State Losing Jobs That Obama Could Lose

Charles Franklin, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, recently published a useful graphic depicting post-2001 trends and current unemployment rates in all 50 states, reproduced here:

Starting in the top-left corner, the states are sorted from lowest to highest unemployment rate. At first glance, what’s interesting is that most states are below the national mean of 10.2 percent, because several very big states are above it: California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio being among the top-11 states whose electoral vote totals alone are sufficient to reach the 270 plateau.

Yes, the electoral college...the subject I really wish to raise as it relates to unemployment levels, specifically to ask: How will unemployment levels affect President Obama's re-election chances? Yes, I know it's three years until election day and that the unemployment figures will move between now and then. And yes, they will not move identically in every state, so there will be some re-sorting. But Michigan and Nevada aren't going to suddenly vault from the nation's highest unemployment rates to ten lowest, and vice versa for North Dakota and Nebraska, the states with the two lowest rates.

That said, I decided to scatterplot just the 18 states where the margin last year between Obama and John McCain was 12 points or less, with that margin plotted against the current unemployment rates. (I put the national average of 7.3 percent margin and 10.2 unemployment in there as a baseline.) Here are those 18:


Let's assume the states Obama lost by double-digits, along the left side of the graph, are not going to flip his way in 2012. For the moment--but only for the moment--let's further assume Obama will again carry the states in the bottom-right corner that he won by comfortable margins and that happen to have lower-than-national-average unemployment rates. I realize that just because the average in a state is below the national median doesn't mean there isn't economic suffering in that state, or that that economic pain will not be expressed at the ballot box in 2012. But for a moment, let's set those states aside to focus on the small subset of states I've highlighted with the oval.

These six states--Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Montana--four of which Obama won and two he lost narrowly, could again be key bellwethers. Economically speaking, they are a mixed bag of industrial, mining, tourist/citrus, and textile/hogfarming states. The good news for Obama is the general trend among these six--the worse the unemployment the better he did. That is, he's got more electoral room to spare the more he needs it, at least from a standpoint of unemployment rates.

But let's assume Obama loses all six--which means four states net, since he lost Missouri narrowly and Montana by a few points. The net electoral vote loss could be as many as the current, combined 73 electoral votes. (We have to wait for reapportionment to be sure, of course.) Subtracted from his 365 total last year, that would put Obama under 300 at around 292, presuming he holds all the solidly Democratic states that do not appear on the scatterplot because of their wide margins, as well as those in the bottom-right corner which provided him comfortable margins last year and have worrisome, yet below-national-mean unemployment rates.

...which returns us to that little cluster of states in the bottom-right. We just saw what happened in Virginia, the state closest to yet outside the oval. I know about the contrarian pattern of the VA/NJ off-year election results relative to presidential results, but for the sake of argument let's assume a rejuvenated GOP in Virginia pulls that state back in 2012. That would drag Obama's EV total down to 279, within range of an average-sized size tipping the result in the other direction.

Which means that, if unemployment woes continue, the election could come down to a block of states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Iowa. That's not an earth-shattering finding per se. But what it does mean is that Obama had better pay special attention to them now if he wants to insulate himself in a close election. He can afford to lose some, even all of those in the oval...but he can't afford to lose all of those and any near it.

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Charlie Crist is Not a Good Sharer

Here are Charlie Crist's favorability ratings among registered voters in Florida, according to the Quinnipiac poll.



Crist's favorability ratings are higher among independents than among Democrats or Republicans (although not by a statistically significant margin in the former case). That's very unusual for a politician who does not actually call himself an independent.

Still, although Crist's favorability ratings with Republicans have declined some, they're still pretty decent. So why is he in so much trouble against Marco Rubio?

For one thing, Republican voters really like Rubio; his favorability rating among Republicans in the latest Quinnipiac poll was 44-3 (!). What's a little scary for Crist is that about half of all Republicans have yet to form an opinion about Rubio -- once they do, the race will presumably get even closer.

For another thing, Florida voters preferred by a 42-26 plurality -- including a 40-32 plurality of Republicans -- that Crist would have run for another term as governor rather than run for Senate. The message that Florida Republicans seem to be sending to Crist is this one: We like you well enough, Charlie. But we also like Marco. So why did you make this hard on us by running for Senate, when we'd have been perfectly happy to re-elect you to Tallahassee instead?

In certain ways, this reminds me of the mayor's race here in New York, where voters approved overwhelmingly of the job that Michael Bloomberg was doing, but nearly voted him out of office because he re-wrote the rules to run for a third term. Crist didn't re-write the rules, but his decision, in some ways, seems equally selfish. If he was doing such a good job as governor, why not stay there? Isn't being the governor of the fourth largest U.S. state a more powerful position than being one of 100 Senators? Crist is only 53 -- what's the rush? What's he hoping to accomplish in Washington? It's going to be a fairly difficult decision for Crist to rationalize to people.

That's not to say that some of this Republican Purity Test stuff isn't also a part of the story (grassroots conservatives only seem to have been encouraged by the results in NY-23, even though their candidate lost). But it's not the whole story: Crist is much more vulnerable than he otherwise would be because had the option of running for another term as governor and declined to do so.

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Some New Rules for Frequent -- and Infrequent -- Fliers

The Associated Press has one of those horror stories out about the family that couldn't afford their airfare to from Syracuse, NY to Omaha, NE for Thanksgiving, and so decided to take the train instead. Over at the Atlantic, Daniel Indiviglio picks up on the theme, bemoaning the surcharge that some airlines have started to charge for holiday travel.

I can't speak to holiday airfares in particular -- my parents came to visit me in New York City for Thanksgiving this year, and because of circumstances that have nothing to do with price, I'll also be staying on the East Coast for Christmas this year. Certainly I feel some sympathy for this family, who sound like they're having a rough go of things.

But I was surprised to read this article -- as in general, I've been impressed by how cheap airfares have become. Back in May, I was able to fly to Europe for some absolutely obscene fair -- $430, I think, with taxes. And I've grown accustomed to being able to book fares to the Western half of the country for somewhere in the $250 to $320 range, even on extremely short notice.

It turns out, indeed, that my experience is somewhat more typical: airfares have not been increasing, and in fact they've become quite a bit cheaper. Still, there are peculiarities in the pricing that tend to cater to me and my travel habits -- someone who travels almost exclusively from large cities to other large cities -- and perhaps not so much the Miles Family of Syracuse.

Below is a graph built from data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which compiles very robust information on airfares. It reflects something called the Air Travel Price Index (ATPI), which measures airfares while controlling for service class and itinerary (so airfares won't artificially appear to get cheaper, for instance, if an airline takes out some business class seats to stuff more people in coach, or more expensive if it begins to fly some longer-distance routes). I've further adjusted this data for "CPILEGSL", which is the consumer price index (inflation) less energy items -- and then divided the airports between the 25 busiest and the rest (BTS tracks data down to the 85th largest air travel market, which is Charleston, SC).



What we see, indeed, is that airfares have gotten cheaper -- by about 15 percent overall over the past fourteen years (adjusted for inflation), although with some periodic spikes due to fuel prices. I know, I know: you're paying less for worse service, given the add-on fees for everything from bottled water to checked baggage, the bizarre ritual that is airport security, and the seemingly inevitable delays. As a relatively frequent flier, you have my sympathies. But given their razor-thin profit margins, the airlines at least seem to be doing their best to pass the cost-cutting onto consumers in the form of cheaper tickets. Given the increasing presence of "discount" carriers like Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier and Virgin America in many markets, indeed they may not have a whole lot of choice in the matter. ("Discount" belongs in quotation marks, since some of these carriers -- particularly Virgin and JetBlue -- offer a superior coach-class experience as compared with the majors.)

We also see, however, that the larger airports, which have seen their fares decrease by 18 percent, have had it better than smaller ones, which have experienced a 12 percent decline. This appears to hold true both for secondary airports within a large market -- once a bargain, they now often charge travelers at a premium -- as well as primary airports in smaller cities. And if you're traveling from one small airport to another, the price pressure may be doubly noticeable.

Suppose, for example, that I wanted retrace the Miles' family's route from Syracuse to Omaha, leaving on Tuesday, January 12th and returning on Friday, January 15th. The best I can do on Kayak.com is $428 on United. That's almost 50 percent more expensive than a round trip from New York to San Francisco over the same period, which I can get for $293 with a layover in Denver (or $309 for a direct flight) -- even though the distance covered is about twice as long.

The cheapest I could get from Des Moines to Gulfport, MS during this time period is $396 -- and that's with three stops on the inbound flight. But Chicago to Seattle -- covering about three times the distance -- is $337, and for a direct flight.

Phoenix to Houston is just $198. But Tuscon, Arizona to Houston is $341 on Southwest, or $392 on a major carrier.

These are not cherrypicked examples -- they're just the first three random ones that I happened to try. I won't speculate too much about the economics behind all of this -- although good old economies of scale, plus the degree of competition in a particular market, surely have a lot to do with it. If you're traveling to or from an airport that doesn't serve as a hub or focus city for one of the major carriers, you're probably not benefiting much from the cheaper airfares that other travelers are seeing, and you may even be paying something of a premium.

The strategy for travelers is obvious enough: if you need to end up in a smaller city, you might consider flying to a larger city instead and driving, training or busing the rest of the way. For a lot of travelers, for instance, the cheapest way to fly to Tucson may be to go to Phoenix, to Portland, ME may be to Boston, or to Omaha to Kansas City.

It also seems like some of the cardinal rules of smart travel no longer seem to apply. For instance, based on my extensive experience as a procrastinator, it seems to be quite a bit cheaper than it once was to book flights at the last minute. In contrast, the penalties for changing your itinerary are still quite steep. So if your travel plans are still coming together -- you're not sure whether you're meeting is going to finish on Wednesday or extend until Thursday, for instance -- it really may be better to wait to book your travel, rather than having to pay a change fee later. In certain cases, booking a one-way ticket and worrying about the return trip later may even be a perfectly sane strategy. (Caution: avoid either of the above if you're coming into town for a major event that a lot of other people are traveling to -- say, the Super Bowl or a political convention -- since the airlines know they have you by the balls. I've gotten burned, for instance, trying to play it cute with the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. This may also apply to the holiday period, where skipping or re-scheduling a trip may just not be an option.)

And because of airlines like Southwest that charge by the segment rather than by the round trip, you should no longer fear so-called open-jaw itineraries. You may pay hardly any premium to travel into Las Angeles and out of Las Vegas, for instance, or into London and out of Paris, if you can get more out of your trip this way.

All of this, assuredly, may sound a little self-serving. I tend to travel to and from large cities, I tend to book my travel late, and I've always been a fan of creative itineraries that combine multiple business or pleasure "objectives" (in different cities) out of the same journey. So all of these changes are working in my favor. And take the above with a grain of salt; I'm just a political blogger with a tryptophan hangover, and not any sort of travel writer. But if you're still following the 20th Century playbook to book air travel in 2009, you're probably costing yourself more than you think.

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Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Let's have some Turkey Day fun.

OK, first, I recommend the timely analysis by Political Calculations, which has tracked domestic turkey production over the past 20 years. Below is a figure they generated from the National Turkey Federation:
According to this site, annual turkey consumption per capita of about 18 pounds has been relatively steady, but still is dwarfed by how much pork (50 lbs per person annually), beef (63) and chicken (84) we consume. The top five turkey producing states, in order, are Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri and Virginia (I thought they were the ham state!). The top three producing companies are Butterball (no shocker there), Jennie-O Turkey Store, and Cargill. We also learn that the average weight of a turkey at slaughter is about 28 pounds, and that a standard turkey splits about 70 percent white meat and 30 percent dark.

Meanwhile, somebody call John McCain with a turkeybarrelling alert. According to an article by Daniel de Vise in today's Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has authorized a grant of $908,000 to Virginia Tech and the University of Minnesota--flagships of two of the top-5 producing states, so that makes sense--to decode the DNA of Meleagris gallopavo, the domestic American turkey you just ate today. (DNA for cows, pigs and chicken have already been mapped.)

Writes de Vise:

If ever there were a candidate for genetic engineering, surely it is the pale, flavor-challenged bird that will adorn millions of American dinner tables Thursday as a matter of Thanksgiving ritual.

And here is a reason to give thanks: The day of the super-turkey might be nigh...

The possibilities for genetic manipulation seem endless. At a minimum, the turkey might be genetically engineered to convey a bit more flavor. And turkeys aren't the most comely of birds. Could they be bred for better looks as well as taste? How about a turkey that arrives pre-stuffed or packed with extra endorphins to pacify a dysfunctional family? Or thighs thick enough for the NFL?

"For me, it would be gigantic Earl Campbell legs," said Damian Salvatore, chef and owner of Persimmon Restaurant in Bethesda, alluding to the former football great. "If they could get some of that leg taste into the breast, that would be perfection to me."

University scientists say genetic mapping will help turkeys lead healthier lives....But this is not all about the interests of the turkey. One goal of genetic mapping is to identify genes that might produce larger breasts or plumper legs -- potential breakthroughs for the diner and the Renaissance Fair vendor, to be sure, but without much payoff for the bird.

What else? Oh, here's the menu for today's Thanksgiving Dinner at the White House for the president and 50 invited guests:

Menu:
Turkey
Honey-Baked Ham
Cornbread Stuffing
Oyster Stuffing
Greens
Macaroni and Cheese
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole

Banana Cream Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Huckleberry Pie
Cherry Pie

Gobble, gobble.

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The Case for Climate Futures Markets, Ctd.

Matt Yglesias is skeptical of an idea that I adulterated from Robin Hanson: a robust system of climate change predictions markets.

This idea has some merit, but let’s not get carried away with ourselves. The underlying intuition here is that talk about climate change is cheap, but if we made people put their money where their mouth is we’d force them to speak honestly. The problem is that when coal and oil interests or the Koch family pays people money to mislead people about climate science or clean energy policies they are putting their money where their mouth is. Big money is at stake in this issue, and it could be easily worthwhile for polluters to lose money on a prediction market if that helped undercut support for clean energy legislation.

The problem is that just about any metric you might like becomes contaminated once people know there are large political economy stakes.

I'm not sure that this criticism holds up. Suppose that Koch Industries, the fossil fuels giant, decides to make a $98 billion wager -- roughly equal to one year of their annual revenues -- on the proposition that global temperatures will not warm significantly over the next 15 years. And suppose that they make this wager not because they actually believe that the planet isn't getting warmer, but in order to rally public opinion against climate change.

Now, suppose that Koch "succeeds" in manipulating the market -- the price of the temperature futures contracts are artificially deflated, and governments are less inclined to take action on climate change as a result. So, the fossil fuels industry is not subject to stricter taxes or regulations. Koch is happy about this. But temperatures keep going up. They're not so happy about this, because it means they're out $98 billion dollars.

Of course, at least Koch is doing a decent job of hedging its risks this way, so perhaps this isn't so bad for them. But in reality, the manipulation attempt is unlikely to succeed. Because that $98 billion is yours, mine, and everyone else's for the taking. I'm going to buy up the "it's gonna be hot!" contracts, expecting to realize a healthy return since the prices are artificially deflated. And so are a lot of other people -- until the price gets back to equilibrium. $98 billion really isn't very much; on a typical day, about $170 billion worth of the stocks represented in the S&P 500 index changes hands, and the S&P 500 captures only a portion of all stock trades worldwide.

So while a one-time hedge of $98 billion might be a reasonable investment for Koch Industries, if they wanted to continue manipulating the market, they would have to continue pouring more and more money in -- all the while, giving the rest of us a nice little nestegg -- until they'd eventually put so much money into the "climate will be cool" position that they'd start hosting their annual barbecues at the Sierra Club.

Now, it certainly is important that the markets are sufficiently liquid to be able to operate efficiently and punish stupid bets. As I inferred during the Presidential campaign, for example, political futures contracts on John McCain at Intrade did appear to be artificially depressed for some time, apparently as the result of one large institutional investor whose motivations are somewhat murky.

But Intrade, although it's a product I greatly appreciate, has some problems when it comes to efficiently pricing futures. It's hard to get money into the site. The exchange falls into a legal gray zone. Transaction fees are comparatively high. And Intrade is stingy about paying interest on deposits, which adds a cost to having your money tied up. Not that many people have heard of Intrade, moreover, which isn't true for the stock market. And because of network effects, it's likely that volume/liquidity is somewhat nonlinear with respect to the number of participants in the market. So if these encumberances reduce the number of participants by, say, a factor of 10, it's likely that trading volumes are depressed by some multiple of that.

I don't think you'd have any such problems with climate futures markets, provided that they were reasonably well designed, unambiguously legal, and open to essentially all investors. After all, people can already bet on the weather at places like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and have been able to do so for about a decade; all that a "climate futures market" would be is a Merc-type setup that allowed you to bet on the weather years, rather than weeks or months, in advance.

I'm also not a big believer, in general, of efficient markets hypothesis. But to bastardize the point that Dr. Hanson raised with me at lunch last month: sure, markets can be inefficient, but compared to what? I'd certainly trust the markets to evaluate the contingencies of climate change more usefully than, say, the United States Congress.

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Government Waste Through Improper Payment

You hear a lot of talk about waste, fraud and abuse in government, and how eliminating it might solve our fiscal problems. It won't. Like John McCain's repeated, annoying complaints about porkbarreling monies, which if completely eliminated would hardly dent our national deficit, the notion that, say, Medicare fraud is reason for our health care cost problems is a joke.

But that doesn't justify waste through improper government payments, which is a serious and remediable problem that cost the government $98 billion last year--nothing to sneeze at, and a sharp uptick from $72 billion the previous fiscal year. So last Friday President Obama signed an executive order that requires a systematic review of relevant agencies to correct the problem of improper payments in federal programs. Within three months, the Office of Management and Budget will identify agencies with serious payment problems, and within six months the OMB director, in conjuction with the Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury to implement a process to correct identified problems.

Government Executive.com's Elizabeth Newell reports that Peter Orszag and crew are aware of the problem and already working on it. "We can no longer tolerate these errors, mistakes and misdeeds," Orszag said. "Every dollar misspent is a dollar not going to help an unemployed worker, a family in need of help buying groceries, or a senior who relies on Medicare to stay healthy." (I want to extend a special thank you to GovExec's Alyssa Rosenberg for help with this post.)

Looking at the improper payment rates above, courtesy of this PDF from Government Executive.com, it's clear that some of the cabinet and non-cabinet agencies that liberals tend to defend and conservatives oppose are among those with the most embarrassing improper payment rates. Holding aside the Treasury Department--which tops the list by far in the share of improper payments, at 25.5%, all of which is for the Earned Income Tax Credit program--many of the most wasteful programs are liberal favorites. Because the table above would have been too noisy, I didn't list every one of the 72 measured programs, but among the programs above the national average of 5.0 percent are the Ag Department's School Breakfast (24.6%) and School Lunch (16.4%) programs; HHS’ Medicare Fee-for Service (7.8%), Child Care and Development Fund (11.9%), Medicaid (9.6%) and Medicare Advantage Part C (15.4%) programs; Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Fund Vendor (8.8%) and Homeland Security Grant (18.8%) programs; Labor’s Unemployment Insurance program (10.3%); Treasury’s EITC (25.5%), and the VA’s Pension (11.2%) and Fee (17.0%) programs.

This is an unacceptable level of fraud and waste in programs that are often unable to fully serve the needs of populations that require serious help. It will be interesting to watch as this oversight process takes shape, and I'll check back in six months from now to see what OMB has learned--and what they are going to do about it.

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Constitutional Chicanery

Where in the Constitution, sir, do you see it authorized that Congress can be involved with "health care," or fund "health care"? I am asking here about the Constitution, not any court rulings. Thank you.

This was the content, in its entirety, of an email I received last night from John Lofton, editor of TheAmericanView.com, a friend and supporter of Constitutional Party 2004 presidential candidate Michael Peroutka, and—get this—communications director for an organization called the Institute on the Constitution. We heard a lot from last summer’s protesters and people like Mr. Lofton about the sanctity of the Constitution and constitutional principles. Granting that tea partiers and people who send me silly emails should not necessarily be taken seriously as constitutional experts, there nonetheless seems to be an unusually high level of either uninformed or knowing manipulation of the Constitution in service to pre-ordained agendas.

I’m not a constitutional scholar. (N.B.: Protestors and other critics attacking the president ought to take note that he is.) Nor do I want to get into specific constitutional controversies. My aim is to rebut a few of the most absurd fallacies that seem to have gained traction--primarily but not exclusively in conservative circles--about the nature of American constitutionalism. To wit:

First, there is the fallacy that anything not specifically prescribed by the Constitution is unconstitutional. True, the Constitution doesn’t mention health care; but neither does it mention air traffic control. Is the FAA’s safeguarding of our skies from commercial crashes therefore unconstitutional? Of course not. First, there is the matter of the “necessary and proper” clause. And second, just because the Founders clearly meant to avoid the whole business of constitutionalizing specifically policies--see point #3, below--doesn't mean they didn't want the government to have any policies. If they did, why create a legislature?

Second, and conversely, there is the fallacy that anything not specifically proscribed by the Constitution is constitutionally permissible. We have one of those nutty preachers who shows up in the common areas of campus. One of his favorite claims is that because the Constitution makes no mention of the separation of church and state, we are free to infuse church into state. He’s right about the omission, but the Constitution doesn’t mention sex with minors, incest, or gay marriage, and so, by the omission-is-permission logic an adult man could consummate his marriage to his 14-year-old nephew. I mean, the Founders didn’t say anything about not doing that, so it must be OK constitutionally, right?

Third, too few people wrapping their policy arguments in constitutional claims understand that the Founders wrote a short charter dedicated almost exclusively to the design, structure, officers and powers of the government because they wanted to avoid constitutionalizing specific policies. The Constitution has only thrice ventured into the prescription or proscription of a specific public policy: the slavery provisions, the prohibition of alcohol, and the enactment of the income tax. The first was the most glaring, nearly fatal problem with the original document; the second, initiated by amendment, was such a bad idea it led to the only direct reversal of a previous amendment; and the third, well, you’d think anti-tax conservatives would have long ago advanced the argument that constitutionalizing policies is a bad idea, given the establishment of the national income tax. Oh, and since the latter two were policies enacted via amendment, that means only slavery--which the Founders avoided mentioning by name--was an “originalist” policy. That should be cautionary tale enough. Look, the Founders were brilliant, but imperfect, but the part they were near-perfectly brilliant about was not constitutionalizing policies, which is what they designated the elected and appointed branches of government to handle.

Fourth, the federal court system is--brace yourself now--constitutional. The quote from Mr. London implies that a matter decided in some way by courts must be either unconstitutional, or at least inferior or suspect. Come again? Given the four previous points, the business of the courts is to clarify and fill in constitutional gaps, especially on matters where the Constitution is silent or ambiguous. We don’t need the Supreme Court to clarify whether one needs to be 35 years old to be elected president, but we do need it to decide whether torture is constitutional. The sad consequence of the decades-long campaign to systematically denigrate “liberal activist” judges—even though there are “conservative activists” aplenty on the federal bench—has been to delegitimize the court system and judges generally, as if they are impostors who have visited themselves upon our democracy by force and without invitation. So, even if the original or amended Constitution did, in fact, prescribe or proscribe a whole list of policies, that still doesn’t mean federal courts can’t insert themselves. Last time I checked, the federal court system was provided for by the Constitution's Article III; ignoring the courts is ignoring the Constitution.

Fifth, if you want to be a strict constructionist, fine, but be one even when it’s inconvenient. Imagine if the Second Amendment read as follows: “A woman’s ability to survive childbearing being necessary to a free state, the right to abort a fetus shall not be infringed.” Now, do you think the anti-choice movement would simply ignore the leading clause and resign themselves to the idea that a woman has an unconditional right to abortion? Not a chance, and they'd be right to fight because the language clearly implies a conditional right. And yet we almost never hear gun rights advocates mention the actual Second Amendment’s leading clause, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state….,” which at least suggests a collective right—indeed, obligation—to an armed defense of the state, rather than an individual’s right to use arms to protect himself and his property. For the record, I support gun rights with some restrictions, but that’s besides my point, which is that you can’t be so selective in citing the language in the Constitution that you chop off inconveniently ambiguous parts of the same sentence upon which you base a categorical claim.

Well, I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list of the sort of rhetorical chicanery currently used by proponents of this or opponents of that. I love the Constitution and believe in it. But my ears tend to perk up the moment somebody reaches for the Constitution and the Founders to justify an argument--especially when they do so fallaciously and without an understanding of the historical meaning of the document.

UPDATE: I obviously couldn't know at the time that the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus would be writing today about the supposed controversy over the constitutionality of health care reform and mandates, but sure enough, she has a nice takedown here. (Thanks and a hat-tip to 538 reader Mike in Maryland.)

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How Bad Could Obama Screw Up and Still Beat Sarah Palin?

Although I'm fairly bullish on Sarah Palin's prospects of winning the Republican nomination, I also subscribe to the conventional wisdom that, were she to be the nominee, she would have an awfully tough time against Barack Obama in 2012. Could she beat Obama? Of course; politics is a world of probabilities, not certainties. But she'd likely cut Obama quite a lot of slack.

Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for George W. Bush's well-run 2004 re-election campaign, makes the opposite case in today's Washington Post. Unfortunately, I don't think Dowd's arguments are very sound. He writes:

First, Gallup polls over the past 60 years show that no president with an approval rating under 47 percent has won reelection, and no president with an approval rating above 51 percent has lost reelection. (George W. Bush's approval rating in the weeks before the 2004 election hovered around 50 percent.) The 2012 election will be primarily about our current president and whether voters are satisfied with the country's direction.

Who the Republican candidate is, and his or her qualifications and abilities, will matter only if Obama's approval rating is between 47 and 51 percent going into the fall of 2012. Interestingly, in the latest Gallup poll Obama's approval rating was at a precarious 49 percent.

Dowd makes it sound like the numbers he cites -- 47 percent and 51 percent -- are hard-and-fast rules. In fact, he seems to have chosen them arbitrarily, and the dataset he's using is not very robust. Here, indeed, is that data: the last approval rating issued by Gallup prior to each incumbent President's re-election date.



One major annoyance is that, until about 1980, Gallup for whatever reason ceased conducting approval polling about six months in advance of the election, meaning that most of these numbers are not very fresh. If we do look at the entire dataset, we find an incumbent getting re-elected with a 39 percent approval rating -- Harry Truman in 1948. Dowd conveniently defines this out of his sample by limiting his analysis to "polls over the past 60 years", the election in question being 61 years old.

It would probably be better to focus only on those elections since 1980, when Gallup began printing approval numbers after Labor Day of the election year. If we look at those elections -- the five cases highlighted in boldface -- then the Dowd Rule would have to be redefined as "no president with an approval rating under 38 percent has won reelection, and no president with an approval rating above 47 percent has lost reelection". That makes his argument considerably less compelling. But it's also what the data actually says.

It would be foolish, however, to come to any conclusions based on this evidence, since we're still talking about only five data points, most of which are not very relevant. Most incumbent elections are not very close -- the incumbent either cruises to victory or gets crushed -- and so there just aren't that many instructive cases in the range that we care about, which practically speaking means when the President's approval rating is somewhere in the 40s.

A better approach might be to look at Obama's polling against Sarah Palin. There have been 11 Palin versus Obama polls that have come out this year -- 8 by Public Policy Polling and one each from Rasmussen, Clarus, and Marist. Those polls showed Obama approval ranging from 49 percent to 55 percent -- not far from Dowd's sweet spot -- but Obama defeating Palin by margins ranging from 6 points to 23.

If we make a scatterplot of these polls, we can extrapolate backward to get an estimate of where Obama's approval rating would need to be in order to bring Palin into a tie with him; the answer is about 43 percent.



If we do the same thing with Mitt Romney's numbers, on the other hand, we get a breakeven point of 46 percent:



So, one way to look at this is that Palin gives Obama an approval rating bonus of about 3 points: if Obama can defeat a Generic Republican with an approval rating of X, he can defeat Palin with an approval rating of X-3.

Caveats abound, of course -- this conclusion too is based on some fairly limited evidence. But if you told me that Obama's Gallup approval rating was 45 percent on Election Eve 2012 and that his opponent was Sarah Palin, I'd put my money on Obama and feel pretty good about it. And if Obama's approval ratings were instead in the 47-51 range that Dowd specifies, I'd give Palin very long odds of defeating the incumbent.

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America's Health is America's Business

Imagine what the American Trucking Association would say if the interstate highway system was a jumble of unconnected, poorly paved roads, every mile of which was nonetheless tolled at exorbitant rates. Think what the American Telemarketing Association would do if half the calls their employees dialed every day were abruptly disconnected because of faulty, unreliable telephonic infrastructure. And how quickly would the Direct Marketing Association, which relies on the U.S Postal Service, mobilize on Capitol Hill if millions of their mail pieces each day never arrived at their intended addresses?

In my Baltimore Sun column today, I ask the $7 trillion dollar question few seem to be asking, no less answering:

In October 2007, the Milken Institute published "An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease," a report analyzing the long-term economic costs of leaving unchecked just seven maladies: cancer, heart disease, hypertension, mental disorders, diabetes, pulmonary conditions and stroke. Comparing a scenario of "reasonable improvements in treatment and behavior" with a "business as usual" baseline, the report estimated that cumulative savings in health care expenditures over two decades, from 2003 to 2023, could total $1.6 trillion. That's $80 billion saved per year - no small sum.

But those savings are dwarfed by the costs to the American economy caused by an unhealthy work force. "Chronically ill workers take sick days, reducing the supply of labor - and, in the process, the GDP," the report's executive summary explains. "When they do show up to avoid losing wages, they perform far below par - a circumstance known as 'presenteeism,' in contrast to absenteeism."

Milken's estimated cumulative loss to America's GDP of doing nothing during the same period? Almost $7 trillion.

We wouldn't tolerate $7 trillion sort of inefficiency and loss if it resulted from a tax increase or proposed business regulation. Wouldn't Grover Norquist and his gang be screaming tirelessly, perhaps with cause? Yet as a nation we sit back passively and allow our capitalist economy to be hobbled by solvable problems affecting the most important infrastructural input of all: the labors of the American workforce. What's amazing is that American workers today work longer hours and are more productive than earlier generations of workers--despite our health problems.

When the government does or doesn't do something that is bad for American capitalism, relevant business interests step to the fore to correct the problem. "The business of America is business," is the famous misquote from Ronald Reagan's favorite president, Cal Coolidge. So why hasn't corporate America stepped forward--long before Barack Obama even arrived on the national scene--to complain about the business inefficiencies of an unhealthy citizenry?

But the tougher, more political question I want to ask is this: Why hasn't the president framed his calls for health care reform--either in subtle or more direct, forceful ways--in terms of American economic performance and productivity? Wouldn't that put a lot of his conservative critics back on their heels? Wouldn't it rally more corporate interests and trade associations to his side?

I can't find any polls to bolster my suspicions--typical national polls ask Americans whether they support reform legislation or whether they approve of the government's handling of the health reform issue--but I suspect that too many Americans conceive of health care reform as a purely fiscal issue, a matter of taxing and spending. Worse, a significant subset of them surely view reform in terms like those recently invoked by Mike Huckabee: that is, as some stealthy, redistributive grab, just another big-government Democratic initiative to take money from their pocketbooks for an entitlement program to help the poor, indigent or other undeserving types.

Now, it's true that reform will cover more people who don't have the means to insure themselves. But whether they're poor or middle class, the uninsured or merely underinsured also go by another name: the American workforce. And the less we think about them as patients, and the more we think about them as workers essential to American productivity, the easier it is going to be politically to fix what ails us. And instead of a national conversation about how we can't afford health care reform, the president's oft-stated macro point that we can't afford not to reform the system would be a lot easier to make.

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Best Idea of the Day: Climate Change Futures Markets

George Mason University economist Robin Hanson makes two interesting points in response to the controversy over the hacked e-mails at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which triggered a self-congratulatory reaction among global warming skeptics.

Robin's first point is that the apparent bad behavior among the academic scientists is really nothing more and nothing less than you might expect if you'd unearthed ten years' worth of e-mails from virtually any academic department at virtually any academic institution in the world. I'm not an academic myself, but I work with them, socialize with them, interview them -- and I grew up as a university brat. The notion that academics are immune from institutional or external political considerations, that they're devoid of their own viewpoints and biases, or that they are otherwise some Platonic manifestation of the ideals of the scientific method is hopelessly naive. But that's an indictment of the scientists and not of the science -- and I'd virtually guarantee that if you'd hacked into the inbox of a global warming skeptic, or a Republican member of Congress, or the Exxon Corporation, you'd find them saying things that were equally uncouth.

But Dr. Hanson's more important argument is this one:

It is a shame that academia works this way, and an academia where this stuff didn’t happen would probably be more accurate. But even our flawed academic consensus is usually more accurate than its contrarians, and it is hard to find reliable cheap indicators saying when contrarians are more likely to be right.

If you don’t like this state of affairs join me in trying to develop a more reliable consensus mechanism on such topics: prediction markets. It just takes time or money. Prefer instead to act shocked, just shocked, when the other side is shown to do this stuff, while reserving your side’s ability to do the same? Then I have little respect for you.

Emphasis in original. I had the chance to meet Dr. Hanson for lunch last month, when I interviewed him for my book project. Now, Robin is certainly a bit more gung-ho about predictions markets than I am -- but he is also aware of their limitations. His perspective is that whatever their flaws, predictions markets are liable to be better than the alternatives, because they incentivize accuracy -- as opposed to some of the more perverse incentives that often prevail in debates about complex issues, and which were certainly manifest both at East Anglia, and among the skeptics who wrote about the "scandal".

Climate change predictions markets, indeed, could be a particularly fruitful application of the concept for a number of reasons:

1) The markets would help to clarify exactly the extent to which there is in fact a consensus about climate change. There is, I believe, an abnormally high degree of disingenuousness within the global warming debate, most of it coming from one side. We would very quickly find out if the skeptics -- and for that matter the believers -- were willing to put their money where there mouths were.

2) The market would help businesses and governments to hedge against both the dangers of climate change, and against potentially somewhat costly efforts to mitigate it.

3) The market would encourage climate change believers to add some specificity to their forecasts. Scientists have been somewhat loathe to make specific, near-to-medium term predictions about climate change (e.g. "there's going to be heat wave in Europe in 3 of the next 5 year"), out of what is probably a reasonable fear that they'll get more blame for an incorrect forecast than credit for a successful one. Markets would force people to think more strenuously about how to make reasonably specific predictions in an environment of great uncertainty.

4) The markets would encourage people from outside the academic sphere to develop their own models of climate change, thereby reducing the risk of groupthink.

5) The markets would encourage the development of new modelling techniques, and would encourage an allocation of greater computing resources toward the climate change problem -- existing CPU resources are generally inadequate as compared to the potential scope of the crisis.

6) The markets, if well designed, could help to provide an assessment of the tangible impact upon climate change of various policies under consideration by governmental and international bodies.

7) The markets, if well designed, could potentially help to establish a price for carbon, providing an alternative to the very useful pricing function of emissions trading markets if it is determined that such approaches are suboptimal or politically untenable.

8) The markets could help to price in new information more quickly -- something which is a bit of a problem since most of the work on climate change is being done in academic, governmental, or international institutions, which tend to slow-moving as compared with the private sector.

I'm sure that I could come up with a few more benefits -- as well as a few potential pitfalls. And certainly, the design of the markets is not trivial. But get Dr. Hanson and Justin Wolfers and Richard Thaler a few other smart people in a room and I'm sure they could come up with something reasonable. Personally, I'd envision a robust series of contracts on temperature, CO2 emissions, precipitation, and perhaps tropical storms that expired at various intervals along the lines of those used for US Treasury bonds -- say at 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30 years. I'd encourage the use of options and perhaps derivatives, which can be helpful in pricing not just the mean estimates of temperature or precipitation but also the uncertainty surrounding these estimates. I'd run the markets through a major, cross-national platform such as the United Nations, IMF or World Bank, so as to encourage participation and create liquidity. And I'd make them open to as many people as possible with few legal restrictions or transaction costs. It wouldn't be perfect. But it would be a hell of a lot better than something like this or this pass for expert opinion on climate change.

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Democrats Damned If They Do; Damnder If They Don't

Public Policy Polling has an interesting survey out today in which they ask about the generic Congressional ballot in the context of the Democrats' actions on health care reform.

What they find is that Democrats initially lead the generic ballot 46-38. This is a somewhat better result than most other pollsters have found, probably because it's a poll of registered -- rather than likely -- voters. But PPP, in spite of being a Democratic polling firm, has shown somewhat Republican-leaning results this year, so this is a pretty decent number for them.

If, however, Democrats fail to pass a health care plan, PPP finds that the Democratic advantage disappears, with the generic ballot instead tied at 40-40.

Surely, then, the Democrats' numbers must improve if they do pass a health care plan?

Well, not so fast. PPP also asked people how they'd vote if the Democrats pass a health care bill that contains a public option, showing the Democrats ahead 46-41. That's better than how they'd fare without passing a health care bill -- although still slightly worse than the status quo.

To be honest, I'm not sure that this poll is quite as useful as it seems, because the main consequence of the Democrats' course on health care is liable to be in terms of turnout -- either motivating their base and/or energizing the Republican one. Projecting turnout is hard enough ordinarily, but especially so when you're trying to condition it upon a hypothetical.

Still, the story that the poll tells seems to be about right. I don't particularly expect a boost in the Democrats' numbers if they pass a health care bill: the plan, after all, has become somewhat unpopular. Their numbers might even get a little worse. But I'd expect a larger drop in their numbers if they fail to pass health care. Then, you're getting something close to the worst of both worlds: the people who don't like health care are still going to blame you for making the effort, but the people who do like the plan will become despondent and wonder what the whole point of electing Democrats to the Congress was in the first place.

Put differently, it seems that the unpopularity of health care has already been mostly "priced in" to the Democrats' numbers -- and indeed they've paid a price for it, although the economy may still be the more important factor. But failing to pass a health care bill would not undo the damage: it would only make things worse by depressing the base, making leadership look incompetent, and producing week after week of horrible news cycles.

Sure, the "status quo" in which health care neither passes or fails might be the best case scenario for the Democrats. Better still might have been the scenario in which they'd looked at horrible unemployment numbers that rolled in month after month during the spring, and decided to forgo healthcare in lieu of more populist economic policies (something which, rumor has it, some very senior White House staff was urging back in May and June). But the Democrats can't undo six months of debate on health care. Nor can the tenuous "status quo" hold. The health care bill, to state the obvious, is either going to pass or it's going to fail -- barring something completely out of left field like a major terrorist attack or another financial collapse, it will not just go away.

Both polling and common sense would seem to dictate that the best way for Democrats to cut their losses would be to pass a health care bill -- particularly one with a public option -- and then move on to debating financial regulation and a jobs program, where public sentiment should be more on their side. They should probably not expect to gain ground if they pass health care -- but they're likely to lose more if they don't.

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Bringing in a Strong Team: Obama vs the EU

When the Lisbon treaty comes into force on December 1st, the European Union will have achieved two of its key goals of the last decade -- improved coherance and a stronger common foreign policy. Among many other things, the Treaty brings major changes to two top posts in the EU, a permanent President of the European Council (rather than 6 month rotating among the heads of states/governments in the EU countries) and High Representative for foreign policy (merging the foreign policy mandate of the European Commission and the common foreign and security policy of the EU (the countries).

In each post is a chance for strong leadership to redefine the role of the European Union vis-a-vis the members states -- particularly large EU countries like France, UK, Germany, Spain and Italy -- and carve out a bigger common space in the realm of foreign and security policy.

This was reflected in the weeks leading up to the decision by the fact that some big hitters in European (and global) politics were lining up as candidate for the post. Most prominent was the candidacy of former UK PM Tony Blair, who with the support of the British government, sought the President post. Other major politicians rumored for the job included Dutch PM Jan Pieter Balkenende and Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker, along with Finnish PM Tarja Halonen.

On the foreign affairs post, prominent foreign ministers and prime ministers were on the nominations block as well, with Spanish FM Miguel Moratinos, British FM David Miliband, former Italian PM and FM Massimo D'Alema, former Austrian FM and ambassador Ursula Plassnik all mentioned as strong candidates.

As a result, it was to the distress of many pro-EU observers that the choices selected by the European nations last week -- Belgium PM Herman Van Rompuy for EU Council President and EU Trade Commissioner Baroness Catherine Ashton (UK) -- were both 'dark horse' consensus candidates with quite low global profiles, and in the latter case, almost no foreign or security policy experience (trade negotiations certainly count for something, but a far cry from FM, PM or ambassador experience).

The basic story is that on both fronts, the heads of France and Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, cut a deal to put forth a united front, and push a common candidate for each post. Chosen to "avoid overshadowing" the traditional leadership on EU and foreign policy issues from Paris and Berlin, Merkel and Sarkozy pushed a candidate would not challenge them. And once he knew that Tony Blair would not fly in the President post, the UK's Gordon Brown agreed -- taking political victory back home that the UK's own Lady Ashton now sat in the foreign policy post. Of course, she would never shine brighter than Miliband, the Labour government reasoned.

Now, contrast this with the tactic used by US President Barack Obama as he pulled together his foreign, security and domestic policy team. Rather than installing low-profile, consensus choices that he could more easily dominate, he generally built a strong-willed and experienced team, who would challenge his thinking and already command a high degree of gravitas inside and outside.

Regardless of their political or ideological stripes, observers found it hard to challenge the appointment of Hillary Clinton to the State Department and re-appointment of Robert Gates to the Pentagon. Similarly, the appointments of high-profile diplomats Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, Scott Gration as special envoys, and the political strength of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel seem to draw from the same logic.

The Obama approach also has a clear political component -- bringing potential rivals into the fold builds the brain power and credibility of the administration and also removes potential critics from the center and left.

When making the comparison between the Obama Administration and the European Council, of course, there are several important distinctions. Decisions by committee, particularly the type described here, tend to prefer easier, consensus nominees. Obama himself drove the train on his nominees and as a result could take more risks. In addition, the EU is essentially an 'incrementalist' organization, with a slowly growing (if not creeping) mandate, whereas a change in US administration is a deliberate chance to make large scale and dramatic adjustments in personnel and vision.

That all said, it is hard to see how Van Rompuy and Ashton will bring the kind of charisma and new vision that the Lisbon Treaty was intended to provide to the Union. Of course, it is easy to argue that the goal of the posts is to do neither thing, instead simply to raise the level of coherance by merging key functions of the EU. But if the EU is to play a larger role in the diplomatic and security realms, for example beyond the current development assistance and humanitarian aid focus of the former and illegal immigration focus of the latter, the strategy must change.
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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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Advice To Blanche Lincoln: Speak Softly, But Carry Firm Position on Health Care Reform

Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, who is up for a tough re-election fight next year, really doesn't have any good choices when it comes to the Democrats' health care reform bill. On the one hand, the measure has become unpopular in her state, and Arkansas -- which was not so long ago considered a swing state, has since become deeply red: one of just a handful of states where Republicans actually gained ground between 2004 and 2008. On the other hand, opposing the measure would depress her base, virtually ensure a primary challenge, perhaps cost her plum committee assignments in the Democratic caucus, and create a toxic environment for the Democrats nationally. It really is a no-win situation.

And yet, by inserting herself at the center of the health care debate, Lincoln may be making matters even worse for himself.

Take a look, for instance, at some evidence from Montana, where we have a bit of a controlled experiment. In Montana, a purplish-red state, there are two Democratic senators -- Max Baucus and Jon Tester -- each of whom have ultimately decided to support the Democrats' health care reform plans. But whereas Tester has staked out his position very quietly, Baucus seemed to relish the attention he received as the head of the Senate Finance Committee, virtually taking it upon himself to strike a deal with the Senate's centrists, and frequently appearing in television and print media.

And what's happened? According to the Montana State University - Billings poll, Tester's approval ratings are virtually unchanged from two years earlier (although his disapproval rating has increased slightly). But Baucus has seen his fall precipitously, from 64 percent to 44 percent.



To repeat: Same state, same party, same position -- more or less -- on health care reform. But vastly different approaches: one senator seeking the spotlight, and the other shunning it. And vastly different trajectories of public opinion.

Baucus, indeed, is not alone in this department: virtually everyone who has tried to play a dealmaker role in health care has seen their approval ratings decline, from Chuck Grassley to Olympia Snowe to Harry Reid to President Obama.

If I were Blanche's Lincoln's Chief of Staff, my advice to her would be as follows:

1. Vote for cloture.
2. Vote against the bill itself.
3. Articulate this position clearly.
4. And then Shut The Hell Up.

Of course, it's probably not possible for Lincoln to avoid the spotlight entirely: she occupies a somewhat unique position as the only Democratic Senator under serious re-election threat in a McCain state. I'm sure that Lincoln would rather that this whole health care thing had never come up for vote in the first place. But given that it has, and that it is much too late for the Democrats to adopt any sort of exit strategy, I would tend to want to minimize my role in the process. Part of that means staking out a clear position, because an undecided vote attracts unwanted attention. And the path of least resistance would seem to be committing to voting for cloture, so that the Democratic base, your colleagues in the Senate, and the national media don't go nuclear on you -- but against the underlying bill, which is unpopular in your state. Dithering, on the other hand, gives pretty much everyone the opportunity to be unhappy with you. And the polling evidence shows that if you give your voters an opportunity to be unhappy with you on health care reform, they probably will be.

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Is Gallup "upping the sample to black Americans"?

Mark Blumenthal links to Rush Limbaugh accusing Gallup of "upping the sample to black Americans to keep [Obama] up at 50%" in the polls. (For the context, see the last paragraph of the transcript.)

Frank Newport of Gallup responds here. Newport denies it all, but he would, wouldn't he?

Seriously, though, it's hard to believe that Limbaugh really believes that Gallup is fudging the numbers. As a big-time radio host, he's gotta know all about marketing surveys, right? I'm just assuming he said that "upping the sample" bit as more of a joke or an off-the-wall speculation. It did raise two interesting questions in my mind, though:

1. The assumption behind Limbaugh's argument--as with many arguments about polls--is that the published poll results have an effect of their own, beyond he president's underlying popularity. For example, maybe some senator would vote for the health care bill if he read that Obama's approval rating was 51% but would vote no if he read that Obama only had 49% approval. This might very well be true--it makes sense--I just don't really know.

2. What if you were a pollster and really did want to cheat and overrepresent Democrats? How would you do it? Contra Limbaugh's suggestion, I don't think you'd oversample blacks. I'm assuming Gallup does telephone surveys, and it's not like there's a separate telephone directory for blacks. Also, as several commenters to Newport noted, the percentage of blacks among the survey respondents is easy enough to check. And, for that matter, many survey organizations (possibly including Gallup) do post-sampling weighting adjustments for race, anyway, in which case oversampling blacks won't do anything for you at all.

If you're doing a telephone poll and want to oversample Democrats, you can just call states and area codes where more Democrats live. Call New York, LA, Chicago, etc. You can even call people in Democratic-leaning white areas if you want to mix things up a bit. That'll do the trick. Bury it deep enough in the sampling algorithm and maybe nobody will notice!

P.S. I looked at Gallup's home page and was surprised not to see any link to a description of their sampling methods. Or maybe it's somewhere and I didn't see it.

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