abc/facebook

One of the fringe benefits of facebook appears to be it has a somewhat more politically active group than the teenyboppers so prevalent here. In any case, one of the more recent debates had attached to it a series of poll type questions. By this I mean poll questions with either limited utility or no scientific usefulness. But in either case these had a few interesting twists once one looked at the poll breakdowns by things like political views and so forth.

First off, the overwhelming majority of respondents to these polls were people of the ages 18-24. This is historically a dubious place to conduct polling data because it tends to be less politically motivated, as a whole, and often possesses a strange mixture of high education and misinformation. This was evident in the polling data, but it does suggest what a candidate could do to motivate this select group to action or at least voting.
I'll give this one a try. "Based on the Republican debate, should the federal government or the states be primarily responsible for making sure Americans have health insurance". The possible responses are Federal, state, not sure, and neither. (obviously if one has been following my commentary with any regularity, neither is the only real choice I can make.) I'll begin my commentary immediately. First, the question asks a foolish introduction. I'm fairly certain most Americans believe they already know the answer to this question, so most of them aren't going to change their minds suddenly because of a persuasive argument by a politician. This much was obvious looking the number of undecided (usually a fairly large percentage, but here less than 3%). It would take more than one such debate and quite possibly a good deal of education in either the fields of economics, public policy studies, or health care for someone to change their views. Looking at the responses based on "political views", it was clear that most people ignored this little lead-in to the question and voted the way they already leaned. Almost no 'liberal' said anything other than 'the federal government'. Only 5% said neither and only 8% said the states. I can't say that someone watching with a truly objective stance would have come away saying that 87% of the GOP candidates were arguing that the federal government should mandate health care or otherwise provide it. Further looking at the question, the question itself does not present 'neither' as a legitimate argument, even though 'neither' is precisely the view that most of the GOP candidates take on this issue. Some of them propose plans to help make it affordable, but do not 'make sure' Americans have health insurance. There was in the actual debate little to no discussion over whether the states have any interest or need to similarly 'make sure' of this, nor would we expect there to be in a Presidential campaign, despite the Massachusetts (Romney) plan that did and the explicit suggestion that such a plan engenders that response with legitimacy (instead of tyranny, inconvenience, and bureaucracy). The choice explicitly suggested by the question should have been whether Americans themselves have such a responsibility or their government, on any level whatsoever. Nevertheless, 'conservatives' and the category labeled as 'other', to which I'm undoubtedly piled into, raked in a considerable landslide for 'neither' as their reply. Moderates, as one would reasonably expect, were fairly split with a leaning toward the 'federal government'. In other words, the more popular choice among young people is to say that things should be resolved by 'the federal government'. This might help explain the boost someone like Obama has had among such people.

Next one "What do you think is the single most important issue in this election?", with the possible replies: other, health care, education, economy, national security, Iraq. I'm not sure how most of those can be considered as 'single issues'. Education irrecoverably impacts things like 'economy', and vice versa. Economy in fact impacts or is impacted by virtually all of those possible responses, including whatever 'other' means. For whatever reason, the data here was perhaps even more confusing. For example, teenagers, a group who have often low wage paying jobs with low job security and no voting rights to speak of, complained that the 'economy' was a big issue. I suppose this is not surprising, but one wonders what they mean by 'economy'.

In fact, one who has studied economics wonders what anyone else means by 'economy', because there seem to be few if any reasonable indications that 'economy' is a serious matter worthy of concern without discourse into things like corporate taxation or international trade/foreign relations, which are not exactly economic matters that the common voter concerns themselves with. There is of course the housing market bubble burst, with its resulting billions of dollars "lost". But in point of fact the only people who were truly harmed by this were speculative buyers and people with poor credit who were put into speculative loans. The average homeowner may simply put off selling their home, or alternatively, will understand that they may be able in a short time to find a new home at a discount from previous prices and will accept a small loss or decreased profit on their present home to exchange to a better value with more personal convenience. Other economic indications are similar once one studies them at all economically. The danger of recession is always there in a country with poor national spending controls and international debts (and hence higher inflationary periods on international goods), but this is again something that a common voter is likely to have studied or understand. I would speculate that the 'economy' they are referring to is most similar to a question like 'how do you feel about your financial state', a question which many people are uncertain of but often have generally positive responses to. The vast majority of an individual person's economic troubles are in fact, little different from those of the federal government (high spending, little to no savings, high debt ratios, inflation), but would not be understood because so much media attention is focused on three indicators: unemployment, illegal immigrant labor/outsourcing, and the stock market. It is true that jobs go overseas. There are reasons that jobs migrate elsewhere. And most of them have to do with either 1) organized labor and general expense of benefits and higher wages demanded by workers in this country or 2) corporate tax rates or regulations being more favorable in other countries. It is conceivable that some levels of productivity improve, but not likely. It is fair to demand decent wages for the work being done, but it is perhaps fair to also point out that the work being done in some fields has in recent years not competed in international markets exceptionally well. And in any case, if a company can get the same levels of work done as it needs done to satisfy its consumers, perhaps sacrificing efficiency, but generating more profit without restrictions of taxation or regulation, I expect it to generate more profit.

As far as illegal immigration, somehow that was a subject that was not listed, even though it is undoubtedly far higher than 'education' on a national level of interest. I expect that few people would understand it as a purely 'economy' issue, though there is that view that labor is a fungible manner of expressing human capital. I'm fairly sure however that based on this country's history with immigration that much of the fervor is based on some levels of xenophobia and the suspicion of strange people from a strange land, particularly those who are "taking American's jobs". Such claims have been leveled at Japanese and Chinese immigrants in the later part of the 19th century, Irish or German immigrants in the late 18th and middle 19th, Eastern Europeans in the early 20th, and so on. Most of these immigrant groups, as with Mexicans and other Latin Americans, possessed some national pride and heritage, but also a profound hope in this new land. Perhaps a vigorous and boisterous minority were rabble that we found credit to our distasteful fears, just like now. The principle gap with this historical analogy has been that immigration was not usually subjected to legal controls as it is now (save Japanese/Chinese restrictions on the West Coast and local businesses refusing to hire each group in their turn). So while there is considerable vim and vigor over this subject, it is hard to see how a good deal of common American people in support of the matter are seriously concerned over 'rule of law'. Immigrants in fact are themselves more apt to be complaining over the matter of 'rule of law' than any man on the street, coming as they often do from a country which had poorer standards in this arena. Common Americans are either worried about their new neighbours or that those neighbours will take away someone's job. When the reality is that public policy should be set to make it difficult to employ illegal laborers and the 'problem' will fix itself. (If someone is an entrepreneur and employs legal immigrants but is himself, illegal, I don't see the problem).

As another curious distinction in this particular poll, 'national security' was considered the top issue for 'conservatives' (excepting of course the nebulous universal topic of 'economy'). I'm not entirely sure what this means either. An issue such as immigration reform could and has been construed politically as related to 'national security', pulling out visions of national ID cards (summoning German accent, paperz please). It could mean terrorism, even though 'terrorism' is itself a nebulous subject which encompasses the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, the general state of affairs in the Middle East, national intelligence gathering abilities, and so on. None of these are things which directly impact most Americans at home in a way which mitigates their personal security or our national security, in this nation itself (in fact it mostly mitigates finances). So really, I'm not quite sure what 'national security' means either, and neither should anyone else answering this poll. For a media that was quick to make Iraq the defining issue of the 06 election cycle (which I wrote at the time was a silly notion), it seems fairly clear that Iraq is not any longer a defining issue, taken by itself. And that leaves health care, which is certainly disconcerting for young people, but they're most likely actively choosing to risk going without coverage anyway, being as it is not often a bare necessity for younger people. And education, a consideration which has barely been tapped as a national issue despite the declining status of our schools and the manner of our educational system and its unions. So whatever 'other' means, I'll go with that. I assume it implies things like energy policy, bear controls, and robots.

Whatever 'economy' means, I'm guessing nobody is really sure. But talking about sure seems important to young people. So whoever talks about the economy in vague and both suspicious and hopeful terms, but also talks about the government health care programs, and believes drug companies (or other corporations) are 'bad guys' is likely to win the younger voters and drive them to the polls.