Paul Krugman: Clinging to a Stereotype

Paul Krugman looks at the economics, sociology, and political science in Barack Obama's recent statements:

Clinging to a Stereotype, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Will Barack Obama’s now famous “bitter” quote turn out to have been a big deal politically? Frankly, I have no idea. But here’s a different question: was Mr. Obama right?

Mr. Obama’s comments combined assertions about economics, sociology and voting behavior. In each case, his assertion was mostly if not entirely wrong.

Start with the economics. Mr. Obama: “You go into these small towns ... in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration.”

There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s and nothing has replaced it. But..., the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000. (...see the numbers at my blog.)

We can argue about how much credit Bill Clinton deserves... But if I were a Democratic Party elder, I’d urge Mr. Obama to stop blurring the distinction between Clinton-era prosperity and Bush-era economic distress.

Next, the sociology: “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

The crucial word here isn’t “bitter,” it’s “cling.” Does economic hardship drive people to seek solace in firearms, God and xenophobia?

It’s true that people in poor states are more likely to attend church regularly... But this result largely reflects ... that southern states are both church-going and poor... Furthermore, within poor states, people with low incomes are actually less likely to attend church... Over all, none of this suggests that people turn to God out of economic frustration.

Finally, Mr. Obama, in later clarifying remarks, declared that the people he’s talking about “don’t vote on economic issues,” and are motivated instead by things like guns and gay marriage.

That’s a political theory made famous by Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” According to this theory, “values” issues lead working-class Americans to act against their own interests by voting Republican...

I was impressed by Mr. Frank’s book when it came out. But ... Larry Bartels ... convinced me that Mr. Frank was mostly wrong...

Mr. Bartels cited data showing that small-town, working-class Americans are actually less likely ... to vote on the basis of religion and social values. Nor have working-class voters trended Republican..., Democrats do better with these voters now than they did in the 1960s. ...

So why have Republicans won so many elections? In his book, “Unequal Democracy,” Mr. Bartels shows that “the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement” explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story.

Does it matter that Mr. Obama has embraced an incorrect theory about what motivates working-class voters? His campaign certainly hasn’t been based on Mr. Frank’s book, which calls for a renewed focus on economic issues as a way to win back the working class.

Indeed, the book concludes with a blistering attack on Democrats who cater to “affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” while “dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans.” Doesn’t this sound a bit like the Obama campaign?

Anyway, the important point is that working-class Americans do vote on economic issues — and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems.

And one more thing: let’s hope that once Mr. Obama is no longer running against someone named Clinton, he’ll stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember.

Comments

[Bruce Wilder]

Hmmm. I wonder why Obama did not embrace a frame, which suggests racism as a prime motivating factor?

Gee, that's puzzling.

[Bruce Wilder]

And, why would Obama adopt a frame, which was unflattering to his rival?

So many puzzles.

[Bruce Wilder]

PK: "Does it matter that Mr. Obama has embraced an incorrect theory about what motivates working-class voters?"

It might matter to the tenure committee. Oh, wait, there isn't one.

Obama was not embracing an abstract sociological theory -- he was offering a frame: an analysis that motivates by implication.

The proper truth value in such a case is pragmatic: does the frame help engender among your supporters a modicum of respect for those you hope to persuade, respect which is persuasive.

Clinton's critique is at least straightforwardly political -- she re-framed Obama's remark as an insult, disrespect that she hopes might be persuasive.

Obama's frame, though, does imply that many of the people, who have been voting for Republicans, on issues like gun rights and gay marriage, would be better off voting for Democrats on the economy, if the Democrats could and did deliver.

The action part is "right".

Is it important to be "right" in the frame, as in scientifically accurate, about the motivations for how people vote? I doubt that it would be helpful for a black candidate to tell people that they've been voting Republican, because they are racists. Call me crazy, but I just don't think that qualifies as good messaging.

We could argue about what it means to be scientifically "right" at this level of analysis. If you are talking about millions of people, and factors that explain a 55-45 split in that group, a little scientific modesty is called for. I don't know that it means much. I suspect practical politics is a bit more fine-grained.

But, in rhetorical strategy, a flattering frame, which changes the dynamic going forward is more important than an historically powerful explanation.

[NLS]

Mommy,

Make them stop.

[Bruce Wilder]

kos of DailyKos pointed to Too Sense: The Bitter Truth, which is a blogpost, which suggests that Obama's comment raised a firestorm from the punditocrisy, precisely because it raises and legitimizes class tensions. It is worth reading, just as it is worth remembering that the outrage was mostly from the likes of Maureen Dowd.

I think we ought to consider that the problem is not that Barack Obama is complacent about class and economic conflict, but that the country's Media is an effective Firewall against any discussion of class and poverty.

[Alex Tolley]

PK: "In his book, “Unequal Democracy,” Mr. Bartels shows that “the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement” explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story."

That macro analysis does not a priori exclude the micro sociological analysis of country vs urban dwellers. Are all those "angry white males" calling in to right wing talk shows agreeing that illegal immigration is to blame for their low wages or lack of jobs really not "clinging" to beliefs that it was better back in the 1950's? Perhaps the church doesn't give them comfort, but it was certainly the traditional role of the Christian churches to make people feel better about their lot in life.

[MDM4584]

"And one more thing: let’s hope that once Mr. Obama is no longer running against someone named Clinton, he’ll stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember."

And this has to do with Hillary how? Not to be crass, but this is like implying Yoko was responsible for 1968-70 Beatles work.

White Album was EPIC!

says...

Alex Tolley well said.

[Cyrille]

"And this has to do with Hillary how?"

Do you mean you REALLY can't see it?

If Obama's opponent's name was not Clinton, what point would there be, for a Democratic candidate, in falsely implying that the Clinton administration was one of economic hardship?

[reason]

NLS
Has it correct! It is time for Democrats to stop tearing into each other. Now, I personally think that the crazy American political is the real culprit (elect someone - a single person - to do something and elect some other people - congress - to stop him/her). (As I almost tired of pointing out here - http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/joseph-stiglitz.html#c110829756 ). But be that as it may, lots of damage is being done. Much of less of "this is a terrible idea" and "what an awful thing to say" and more "I think it would acchieve what we both want better ...".

[Dickeylee]

Great insights Bruce, spot on. Your point on the media and it's smug I've got mine (money money money) effectively threw the 2000 election to Bush, and scuttled John Edwards try this time. The suitcases of money that they make alters their world view and their opinion of politicians that lead us.

[anne]

Though I thought Barack Obama's surmise wrong from the beginning, I found the assumptions made important and offering an opportunity to set right voter stereotypes that I believe have hurt Democrats but more seriously hurt policy development by Democrats. Should Obama and advisers be wrong in assumptions about voters, that could explain a catering of policy to conservative interests that I believe will cripple attempts at much needed change.

[anne]

From the beginning I thought Robert Frank wrong, I thought Frank had no idea about what was "wrong" with Kansas, and examining the stereotypes is most important and this discussion should serve as an important opportunity to possibly free Democratic policy making to turn to the heritage of a Franklin Roosevelt.

Bartels and Krugman have done us a distinct favor. I would like to support a candidate whose polices I actually agree with, and for that Obama's advisers need to be listening for a change, not telling voters how they are supposed to think but asking how they do think.

[ndd]

If you haven't already, it's worth clicking through to Krugman's "Clinging to the Data" blog post, in which he posts the graphs supporting his piece above.

Bottom line: the graphs suggest that it isn't southern whites specifically, but middle and upper income southern whites, who shifted their votes from democrat to republican. In a sense, they had been voting "against their (economic) interests before the civil rights movement, and are voting "for" their economic interests now.

I'll have to go back and compare Krugman's graphs to those in "Whistling Past Dixie" because I still don't see why lower income southern whites + lower income southern blacks wouldn't make a majority. So something isn't quite adding up yet.

(P.S. Great points, Bruce Wilder).

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/clinging-to-the-data/

April 17, 2008

Clinging To the Data
By Paul Krugman

Some supporting facts for tomorrow's column.

First, the Clinton years were good for incomes, * especially in the Midwest:

Good times, bad times [Chart]

Next, from Andrew Gelman: **

Church attendance and income by state:

Let the Bible Belt come and save my soul... [Chart]

Notice the cluster of poor Southern states at the upper left, which accounts for most though not all of the relationship.

Gelman also offers within-state correlations between income and church attendance: positive in poor (and red) states, negative in rich states.

The observant affluent [Chart]

From a different Gelman post, *** affluent voters seem to be more influenced by religion than the working class:

Rich, religious, right-leaning [Chart]

From Larry Bartels's new book **** (which is closely based on his paper 'What's the matter with 'What's the matter with Kansas?' " ***** ):

The South did it [Chart]

This shows trends in white voting, North and South. It's all about upper- and middle-income Southern votes.

[anne]

We are dealing with stereotypes that that will be destructive. A public television portrayal of highly attractive though differing universal health insurance programs internationally, easily comes to the conclusion that asking all people to carry health insurance is critical for success. John Edwards understood this from the beginning, but the idea was disgarded and mocked by Barack Obama's conservaitve economic advisers who have done much to insure there will be no universal health care insurance here. This is disgraceful, and based on false conservative fostered stereotypes.

[anne]

I am not interested in conservative self-defeating policy proposals being sold by a Presidential candidate because of false adviser stereotypes of voter interests, stereotypes that need to be thoroughly reexamined by the candidate but will not be reexamined as long as supporters cushion the candidate from fair argument. Edwards found just this when Obama met with him after he left the campaign only to have his ideas disgarded with no consideration.

Austan Goolsbeen and Jeffrey Liebman have not offered economic proposals I find acceptable or reasonable, though months have passed with evident need for such proposals. Undermining a move to universal health care insurance or undermining Social Security or failing to address the harm in housing market failure or failing to explain how taxes can be cut while military spending levels continue or are increased but social spending is pay-as-you-go is disappointing.

[zinc]

Obviously the traditionally Democratic South has gone Republican as a block, indicating a complete change in the general philosophy of a plurality of voters. Why the change ? Backlash against civil rights is the most obvious reason.

From what I have been allowed to see by the MSM, it would seem to me that the people who make their money from religion are able to persuade large blocks of voters to believe some pretty crazy shit, especially in the South. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Baker, Oral Roberts, etc. That is why "Charlie Brown" McCain kissed the cloak of the whacko John Hagee.

The Republican handlers for Bush (Karl Rove) and Reagan focused on the tendency of voter blocks to vote on the basis of single issues while ignoring the so called general policies of the candidate.

Hey, does anyone want to talk about John McCain. He doesn't have a real position on anything because he may have to explain what he meant, like O'bama. He told the AP reporters the other day he is the change candidate, and got away with it.

[Simon St.Laurent]

I'd like to suggest that Paul Krugman and Hillary Clinton take a "listening tour" of both northern Pennsylvania and a territory she represents in the Senate, Upstate New York.

These were not places that benefited particularly from the Clinton administration or the Bush administration. They've seen jobs and businesses migrate elsewhere, and not seen a whole lot of warmth from the federal government. The 1990s were as bad here as the 2000s.

Small towns (and heck, cities) here used to have strong reasons for being - resources, industry, agriculture. Some places still have it going, but a lot of them are in trouble, and there's not a whole hell of a lot that's helped them so far.

Remember an Upstate native named Timothy McVeigh? I don't have to look hard to find neighbors who think it important they have guns to defend themselves against the useless government when that day comes, either. Come out and visit some time, and don't just talk with the elected officials!

I admire Krugman, but don't really understand why pecking at Obama has been his favorite sport the last few months. Sure, I would have preferred Edwards as the nominee. This column is strange to me, as it seems to support Edwards' call to focus on the working class but doesn't show much understanding of what the problems actually are outside of the corridor in which he lives.

[anne]

"I don't have to look hard to find neighbors who think it important they have guns to defend themselves against the useless government when that day comes, either."

Thoroughly absurd and horrid, even as simply a thoughtless metaphor.

[anne]

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton is wildly popular in New York, rural and urban New York, and Clinton has repeatedly from the beginning and since listened carefully to rural voters in New York and represented their specific needs while listening as well to rural voters beyond.

The difference between the Bush economy and clinton economy is stark, so enough of distorting history.

[ken melvin]

These things need be discussed. Pretending they aren't real won't make them go back under the bed. America has changed a great deal in the past 35 years and a lot of Americans are really hurting. Ronnie pulled the pretend thing, disappeared lots of Americans into homeless shelters, but he didn't solve any problems. We need to acknowledge these problems, then deal with them. Edwards is not the candidate because the media and the people didn't want to hear that a lot of Americans are hurting. They want another Reagan to tell them that they're OK. That America's doing great and that we can go back to that shining city on the hill.

New Yorkers should learn to be quite about things they know nothing of such as droughts and tent meetings. People have always turned to religion when things get unbearable.

[anne]

We have gone from an economy that was generating 225,000 jobs a month for the 96 months of the Clinton Presidency to 160,000 jobs a month for the finest 52 months of the Bush Presidency and those finest months are well gone and gone as a result of policy. At least understanding history, being honest about our history, can allow us to regain constructive policy.

We have cultivated policy that while having a relatively tepid growth effect has increased income and wealth inequality and accentuated economic stress. simply look to the loss of health care insurance these last years and understand that Republicans have repeatedly prevented even 3.8 million needy children from gaining health protection at the cost of a couple of needless tragic weeks in Iraq.

[lonesome moderate]

In fact, the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000.

Hmm, rather different from the reality portrayed by save_the_rustbelt and other midwesterners on this blog. I wonder why there is the discrepancy.

[lonesome moderate]

Simon St LaurentThese were not places that benefited particularly from the Clinton administration or the Bush administration. They've seen jobs and businesses migrate elsewhere, and not seen a whole lot of warmth from the federal government. The 1990s were as bad here as the 2000s.

Simon - do yo uhave any idea where the numbers cited by Krugman come from? Perhaps there were a few propserous areas of the Midwest/Rust Belt that got all the growth that he cites?

[save_the_rustbelt]

"There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s and nothing has replaced it. But..., the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000. (...see the numbers at my blog.)"

That is simply not true.

The momentum for offshoring was starting to build, and the manufacturing job losses were not as heavy, but the momentum was building and has continued to build until today.

(Economists using broad averages rarely get anything right.)

Less bad than now it not the same as good.

Beyond that, whatever happens in the South, or in Kansas, are not exactly relevant to Midwest.

The Democrats alienated blue collar ethnic Catholics and conservative Protestants when the pro-lifers were thrown out of the party. That is a problem that is not fixed, and must be fixed.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Lonesome:

During the Clinton administration there were some positives in the rustbelt which certainly would have raised the averages.

Construction did ok. Government did well, insurance centers (Columbus, Indianapolis, Lansing) did well, so I would not be surprised if the overall average was good.

But an average has to be dissected down to components.

[Callahan]

Nader, Obama, Clinton, ALL BETTER THAN BUSH!!!

But then ANYBODY is BETTER THAN BUSH!!!!

With the possible exception of McPain.

[lonesome moderate]

From what I've seen, the majority of regular chuchgoers appear to be middle and working class people. The poor and the rich do not participate nearly as much. This probably accounts for much of the income/church attendance correlation--in states with lots of poor people, it is the "richer" people who go, while in states with lots of wealthy, it is the relatively poorer.

[moz]

Anne, please stop. Krugman and Bartels have done us no favors!
Bartels 1st draft of his response to Thomas (not Robert) Franks was so bad and so roundly dismissed by Bartels academic peers that he had to rewrite it! This didn't stop Krugman, however, from basing a large part of his book on Bartel's bad paper.

White people are not identifying with Democrats, and this is true not only in the south. To note that more affluent whites are more likely to vote Republican than less affluent whites does not change the fact that the constituency (working-class) with the least to gain from Republican policy increasingly identifies with Republicans. I refer you to the highly regarded Ruy Teixeira, criticizing Bartels (and Krugman):

"To me, this just doesn’t make any sense. So let’s think of the white poor as, well, the white poor and not confuse them with the white working class, a genuine and vexing political problem for the Democrats. I’ll close with these hair-raising data from the 2004 exit poll:

Among non-college-educated whites with $30,000–$50,000 in household income, Bush beat Kerry by twenty-four points (62 percent to 38 percent); among college-educated whites at the same income level, Kerry actually managed a 49 percent to 49 percent tie. And among non-college-educated whites with $50,000–$75,000 in household income, Bush beat Kerry by a shocking forty-one points (70 percent to 29 percent), while leading by only five points (52 percent to 47 percent) among college-educated whites at the same income level.

In other words, the more these non-poor voters looked like members of the white working class (by my definition), the less likely they were to vote for Kerry in the 2004 election. That’s a problem—a big problem—that no defining down of the white working class is going to take away."
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/001366.php

Krugman may be a good economist but he is a lousy political scientist.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Moz:

Good analysis.

[moz]

Zinc,
Simplistic, mono causal explanations for complex phenomena is not what Democrats need right now. Race was surely a large factor in the political transformation of the south, but we need to address why white people throughout the country are not voting Democratic -- and not just in presidential election. A major flaw of Bartel's (now Krugman's) research is that it only looked at presidential elections: bad presidential candidates offered up the Democrats in recent decades resulted in registered Democrats voting for Republicans in the general election even as these voters chose Democrats in other elections. These voters and their ilk are now more likely to vote a straight Republican ticket than before. And not only in the south.

[zak822]

"Does economic hardship drive people to seek solace in firearms, God and xenophobia? "

No, it drives them to seek solace in the familiar: Church, hunting and neighbors. It's way past time to stop mischaraterizing Sen. Obama's intent, and I'm disappointed to find Krugman doing this.

And anyone who doesn't think small town Pennsyvania, and small town America, feel bitter about what's been lost is kidding themself. While you won't find people sitting around saying "I'm bitter!", you will hear it in conversations in the diners and bars of small towns in Pennsylvania.

zak822, from pennsylvania

[anne]

"White people are not identifying with Democrats, and this is true not only in the south."

Please do offer evidence, like actual evidence, and not Ruy Teixeira's self-serving conservative statistical mashing.

[anne]

"A major flaw of Bartel's (now Krugman's) research is that it only looked at presidential elections: bad presidential candidates offered up the Democrats in recent decades resulted in registered Democrats voting for Republicans in the general election even as these voters chose Democrats in other elections. These voters and their ilk are now more likely to vote a straight Republican ticket than before. And not only in the south."

Enough rubbish, enough conservative raving deceiving rubbish.

[anne]

Suddenly we have wild conservative destructive Republicans explaining to Democrats why Democrats are actually winning. The idea is to turn Democrats to conservative Republicans who are as destructive and more so as those we have now. Enough of the pretense, enought of the rubbish.

"White people are not identifying with Democrats, and this is true not only in the south."

Rubbish for the sake of deception.

Get it? Duh.

[Simon St.Laurent]

"Interestingly, Hillary Clinton is wildly popular in New York, rural and urban New York, and Clinton has repeatedly from the beginning and since listened carefully to rural voters in New York and represented their specific needs while listening as well to rural voters beyond."

Uh, Anne? Do you live here? Visit here often?

Clinton certainly has fans, but I think calling her "wildly popular" is a pretty grotesque overstatement, especially for rural NY.

The rest of the paragraph reads like Clinton Kool-Aid.

I'm happier with her as my Senator than I am with Chuck Schumer, but she's hardly a fantastic representative of Upstate needs. She does what she wants to do, and makes sure there's enough "constituent service" in there to keep people from grousing too much.

Please, do come take a listening tour. We could use your hotel dollars and you might learn a bit beyond the talking points.

[anne]

"It's way past time to stop mischaraterizing Sen. Obama's intent, and I'm disappointed to find Krugman doing this."

There was no questioning of Obama's intent, only questioning of whether he is right, and this is important and would be helpful if allowed to be.

I'm still waiting for a just decent health care insurance proposal, let alone for a determined explanation of policy on Iraq that is not contrdicted by advisers.

[lonesome moderate]

Construction did ok. Government did well, insurance centers (Columbus, Indianapolis, Lansing) did well, so I would not be surprised if the overall average was good.

save_the_rustbelt: thanks, I'm sure this is part of the explanation. However, Krugman refers to the median, not the average, which suggests something broader then a few booming sectors versus general decline.

[anne]

"------- Kool-Aid"

Gutter metaphors do not impress me, but do keep trying.

[moz]

Anne,
Are you serious? Did you not follow the link provided? Teixeira is, among other things, a fellow at the Brookings institute -- not a conservative think tank the last time I looked. What kind of evidence would a rabid animal read? Geez, and I thought right-wingers were nuts!

But I apologize, I took you seriously when I should not have.

[Alex Tolley]

Anne: "Clinton has repeatedly from the beginning and since listened carefully to rural voters in New York and represented their specific needs while listening as well to rural voters beyond."

Be specific. How exactly? What policies has she formulated that addresses this point?

[Simon St.Laurent]

Wow. Kool-Aid is a "gutter metaphor"?

Way not to have to answer the point, or spend money traveling to visit the local reality you dismiss.

[anne]

We are in the midst of a $3 trillion war, financed as no war in American history, a war and financing that have taken us from fine general and personal economic growth and even a budget surplus to relatively poor general growth and middle class limits or even stress and a budget deficit.

Since the initial budget of George Bush military spending has increased as a portion of national income, social spending has decreased both as a portion of national income and in real per capita terms, while taxes have been cut especially helping the wealthiest.

There is Republicanism, there is conservatism, and I would imagine that all sorts of voters have come to understand. Now for actual Democratic plans for change.

[Alex Tolley]

anne: "A public television portrayal of highly attractive though differing universal health insurance programs internationally, easily comes to the conclusion that asking all people to carry health insurance is critical for success. John Edwards understood this from the beginning, but the idea was disgarded and mocked by Barack Obama's conservaitve economic advisers who have done much to insure there will be no universal health care insurance here."

Universal H/C should be front and center in this election. Only yesterday I had to deal with a carrier dropping me from state mandated coverage, which after inquiry, was a "paperwork error". (As was a another denying payments last year). NPR just today had a piece on California forcing carriers to reinstate coverage after dropping people for the most trivial reasons.

Obviously Moore's "Sicko" needs to be re-aired until it gets through to the public that the current system is broken and that ideas for more free market approaches are fundamentally flawed. Neither Hillary's nor Obama's plan will do much more than provide a band-aid unless they can ensure that individuals can join a large risk pool and be given guaranteed coverage at a reasonable rate. But given how uselessly expensive California's state offered earthquake insurance is, I wouldn't pre-judge that government H/C insurance will be good, although Medicare does offer a good precedent.

[anne]

Brookings, dear wittle un-think tank tankers, has been among the leading pushers and rationalizers of Iraq. The all war all the time dear wittle un-think tank tankers tanking for the makers of tanks. That Brookings. Am I being clear enough?

[save_the_rustbelt]

Lonesome:

Yes, the median to be correct.

The diversity of the rustbelt makes statistical analysis tough. Cleveland is different from Columbus which is different from Cincinnati which is different from Indianapolis and all of the them are different from Detroit........ you get the point. And all are within an hour of really rural areas with totally different profiles.

Thirty minutes from Lansing there are townships with dirt and gravel roads. It is a diverse region. It is different than Connecticut or New Jersey.

To really understand takes a longer, broader view, I trust years of journalism and state government numbers more than professors researching from afar. No knock on professors, they work with the tools they have.

[anne]

Alex Tolley:

"Neither Hillary's nor Obama's plan will do much more than provide a band-aid unless they can ensure that individuals can join a large risk pool and be given guaranteed coverage at a reasonable rate."

Absolutely essential; the idea of being frightened, really frightened, of loss of health care insurance must be stopped.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/watch-frontline-tomorrow/

April 14, 2008

Watch Frontline
Edited by Paul Krugman

"Sick Around the World": *

"Four in five Americans say the U.S. health care system needs 'fundamental' change. Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system, or are these nations so culturally different from us that their solutions would simply not be acceptable to Americans?

Frontline correspondent T.R. Reid examines first-hand the health care systems of other advanced capitalist democracies–UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Taiwan–to see what tried and tested ideas might help us reform our broken health care system."

* http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

[Simon St.Laurent]

There's also something complicating in the way Krugman focuses on the midwest, not specifically Pennsylvania. While Obama's original comment leaves that open, I'm not sure that the midwest has the same profile as PA in any case.

(Maybe western PA and western NY would go into the midwest/great lakes area if the breakdown wasn't by state.)

On diversity - yes, definitely. Some places continue to boom while other place collapse. I don't think there's anyway to summarize these differences statistically, at least without a lot more statistics that fit in the average NYT article, much less a column.

[ken melvin]

The median income per individual is somewhere around $26k meaning that half of Americans have somewhere between nothing and $26K/yr, and the the remaining half have somewhere between $26K and several $million/year. The thinking needs to be in terms of distribution. Remember the football field graph with all the income splashed up at one end and those below midfield getting very little. All is not well. There's a whole lot of Americans getting by on next to nothing.

[moz]

Anne your vitriol rings eerily similar to those on the right who consider McCain a liberal because he once or twice entertained an independent thought or befriended a liberal. Yes, I agree that Brookings has allowed too much, specifically in regard to foreign policy. It does not follow that Teixeira and other respected pollsters and political scientists are pawns of the Right. You're not clear, you're a raving nut!

[anne]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/interviews/

Here are texts of the Frontline comparative health care system interviews.

[cm]

anne: With all due respect, it appears that you may be a bit too sheltered in your environment and circle of associates. People in the city, esp. in professional circles, indeed live in a different sector of reality. That's just the way it is, pretty much everywhere. I can confirm the stereotypical sentiments quoted by various people here from first-hand experience.

[Cyrille]

moz, that's a crazy definition of working class.

If someone is rich but not college educated, the likelihood is that he is by now a business owner. So, let's say you are the one in a hundred who really succeeded, maybe you are going to want to believe the Republican rubbish that all poors are poors because they are lazy, or in any way deserve to be so, whereas when you are good you always succeed, and being rich is always a proof of being superior.

Especially if you are not educated and more likely to see things in black and white.

But if neo-liberalism made sure you stayed in the gutter, you may be less impressed by that definition.

Besides, counting a non-college educated successful entrepreneur among those with the least to gain from Republican policies is beyond delusional.

Anyway, I greatly doubt that Krugman had missed the very strong education effect in the election, since I'm pretty sure I read something from him about that. But then uneducated people were disproportionately likely to believe that Iraq had attacked USA in 2001, that the terrorists were Iraqi, that there was no Global warming, that tax cuts paid for themselves...

That has nothing to do with Working Classes, but with the fact that the less culture and exposure to other sources you have, the more likely you are to believe media propaganda.

[anne]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/tiering_the_government.php

April 18, 2008

Tiering the Government
By Matthew Yglesias

You may have seen The New York Times' April 17 article on insurance companies "tiering" their pharmaceutical coverage * so that for some of the more expensive drugs patients can't use the standard flat plan co-payment, but instead need to pay out of pocket a percentage of the (very high) underlying cost of the drugs.

Alyssa Rosenberg looked into a related issue ** for Government Executive and found that many of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program plans are doing this now. Stranger, the Office of Personnel Management seems to have managed to approve these plans without people quite realizing what was happening. It's a reminder, among other things, that when we talk about everyone having health insurance that still leaves a broad range of possible scenarios that hinge on the issue of what "health insurance" amounts to. In other words, how generous will the coverage be? With underlying medical costs soaring, there's tons of pressure to simply save money by making the coverage not-so-generous. But a brave new world in which we all have health insurance but it's bad insurance isn't such an appealing scenario.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html

** http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39802&dcn=todaysnews

[david]

If you don't know who Ruy Teixera is, it's okay to ask.

There's lots of Frank bashing which seems quite removed from his book -- especially the "he doesn't know from Kansas" parts. His book is a series of travel vignettes focused on politics in Kansas, which is where he is from. Some people would call it fieldwork.

Frank pwned Bartels on the first go round.

[anne]

Points of cost for medical care insurance begin with the need for coverage that for us all, and noticing how various public-private combinations of coverage have lowered costs in dramatic ways internationally.

[RW]

First, Krugman is clearly not a political scientist but quite possibly it is that very lack of nuanced interpretation combined with a first class intellect and an unwavering willingness to let data speak for itself that allows him to be quite good at recognizing a lack of sufficient warrant binding a claim and its associated data (to use Stephen Toulmin's construct of a coherent argumentative statement). Less politely this is known as a good bullshit detector and it serves him well even when the topic is outside the discipline of economics but unfortunately in this case I think it is misleading him somewhat mainly because he is granting insufficient weight to that other 500 lb gorilla in the room, the need to win; that is, Obama absolutely must differentiate and brand his candidacy even if it involves positions he might not otherwise wish to take or the entire exercise becomes pointless, he will have lost.

Krugman is right to argue that this could cost both Obama and us later if Obama wins and has talked himself into a rhetorical corner regarding health reform, etc. -- and make no mistake about it Clinton's health proposal is clearly superior -- but that not only misses the previous point, that that is not game Obama is in right now, it also misses a second point: If Obama wins there is this thing called a bully pulpit and Obama is proving himself adept at deploying it; e.g., assuming the foreign policy and looming economic crisis the Republicans have delivered us into does not completely occupy his time I believe he could change his mind and get away with it.

As for the rest, anyone who has lived in the Southern US and cared to think about it knows Bartels was right but also knows that racism was never the whole story -- there's pride, and independence, and opinions from folks who don't know you and you don't know, and a whole bunch of other stuff -- and anyone who has lived in rural America and cares to think about it knows that there is no single characteristic defining that group any more than there is a single characteristic defining a Southerner or a Parisian. I lived for years in a small, Southern town and some of the strongest distinctions you could imagine (and some discrimination too) existed between townies, farmers and holler folk -- and no they didn't all have guns, knew a couple who wouldn't even permit them in the house -- and between all the denizens of one county and another; everyone knew exactly where you came from if you were raised anywhere within a radius of 50 miles or so and outside of that you were "from off of here" and whether that meant Nashville, New York or Mars came to about the same.

Finally anyone who has ever endured peer review knows there is nothing uncommon about rewrites and the frequently rather blunt demand for same from reviewers; if you're going to work in academia you are going to be in both positions and doing rewrites says little one way or another if your work is consistently accepted for publication.

[Joe]

Anyone care to read this:
http://www.dailyyonder.com/why-rural-and-urban-pennsylvania-might-be-bitter

[Simon St.Laurent]

Joe - Great piece! The maps are especially striking.

I'll have to cook up something similar for New York.

[anne]

RW:

"Obama absolutely must differentiate and brand his candidacy even if it involves positions he might not otherwise wish to take or the entire exercise becomes pointless, he will have lost."

Agreed, and a fine criticism, leaving me to wonder what I have wondered for months, whether there is proper understanding of just how ready to listen to respond to important ideas for change voters are.

Though I can follow the polls, I really do not even know the extent to which voters are determined that we leave Iraq. However, I am convinced the distructiveness of the war can be convincingly discussed by a Democratic candidate through all the complaints and voters will respond. Should there be such a response, there is a likelihood we will actually leave no matter the opposition that is a certainty from so much of the foreign policy establishment and so many currently serving general officers.

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/dying-midwestern-city-blogging/

April 18, 2008

Dying Midwestern City Blogging
By Paul krugman

Youngstown, Ohio, is the poster child for towns where the factories left and aren’t coming back. It’s so bad that the city government is trying to convert derelict neighborhoods into open space.

Yet there have been better and worse periods. Nonfarm employment in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metro area actually rose in the 1990s, before falling again this decade (I’d add pre-1990 data, but the BLS doesn’t have it.)

Ups and downs [Chart]

And small-town Americans, contrary to myth, do drink lattes (small luxuries are sometimes all they can afford). The Starbucks store locator shows 5 in the metro area:

Lotsa lattes [Map]

[Joe]

Anne, seems to think that Obama's response to economically but culturally conservative voters in small-town PA is to offer them conservative economic solutions to our macro-problems. This is nonsense and intentionally obtuse. He is offering much of the same economic policy, but with a different kind of politics and a personal willingness to engage on cultural values.

1. His policy positions are all well with in the mainstream of democratic policy-making for a generation. You may be convinced his health care proposal is worse than Clinton's, but it is ridiculous to argue that it isn't far better than the status quo, especially for people who are in general much more likely to be the recipients of the subsidies offer by both plans.

2. He had repeatedly said that the major problem is not that Democrats have the wrong policies, but that we have the wrong *politics* in our country, so policies that would truly help the little guys never get enacted or get watered down, or provide disproportionate benefits to the best off. You can argue that this is wrong, that all you have to do is fight harder and then things will change. Maybe.You can argue that all you have to do is elect 60% majorities in both houses and then you can do whatever you want. Maybe.

Krugman seems to be advocating, just fight harder. Since he is such a hard-line empiricist, what's his evidence that this is likely to be correct?

3. Obama has, unlike most recent democrats, shown a willingness to engage cultural conservatives (not republicans, per se) on their own terms--on faith and the 2nd amendment, on affirmative action, etc... The thing that makes the "bitter-gate" stuff such a smear is that rather than condescend to people of faith he is trying to show why it is exactly his faith that leads him to certain policies. That may or may not be sucessful, but it is a far cry from just hoping that those great un-washed have the scales lifted from their eyes and start voting for who has the best health care plan instead of who is going to wear a flag lapel pin, or who has the funkiest minister. Why is Bob Casey, the pro-life democrat going with Obama. have you read Douglas Kmiec's endorsement of Obama. These folks are not heartened by Obama's conservative economics but by the seriousness with which he engages people on the cultural issues even when he does not agree with them. It is precisely his lack of condecension that makes the dialogue possible.

Finally, how are we to interpret Clinton's hitching her entire campaign rationale on the notion that only she can win the white working class democrats. Why does she bring up issues like elitism, 60's radicals, Farrakhan, Hamas, 9-11 if not to simply make Obama toxic to the folks who vote their prejudices not their policy preferences? Does anyone have a serious answer to that question?

[save_the_rustbelt]

Just finished a little reading, on a cheerful note:

McCain is having trouble raising money.

The Michigan GOP is broke.

Maybe Bushism is bearing the wrong kind of fruit.

Now let's hope the Democrats do not self-destruct.

[anne]

Simply look to the gains in the Midwest through the Clinton years, and the change after. Ohio gained jobs, decent jobs, not everwhere since that is never the case, but jobs were gained and gains persisted through the 1990s; then there were losses and the losses are not being made up, and I find no gains coming with current fiscal policy even with slow growth rathen than recession.

Current fiscal policy, current war derived fiscal policy, has been distructive, and this must be explained.

[kthomas]

anne! "... not telling voters how they are supposed to think but asking how they do think."

Please help on this one. How do they think? And Sen. Clinton does this? Does anyone? Girl....

Dr. Krugman should lighten up. If Obama wins the nomination, I hope that he supports the man.

[anne]

"Anne, seems to think that Obama's response to economically but culturally conservative voters in small-town PA is to offer them conservative economic solutions to our macro-problems. This is nonsense and intentionally obtuse. He is offering much of the same economic policy, but with a different kind of politics and a personal willingness to engage on cultural values."

Say what? I am all tingly waiting for the policies; waiting on universal health care that is universal, waiting on protecting Social Security, waiting on how to cut middle class taxes while adding 100,000 soldiers using pay-as-you-go financing; waiting on a plan for community-homeowner protection.

I am all tingly waiting for a different kind of politics, a politics that makes the least sense beyond hope hope hoping.

[anne]

The question is not supporting Obama, who is well supported and for whom I voted, the question is having decent policies from Obama. When 2 of Obama's closest advisers have been discussing the prospect of not leaving Iraq, while Obama continually suggests the adding of troops in Afghanistan. I have a problem.

War is costing us $200 billion a year, just directly and just materially. How do we lower taxes, add troops, stay in iraq for at least some while, and afford broader health care insurance while paying-as-we-go (not that I care about paying-as-we-go)?

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Simply look to the gains in the Midwest through the Clinton years, and the change after. Ohio gained jobs, decent jobs, not everwhere since that is never the case, but jobs were gained and gains persisted through the 1990s; then there were losses and the losses are not being made up, and I find no gains coming with current fiscal policy even with slow growth rathen than recession."

Other than some construction jobs and some "finance" jobs (translated: mortgage clerks) there was no boom in Ohio in the 1990s, there just enough job creation to mask what was coming in manufacturing. As I remember, government grew quite a bit also.

The offshoring phenomena was gathering steam and broke out full blast in the 2001 recession.

If the intent was to imply that the Clintons did something wonderful for the rustbelt, it ain't so. They just set the stage for what was to come.

[anne]

"He is offering much of the same economic policy, but with a different kind of politics and a personal willingness to engage on cultural values."

What the heck does this mean? What cultural values are to be engaged on, after these years of a Republican cultural wasting? You mean we haven't given over enough rights, haven't a Republican enough Supreme Court to engage with?

Me, I like my cultural values and intend more.

[anne]

"If the intent was to imply that the Clinton [Administration] did something wonderful for the rustbelt, it ain't so. They just set the stage for what was to come."

Republican rubbish, since what was to come was and is definitive Republican rubbish.

[anne]

We have a Republican President and had a Republican Congress, that gave us wild military spending increases, slight social spending declines, tax cuts exprecially for the wealthiest, a slant to any and every business interest. But, in the resulting misfortune the need is to deny history.

No problem, we can blame Australia and Australians tromping through the Midwest stealing Midwestern women. There is the problem.

[hari]

I've a funny feeling that the issue of *race* is hidden in this thread - and it will seriously damage Barack before too long. Frustration was all over his intuitive logic, and he came over more trite than I've heard him before...

It is or even may be possible *working-class-white* will NOT vote for him - come what may!

[im1dc]

"There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s and nothing has replaced it. But..., the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000."

This shows me that Krugman is out of touch with small town America.

The reality of the Clinton years for small manufacturing towns in America is that they saw the loss of the textile industry, furniture industry, the household electronics (especially TV's) industry and all the smaller firms that supported them.

Along with that the Clinton years oversaw the final consolidation to today's Big Energy; ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips. And the coup de grace, the Clinton years oversaw the tearing down of regulatory barriers between Big Banks and other financial institutions; Enron, Aruthur Anderson, Worldcom, etc.

The so-called welfare safety net was also overhauled under the Clinton's watch, not Reagan's.

With Clinton if you were in Mega Corporation America and/or a Wall Streeter you did well and were pleased. (check incomes of those CEOs for the period)

If you lived in Small Town America and relied upon the factory that eventually closed, you did not do well unless you relocated and/or retrained. (See krugman's cited statistics)

If you needed that safety net when your job disappeared you lost out on Clinton's watch too.

That's the Clinton legacy of the 1990's that Obama spoke about, imo. The rich got richer and the poor stayed poor.

Trusting Krugman to be honest and forthright when he writes about partisan primary politics is like trusting a Clinton, either Hill or Bill, it is simply not done by knowledgeable people.

[anne]

"Trusting ------- to be honest and forthright when he writes about partisan primary politics is like trusting a Clinton, either ---- or ----, it is simply not done by knowledgeable people."

Remember what is important is always to deceive and smear and slander, and always but always to be destructive in deceiving.

[anne]

"That's the Clinton legacy of the 1990's that Obama spoke about, imo. The rich got richer and the poor stayed poor."

This is a lie, of course, but the point is simply to lie.

[anne]

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2008/04/who_are_the_val.html

April 18, 2008

Who are the "values voters"?
By Andrew Gelman

Larry Bartels wrote an excellent op-ed * on rich and poor voters, ringing many of the bells that we strike in our forthcoming book. Bartels writes:

"Do small-town, working-class voters cast ballots on the basis of social issues? Yes, but less than other voters do. Among these voters, those who are anti-abortion were only 6 percentage points more likely than those who favor abortion rights to vote for President Bush in 2004. The corresponding difference for the rest of the electorate was 27 points, and for cosmopolitan voters it was a remarkable 58 points. Similarly, the votes cast by the cosmopolitan crowd in 2004 were much more likely to reflect voters’ positions on gun control and gay marriage.

"Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect religion and politics. Support for President Bush was only 5 percentage points higher among the 39 percent of small-town voters who said they attended religious services every week or almost every week than among those who seldom or never attended religious services. The corresponding difference among cosmopolitan voters (34 percent of whom said they attended religious services regularly) was 29 percentage points.

"It is true that American voters attach significantly more weight to social issues than they did 20 years ago. It is also true that church attendance has become a stronger predictor of voting behavior. But both of those changes are concentrated primarily among people who are affluent and well educated, not among the working class."

Well put, and nicely backed up by statistical evidence.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/opinion/17bartels.html

[anne]

The Presidency of Bill Clinton involved 96 months of 255,000 jobs created a month, increasing total employment, increasing employment for African Americans, remarkably low unemployment by ethnicity and region, middle class gains in wages and benefits, decreasing poverty, increasing productivity, lessening deficits to a budget surplus. So that we know.

[No One]

Hari - you are correct in your assumption - and it is Democrats like Anne that refuse to have an open and honest discussion becuase that discussion is not positive.

People like Anne don't get it because they don't get out enough and see the world through their own prejudices - go to NRO "The Corner" and you can find another bunch of narrow minded fools.

People like Thoma and even Mauereen Dowd get it because they occasionally talk to people with different views.

[acerimusdux]

Well, Bruce Wilder as usual nails it right off the top.

There really isn't much to disagree with here from Krugman, as far as he goes, except that his analysis is very shallow. He wants to point out that many people at least did better in th Clinton years than the Bush years. A fair point. But he doesn't have much to add beyond that.

Beyond that, he seemingly disagrees with Frank's analysis, then rather contradictorily, accuses Obama of not campaigning according to Frank's conclusions. If the real problem has been racism, as his analysis suggests, he doesn't offer any way to address that.

Yes, it's an important point that working class Americans do vote on economic issues, but they have been for a long time and it hasn't been enough.

As I suggested in the previous thread, what Bartels (and now Krugman) is ignoring in this analysis is the very real divide which is apparent in the data between rural and urban voters. Just because Democrats are doing marginally better than Republicans amongst working class rural voters does not mean they are doing well enough to win. Not with the other groups voting against them.

So the solution is clearly not to abandon economic appeals to working class interests, but to add to that by addressing also other concerns which are also important to some rural voters (or alternatively, to some middle class voters, who Democrats also aren't winning as much as they should).

I think it s perhaps useful here to observe how Republicans are actually winning on some of these issues. For example, on race, the truth is that racism isn't really terribly popular anywhere today. It is precisely because they recognize this that Republicans don't make overtly racist appeals. Instead they appeal to things like "states rights"--which has broad appeal in rural areas well beyond any racist overtones.

Likewise on social issues like abortion, Republicans are again on the wrong side of most popular opinion. So they are willing to compromise, and frame the issue in a more favorable way. Again they say it should be left to the states, or they employ an incremental approach, arguing topics like partial birth abortion, where polls are more favorable to them. Even when appointing Supreme Court justices who are likely to overturn established law, they argue that they are doing so in the name of "original intent" and "strict construction" out of a philosophy of strict limits on federal power.

And what do Democrats do in response? They argue that in order to achieve their progressive goals, they require "mandates", and "bans" and "freezes" and definitions of new federal "rights" which can never be compromised through political negotiation.

The irony here is that the current Republican administration has been perhaps the most uncompromisingly ideological and partisan presidency history, but they got there by knowing how to better speak this language of compromise and moderation, and restraint on the use of government power. Democrats could easily lose again on these issues, especially as the current Republican nominee is not too closely associated with the current administration, which has so badly failed to live up to this rhetoric.

[Blissex]

«Simplistic, mono causal explanations for complex phenomena is not what Democrats need right now. Race was surely a large factor in the political transformation of the south, but we need to address why white people throughout the country are not voting Democratic -- and not just in presidential election.»

But sometimes politics, in a long term sense, is simple. Sometimes I muse that once upon a time the Democrats were an alliance of working class northern racism-tolerating catholics irish/italians and of southern racists (just look at the surnames of many important Democratic politicos of the golden era), both groups in the alliance having the common enemy of the northern capitalist establishment.

Then what happened is that those catholic irish/italians made good and become well off, and decided that their interests were establishment interests ("F*ck you! I am fully vested"), the good old ''reagan'' democrats, and dragged the southern elites with them, and the western libertarians joined in, and by bye america.

Currently the Democrats represent the non voting poor (usually young, dark or foreign) and a few totally disconnected segments of single-issue special interests, whose only glue is being anti-establishment, where most voters are establishment-leaning.

Hey, currently the "working class" is mostly young, foreign or dark skinned, and many voters are white middle aged entitled "right thinkers" who own suburban property, a fat pension account, a gun and are socially conservative, and have been persuaded by the upper establishment that their common class enemy are the exploitative poor and the parasitical working class.

[anne]

"Yes, it's an important point that working class Americans do vote on economic issues, but they have been for a long time and it hasn't been enough."

Obviously it has been enough; obviously there is a Democratic Congress; obviously state executives and legislatures are decisively Democratic; obviously there is a wildly unpopular Republican President.

Do continue with the nonsense however. Do continue to make sure there will be no universal health care insurance by making sure the will be no reason for millions of people to be insured.

Bad human rights, bad, bad human rights, bad bad bad human rights. No more rights, never ever, too many women voting already and now they want health care insurance for their kiddies too. What nerve.

[anne]

"Race was surely a large factor in the political transformation of the south, but we need to address why white people throughout the country are not voting Democratic -- and not just in presidential election."

We need only address why this is wrong, and absurdly wrong it is. I even know 2 (not 1 but 2) white people who claim they have been voting Democratic. They may be lying, but they really do claim they have been voting Democratic (while even being white, both of them). I know 2 is not many, but it's a start.

[templestark]

Wow. Great theft of almost the entire editorial.

Temple

[billyblog]

Bruce Wilder says:

"But, in rhetorical strategy, a flattering frame, which changes the dynamic going forward is more important than an historically powerful explanation."

Oh my! I doubt that even that soi-disant pragmatic-theory-of-truth flack, Richard Rorty, God rest his soul, or, as he I am sure would have preferred, god rest his soul, would push the post-modern envelope on the interrelation – or lack thereof – between thought and action this far.

Consider:

BRUCE WILDER: You said what, Mr. Wolfowitz?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well merely that, "for bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" to justify the invasion of Iraq.

BW: Say what?

PW: Bruce, you're a sophisticated post-modern sort of guy. You understand that it was merely a "rhetorical strategy" to get everybody to agree upon a course of action to "change the dynamic" in a direction which no one in his right mind could take exception to, especially in the wake of 9/11, namely, the necessity for regime change in Iraq.

BW: Wait a minute. Leave aside whether Saddam Hussein and Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

PW: Are you alluding to the fact that that particular "rhetorical strategy" was used as well?

BW: Well, yes. No. I mean no, since I want to focus for the moment on the WMD issue. You are saying that WMD were known -- or at least it might have been known to be the case if a certain amount of due diligence had been allowed to overcome ideological presuppositions in terms of the intelligence that was available from those charged with knowing such things -- to have been an, um, less than rationally persuasive casus belli for starting a so-called preemptive war against Saddam Hussein. But still you think it legitimate that the administration used the false premise of existent WMD in support of a "true" conclusion, in terms of what was warranted in terms of what one wag has characterized as the "action part" that was "right"?

PW: Weapons, schmepons, Bruce. I think we can all agree that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, and that any "rhetorical strategy," whether driven through "flattering" the electorate into what they wanted to believe from the standpoint of their better angels or pitched to the fears of their lesser angels in the wake of 9/11 was a wholly justifiable sort of thing to do.

BW: You're saying the end justifies the means, and that the Big Lie is sometimes warranted?

PW: Bruce, Bruce. You obviously are aware that I sat at the feet of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago and that I am aware – in the original Greek, mind, you – of the logic of the Big Lie in Plato's Republic.

BW: Well, I dunno about the original Greek, but I think I catch your drift. But whether Plato, Leo Strauss, or Moses Maimonides, in his own way, said it, aren't you essentially arguing that the end justifies the means?

PW: Bruce, my son, we're not talking theology here. We're talking raisons d'état. And I certainly hope we're not going to get into an argumentum ad Hitlerum. For if you can't distinguish between what Joseph Göbbels was doing in the Third Reich from what we, well intentioned, though sometimes fallible clercs were doing to "change the dynamic" – though George and Dick have never publicly admitted to their fallibility, but no matter – then I don't think this will be a very useful discussion.

BW: Hmm. I think I understand your point. Ideology and "having drunk the Kool-Aid" über alles?

PW: I wouldn't quite put it that way, but I think you catch my basic drift.

BW: Hmm, something like the following? When you absolutely positively know ….

PW: Let me interrupt you for a moment. Some of us at the University of Chicago – but don't tell the shades of Richard McKeon or Mortimer Adler -- parse that as: "When you are not really interested in entertaining alternatives any longer."

BW: Yeah, got it. Anyway, when you know you are in the right on a particular issue in terms of what should be the so-called pragmatic outcome, then facts and analysis recede into the background in terms of their importance for deciding the way forward. Much more important is to adopt whatever "rhetorical strategy" is most conducive to achieving the desired outcome, no matter whether that strategy is fact based or not.

PW: Bruce! By golly, I think you could teach the course.

BW: Oh, Paul. Don't flatter me with your rhetoric. Anyway, I think I can see concrete counterexamples of The Way in these sorts of matters.

PW: How so?

BW: Well, for example, there are people I respect, like Anne, who contributes regularly The Economist's Blog. She has announced that she even voted for Barack Obama in her state's primary. But she is now having a bit of buyer's remorse based upon her analysis of the logic inherent in certain stubborn facts.

PW: What do you mean?

BW: Well, Anne, with her fetish about facts, has recently said such things as:

"Austan Goolsbeen [sic, sorry Anne] and Jeffrey Liebman [economic advisors to Obama] have not offered economic proposals I find acceptable or reasonable, though months have passed with evident need for such proposals. Undermining a move to universal health care insurance or undermining Social Security or failing to address the harm in housing market failure or failing to explain how taxes can be cut while military spending levels continue or are increased but social spending is pay-as-you-go is disappointing."

PW: Yes…?

BW: Well, Anne apparently has not come to terms with the notion that reasonable anticipations about policy outcomes – presumptive facts in the making, if you will -- are the sorts of things that can and should be rigorously subordinated to getting elected. I mean, don't let probable facts get in the way of hoped for outcomes. This is all about "changing the dynamic."

PW: I'm not sure if I am following you.

BW: Yeah, the thought is a bit complex, I'll admit. But it essentially boils down to the fact that the most important thing about supporting an Obama candidacy at this point in time is to have faith – and not an immoderate amount of hope – in the controlling idea that if he were elected President of the U.S. he would "change the dynamic" sufficiently in the direction of progressive policies to quell the qualms of anyone who would prefer to see the most prima facie progressive choice become the Democratic nominee for president to run against the Republican's 19th century candidate du jour – John McCain at this juncture.

PW: Bruce, you realize you're talking to someone whose bread has been buttered in the past mostly by Republican administrations?

BW: Yes, Paul, but with your own "the end justifies the rhetorical means" approach to facts, you will have no problem fitting in anywhere.

PW: You've got a point there, Bruce.

PW: Precisely, Bruce. You have to look beyond the horizons of academic tenure. I mean, look at me. Once I was in the World Bank and there was no faculty committee looking over my head anymore, getting my girl friend an appointment at the State Department? C'mon, this is real politik 101 in terms of "changing the dynamic" – if you'll excuse the throwback metaphor.

BW: Oh, Paul. You and Thrasymachus. How to choose?!

[anne]

Billy, that was simply brilliant. Thrasymachus, even.

[anne]

Billy, sort of:

"Well, Anne apparently has not come to terms with the notion that reasonable anticipations about policy outcomes – presumptive facts in the making, if you will -- are the sorts of things that can and should be rigorously subordinated to getting elected. I mean, don't let probable facts get in the way of hoped for outcomes. This is all about 'changing the dynamic.' "

I am awed.

[Lafayette]

Sex, race and taxation

BW: But, in rhetorical strategy, a flattering frame, which changes the dynamic going forward is more important than an historically powerful explanation.

Frames have a way of changing during electoral campaigning. Politicking inevitably provokes candidates to say things that they find, later, it would have been better not to say.

It happens when laxity sets into a campaign. Laxity on the part of the candidate, who makes the same speech a hundred times, and then scrambles for something new and catchy to say. It's difficult to be creative, every day of the week.

I also believe that people, come the day and despite the voluble rhetoric during the campaign, vote their pockets. That is, they vote for the candidate they feel will be financially best for their interests. After all, well-being in a consumerist society is brought about by the ability to consume.

What neither Dem candidate has done is mention Income Inequality in terms of what specifically must be done to correct the manner in which it has warped the distribution of income. Southern blacks and northern whites have both been hurt by job dislocations, if they are unskilled workers. They just cannot believe that those 75$ an hour jobs assembling cars are gone or going.

(This is not uniform. Yuppy blacks and whites don't feel that same fear, because they are pursuing careers in other less manufacturing oriented sectors that are less threatened by global competition.)

How does a candidate explain that sorrowful fact? What does a candidate propose as a viable alternative that can give them hope? Such workers, in the lower-lower to the lower-middle classes, are scared sh*tless that their un- and semi-skilled jobs are hightailing to China. Or, because of inflation, that they just can't make ends meet because incomes are stagnant.

In other words, aside from the "framing", where's the beef that is going to win a Dem candidate the presidency?

Nowhere to be seen. Why? Because it entails taxation and redistribution of wealth towards sparking economic revival. And, no candidate will touch taxation with a ten-foot pole during a presidential campaign.

Sex, race and taxation -- the three taboos of an American presidential campaign.

[BJ Feng]

"How does a candidate explain that sorrowful fact? What does a candidate propose as a viable alternative that can give them hope? Such workers, in the lower-lower to the lower-middle classes, are scared sh*tless that their un- and semi-skilled jobs are hightailing to China. Or, because of inflation, that they just can't make ends meet because incomes are stagnant.

In other words, aside from the "framing", where's the beef that is going to win a Dem candidate the presidency?"

It's easy to state that one supports the plight of the poor, it's hard to come up with an actual policy that will work. The loss of manufacturing jobs and semi-skilled jobs is structural and a normal process in the evolution of our economy. We can't stop this process without resorting to trade barriers and other policies that would do a great deal of harm to our economy. As for the future, it's hard to predict what types of jobs will arise to replace these lost jobs and if they will require the employment of the semi-skilled worker. From what I've read, "Job Training" and "Re-Education" programs are pretty ineffective.

In my opinion, there will be a continued growth in service jobs that don't require traditional education and pay a decent amount. Hair-stylist, personal assistant, etc., but the typical manufacturing job is gone forever. There will still be need for skilled manufacturing workers, like the ones at Boeing, who can operate and maintain complex machinery and put together a whole slew of parts. There isn't a simple answer.

[BJ Feng]

So Obama should play the race card now and make himself another Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton? That would absolutely destroy his candidacy. America likes Obama because he promises to transcend race. America doesn't want another victocrat who blames his problems on racism and offers no solution other than for America to stop being racist.

One of Obama's most appealing aspects is his refusal to play the race card. He acknowledges his race and understands history, but he's made it clear that people should vote for him because of his views, not because of his color. Whites can vote for him because he's not running as a Black candidate who will only champion his own people, but as a liberal candidate of change who will consider the concerns of all Americans.

Clearly Blacks will vote for him anyway because of his race, but his refusal to inject race into the campaign allows others to vote based on policy preferences. Obama rightly knows that he would be crushed if the campaign degenerated into a straight line vote based on race, or anything even close to that. And now you want him to play the race card? Please only after he's secured the Democratic nomination.

[im1dc]

anne,

Your defense of PK has failed due to your flailing about.

When I said:

"That's the Clinton legacy of the 1990's that Obama spoke about, imo. The rich got richer and the poor stayed poor."

You shrilly emote:

"This is a lie, of course, but the point is simply to lie."

Where's the lie? The first statement is my opinion and the second statement is 100% accurate.

What gives you the right to ignore my "imo"?

When you characterized my opinion as a lie, which is an attempt to belittle and minimize me, you engaged in a lowball polemic for no other reason than you cannot factually counter the points made.

You can do better, I know it.

[gordon]

Bartels' response to Frank on the "Kansas" thing is convincing up to the part where he says: "...the overall decline in Democratic support among voters in Frank's white working class over the past half-century is entirely attributable to the demise of the Solid South as a bastion of Democratic allegiance".

Maybe I'm being obtuse, but Bartels appears to shoot himself in the foot with this statement. He admits that white southerners shifted towards the Republicans in response to a classic social issue: race. That this happened in the southern States actually doesn't matter; it happened in the US. That is Frank's point.

[Bruce Wilder]

I thought about having my good friend, Alcibiades, come over, and explain about how to talk one's friends into idiotic military adventures, but he was busy being dead.

A lot of communication is symbolic without being logical, functional without being meaningful, and suggestive without being descriptive. In many circumstances, strict factual accuracy is not helpful.

You witness a terrible accident, involving your friend, and your friend is injured. You see to the emergency, and you say to your friend, "You were lucky, if [fill in the blank], you might have been killed or seriously injured, but look, you will live, everything will be alright." What you say does not make a whole lot of sense, as a scientifically factual assertion. In fact, if the objective is make true factual sense, then you might say, "You're really unlucky, and also foolish for taking such a risk in crossing the street. You deserve this pain; you will bear the scars for life to remind you of your foolishness and your unluckiness."

The latter is easier to support as a factual statement, but the former would be kinder and more helpful. The lizard brain likes to think its host lucky, and hope and faith have benefits that include, but are not limited to, the possibly irrational pleasure they give us.

The campaign to sell the Iraq War shows how effective any argument cast into certain archetypal forms can be. The power of the argument derives from its form, not from the truth of the underlying facts. Would that it were not so! The ethical obligation to make certain that the underlying facts are true, precisely because the form is so powerful. To use the form in contradiction of established facts is extremely irresponsible.

Obama is not using a particular, powerful form in contradiction to established facts. The facts he employed in his interpretation were all true about some people. Some people do vote against their substantive economic interests and instead vote on symbolic issues relating to hunting or religion and some of these people are angry or bitter -- some of them even live in Pennsylvania. He's forming an interpretation, connecting facts in a narrative, which leads such a person to re-consider voting Democratic, on economic issues.

If only 40% of "working class" whites in small-town Pennsylvania vote Republican, based on guns and God, that doesn't factually contradict Obama in any way. Obama was offering advice on how to respectfully approach and persuade a person in that 40%.

Krugman or Bartels spouting off on why middle-class white Southerners switched to the Republican Party 30 years ago does not really address either why Pennsylvanians vote the way they do, or how to persuade certain Pennsylvanians to switch from voting Republican to voting Democratic.

I certainly do not mean to disparage serious opinion or attitude research, which aims at better understanding what has happened historically, to influence voting and partisan loyalty. But, to suggest that Larry Bartels saying 43% of demographic A2 voted Republican and 57% voted Democratic is equivalent to discovering that Bush's claims about WMD in Iraq were false, is beyond silly.

[gordon]

Bruce Wilder: "The power of the argument derives from its form, not from the truth of the underlying facts".

Since I don't live in the US I can't comment on exactly how powerful the "form" of argument brought to bear on the US populace was; I remember the lies, though, about Saddam and WMD, and the innuendoes. They were big lies, as big as Nazi lies about "stab in the back" and Communists and Jews. The lies about "freedom" and "democracy" were as big as Nazi lies about lebensraum and the untermenschen of the East.

The form of the argument is less important than trying to work out why people come to believe such things. Not everybody is dominated by the "lizard brain" or is prepared to get hope and faith from such desperate sources, or irrational pleasure from bombing cities. And you don't need 51% to fall into this state to get a result like 1939.

Really good luck in finding the answer.

[RW]

I sympathize with any attempt to re-frame the debate and reclaim the ground of root metaphors that the right-wing has exploited so productively to our national detriment and disgrace over the past couple decades. But I must confess that the growing schism between rhetoric and reality of which the abuse of those metaphors is surely a part disturbs me at least as much and I hate to see anything that smacks of Democrats accepting that status quo.

I think it was Niklas Luhmann who argued that meaning is a determinate strategy amongst alternative possibilities. That is, meaning is not simply a property of system components but functionally is the constituting and integrative relations among them. But meanings constitute themselves self-referentially (they refer exclusively to other meanings) and thereby organize, following Husserl, ‘horizons’ of further communicative alternatives. They do not in and of themselves bind society to the world, if anything they permit social solipsism; I not only loathe the meanings the right-wing and contemporary Republicanism has inflicted upon the nation for moral reasons nor even the terrible consequences acceptance of those meanings has engendered, I fear the impact those meanings may have on our very survival as a people and therefore any rhetoric that appears to draw from the same well frankly makes me writhe.

[Lafayette]

Where's the beef? You asked for it ...

It's easy to state that one supports the plight of the poor, it's hard to come up with an actual policy that will work.

No, it isn’t. You haven’t been reading my posts, BJ. Due, likely, to cognitive dissonance on your part?

We can't stop this process without resorting to trade barriers and other policies that would do a great deal of harm to our economy.

Typical unreasoned thinking. Right, we start a trade war. One the US can only lose.

For the moment, we are dislocating un- and semi-skilled jobs from small value-added production processes. Start a global trade war, by imposing punitive import tariffs; then watch (for instance) Boeing have a conniption as it is forced to shed a third of its workforce, including talented engineers and other information workers throughout its organization.

Duhhhhhh …. : ^ {

As for the future, it's hard to predict what types of jobs will arise to replace these lost jobs and if they will require the employment of the semi-skilled worker

No, it isn’t. Start thinking instead of posturing. The trend has been in place already for a decade.

Both the US and Europe need a massive upgrading of workforce skills in those areas that depend, mostly, upon information workers with talents related to the manipulation of data. This cuts across the board from service-oriented companies, to engineering production, to distribution, to even basic and processing. It means replacing manpower (that retires) with automation systems that require brainpower to manage.

The unskilled -- who refuse training – are condemned to local service jobs of low-wages because of poor value-added content; such as lipping hamburgers / serving pizzas, hairdressing, taxi-driving, cutting lawns, etc., etc.

From what I've read, "Job Training" and "Re-Education" programs are pretty ineffective

Ah ha, a spark of intelligence! You are right. Because such programs must be coincident with business requirements that give rise to employing the new talents. That is, it is necessary but insufficient to up-skill workforce talents. The country must also invest in areas where the New Talents will be employed.

We already have far too many of our youth going into Financial Services – that area will soon be shown to be overloaded with good but far too much talent for the need.

The Large National Infrastructural Projects that require Federal Long-term Investment and Measures are:
1) Increasing norms controlling toxic emissions/effluents and the replacement of outdated power and treatment plants. A renovation of the electricity grid that is wasteful in energy. (Lead-head this week refused to assume America’s responsibilities as regards Climate Control – read here. Watch the coal industry hire him for a series of $100,000 luncheon speeches across the country as of February next year.)
2) Adding rail to the triad (Road, Air, Rail Transport Triad) for long-haul by means of a high-speed train network across the nation. No one has driven, yet, a high-speed train into a downtown skyscraper – and the fuel efficiency is phenomenal compared to air/road transport. Such a network will also change work habits, such that – in some instances – small towns will experience growth in office space and jobs.
3) Both tax incentives (advanced amortization) and financial enticements (Government expenditures) in the development and implementation of robotic manufacturing in specifically unskilled production processes, typically plastics. If Tupperware can produce with three plants in higher-cost France, all totally automated, the US can as well.) This will lower total manpower labor factors, but keep manufacturing in the US thereby leveraging ancillary jobs, namely in transportation of parts and finished products as well as manufacturing operations.
4) Decent, affordable nursing care for an aging population. Special permanent weight-loss camps for obese children. Many, many other such social programs of merit.
5) Rather than helter-skelter urban sprawl (residence subdivisions satellite to large towns), a plan for new townships that include administration / services / commerce all-in-one. Endow such townships with hi-tech IT so as to entice information-worker jobs to that area, more than likely rural. Make them ecologically friendly.

I could go on, but it would only bore you. The above require dedicated Federal investments ... and the Troglodytic Right is dead set against such -- unless of course the funds were destined for sexy armament programs.

Your nostrums are old hat, BJ. And dangerous to the nation's long-term Economic Dynamic.

[Lafayette]

Article: (Obama will) stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember.

Sorry, Mr. Krugman, but the Clinton administration's Sprint in the Sun was pure happenstance. Bill's economic boom is not likely to be repeated in the same way just because Hillary is PotUS. There was no Magic Formula that was passed from Bill to Hillary.

What did Bill ever do for Income Inequality? He refused to reform the disaster of Reagan's bludgeoning of Marginal Taxation -- which created today's American plutocracy.

Smart Bill decided to play the game and rake in the money to get not only himself reelected but his wife into the White House. There is nothing inherently wrong or immoral with that strategy, mind you. Many a clever person would have chosen to exploit the Plutocratic System, rather than reform it.

Hillary's economic boom could happen as well, but it would take yet another conducive Set of Circumstances and other Driving Forces.

Namely, an impetus taking the downtrodden out of precarious low-paying jobs and up the skills ladder to more durable/decent employment. And, reforming the taxation mechanism that allows far too much of the nation's wealth to gravitate into the social stratosphere.

Both of which will require more than a magic wand to appear and happen. But, first she has to propose that Vision of Hope and Show How she intends to pull it off.

For the moment, she has failed to do so. But, thankfully, so has Obama not achieved either that objective.

[anne]

"Sorry, Mr. Krugman, but the Clinton administration's Sprint in the Sun was pure happenstance."

Nonsense, sound and middle class sympathetic economic policy is not happen-happen-happen, but do keep on trying because re-writing history with nonsense is important.

[Blissex]

«In other words, aside from the "framing", where's the beef that is going to win a Dem candidate the presidency?
Nowhere to be seen. Why?»

Because Coke and Pepsi and many other brands can be very profitable selling things like brownish sugared water almost entirely because they are good at "framing" them. Framing sells, either product or policy, because the lizard brain jumps to conclusions. Framing works, as exemplified here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)

So one has to choose between winning by framing or losing by by substantive. Guess what candidates prefer?

«Because it entails taxation and redistribution of wealth towards sparking economic revival. And, no candidate will touch taxation with a ten-foot pole during a presidential campaign.»

But that is a second order effect -- what matters is avoiding any mention of substantive issues unless they are semi-universally agreed upon. Because voters don't spend their votes rationally, but according to where their interests have been framed. And the average voter has a very limited time to spend making up their mind.

This another area where the demise of unions has damaged the lower classes: while the upper classes have their think tanks, consultants, Chambers of Commerce and Business Roundtables to figure out that is in their best interest and give strategy indications, the lower classes haven't got that anymore and therefore fall easily prey to propaganda, ahem, sorry "framing", from the other side.

For the lower classes collective strategy is as essential as collective action, and while the upper classes have their own unions that that deliver both as to research on strategy and purchase of political influence, the lower classes don't.

The upper classes are rather leninist, and get their vanguard of the bourgeoise cadres to buy them strategy (serious think tanks) and influence (campaign donations) wholesale, the lower classes advance each on their own and buy strategy and influence retail, by taking advice from mass media and by voting, and are the losers.

«Sex, race and taxation -- the three taboos of an American presidential campaign.»

Those are substantive and controversial issues -- on which the lower classes are easily lead on by propaganda, and have no trusted wholesale/collective agency of strategy and influence to rely upon. While the upper classes discuss, strategize and purchase influence very seriously about those issues, and so they win.

BTW, as others have said, I admire Bruce Wilder's Socratic dialogue above. But Paul Wolfowitz is *right*: the Noble Lie works, if one is skilful and the target audience are undefended by countermeasures like relying on union advice.

Humans are wired for group hunts, for cooperating in achieving goals as interest groups -- the owners of capital are hunting as a group, the lower classes are losers hunting on their own.

[Blissex]

«He refused to reform the disaster of Reagan's bludgeoning of Marginal Taxation -- which created today's American plutocracy.»

Like the Republicans you attribute here to taxation a magical property.

The widening inequality is largely due to a large shift in the economical and political power relationships between capital and labour, where labour's leverage has been steadily attacked at the margins by deliberate, continuous assaults by conservative forces.

The medium term driver of labour's loss of leverage has been that conservatives strongly believe the leninists and marxists analysises and thus that the bourgeoisie needs to be organized and act collectively in their own interests, with a vanguard of the bourgeoise led by Grover Norquist and the AEI thinkers, and that a disorganized working class is easy prey. Of course where Marx decries this, they see it as a desirable goal.

The shorter term enabler of labour's loss of leverage is that globalization has doubled the labour-to-capital ratio of the world economy in numbers, and by much more in money terms.

My speculation as to the long term driver is that the generation that fought together in WWII and Korea and who did military service together is/has disappeared. Military service is a great eye opener and equalizer and builder of human links across classes and regions. In WWII and Korea people who served with those whose dad earned 1/100th of what they dead earned discovered that the working class and the poor are actually human beings, just like them, with the same levels of honesty, hard work, intelligence, just often trapped by culture and circumstances.

But in the past few decades the rich have become sure that the poor are as Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan described them, a ferocious "untermensch" mob of dim, lazy, exploitative parasites, luxury loving strapping young bucks and welfare queens, with their t-bone steaks and Cadillacs, thieving and stealing with every underhand trick of taxation, ever ready to unleash a wave of rape and pillage on their superiors, and that keeping them down is not just morally righteous, but also in the best economic interests of the tribe of the rich.

In other words, a plantation mentality and economy. It is not so much that the Republicans conquered the South, but that the culture of the Southern elites conquered the Republicans.