama personally than a policy-gain for the bill? And will those who support a public option actually work with knocks and calls for an issue campaign as opposed to an election campaign?

If I were Obama’s team today, I’d have suggested that the way to handle the Joe Wilson episode would be the way I saw Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer once handle a similar situation. In 2007, during tense state budget negotiations, the Republican Majority Leader melted down with a profanity-laced tirade that predictably caught statewide attention. Schweitzer replied that he knew the Majority Leader and that to judge a man by his worst public moment would be a mistake. Not long thereafter, Schweitzer got his way on the bill.

Importantly, Obama should take this approach and also remind people that although Wilson’s objection was not a truthful one, that if anyone out there was bothered by what they saw with that display, the best action would be to not waste energy attacking Mr. Wilson but instead to contact their Representative and Senators and express their opinions on getting a health insurance reform bill passed. If people don’t know the phone numbers & emails for their Representative’s or Senators’ offices, he should say, just go to www.barackobama.com and type in their home address/zip code to find it. He’d have a big platform to make that pitch with media attention hot on the story.

Ultimately, the success of last night’s speech can’t be determined until we see the outcome. Effectively, as he always does, Obama closed with a personal story. The Character of Our Country felt like the 2004 convention speech fused with the recent eulogy for Senator Kennedy. Many of those who would be the best foot soldiers in taking supporting action – and by action I mean exactly what Al Giordano wrote last Friday in “Want Health Care? Go Door to Door or You Won’t Get It” – have this one final window of energy to latch onto and keep the momentum going, but Obama has to do his part and own the narrative every day.

Lincoln may share with Obama the capacity of “better angels” appeal, but he was also willing to go to war.

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Wilson's Outburst Merely a Peep

Why such fury--or, for that matter, surprise--at Joe Wilson's "liar" outburst last night? There are calls for him to be formally censured, including from one former Republican senator, or at least apologize to the entire House. Meanwhile, monies are pouring into the campaign coffers of Wilson's 2010 Democratic challenger, Rob Miller. (According to the DCCC, more than 10,000 contributions totaling more than $350,000, and counting.) He's getting raked over the coals for his 2000 vote as a state senator--one of just seven--to continue to fly the Confederate Flag over the South Carolina state capitol. Some are even poking into poor Congressman Wilson's shaky personal finances.

I, for one, am not much surprised that such bleating-heart conservatism came from South Carolina. I mean, c'mon: This is a state that, more than any other, has been resisting progress for the Union--and the Union itself--since, well, before there even was a United States.

This is a state whose slaveowners pressured Thomas Jefferson to remove condemnations of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. This is a state where loyalists rallied by the British as part of their "Southern Strategy"--the Brits' term, not mine--recaptured South Carolina from the patriots in 1780 as part of a plan to flip SC and Georgia and roll northward from there to smother the very revolution that birthers and tea partiers and Glenn Beck sychophants point to today as inspiration. This is the state that gave us senator and Vice President John C. Calhoun, who advocated state “nullification” of federal powers. This is also the state which became the first to secede from the Union to start the Confederacy—and even threatened to secede from the Confederacy when the other southern states refused to join its calls to re-open the slave trade. This is also the state that boasts of Congressman Preston Brooks, who in 1856 bloodied abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane. (Top that, Rep. Wilson!)

All ancient history, you say? Not so fast.

Well into the 20th century, this was the state where black citizens observed the Fourth of July mostly alone. Why? Because--get this--the vast majority of whites preferred instead to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, May 10, a practice that continued into the early 50s, which means there are some very senior South Carolina citizens who skipped a few Fourths back in their early years. (Why isn't Sean Hannity asking them to brandish their flag pins?) In 1920, this was the state whose legislature rejected the women’s suffrage amendment, only ratifying it for symbolic purposes a half century later, in 1969. In 1948, this was the state where the legislature declared President Harry Truman’s new civil rights commission “un-American,” and that offered segregationist favorite son Strom Thurmond as the so-called Dixiecrat party's presidential nominee. And it was this state's Clarendon County, not Topeka, that was the original case that later became--and only after political intervention by Gov. James Byrnes to replace SC with KS--the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Is anyone surprised that this was the state that brought the first court challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act?

Joe Wilson's outburst? Puh-lease. Merely a peep, folks. Merely a peep.

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The Speech as Rhetorical Device

I want to add some comments about the speech as a purely rhetorical event. That is, I want to set aside the policy arguments to judge Obama’s performance (and some of those in the congressional audience) as a performance.

For starters, the finish was quite powerful. Obama’s great strength, as any good politician’s, is putting complex and difficult policies and choices into very simple, and traditionally American terms. He did a splendid job of contextualizing this debate in terms of the past and the future, in terms of the size and role of government and when government acts well and acts boldly.

Second, the president surely angered some on the left with his point about the goal of what a public option would bring—access to affordable insurance to those who presently cannot afford it or have no access—rather than defending the option as a non-negotiable. He may need to give that away to corner in his opponents, or rather, to give them a “victory” as a takeaway to boast about to their constituents.

“You lie.” It is so rare to hear politicians use this word. We hear every other variation—untrue, twisted, spun, misleading. It was nice to see Obama call to the carpet liars who lie to distort and distract from the debate. That took guts to say, but it was pleasing to hear the talk radio blabbers get chumped down. They deserve it; it was long overdue.

I’m biased, because I’ve used this metaphor myself for years (including on conservative talk radio), but I simply loved the analogy, however imperfect, between uninsured citizens and uninsured motorists. Not sure how the White House computed the $1,000 figure for the costs to the insured created by those without insurance, but that is a powerful talking point.

What continues to be the weakest rhetorical claim—if only because it’s so unclear—is how reform with mostly pay for itself and, at most, cost $900 billion over 10 years. It was great to compare that to the costs racked up on the debt for Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy—watching sourpuss Republican faces at that moment, as they choked down yet again on Bush-era policies was precious—but the details of how it’s going to cost so little are not clear to me, and I’m sure not to millions of other Americans. I wish Obama would specify just how.

As for the Republicans, the rumor is that Rep. Joe Wilson (SC) was the person who called the president a liar in the middle of the speech. I’m watching CNN, which has not yet confirmed. Apparently, Rep. Louie Gohmert was holding up a sign. (I think it said "What Bill?" but am not sure.) UPDATE: It was Wilson who called Obama a liar. The South Carolina congressman was chastised, including by some in his own party, not to mention mocked; he has since issued an apology.

And Rep. Charles Boustany, who gave the GOP response? His speech was actually pretty good, given how little time he had. He was right about encouraging wellness and preventative care. But it’s amazing to hear a Republican talk about making sure that every American has access to health care regardless of pre-existing conditions. If the GOP really means that, Obama can hold their feet to the fire and ask him them either (a) how they plan to do that via the insurance companies; or (b) failing that, how they will do it without having some sort of public option when the insurance companies refuse to cover those who have potentially costly pre-existing conditions that no premium amount would ever cover.

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State-of-the-Healthcare Speech: Final Thoughts

Reactions from Tom and I:

Nate Silver: As Marc Ambinder outlined this afternoon, this was a difficult speech because it was going for a bit of a two-fer. On the one hand, Obama needed to appeal to liberals -- both the 60 or so members of the House who have threatened to vote against a watered-down bill, and the much broader, activist community who has grown wary of what they perceive as a Clintonian president who is too willing to compromise. On the other hand, he needed to appeal to independent voters and their brethren, among whom Obama's approval ratings and sentiment toward his health care package have fallen significantly. He could afford to skip over the broad mainstream of the Democratic Party, who are going to be happy with more or less anything the that he does on health care, and the quarter or so of country who disapproved of Obama from Day One and won't care for what he has to say no matter what.

I think Obama accomplished both of those things -- with some margin to spare. On the one hand, there was no absence of red meat for the liberals. Lies were called out as lies. The Republicans, who seemed to lack an understanding of the theatrics in the room, were at several points made to look petty and stupid. And Obama made the moral case for health care reform, something many liberals -- including yours truly -- have been urging him to do for a long time.

On the other hand, there was a lot of the "bipartisan" pivoting of the sort that made Obama very popular during his 2004 DNC convention speech. He made himself look like the reasonable party in the room. He got a smile out of John McCain, and a golf clap out of John Boehner. At the end of the day, he probably acknowledged the sacrifice of the "robust" public option (although a version with a trigger remains possible, and perhaps even likely). But he got some mileage out of it: using it as the left goalpost by which he'd confidently kick the field goal through.

I called the speech a triple, because I think it was about 10 minutes too long. Andrew Sullivan's readers call it a home run. FOX News, I'm sure, will call it a long fly-out to the warning track. The bottom line: it was a well-delivered speech, and a very, very smart speech. It will remind people of what they liked about Obama. It won't do miracles. But it will increase, perhaps substantially, the odds of meaningful health care reform passing.

Tom Schaller: This was classic Obama, both from a policy conceit and rhetorical framing. Anyone who read The Audacity of Hope knows how Obama works through issues—he sets up how one side conceives it and how the other side does and then, after admitting he is inclined toward progressive/Democratic side of the ledger, he humbly suggests the best solution is probably somewhere in between.

Obama did that again tonight with his juxtaposition of liberals’ desire for single-payer and conservatives’ desire for ending employer-based insurance and a fully privatized market. He was also clear about setting out the three overall goals of reform: lowering growth rate of total cost, adding stability to those who have insurance, and extending coverage to those without. And then he proceeded to argue for those goals and demonstrate a desire for split-the-difference pragmatism: On the one hand standing behind a public option but not laying down an absolute ultimatum; and on the other saying that, while tort reform is not a silver bullet, he’s willing to negotiate to help alleviate the costs associated with defensive medicine practices.

As for raw politics, unsurprisingly the lion’s share of attention was directed at seniors, about whom I’ve written on this site as both the biggest complainers about “socialized” medicine and its largest beneficiaries. The politics of health care have always been about convincing the insured—who by definition are both more powerful and less inclined toward change—and specifically the elderly who are insured, that something needs to be done. This speech was designed to convince the reluctant insured to get behind the White House plan.

I have no doubt the speech can’t hurt this effort. But I wonder just how many of the insured, regardless of age, are persuadable at all—whatever the merits of the plan or the audacity of the speech. Obama’s key line—that the health care problem is our deficit problem—is essentially (if incompletely) true. But the nature of health and health care makes it very difficult to get people to conceiving of health care as a budgetary problem for the federal government, or least conceiving of it primarily and forebodingly that way.

And frankly, the notion that Americans of the current and previous governing generations care about the government’s fiscal solvency is belied by the fact that most cannot remember the government balancing the budget in their adult lifetimes. They have shown a willingness to let the country spend inefficiently and beyond its means for years, on policies (as Obama pointed out) both domestic and foreign. I’d like to believe that rationality and long-term planning governed the thinking of politicians and voters. But there’s too much evidence to the contrary. I know this sounds cynical, and I hope I’m wrong.

That said, Obama is trying to win an argument on its merits, on logic, and statistics and projections. In an ideal world, that sort of pragmatic rationality would be enough. But we don’t live in such a world.

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Liveblog: Obama's State-of-The-Healthcare Speech

9:06 PM [Nate] This was not a home-run kind of speech; he was trying to leg this one out, and say a lot of different things to satisfy a lot of different constituencies. But I think it was a stand-up triple.

9:04 PM [Nate] I don't mean this dismissively: there's really been something for everyone in this speech. Some red-meat, some rope-a-dope centrism, some wonkery, some emotion.

8:58 PM [Nate] I don't mean this dismissively: there's really been something for everyone in this speech. Some red-meat, some rope-a-dope centrism, some wonkery, some emotion.

8:47 PM [Nate] Golf clap from Boehner on proposal for pay-go rules. That was literally the least anyone could possibly clap, without being accused of not actually clapping at all.

8:44 PM [Nate] I think he's pivoted on the public option about as well as he could. At the end of the day, he's simply making the right argument about it, which is that it's a means to an end.

8:36 PM [Nate]: Sean Quinn writes in to say that the Republicans failing to clap for the "no one should go broke" was a big mistake that will make for good commercials. I agree.

8:30 PM [Nate]: The images of Republicans clapping alongside Democrats when Obama mentions something like pre-existing conditions is the upside to doing this from the floor of the Congress, rather than another venue like the Oval Office. Note, though, that many Republicans didn't stand up and clap when Obama said "no one should go broke because they get sick."

8:26 PM [Nate]: Probably smart, politically speaking, to throw both Wyden-Bennett and single payer under the bus -- but of course, the whole problem on "build[ing] on what works" is that what we have doesn't really work.

8:24 PM [Nate]: Wish Obama would have more moments in which he's looking straight at camera, though.

8:22 PM [Nate]: Tonally, this seems pretty decent so far -- better than it reads on paper.

8:14 PM [Nate]: Excepts on public option will generate much debate. Obama will mention opinion polling showing public option is popular.

8:05 PM [Nate]: The speech, interestingly, will begin by talking not about health care, but about the economy.

7:59 PM [Nate]: BTW, the story on Drudge right now about Dems' "whip count" on health care is, of course, total crap. That list lumps together liberal and conservative objections, people like Jared Polis who voted against the bill in committee but will vote for final passage, and basically any Democrat who raised any uncertainties about the health care bill whatsoever. Obviously, there are votes on the right -- and the left -- which are at risk, and passage through the House is hardly assured. But Drudge's list is nevertheless total crap.

7:55 PM [Nate]. Excerpts indicate something more prosaic than poetic -- but maybe that is what's needed.

7:54 PM [Nate]. Some pre-speech recommended reading: Ambinder, Sides, Tomasky.

7:52 PM [Nate]. Tom and I will be doing it live, beginning in just a moment.

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Analysis: Public Option Is Likely Popular in Most Blue Dog Districts

Yesterday, Arkansas' Mike Ross, an influential Blue Dog Democrat, stated that he was opposed to a public option in the Democrats' health care reform package. "An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well," Ross asserted in a letter to his constituents.

Ross may well have gotten a significant number of letters and e-mails against the public option. He may have hosted a town hall forum before an audience who was skeptical of such a provision. But if Ross had actually polled his district, it's unlikely he would have found overwhelming opposition to the public option. Instead, he might even have found a that a plurality or majority of his constituents supported the public plan.

Ross's district itself, the Arkansas 4th, has not been polled publicly. But some others like it have been -- and have usually revealed decent levels of support for the public option. In particular, Research 2000, via Daily Kos, has now surveyed the public option in Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and the Tennessee 5th Congressional District occupied by fellow Blue Dog Jim Cooper. Research 2000 also conducted a nationwide poll on the public option. These six polls reveal a strong relationship between support for the public option and support for Barack Obama last November:



This would not appear to be good news for the public option in Ross's district, which gave Barack Obama just 39 percent of its vote. However, there also appears to be a secondary relationship between support for the public option and the poverty rate. Kentucky and Nebraska, for instance, each gave Barack Obama 41 percent of their vote. But in Kentucky, the public option is supported (barely) at 46-45, whereas in Nebraska it's opposed 39-47. What's the difference? Kentucky is much poorer than Nebraska -- 17.0 percent of its residents are impoverished, versus 11.5 percent in the Cornhusker state. Likewise, Nevada gave Barack Obama 55 percent of its vote, whereas Cooper's TN-5 gave him 56. But in Nevada, the public option is supported 52-40, whereas in TN-5, the margin is much larger: 61-28 in favor. TN-5's poverty rate is about 50 percent higher than Nevada's.

While Arkansas-4 does not have a lot of Obama voters, it does have a lot of people in poverty: 20.5 percent of its population, which ranks it 50th out of the 435 Congressional Districts. It is basically like an exaggerated version of Kentucky where, according to the Research 2000 poll, 46 percent support the public option and 45 percent oppose it. That the public option is "overwhelmingly" unpopular in such a district is unlikely.

We can systematize these results by means of a regression analysis that accounts for the Obama vote share and the poverty level in each district. (Technically, we'll be using a logistic regession, treating each of the voters included in one of these surveys as a separate data point.) This analysis finds that support for the public option nationwide is about 55 percent, against 36 percent opposed, similar results to what I believe to be the most reliable polls on the subject.

What's more interesting, though, is where we project the public option in individual districts. We find that:

-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 291 of the 435 Congressional Districts nationwide, or almost exactly two-thirds.
-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 235 of 257 Democratic-held districts.
-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 34 of 52 Blue Dog - held districts, and has overall popularity of 51 percent in these districts versus 39 percent opposed.

Obviously, there is a margin of error inherent to this analysis when applied to any individual district. The polls that inform this analysis themselves have a margin of error, and there is an additional layer of error introduced by the statistical process that we apply to the data. But in Ross's district, for what it's worth, the projected numbers are 49 percent in favor of a public option and 41 percent opposed.

The districts represented in blue in the map below are those where we'd project the public option to have plurality support if a poll were conducted there; those in red are where we expect a plurality to oppose it:



The raw projections for all 435 districts can be found below. Blue Dog Democrats are indicated by a lower-case 'd' and a lighter shade of blue.

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The John and the Porn Star

A woman in the sex trade cost New York governor Eliot Spitzer his office. Will a woman in the sex trade save Louisiana Sen. David Vitter? Possibly, but let me explain.

The big news last week in the 2010 Louisiana U.S. Senate race was that Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon will challenge Vitter for his seat. That, coupled with Vitter's residual problems stemming from his 2007 "Canal Street madam" scandal, in which Vitter was implicated as a john who used a high-priced prostitution service, has put Vitter in serious electoral jeopardy.



So what are Melancon's prospects? A late-July poll, taken before Melancon's announcement, showed Vitter anchored around 44 percent on several measures. Here are the key graphs from Public Policy Polling's write-up of their results:

When you pit Vitter against a generic Democrat ... he leads 44-38. And when you test him specifically against potential opponent Charlie Melancon, that advantage rises to 44-32.

That 44% seems to be the magic number when it comes to Vitter right now. His approval rating is also 44%, with 36% disapproving and the percentage of voters with a favorable opinion of him is 44% as well, compared to 39% who view him negatively.

So he's definitely below the 50% mark considered safe for an incumbent, but he's not that far below it and at least initially voters still prefer him to letting the seat change parties.

One wild card in this race is the possibility that adult film star Stormy Daniels will run, too. It's not clear what her party affiliation is, but Daniels says she wants to eliminate the federal income tax and replace it with a national sales tax. It's also unclear whether there's any real momentum for her candidacy: The "Draft Stormy" website, which is an independent site unaffiliated with the actress, has gone several months without an update.

As Daniels herself indicated during one of the interviews she conducted after announcing her "exploratory" committee (insert your own double-entendre here), she may be less interested in running as she is in compelling somebody more serious and experienced to plunge into the race against Vitter. Here's what she told FOX News back on June 7 (full video above):

"If I were an outsider looking in I'd think [my candidacy] sounds ludicrous. It really does. And I guess the whole thing is, if they dislike David Vitter so much that they think I'm the best person for the job, then that's kind of scary. And, as I've said before, maybe I'm not, and perhaps me bringing attention to the issues at hand and the state of the Senate in Louisiana, maybe I will encourage someone to step up and really give him a good challenge. And if not, then I'm willing to do everything i can in my power to make it legit and, like I said, do the best I can do."

So Melancon's announcement may be sufficient for Daniels to bolt.

Now, the conventional wisdom is that having Daniels in the race would provide a constant, painful reminder of Vitter's sexual indiscretions. That makes sense--although I'd caution that, compared to porn stardom, mere solicitation of prostitutes (even if illegal) pales somewhat.

But having Daniels, or really any other legit third (and/or fourth or fifth) candidate in the race, could very well complicate matters for Melancon--as Democratic Rep. Chris John learned in 2004. That year, Vitter narrowly avoided a runoff, capturing 51 percent of the vote against three Democratic challengers. The crucial factor here is Louisiana's electoral system which, as most of you surely know, requires a strict majority, rather than a mere plurality of the vote, to win; if no candidate receives an absolute majority the top two vote-getters go to a run-off.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's presume from the PPP results that Vitter will do no worse than 44 percent. That said, Melancon will need to get 50 percent of the remaining 56 percent to avoid the run-off, which will be hard enough. Still, Melancon really wants to avoid having to go to a run-off, because in run-offs voter turnout rates tend to drop in ways that favor Republicans. (Just ask Georgia's Jim Martin.)

And if, in fact, a simple, head-to-head matchup with Vitter is the ideal scenario for Melancon to unseat Vitter, the possible addition of other candidates--be they former porn stars or not--only complicates matters for the Democratic congressman. Which is why, crazy as it may sound, the Porn Star's candidacy could actually help the John.

CORRECTION: I was unaware that in 2006 Louisiana eliminated the so-called "jungle primary" system for federal elections, so there will in fact be a traditional primary and thus only one Democratic and Republican nominee for the 2010 senate race. My thanks to Kevin Franck of the Louisiana Democratic Party for alerting me to the change, and my apologies to readers for not knowing about the change. That said, Melancon, presuming he's the nominee and Vitter is too, will not have to worry about the complications that faced Chris John in 2004.

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Dep't of Stupid Headlines: L.A. Times Edition

Today, there's an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled:

"Obama is fast losing white voters' support".

A reasonable person might expect the punchline to be either that the manifest decline in Obama's approval ratings is particularly steep among white voters, or that race-related issues are responsible for Obama's current slump. A reasonable person would then click on the chart accompanying the article and discover...



... that they're much smarter than the people who wrote and edited the article. Obama's approval rating has declined by 10 percent overall since April. It's also declined by 9 points among white independents, 9 points among while college graduates, 11 points among whites non-Democrats, 11 points among White Democrats, and 12 points among white (is there any other kind?) Republicans. In other words, Obama's approval ratings have declined exactly as much, but no more, among white voters as it has among nonwhite voters.

So what in the hell does the decline in Obama's approval rating has to do with race? It doesn't -- or maybe it does, but if so, this article is evidence to the contrary.

The best part of a story like this is that it spawns its own series of sequels:

"Obama is fast losing Hispanic voters' support!".

"Obama is fast losing Inuit-Eskimos' support!".

"Obama is fast losing support among Scots-Irish women named Vanessa in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!".

I'm not one to take some schadenfreudic pleasure in the decline of the mainstream media; the Los Angeles Times was once, and sometimes still is, a great paper. But articles like these are approximately as fresh as the latest Garfield comic strip, and have approximately as much news value.

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As Unemployment Rises, Support for Organized Labor Falls

Don't have a lot of time to write today, so we'll hope that whole picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words thing is true after all:



On the horizontal axis, we have the civilian unemployment rate; on the vertical axis, we have the number of people who approve of labor unions, in 35 distinct Gallup surveys going back to 1948. There is a moderately strong relationship between these two things, as you can see.

Gallup recently found sympathy toward labor unions is at an all-time low, at 48 percent. but then again, unemployment is close to its post-WWII highs. Gallup did not happen to ask this question in late 1982 or early 1983, when unemployment exceeded 10 percent. They did ask in August 1981, when unemployment was up to 7.4 percent and rising rapidly, and at that point support for labor was at 55 percent, which was the lowest figure it had achieved before this year's survey.

The regression line finds that, for every point's worth of increase in the unemployment rate, approval of labor unions goes down by 2.6 points. Alternatively, we can add a time trend to the regression model, to account for the fact that participation in labor unions has been declining over time. This softens the relationship slightly, but still implies a decrease in approval of 2.1 points for unions for every point increase in unemployment. Both relationships are highly statistically significant.

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A Trigger -- With Teeth?

Ben Nelson, the Nebraska-based centrist Democrat who's vote will almost certainly be among the most difficult for President Obama to get in his push for health-care reform, yesterday signaled that he might support a public-option -- but only if it has a so-called "trigger" mechanism under which the plan would kick in after 3-5 years if certain, as-yet-unspecified conditions were met. The "trigger" has also been floated by Maine's Olympia Snowe, who may be just as essential a vote for the White House.

As with most things on health care, the devil is in the details of a trigger plan. However, there are versions of a trigger compromise that progressive Democrats ought to be willing to accept.

And what, pray tell, might those conditions be? The most obvious is that a trigger couldn't be overly tolerant of further growth in health insurance premiums. For instance, suppose that the trigger were triggered if the average cost of health care for a represenative cohort of adults rose by more than inflation + 0.5 percent over the next five years. Health insurance premiums, according to an estimate by the Commonwealth Fund, are expected to increase at an annual rate of about 5.5 percent over the next dozen years, whereas inflation typically runs at between 2 and 3 percent. If premiums were to grow at 3 percent per year instead, that would save the typcial family about $5,000 per year by 2020. This is not trivial.

But secondly, the insurance companies would need to have real reason to fear the trigger. And that means having a public option that, if it were triggered, would be able to negotiate at Medicare rates, or perhaps Medicare rates plus a small premium of 5 to 10 percent. This is how the public option was originally envisioned -- but the provision appears to have been stripped from the version of the House bill passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, which arguably represents about the maximal bill that a sufficient number of Blue Dogs would be willing to accept.

Indeed, if the public option were "softened" by having to negotiate at prevailing private-industry rates, and particularly also if it had to offer premiums at prevailing private-industry rates, it is not clear how much good it would do. It would just be another plan in a market of increasingly undifferentiated plans. Perhaps it would be able to generate some savings in terms of administrative and advertising costs -- although if premiums were indexed to private-industry norms, this would result in a profit for the government (not necessarily a bad thing; it would reduce the debt) rather than having any direct impact on health care costs for families.

In other words, given a choice between a "robust" public option that would be subject to a trigger, and a non-robust public option that would be prevented from leveraging much of its negotiating power but would be in place from Day One, the former would probably be the better choice for Democrats -- particularly as the mere specter of a robust public option could have a lot of deterrent value for the private insurers. Of course, this is an artificial choice: progressives want a public option that is both robust and immediate. But it's not clear that they have the votes for one.

The other worry that progressives have about the trigger is that it could be compromised -- meaning cancelled -- by some future, presumably more conservative Congress. I'm not sure, however, that this concern is warranted. For one thing, once the trigger became law, it would probably have to overcome a Democratic filibuster to be overturned. Even under somewhat worst-case scenarios for the Democrats, they are unlikely to be in a situation in the near future where they wouldn't be able to muster up 40 votes in the Senate. For another, so long as a Democratic president remained in office, even 60 votes might not be enough -- such a proposal would probably require 67, in order to overcome a Presidential veto. And for a third, the Republicans would be on the wrong side of the politics. Americans might be a little bit daft when it comes to the impact of various proposals to reform the health insurance system, but a bill which sought to overturn a de facto cap on the growth of health insurance premiums -- which is what a well-structured trigger plan would be -- would not be very popular.

I don't mean to sound naive here -- and I'm sure that this is not the sort of trigger mechanism that Ben Nelson has in mind. But if Democrats insist on a public option, they ought to recognize that (i) the public option has already been significantly compromised and (ii) there may be better compromises available -- some of them involving a trigger.

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