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That Mandates Thing

In the spirit of intellectual honsety, let me say that the one thing that drives me crazy about Barack Obama is his role in the debate over healthcare mandates. I'm not bothered so much by his mere opposition to them, but rather by his complete demagoguery of the issue.

Exhibit A: The Obama campaign is sending out mailers playing on the Harry and Louise imagery used to defeat "Hillarycare" the first time around. Here's one of them:

The text asks if forcing people who can't afford healthcare to buy it is the best solution to the problem. And the mailer sure makes that sound scary. But healthcare experts who care about universal coverage agree it in fact is the best solution to the problem, assuming that low-cost options are available. Via Ezra Klein, the Urban Institute writes:

In this brief we conclude that, absent a single payer system, it is not possible to achieve universal coverage without an individual mandate. The evidence is strong that voluntary measures alone would leave large numbers of people uninsured. Voluntary measures would tend to enroll disproportionate numbers of individuals with higher cost health problems, creating high premiums and instability in the insurance pools in which they are enrolled, unless further significant government subsidization is provided. The government would also have difficulty redirecting current spending on the uninsured to offset some of the cost associated with a new program without universal coverage.

Andrew Sullivan -- "socialized medicine" hater extraordinaire -- prefers Obama's approach to Clinton's on the merits, which is pretty indicative that it's wrong. Now, in Obama's defense, their plans are mostly similar and the fact that Obama has advocated for a single-payer system in the past -- and still lists it as his ideal system -- shows he isn't some right-winger on the issue. Jonathan Cohn has a great New Republic article explaining why Obama's past suggests he'll be a perfectly fine leader on healthcare reform. Unfortunately, it isn't available online without a subscription. But even so, this is unfortunately one area where Hillary Clinton has the upper -- and more liberal -- hand on the issue.

Obama's Kennedy Endorsements

The Ted Kennedy endorsement of Barack Obama is a huge deal, especially coming as it does on the heels of Caroline Kennedy calling Obama "a president like my father" (that is, like John F. Kennedy) in the New York Times. Marc Halperin says it helps with Latinos, union members, working-class voters, and superdelegates -- four important groups that Obama has varying levels of trouble with. One of Ben Smith's readers has a nice bit of anecdotal evidence that this is true for a lot of people: "My mother is a die-hard, working class, union Democrat who, up to now, wouldn't consider Obama if the good Lord himself told her to. But she will now, because, well, the good Lord is telling her to." She probably isn't the only one. It also creates excellent media coverage and provides support to the Obama narrative of a JFK/RFK-style new politics. See Marc Ambinder in this regard. MSNBC says a huge crowd was already in line at American University in DC by 10 am to hear the endorsement speech, which isn't scheduled to begin until 12:15. As a temporary Massachusetts resident, I'm interested in seeing if it helps Obama here. Senator John Kerry and Governor Deval Patrick have already endorsed Obama, but Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has the working-class Democratic establishment rallied around Hillary Clinton and she's speaking in Springfield as I'm writing this. I thought about heading out to hear her, but thought better of it.

Rudy Giuliani vs. Ron Paul Update: Michigan

Ron Paul beat Rudy Giuliani in Michigan. Wasn't even close this time: Paul came in 4th and Giuliani came in 6th. I know Rudy is going to (somehow) come back and surprise everyone with a blowout Florida victory, but Ron Paul -- Ron freakin' Paul -- has now won more votes than him in not one but two states. My summer prediction that Giuliani would lead Christian conservatives to a new vision of political engagement based on anti-Islam militarism rather than cultural conservatism is seeming less and less likely.

As a side note, some have suggested Paul's strong showing relative to Giuliani means Giuliani should be the one networks consider not including in the debates, not Paul. The only problem is that while Giuliani is doing exceptionally poorly in the polls, if he is the Republican nominee, he has a pretty high ceiling for voters that would come around to him. Even if GOP voters prefer Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Mike Huckabee, at least 95% of them would vote for Giuliani if he's the party's nominee. A GOP campaign headed by Paul, on the other hand, would be the closest thing to a repeat of the 1964 Barry Goldwater candidacy that's possible in today's Republican party.

Why Did Everyone Assume Obama Would Win NH?

The New Hampshire polls were stunningly wrong, of course. ABC polling director Gary Langer calls it "unprecedented." So what was the problem?

Pollster's Mark Blumenthal isn't sure, but thinks it has something to do with methodological decisions regarding the college-educated women subgroup particularly. Polls showed Obama leading Hillary Clinton among New Hampshire women by a few percentage points and she in fact beat him by double digits among female voters. Blumenthal also (and relatedly) notes that today's exit polls show 37% of Democrats only "finally" decided who to vote for within the last three days. So perhaps people weren't as sure as they thought they were when they talked to pollsters over the weekend.

Some random thoughts:

- Public opinion pollsters (as well as the media pundits that love to cite them) often forget to consider the actual effect of the polls themselves. Polling isn't merely an academic exercise. Poll results enter public discourse and help frame the debate. Independents in particular might very well have seen Obama leading by a solid margin and decided to vote for John McCain in the Republican primary instead, thinking (perfectly rationally) that an Obama victory was a sure thing. That said, Matt Zeitlin is right that Obama and McCain have no obvious similarities except cross-partisan appeal and having the media love them. On the issues, it's hard to find starker policy differences in the current race.

- Pollsters and pundits thought most of the remaining undecided voters would break for Obama over Clinton based on the assumption that people tend to remain undecided because they're considering the relatively riskier "insurgent" candidate over the safer "incumbent" one. And the media loves to claim Clinton is running as essentially an unelected incumbent. But maybe that's not voter perception. Particularly after Obama's stunning Iowa victory and the media's assertion that Clinton had no chance in New Hampshire, her position as "incumbent" crumbled and voters didn't want to coronate Obama.

- The gender gap really is key here and has to be explained by something. Was it Clinton's display of emotion? Her proclaimation in the debate that electing a woman as president would constitute quite a bit of "change"? The charges Obama's record isn't pro-choice enough? This woman? Obama did so well in Iowa at least in part because he neutralized an obvious Clinton base. If he intends to win the nomination, he needs to find a way to do it again.

- It probably wasn't racist lying white people (the Bradley/Wilder effect). As Matthew Yglesias notes, the polls were actually entirely accurate in predicting Obama's performance (same for John Edwards). They simply under-predicted support for Clinton, so it seems like they were wildly off-base. It's just not the case that white voters said they'd vote for Obama and didn't. They basically did. The problem is no one predicted Clinton's potential.

In some ways, this simply shows the limits of polling. No methodological tool is perfect. While polling can explain a lot, it can't explain everything. Pollsters need to start being more self-aware of how polls themselves become part of the campaign, in addition to second-guessing assumptions about where undecided voters will eventually break. The media is perhaps the real culprit though, because polling results necessarily explain the scene before those poll results become part of public discourse. If the way the poll results are debated in public discourse in itself changes public opinion, the value of public opinion research on time-specific things like primary elections becomes moot.

History and the Democratic Nominee

E. J. Dionne's latest is pretty smart and well-written, not to mention it contains the sort of Adlai Stevenson reference that makes any piece of political writing better. Dionne also notes that "Experience Counts" -- effectively Hillary Clinton's current theme -- was the slogan Richard Nixon used against John Kennedy, a comparison I'm sure Barack Obama would gladly welcome. Digging even more into twentieth century electoral history, Dionne compares Clinton to Hubert Humphrey, who once said, "Some people talk about change, others cause it." Humphrey, of course, never became president, just like he never tapped into the growing youth movement that turned against him as well as the Republicans. Obama isn't exactly Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, but Clinton is looking more and more like Humphrey, which is precisely her problem: There is a social movement growing that will exist whether or not the Democratic candidate reaches out to it. Clinton and John Edwards both seem unable to become the candidate of that movement and if either of them is the nominee, the Democratic Party will have to succeed without the benefit of new voters -- certainly not the best strategy in the long term.

Which is precisely why Obama is ultimately the candidate the country needs right now. This sort of thing matters. Clinton might very well win -- and having a female president would be a great response to the ludicrous sexism her campaign has been met with -- but movements matter. They matter more than I was willing to admit even a week ago.

Something I Never Thought I'd Read

The Corner: "I think Rudy really, really has to beat Ron Paul tomorrow and place fourth."

Why Barack Obama's Candidacy Matters

A political candidacy is necessarily about more than an individual. It is equally about the mass of other individuals that the candidate brings along. And this is precisely where Barack Obama stands out from every single other candidate in the race. He said tonight that he knows many of his supporters aren't there for him, but for what he represents. It's true in a really important way.

While I can cite endless policy objectives that I think make John Edwards the better candidate, Edwards has never been able to create a movement that is beyond him. The Edwards candidacy is about his populism, his beliefs, his message. But it mostly does not transcend the individual speaking at the podium.

The Obama candidacy does. Obama's candidacy is not merely about the audacity of his own hope, but the audacity of hope for an entire new generation of Americans, young Americans especially. Policy matters, but so too does mobilization. I was always impressed by Obama's community organizer background, but not until tonight did I realize how vastly important it really is. All those young people, independents, and first-time caucus-goers actually showed up. The importance of that really can't be overstated. Mix that with the abilities of a genuine orator and you have the full power of Obama's candidacy.

Ezra Klein captures it best:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

And when a black man named Barack can win in Iowa -- a state with a black population hovering between two and three percent -- the glittering ideal of America he espouses does manage to seem somehow attainable. That's the excitement, the hope, that Edwards simply cannot create, however much I agree with almost every word that comes out of his mouth.

Tonight I'm sold on the Obama hype. Whether I wake up tomorrow and roll my eyes at what I'm writing in this post will be the true test of my political loyalties I suppose.

Is Mike Huckabee a Populist?

Maybe. At least if, as Matthew Yglesias suggests, "[p]opulism is a political style," not a specific set of policy proposals. This is why there are both left- and right-wing populists. Huckabee is the closest to the latter in the current Republican race, while John Edwards is the the closest to the former in the Democratic race. Huckabee at the very least has that folksy charm thing down. Or, as Kate Sheppard more cleverly puts it, "He's down to earth -- even if he thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old!" Which, in a way, helps. Populism at its core is not an intellectual endeavor. William Jennings Bryan was in some ways even more of a populist because he eschewed the scientific establishment and advocated a biblical literalist understanding of the world. So yes, Mike Huckabee is a populist. But he's the kind even Fair Tax advocates and creationist school board members can heart.

Endorsement of the Day

Chuck Norris for Mike Huckabee.

Ron Paul Update: White Supremacy Edition

Ron Paul has a lot of support from -- drum roll, please -- white supremacists who agree with his crankish and/or obscure monetary policies and general isolationist tone. Thomas Edsall writes:

The white nationalist and anti-Semitic support flowing to the Paul campaign reflects one of the difficulties facing candidates who do not fall into the midstream: that often their views on less controversial subjects like trade and the power of the federal government to take property through eminent domain also appeal to extremist groups.

In most likely unrelated news, Pollster.com is now including Paul in their state charts along with Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee. Paul thus continues his trend of having no chance of winning the GOP nomination but making things endlessly interesting in continually surprising new ways.