Month: December 2021

Here is Brian Stryker, a Democratic pollster who worked in the Virginia gubernatorial race:

What was the first thing you told your partners after you got done with the groups — what was your big takeaway?

I was surprised by how dominant education was in this election. I was also struck by how much it was this place for all of these frustrations for these suburban voters, where they could take out their Covid frustrations in one place.

....How do Democrats balance a commitment to core constituencies while at the same time addressing economic issues that voters are confronting every day?

The No. 1 issue for women right now is the economy, and the No. 1 issue for Black voters is the economy, and the No. 1 issue for Latino voters is the economy. I’m not advocating for us ignoring social issues, but when we think broadly about voters, they actually all want us talking about the economy and doing things to help them out economically.

Wait a second. Was the dominant issue in the Virginia election education? Or was it the economy? Only one can be the #1 issue.

One of the most consistent results in political science is that bad economies are bad for incumbents. It's not even a matter of voters explicitly blaming anyone in particular for bad times. It's just that bad economies make people unhappy, and unhappy people generally figure that a new face might be worth taking a chance on.

That's uncontroversial. What's less obvious is whether incumbents stuck with a bad economy can do themselves any good by talking about the economy. I'm pretty sure the answer is no. I mean, what can an incumbent say?

• "We're working hard on it." That just makes you sound ineffective.
• "We need to make big changes." So why haven't you done that already?
• "The economy is better than you think." Makes you sound out of touch.
• "We'll get through it." Makes you sound like you're doing nothing.

There's really no good message. The best thing an incumbent can do is change the subject and hope for the best. After all, Ronald Reagan didn't win a landslide reelection because of his happy talk on the economy. He won a landslide reelection because the actual economy was booming by 1984. Lucky guy.

The good news for Democrats is that the economy is frustrating right now, but it's not all that bad. Doom isn't inevitable. So what should Democrats do? I'd say that's obvious: Do just enough talking about the economy so they sound like they care, but otherwise find some high-salience culture war issue they can talk endlessly about. The key here is to find some issue where Republicans are on the unpopular side. Unpopular. OK?

On Twitter, a reader suggests I should comment on this chart from Alex Tabarrok:

Alex says this chart "casts doubt on a sugar mono-causal theory of obesity," which I have no problem with since there are damn few monocausal explanations for anything.

For what it's worth, the decline in sugar consumption is due almost entirely to the collapse in soda consumption, which has gone down by something like a quarter since the late '90s:

As a result of this and, presumably, other things, per capita calorie consumption in the US has recently flattened out and even declined a bit. It's still vastly higher than it was 50 years ago, but it's no longer going up.

Beyond that, my personal sense is that our long-term increase in obesity is due mostly to the increased popularity of sugar, vegetable oil, prepared foods, and fast food. This is pretty conventional thinking, and the only unconventional part of it is that I don't think consumption of meat and animal fats has much to do with it, especially since consumption of both has declined over the past century.

But this is all tentative, and I haven't studied it deeply. It's just my two cents.

According to press reports, today's arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization were all over the map. The Mississippi law at issue bans most abortions after 15 weeks—compared to the current limit in Roe v. Wade of about 23 weeks—and there are several ways the Supreme Court could rule:

• Affirm the current limits in Roe v. Wade and simply strike down the Mississippi law. This is highly unlikely.
• Accept the 15-week limit in a narrow decision.
• Create a new standard based on fetal viability that would have a variable impact depending on both technological progress and subsequent court rulings.
• Flatly overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to do whatever they want.

The legal impact of the Mississippi law¹ is evident in this chart:

If the Supreme Court adopted the Mississippi standard and kept it, it would affect only about 5% of all abortions. In fact, it would be less than 5% since certain late abortions would still be legal and pregnant women would probably be motivated to get abortions earlier if they want them. Call it 3-4% or so.

But that's only if the Court inexplicably agrees to adopt 15 weeks as a permanent limit. That seems improbable, though. If the justices affirm the Mississippi law in a narrow decision, it seems highly likely that it's just the first step toward overturning Roe completely.

In any case, it's probably going to be a messy decision. There are almost certainly three votes to overturn Roe and three votes to keep it in place. But then what? Among Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are there two more votes to overturn Roe? Or will the three of them adopt three entirely different reasons for accepting the Mississippi law without overturning Roe? And if that happens, what exactly will be the majority holding?

Hold your breath. This is likely to be a convoluted and razor thin split decision when it's released next year.

¹The real-world impact is greater since the law intersects with lots of other state-level policies that impact abortion. But this is very hard to quantify.

Last night I looked at cumulative COVID-19 deaths in each state. This morning I got curious about what this looks like just for the year 2021. That is, with a year of experience behind us and vaccines becoming available, how did each state do? Here's the answer:

Delaware is a lot worse than it was in the overall data, as is West Virginia. The bottom of the chart looks much the same. Here's a chart that shows how state rankings changed between 2020 and 2021:

At the top of the list is North Dakota, which ranked 46th in 2020 thanks to a big outbreak but in 2021 ranks 10th, an improvement of 36 places. Conversely, West Virginia ranked a respectable 14th last year but is dead last at 51st this year, a drop of 37 places.

This is all kind of sketchy, so let's just dive all the way down the sketchiness rabbit hole. I wanted a simple index that represented my intuition that you should get more credit for improvement if you started from a high point in the first place (and vice versa for declining if you started at a low point). So this index gives points for ranking well in 2020 and for improving your rank in 2021:

The index is just your rank in 2020 rank plus your improvement rank in 2021. For example, Vermont ranked second in 2020 and then stayed about the same in 2021, which is obviously a great performance. On the other end, Arizona ranked 34th in 2020 and then ranked nearly the worst in how far they dropped in 2021. That's pretty miserable. Conversely, Idaho dropped as badly as Arizona but started out at 15th, so they don't score quite as badly.

Anyway, this index penalizes a ranking drop more if you started out from a lousy position to begin with, which seems fair. Take it for what it's worth.

The classic picture of a Louisiana swamp includes a lot of Spanish moss draped on the trees. Unfortunately, it turns out that unless the moss is strongly lighted by the sun it's almost invisible in a photograph.

Luckily, on my first day I took a swamp tour that ended in late afternoon when the sun was shining directly on the moss. And here it is.

I woke up late this morning, and headed over to the Wall Street Journal to see how the economy was faring. Not so well, apparently:

They just can't help themselves, can they? The Journal is so obsessed with killer inflation that they'll find any excuse to overhype it. This time it's bicycles.

Bicycles!

This is the best they can do? Here's the price of bicycles over the past couple of years:

Prices are up only slightly more than the overall rate of inflation. There's just nothing to see here. Honestly, if the Journal is truly dedicated to its narrative of inflation hysteria, they could at least pick examples of prices that really have gone up a lot. This is just laziness.