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November 2012 Archives
Longtime filibuster opponent Hendrik Hertzberg encountered a pretty good Michael Tomasky item on the Reid/Merkley/Udall reform package which wondered whether getting rid of the motion to proceed and forcing talking...
Kevin Drum notes that Republicans insist on something called “entitlement reform,” but have no actual ideas about what this reform might mean (aside from getting rid of Medicare). So now...
Big shout out to my mom, who has a letter to the editor in the New York Times today: To the Editor: Re “We Need to Retreat From the Beach,”...
A bunch of liberals (here's one; here's another) had good fun with an op-ed by Romney strategist Stuart Stevens recently. The main point of the ribbing was that Romney's campaign...
I am resurrecting this old post (sorry, no clean 2012 data yet, I’ll update when I have the numbers) because some people were asking about education and voting in a...
Yesterday at the Monkey Cage, Josh Tucker complained that analogizing $6 billion in campaign advertising to $6 billion spent on potato chips is improper. Jonathan Bernstein defended the analogy, arguing...
It looks like the United Nations General Assembly is set to vote today on granting the Palestinian Authority the status of a “non-member observer state.” As the title suggest, this would not...
I’m glad to see the Washington Post endorsing the idea that the feds should let Washington State and Colorado go ahead and experiment with legal marijuana. “For now, the federal...
False confessions in criminal cases are very hard to reverse in the minds of police, jurors and judges, even when substantial evidence is available to show that the confession is...
Since I wrote about my lack of enthusiasm for eliminating filibusters on the motion to proceed to bills yesterday, I figure I should write one today about a reform that...
Washington is not known for the stunning clarity with which it frames and addresses tough issues. But has there ever been a debate so mired in confusion as the one...
I thought I would add a few observations to Jon Bernstein’s thoughtful discussions here and here about potential reforms of the Senate’s Rule 22. Jon and others wonder whether...
A new poll shows that raising the Medicare age slowly to 67 (presumably to unify it with the Social Security full retirement age) is not popular. It is a bad...
In the election for President of the United States, the Electoral College is the body whose members vote to elect the President directly. Each state sends a number of delegates...
Okay, this is just getting stupid. Even after the CIA explained that Susan Rice was using intelligence-approved talking points, and briefed Senators on the fake-Benghazi scandal, the Nuevo Three Amigos...
Excellent news about Senate reform, at least for those favoring reform, in a Greg Sargent post today: Dems may not change the rules on the first day of the session....
Joel Kotkin writes that the Republican party can win by moving to the left of the Democrats on economic issues: This aspirational element should be the centerpiece of the Republican...
Why do people of different parties seem to have such a hard time understanding each other and reaching agreements? It may be, in part, because they belong to completely different...
If you open this week’s Economist, you will find what is becoming a familiar line about spending on US elections: The election cycle that has just limped to its exhausted...
1. A phased-in, but ever-rising, greenhouse gas tax or carbon tax. (Raises revenue, protects the planet.) 2. Tripling the federal alcohol tax. (Raises about $15B/yr. in revenue, prevents violent crime...
Conservative data cruncher Charles Murray asks, “Why aren’t Asians Republicans?”: Asians are only half as likely to identify themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative” as whites, and less than half...
Politico has a pretty weak item about second terms and what Barack Obama should do to secure a good one. I'm no expert on Teddy Roosevelt, so I'll pass on...
In yesterday morning's Politico filibuster story, Republicans threatened to "shut down the Senate," in the words of GOP Whip-to-be John Cornyn (via Greg). Filibuster reformers such as Ed Kilgore respond...
If you want to understand American gender relations in the 1960s, skip "Mad Men" and tune into classic "Star Trek." I recently re-watched "The Enemy Within" with the kids and...
In February, the political establishment here in Maine was rocked by Sen. Olympia’s Snowe’s late and entirely surprising announcement that she would not seek reelection. The Senate, she said, had...
In an editorial Monday, the Denver Post defended the Electoral College, writing, Until such time as candidates regularly start landing in the Oval Office despite having lost the popular vote, there is...
Since the election President Obama has received a wide range of unsolicited advice regarding his legislative relations as they pertain to his second term agenda and, most immediately, avoiding a...
In my Wall Street Journal article on vaccines for addiction to stimulant drugs (e.g., cocaine and methamphetamine), I lament the fact that the development of these remarkable medications is moving...
Reading these news articles that slam more and more nails into the already-dead reputation of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, I keep thinking: what if she’d won her election a...
According to Wikipedia’s latest tabulation, Mitt Romney has received 60,227,548 of the 126,832,750 votes tallied so far. That’s 47.485%, which rounds off to … 47%.Mission accomplished. [Cross-posted at The Reality-based...
Tyler Cowen points to this news article by Lauren Sandler: Stunningly, the postponement of marriage and parenting — the factors that shrink the birth rate — is the very best...
John Patty: In a nutshell, the uncertainty about Boehner’s bargaining position relative to his own caucus can generate sufficient incentives for him to “act the diva,” and seem to hold...
Republicans are floating three ideas to make cuts to the Affordable Care Act as part of a fiscal deal. Since they’re Republicans, all of the ideas they’re floating are horrible:...
Most everyone in Red Blogistan and on the Red-team varsity of punditry (Pete Wehner at Commentary is an honorable exception) seems to agree that GQ was mean to po’ widdle...
The New York Times reports the following proposal is on the table in negotiations over raising additional tax revenue so that Republicans can say they have not allowed marginal tax...
Marco Rubio decides that running for President as a Republican means pretending to believe that the Earth is flat, or that it might be flat, or that the question of...
I think the strongest case for protection of minorities in the Senate is in confirmation of judges. It's a lifetime appointment; we're now being governed in part by decisions made...
At this writing, Middle East watchers are, well, watching to see if Israel and Hamas can reach a cease-fire. Signs are good, but pessimists are rarely disproved in the Middle...
For all the talk of tax increases and debt-cutting, President Barack Obama’s biggest and most- revealing decision this year may be which candidate he chooses to be his new secretary...
Bill Clinton became U.S. president on a platform of “change.” Not change in any particular way -- just change in the abstract. Like characters in a Chekhov play, Americans found...
No matter how hard I try, I can’t make this myth go away. Until I do, I will keep on posting this every Thanksgiving.Myth: Eating Turkey Makes You SleepyWhile not...
Greg Koger offers important insights here about potential reforms of Senate rules that seek to encourage “talking filibusters.” Although as Greg notes, we lack details about the mechanics of the...
Last Friday, our friends at Wonkblog posted comments on Senator Merkley’s proposed-but-still-vague reform. I thought I would elaborate on whether Merkley’s proposed reforms will help make the Senate more effective…or at...
As Hilary Clinton arrives in Israel to attempt to negotiate a cease fire in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hammas, it is worth noting that there is a sub-field...
In late September, I was involved in an email exchange in which a historian stated that “Someone should do a piece cataloging down all the poli sci consensi being undone...
Long-time reader Ed Whitney wrote me an email that was too intriguing to keep as a private communication. Ed graciously agreed to turn his thoughts into a guest blog post....
Ezra Klein predicts today that we'll have a compromise on fiscal issues in time for Christmas. I hope he is wrong, because that would be a real tragedy. Klein was...
One of the arguments for increasing the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to, say, 67 is to increase the incentive to work. Putting aside the fact that many...
At Stanford School of Medicine’s blog , I described the results of the new RAND study showing that mandatory sobriety programs reduce both drink driving and domestic violence arrests. The...
Ken Burns’ Dust Bowl was on PBS recently. It was essential viewing. The most obvious reason to watch concerned unnerving parallels between the man-made climate disasters of eight decades ago...
1. The Federal government needs some revenue in medium and long term but we still need fiscal stimulus in the short term. 2. The planet needs a decrease in greenhouse-gas...
For the last 20 years, the Right has worked hard to convert support for Israel from an area of bipartisan consensus into a topic for Republicans to beat Democrats with....
I still get an earful for my skepticism that banning, or even taxing, sugar-laden soft drinks will do much to improve our health. In the interest of being fair on...
Some of the bits of the Web that I pay close attention to are trying to figure out how to react to the Republican Study Committee’s new thinkpiece on copyright....
Jonathan Chait riffs today on Romney, Republicans, and libertarians. His general point that every faction after a loss simply blames all the other factions is certainly correct. But I think...
This discussion arose in the context of statistics teaching: April Galyardt writes: I’m teaching my first graduate class this semester. It’s intro stats for graduate students in the college of...
…when he said: “What I would do if I were a Democrat running four years from now, I’d say, you know what, dental care will be included in Obamcare.”Oral health...
Avi Feller and I write: The basic question driving the 2012 campaign was always clear: could Mitt Romney gain enough of the vote among older, upper-income white Americans to overcome...
I have not yet read Sasha Issenberg's book (it's on my holiday wish list!), although I imagine there are still several books to be written about the use of social...
It appears that even some media outlets are getting tired of John McCain’s shtick. His decision to skip a classified Senate Intelligence Committee briefing about what happened in Benghazi in...
The GAO did a study: Medicaid enrollment has grown significantly in recent years due to the economic downturn. This growth is expected to continue as the Patient Protection and Affordable...
Following up on a comment by a reader, the above title is my quick summary of the income/voting graph: [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]...
Matt Yglesias had a nice item yesterday about a tanning salon owner who reportedly killed himself, blaming Barack Obama. The point Yglesias made was that, this tragedy aside, in his...
The United States has long relied on monarchs and strong militaries to prop up political systems in the developing world. That strategy isn't working too well any more.
At least so far.Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has been making a lot of loud noises lately, theoretically criticizing GOP plutocracy. A few days ago, he supposedly advanced a new conservative...
Nate Silver helpfully compiles voter turnout figures (so far) by state in last week's presidential election. I've used those figures to chart the change in turnout since 2008, plotted against...
Nancy Pelosi, describing the incoming Democratic House caucus, of which white males make up a minority: [O]ur House Democratic Caucus [will be] the first caucus in the history of civilized...
In his keynote speech last Thursday to the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist party, retiring President Hu Jintao said: Energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP...
Imagine that a politician announces a plan to cut local/state/federal taxes on income up to $20,000. Is this policy:(A) A tax cut for struggling working class Americans?, or (B) A...
So everyone is prattling away with their grand bargain ideas on tax reform, etc. so I will re-up the basic idea at the heart of the tax reform I proposed...
Filegate. Travelgate. Whitewater. Birtherism. Solyndra. Fast and Furious. Notice a pattern?When there is a Democratic President, Republicans are quick are quick to make wild accusations of wrongdoing that turn out...
Paul Krugman wrote a nice piece yesterday on life expectancy, specifically on how it hasn’t been going up like “everyone” says. It’s a zombie idea; it won’t die.I thought I’d...
From the exit polls: This is all pretty obvious but it seemed worth posting because some people still don’t seem to get it. For example, Jay Cost, writing in the...
In my post last week, I said that I'd like to increase incentives for cross-party incentives. An anonymous commenter quite sensibly asked: "Why?" It's worth a response. Basically, I'm for...
I wrote about Barack Obama's press conference over at Plum Line today, and I had a few comments about the challenges of negotiating in public, but that sort of begs...
Washington loves its panaceas. A few years ago, it was Army General David Petraeus who could fix any problem -- up to and perhaps including the presidency. Then it was...
It’s a small matter, I know, compared with the historic issues now obsessing the commentariat, such as the fiscal cliff and how many mistresses and admirers former Army General David...
David Lazer has an interesting piece on the topic. What is important is how well pollsters did in the face of increased obstacles to doing a good job: response rates...
Michael LaCour sends the following graph, which is fun to look at and puzzle over—e.g., the pro-Obama swing in Alaska. [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]...
I’m gratified that Sean Hannity and other conservatives have gotten the post-election memo on immigration reform. (In Hannity’s case, this may literally be true.) But there’s still another piece of...
An African friend asked me recently “What did Kim Kardashian DO?”. “Nothing” I said. “Then why is she so famous?”.How I cherish his innocence. The exchange made me want to...
Did you know obesity is a problem? Did you know that saturated fat is bad for you?Why don’t we start taxing fat? Revenue goes up and fat intake goes down....
Public opinion about marijuana has moved sharply over the past few years; about half now support legalization. Last Tuesday voters in Washington State and Colorado took the leap of approving...
Studying drug policy is no fun if you like things to make sense. But it’s a good way to cultivate an appreciation of the absurd.The United States consumes large amounts...
I’ve mentioned before in passing that physicians have the highest suicide rate of any profession. Some more details about this are to be found in a recent study, “Details on...
After the 2004 election, commentator Michael Lind wrote: Karl Rove is an evil political genius, but he is a political genius. As he hoped, 2004 was a realigning election like...
As the president and Congress approach the “fiscal cliff,” which will result in automatic cuts to government programs, without a new budget deal there’s one thing it's interesting to recall....
All that stuff I’ve been saying about deficient reality-checking by the Red team? Rachel Maddow says it about 100 times as well: [Cross-posted at The Reality-based Community]...
Joe Romm nails it: The only people who will pursue real adaptation are those who understand the latest science and are prepared to take serious political action based on that...
Everyone knows health care costs too much. When I talk about this, especially on the radio, people call in to try and pin that entirely on individual choices. It’s always...
From DogHouseDiaries. Click to enlarge. [Cross-posted at The Incidental Economist]...
Via both Cosma Shalizi’s Pinboard feed and an email tip, this map of the geographical origins of racist tweets in the US shows a rather striking pattern. For a very...
Now that the question of who will inhabit the White House for the next fours years has been answered, the focus of the political debate will return to the looming...
It's looking more and more as if something will happen on filibuster reform. Greg has a total of 50 Members of the new Senate on record as supporting at least...
Last week’s election demonstrated, once again, that America’s most essential and abiding divisions are not between red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals, or even the faithful and the...
Economic growth and the vote for president, based on the most recent numbers: So, after all that money was spent, all those ads were run, all those voters were contacted...
We all know the famous story of FDR meeting with a group of liberal activists early in his term. They made an impassioned plea for their policies, and the President...
It’s now several days after the election, and thus time for a new spate of speculation (e.g., here, here, here) about who might serve in the second term Obama cabinet....
That’s what a lot of pundits say. But let’s examine the assertion a little more closely.There is a reason why the Republican Party, and leading politicians in the Republican Party,...
A few people sent this on to me, and so I share it with you. From JAMA, “The Cost of Technology“: No one was more surprised than the physician himself....
From POLITICO Pulse:* BOEHNER WANTS OBAMACARE COMPONENTS ON THE NEGOTIATING TABLE - Any moves to chip away at the law during fiscal cliff negotiations could have a game-changing effect on...
If the experience of the Great Depression is anything to go by, economic crises help the far right rather than the far left. In a recent paper, Alan de Bromhead,...
Some interesting new research bears on this question: On average, women make up about 20 percent of lawmakers in the United States and abroad. We found that when women constituted...
I've mentioned this before, but I'm already hearing the complaints, so here we go again. The battle for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president started some time ago. The battle...
I don't have the answers to these, but I'm sure someone will after a while, and I'm very interested to hear them. By the way, this reminds me that I...
U.S. presidents’ second terms often turn out to be failures in domestic policy, largely because lame ducks are almost by definition political figures of the past. Yet President Barack Obama’s...
A remarkable thing happened last Tuesday. The Republican Party was virtually extinguished from the land of its birth. I’m speaking of Yankeedom, a great swath of the country from Maine...
John Boehner has committed the house majority to accept new revenues under the “right conditions”. The California legislature has a 2/3 D majority in both houses, which means it can...
Like a political Punxatawny Phil seeing his shadow, George Will has seen the president re-elected, Democrats returned to their majority in the Senate and Republicans to theirs in the House,...
How America voted in the 2012 election: More here. The short story: nonvoters have different attitudes, on average, compared to voters. When lots of people don’t vote, this affects political...
There are still more votes to be counted, but as of now the tipping point state was...Colorado, same as in 2008. They're still counting the votes in Colorado, but as...
On Tuesday, the voters of Colorado voted to pass Amendment 64 which legalizes the recreational use of marijuana for adults 21 years old and above. It is groundbreaking legislation that...
Today is the day of the Great Pundits Pivot. It happens every four years, the day after a presidential election. Before the election, every commentator wants to be Michael Barone....
In 2008, Barack Obama promised to change the way Washington works. In 2013, we might actually see that change. But it won’t be because of Obama. It will be because...
In my piece on presidential debates in the September/October issue of the Washington Monthly, I argued that while debates can move the polls, they rarely decide the winner of the...
Thank goodness this crap campaign is over. It turned out to be a bit of nail-biter, but it should never had been so close. Obama should have walloped Romney, who...
Washington State and Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana during Tuesday’s election. There are still many legal issues to be sorted out but it pays to ponder what will happen...
Voters in Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana yesterday. Although the drug is still illegal under federal law, Reason's Jacob Sullum explains that there isn't much Washington can do: With only...
Standing out among the mainstream media’s determination to echo the standard Republican talking point that only GOP election victories actually count, Steve Benen nails the election’s real significance: Had Obama...
Jon Cohn put it best: I’ve waited more than two years to write this sentence: The Affordable Care Act is here to stay. It survived the Supreme Court and now...
When your side wins, it’s easy to think you have a “mandate.” So when Bush won in 2004, Brendan Nyhan notes, the Wall Street Journal editorial page called it a...
John Sides has an excellent post up called "The Fundamentals Mattered in 2012." He's not saying that the campaigns didn't matter at all, but that the context for the campaign...
I stayed up way too late last night, but listening to my kids’ excitement about the election this morning was totally worth it. In no particular order, here are my...
Hillary Clinton vs. Paul Ryan. I know, that’s a boring speculation, but as a statistician I gotta go with the highest-probability event. [Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]...
I’ll leave it to others to write the bigger posts on how much better the election results support models based on aggregates of polls than the bloviations of the pundits...
Mike Bloomberg and Chris Christie.Sonia Sotomayor.Paul Ryan.Those guys distorting the numbers in some back room in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.That waiter who secretly taped Romney’s “47%” speech.The National Oceanic...
just a quick note on the news coverage -- specifically on CNN, since I had the TV on to it for most of the night. If I had to judge...
The victory of Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts marks the arrival in the Senate of a major new figure in American politics. To be effective, she will have to lay low...
In the first e-chapter of The Gamble, “The Hand You’re Dealt,” Lynn Vavreck and I argued that an incumbent running amidst even modest economic growth was the favorite. Certain economic...
About half an hour ago I was eating lunch (outside: this is L.A.) and overheard two female undergraduates talking about heading to the polls. One asked the other, “how are...
A political observer could be forgiven for not noticing that there are more than 6,000 state legislative elections occurring tomorrow -- the presidential race tends to suck up most of...
It’s hard to sum up the mendacity and the obscurantism of today’s GOP in a single column. But the real pros are up for the hard tasks.Peggy Noonan, who taught...
… it would be a long night (both literally and figuratively) for Romney. From the a BBC World Service poll conducted largely in July and August: [Cross-posted at The Monkey...
To date, I haven’t made a formal forecast of the presidential election (though I will below). But I want to answer the question in the title of this post first,...
As far as I can remember throughout this cycle -- and to be fair, I was mostly following my own advise surprisingly well and ignoring quite a bit of the...
Perhaps it was my fault, but I was not aware that my kids’ elementary school was going to vote for the presidential candidates a couple of weeks ago. I’m glad...
When the September jobs report showed that unemployment had dropped to an unexpectedly low 7.8%, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch helped launch a new conspiracy theory when he tweeted:...
In the latest effort by pundits to grab Nate Silver's hands and hit him in the face with them while asking "Why are you hitting yourself?", we see Michael Gerson's...
Tomorrow is Election Day. I have three last minute messages for you. First, vote. If you haven't voted already, go vote. It's probably not rational, but how many of the...
As a follow-up to a recent piece regarding the Rothschild and Wolfers research suggesting the predictive value of aggregating voters’ beliefs about the likely winner of the election, Pew just recently released...
I won't be voting for Barack Obama this time. Not because I don't think his opponent's policies betray a reprehensible lack of compassion and a reckless disregard for reality. I...
In a recent post,the estimable Jon Bernstein considers the question of whether Republicans would blame a Romney loss on Hurricane Sandy. He concludes that this would be a good outcome,...
Comparing (1) this tweet from Nate Silver yesterday: Between national + battleground state polls so far today: 29 Obama leads, 3 Romney leads, 5 ties. with (2) this anecdote from...
Thomas Ferguson writes about the campaign: There’s something chilling that haunts these final days: the Ghost of the 2000 Election. . . . for 2012, the scariest thing about 2000...
A recent UMass poll was in the field when the September jobs report came out, showing the unemployment rate to have dropped to 7.8%. Brian Schaffner writes about how liberals...
Whatever happens, it’s a safe bet the 2012 presidential election won’t go down in history as one for the ages. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have bickered ad nauseum, but...
Following up with Max’s The 2012 Stakes, Part I, I am going to discuss what's at stake with foreign affairs in this election. James Traub wrote in our 2012 January issue...
Brad DeLong claims that health insurance and finance are “at best, completely unproductive.” Shifting an extra three percent of GDP into health care administration was a huge mistake. What the...
Ann Althouse is correct (blind squirrel theory in action? stopped clock theory in action?) to say that the absence of any “Mormon issue” in this campaign says something good about...
This is the last in our series on what's at stake in this election. Healthcare Obamacare is the most prominent issue at stake in this election. Republicans have vowed to...
Today’s employment report was the last wild card in the electoral deck. Substantively, the report was fairly positive: more jobs gained in October than expected, and the August/September numbers revised...
I’ve been following the current brouhaha about Nate Silver with interest, because it’s fascinating to me to watch people viscerally respond to probabilities. This is, in part, because some of...
After a football game, the winning team gets to go home and celebrate. After a presidential election, the winner gets to set national policy for four years. Today and Monday,...
Reading this excellent post by Lynn Vavreck reminded me of a question that sometimes comes up (for example, in our recent q-and-a at the Larchmont public library): Who are those...
This is a guest post by Matthew Incantalupo, a doctoral candidate in politics and social policy at Princeton.*****The United States is slowly emerging from a once-in-a-generation period of high unemployment...
New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg endorsed Barack Obama, citing the issue of climate change. How many votes is that worth to Obama? Well, we have here the mayor of the...
Reihan Salam: Is it obvious that HRC would crush Bloomberg in a D primary? I don't think so. Of course, that assume that Bloomberg looks good in the long run...
In 2007, when Mitt Romney sat down with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination was eager for the influential paper’s blessing. What he...
It’s incredibly hard to study the effect of legislation. So many factors come into play. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I just saw a study entitled, “Association Between Smoke-Free...
In endorsing Mitt Romney for President, David Frum writes:Obama is following a path explored by the British Labor governments of 1997-2010, when the majority of the net new jobs created...
Plutocrat Michael Bloomberg and the plutocrat-friendly Economist agree: Mitt Romney is just too big a risk to take.My favorite line is from The Economist: “Mr. Romney has an economic plan...
New research from David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers: Most pollsters base their election projections off questions of voter intentions, which ask “If the election were held today, who would you...
Tom Holbrook: …throughout this campaign period the Democratic Party has been viewed more positively than the Republican Party. In fact, there is not a single poll in this series in...
A lot of speculation out there now that if Mitt Romney loses, Republicans will blame Sandy for the loss. Momentum was going Romney's way all through October, but the storm...
HuffPo’s Jason Linkins asks: Dunno if @monkeycageblog takes requests, but I’d love to see some poli sci on when, on the campaign timeline, tv ads are most effective. Here’s what...
A group called EGAP (Experiments in Governance and Politics) is considering a proposal to establish a “Pilot Registry for Research Designs” where scholars could register new research projects, specifying in...
My colleague Dr. Tom Robinson points out that sugar does not actually make children hyper. However, parents who believe that it does see what they expect. When researchers tell parents...
Greg Sargent has an important post up this afternoon about the possibility of a strong drive for filibuster reform if, as the polls right now are indicating, we get a...
Frida Ghitis writes an odd column for CNN urging voters not to take Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath into consideration when casting a vote in the presidential election. As evidence...