Romney picks Paul Ryan as his running mate **official thread**

[muon2]

This is a choice that allows Mitt to double down on the fiscal state of the nation. Much of his difficulty the last six weeks is that he's been losing the tug of war between personal popularity where Obama beats him to economic competence where Romney wins. My guess is that he's heard his advisers tell him to get back on message, and this is his pick to do so.

I had a chance to listen to one of those advisers this week and it's interesting to see how this pick figures into the electoral map. That adviser (who's also a major pollster) said that Romney's best path is to first take the McCain states, and this pick doesn't put any of those into jeopardy. The next step is to retake IN, NC and VA the historically GOP states that flipped in 2008. IN is a lock by most polls, and Ryan won't hurt in VA/NC and may help if he can reinforce a message of economic competence. There was a talk by a top Dem pollster as well and he didn't disagree with any of the main points of the GOP analysis.

The second pair of take backs on the map identified by GOP advisers are OH and FL. Ryan's Midwestern roots and college career at Miami of OH only add to the fix the economy message that OH voters put at the top of their list. Polling for FL shows Romney doing best with seniors in that state while losing the younger part of the electorate. FL is already getting hit by negative ads from both sides and adding those against Ryan may be lost in the noise. If Mitt keeps himself as the main face in FL, Ryan may not cut into his senior base.

If Romney gets the above states, he needs one more to top 270 EV. Ryan clearly helps in WI and IA, and may also help in NH and MI (which has a similar issue profile as OH). The other close western states could be substituted in this list, but the pick of Ryan seems to indicate that Romney is making his stand in the Midwest, so if states like NV or CO are wins that's just gravy. How he campaigns in FL becomes a critical piece now, since losing that state would require multiple other states to replace its EVs.

[muon2]

Well, good for Romney. I don't know if he's going to win or not, but he needed a game changer, and this was the right way to do it.

Ryan is more of the same.

Yeah, there is absolutely no stretch of that phrase where I can think of this as some sort of "game changer." Paul Ryan has been the epitome of everything the Democrats have been (rightfully) accusing the Republicans of supporting since Obama took office.

Let me explain what I was thinking... "more of the same" to me was Romney pretending this election was a referendum on Obama, that if anyone was unhappy with unemployment they have to vote for him, and that he stood for generic values of free enterprise and American strength. He'd been coasting on that for a while and it wasn't working out. Picking someone like Pawlenty or Portman would have amplified the same tinny message and not made a difference.

Picking Ryan marks no change in the policies Romney would have pursued, but it gambles that putting them front and center may make a change for the better and that Ryan is charismatic or respectable enough to rejuvenate his campaign. Will it make a difference? They have to see.

According to serious pollsters on both sides it is a referendum on Obama. The question is whether more voters will see it on Obama the person or Obama the executive of the economy. Your second paragraph is correct. The crosstabs basically indicate that Romney must put the economy front and center.

[muon2]

If the election were a referendum on Obama, Romney wouldn't have slid in the polls on the past month. Obama has made headway in making Romney unlikable.

No and yes. Obama's best strategy is to make the referendum on Obama the man. He wins the favorability polls easily. His messaging this summer has served to keep the referendum on that point.

[muon2]

The chart found here compares a variety of plans, with current law under ACA in the first column and the Ryan plan (from his budget, not the one he constructed with Wyden, which is also compared) is in the last column.  One will notice that some of the details are similar, though ACA differs from the Ryan plan mainly in keeping Medicare as a defined-benefits plan, capping beneficiary liability for catastrophic care, relatively higher subsidization levels (see link immediately below as well), more regulatory agencies to identify cost-saving strategies, and
a higher cap on total Medicare spending.
http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/8284.pdf

What I find interesting in the chart is how all of the alternate plans use some form of defined contribution to replace the defined benefit of the existing system. This is the health insurance equivalent to what has been happening with pensions, first in the private sector and now in the public sector. A defined benefit carries a lot of actuarial risk, some of which can be mitigated with a defined contribution which caps the government's risk. In the chart the plans seem to use private insurers as the means of sharing risk with the government.

Based on past innovation in health care which drives up cost, that shared risk is probably what really saves the government money. However, innovation is difficult to quantify in projections like those of the CBO. To the extent that the next 40 years looks like the last 40 in terms of medical advances then I would speculate that the alternate plans would save money compared to the current system.