6 ms·

Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?

Valgrim 4y ago
Demagoguery implies an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The argument presented in this articles stems from reason and is an analysis of real, verifiable data, so I'd say no.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  The article tries to come to the conclusion that correlation equals causation. The title reads "A growing gap in premature deaths along party lines underscores the collision of politics and public health" which implies politics causes premature deaths. In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Unless you're arguing that the typical Republican voter is skewing ruraler and poorer over time such a theory doesn't explain why the gap is growing.
    - ceeplusplus 4y ago
      I think that's a valid argument to be made. Stats have shown the Republican party has become more blue collar over time [1] and that white collar workers are trending left over time [2]. This would explain why the gap is growing: blue collar workers make less and sacrifice more of their health on the job than white collar workers. Blue collar workers also generally don't live in cities, because factories and industry aren't located in cities. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-becoming-blue-collar-party-here-s-what-means-n1258468 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/11/democrat-voters-working-class-race/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/11/democrat-...
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths. The author's based their analysis on data; is there data for your claim? There is plenty of poverty in cities. EDIT: Quoting another commenter who quoted the OP: "[r]egardless of whether we looked at urban or rural areas, people living in areas with Republican political preferences were more likely to die prematurely than those in areas with Democratic political preferences"
- mistrial9 4y ago
  good on you to look more carefully.. I would say that the emotion here is the health outcome.. by saying "super bad health outcome" == "that group over there" it appeals to emotions, because just about any whole person would care about health outcomes for others, and any literate person would very likely care about health outcome for themselves. with the emotion being the health outcome response, I would tend towards Yes, demagogue.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    In the case of the clickbait-ish title I would agree, but if the actual claim is an accurate representation of the data[0] how is one supposed to phrase that idea in a way that _wouldn't_ be considered demagoguery under this broad of a definition? [0] I don't currently have time to verify this myself.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      not a specialist but I have worked alongside specialists in public policy and public health, at scale. I think the first step is that you need to classify the parts of the population a few ways.. income, language group, age, relationships in close contact / living quarters; next layer is something about education, vocation, and remove or focus on real health outliers.. special needs, dangerous jobs, any circumstantial effects in their area that affect many people. Any real studies in health sciences rely on statistics, so the treatment of the stats has to be defensible. That specifically is where they lose me, but that is how it is done. I do not subscribe to the partisan politics world-view, in many, many ways.. so I was motivated to disparage the idea that this study is adequate to learn by the reader. I also am not going to take the time to really read this one. hth
qgin 4y ago
It’s not about the victory or loss of either party. It’s saying there are two Americas developing simultaneously and people in each have different health outcomes. Are the parties causative? Or are they just the labels that we have to describe the two groups currently? We don’t know.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > Are the parties causative? Or is it the other way around? Commenters occasionally often point out the "red states" are the biggest recipients of welfare in spite of being the ones that vote most against it. To me, it seems that the most likely explanation for this is that the voters there see the negative effects of welfare and the ones who are voting for it are insulated most from the unintended consequences. It could just as easily be that the voters who see the most death are voting for the party they most feel will enact policies that will lead to less of it.
  - timr 4y ago
    Before looking for cause, you always look for plausible co-variates. Here, there are a ton: red counties tend to be rural. Rural places have huge problems with health care access, obesity, addiction, poverty, and many other issues that predict poor health outcome.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      That would only explain a point in time state of affairs but not why they observed the effect widen along party lines. Their theory was that blue areas expanded medicare and red areas didn't but there could be others.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        Medicaid was expanded to cover those with low incomes in some states, not Medicare.
    - kibwen 4y ago
wfhordie 4y ago
The numbers are the numbers. Care to take a stab at how they’re off track?
the_third_wave 4y ago
Yes, it is. It compares age-adjusted mortality rates without taking other factors into account. What this study shows is that upper middle-class urban and suburban voters - who are more likely to vote D - have a lower mortality rate than lower and lower middle-class rural voters - who are more likely to vote R. While the article states that [r]egardless of whether we looked at urban or rural areas, people living in areas with Republican political preferences were more likely to die prematurely than those in areas with Democratic political preferences it fails to notice that 'areas with democratic political preferences' in rural states tend to be more urban and as such have more upper middle-class D voters which resemble their ideological compatriots in coastal urban areas more than they have in common with the small town and rural R voters elsewhere in their rural states. This may be just a classical correlation =/= causation error or it is campaign fodder for the upcoming elections.
Retric 4y ago
One party is hurting their own constituents by limiting access to healthcare at the state level. Verifying this actually has negative outcomes isn’t inherently political. Imagine if the research showed zero correlation, that would have been far more interesting. Understanding the outcomes of political choices isn’t inherently political. It’s completely reasonable for someone to say yes this saves lives but it’s still not worth the money.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  Really? Only thing I can think of that is (sort of) a political decision to “limit health care” is refusing to expand Medicaid. I know that didn’t happen across the board for Republican counties/states, though, so what in the world are you claiming?
  - Retric 4y ago
    That wasn’t the specific example I was thinking of, but it is illustrative of such policy decisions. Credit where credit is due, Iowa and Hawaii actually rank very highly in terms of healthcare affordability and outcomes.
  - belltaco 4y ago
    A different track, but the political decision on many on the right(media and personalities) to minimize the dangers of the virus, and demonize the vaccines caused bad outcomes. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divide-covid-19-death/story?id=83649085 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divid... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll-red-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll... https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing-political-geography-of-covid-19-over-the-last-two-years/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing...
Beltalowda 4y ago
> Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party? Isn't the entire point of politics and political parties to change social outcomes? "Your policy X will negatively impact social outcomes because reason Y while my policy Z will positively impact them" is a huge chunk of politics. Besides, I don't see how actually trying to measure outcomes of specific policies is "demagoguery"? The author(s) of this paper may be wrong (I didn't look too deeply at the study), but that's not the same as "demagoguery".
tert101za 4y ago
I would advise reading the original paper as posted by several users: https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308 https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308 As I see it: A) The paper is primarily a study of numerical trends. B) Some potential policy causes for this difference are listed in the discussion section. While this is not the primary focus of this paper, the discussion links to several other prior studies regarding particular policies and their impacts. C) However, more specific details (other than the above postulates) is not part of the paper's focus. This is acknowledged as a limitation in the study, and it is also acknowledged that other factors aside from policy (such as poor health or social and economic factors that may also motivate political preference) explain some of the hap. So it is important not to read too much detail into the cause of this gap at this time.
derbOac 4y ago
I've become disturbed by this tendency the last couple of years to justify political decisions by appeal to public health. My own political leanings are complex, so I say this not from a partisan perspective. It's very easy to specify hypothetical laws, that if enacted and enforced, would have dramatic public health benefits. A tyrrany of health, if you will. But that doesn't mean it would be ethically acceptable. Conversely, a great many military and other actions, ethically justified, are not healthy at all for its participants. The problem with these political appeals based on public health is that physical health per se, or even health in general, is just one of many values to be weighted in decision making. I think there's been a general creep in what "health" encompasses, while being selective in other ways. I do think this is part of the reason for pushback from certain quarters, a reaction against trying to dress up politics in the disguise of science without being honest about it. Science is always political to some extent, I think. So trying to argue that some phenomenon is a "scientific" issue, and therefore best addressed by qualified scientists seems disingenuous to me. It's not so much that expertise isn't real, it's that it has to have limits or it's meaningless.

Demagoguery implies an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The argument presented in this articles stems from reason and is an analysis of real, verifiable data, so I'd say no.

ceeplusplus 4y ago
The article tries to come to the conclusion that correlation equals causation. The title reads "A growing gap in premature deaths along party lines underscores the collision of politics and public health" which implies politics causes premature deaths. In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Unless you're arguing that the typical Republican voter is skewing ruraler and poorer over time such a theory doesn't explain why the gap is growing.
  - ceeplusplus 4y ago
    I think that's a valid argument to be made. Stats have shown the Republican party has become more blue collar over time [1] and that white collar workers are trending left over time [2]. This would explain why the gap is growing: blue collar workers make less and sacrifice more of their health on the job than white collar workers. Blue collar workers also generally don't live in cities, because factories and industry aren't located in cities. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-becoming-blue-collar-party-here-s-what-means-n1258468 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/11/democrat-voters-working-class-race/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/11/democrat-...
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths. The author's based their analysis on data; is there data for your claim? There is plenty of poverty in cities. EDIT: Quoting another commenter who quoted the OP: "[r]egardless of whether we looked at urban or rural areas, people living in areas with Republican political preferences were more likely to die prematurely than those in areas with Democratic political preferences"
mistrial9 4y ago
good on you to look more carefully.. I would say that the emotion here is the health outcome.. by saying "super bad health outcome" == "that group over there" it appeals to emotions, because just about any whole person would care about health outcomes for others, and any literate person would very likely care about health outcome for themselves. with the emotion being the health outcome response, I would tend towards Yes, demagogue.
- Shared404 4y ago
  In the case of the clickbait-ish title I would agree, but if the actual claim is an accurate representation of the data[0] how is one supposed to phrase that idea in a way that _wouldn't_ be considered demagoguery under this broad of a definition? [0] I don't currently have time to verify this myself.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    not a specialist but I have worked alongside specialists in public policy and public health, at scale. I think the first step is that you need to classify the parts of the population a few ways.. income, language group, age, relationships in close contact / living quarters; next layer is something about education, vocation, and remove or focus on real health outliers.. special needs, dangerous jobs, any circumstantial effects in their area that affect many people. Any real studies in health sciences rely on statistics, so the treatment of the stats has to be defensible. That specifically is where they lose me, but that is how it is done. I do not subscribe to the partisan politics world-view, in many, many ways.. so I was motivated to disparage the idea that this study is adequate to learn by the reader. I also am not going to take the time to really read this one. hth

qgin 4y ago

It’s not about the victory or loss of either party. It’s saying there are two Americas developing simultaneously and people in each have different health outcomes. Are the parties causative? Or are they just the labels that we have to describe the two groups currently? We don’t know.

commandlinefan 4y ago
> Are the parties causative? Or is it the other way around? Commenters occasionally often point out the "red states" are the biggest recipients of welfare in spite of being the ones that vote most against it. To me, it seems that the most likely explanation for this is that the voters there see the negative effects of welfare and the ones who are voting for it are insulated most from the unintended consequences. It could just as easily be that the voters who see the most death are voting for the party they most feel will enact policies that will lead to less of it.
- timr 4y ago
  Before looking for cause, you always look for plausible co-variates. Here, there are a ton: red counties tend to be rural. Rural places have huge problems with health care access, obesity, addiction, poverty, and many other issues that predict poor health outcome.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    That would only explain a point in time state of affairs but not why they observed the effect widen along party lines. Their theory was that blue areas expanded medicare and red areas didn't but there could be others.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Medicaid was expanded to cover those with low incomes in some states, not Medicare.
  - kibwen 4y ago

wfhordie 4y ago

The numbers are the numbers. Care to take a stab at how they’re off track?

the_third_wave 4y ago

Yes, it is. It compares age-adjusted mortality rates without taking other factors into account. What this study shows is that upper middle-class urban and suburban voters - who are more likely to vote D - have a lower mortality rate than lower and lower middle-class rural voters - who are more likely to vote R. While the article states that [r]egardless of whether we looked at urban or rural areas, people living in areas with Republican political preferences were more likely to die prematurely than those in areas with Democratic political preferences it fails to notice that 'areas with democratic political preferences' in rural states tend to be more urban and as such have more upper middle-class D voters which resemble their ideological compatriots in coastal urban areas more than they have in common with the small town and rural R voters elsewhere in their rural states. This may be just a classical correlation =/= causation error or it is campaign fodder for the upcoming elections.

Retric 4y ago

One party is hurting their own constituents by limiting access to healthcare at the state level. Verifying this actually has negative outcomes isn’t inherently political. Imagine if the research showed zero correlation, that would have been far more interesting. Understanding the outcomes of political choices isn’t inherently political. It’s completely reasonable for someone to say yes this saves lives but it’s still not worth the money.

jtbayly 4y ago
Really? Only thing I can think of that is (sort of) a political decision to “limit health care” is refusing to expand Medicaid. I know that didn’t happen across the board for Republican counties/states, though, so what in the world are you claiming?
- Retric 4y ago
  That wasn’t the specific example I was thinking of, but it is illustrative of such policy decisions. Credit where credit is due, Iowa and Hawaii actually rank very highly in terms of healthcare affordability and outcomes.
- belltaco 4y ago
  A different track, but the political decision on many on the right(media and personalities) to minimize the dangers of the virus, and demonize the vaccines caused bad outcomes. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divide-covid-19-death/story?id=83649085 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divid... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll-red-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll... https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing-political-geography-of-covid-19-over-the-last-two-years/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing...

Beltalowda 4y ago

> Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party? Isn't the entire point of politics and political parties to change social outcomes? "Your policy X will negatively impact social outcomes because reason Y while my policy Z will positively impact them" is a huge chunk of politics. Besides, I don't see how actually trying to measure outcomes of specific policies is "demagoguery"? The author(s) of this paper may be wrong (I didn't look too deeply at the study), but that's not the same as "demagoguery".

tert101za 4y ago

I would advise reading the original paper as posted by several users: https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308 https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308 As I see it: A) The paper is primarily a study of numerical trends. B) Some potential policy causes for this difference are listed in the discussion section. While this is not the primary focus of this paper, the discussion links to several other prior studies regarding particular policies and their impacts. C) However, more specific details (other than the above postulates) is not part of the paper's focus. This is acknowledged as a limitation in the study, and it is also acknowledged that other factors aside from policy (such as poor health or social and economic factors that may also motivate political preference) explain some of the hap. So it is important not to read too much detail into the cause of this gap at this time.

derbOac 4y ago

I've become disturbed by this tendency the last couple of years to justify political decisions by appeal to public health. My own political leanings are complex, so I say this not from a partisan perspective. It's very easy to specify hypothetical laws, that if enacted and enforced, would have dramatic public health benefits. A tyrrany of health, if you will. But that doesn't mean it would be ethically acceptable. Conversely, a great many military and other actions, ethically justified, are not healthy at all for its participants. The problem with these political appeals based on public health is that physical health per se, or even health in general, is just one of many values to be weighted in decision making. I think there's been a general creep in what "health" encompasses, while being selective in other ways. I do think this is part of the reason for pushback from certain quarters, a reaction against trying to dress up politics in the disguise of science without being honest about it. Science is always political to some extent, I think. So trying to argue that some phenomenon is a "scientific" issue, and therefore best addressed by qualified scientists seems disingenuous to me. It's not so much that expertise isn't real, it's that it has to have limits or it's meaningless.