THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

American politics is now akin to Daffy Duck arguing with Bugs Bunny. For the president to get anything done, he has to seem to be against what he is actually for. Wabbit season! Duck sssssseason! BANG!

I’ll blame the media that is always looking for a winner and loser.  What I prefer is for politics to be the winner and the media to be the loser.

Perhaps the biggest problem is actually the media’s cult of balance, exemplified in comment 1, where both sides must be somehow be to blame.
That’s an easy out for people who aren’t paying attention, but the fact of the matter is that Obama’s policies are squarely what pundits screaming for a centrist candidate are asking for.

The asymmetry is that Dems want government to work, while Reps believe it can only fail. That makes for quite an intransigent negotiating partner. Put another way, Congress’s 9% approval rating is great for Republican ideology. What else can Dems do except compromise 99.94% of the way, of course? The problem is the media can’t ever blame one side even if it’s deserved, unless it’s about penises.

Mettle/3 pretty much has this laid out.

As Paul Krugman is fond of saying, the facts have a well-known liberal bias.

It is classic leftist thinking that the other side must be irrational to disagree with them. Obama himself believes this, which has made it hard for him to work with Republicans.

It is also a viewpoint which is totally divorced from reality. While there are elements of the GOP that favor a very small central government, there are also elements of the Democratic Party which are outright Marxist.

The objective fact is that the GOP has long since accepted the existence of the welfare state. The debate has been over the rate of expansion and the mechanisms by which it would operate.

For a long time, there was a growing economy as a backdrop. Now that’s changed and the country’s fiscal situation is rapidly deteriorating. This is a huge problem for both sides, but particularly Democrats because their entire apparatus is built on patronage through the federal government.

The payroll tax issue is just pure political theater. Obama started campaigning for 2008 and has never stopped. He is completely over-matched as President; he thinks there *might* be three better Presidents in history? That’s Nixonian-level delusion.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
Alexander Hamilton

"there are also elements of the Democratic Party which are outright Marxist.”

I guess the answer to Tango’s question is four posts.

5/
You’re debating a 15 year old vision of the political parties that is a distant memory.

Witness the recent budget impasse. R’s insisted on 100% spending cuts, Obama suggested 50-50 spending cuts/tax hikes, then 60-40, then 80-20, but there was no compromise from the R’s.

When you factor that intransigence in with the anti-science stance of the bulk of the party, in terms of climate science, stem cell science, evolution and so on, then that is what your modern day GOP is all about.

You can say, “oh, but there are dozens of pro-science republicans” but that’s equivalent to saying, “jeter gets to tons of ground balls.” When you look at the *actual numbers* you see that facts and science are more often on the side of the D’s than they are the R’s. You can wriggle around that *fact* as much as you want, and somehow try to avoid having it implode your world-view, but it’s still a fact, sorry to say.
That’s what’s meant by saying that facts have a well-known liberal bias.

Your comment:

While there are elements of the GOP that favor a very small central government, there are also elements of the Democratic Party which are outright Marxist.

The thing is that both parties don’t want to pass the payroll extension.  Dems do, Republicans don’t, but don’t want to be seen opposing it.

The Dems are better at politics than the Repubs, however, while the Dems keep playing the game of free lunch, we get deeper into debt.  Why is it, do you suppose, that a nation of voters with basically high school educations and basic economic illiteracy, keep voting democratic?  When it’s time to pay the piper, I don’t want to hear any whining.

My initial thought was… if the senate agreed to a 2 month solution and the republicans in the house were opposed because they “wanted a full year solution"… wouldn’t the simplest idea be to make what happens in the 2 month band aid happen for the whole year instead?  Is there some reason that wasn’t immediately proposed and passed?

Re: 11.  Republicans don’t actually want an extension.  They will only take one if it comes with a bunch of sweetening.  Republicans believe the working poor don’t pay enough taxes.  See post 10

10/
Some facts:

The more education you have, the more likely you are to vote D. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/bush.html
How does that square with your story, btw?

Another fact regarding who causes the largest deficits:
http://www.freakalytics.com/usdeficitstats/1_debt_growth_in_US_debt_measured_as_percent_of_gdp_freakalytics_com.png
That would be Republicans, on average and in aggregate.

Another fact:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-social-welfare-state
The US spends on the low end of all other western democracies on social welfare and those that spend more do better in terms of growth.

Taken together, these data point to the problem being uneducated voters voting Republican and having no clue how economies work.
Treat this like a baseball discussion and bring some data with you if you disagree.

11/
Technically, because the Senate bill was already passed and they already went home. Doing the new bill would have taken a few weeks, past the Jan 1 deadline. More importantly, if the senators came back to negotiate, you can be sure Boehner et al. would have insisted that the bill be packed with offsetting budget cuts, killing the deal altogether. There is no way the 1-yr. story was the R’s actual position given it was diametrically opposed to their initial negotiating point.

"Witness the recent budget impasse. R’s insisted on 100% spending cuts, Obama suggested 50-50 spending cuts/tax hikes, then 60-40, then 80-20, but there was no compromise from the R’s.”

There haven’t been any spending cuts. The parties were arguing over the rate of future spending increases. Federal outlays continue to rise under GOP proposals. I happen to disagree with them for doing it, but it’s true all the same.

“The US spends on the low end of all other western democracies on social welfare and those that spend more do better in terms of growth.”

I hope you are not seriously claiming correlation = causation. On this site? Come on.

“is a classic exemplar of everything the R-party is right now. Name calling and labeling instead of appealing to facts.”

Translation: ‘Republicans are uneducated buffoons but, please, cut out the name-calling.’

14/

Point 1: The point here is simply where budget deficit reduction will come from - spending cuts of the existing budget or tax increases on the existing tax rates.

Point 2: Please reference the posts I was responding to. My point here is that our social expenditures are in no way out of whack for similar countries (unless you want to count Somalia among our cohort), and that our deficit is not because we are some extreme (Marxist) welfare state.

Point 3:
You said “uneducated buffoons”, I did not. I was simply directly responding to the posters comment:

“Why is it, do you suppose, that a nation of voters with basically high school educations and basic economic illiteracy, keep voting democratic?”

This really betrays how sensitive you are to a relatively plain presentation of data. My gut reaction is that you take this fact that Republican voters are less educated so personally (to where you have to translate it in an insult) is because the facts don’t fit your world view. I’ve seen this reaction among conservatives many times—perhaps you can clarify?

Good job John!  Turn someone else’s statement in an insult directed at you, then stand with a “shame on you, you hypocrit” attitude!  Classic republican tickers, you’ve masters it.  You now advance to level 2 and have a good understanding of how to twist anything and everything around to seem like you are being victimized!  Fantastic!

15/

#1 - Well the Democrats actually have no plan to close the deficit, since they repudiated the bi-partisan deficit commission and have offered no alternatives (raising taxes on the rich is a drop in the bucket). The debate was much smaller in scale, basically whether to begin the process by raising taxes or limiting future spending growth.

#2 - OK. It is a misleading statistic, but you didn’t explicitly claim causation. I read it that way initially.

#3 - I wasn’t responding to any particular comment. Here are some statements you’ve made that I think are lacking in the objectivity dept.:

- 3/ Republicans think government always fails. Objectively false. Republicans widely believe in the military as an institution and most support NASA, strong law enforcement, and various other government efforts.

- 5/ Republicans wouldn’t accept any tax hikes. Objectively false. GOP negotiators offered hundreds of billions in added revenue (i.e. added taxes) at a 2-1 ratio of cuts/revenue. Democrats rejected it out of hand with no counter-offer.

- 5/ Republicans are anti-science. How about this fact- 74% of Democrats believe in creationism or think God guided evolution (per Gallup).

- 13/ More education leads to greater Democratic identification. Not really. Democrats dominate academia, skewing the statistics. Highly educated people with good incomes lean Republican. People with some higher education lean Republican. High school dropouts are overwhelmingly Democratic.

***

I didn’t take anything personally. I’m not even a Republican. But people may react badly to your arguments because you claim to be objective while making claims that are anything but.

I just want to thank americans for making the politics of your country so insane, so nonfunctional, so spit-take inducing, that I’ve basically stopped paying attention for the first time in my adult life. Canadian here, and our own system has some major flaws, but wow...just wow. Quite the system you’ve entrenched yourselves in. I just hope it’s not too late to avoid this north of the border…

I used to pay close attention, but now I wish you the best, and hope you can come back to something resembling a reasonable system. If you could just stop broadcasting your behaviour so that others begin to think of it as acceptable, that would be great.

LOL U.S. politics as usual: yelling past each other.

17/
I’m just going to appeal to the same comment that we use when talking about baseball:
You provide no data and so pretty much everything you said is BS.
For example, the gallup poll in question:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/republicans-democrats-differ-creationism.aspx
R: 60% creationist
D: 38% creationist
That’s a cold hard fact you simply can’t spin. And that fact has no “bias” or “subjectivity” - it’s what I call objective. If you have a different understanding of “objective” please share.
If the media, and everyone, paid attention to these little niggling fact-y things instead of soft-pedaling the truth so no one is offended, or instead of trying to force facts to fit preconceived worldviews, then I think we’d be better off.

I’m not going to sit here and look up more links to counter your made up statistics - no one’s mind is being changed. I am intrigued by this claim, though: “GOP negotiators offered hundreds of billions in added revenue (i.e. added taxes) at a 2-1 ratio of cuts/revenue.” If you have an actual link for that, please provide.

***

To the Canadians: I appreciate your disgustedness with the process as a whole, but I’m not sure you can appreciate how difficult it is to deal with a political party where more half the members believe the earth is 10,000 years old, disbelieve in evolution and believe the earth is not warming (let alone due to human activity). Again, if you have any suggestions, please share.

20/

- Toomey plan to raise taxes by $290 billion:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9R2C3L01.htm

- With respect to evolution, how does the fact only 17% of Democrats believe in purely natural evolution support your argument? That’s a pretty small minority.

- Education and partisan identification (in 2006 Dem landslide):

HS Dropout-
Dem: 51%
GOP: 28%

HS Graduate-
Dem: 43%
GOP: 33%

Some college-
Dem: 36%
GOP: 36%

College or beyond-
Dem: 34%
GOP: 37%

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/independents/data-year-by-year.html

- “I’m not going to sit here and look up more links to counter your made up statistics “

Could you be more specific as to which statistics I made up?

Yeah, the answer was four posts as noted by Larry. As soon as the Marxist bell was rung.

Actually, I believe the answer to Tangotiger’s question was zero posts. 

I also was unimpressed by Romney’s answer, but to write that “people can’t stand him” seems wrong to me when it was reported that his poll numbers among Iowa Republicans placed him first and his poll numbers head to head versus Obama tend to be consistently better than other Republican candidates.

No, I’m not a Romney supporter either.

With respect to evolution, how does the fact only 17% of Democrats believe in purely natural evolution support your argument? That’s a pretty small minority.

And Pujols only gets on base 40% of the time!  How does that support your argument that he’s the best player when he makes an out more often than not when he goes to the plate?!

* * * * *

Also I’m not really sure what this whole education debate is about.  Is the argument that the party for which the most highly educated folks vote for is somehow the “correct” party to vote for?  That seems silly - it seems to me that educated and uneducated people both tend to vote based on their perceived short-term interests, rather than what we might consider the “correct” thing to do.

Re: 20. You think that religious conservatives only exist in the US? I’m American and even I am aware of the Conservative Party of Canada. Things might be even worse for the left there because the right is united and the left is divided between the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party.

Let me dive in here, pointing out that the ‘Payroll Tax’ that is the original point of this thread is the tax that funds Social Security. IMO that fact is critical to this discussion, but the words “Social Security” have yet to be mentioned in Tango’s intro or the first 25 comments.

Here’s what happened concerning the ‘Payroll Tax’. When discussing whether the ‘rich’ pay their ‘fair share’, those on the Right pointed out correctly that something like 47% of Americans do not pay any federal income tax. Those on the Left also correctly pointed out that those bottom 47% do pay the federal ‘payroll tax’, but quite often did not elaborate that the payroll tax is what funds Social Security.

The difference is that personal and corporate income taxes, capital gains tax, etc, go into the general fund, while the ‘payroll tax’ is dedicated to the Social Security Trust Fund. In some ways it’s not considered a tax but an insurance premium, as the official name for Social Security benefits is Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI). The law which enables the money for Social Security and Medicaid to be withheld from paychecks is called the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA).

In the past, when projections indicated that Social Security would be running low on funds, multiple times commissions were created t study the issue, and the suggestions were commonly increase contributions, decrease benefits, raise the retirement age, etc. Also, there is a cap on earnings subject to the Social Security Tax. This year it was $106,800, in 2012 $110k. It frequently increases with inflation, but had been at $106,800 for three years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Wage_Base. There had been proposals for a large increase in the amount subject to taxation, but no changes were passed. This is significant because people making more than the limit pay a decreasing percent of their income into the Social Security Trust Fund, making it a regressive tax.

However, a year ago during the negotiations to extend the Bush era tax rates, a one year holiday was included on the Social Security tax, dropping the individual contribution fro 6.2% to 4.2%, while the employer contribution stayed the same. The law called for the shortfall in revenue to be made up with transfers from the general fund. Now the Obama administration wants to cut the individual contribution to 3.1%, half of the level previous to the ‘tax holiday’.

This makes a profound change to Social Security funding, with little or no public debate on the matter. With a 3.1% individual contribution, 50% of SS funds will be coming from employers, 25% from individual payroll tax, and 25% from the general fund, which is about half funded by the upper  of income earners, the ‘millionaires and billionaires’ as referred to in the Democrat campaign literature I receive. I’ve heard several conservative commentators opine that lowering the employers’ contribution would probably have more of an effect on hiring (lowering the cost of labor).

I’m not saying this is bad, but that it has not been brought into the discussion. My local TV station described the tax as “a certain payroll tax on working Americans”. Why not call it Social Security? Were they unaware, or did they not want to go there? I do believe that many Americans have no idea that this tax cut being discussed is Social Security.

The Left usually has a Keynesian approach to economics, focusing on the demand side, while frequently denying a supply side even exists (ie tax rates and regulations have little effect on production). The Right would acknowledge the demand side, that taxpayers would like more of their own money in their pocket, but puts an effort into protecting the supply side, trying to create a producer friendly economy.

Now, I confess the Democrats are much better politicians than the Republicans. Once the tax cut was passed, it would be hard to undo. Any Republican discussions of whether it’s wise to subsidize Social Security with general funds already over a trillion dollars in annual deficit, or if it’s wise to raise income taxes during a recession, or if this tax cut is effective in stimulating the economy, is met with Democrat cries of “The Republicans want to raise taxes on the poor and middle class!” and we never discuss the real issues.

And before we can discuss the real issue, we have to identify it as Social Security.

A final comment on the Keystone Pipeline. Non germaine amendments have been allowed as long as Congress has existed, although sometimes disconcerting. However, my opinion is that permission to build pipeline is as just as valid an economic stimulus and job creation measure as a Social Security tax cut or extending unemployment benefits. Unions want it approved, but environmentalists don’t. So far, Obama has gone with the environmentalists.

Is there any objective evidence that democrats are better politicians?  This reminds me of sports teams that like to play the “no one believes in us” card to hype themselves up before games.

Romney: for someone that should be lapping the field based on his credentials and, let’s face it, look at the competition, and having already finished #2 behind McCain last year, his lack of popularity is quite the surprise.  He must really rub people the wrong way. 

Wait for Chris Christie, the ultimate bully, in 4 years.  I have no doubt that half of Americans will take to him because they love a scrapper.  And he revels in the role.

I meant better politicians to mean better at playing the games. Republicans often seem brain dead on how to maneuver legislation. In this particular case the Dems skillfully lured the Republicans into a trap.

Apart from that is the ability to have the government effectively serve the people. I don’t know if anyone has succeeded there yet.

29/

To repeat the original question:  What evidence do you have the Dems are better at playing the games?
I would suggest quite the contrary.

Indeed, when you look at how Reps poll compared to the issues they espouse (better), and at how Dems poll compared to the issues they espouse (worse), then you’d likely have to come to the conclusion that Reps are the better spinners.

And yes, the Dems won this time, but the debt ceiling maneuver was a brilliant stroke the Reps came up with out of nowhere that served them quite well.

Finally, Dems control the executive branch and - as most people forget - the Senate, yet somehow the Reps are able to act as though they run the show. Even when Dems held everything in ‘08, the Reps managed to use the veto far better than the Dems did when the Reps held exec and both houses. These all point to Reps being the better “politicians”.

26/

A useful exegesis, thank you. Two important quibbles, however.

First, on Keysian economics, it’s quite incorrect to say Dems “deny a supply side even exists.” That’s a pretty inflamatory statement, in fact. The more important distinction is whether centralized policy can have a tangible economic impact—that, I think is a more appropriate characterization of Keynes vs. Hayek, or whomever you want to identify as your standard bearers. Dems think tanks like the Center for American Progress have spent a lot of energy quantifying the impact of each of the types of levers that can be used to affect policy - it just so happens that stimulative spending has ~3 times the effect of tax cuts.

Second, on the pipeline, again, I think your characterization leaves out crucial details that create a bias. The choice isn’t XL or no XL, it’s XL immediately or XL maybe with further study. The Dems support the latter. The second fact here is that just because something creates jobs, doesn’t automatically make it good. The gov’t can hire people to spray arsenic in people’s faces, and that would create jobs, too. Sorry if that was extreme, but I think it has to be to overcome the ruckus about (possible) jobs losses that Reps create when regulations are enacted.

John/5 - “he thinks there *might* be three better Presidents in history? That’s Nixonian-level delusion.”

Except he never said that or anything else close to it. Saying something like that completely invalidates your opinion as something that can possibly resemble objective.

John/21 - “With respect to evolution, how does the fact only 17% of Democrats believe in purely natural evolution support your argument? That’s a pretty small minority”

So another person who doesn’t understand evolution. Awesome. Seriously, this doesn’t mean anything. Evolution makes no mention of a higher power. It doesn’t disprove or attempt to disprove a higher power. It just explains the mechanism for things on Earth. So believing that evolution is God’s way of working is in no way anti-science. Believing in God (and I don’t) is not anti-science. You know what’s anti-science? Refuting basically proven science with no actual evidence.

JD/31- Just for everyone, here’s Obama’s actual quote: “The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70684.html

I interpret that quote as meaning that Obama created the internet protocols.

By the way, Vint Cerf, creator of the internet:

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/what-ive-learned/vint-cerf-0508

Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit.

Earlier, he also said:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President.  Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large.

The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.

What a cynical world that everything good must be spun into something one-sided negatively.

And the irony to use the internet to do so…

Tango/35 - That’s a remarkably accurate comparison.

The best part of the whole thing is that the right seems to think Obama believes LBJ (he can’t possibly be speaking of Andrew Johnson) is one of the three best Presidents ever. Nobody thinks LBJ is a Top 3 President (he averages in the 13ish range in scholarly polls).

JD/36 -

I’ve long thought LBJ was largely underrated in academic circles, mostly because he shoulders most of the blame for Vietnam, and he is given less credit for civil rights changes than I’d say he deserves, especially in light of how intransigent Congress can be.

In terms of pushing an agenda through Congress, while ignoring what you think of that agenda as a matter of policy, I don’t see how you keep LBJ out of the top 3, or at least top 5, especially if you’re looking only at the first 2 years in office.

In his first 2 years, Johnson passed about the civil rights act, the voting rights act, created Medicare and Medicaid, and he massively increased our presence in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I doubt many people would favor all of this, and indeed many would oppose most, or even all, but this is major, significant change, to a degree that few presidents compare.

What’s funny about the Obama quote to me is that he cites foreign policy accomplishments in addition to legislative ones. From a liberal perspective, the LBJ presidency was full of legislative accomplishments, but escalation in Vietnam is now generally considered to have been a major mistake, particularly on the left. FDR similarly had a number of large legislative successes in his first 2 years (again from the perspective of a liberal), but his first 2 years were devoid of major foreign policy change - leading us into World War II shouldn’t count yet.

And while I’m quibbling, is the Civil War foreign or domestic policy? I’d say the former, although keeping Great Britain from siding with the CSA does count as a foreign policy coup. Lincoln is not remembered for legislative accomplishments during his term, let alone his first 2 years.

So why mention foreign policy? Because Obama wants to push that as a point of his own strength. And at least on the surface that seems plausible: he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, we helped in ousting Muammar Ghadafi from power in Libya, and our military found and killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. A closer examination of foreign policy would likely show much less difference between W. Bush and Obama than most partisans would want to admit.