Not So Fast

            I don’t want to come off as a Republican ostrich with my head buried in the sand, so let me put this out there first.  I am a strong Democrat and a liberal. When I look at the current Republican party and its presidential candidates, I confess to a satisfying feeling of schadenfreude.

            But I experienced no such feeling after reading “2016 Could Scramble the GOP,” by Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg in Sunday’s Washington Post.

            Greenberg argues that a new, more Democratic America is emerging from demographic, technological, social and economic revolutions now taking place, just in time for the 2016 election.  Noting that 63% of the electorate will be composed of people who strongly support Hillary Clinton, Greenberg says that “the United States has reached an electoral tipping point.”

            The Republican Party’s “counterrevolution,” he says, has also reached a tipping point.  It has been left with an electoral base of “tea party supporters, evangelicals or religiously observant” people who have “catapulted to the top of the Republican presidential race candidates who promise to challenge this new America before it’s too late.”

            Greenberg predicts that the 2016 election “will confirm that the new America is here and that the counterrevolution has lost.”  The result, he says will be “shattering for the Republican Party as we know it.”

            The Democrat in me wants to stand up and cheer.  But the political scientist that I am is clamoring for the partisan to sit down and look at the situation more carefully.

            Greenberg is a Democratic pollster, and he is, no doubt, working with carefully developed data.  The problem is that he seems to be conflating political support with electoral and governmental power. 

            In our system, national power doesn’t necessarily accrue to the party that wins the most votes on Election Day. We do not have a national electorate, even for presidential elections.  We have at least 51 electorates--even more if you count each Congressional District and each state legislative district separately—and power depends on what those electorates do on Election Day.

            In our political system, it doesn’t help the Democrats if they are all clustered inefficiently in a few states.  Winning California and New York by millions of votes can’t overcome bare Republican majorities scattered across states holding enough electoral votes to win an Electoral College majority.

            Of course, Barack Obama has twice shown that the Democratic coalition holds majorities in enough states to give Democratic presidential candidates both popular vote and Electoral College majorities.  It’s fair to say that Democrats probably have a lock on the White House for the foreseeable future.

            But that’s about it.  With respect to almost everything else in American politics, the Republican Party still has considerable strength.

            Control of the Senate may bounce between the parties, but Republicans are likely to control the House of Representatives until at least the end of Hillary’s first term in 2020 and possibly longer.  Republicans also have a strong advantage at the state and local government level where they control the governorship and legislatures of of 20 states, including 5 states Obama won in 2008 and 2012.

            That means that the gridlocked federal government we have now is likely to be the government we have into the foreseeable future.  Because the national government won’t be able to act, the states, where Republicans hold an advantage, are likely to step in to enact local policies that fit their ideology.

            This is the result of both structural and political factors that cut against Democrats.  First, the Republican population is more efficiently distributed than is the Democratic population, and that means that while Democratic congressional candidates can win their districts with huge margins, Republicans can win a larger number of districts with much smaller margins.  That Republicans benefit from more gerrymandered districts than do Democrats certainly doesn’t help.

            Second, Democratic voters haven’t been turning out in non-presidential years as reliably as have Republican voters.  States tend to hold their elections in these off-years, and with relatively more Republican voters, Republican candidates have been able to win in places such as Massachusetts and Maryland where they would have gone down to landslide defeats had the presidential year electorate shown up.

            Not only does this give Republicans a stronger hand in drawing up legislative districts after each decennial census resulting in more Congressional districts that advantage Republicans, but it also allows the Republican party to develop its bench.  Governorships have proven to be a more reliable stepping stone to the presidency than has any other office, and Republicans simply have more people with that credential than do the Democrats.  For Democrats it should be worrisome that party leaders are relatively old—though Martin O’Malley is 53, Hillary Clinton is 68 and Bernie Sanders is 73.  Republican leaders—think Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul—by contrast, are in their 40s’ and 50s.

            Until Democrats find a way to fix their off-year turnout problem and cultivate more young leaders, the battles that really count are likely to be fought on a Republican playing field controlled by Republican ideology.  That makes it far too early to write the Republican party’s epitaph.

What's Gone Wrong in White America?

            The The New York Times published a blockbuster social science story last Monday about a study completed by Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case.  Drs. Deaton and Case found that mortality rates had spiked for whites who are between 45 and 54 years old.  That spike was largely confined to people without any college education and bucked mortality trends for all other races and age groups, both in the United States and in other developed countries. 

            Tragically, the increased death rate was the result of suicides, drug overdoses and chronic liver disease, which is generally associated with alcohol abuse.  By contrast, death from lung cancer has trended down for this group while deaths from diabetes associated with obesity have remained flat.

            I was prepared to write an article like the one Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post wrote on Thursday.  He tied this spike in white middle age death to a narrative about the job loss and economic impotence of people who thought that they would be able to maintain a middle class life style by parlaying their high school diplomas into secure jobs in manufacturing and construction, just like their mothers and fathers had.

            In Meyerson’s narrative, the deaths are a natural result of the angst people experience when they lose their jobs and realize that, for them, the American Dream is a chimera.  They realize that they are not going to do better than their parents and that they can expect to finish their lives on the brink of poverty.  They numb their existential pain with drugs and alcohol, or they end them with suicide.

            For good measure, Meyerson points out the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump draws much of his political support from non-hispanic whites who have high school degrees or less.  Support for Trump and the high death toll for this group, he says, share common roots: “a sense of abandonment, betrayal and misdirected rage.”

             As I started to write, though, it occurred to me that Meyerson’s narrative left too many questions unanswered.  First of all, as the Times points out, while the trend for middle aged is going in an unfortunate direction, middle aged blacks still have a much higher death rate than do whites.  The death rate for middle-aged African-Americans is 581 per 100,000, 166 per 100,000 higher than the 415 per 100,000 applicable for middle-aged whites.   

            The Meyerson narrative doesn’t even mention this fact, nor does he ask why there is a difference between white middle-class mortality and black middle-class mortality.  I suppose it’s newsworthy when a mortality trend reverses itself, but it’s downright embarrassing when a story about middle-aged whites receives vast media attention and the story about abbreviated African-American longevity never even got written.  Middle-aged black mortality doesn’t appear relevant to the larger political narrative.  Do their lives not matter?

            What’s also missing, though, is any analysis of where these deaths are coming from.  Deaton and Case provide one tantalizing graph, which I reproduce here, that sheds some light on this.

            Each point on the graph represents a year and one of the country’s four census regions: blue for the Northeast, red for the Midwest, black for the South and green for the West.

            While all regions show increases in mortality due to suicide and drug overdoses, the death rates in the Northeast and the Midwest seem to lag those in the South and the Midwest.  The worst year for these kinds of deaths in the Northeast and the Midwest was 2013.  But the South and the West had already reached this level of death for these causes in 2007 and 2005 respectively.

            Why did life get harder for middle-aged whites living in the South and the West sooner than it did for middle-aged whites living in the Northeast and the Midwest? Why do things get much worse in the South after 2005 and the West after 2007?  Is there something going on at the state or local level that is either making mortality rates from drug abuse and suicide worse in the South and in the West or is there something happening in the Northeast and the Midwest that is putting a lid on the problem there?

            And finally, why have the mortality trends reversed themselves only for middle-aged whites with no college experience? It’s easy to jump to the conclusion, as the Meyerson narrative does, that folks who haven’t been to college are more likely to experience joblessness or economic dislocation leading to poverty and hopelessness than their better-educated peers. But, is that really the whole answer?

            How can we explain the fact that, according to the study, people who have taken some college coursework but didn’t graduate from college are doing much better than middle-aged whites with no college experience?  Why should a college dropout, someone who has obviously failed at something big, be less likely to die in middle-age by suicide or drug overdose than his or her peer with only a high school diploma?  Are his or her life prospects really that much better?  Is there something about an abbreviated college experience than helps to immunize a person against suicide and death by drug addiction at middle-age, or is it the willingness to try to get a college education that does the trick?

            Good science is all about generating good questions. Deaton and Case have just contributed more than their share.  Questions such as the ones I’ve just asked should keep social scientists busy for a good long time.

            Their answers are clearly matters of life and death.

Don't

            Former Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Jim Webb says he is considering recasting himself in the presidential sweepstakes as an independent.  As someone who loves his country, studies politics in depth and harbors grave questions about whether our democracy can survive this era of partisan warfare, I offer a heartfelt piece of advice.

            Don’t.

            I have great respect for you and your service to our country.  I do not share your view of the world, but that is not the reason for the advice I offer.  Instead, your musings about American public opinion betray a deep misunderstanding of the forces at play in American politics.  If you follow them, you will end up wasting huge amounts of time and money, and you will ultimately hurt your country.

            Let’s start with your claim that the greatest trend in American politics is that “an increasing plurality of our citizens strongly dislikes both political parties as well as their entrenched leaders.”  As support for this contention, you offer the observation that “far more Americans consider themselves to be political independents than Democrats or Republicans.”  You disparage the “seasoned political commentators” who “tend to dismiss this trend, since many independents say they ‘ lean’ toward one party or the other.”

            The first thing that concerns me about this argument is that fact that you offer no hard evidence either to support your contention that this plurality hates both parties and their leaders or to demonstrate that the “seasoned political commentators” don’t have a point.

            If we are ever going to get past the partisan warfare that you rightly decry, we’re going to have to find ways of having fact-based discussions.  What you have here is based on your impressions, and just as in art, impressions may only have a glancing relationship with reality.

            Yes, there are more people who describe themselves as political independents. According to the Pew Research Center, 39% of Americans say that they are “Independents” while only 32% identify as "Democrats" and 23% identify as "Republicans."  That’s up from 2004 when only 30% of Americans identified as Independents, but not much different from 1992 when 36% identified as Independents.

            As Figure 1shows, the growth in the share of people claiming to be Independents since 2004  

Figure1Source: Pew Research Center

has come mainly at the expense of the Republican Party.  The Democratic Party’s share of the electorate hasn’t varied much over time. To the extent that increases in the percentage of self-identified Independents reflect contempt for the political parties, that increase has more to do with disaffected Republicans than disaffected Democrats.

            Your operative assumption is that people who identify as Independents would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate who similarly self-identifies as an Independent.  But, once again, there is evidence available to show that this assumption isn’t true.

            In Figures 2 and 3, also provided by the Pew Research Center, you can see that the “seasoned 

Figure 2 Source: Pew Research Center

political commentators” know what they’re talking about.  Ideologically, leaners hold attitudes and behave in ways that resemble the attitudes and behaviors of self-identified Democrats and Republicans.

Figure 3 Source: Pew Research Center

            What’s worse, leaners dislike the party they lean against about as much as the people in the party toward which they lean.  And they also like the party they lean toward about as much as the people who are willing to self-identify as members of that party.

            There are some people who fit your description of the disaffected independents, but that segment amounts to less than 12% of the electorate.  They’re truly ambivalent and are open to persuasion. The trick is getting these people to vote at all.

            What all this means is that an electoral strategy centered on appealing to the plurality that identifies as Independent is not likely to work.  They’re not centrists looking for a grand bargain between Democrats and Republicans.  They’re just as likely to want total victory for the party toward which they lean as are the party’s self-identifiers.

            But let’s forget all that, and for the sake of argument, accept your premise that it would be possible for an Independent centrist to cobble together a coalition that can outvote the true Democratic and Republican partisans.

            Under our system, winning a plurality or even a majority of the popular vote isn’t enough to get the keys to the White House.  Just ask Al Gore. 

            Presidential candidates needs 270 electoral college votes to be elected president.  Bill Clinton was able to get 270 electoral votes in both of his three-way races for president.  But he was a Democrat with strong party organizations in the states with the electoral votes he needed to win. 

            Without 270 electoral votes, the Constitution leaves it to the House of Representatives, voting as state delegations, to choose the president.  Regardless of the popular vote, it’s not likely that partisan legislators will select somebody outside of the party.  There’s no reason in the Constitution that the members of the House even have to consider the fact that the Independent may have won a plurality of the popular vote.

            Imagine the hostility a President selected by a partisan House would engender.  Just ask George W. Bush, whose election was all but decided by the Supreme Court.  And, imagine the harmful effect on American Democracy.

           But suppose, the Independent does win the presidency with 270 electoral votes, fair and square.  What then?  Just ask Barack Obama.

            In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama won the presidency decisively, while Democrats retained their majority in the House and won a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Despite the resounding win in 2008, Republican leaders in Congress decided that it was not in their interest to cooperate with the President. The GOP became the Party of No.  What lets anyone think that partisan Senators and Representatives wouldn’t do their best to undermine the Independent president so that they can help their parties try to reclaim the White House in the next election?

            Sorry Jim, but that’s how American politics works.

            I understand you’re disappointed that neither you nor your message caught fire this cycle.  I’d chalk that up to message, not partisanship.  Nobody was buying what you wanted to sell.

            If you really want to make a difference, though, given our entrenched party system, you’ve no choice but to get yourself a following within one of the existing parties.  That way, your faction can drag the party toward you.  Just ask Bernie Sanders.

Retirement Security Through the Fun-House Mirror

           We generally want the government to help those who need help.  And we expect those who can help themselves to do so.  Yet, our public policy system seems to get this exactly backwards.  The American government helps the people who most need help least while it helps the people who least need help the most.

            That’s the conclusion of a new Center for American Progress report written by Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress and Teresa Ghilarducci of The New School.  According to Weller and Ghilarducci, the American system is extremely inefficient in the way it incentivizes retirement savings, if it incentivizes them at all.

            That, in large part, is because we use the fun-house mirror world of the Internal Revenue Code to encourage people to save for retirement instead of directly subsidizing retirement security through government spending.

            To make this simple, imagine two taxpayers, Alice and Betty.  Alice is richer than Betty and pays tax at an effective rate of 25%.  Betty only has to pay tax at an effective rate of 15%.

            Let’s say that last year, Alice had gross income of $100,000 while Betty had income of only $50,000.  With no deductions Alice owes $25,000 in taxes while Betty owes only $7,500.  That seems fair under a tax system where the better off have to pay tax at a higher rate.

            But now lets suppose that the government allows both Alice and Betty to deduct or exclude from taxable income $2,000 for money they each deposited into retirement savings accounts.  That gives Alice $98,000 in taxable income while it gives Betty $48,000 in taxable income.  At their respective rates Alice owes $24,500 while Betty owes $7,200.  The deduction or exclusion reduces Alice’s tax bill by (and is therefore worth) $500.  Though Betty deposited the same amount of money in a retirement account, her tax bill is only $300 lower. Alice’s cost of savings with the deduction or exclusion is only $1,500 while Betty’s is $1,700.

            The first thing to notice here is that the national government made Alice and Betty collectively $800 better off than they would have been without the deduction or exclusion.  And it also reduced the amount of money available to the government to spend on other things by $800 because now Alice and Betty will be paying the government $800 less than they would have paid.

            Second, the amount of the benefit depends on the tax rate applied.  $500 is 25% the $2,000 Alice deducted and $300 is 15% of the $2,000 that Betty deducted.  The $200 difference between the value of the deduction to Alice and the value of the deduction to Betty is 10% of the $2,000 they both deducted, which is the difference between the tax rate that applies to Alice and the tax rate that applies to Betty.           

            The last thing to notice is that Alice has a bigger incentive to save than Betty, even though it is likely that, because of her higher income, Alice needs less incentive to save than does Betty. In fact, because Alice has more income than Betty, she was probably going to be able to save regardless of whether the government gave her an incentive to do so.  Betty’s income doesn’t leave her much room to save for retirement, and so if we want her to save for retirement, she’s probably going to need a bigger incentive.

            Weller and Ghilarducci also point out that Alice and Betty aren’t likely to have the same opportunities to save.  Alice probably works for a company that makes a tax favored 401(k) retirement plan available as a payroll deduction while Betty, if she’s going to save, will have to set up a private IRA. The maximum amount Betty can save in her IRA in any year is $5,500.  But Alice, with access to a 401(k) plan, can contribute up to $18,000 toward her retirement in any year.

            Because Alice’s company has specialists who can design the company’s retirement plan so that Alice can make a few meaningful choices in how her contributions are invested and have an automatic payroll deposit of a specified amount deducted from her paycheck and deposited in her account, the plan is gentle on her mind.  It takes her a few minutes to set it up and then she can forget about it. There are few if any fees.

            Poor Betty has to do it all on her own.  She has to figure out how to set up her own IRA.  She has to decide whether to use a bank or a brokerage.  She has to choose from an almost endless menu of investment choices.  And some of the investment vehicles will benefit her commissioned investment advisor more than they will benefit her.  Her investment advisor isn’t yet required to disclose that conflict of interests.  And she has to rely on self-discipline to see that some of her earnings are deposited in her retirement account.  Weller and Ghilarducci say that people like Betty are likely to forgo setting up retirement plans because it’s just too hard.

            Meanwhile, the government forgoes (and so it spends) over $100 billion in tax revenues every year that it could otherwise have collected on account of the special tax treatment of retirement savings accounts.  States forgo (and, therefore spend) about $20 billion.

             The lion’s share of this goes to the top 20% of all earners, three quarters of which goes to the top 10% of all earners.  Only 18% of the benefits of tax favored retirement accounts goes to the bottom 40% of all earners.

            No wonder we have a retirement crisis on our hands.

            Imagine the uproar that would occur if, instead of trying to incentivize retirement savings through the tax code, we simply asked the Treasury to write checks to people like Alice and Betty, correcting for the fact that Betty needs more help than Alice.

            Is there anybody who thinks Congress would adopt that kind of system?

            Probably the same people who want to cut Social Security.