Blogging while on TV

Just because I can.  Just did a segment on how the age gap in turnout and the age gap in gay marriage probably doomed the amendment.  I love it when I get to bring the Political Science to television.   It is weird, though, to sit off to the side blogging while the host talks to other “experts.”

Managing a private equity firm ≠ managing a national economy

Let’s go non-election a bit today as I wanted to mention this really nice Paul Waldman piece about Romney’s undeserved credibility on managing the economy:

What I’d really like to see is the Obama campaign taking on the whole idea that because you made a lot of money in business, that means you’ll be brilliant at setting macroeconomic policy for the country. This idea gets repeated a zillion times every election by candidates saying, “I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman,” as though that were a compelling argument for why you’d be successful in politics, not business. This is a pet peeve of mine I’ve written plenty about; see this article for a rundown of all the reasons it’s absurd. But I’m not naive enough to think the Obama campaign is going to spend time arguing against something so many people believe in without thinking. Instead, they’re going to comb through Romney’s career and figure out what combination of attacks will create a negative association in the public’s mind when the words “Romney” and “business” are mentioned together. Maybe the key will be his personal wealth and hilarious habit of saying things that reinforce his distance from the struggles of ordinary people, or maybe it will be stories of layoffs at companies Bain Capital acquired, or maybe it will be some new story we haven’t yet heard of. But they’ll be attacking him on it, good and hard.

In response, Romney will keep saying, “I know how the economy works,” which is just an assertion, not an argument. For the moment, that seems to be somewhat persuasive; polls show him leading on the question of who would do a better job managing the economy (see here or here).

Most importantly, Waldman points out that if Romney has any unique insight into the economy, why then is his economic plan basically the exact same thing we always get from Republicans?

Romney does have a lengthy economic plan, but it amounts to the same thing Republicans always advocate: tax cuts, particularly on the wealthy; spending cuts in domestic programs; eliminating regulations; free trade; undermining labor unions, and so on. The closest thing to an innovative idea is the creation of a “Reagan Economic Zone,” which presumably will create wealth through the repeated incantation of the great one’s name.

Or maybe we are to believe that the basic Republican platform is just the distilled ideas of all those “businessmen” out there.  But, heck, if that’s the case, what’s the advantage for voting for a “businessman” when you can just vote for any Republican?  Or maybe, just maybe, being president is really quite dramatically different from running a business.

Low information elections and the power of social media

So, even Political Science professors don’t really know who to vote for in a primary for Commissioner of Agriculture or Commissioner of Labor.  Thanks to my great success getting advice on judges in “non-partisan” elections last year, I went to FB for some advice on today’s Democratic primary.   Truth is, I know that when it comes to NC Democratic politics,  I have a network of very involved, very knowledgeable FB friends.  I ended up with excellent advice from people in the know that made me feel very good about my choices.  Sometimes knowledge means knowing when to turn to other people and I think low information elections are a great example of this.  I haven’t seen any of my other FB friends do this, but it sure works great for me.

On a quasi-related note, when the Greene family voted around 7:15 tonight, I was voter 470.  That’s excellent for our precinct (I always like to go between 7:00 and the poll closing at 7:30 to see how we’re doing).  One time a few years back in a run-off for a Cary Town Council race, Kim and I were voters 12 and 13 at 7:20pm.  I don’t think I’ll ever see worse turnout that that.

With enemies like these…

From the Heartland Institute– pseudo-scientific veneer for science denialism:

Steve Benen comments:

I’m trying to imagine what the initial conversation was like at the Heartland Institute’s headquarters. Someone must have said something like, “I’ve got an idea. As part of our campaign against climate science, let’s put up billboards equating those who believe scientific evidence with famous madmen. That’ll work wonders to get our message out.”

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, because that’s what the strange, far-right group did, putting up billboards showing “some of the world’s most notorious killers,” including “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who accept climate science. It followed a child-like logical fallacy: if a bad person believes in scientific evidence, then scientific evidence must be wrong.

First, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a conservative climate-change denier, said he no longer wanted to participate in the group’s upcoming conference. Then, the Heartland Institute started losing corporate sponsors. Now, E&E’s Evan Lehmann reports the fiasco is “prompting a mutiny among its Washington-based staff, which is decamping for less volatile surroundings.”

Probably about the only people who could be convinced by logic so weak are already denying global warming.

Photo of the day

I was going to post a photo from the Post’s collection of Supermoon photos, but I realized that if I waited, Alan Taylor would have better ones.  As expected, he came through.  Love this whole set– you really should check it out.  I think this is my favorite.

The supermoon appears behind the Temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion, south east of Athens, Greece, on Saturday, May 5, 2012.(AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis)

Vote for the amendment

No, don’t really vote for North Carolina’s gay marriage amendment.  Slate’s Will Saletan rounds up some of the many arguments made in favor of the amendment.   Some, he deconstructs.  Others he just lets stew in their own inanity (i.e., God will strike down NC like Sodom if we don’t).  Nice piece.  The summary:

So get out there and vote, people of North Carolina. Make your decision on fact, not fear. Just don’t undermine our productivity, impoverish our children, sanction bestiality, or risk God’s wrath. You’ll be sorry if you do.

Don’t let the pigeon read this blog post!

If you are a parent of kids between the ages of 1-12 and you don’t know who Mo Willems is, where have you been?  You know what, even if you are not a parent at all, Mo Willems is awesome.  And, if you are already a fan of Pigeon, Piggie, etc., you’ll love this recent NPR interview him him (definitely worth a listen, despite the full transcript).   It was especially fun to hear about Willems’ inspiration for the pigeon.

Courtesy of Hyperion Books

And if you are a parent of younger children (all the kids in our family from 1-12 love them) and are not familiar with Willems’ books?  Get to it!

Who is persuaded by political ads?

You!  At least I’m going on the assumption that if you are reading this blog, you are fairly politically sophisticated.  A friend of mine had a really nice summary of his research on the matter written up in his University newspaper:

Contrary to popular belief, recent research reveals that high sophisticates are actually more emotionally responsive to political advertising than low sophisticates.

Patrick R. Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, is one of the first people to argue this point…

Political psychologists have found it’s an evolutionary instinct of living beings to be attentive to threat. When they’re threatened, they’re more attentive and, therefore, learn more, he said.

Attack ads are more educational to an average citizen than positive ads because there are usually more facts in the negative ads, Miller said.

Political advertising companies are aware that people are hard-wired to pay more attention to negative information, he said.

Miller conducted a controlled lab-experiment survey using political news stories on the issue of illegal immigration. The ads were from the 2000 presidential election.

Miller manipulated the messages that each group was potentially exposed to. The emotions that the messages appealed to were sympathy and anger toward illegal immigrants, and the groups were only shown one of the two messages.

The experiment showed people responded to the information they received with the emotion consistent with the message they were given — those who received information sympathetic to illegal immigrants responded strongly with sympathy, and those who received information expressing anger toward illegal immigrants responded strongly with anger.

“The people who were most likely to experience [emotion] were the people that were most sophisticated, and by sophisticated, [I] mean the most knowledgeable about politics, the most interested in politics, the most attentive to politics,” Miller said.

In addition to responding with a targeted emotion, people are selective about which ads they are attentive to, Miller said.
People respond to ads that align with their partisan identification.

I do think it is probably useful to be aware of your own biased predispositions when watching political ads.  I would suggest that rather than giving credence to the arguments of the other sides’ ads, probably just remember your side is lying to.  And don’t get emotional– that’s what they want you to do .

Election Day and gay marriage

Most of my previous posts on the anti-gay amendment have focused on the public opinion, but as today is election day, I feel the need to vent a little about the policy.  I can truly accept that many people feel strongly that “marriage” should be defined solely as between one man and one woman.  Even if that belief is religiously motivated, I can still accept it.  The simple truth is that the norm of marriage between one man and one woman is incredibly long-standing and pervasive throughout most all the world.  Now what “marriage” is has changed dramatically without actually chaning the word “marriage” but I can understand a Burkean impulse to fight back against such a radical revision.

Two things I cannot abide.

1) Legislating with a constitution.  Stupid, stupid, stupid!.  Anybody heard of Prohibition.  Constitutions are not for making policy they are for setting up the basic structures of government and for protecting the rights of citizens.  That’s it.  You don’t want same-sex marriage?  Make a law for that (oh wait, NC already did).

2) Denying gay couples any of the legal protections and benefits of marriage.  This “only legal domestic union” business is (as Jonathan Rauch put it) just plain mean.  Now this, to me simply smacks of bigotry and small-mindedness.  Just wrong.  Gay couples are not going to go away and not going to stop have children just because some people decide that they are violating the bible.  The idea that they shouldn’t have the legal protections that we generally provide to families is not only mean, as policy goes, it’s just plain stupid.