The following article, by Keith Humphries, is cross-posted from Washington Monthly’s Ten Miles Square This is a simple and clear introduction to a complex problem. It provides a very useful note of caution for Democrats in interpreting and using opinion data.
There are many ways, either through error or chicanery, that a poll can misrepresent public opinion on some issue. For example, the chosen sample can be unrepresentative, the questions can be poorly worded, or, as in this classic demonstration from Yes, Minister, respondents can be lead by the nose to give a certain answer.

Yet none of those problems is as serious as the one that afflicts almost every poll: The presumption that those polled care a whit about the issue in question. Whoever commissioned the poll of course considers it important, but that is no guarantee that respondents have ever thought about it before they were polled, or will act on their opinions in any way afterwards.
Advocacy organizations exploit this aspect of polls relentlessly. If the Antarctic Alliance polls 1000 people and asks “Would you like it if there were a law that protected penguins?”, probably 80% of people will say yes because it’s hard to hate on penguins: They are always well-dressed, they waddle in a cute way and many people are still feeling bad for them because of that egg they lost in that movie where they marched all that way in the cold — what was it called? — anyway, man that was sad, so yeah, happy to tell a pollster that we should protect those furry little guys.
Anarctic Alliance will then argue that Congress should pass the Protect the Penguins Act immediately because their new poll shows that 80% of Americans “want penguins to be protected”. But if you asked those same poll respondents if they’d be willing to donate even $10 to help the law pass, most of them would say no. And if you asked them if they would vote for the Congressional Representative on the basis of how s/he responded to the Protect the Penguins Act, most of them would say no. And if you asked them the open ended question “What are the 10 biggest challenges Congress should be addressing now?”, probably none of them would put penguin protection on their list.
To give a darker variant of this problem, gun control laws generally poll well yet don’t pass. How can we not pass something that we “support”? Easily, if the people who say they support it are not willing to do much to see it pass and the people who are against it are willing to do a lot. Polls usually miss this sort of nuance because they don’t assess how much people care about what they are being polled about.
The few polls that somewhat surmount this problem are those that assess the voting intentions only among people who intend to vote, and, those that try to assess how intensely people feel about the opinions they express (e.g., With a follow-up question of “would you be willing to have your taxes rise to make this happen?”).
The only way I can see to consistently avoid the problem of assuming respondents actually care about the issue of interest as much as do poll commissioners is to expand the usual response format of “Yes, no, or don’t know” to include the option “Don’t care”. But I doubt pollsters would ever do this because it would put them out of business to tell their clients that most people simply don’t give a fig.
[Cross-posted at The Reality-based Community]

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, is cross-posted from Think Progress :
In the President’s last weekly address (August 3), he offered the following deal to Republicans, which he termed a “grand bargain for the middle class:” simplify the tax code in exchange for new job spending. While there are substantive reasons for this move away from the president’s previous focus on a deficit “Grand Bargain” — falling deficits and slow growth — there’s also a political rationale: the Democrats need a new argument on jobs for the 2014 midterm.
A recent Pew poll outlines the basic problem. The Democrats face a tough mid-term election in 2014 and that poll shows Obama hemorrhaging support among white working class voters — his approval rating among this group is down to a truly abysmal 26 percent. This is the same group that powered historic Republican gains in 2010, so signs of big slippage among these voters have to worry Democrats at this point.
What do white working class voters want? Above all, they are looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets and rising incomes such growth would bring. In a low growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility. Conversely, with higher growth, these voters will be far more sympathetic to what Democratic candidates have to offer.
As a bonus, improved economic performance would probably go a long way toward helping motivate core groups in the Obama coalition — minorities, youth, single women — to show up at the polls. So Obama’s new grand bargain is both the right thing to do in policy terms and excellent politics to boot. Even if Republicans do not cooperate in the short run, as seems probable, there is much to be gained by fighting for what a key constituency really wants and forcing your opponents to put themselves on the opposite side.
In the long run, the goal of reaching a high growth economy is central to the current Democratic political project of consolidating and expanding the Obama coalition. A very simple equation captures what’s at stake here:

Demographics + Growth = Dominance

Democrats have the demographics part of the formula already. The growth part, on the other hand, remains lacking, suggesting that Democrats would be wise to continue pursuing something like Obama’s jobs proposal for as long as it takes to be successful.

The following article is by Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps:
There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.
We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens:

–In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)
–When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2011, 43 percent of seniors gave the Republican Party a favorable rating. Last month, just 28 percent of seniors rated the GOP favorably. This is not an equal-opportunity rejection of parties or government — over the same period, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating among seniors has increased 3 points, from 37 percent favorable to 40 percent favorable.
–When the Republican congress took office in early 2011, 45 percent of seniors approved of their job performance. That number has dropped to just 22 percent — with 71 percent disapproving.
–Seniors are now much less likely to identify with the Republican Party. On Election Day in 2010, the Republican Party enjoyed a net 10 point party identification advantage among seniors (29 percent identified as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans). As of last month, Democrats now had a net 6 point advantage in party identification among seniors (39 percent to 33 percent).
–More than half (55 percent) of seniors say the Republican Party is too extreme, half (52 percent) say it is out of touch, and half (52 percent) say the GOP is dividing the country. Just 10 percent of seniors believe that the Republican Party does not put special interests ahead of ordinary voters.
–On almost every issue we tested — including gay rights, aid to the poor, immigration, and gun control — more than half of seniors believe that the Republican Party is too extreme.

What do seniors care about now? Our Democracy Corps July National Survey found that:

–89 percent of seniors want to protect Medicare benefits and premiums.
–87 percent of seniors want to raise pay for working women.
–79 percent of seniors think we need to expand scholarships for working adults.
–77 percent of seniors want to expand access to high-quality and affordable childcare for working parents.
–74 percent of seniors want to cut subsidies to big oil companies, agribusinesses, and multinational corporations in order to invest in education, infrastructure, and technology.
–66 percent of seniors want to expand state health insurance exchanges under Obamacare.

All of these issues will be critical to the national debate as the 2014 election nears. The more seniors hear from Republicans on these and other issues, the more we can expect the GOP’s advantage among this important group to decline. And we can count on one thing in 2014: Seniors will vote

The following article is cross-posted from a DCorps E-blast:
Republicans will run on health care reform in 2014 and 2016, so get used to it. But do not believe that it will give them a better chance of securing their seats or the best shot at putting competitive Democratic seats in danger. Democrats in the most rural and the strongest Romney seats will have to be inventive as usual, but Democrats have a lot to say on health care: fix it, don’t repeal it, don’t put the insurance companies back in charge and take your hands off Medicare.
Health care is just not a wedge issue that threatens to change these races very much – as we saw in the 2012 elections where Republicans played out this strategy. This is basically a 50-50 issue in the battleground districts and the country, and it remains a 50-50 issue after voters have heard all of their toughest attacks, including one on the role of the IRS in the new system. These attacks have power, and it is important to engage on the issue. But there is no reason to think the debate changes the dynamic in these competitive House seats: we actually show Democrat members gaining on handling health care reform in their own seats.
Why is it that the popularity of the Republican Congress keeps going down as the Republicans vote now 40 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite that the law is not popular with the public? We suspect because the House Republicans are associated with gridlock, extreme partisanship, and intense anti-Obama sentiment; because voters have other serious priorities and their steadfast focus on health care alone says Republicans are not focused on them and their issues; because Democrats are more trusted than Republicans on health care; and most important because voters do not want to repeal the law. The more voters hear “repeal,” the less they are interested in voting Republican.
We know Republican base voters feel intensely about health care reform, but voters rank “government takeover of the health care system” pretty low as a concern about Democrats in Congress.
These results suggest Democrats should engage the issue with some confidence — they can undermine the Republican attacks and indeed gain an advantage by educating the public on the reforms. Read the full memo at Democracy Corps.

From Jim Galloway’s ‘Political Insider’ post, “New poll: Michelle Nunn matches GOP field in U.S. Senate race” at the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Michelle Nunn begins her Democratic race for U.S. Senate polling ahead of, or tied with, the entire Republican field – but does especially well against U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, according to Public Policy Polling….
The all-important top lines:
Nunn, 41 percent; Broun, 36 percent; Not sure, 23 percent.
Nunn, 41 percent; U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, 41 percent; Not sure, 18 percent.
Nunn, 42 percent; The Rev. Derrick Grayson, 36 percent; Not sure, 22 percent.
Nunn, 40 percent; Former secretary of state Karen Handel, 38 percent; Not sure, 22 percent.
Nunn, 40 percent; U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, 38 percent; Not sure, 21 percent.
Nunn, 40 percent; Businessman David Perdue, 40 percent; Not sure, 21 percent.
Nunn, 42 percent; Businessman Eugene Yu, 35 percent; Not sure, 24 percent.
…A couple things are likely to be turning heads in the Michelle Nunn camp:
— Her father, former U.S. senator Sam Nunn, is still rated favorable by 56 percent of those surveyed. White voters rated him higher, at 62 percent.
— In each of the above hypothetical match-ups, Michelle Nunn peeled away between 8 and 12 percent of those voters who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
Both of those are crucial points in a Georgia electorate that has been increasingly split by race over the past six voting cycles.
Another thought: In a Nunn/Handel match-up – two female statewide candidates running against each other would be a Georgia first – Nunn pulls better among women, 46 to 32 percent.

Those who want to contribute to Nunn’s campaign — and a Democratic pick-up, which could prevent a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate — can do so right here.

In his Nation of Change article “8 Ways Privatization has failed America,” Paul Buchheit unwinds a compelling argument that Republican-driven initiatives to gut the public sector have backfired badly. Buchheit, author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities,” assesses the track record of privatization and deregulation with respect to: health; water; internet, television and telephone; transportation; banking; prisons; education; and consumer protection.
Regarding privatization of water, for example, Bucheit explains:

…A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services…Numerous examples of water privatization abuses or failures have been documented in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island — just about anywhere it’s been tried. Meanwhile, corporations have been making outrageous profits on a commodity that should be almost free.

The experience with privatizing transportation has been equally unimpressive:

…With privatization comes automatic rate increases. Chicago surrendered its parking meters for 75 years and almost immediately faced a doubling of parking rates. California’s experiments with roadway privatization resulted in cost overruns, public outrage, and a bankruptcy; equally disastrous was the state’s foray into electric power privatization. In Pennsylvania, an analysis of school busing by the Keystone Research Center concluded that “Contracting out substantially increases state spending on transportation services.”

Deregulation also delivers little of benefit to consumers, as Buchheit writes:

Deregulation not only deprives Americans of protection, but it also endangers us with the persistent threat of corporate misconduct. As late as 2004 Monsanto had insisted that Agent Orange “is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.” Dow Chemical, the co-manufacturer of Agent Orange, blamed the government. Halliburton pleaded guilty to destroying evidence after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. Cleanups cost much more than the fines imposed on offending companies, as government costs can run into the billions, or even tens of billions, of dollars.

None of this is to say that the private sector is inherently a bad thing. Instead, Buchheit is arguing persuasively that most major initiatives to dismantle a public sector entity or deregulate industries for the benefit of profit-driven enterprise have resulted in inferior services, higher costs and sometimes reduced safety for the people who were supposed to be helped.
Overall, the private sector in the U.S. does a good job of making needed stuff and offering myriad choices for purchasing houses, cars and consumer goods and services. But some needed products and services, particularly those related to health, safety and public welfare — which, after all, are more important than private profit for a few investors — should remain in the public sector.
Buchheit could also have added that privatization more often than not results in job losses. Indeed, reducing wages is often the reason behind privatization.
Buchheit’s case won’t change the minds of many Republicans, especially knee-jerk government-bashers. But Democrats, especially blue dogs and those whose economic philosophy bends toward the conservative end of the political spectrum, should read Buchheit’s article before supporting any privatization or deregulation initiatives.

From Paul Krugman’s column, “Republicans Against Reality“:

For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.
At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.

It was always a stretch to believe that those who hate government pathologically could govern well. And now that the inmates have seized control of the asylum, increasing numbers of sane voters are realizing that the only cure for this particular form of lunacy is to defeat it at the polls.

The August recess is a good time to assess the performance of Speaker John Boehner, who has recently called attention to himself with his Face the Nation comment that “we should not be judged by how many new laws we create…ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”
Steve Benen responds at Maddowblog:

Let’s appreciate exactly what Boehner is trying to do here. When he and his Republican colleagues sought power, they told the electorate that they would work to find solutions to national problems. After having been unsuccessful, the Speaker of the House has decided to rebrand failure — he wants credit for his record of futility and expects praise for the fact that he and his caucus have made no legislative progress since he took power three years ago.
Instead of finding solutions to ongoing challenges, Boehner believes Congress should be focusing on undoing solutions to previous challenges. By the Speaker’s reasoning, we should probably change the language we use when it comes to Capitol Hill — Boehner and his colleagues aren’t lawmakers, they’re lawenders.
…On the surface, his rhetoric is the epitome of the kind of post-policy nihilism that dominates Republican thought in 2013 — Boehner doesn’t want to build up, he’d rather tear down. Given an opportunity to look forward and make national progress, the Speaker sees value in looking backward and undoing what’s already been done.

Yet, judging Boehner, even by his own standards yields unimpressive results, since congress has successfully repealed zero laws under his leadership.
One of Boehner’s constituents puts it this way at Democraticunderground.com:

In one sentence, John Boehner expresses his contempt for the American people and the job he was sent to Washington to do. If you’re for anarchy, Boehner is your representative. For anyone wanting a functioning government, this is the person who needs to lose his seat in Congress. The fact that his district is so gerrymandered that he can’t lose is testament to the true problems our country faces. I am ashamed that John Boehner is my representative in Congress!!!

Ed Kilgore adds in his Washington Monthly post, “The awesome Weight of Governing“:

As Ezra Klein pointed out a few weeks ago, the only thing that keeps the 113th Congress from rivalling the 112th Congress as the worst ever is its remarkable laziness (unless you count all those votes to repeal Obamacare as hard work):
The 113th Congress simply isn’t doing much. Sure, they’re less popular than dirt mixed with mud, but the 112th Congress was less popular than Nickelback! But thus far, the 113th has avoided shutdowns and debt-ceiling brinksmanship and they’ve managed to avoid leading us into any new, completely unpaid-for wars. So…hooray?
But they’ve still got a year-and-a-half on the clock. That’s time they could use to pass immigration reform and secure their reputation as a Congress that did something big and important and overdue. Or it’s time they could use to learn some tricks from their predecessors and shut the government down or nearly breach the debt ceiling.
So now Republican members get to go home and hear from “base” constituencies who want to shut the government down and breach the debt limit. I’m sure they’ll come back refreshed and reassume the awesome weight of governing.

Boehner has had ample opportunities to demonstrate real bipartisan leadership, but has never risen to the challenge. It’s only fair to add, however, that he is enabled and encouraged by the equally-unproductive majority of his party in the House.

The following article, by Stanley Greenberg, is cross-posted from The New Republic:
We need a serious and sustained presidential conversation with the country about the new health care reform laws–or progressives risk losing ownership of this once-in-generation liberal reform.
If you listen to people in focus group discussions right now, they are clueless about the most basic policies in the reforms, even though parts of the law are already in place, the exchanges are to be launched in October, and the law’s requirements and benefits will become fully operative in January. Yes, people know about college kids staying on their parents’ plans; some women notice they no longer pay for birth control; and some acknowledge a mysterious rebate check from insurance companies refunding excessive administrative costs to consumers.
However, when we talk to Americans in focus groups around the country, nobody has heard anything about the impending state health care exchanges–now called, “the health insurance marketplace.” Indeed, barely half of the uninsured know they will be required in six months to carry health insurance. And in the most recent national surveys, more people think their health insurance situation will be made worse by the impending changes.
The inability of the president to fashion public clarity on his major policy initiatives is hardly confined to health care reform. The president rescued the economy from crisis and has nearly brought it back to a growth path but nobody in a focus group can answer the query, “what’s the president’s approach to the economy?”–except maybe spending. Of course, the president did a lot more tax cutting than spending, but that has been kept secret from ordinary citizens. This week, the president put the spotlight on the broken link between productivity and wages and how reversing that is central to restoring the economy and middle class. He did get traction in the election year and ultimately won a mandate to prioritize the middle class, but that has faded. We all know that a litany of sensible policies to help the middle class will die in the congressional killing fields and Washington will fall into the next epic fight over austerity or not-so-epic fight about the IRS or Bengazi or whatever.
The president has laid out an impressive and probably effective approach on climate change, but the public will never be brought along, as the president will only intermittently reference the epic battle he has joined. It will be left to us and history to divine the common thread in his much less impressive approach to Syria, Egypt, and the ‘Arab Spring,’ as the president has decided affirmatively not to speak publicly on these events, supposedly emulating President Dwight Eisenhower’s approach, according to Peter Baker of The New York Times.
With the public uncertain of the president’s direction in so many areas, his approval rating has slid down to 45 percent in the polls, emboldening his critics.
With the national news dominated by the travails of Anthony Weiner and Edward Snowden and the George Zimmerman jury verdict, it would be hard to get heard on the new health care law or anything else. But the White House has been tongue-tied on health care from the beginning, so there are more enduring reasons why the president has not made the case or educated the country about these major reforms.
But with Republicans waging all out war to make it fail and some evidence they have successfully elevated public fears, the president has no choice–and he has told many of his allies he intends to do just that.
The conservatives are right. Health care reform is the biggest use of government to reshape major parts of the economy, regulate business, create a new form of social insurance, restructure the distribution of public health, redistribute wealth and benefits, and create new rights since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson and Social Security under Franklin Roosevelt. Because Obama rejected a Canadian-style single-payer system or Medicare for all and instead built on the current private insurance system and expanded markets, progressives hardly considered the reforms progressive–even if they welcomed the very important changes. But it is now apparent under attacks from conservatives that the Affordable Care Act makes fundamental changes and takes the country into new territory.
The American health care system had reached such an absurd, corrupt, inefficient, and immoral state that it could no longer be patched. Insurance premiums increased 119 percent in the decade before the financial collapse, and health care as a share of the economy grew to 16 percent–despite no evidence of better health outcomes. The link between a job and health insurance was broken. In the decade before the health care law was passed, the percentage of people with job-based health insurance dropped from 69 to 59 percent, while employers pushed more of their costs on to employees. Today, just one quarter of the new jobs for high school graduates offer health insurance.
The health care reform creates a new system where large employers and individuals all have health insurance and where individuals and small businesses get substantial financial help to purchase it. It creates an on-line insurance marketplace in your state where individuals and small businesses will get expanded choices and lower costs, perhaps even dramatically lower costs. Medicaid and public health clinics are expanding to cover low-wage workers. This new system is paid for by a new tax on individual income over $200,000 a year. Insurance packages now must include an essential benefit package with no-co-pays for preventive services, and insurance companies can not take into consideration a person’s health, pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, or gender and cannot place life-time limits on care.
So, Vice President Biden is right, “this is a big deal.”

Read more…

In his Plum Line post, “Ostrich Punditry refuses to reckon with reality of today’s GOP,” Greg Sargent addresses the ‘blame both parties equally’ school of political commentary, with a focus on AP’s Ron Fournier, who recently criticized the president for not being able to make much progress against Republican obstructionism. Sargent responds to Fournier:

If anything, it’s punditry such as Fournier’s that constitutes a surrender of sorts. It’s not enough to claim Obama’s legacy will inevitably seen as a failure to overcome GOP intransigence (should that happen), because history isn’t fair. The question is, should that be the case, and would blaming Obama for failing to overcome it be a reasonable and accurate assessment? Fournier, in effect, is giving up on the pundit’s ability to engage this question forthrightly and directly, and by extension, on his ability to influence public and elite perceptions of what’s happening. Fournier regularly derides “partisans” on both sides of this argument. But the refusal to apportion blame accurately — when the facts plainly merit assigning it overwhelmingly to one side, and not the other — is itself a form of partisanship and bias that impairs judgment and, in the end, misleads readers.

Fournier, of course, is not alone in his inability to get real about where the gridlock is coming from. The U.S. seems awash in mainstream reporters who suffer from this malady. Fortunately, there are a few reporters like Sargent who are unafraid to tell it straight.