barehl
Master Poster
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2013
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There are several different ways of looking at the ACA, but most sources don't. Generally only one or two somewhat shrill points or slogans come to the front and that is about where it stops. But, there's more to it.
Many Republicans will look at the insurance exchanges and see that there is no big savings to them and feel justified in claiming that the law was unnecessary. Some of the tone deaf politicians like Ted Cruz will also follow this line while tossing in platitudes about the end of civilization as we know it. However, John Boehner is going to have an increasingly tough time ignoring people in his own district who can only get insurance now because of the ending of the exclusion of pre-existing conditions. Eventually, he is going to have to shift to saying "fix" instead of "repeal" and the battle will be over. Even staunch Republicans are going to lose steam on this issue once they realize that nothing happened--that is, that the claims of skyrocketing insurance premiums and healthcare rationing don't materialize.
So, what options are on the table?
1.) Boehner could hope for the struck by lightning twice while winning the lottery play. This would involve gaining enough seats in the House and Senate in 2014 to override a veto--or, having public opinion for the ACA plummet so sharply that they could gain an override with Democratic help. There was a time when believing something like a Rasmussen poll was an honest mistake. However, that is no longer the case. Believing today that the ACA is wildly unpopular and that its popularity decreases everyday, as Rasmussen implies, requires not just drinking the Kool-Aid but taking it intravenously. Yes, I've seen the claims of 55% in favor of repeal and even one suggestion of a 5% error. No, I would say that this poll actually has an error closer to 20%. Why? Well, you can look over the wording yourself: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/november_2013/questions_health_care_exchange_november_9_10_2013
By the way, it can help in analyzing this poll if you understand Forces used in card tricks.
Question 1 is missing the option of "I'm not sure." or "I don't know." This skews the question by about 25%.
Question 2 is redirection because the question has nothing to do with the ACA and also excludes a neutral answer. Skewing here would be about 25%.
Question 3 is all or nothing and also is unrelated to the ACA. I would expect around 15% skewing here.
Question 4 is worded specifically to force you to take something away from someone else. Skewing here is quite high, around 40%. This question is redirection but also an example of false choice and factor scaling since it concerns only one part of the ACA without establishing magnitude or giving the option of changing one part.
Question 5 is the only other question actually related to the ACA. Notice however that it also excludes a neutral answer. Skewing however should be fairly small, around 15%.
So, just adding these up gives 18%. However, you then have to realize that Rasmussen's telephone polls skip people with cell phones which removes younger people and weights the poll towards older people (this gives at least 5%). And, you have to note that most of the questions have nothing to do with whether or not someone is in favor of repealing the ACA. This poll is not quite as bad as a push poll but is not even close to a real poll. It's junk and it's difficult to imagine that people like John Boehner truly do not have statisticians on staff who could tell them that.
2.) The second option is basically a Hail Mary. It would involve winning the 2016 election and keeping the House while gaining the Senate and holding onto Rasmussen's claims of ACA unpopularity. If all these things happened then the law could be repealed. The main problem with this is who in the Republican field could actually win? Ted Cruz? No, and I can say that with great confidence considering that arch-conservative State, Indiana, rejected Richard Mourdock in favor of Joe Donnelly. Chris Christie? No. His primary accomplishment of dealing with Hurricane Sandy doesn't count for much in most of the country (remember what a fool Guliani made of himself with nothing to talk about besides 9/11). Also, Christie's pitbull debating style won't work in a national election. Rick Perry knocked himself out by forgetting his own policies. Marco Rubio sunk whatever hope he had with his reply to the State of the Union (similar to what Bobby Jindal did before him). What about Paul Ryan who sounds like he took a dose Valium right before coming on stage? Not likely. Rand (stop picking on me) Paul? He wouldn't make it through the primary. Scott Walker is still the darling among many in the now zombie tea party. However, you don't have to look much beyond his debates in his own state to see that he would get eaten alive in a national race. And if he is so popular, why is his disapproval higher than his approval in his own state? Jeb Bush is the only one I can think of who has not yet proven that he would get beaten. Of course, the fact that he is currently polling below Hillary in Florida doesn't exactly bode well. The lack of strong candidates is a direct result of removing moderate Republicans (you know, the RINOs) in favor of fundamentalist crazies.
So what is more likely to happen? One big problem if you are hoping and praying that the sky is falling is that health insurance is a huge lock on the economy. I knew people 20 years ago who couldn't switch jobs because of health insurance. With the ACA up and running, this is no longer a factor. When people can leave one job and move to another (or even start their own business) without that fear, the economic gears get a good dose of grease. And, that means that by 2016 the economy is likely to be doing considerably better. I don't really know what would stop it. Even Boehner's taking 245 vacation days this session is not going to hold back the rising tide. I know, it wasn't so long ago that Walmart was standing firm on its anti-union, our workers don't deserve healthcare position. But today, Walmart finds itself in a public relations nightmare with falling profits and the grim reality that Dollar stores are being built at the rate of 1,000 per year. Every one of those stores chips away at the Walmart bottom line and they've never had to compete on that level. Meanwhile, Amazon draws away sales in everything else except groceries and services. McDonalds was once an American icon but now finds itself not far behind Walmart. It is today a possibility that Walmart and McDonalds employees could end up in a union within a few years. An expanding union is not something Republicans want to think about.
So, why isn't this what you hear on the news? The news media have been engaged in trolling. You don't think so? Why else would a news anchor bother to ask Mitt Romney his opinion about the ACA rather call up the sitting governor of Massachusetts and ask him how things are going? Why would they play a clip of Sara Palin saying that she is certain that there are still death panels in the ACA? None of this is news; this is more of an attempt to invent news.
What is the real story? How about the Republican war on the Republican Party? You don't do things now that hurt you later; you do things now that make it easier later. That's called planning. How is all that overblown rhetoric about job-killing legislation going to sound in 2016 when the economy is growing faster than it is now? How about those claims of tripling of premiums? I'm waiting for someone in the Republican Party to finally grasp that invoking Ronald Reagan means almost nothing to people 35 years old and younger. By 2016, that will be 38 and younger. What demographic are you chasing? Remember that autopsy? What are you going to do now, write an autopsy about why you didn't listen to your own autopsy? Do you still believe the Limbaugh rhetoric that McCain and Romney lost because they weren't conservative enough? Oh, and speaking of Limbaugh, who exactly is going to pay his bloated salary of $38 million a year when Clear Channel goes bankrupt in 2016 because it can't pay back the $10 billion in debt that was run up under Bain Capital? You know what? I'll bet they won't be going to Mitt Romney for a comment about that.
Many Republicans will look at the insurance exchanges and see that there is no big savings to them and feel justified in claiming that the law was unnecessary. Some of the tone deaf politicians like Ted Cruz will also follow this line while tossing in platitudes about the end of civilization as we know it. However, John Boehner is going to have an increasingly tough time ignoring people in his own district who can only get insurance now because of the ending of the exclusion of pre-existing conditions. Eventually, he is going to have to shift to saying "fix" instead of "repeal" and the battle will be over. Even staunch Republicans are going to lose steam on this issue once they realize that nothing happened--that is, that the claims of skyrocketing insurance premiums and healthcare rationing don't materialize.
So, what options are on the table?
1.) Boehner could hope for the struck by lightning twice while winning the lottery play. This would involve gaining enough seats in the House and Senate in 2014 to override a veto--or, having public opinion for the ACA plummet so sharply that they could gain an override with Democratic help. There was a time when believing something like a Rasmussen poll was an honest mistake. However, that is no longer the case. Believing today that the ACA is wildly unpopular and that its popularity decreases everyday, as Rasmussen implies, requires not just drinking the Kool-Aid but taking it intravenously. Yes, I've seen the claims of 55% in favor of repeal and even one suggestion of a 5% error. No, I would say that this poll actually has an error closer to 20%. Why? Well, you can look over the wording yourself: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/november_2013/questions_health_care_exchange_november_9_10_2013
By the way, it can help in analyzing this poll if you understand Forces used in card tricks.
Question 1 is missing the option of "I'm not sure." or "I don't know." This skews the question by about 25%.
Question 2 is redirection because the question has nothing to do with the ACA and also excludes a neutral answer. Skewing here would be about 25%.
Question 3 is all or nothing and also is unrelated to the ACA. I would expect around 15% skewing here.
Question 4 is worded specifically to force you to take something away from someone else. Skewing here is quite high, around 40%. This question is redirection but also an example of false choice and factor scaling since it concerns only one part of the ACA without establishing magnitude or giving the option of changing one part.
Question 5 is the only other question actually related to the ACA. Notice however that it also excludes a neutral answer. Skewing however should be fairly small, around 15%.
So, just adding these up gives 18%. However, you then have to realize that Rasmussen's telephone polls skip people with cell phones which removes younger people and weights the poll towards older people (this gives at least 5%). And, you have to note that most of the questions have nothing to do with whether or not someone is in favor of repealing the ACA. This poll is not quite as bad as a push poll but is not even close to a real poll. It's junk and it's difficult to imagine that people like John Boehner truly do not have statisticians on staff who could tell them that.
2.) The second option is basically a Hail Mary. It would involve winning the 2016 election and keeping the House while gaining the Senate and holding onto Rasmussen's claims of ACA unpopularity. If all these things happened then the law could be repealed. The main problem with this is who in the Republican field could actually win? Ted Cruz? No, and I can say that with great confidence considering that arch-conservative State, Indiana, rejected Richard Mourdock in favor of Joe Donnelly. Chris Christie? No. His primary accomplishment of dealing with Hurricane Sandy doesn't count for much in most of the country (remember what a fool Guliani made of himself with nothing to talk about besides 9/11). Also, Christie's pitbull debating style won't work in a national election. Rick Perry knocked himself out by forgetting his own policies. Marco Rubio sunk whatever hope he had with his reply to the State of the Union (similar to what Bobby Jindal did before him). What about Paul Ryan who sounds like he took a dose Valium right before coming on stage? Not likely. Rand (stop picking on me) Paul? He wouldn't make it through the primary. Scott Walker is still the darling among many in the now zombie tea party. However, you don't have to look much beyond his debates in his own state to see that he would get eaten alive in a national race. And if he is so popular, why is his disapproval higher than his approval in his own state? Jeb Bush is the only one I can think of who has not yet proven that he would get beaten. Of course, the fact that he is currently polling below Hillary in Florida doesn't exactly bode well. The lack of strong candidates is a direct result of removing moderate Republicans (you know, the RINOs) in favor of fundamentalist crazies.
So what is more likely to happen? One big problem if you are hoping and praying that the sky is falling is that health insurance is a huge lock on the economy. I knew people 20 years ago who couldn't switch jobs because of health insurance. With the ACA up and running, this is no longer a factor. When people can leave one job and move to another (or even start their own business) without that fear, the economic gears get a good dose of grease. And, that means that by 2016 the economy is likely to be doing considerably better. I don't really know what would stop it. Even Boehner's taking 245 vacation days this session is not going to hold back the rising tide. I know, it wasn't so long ago that Walmart was standing firm on its anti-union, our workers don't deserve healthcare position. But today, Walmart finds itself in a public relations nightmare with falling profits and the grim reality that Dollar stores are being built at the rate of 1,000 per year. Every one of those stores chips away at the Walmart bottom line and they've never had to compete on that level. Meanwhile, Amazon draws away sales in everything else except groceries and services. McDonalds was once an American icon but now finds itself not far behind Walmart. It is today a possibility that Walmart and McDonalds employees could end up in a union within a few years. An expanding union is not something Republicans want to think about.
So, why isn't this what you hear on the news? The news media have been engaged in trolling. You don't think so? Why else would a news anchor bother to ask Mitt Romney his opinion about the ACA rather call up the sitting governor of Massachusetts and ask him how things are going? Why would they play a clip of Sara Palin saying that she is certain that there are still death panels in the ACA? None of this is news; this is more of an attempt to invent news.
What is the real story? How about the Republican war on the Republican Party? You don't do things now that hurt you later; you do things now that make it easier later. That's called planning. How is all that overblown rhetoric about job-killing legislation going to sound in 2016 when the economy is growing faster than it is now? How about those claims of tripling of premiums? I'm waiting for someone in the Republican Party to finally grasp that invoking Ronald Reagan means almost nothing to people 35 years old and younger. By 2016, that will be 38 and younger. What demographic are you chasing? Remember that autopsy? What are you going to do now, write an autopsy about why you didn't listen to your own autopsy? Do you still believe the Limbaugh rhetoric that McCain and Romney lost because they weren't conservative enough? Oh, and speaking of Limbaugh, who exactly is going to pay his bloated salary of $38 million a year when Clear Channel goes bankrupt in 2016 because it can't pay back the $10 billion in debt that was run up under Bain Capital? You know what? I'll bet they won't be going to Mitt Romney for a comment about that.
