“I don’t see the equivalence between those two formulations, but I’m not nearly so sophisticated as you.”

No, you’re just trying to go all philosophical with Platonic ideals and epistemology and critical analysis and all that crap when we’re discussing a supposed political analysis piece. Thing is, Franc’s supposed political analysis has zilch to do with the real world, so you just have to make up for that by blow a lot of fact-free smoke.

Perhaps it would be good for you to compare your comment to Andrew Gelman’s. Maybe when you stop acting like the reasonably intelligent 12 year old you can be more like him.

Finally, I will take your word for what you meant by “he rather obviously is using evidence about the second to do his damnedest to imply the first.” I read that as a claim that Franc is equivocating, but you say that you didn’t mean that. I’m not sure how to make sense of the sentence if you say that you meant something like “he rather obviously is using evidence about the second because he is relying on a statistical fallacy.” I mean, I don’t see the equivalence between those two formulations, but I’m not nearly so sophisticated as you. Now, back to your name-calling and hand waving.

Holy batman, so Franc’s essay is in fact a Rorschach inkblot test, instead of an actual political analysis piece dealing with events in the real world?

What’s up with these trolls?

Can you offer an explanation for Franc’s inclusion of each party’s fundraisers, other than as a reference to the parties’ fundraising? Your explanation suggests that the names of random members could have been picked out of a hat. And of course contributions are raised from the rich—who do you think contributes to campaigns? I thought that was your complaint, but now I see we’re supposed to feign ignorance of the point when someone else mentions it.

The final bit is just your restatement yet again that “party of the rich” means only what you want it to mean and nothing more. Calling it names doesn’t help that.

Rich people may be more likely to vote republican, but that doesn’t mean more rich people successfully voted for the republicans than the democrats. That’s another EI. If enough rich republicans are wasting their votes in blue states then the democrats who have been elected may well have got more support from the rich than republicans who were elected. Gelman was asking something like “who would have won if only the rich voted”, Franc seems to be asking somethin more like “out of the winners, how many rich people voted for them”.

I’m not saying Franc’s right – he’s vague and it’s not really that clear what his argument is. But I’m not sure by “the party of the rich” he means “the party rich people vote for”.

We desperately need public campaign financing here, like the Clean Money bill in California or a similar bill that’s been lost in the shuffle in Congress for a while now.

Now you say that Franc is giving a mistaken impression to readers (“he rather obviously is using evidence about the second to do his damnedest to imply the first”). Yesterday, however, your complaint was that Franc’s argument relied on a statistical fallacy, not an equivocation in terminology.

What I said above:

Franc’s bogus op-ed is trying to say that evidence that Democrats tend to be elected by richer districts and states is evidence that Democrats are now the “party of the rich.” This is a claim that is, to put it kindly, not only intellectually flawed but roundly refuted by the empirical evidence that we have available.

“intellectually flawed” refers to the statistical fallacy. “empirical evidence” refers to the results reported in Gelman et al. Better trolls please.

As for the “Franc mentions political donations” canard, let’s go back to the text, shall we. Here’s the relevant discussion.

This new political demography holds true in the House of Representatives, where the leadership of each party hails from different worlds. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, represents one of America’s wealthiest regions. Her San Francisco district has more than 43,700 high-end households. Fewer than 7,000 households in the western Ohio district of House Republican leader John Boehner enjoy this level of affluence.

The next rung of House leadership shows the same pattern. Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer’s district is home to the booming suburban communities between Washington, DC, and Annapolis. It boasts almost 19,000 wealthy households and a median income topping $62,000. Mr Hoyer’s counterpart, minority whip Roy Blunt, hails from a rural Missouri district that has only 5,200 wealthy households and whose median income is only $33,000.

Income disparity – to use the class warrior’s favourite term – is greatest among the districts of lawmakers that lead each party’s campaign arm. Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen chairs the Democratic congressional campaign committee. With more than 36,000 prosperous households and a median income of nearly $70,000, his suburban Washington district even out-sparkles Ms Pelosi’s. In contrast, fewer than 5,000 such wealthy households are found in the largely rural district of his Republican counterpart, Tom Cole from Oklahoma. The median income there is only $35,500.

Franc mentions the “lawmakers that lead each campaign arm” as part of an entirely generic and sweeping claim about the leadership of the Democratic party and their districts. He only gets around to them third, after covering the first rank of Democratic leaders, and then the second. There’s not a jot, tittle, iota or scintilla in there about how they raise funds from the rich or indeed from anyone else, and it’s either extraordinarily stupid, or palpably dishonest (or perhaps some combination of these two) to go on maintaining that there is. Franc’s argument is perfectly straightforward – because Democrats represent richer districts than the average, they are ergo the party of the rich. That this is a perfectly stupid and factually bogus argument is equally straightforward and obvious.

That appearance is buttressed by the fact that the WaPo does not make any attempt to present other arguments supporting the “loophole” or attempt to examine the high likelihood that this is a “feel-good” tax that won’t actually raise revenue.

For example, this CBO study explains that the capital gains treatment of “carried interest” mimics the tax treatment that would be incurred if the hedge fund investors:

(a) paid explicit management fees to the manager;

(b) lent the manager an amount of money equal to, e.g., 20% of the net investment;

(c) charged fair-market interest on that loan which offset the management fee;

(d) let the manager share in any capital gains at year end, based on the manager’s 20% ownership of the investment pool (financed by the loan in (b).

IF the contracts were drawn that way the manager woul dget mostly capital gains treatment.

Or, if a change in tax law prompts managers to re-draft their contracts to explicitly fit that model, well, maybe that is what they will do, in which case the revenue impact of the tax “increase” will be zero. However, the PR impact of the “increase” may well be positive.

Put another way, the WaPo is telling us that a hedge fund operator looking at an increased tax bill of $35 million made donations of about $50,000 to head it off. Either Congress represents a great bargain (possible!) or he just does not care that much, but figures for the price of walking-around money he can at least explain why Congress is wasting their time.

It may be that many wealthy people understand that a certain amount of taxation and collective action is necessary to make and keep them prosperous. They support Democrats because they deliver these policies—that is, perhaps Democrats represent more wealthy people because the policies they implement promote prosperity and wealth.

If this is true, it makes perfect sense for Democrats to continue supporting policies that on the surface appear to negatively affect the wealthy—or some subset of that group—but in practice make the community as a whole, and therefore its most wealthy citizens, more prosperous. They see the benefits of managed redistribution of wealth, regulation of business and manufacturing, investment in infrastructure, and tolerance of behaviors and attitudes that fall outside their own social norms.

Democrats may support changing hedge fund income tax policy because some wealthy people support changing a provision of the code that egregiously redistributes wealth upward and into the hands of a few. To be sure, these few can influence some officials, as you point out, and this causes a debate within the party.

But many Democratic politicians—who have their jobs because their (wealthy) constituents wanted the policies they proposed and implemented—understand that allowing hedge fund managers to avoid taxes on so much of their income does not “promote the general welfare” or fit into their idea of collective action. Moreover, they know their constituents agree—they are paying their share, and want others to do the same.

Indeed, many people who invest in hedge funds but do not manage them may be wondering why so much of the money they generate finds its way into the hands of managers and not investors. They may see taxation as a good way to capture that money and use if for the kinds of policies Democrats favor—which in their experience makes their communities more prosperous. They get two things they value from their investments: increases in their own wealth, and revenues to pay for collective action.

This explains why we have seen no “Blue State tax revolt” (though we certainly do see pressure to maintain the balance that seems to promote prosperity), and why Democrats are pushing to end this tax loophole. Their wealthy constituents want them to.

Francs argument is entirely consistent with the first sense. If I’m a democrat representing a rich state, then rich people within my state could vote for me (and, if I remember correctly, do to some degree – there isn’t a hard class cleavage). But neither rich nor poor people outside my state could vote for me. I’ve no hope of attracting support from people outside my state whether they’re rich or poor, but at least a hope of attracting support from those within it. That’s the big problem of an exclusively class based analysis of elections. Constituencies mean the electoral effect on individual politicans is isolated from national class divisions.

Even if we switch to parties, the democrats don’t have much hope of meaningful support from the poor in deepest red states.