The term moral hazard refers to the way that people tend to become less risk averse when they know they are protected from the consequences of their folly. The textbook example is the well-documented tendency of insured drivers to be less safe on the road, because they will not bear the full cost of any accidents. A professor of mine once likened the problem to the spoiled rich child who sits down whenever he wants, confident that someone will push a chair under him before he hits the floor.
The analogous problem in politics arises when a party's certainty of victory leads to a recklessness during the campaign itself
— in particular, a floating of ideas that in a tighter race might be kept under wraps. One wonders, for instance, whether
This year, the
The view that animosity would carry the day was not entirely wrong. According to Morning Consult, some 44% of Biden voters said they were voting more against the other candidate than for their own, compared with only 22% of Trump voters.(1) But the very fact that the strategy partly succeeded is a reminder of the risks in translating a narrow victory into a program of governance. When so large a chunk of your coalition hated the other guy, you lack a reliable basis for assuming that they're with you on the issues. Treating them as solid supporters and proceeding with an agenda that might wind up alienating them is a textbook example of moral hazard.
To see why, let's begin with a quick a trip down ballot, where the Democratic blue wave shattered on the boulders of human
complexity. As of this writing, the
The tendency of the voices of the party's left wing to drown out Biden's centrist appeals had a cost. Consider, for example,
the way that the heavily Hispanic counties in
In this sense, the rise of identity politics created a moral hazard of its own, leaving the party with a false sense that
ethnic groups have common interests that lead their members to vote as a bloc. There's limited truth to this contention, and
this year the limits became apparent. The
Similarly, despite Trump's well-documented history of misogynistic comments, he and Biden essentially tied among white women
with college degrees, compared with a 7-percentage-point advantage enjoyed by
All of which brings us to the single most important lesson of the exit polling: While Democrats won easily among voters who
considered the candidate's "personal qualities" the most important factor, voters who prioritized the candidate's position
on the issues over character leaned Republican. And there were a lot more of the latter — 73% vs 23%. A significant fraction
of voters care about policy, and were even willing to support an incumbent they probably don't much like because they liked
his policies; whereas the
Thus we see the costs of moral hazard. Yes, the
What one hopes is that next time around, the driver will pay more attention to what's actually in the road.
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(1) Although polling organizations insist that they have gone to extraordinary efforts to get accurate data in this year of pandemic and early voting, we should still place only tentative reliance on the results.
(2) For example, among voters of color without college degrees, the Democratic advantage dropped from 56% in 2016 to 46% in 2020, meaning the gap was almost one-fifth smaller.
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Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. Among his courses are law and religion, the ethics of war, contracts, evidence, and professional responsibility. .