Commenter Fair Economist raises a possible point of political hope for PPACA in that states that implement PPACA even with the Supreme Court fucking with them are doing well, and states that are actively monkey-wrenching PPACA are doing poorly.
They got away with the comparisons in 2014, but if 2016 involves a comparison to other states doing much better *and* their own states having done better with Exchange subsidies
I was in a twitter conversation with Sheldon Weisgrau who is a technical expert and ACA advocate in Kansas where he brought up the same general point:
@bjdickmayhew @hiltzikm Agreed, slower cost growth requires info on what costs would have been. But that’s another messaging issue . . .
— Sheldon Weisgrau (@ACAResource) December 4, 2014
I think messaging is fundamentally a magical talisman. A good message may move a point or two of public opinion in a reasonably short time frame (a year or less) if it is an opposed message with some elite signalmakers pushing back against the message. It is not a panacea. Most people don’t make complex multi-variate comparisons across time and space as an operative part of their voting calculus. Instead they rely on far simper heuristics of “how am I doing, how are my friends/family doing, and do I feel secure…” That last phrase “feel secure” basically contains a massive error term as it could include quite a bit of non-economic uncertainty/fear/comfort etc. Finally, we as a species fear loss far more than we prize gains.
We know for modeling purposes that the American voting public has an extreme recency bias in voting in presidential elections. People assess what the ecnomomic situation is two to three quarters before the election, anchor their impressions there and vote from that basis. A quick up-wards pop in the 4th quarter of the previous year and the 1st quarter of the election year is an amazing aid to an incumbent, and a pair of snowmagedeons as well as an inventory reduction could be political diseaster greater than the American public seeing a candidate ask for and enjoy fancy mustard. A standard Federal Reserve recession at the start of a first term is probably a President’s campaign manager’s best friend as there would be a very high probability of a rapid V-shape recovery in the second half of the first term.
We saw it this election cycle. Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser has been running a very long series of posts on the economic performance of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Minnesota has embraced standard Keynesian economics and Obamacare. Wisconsin has had a public policy of attempting to become the Mississippi of the North — low wage, low service, low tax, low education. Minnesota on employment, growth and government budget projections has massively outperformed Wisconsin in the past four years. Wisconsin has consistently lagged the national averages while Minnesota has consistently met or beat national averages.
Yet both states handily re-elected their incumbenet governors despite vastly different policy regimes producing clear differences in results.
Good messaging helps, but it won’t help much. Comparative performance helps, but it does not help much; if comparative economic performance was a major determinant of political affiliation, the South would have moved rapidly away from reactionary white power at some point in the past three hundred years. Absolute performance is the determinant — are things better but not are things as good as they could be, but is the first derivative positive?
Cervantes
What was that first derivative in Wisconsin?
Richard Mayhew
positive against the baseline, but compared to surrounding peers, it sucked
Cervantes
@Richard Mayhew: So with that as context and the human tendency to “fear loss far more than [covet] gains,” do you still think better “messaging” could not have worked?
I don’t know enough to even hazard a guess; just interested in your view.
hoodie
Yeah, but how does one determine “absolute performance”? Your example of comparative performance does not seem to explain something like MN vs. WI. The South and the North have big cultural differences which could explain why comparative performance might not work in that context. Do WI and MN have similar differences? I would think they’d be much smaller, and messaging might be important in a place like WI. Did anyone in WI campaign saying “hey, look, Minnesotans are doing better with their socialist nanny state than we are with turds like Walker and Ryan”? I doubt it. Messaging may be overemphasized in some contexts, but it still may be important, especially when you see Dem candidates running away from their own party achievements.
japa21
In terms of WI and MN, it is important to note that the Walker campaign outright lied about the state’s performance. But more importantly, they did what the GOP is best at, creating division and an us vs them mentality.
Also, trying to us MN as an example of what could be wouldn’t work in a state like WI. Trying to be like MN is like saying we should try to be more like Europe. Although most reasonable people would say, that might be good, most reasonabale people are in the minority.
People in WI don’t want to be like MN, even if MN is doing better.
Tripod
@hoodie:
Urban rural divide – MSP is far larger than anything in WI and a far bigger chunk of the state’s total population than Milwaukee and Madison.
The netroots are deluding themselves about the trendlines in WI, IA and MN. It’s not just a matter of clapping louder, and missives about the state party being out of order – these states have been in a slow rightward drift due to demographics for a while now.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Tripod:
I know you’re not talking about minnesota with 6/9 democratic congresscritters, 2/2 democratic senators, a democratic governor, and EVERY constitutional office held by a democrat?
Tripod
” Finally, we as a species fear loss far more than we prize gains.”
They may hate Obamacare, but what are they willing to cut?
IMO, due to the complex nature and interconnectedness of the program(s), it’s all wired to a political third rail. Boehner and McConnell aren’t going to do shit about it, and the true believers are now asking Roberts to jump on the grenade (again) for the team.
low-tech cyclist
I’m a believer in messaging, but with the qualifications that the messages have to be (a) simple, and (b) reasonably consistent over time.
And when I say “simple,” I mean simple. A message like “the reason your pay is going up is because your employer is saving money on health costs due to the ACA” is way beyond what the average voter is going to absorb. “ACA says they can’t take away your health insurance when you get cancer” is about as complicated as you’d want to get.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t think even absolute performance really matters. You can just lie to people about whether they were better off last year and they’ll believe you, as long as you’re a Republican.
Remember the meme going around Facebook about how much gas prices had gone up under Obama? Gas happened to be under two bucks a gallon on Inauguration Day 2009 only because the whole economy had just collapsed. A few months earlier it’d been above $4, after a long rise through Bush’s whole second term. Anyone who drives a car ought to be able to remember that, but the meme claiming Obama had driven gas prices way up since the good old days got huge traction anyway. The reality just did not matter.