My father was of the opinion, from rather early in the Republican primary contest, that Newt Gingrich would be the nominee. When Gingrich's campaign crumbled into dust, and he sank to ~3% in the polls, he admitted he was probably wrong, though he wasn't yet ready to concede defeat. After all, John McCain's campaign crumbled to dust in the summer and fall of '07, but he made a comeback. Such things do happen. Well, according to the only pollster I trust, PPP, Gingrich is in third place now, at 15%, behind Cain's 30% and Romney's 22% but narrowly ahead of Perry's 14%. My whole logic as to why Romney will lose is that Cain's bubble seems very likely to pop at some point, and those supporters aren't going to Romney. Typically I assume that means they'll go back to Perry, which is where most of them came. But maybe not. His campaign still seems kind of moribund, and Gingrich is trending upward in the polls. At this point I will not be shocked if Gingrich ends up winning. I won't be shocked if Perry wins, either, or if Romney does manage to hold on. (I will be shocked if Cain wins, though. Genuinely shocked.)
Needless to say, I would be thrilled if Gingrich beats Romney. Romney was tied against Obama in that poll, with a net -6% favorability. Perry's got a -9 margin against Obama, and -34% favorability. Gingrich has a -11 margin, and -26% favorability. I don't think you can be elected President with the kinds of numbers Perry and Gingrich are putting up. I dare the Republicans to nominate anyone other than Romney; if they do, it'll be a fun year!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Romney's Handicap
I mentioned in my last post that each different Republican candidate appears to give Obama a certain 'handicap' in his re-election bid. That is to say, you can roughly think that every change of 1 point in Obama's net approval rating will cause a 1-point change (in the same direction, obviously) in his margins over his Republican opponents. But for each different opponent, there's a different calibration. In one poll Obama might lead Romney by 3 points, Perry by 8, and Palin by 17, all obviously with the same approval rating. So each candidate is giving him a different handicap. I thought I'd take a look at trying to quantify the Romney handicap.
Warning, Republicans: Presidential Approval is Volatile
Barack Obama's job approval ratings are not very good right now. Pollster.com's average puts it around 43% nationally. And yet, in this environment, we have the scary-good polling firm PublicPolicyPolling showing that Obama is tied nationally with Mitt Romney, his most likely general election opponent and by far his most formidable potential foe, and leads Romney by 4% in Iowa. Moreover, that's in an Iowa poll where Obama's approval rating had declined by six net points since August and his lead over Romney had declined by... six net points. In other words, as I've long been suspecting, Obama's general-election vote share looks a lot like a direct, point-for-point translation of his approval rating, plus some handicap depending on who his opponent is. And notice that Romney's trailing Obama by four points in a state where Obama's net approval rating is -9. That's a 13-point net handicap. That's enormous! So it's not so much that Romney's a strong candidate, but rather that Obama is sufficiently vulnerable that even a very weak candidate like Romney is competitive against him, and all of Romney's primary competitors are incredibly vulnerable. Okay, fine, that's the situation. It looks pretty decent for Republicans, actually.
Don't Limit Utilitarianism
In class today, my philosophy of law professor repeatedly defined utilitarianism as the family of philosophies that hold that a) the welfare of sentient beings matters tremendously for ethical thinking, and b) nothing else matters at all. That's a good, accurate definition (though I'm paraphrasing slightly on Part A, with the language about sentient beings, it's still the gist of what he said). But the problem is what he did with it. Because he was saying things like, under a utilitarian view one would have to approve of two people twisting a child's arm, and inflicting pain on that child, just because the two of them get a kick out of it. Two people having fun, one person in pain, it's a net win, so he says. But there are some serious problems with this, because in making that assertion he's using the word "utilitarianism" in a much more restrictively defined fashion.
In order to reach the kinds of conclusions he reached, you have to define a kind of utilitarianism that is, roughly speaking, strictly additive. That is to say, you're talking about a kind of ethical calculus in which you just say, X net well-being for this person, Y net well-being for this person, Z net well-being for this person, so on down the line; add up all of those values, and then maximize the result. That is, to be sure, a utilitarian kind of ethics. But not the only one. The only requirement of a utilitarian ethics, as I see it, is that your utility function be a function of the welfares of sentient beings, and nothing else. That gives you a lot of discretion! For one thing, we haven't yet assumed that suffering and happiness are to be measured in the same units. Maybe we adopt a utility function that highly prioritizes the avoidance of pain. In that case, you shouldn't twist the kid's arm, because our utility function doesn't value your pleasure as highly as it values avoiding the kid's pain. In fact, we could theoretically have a utility function that says that an increase in pain for one individual can never be justified by an increase in pleasure for another individual, but only by a reduction in pain for others that is commensurately large. Thus, twisting the kid's arm to save the world, or even to save one life, would be justified, but even if all seven-billion people in the world would get a tremendous kick out of seeing this little kid's arm be twisted, that's not enough to justify it. Again, all we're caring about are the welfares of sentient beings, and we've just avoided his result.
Simply saying the word "utilitarian" really doesn't commit you to very much about your ethical philosophy. All it commits you to is never making an argument that X is good that you cannot translate into an argument that X will increase the welfare of at least some sentient beings, and can plausibly be claimed to increase the welfare of sentient beings in the aggregate; similarly, to never making an argument that Y is bad that you cannot translate into an argument that Y will decrease the welfare of at least some sentient beings, and can plausibly be claimed to decrease the welfare of sentient beings in the aggregate. That's all. The specific rule for adjudicating between competing interests is not determined simply when we decide to be utilitarians. Within the big tent of utilitarianism we can have reasonable arguments about how to tally up the score, and when X will outweigh Y. But we are not committed to the view that we should twist that little child's arm, not even remotely.
In order to reach the kinds of conclusions he reached, you have to define a kind of utilitarianism that is, roughly speaking, strictly additive. That is to say, you're talking about a kind of ethical calculus in which you just say, X net well-being for this person, Y net well-being for this person, Z net well-being for this person, so on down the line; add up all of those values, and then maximize the result. That is, to be sure, a utilitarian kind of ethics. But not the only one. The only requirement of a utilitarian ethics, as I see it, is that your utility function be a function of the welfares of sentient beings, and nothing else. That gives you a lot of discretion! For one thing, we haven't yet assumed that suffering and happiness are to be measured in the same units. Maybe we adopt a utility function that highly prioritizes the avoidance of pain. In that case, you shouldn't twist the kid's arm, because our utility function doesn't value your pleasure as highly as it values avoiding the kid's pain. In fact, we could theoretically have a utility function that says that an increase in pain for one individual can never be justified by an increase in pleasure for another individual, but only by a reduction in pain for others that is commensurately large. Thus, twisting the kid's arm to save the world, or even to save one life, would be justified, but even if all seven-billion people in the world would get a tremendous kick out of seeing this little kid's arm be twisted, that's not enough to justify it. Again, all we're caring about are the welfares of sentient beings, and we've just avoided his result.
Simply saying the word "utilitarian" really doesn't commit you to very much about your ethical philosophy. All it commits you to is never making an argument that X is good that you cannot translate into an argument that X will increase the welfare of at least some sentient beings, and can plausibly be claimed to increase the welfare of sentient beings in the aggregate; similarly, to never making an argument that Y is bad that you cannot translate into an argument that Y will decrease the welfare of at least some sentient beings, and can plausibly be claimed to decrease the welfare of sentient beings in the aggregate. That's all. The specific rule for adjudicating between competing interests is not determined simply when we decide to be utilitarians. Within the big tent of utilitarianism we can have reasonable arguments about how to tally up the score, and when X will outweigh Y. But we are not committed to the view that we should twist that little child's arm, not even remotely.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Mitt Romney's Herman Cain Problem
Mitt Romney has a problem named Herman Cain. Cain is now leading PublicPolicyPolling's latest foray into the vital Iowa contest, with 30% to Romney's 22%. Other polls show the two in the other order, but much closer; whatever, I trust PPP way more than any other pollsters at this point. In late August, Cain was getting just 7% in Iowa, compared to Romney's 19%. But that's not Romney's problem, or at least, his problem isn't that Herman Cain will win the Republican nomination instead of Romney. It's that the rise of Herman Cain tells us a hell of a lot about the Republican primary electorate: they really, really, really don't want to vote for Mitt Romney.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Nancy Pelosi Is Awesome, Continued
Now, of course, there's no guarantee that this will happen, but Nancy Pelosi's 3 years, 363 days of service as Speaker of the House put her 18th all-time, two measly days behind Joseph Martin, the Massachusetts foil and of and gavel-swapper with Texan Sam Rayburn. Supposing the Democrats take back the House next fall (which I admit is a reasonably big "if"), there's every reason to expect Pelosi to add two years to her record, which would put her at 5 years, 363 days. That would be seventh all-time. Behind the following people: Sam Rayburn, who is never ever going to lose his #1 spot, Tip O'Neill, John McCormack, Dennis Hastert, Champ Clark, and some guy named Henry Clay. If she could get another four years somehow, without losing another four anomalous days, she'd move ahead of Hastert into fourth all-time, behind only Rayburn, O'Neill, and McCormack. Obviously, as I said, there's no way to know if that will happen, but I bet you anything that John Boehner is never going to see his name very high on this list.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Reyes and the Hall of Fame
Just for fun, I've been playing around with the numbers and trying to see how I would construct a baseball Hall of Fame, from scratch, and I just went through the shortstop section. My observation was that twice the career numbers of Jose Reyes would compare really well with a lot of Hall-caliber shortstops throughout history. If we doubled Jose's career so far, he'd have 2600 hits, 444 doubles, 198 triples, 162 home runs, 1470 runs scored, and 740 steals in 8906 at-bats and 9680 plate appearances. He'd be second all-time among players with at least 40% of games at short in triples, behind Honus Wagner; 11th in doubles; 11th in hits; hell, he'd be 20th in home runs! He'd be eighth all-time in runs scored, seventh in extra-base hits, seventh in total bases. All while being just 14th in plate appearances. And, oh yeah, something else: he'd be first, all-time, in stolen bases, seventeen ahead of Honus Wagner, and nearly 100 steals ahead of third-place Bert Campaneris.
In other words, Twice Jose Reyes would be an all-time great offensive shortstop. And guys like Alex Rodriguez, Ernie Banks, and Robin Yount, who began their careers as shortstops but then switched positions mid-way through their careers, are included in the rankings above. Run the threshold to, say, 70% of career games as a shortstop, and he becomes a top-5 all-time shortstop. Now, granted, the man does not have the defensive numbers that someone like Ozzie Smith, or really most of the Hall of Fame-caliber shortstops, put up throughout their careers, but defensively at least he's no Derek Jeter (the second-worst defensive player all-time according to baseball-reference, and the 7th-worst according to Fangraphs). And remember, all of this is assuming he can just double his career so far. That career has seen only five healthy, productive years out of the nine he's played. And there's also some evidence (see: his 2011 National League batting championship) that he's gotten even better than he used to be. It makes sense: 28 is typically the age when players enter their prime.
The point is, there's every possibility that Jose Reyes will be one of the greatest offensive shortstops of all time, not to mention the best speedster ever to play the infield. If the Mets know what they're doing, they'll make sure this offseason that when he gets his plaque, it's got the Mets' logo on his cap.
In other words, Twice Jose Reyes would be an all-time great offensive shortstop. And guys like Alex Rodriguez, Ernie Banks, and Robin Yount, who began their careers as shortstops but then switched positions mid-way through their careers, are included in the rankings above. Run the threshold to, say, 70% of career games as a shortstop, and he becomes a top-5 all-time shortstop. Now, granted, the man does not have the defensive numbers that someone like Ozzie Smith, or really most of the Hall of Fame-caliber shortstops, put up throughout their careers, but defensively at least he's no Derek Jeter (the second-worst defensive player all-time according to baseball-reference, and the 7th-worst according to Fangraphs). And remember, all of this is assuming he can just double his career so far. That career has seen only five healthy, productive years out of the nine he's played. And there's also some evidence (see: his 2011 National League batting championship) that he's gotten even better than he used to be. It makes sense: 28 is typically the age when players enter their prime.
The point is, there's every possibility that Jose Reyes will be one of the greatest offensive shortstops of all time, not to mention the best speedster ever to play the infield. If the Mets know what they're doing, they'll make sure this offseason that when he gets his plaque, it's got the Mets' logo on his cap.
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