So one thing that's making the rounds today is a poll showing an ever-increasing number of people saying they wouldn't like it if their child married someone of the opposite political party. This of course shows how terrible Americans are, how acrimonious our partisan divides, how tribal our politics, etc. Because you see, in 1960, 4% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans said this. In 2008 it was 20% of Democrats and 27% of Republicans. Now it's 33% of Democrats and a whopping 49% of Republicans. People are becoming that much more ideologically intolerant, I guess.
Or not. We don't know how ideologically intolerant people were in 1960. Not from this survey data at least. Because, as I detailed in my previous post, back in 1960 party identification correlated only weakly with ideology. More to the point, there was a considerable amount of ideological overlap between the two parties. A Democrat and a Republican from Massachusetts had an awful lot more in common with each other than that Democrat would have with a Democrat from South Carolina. Indeed, it's quite likely that, at least if you go back a little further, the Massachusetts Democrat would have had more in common with the South Carolina Republican than with his southern co-partisan.
So if you had the strong feeling that you didn't want your son or daughter marrying someone whose ideology you found hateful, it just wouldn't make a lot of sense therefore to decide you didn't want them marrying someone of the opposite party. You would presumably want to be discriminating among cross-partisans, just as you would need to be discriminating among co-partisans. These days, though, if someone puts an R after their name it gives me a pretty good idea of what they're all about, or at least what they're willing to tolerate. So whether you like the practice or not, it just plain makes a lot more sense to disfavor members of the opposite party, for your children or for yourself.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Donald Trump is the Inevitable Result of the Great Inversion's Completion
The latest CNN poll shows Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz as the three medalists (right now) in the Republican nomination. That's two not-actual-politicians who've spent years cultivating support among the right-wing fringes of society, plus one actual Senator practically every member of whose own party hates his guts. The three of them together are getting 66% of the primary vote right now. That's two-thirds of Republican voters, planning right now to vote for one of the three craziest candidates in the race. If Marco Rubio were to consolidate the Christie, Bush, Fiorina, Kasich, and Paul supporters, he'd be at a whopping 25%. There's a real inmates-running-the-asylum feeling here. And I know why.
The big story of American political history, well, since the Civil War at least, is what I like to call the Great Inversion. In 1890, there were two political parties, each consisting of a sharply-drawn and entirely coherent faction. One party represented the northeast and the Pacific coast; the other was for the most part based in the South. You'll note that every word of those two sentences would be the same if I replaced the year with 2015. The only difference, of course, is which was the Democrats and which the Republicans. During the interim the two parties switched places, Democrats shifting from the party of John C. Calhoun to that of Barack Obama, while the Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of, well... evidently Donald Trump. And all through the middle of that time period, things were messy.
The big story of American political history, well, since the Civil War at least, is what I like to call the Great Inversion. In 1890, there were two political parties, each consisting of a sharply-drawn and entirely coherent faction. One party represented the northeast and the Pacific coast; the other was for the most part based in the South. You'll note that every word of those two sentences would be the same if I replaced the year with 2015. The only difference, of course, is which was the Democrats and which the Republicans. During the interim the two parties switched places, Democrats shifting from the party of John C. Calhoun to that of Barack Obama, while the Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of, well... evidently Donald Trump. And all through the middle of that time period, things were messy.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Giving Constitutional Argument a Bad Name
So apparently Erwin Chemerinsky goes around maintaining that the text and history of the Constitution don't suggest that a woman can be President. This is called giving constitutional argument a bad name. This outrages me so that I thought I'd just give a quick run-down of different ways to approach this problem from various modal angles.
Monday, November 16, 2015
On Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, and 9/11
So, in what might have been the single most memorable moment of the debate (other than that time when I was genuinely shocked to hear that Sanders actually wants to let the states run his single-payer health care program, like, actually), Bernie Sanders impugned Hillary Clinton's integrity over her donations from Wall Street (despite his protestations that he did no such thing) and then Hillary responded by invoking 9/11. It was pretty cringe-worthy. In no way is this post meant to deny that. What this post is meant to do, however, is suggest that Hillary has at least a very plausible argument for why those campaign contributions shouldn't be held against her the way Sanders wants them to be.
Let's start with getting at what Hillary was actually trying to say, or at least the coherent argument behind her (again, admittedly) facepalm-level 9/11 framing. The donations from Wall Street are on the record, and they almost entirely date from her tenure as Senator from New York. Sanders' hypothesis is that the bankers gave her this money because they know that, no matter how tough she might talk on financial regulation, she won't actually do it. Hillary's suggestion to the contrary is that these were essentially donations of gratitude for her service to the state and city in the wake of 9/11. That's... that's very plausible, right? Especially bearing in mind that when we say "Wall Street donations," we don't just mean donations from the corporations themselves, or even from their executives. Donations from any of their employees count for this purpose. And it sounds pretty plausible to me to think that a lot of Wall Street bankers might have donated to any and every politician who played a meaningful role in the 9/11 rebuilding efforts. It might not be true that that's what motivated the donations, but it's a valid and on-point argument to make.
And really, she didn't even need to get that specific. She was a Senator from New York! I have a feeling that anyone in that position is going to get a lot of donations from Wall Street. I'm sure Chuck Schumer has a long trail of such donations to his name. You donate even to candidates who are relatively speaking not on your side, especially because New York is a solid blue state with little hope of electing Republicans to the Senate. And, sure, you're probably hoping for some measure of access and influence, but, contra what the moderator said, candidates aren't actually indebted to their donors. Again, it's genuinely possible that Hillary went around to various Wall Street potential contributors and said, give me some money and I'll keep an eye out for your interests going forward. That would be bad! But it's also genuinely possible that a bunch of Wall Street bankers gave her money just because she was the only game in town, and she didn't outright reject their donations.
This sort of ties in with another dimension of this whole thing. She was Senator from New York. All the financial types from Wall Street were among her constituents. There are many valid theories of representation on which it would have been proper for her to promote Wall Street's interests, insofar as they were New York's interests, as against the rest of the country. This would have to be within reason, of course; politicians shouldn't support the interests of every scumbag who happens to live in their jurisdiction. But we don't think there's anything weird about Senators from Iowa promoting corn interests or whatever. It's natural, if slightly unsavory.
The question is whether this works for or against Hillary. And that depends, I think, on whether we think that a person who has once favored a certain interest because they represented that region will always be beholden to that interest, even if they now represent a broader constituency. I tend to think the answer here is "no." Kirsten Gillibrand, Hillary's successor in the Senate, is an interesting example. She used to be a Representative from a reasonably conservative district in upstate New York, and her record in the House was reasonably moderate. That led people to be concerned that she wouldn't be as liberal as a Democratic Senator from New York ought to be. But in fact, she's been great! Because now she's not representing a constituency that requires her to be more moderate. By analogy, even if Hillary did take Wall Street contributions, and aye, even if she did take relatively pro-Wall Street stances when she was Senator from New York, that doesn't mean she would do so as President, representing the whole nation.
Now, Sanders and his supporters could try to argue it the other way. That, a candidate's once having been willing to pander to a local interest, we should always view them with suspicion on that issue. But I really don't think he wants to open up that can of worms. Because he's confessed, more or less candidly, that his relatively moderate record on guns was largely a pander to his rural Vermont constituents. Which would look an awful lot like Hillary's purported record on financial regulation--if we grant the assumption that Hillary has been soft on financial regulation historically. If we get into playing this game, it's just not at all clear that Sanders is categorically more pure than Clinton. And that's not even getting into all the companies whose employees he's received donations from over the years, a list which is less than wholly devoid of what we might think of as villains. The sum totals are a lot lower 'cause he represented Vermont, which has about as many people in it as like a city block in Manhattan, but the logic would seem to apply reasonably well.
There's also an additional level as concerns Hillary: she's a lawyer. She went to Yale Law School. (Woohoo!) She knows a lot of people in the world of law, which has a lot of overlap with the world of finance. A lot of these people probably gave to her campaign because they know her, and (perhaps unlike their bosses or the corporate entities for which they work) they honestly don't care that much about the public policy dimensions of politics.
The bottom line is that there are an awful lot of genuinely good reasons to think that Clinton's past Wall Street donations do not mean that she will be in any way beholden to the financial industry if she becomes President. Again, it might in fact be the case that she would be beholden to them. But there are good reasons for thinking otherwise, and it's basically a matter of contestable fact. And while, again, I agree that her invocation of 9/11 was extremely poorly done, there was an argument at the heart of those remarks, one that fits into the basic pattern of the more general arguments for why we shouldn't be troubled by her donations. So yes, it's totally fair game to call her out for her heavy-handed, Giuliani-esque flag-wrapping, but it's wrong to pivot from that to simply assuming that she is in fact vaguely corrupt in the was Sanders was insinuating.
Let's start with getting at what Hillary was actually trying to say, or at least the coherent argument behind her (again, admittedly) facepalm-level 9/11 framing. The donations from Wall Street are on the record, and they almost entirely date from her tenure as Senator from New York. Sanders' hypothesis is that the bankers gave her this money because they know that, no matter how tough she might talk on financial regulation, she won't actually do it. Hillary's suggestion to the contrary is that these were essentially donations of gratitude for her service to the state and city in the wake of 9/11. That's... that's very plausible, right? Especially bearing in mind that when we say "Wall Street donations," we don't just mean donations from the corporations themselves, or even from their executives. Donations from any of their employees count for this purpose. And it sounds pretty plausible to me to think that a lot of Wall Street bankers might have donated to any and every politician who played a meaningful role in the 9/11 rebuilding efforts. It might not be true that that's what motivated the donations, but it's a valid and on-point argument to make.
And really, she didn't even need to get that specific. She was a Senator from New York! I have a feeling that anyone in that position is going to get a lot of donations from Wall Street. I'm sure Chuck Schumer has a long trail of such donations to his name. You donate even to candidates who are relatively speaking not on your side, especially because New York is a solid blue state with little hope of electing Republicans to the Senate. And, sure, you're probably hoping for some measure of access and influence, but, contra what the moderator said, candidates aren't actually indebted to their donors. Again, it's genuinely possible that Hillary went around to various Wall Street potential contributors and said, give me some money and I'll keep an eye out for your interests going forward. That would be bad! But it's also genuinely possible that a bunch of Wall Street bankers gave her money just because she was the only game in town, and she didn't outright reject their donations.
This sort of ties in with another dimension of this whole thing. She was Senator from New York. All the financial types from Wall Street were among her constituents. There are many valid theories of representation on which it would have been proper for her to promote Wall Street's interests, insofar as they were New York's interests, as against the rest of the country. This would have to be within reason, of course; politicians shouldn't support the interests of every scumbag who happens to live in their jurisdiction. But we don't think there's anything weird about Senators from Iowa promoting corn interests or whatever. It's natural, if slightly unsavory.
The question is whether this works for or against Hillary. And that depends, I think, on whether we think that a person who has once favored a certain interest because they represented that region will always be beholden to that interest, even if they now represent a broader constituency. I tend to think the answer here is "no." Kirsten Gillibrand, Hillary's successor in the Senate, is an interesting example. She used to be a Representative from a reasonably conservative district in upstate New York, and her record in the House was reasonably moderate. That led people to be concerned that she wouldn't be as liberal as a Democratic Senator from New York ought to be. But in fact, she's been great! Because now she's not representing a constituency that requires her to be more moderate. By analogy, even if Hillary did take Wall Street contributions, and aye, even if she did take relatively pro-Wall Street stances when she was Senator from New York, that doesn't mean she would do so as President, representing the whole nation.
Now, Sanders and his supporters could try to argue it the other way. That, a candidate's once having been willing to pander to a local interest, we should always view them with suspicion on that issue. But I really don't think he wants to open up that can of worms. Because he's confessed, more or less candidly, that his relatively moderate record on guns was largely a pander to his rural Vermont constituents. Which would look an awful lot like Hillary's purported record on financial regulation--if we grant the assumption that Hillary has been soft on financial regulation historically. If we get into playing this game, it's just not at all clear that Sanders is categorically more pure than Clinton. And that's not even getting into all the companies whose employees he's received donations from over the years, a list which is less than wholly devoid of what we might think of as villains. The sum totals are a lot lower 'cause he represented Vermont, which has about as many people in it as like a city block in Manhattan, but the logic would seem to apply reasonably well.
There's also an additional level as concerns Hillary: she's a lawyer. She went to Yale Law School. (Woohoo!) She knows a lot of people in the world of law, which has a lot of overlap with the world of finance. A lot of these people probably gave to her campaign because they know her, and (perhaps unlike their bosses or the corporate entities for which they work) they honestly don't care that much about the public policy dimensions of politics.
The bottom line is that there are an awful lot of genuinely good reasons to think that Clinton's past Wall Street donations do not mean that she will be in any way beholden to the financial industry if she becomes President. Again, it might in fact be the case that she would be beholden to them. But there are good reasons for thinking otherwise, and it's basically a matter of contestable fact. And while, again, I agree that her invocation of 9/11 was extremely poorly done, there was an argument at the heart of those remarks, one that fits into the basic pattern of the more general arguments for why we shouldn't be troubled by her donations. So yes, it's totally fair game to call her out for her heavy-handed, Giuliani-esque flag-wrapping, but it's wrong to pivot from that to simply assuming that she is in fact vaguely corrupt in the was Sanders was insinuating.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Meet the (2016) Mets
Well. That sucked. I mean, first it was awesome, and then it sucked. That's true of the whole year, and also of each individual game. Good lord, has a team ever lost a World Series where it led every single game before? And four of them after the seventh inning? Jeez those Royals are obnoxious to play against. For many of the same reasons that, for a neutral fan, they're a really cool team and a great story. But... jeez. Break up the Royals, man.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Monday, October 19, 2015
On Matt Harvey and Steroids
Steroids! They're bad, right? They're "performance-enhancing drugs," and the people who use PEDs are cheaters who should be suspended for lengthy periods of time, possibly given lifetime bans, and certainly not voted into the Hall of Fame even if they did flat-out goofy things at the plate like getting on base more than half the time over a four-year span while drawing more intentional walks than strikeouts. (Yeah.)
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Intent and Utley
So. The Mets just lost the second game of the National League Championship Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The critical moment of the game came in the 7th inning. The Mets led 2-1, but the Dodgers had a runner at second when Chase Utley came in to pinch-hit against Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard was clearly tiring, and Utley managed to get just enough bat on a low change-up to line it over Daniel Murphy's head into right field. Fortunately the runner from second had to hold up to make sure it wasn't caught, and so didn't score. Then Terry Collins brought in Bartolo Colon to relieve Syndergaard, and he induced a hard ground ball up the middle from Corey Seager. Murphy gloved it and flipped to Ruben Tejada, a little off-line. Tejada had to reach back for the ball as he was shuffling over to the second base bag, and then as he was spinning around to throw the ball to first Utley slammed into him, knocking him to the ground and, it transpired, breaking his fibula. Meanwhile, since the double play hadn't been completed, the runner from third scored, and the game was tied at 2.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
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