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Update: What Do Critics Mean Who Say Obamacare "Isn’t Liberal Enough"?

by RobinLeflore Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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I periodically drone on about the laziness of polls that ask a simple approve/disapprove question about Obamacare. The problem is that a lot of people say they disapprove because Obamacare isn’t liberal enough. These are folks don’t necessarily disapprove of the concept of national healthcare in general or Obamacare in particular, and shouldn’t really be counted among right-wing opponents of the law.

A couple of weeks ago, a Kaiser poll gave us a slightly deeper glimpse into all this. They asked the disapprovers why they disapproved, and it was clear that some of them had lefty criticisms of the law, not conservative criticisms. But the evidence was still a bit fuzzy.

Today, Mark Blumenthal goes further. In a recent HuffPo poll, about 9 percent of the respondents said they opposed Obamacare because it wasn’t liberal enough. Then, in a follow-up question, they were asked, “In your own words, what do you mean when you say the health care law is not liberal enough?”

The results are on the right. There’s still some ambiguity here, but I’d classify several of the responses as likely left-wing criticisms. Adding up the percentages, I get 6 + 4 + 15 + 4 + 4 + 3 = 36 percent. That’s a little less than half of those who had a response.

So, very roughly speaking, in future polls I’d guess that about half of the “not liberal enough” folks are basically supporters of Obamacare but want the law to go further. It might even be more than that, but it remains hard to parse the motivations behind all of these responses with precision. Is “too complex” a liberal or conservative criticism? How about “lack of choice”? Hard to say.

In any case, this adds some context to the whole debate about Obamacare critics who say it’s “not liberal enough.” It’s also an object lesson against assuming too much ideological coherence from survey respondents. A larger survey with a bigger sample size and a little more structure to the questions would be welcome.

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Update: What Do Critics Mean Who Say Obamacare "Isn’t Liberal Enough"?

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Can Anyone Win the 2016 Republican Nomination?

by XavierT89k Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ben Smith pours cold water on the idea of Jeb Bush running for president:

The notion that Jeb Bush is going to be the Republican presidential nominee is a fantasy nourished by the people who used to run the Republican Party. Bush has been out of a game that changed radically during the 12 years(!) since he last ran for office. He missed the transformation of his brother from Republican savior to squish; the rise of the tea party; the molding of his peer Mitt Romney into a movement conservative; and the ascendancy of a new generation of politicians — Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, among them — who have been fully shaped by and trained in that new dynamic. Those men occasionally, carefully, respectfully break with the movement. Scorning today’s Republican Party is, by contrast, the core of Jeb’s political identity.

There’s more, and Smith makes a good case without even bothering to mention Bush fatigue.

But I have to say that I’m mystified right now. In 2012, from the very start, I thought Mitt Romney would win the nomination. Basically, the whole contest boiled down to Mitt and the Seven Dwarves, and eventually I figured Mitt would stomp each dwarf and then, battered and bruised, win the nomination.

But this time around, it’s just dwarves. Like Smith, I have a hard time seeing Jeb Bush making a serious run. Chris Christie still seems terminally damaged by Bridgegate, though I suppose that’s still up in the air depending on what future investigations reveal. Beyond that, I guess Scott Walker is still a possibility—though, in the immortal words of Ann Widdecombe, it’s always seemed as if there’s a bit of the night about him. And Paul Ryan, of course, though it sure doesn’t seem like he’s seriously interested in running.

Beyond that, it’s just the usual clown show of nutballs and C-list wannabes. You can make a great case for why none of them can possibly win. And yet, someone has to win. It’s a mystery.

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Can Anyone Win the 2016 Republican Nomination?

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Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

by LibbyHammqmm Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Apropos of nothing in particular, I want to highlight this column from Hugo Dixon that I found at Counterparties yesterday:

Greece is undergoing an astonishing financial rebound. Two years ago, the country looked like it was set for a messy default and exit from the euro. Now it is on the verge of returning to the bond market with the issue of 2 billion euros of five-year paper.

There are still political risks, and the real economy is only now starting to turn. But the financial recovery is impressive. The 10-year bond yield, which hit 30 percent after the debt restructuring of two years ago, is now 6.2 percent….The changed mood in the markets is mainly down to external factors: the European Central Bank’s promise to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro two years ago; and the more recent end of investors’ love affair with emerging markets, meaning the liquidity sloshing around the global economy has been hunting for bargains in other places such as Greece.

That said, the centre-right government of Antonis Samaras has surprised observers at home and abroad by its ability to continue with the fiscal and structural reforms started by his predecessors. The most important successes have been reform of the labour market, which has restored Greece’s competiveness, and the achievement last year of a “primary” budgetary surplus before interest payments.

I don’t have anything to say about this, but once a narrative takes hold we sometimes don’t realize it when things change. If you had asked me last week how Greece was doing, I would have answered, “Oh, they’re still screwed.” But apparently they’re doing better. Not out of the woods yet, but doing better. Update your priors.

POSTSCRIPT: If this keeps up—and that’s still a big if—it also might be a lesson in the virtue of kicking the can down the road. Back in 2012, lots of commenters, including me, believed that the eurozone had deep structural problems that couldn’t be solved by running fire drills every six months or so and then hoping against hope that things would get better. But maybe they will! This probably still wasn’t the best way of forging a recovery of the eurozone, but so far, it seems to have worked at least a little better than the pessimists imagined. Maybe sometimes kicking the can is a good idea after all.

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Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

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Gallup Confirms Further Fall in Uninsurance Rate

by Dorcas82Euh Posted on April 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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The latest Gallup poll on the uninsured is out, and it shows that the uninsurance rate continues to drop. Using the same 2011-12 baseline I’ve used before, uninsurance has now dropped about 1.8 percentage points since the rollout of Obamacare. Since the Gallup poll includes everyone, not just the nonelderly, this amounts to about 5.6 million people. However, note that this 5.6 million drop doesn’t include sub-26ers who are on their parents’ insurance, since that policy change had already taken effect by 2011. Nor does it include the entire late surge in Obamacare enrollment. Add those in and the real number is probably in the neighborhood of 8-9 million. By the end of the year, we should hit 10 million or so.

The biggest declines in uninsurance were among the young, among blacks, and among the low-income. More details at the link.

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Gallup Confirms Further Fall in Uninsurance Rate

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