Everyday Politics Blog

Online Petitions

by Laura McKenna

When I was a kid, the running joke was that dad always stole our black magic markers. We had every other color in our art kits, except for black. Why? Because dad used them to make protest signs. And then he would round up the three of us to march around in a circle with other people protesting something or another.

Before he was a marker-stealing dad, he attended civil rights marches and anti-war rallies in DC. He even had a confrontation with Dan Rather, because Rather chose to interview the long haired hippies at the rallies instead of the clean cut college kids, who were the majority of the protesters. Later, after we arrived, he got involved in local politics. He became involved in environmental policy and ran for office on a third party.

What Kind of Justice Will Sotomayor Be?

By Scott Lemieux 

The confirmation hearings for Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, begin today. The hearings are unlikely, however, to produce a great deal of useful information.    Since the defeat of Robert Bork -- who had been all too candid about his views on specific constitutional issues, particularly Roe v. Wade, which he would have been the fifth vote to overrule in 1992 had he been confirmed -- successful nominees have mastered the art of sounding smart while saying nothing.     As a result, in his very useful  recent book about the confirmation process, Christopher Eisgruber persuasively argues that the "Senate should evaluate nominees on the basis of their record and reputation, just as presidents do." 

But how to evaluate this record?   One method used by political scientists is Segal-Cover scores, which use newspaper editorials to predict the ideological direction of a future justice's votes.    Despite the relative simplicity of the method, it's quite effective at predicting future judicial votes.   According to her Segal-Cover scores, we should expect Sotomayor to be liberal by the standards of the current Republican-dominated Court, but a moderate liberal by historical standards:

  

Jeffrey Segal, who helped develop the system for grading nominees' perceived ideological leanings, told NationalJournal.com in early June that Sotomayor would likely have a similar score to Ginsburg -- around 0.68 on the 0-1 scale, with 0 being most conservative. If that's the case, Sotomayor would rank as one of the more liberal judges to be nominated since 1937, but she would hardly approach figures such as William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall, both of whom rate at 1 on the scale. Ginsburg currently ranks as the court's 17th most liberal nominee going back to the FDR administration. The 10 most conservative nominees during that period include four current justices: Antonin Scalia (he tops the list with a score of 0), Samuel Alito (0.10), Chief Justice John Roberts (0.12) and Clarence Thomas (0.16). Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist comes in third, with a score of 0.05, and President Reagan's failed nominee Robert Bork is up there as well, with a score of 0.10.

To reiterate what I said in my last post, I don't mean to suggest that Segal-Cover scores can, in themselves, provide all the necessary information. Dichotomous characterizations of Supreme Curt decisions leave out many possible nuances in individual cases, and how a justice is perceived before his or her hearings is a good but far from perfect indicator. Still, these scores have been useful in the past, and are likely to provide more useful information about Sotomayor than the hearings == at least if she's been well-coached.

Class War? What Americans Really think about Economic Inequality

by David Watkins

Over the Summer, I'll offer brief reviews of recent books of interest to students of American Politics. I begin with a short but important book about public opinion regarding economic inequality in the United States. Class War? What Americans Really think about Economic Inequality by Ben Page and Lawrence Jacobs, provides an overview of 'the data' on public opinion. They review existing polls on the subject over the last several decades, and commissioned a major poll of their own (conducted in 2007; interestingly, the public opinion they measure is prior to the current economic crisis).The central finding is one that many who’ve followed public opinion closely have long known—that substantial majorities of American have favored a number of policies that reduce economic inequalities and threaten opportunities, and they express a willingness to pay for these policies as well. In addition to this startling and direct finding, their analysis of the data reveals three other significant features about American public opinion on economic inequality:

Agreement. For those of us who follow politics closely, the fact that Republicans and Democrats largely agree on most issues regarding economic inequality will probably come as something of a surprise. Certainly, this fact often seems to have little effect on the behavior of Republican politicians, and would seem foreign to those who interact primarily with Republican Party activists and movement conservatives. But on question after question, over time, Republicans are generally only slightly less likely than Americans overall to support measures to reduce economic inequality and increase economic opportunity. A few examples: 72% of Americans affirmed the statement that “Differences in income in America are too large”—as did 56% of Republicans (pg. 44). 64% of Americans said they were willing to pay more taxes to support funding for early childhood education in kindergarten and pre-school, as did 57% of Republicans (pg. 59). Should the federal government see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job? 67% of all Americans and 60% of Republicans say yes (pg. 62). Is it the task of government to see to it that no one is without food, clothing, or shelter? 68% of Americans and 61% of Republicans say yes (pg. 72). This pattern repeats itself with High-income Americans, who respond in a similar fashion to Republicans. There is little widespread disagreement amongst American voters on these issues, at least along the traditional cleavages where we’d expect to find it. 

Knowledge. A number of survey questions in chapter two indicate that Americans are actually quite knowledgeable about economic inequality. Many might find it inconsistent that a solid majority of American agree with the statement “In order to get people to work hard, large differences in pay are necessary” (pg. 33) while at the same time supporting measures to reduce inequality. But it’s not necessarily inconsistent at all. One can support inequality—even large amounts of it—and still recognize that we currently have too much, and more than is necessary for any socially beneficial consequences of inequality. On inequality issues, American public opinion is more knowledgeable than is often assumed. 

Complexity. What I’ve presented here is fairly straightforward, but Page and Jacobs introduce an important twist in understanding American public opinion on inequality. We are, in an important sense, philosophically conservative. Americans want work, effort and talent to be well-rewarded. They want actions and choices to have consequences, positive and negative. They remain suspicious that governments will spend our money well. But when our questioning moves from the realm of abstractions to specifics—health care, education, taxation, and the like, they seemingly abandon this conservatism and support action to reduce inequality. Page and Jacobs call this operational liberalism, which combined with philosophical conservatism yields a result they call ‘conservative egalitarianism.’  

These three features—agreement, knowledge and complexity, suggest a very different picture of American public opinion than we are often presented with in contemporary political discourse. But this analysis raises an obvious question—if there is so much agreement on these matters, why is there such tepid support for substantial inequality-reducing reforms? Page and Jacobs don’t tackle this difficult question until the end of the book. There are many possible answers, I think, and the ones they prefer—inaction due to the structure of American politics and, more importantly, interest group politics resulting in the overrepresentation of elite interests and perspectives in government, seem as plausible as any. Nevertheless, the book, while succeeding admirably at presenting a more accurate picture of American politics than is typically presented, left me wanting a more thorough discussion and investigation of the gap between political preferences and policy. This book is an excellent beginning to this discussion.