“negative partisanship.” It’s not so much that we like our own party as that we detest the other. In fact, Eric Groenendyk, of the University of Memphis, finds evidence that people hate the other party partially because they are disappointed in their own party. “[T]hey appear to be rationalizing continued identification with their party in the face of this ambivalence by reporting even more negative feelings toward the other party,” he writes. “In other words, they seem to be engaging in the ‘lesser of two evils’ identity defense.” By protecting their sense of belonging, intense partisan animosity performs what Groenendyk has called emotional rescue. The fevered view of President Obama proffered by people like Dinesh D’Souza may have been absurd, but it did serve the purpose of making every Republican leader look better by comparison. If Donald Trump is the devil incarnate, then you had better support whatever mediocre Democrat is on offer.
In any case, an implication of negative partisanship is that partisans are not so much rallying for a cause or party they believe in as banding together to fight a collective enemy — psychologically and politically a very different kind of proposition, as we see when we look at the literature on what tribalism does to the brain.
He does get around to citing Lilliana Mason. He doesn’t mention my book, but his themes are very similar. Highly recommended.
And try to attend, either in person or by viewing on the web, my conversation with Russ Roberts on these topics tomorrow at noon eastern time.
I’ve never heard this story before, it is awesome. It captures the key aspects of Trump Populism. Everything Rauch writes afterwards is irrelevant navel gazing. The CassyMcActivist-vs-TowingKen story has two important components:
1. The TowingKens of the world jumped political ships en masse, mostly after a long history of being alienated by the CassyMcActivist progressive wing
2. The TowingKens of the world made headlines using bold acts of social activism, the same kind of tactics long mastered by CassyMcActivist progressives.
Both TowingKen and CassyMcActivist are like distorted mirror-image caricatures of one another.
It is not so simple when we have the big state political parties.
Much of the Trump rebellion simply cam from one idea, it was the turn of New Yorkers to rule the roost.
Neither party can satisfy the peculiar regional demands, and inevitably the losses on one region make an expensive political effort from that region worthwhile. We generally get regional rotation among the presidents.
One implication of negative partisanship is that no party should be considered to have won a “mandate” by winning an election. Instead, we really should intrepret elections as negative mandates against the losing party. If Democrats win the next election, we should view that as a rejection of Trump’s immigration and trade policies rather than a mandate for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and “free” tuition. Conversely, if Republicans win, then that should be viewed as a rejection of those same Democratic spending and regulation programs rather than a mandate for more restrictive immigration and trade. Strangely, few commentators seem to emphasize, or even mention, this point, even negative-partisan commentators that rail against the opposing party.
Negative partisanship would seem like a mandate for libertarianism: voters are saying, “Whatever you do, don’t do what the losing side was planning to do.”
I wish that I could agree with BC’s last sentence. Unfortunately, I think that negative partisanship’s progressed beyond “Don’t do what their side wants” to “Since their side’s evil, we should do whatever hurts them the most”.
Trump’s policies, including on trade and immigration, and more popular than he is. You might say they were so popular that Trump won in spite of himself. Why would Trump losing an election mean voters rejected these positions? Whenever I read Trump commentary, its always about Trump the person and how personally odious he is. The NeverTrump position appears to be based entirely on this fact.
Also, Obamacare polls decently well, and specific propositions in it extremely well (medicaid expansion, kids on insurance till 25). If Obama had lost to Romney, would that mean people rejected a position that polls well? Or it would it just mean one person lost to another.
Moreover, how do you separate these concerns. If I don’t like the Green New Deal…the very last thing I want is to import enough AOCs to force it down my throat.
You’re reading is…amazingly self serving. Whatever voters do, any action under any circumstance, what it REALLY MEANS is they want libertarianism, despite libertarians being a tiny % of society and many of their positions polling poorly.
Trump’s positions on Immigration and, especially, Trade not that popular. However these issues were not Party aligned for the last 40 years and traditionally class aligned. Roll back the tapes on Obama 2008 in which he ran against free trade and ‘Open Border’ on Immigration than McCain 2008.
1) Republicans started turning heavily against ‘Open’ borders in the Primary 2011/2012 with Romney stating ‘Self-Deportation’ to combat stronger opinions for his Primary opponents. And then the Hispanic-American voters went very heavy against Romney and the elite in the R Party panicked for Immigration Reform.
2) Trump’s positions on Immigration, Trade and, most importantly, Social Security ensured he won the White Working Class in the Republican Primary while the elite Republicans whined.
3) There is still a ‘Class’ component to Free Trade as Warren and Biden will have debates in the Primary.
Assume you’re right: “we really should interpret elections as negative mandates against the losing party.” But there is no such thing as pure negative voting. Rejection of X implies acceptance of some sort of not X. “[R]ejection of Trump’s immigration and trade policies” implies a certain acceptance of what it looks like a non-Trump administration would do. Not necessarily a “mandate” for the more outre things in a candidate’s speeches, but some support for going in that direction.
Of course has there ever been a candidate, like Trump, that run so negative Partisanship? Most of the campaign Trump’s goal was to bring other candidate down to his level and endlessly attack them. (And remember most of complaints are trade focused on the Clinton’s fault because of Bill finalizing NAFTA.)
I was disappointed that Rausch made no attempt to find examples of manifestations of negative partisanship on the part of his Democratic Party tribe. As such, his article struck me as an example of negative partisanship disguised as even-handed analysis.
+1
Rausch starts with this evidence-free assertion:
” Elite polarization was evident in both parties, albeit not symmetrically: Republicans had veered further to the right than Democrats had to the left at that point. “
In fact, elite polarization has LONG been, and remains, very evident in college hiring. In the 60s, it was about 2:1 of liberal Dems over conservative Reps. It has gotten steadily worse since then. This college evidence is EXACTLY the “elite polarization”, objectively.
The elitist Roe v Wade in early ’73 added a huge cultural, anti-Christian elitist element.
Note his Clinton – Trump comparison:
If group solidarity requires us to excuse Donald Trump for behaviors far worse than those we condemned in Bill Clinton, no problem.
Clinton raped Juanita Broderick. He sexually harassed Paula Jones, and committed perjury while losing his sexual harassment suit. He committed numerous adulterous acts with various women while President, and before that while governor.
Trump cheated on each of his first two wives, and in both cases left his wife and married a younger woman. Who became a mother of one of his children.
He talked, in private but graphic vulgar detail, about how, because he’s rich and famous, women allow him to do anything, including grabbing them between their legs. He had sex with prostitutes and other discreet affairs.
In fact, the Dems have long been excusing Bill Clinton, Jeff Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and various other women exploiters of far worse than Trump has been doing.
The gross and disgusting hypocrisy of the Dems, combined with their own “holier than thou” moral pronouncement, is a huge push for more tribalism.
And yes, the Reps are responding with more tribalism.
Dr. Kling’s advocavy against Fannie May and Freddie Mac shareholders would seem to be the perfect example of negative partisanship.
Dr. Kling writes “It would be a mistake to try to take away the profits from taxpayers and return the functions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the private sector. Once the profits are privatized, socialized risk-taking is likely to follow. Firms that are vital to the mortgage market will have either an explicit or implicit government guarantee. They will find ways to exploit that guarantee, putting taxpayers at risk. ”
Yet, as Gary Hindes writes at RealClearMarkets today, “Under GAAP accounting rules in effect at the time — and as certified by their independent auditors (and regulators) — there is no question that both Fannie and Freddie were in full compliance with capital requirements when they were forced into conservatorship. True, they had been incurring losses due to the then-raging housing finance crisis, but still, they had the highest capital cushions in their histories and were flush with cash.
It was only after the government seized control that it was able to fire the directors, replace management and order the companies to start booking billions of one-time, non-cash charges. These cookie-jar accounting entries ultimately required Fannie and Freddie to accept $191.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department (and issue it an equivalent amount of preferred stock bearing a 10% dividend), in order to maintain a positive book net worth. (Hence the “bailout” narrative.)”
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/09/23/there_was_no_fanniefreddie_bailout_there_was_a_stick-up_103922.html
Hindes was writing in response to a Sept 20 RealClearMarkets piece by Alex Pollock entitled “Have Fannie and Freddie Paid the Taxpayers Back Yet?” In that piece Pollock cites the 5th Circuit regarding the “payback” to set up a proposed government charge to Fannie and Freddie to continue the government guarantee:
” The court observed in its September 6 judgment:
“The net worth sweep transferred a fortune from Fannie and Freddie to Treasury.” Specifically, “Treasury had disbursed $187 billion and recouped $250 billion.”
The “net worth sweep” is the dividend on the senior preferred stock in Fannie and Freddie acquired by the Treasury in the bailout. Originally set at 10% per year in 2008, the dividend was changed in August 2012—in the “Third Amendment” to the governing agreement—to essentially, “just send in all your profit” each quarter, hence a “sweep.” The Treasury then owned $187 billion of senior preferred stock acquired for cash, as the court suggested, and another $2 billion in exchange for the original credit support agreement, for a total of $189 billion. (Now it owns $199 billion.)
Fannie and Freddie should, said the court, “of course…pay back Treasury for [their] draws on the funding commitment.” And “Treasury was also entitled to compensation for the cost of financing.” No one could disagree. “But the net worth sweep continues transferring [Fannie and Freddie’s] net worth indefinitely, well after Treasury has been repaid,” it critically points out. This must make us ask: Have Treasury and the taxpayers been repaid at this point? The answer is not obvious, as sometimes has been asserted, and requires a little arithmetic.
In short, does having been paid $250 billion vs. a $189 billion principal amount automatically mean full repayment? As every banker knows, it doesn’t.
Consider a simple analogy. Suppose you borrowed $1,000 at an interest rate of 10%, under a $5,000 commitment with a commitment fee of 1% per year. Suppose you pay only the interest and the commitment fee, but never a penny of principal. After ten years, you will have paid $1,500. You could truly observe that “You lent me $1,000 and I have paid you $1,500.” But how much principal do you still owe? You still owe all $1,000, without a doubt.
We can apply the same logic to Fannie and Freddie and see what happens.
Let us go back to August 2012, and suppose that the Third Amendment and the “net worth sweep” had never happened. There is outstanding $189 billion of senior preferred stock. The dividend remains the original 10%. That is a dividend of $18.9 billion a year. In addition to the dividend, as the court rightly noted, the original deal provides for Treasury also to charge an ongoing commitment fee. This was to compensate the taxpayers for their continuing credit support, which backed up and continues to back up all Fannie and Freddie’s liabilities. Nine Fifth Circuit judges in an accompanying opinion call this support “a virtually unlimited line of credit from the Treasury.” It effectively guarantees liabilities totaling $5.5 trillion—you don’t get that for free. With vast liabilities and effectively zero capital, Fannie and Freddie could not function for even a minute without taxpayer support. The Housing Reform Plan just published by the Treasury clearly provides for Fannie and Freddie to pay a commitment fee—and they undoubtedly should.
What would be a fair price for the taxpayers’ credit commitment? Based on what the FDIC would charge a severely undercapitalized bank for the credit guarantee which is called deposit insurance, I believe 0.18% of total liabilities per year is a good guess. This credit support fee on $5.5 trillion in liabilities gives an annual fee of $9.9 billion.
Thus, going back to our hypothetical 2012 with no profit sweep, Fannie and Freddie should have been paying Treasury $18.9 billion plus $9.9 billion or a total of $28.8 billion a year. That was seven years ago. Had Fannie and Freddie been paying that instead of the profit sweep for seven years the aggregate payment for dividends and commitment fee only, would have been $202 billion. That payment would provide no reduction of the $189 billion of principal.
But Fannie and Freddie paid $250 billion. That is $42 billion more than $202 billion, which might fairly be used to retire some of the $189 billion principal. If we credit Fannie and Freddie with the going rate of interest, say 2%, on this amount, we might make that $45 billion. That gives us $189 billion less $45 billion, leaving $144 billion of principal still to be repaid.
Suppose you think my suggested commitment fee is too high. Let us cut it in half, to 0.09 %. Then by analogous math, Fannie and Freddie’s required payment of 10% dividends plus commitment fees would be $23.9 billion a year, or $167 billion in total for seven years. That would leave $83 billion, or $88 billion with interest, for principal reduction. Result: they would have $101 billion still to pay.”
The Trump/Treasury plan does include a charge for the guarantee, it would not simply be privatizing the profit and socializing the risk. The Treasury statement included the following: “Treasury would support legislation that authorizes an explicit, paid-for guarantee backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal Government that is limited to the timely payment of principal and interest on qualifying mortgage-backed securities.” A far cry from the straw man Dr. Kling decries and not so easily subject to the fears he purports to have regarding rent-seeking lobbyists in the future, which are a constant in any scenario.
Kling’s knee-jerk opposition to the Trump plan is important because it may offer a clue as to how he would respond to government seizures of retirement accounts under a Warren administration. The kumbaya session with Roberts today will be interesting to watch to see just how far libertarians will go in campaigning for Warren. I expect to hear a lot of positive-Warren spin.