Trumpian Logical Fallacies: Moving the Goalposts

Gaslighting, moving the goalposts, ad hominem, strawmen, appeal to fear, bandwagon, appeal to authority, false dilemma, slippery slope, argument by anecdote; are there any logical fallacies that President Trump doesn't employ as he attempts to convince himself that he is a qualified executive, a serious leader of our nation and someone who can make "the best deals" for America.

I'm going to devote several posts to looking at the use of logical fallacies by President Trump and his supporters, starting with "Moving the Goalposts:

Moving the goal posts is a logical fallacy wherein one side "changes the rules" mid-discussion. This can take the form of one side demanding higher and higher standards of proof, or of changing definitions as their positions are debunked. An example of this involves two roommates, Cain & Abel. Cain maintains that he does more of the household tasks than Abel does, and that Abel should do more. Abel disagrees and requests that Cain put together a spreadsheet showing all the household chores, who does them and how much time it takes; if the spreadsheet shows that Cain spends more time doing household duties than Abel, then Abel will adjust. Two days later, Cain presents his spreadsheet to Abel. It clearly shows that Cain does 62% of all the housework. Abel points out that he works longer hours than Cain, 50 hours/week to Cain's 35, and that mowing the lawn is a more physically demanding task than washing the dishes, and cites this as a reason not to adjust. Abel has moved the goalposts, i.e. he has changed what they were measuring after they had agreed what would be measured. Another example is personal - I was participating in a forum of ex-members of a religious group. I was taking the position in a discussion that Christianity could not be demonstrated to be more "true" than any other religion. One of my fellow posters suggested that Christianity had stood the test of time - over 2000 years and counting - and that's what showed that God was behind it. I pointed out that Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism had all predated Christianity, and if we were going to use longevity as proof of truth, then Hinduism would be the winner. My fellow poster quickly dropped the longevity argument and switched to a different standard. She had changed the goal lined mid-discussion. I have run into this pretty regularly in my political discussions over the last year.

I've encountered goal post moving fairly regularly during the election season. I've probably even done it a time or two myself! You might be in the middle of talking about Trump's immigration policies and point out that we actually do need to get better control over our borders, and that Trump is correct that as a sovereign nation we should not allow illegal immigration. The goalpost is: the premise that the United States need to control its borders. Any arguments should be restricted to whether that premise is correct or not. Someone else responds with "Yeah, but Trump's a bigot and he only wants to do this because he hates Mexicans, remember, he called them rapists. Do you see where the goal posts just moved? The argument isn't now about whether controlling the border is a good thing or a bad thing, it just became about whether Trump's policy is bad because he's a bigot. Okay, it's arguable whether Trump's a bigot, and that might be a legitimate point if we were talking about his fitness to lead, but we're not, we're talking about a specific policy. The goal post move now changed the standard for evaluating Trump's plan from "Is border control a good thing" to "Is border control advocated by a bigot a good thing".

A goal post move that pre-dated the election was the so-called "birther movement". Donald Trump and others speculated that Barack Obama might not have been born in the United States. The goal post was seeing a birth certificate proving that he was. When the birth certificate was produced, the goal post was moved to "we need to see he long form birth certificate". When that was produced many still didn't believe that it was genuine; even during last year's campaign Trump finally admitted that President Obama was born in the United States (while refusing to discuss his long advocacy of the position that Obama wasn't born here) but insisted that he had settled the issue that Clinton had originated!

President Trump's speeches and tweets have been full of moving goalposts lately. Lately he has been insisting that the 100 day mark of a Presidency is meaningless, even though he is on record numerous times laying out his plans for his first 100 days. His applause line of a policy to build a massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, paid for by Mexico has changed numerous times, including a plan for Mexico to pay for it "later" so we can get started on it early, to the latest version - that it will be built eventually, and that Mexico will pay "in some form". Obamacare would be repealed on Day One, then it would be repealed and replaced by something vaguely better, then the Democrats would come crawling to him for a deal...yikes! He claims to be the one who "alone can fix it", then he's at the mercy of disloyal Representatives & Senators. What's concerning about these legislative and policy targets is that they are flying by so fast you barely know what it is before it's changed and that Trump insists that he hasn't changed his position. Just this week he tweeted that we shouldn't let the "fake media" tell us that he'd changed his position on The Wall, hell, we don't need the media to tell us that, we just have to read and listen to what he says!

For Trump, victory isn't achieving a predetermined goal, it's what he says it is, and goal changes as circumstances change.

Trump, The Republicans & Healthcare

Who among us can convincingly argue that Healthcare was perfectly fine before the patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed into law? There were significant problems that had to be addressed. The price of healthcare itself; the price of insurance policies; the manifold exclusions set by insurers, such as no insurance for pre-existing conditions, and lifetime limits; and the tendency for the young & healthy to roll the dice and forgo insurance, requiring premiums to be higher on the older and riskier. The spotlight in recent years has focused on the extremely high prices of prescription medications as well.

The road to the passage of the PPACA was long, which initially included negotiations with Republicans, who apparently never had any intention of voting for anything that President Obama supported, even though they had a lot of input, including well over 100 amendments. Their obstructionism while feigning cooperation caused some aspects of the bill to be watered down, namely the absence of a public option, i.e. a "Medicare for everyone" option.

Part of the strategy of obstruction included egregious public lying about the details of the plan. The most memorable was the non-existent "death panels", which although thoroughly debunked, was believed and internalized by many people. Republican lawmakers and right-wing talk-show hosts and bloggers worked overtime to portray the details of the plan as inaccurately as possible.

Most of the opposition to the bill was ideological or political rather than practical. The bill, later the law, addressed many of the problems with our healthcare system: eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions, eliminating lifetime maximums, eliminating the option of insurers to drop you when you most need it, requiring that all insurance plans have minimal essential coverage, the setting up of health care insurance marketplaces where consumers could compare the different plans to make intelligent choices, offering subsidies for low- and middle-income people in order to make insurance more affordable.

It's difficult to be seriously against any of these provisions.

To be sure, there were problems. One of President Obama's promises was that you would get to keep your current insurance if you liked it. This turned out not to be true. Not because the government was overtly forcing you to change insurance, but because many policies did not meet the PPACA's requirements and, rather than fixing the plans, the insurance companies eliminated them. This is one of the clubs that today's Republicans are using to bludgeon the PPACA and kill it.

A second problem was that a central part of the law required states to expand Medicaid. The Supreme Court ruled that this was not constitutional and 19 states decided to not expand Medicaid, leaving many people out in the cold. (The plan was that anyone who was earning less than 139% of the poverty level would be eligible for the expanded Medicaid coverage, anyone with 140-400% of the federal poverty level income would be eligible for subsidies). Since the law assumed that anyone whose income was less than the poverty level would be able to get Medicaid, there was now no provision for people who needed it most to be able to get coverage, or even qualify for subsidies. By the time this Supreme Court ruling came down, the Democrats had lost control of Congress and a change in the law to fix this problem was impossible.

Another problem, one that I also view as more ideological than pragmatical, was the requirement that everyone have insurance or pay a penalty. This, surprisingly to many, was ruled constitutional by the same Supreme Court, however, it angered a lot of people who felt that they shouldn't have to buy insurance if they didn't want to, especially those who were already penalized by the Medicaid non-expansion. The people who are against this requirement fall into two categories. The first, is as I opened this paragraph with, ideological. People who have insurance, or are wealthy enough not to have to worry about medical expenses, but believe that requiring people to have insurance is an infringement on freedom. The other category consists of people who, cannot afford insurance, even with subsidies, or have decided that their money is better spent elsewhere. But insurance is all about shared risk. When you're young and healthy, you don't need, or don't think that you need insurance, but when you're older, or when calamity strikes, then you need it. This whole concept seems to elude many people.

Finally, in 2016, premiums and deductibles started to increase greatly, insurers also started leaving the marketplace leaving some areas without a plan eligible for subsidies.There were several reasons for this. One was that many people chose to pay the penalties, which were still fairly low, rather than buy insurance. Another was that the initial premiums were based on estimates of participation that turned out to be overly optimistic. Insurers started dropping out due to lower than acceptable profits and the uncertainty engendered by the Republicans insistence on repealing PPACA and finally Trump's election.

President Trump's and the Republicans' opposition to the PPACA, when not purely political, focuses mainly on the rising premiums and deductibles. Despite being cast as failing, imploding, exploding, a disaster and any other negative description that you can think of, the PPACA is for the most part, doing what it was designed to do: bringing affordable, comprehensive health care to millions of Americans who previously couldn't afford it. Republican opposition to the PPACA has always been based on the fact that it was Obama's baby, and they were hell-bent on obstructing everything that he did. In my opinion the focus in the last year on premium and deductible increases is merely an excuse.

The Republicans have talked about repealing the PPACA for the last seven years; during the 2016 presidential campaign they started talking about, not only repealing, but replacing, since they realized that many of their constituents were benefiting for the PPACA. But when the opportunity presented itself, it became apparent that they had squandered those years and had quickly cobbled together a bill that did a lot of harm and did good only for the wealthy.

Okay, premiums are going up; but the questions that no one is asking are "What would the premiums be if the PPACA had never been enacted?" Since those who are below 400% of the federal poverty line qualify for subsidies, the rate increases pertain to those who are above that amount. Of those who are earn more than that, what percentage are buying individual, and not group, insurance? It's that small percentage who are bearing the brunt of the increases.

So what needs to be fixed?

• Costs: One of the reasons premiums go up is that the ratio of older/sicker people to younger/healthier people is too high. The individual mandate was supposed to fix that, but the penalty isn't high enough to persuade someone to buy insurance if they don't want it and there are way too many exemptions. There is no mechanism for people to have to prove that they have insurance. Getting everyone in the risk pool will allow insurance companies to remain profitable and keep costs down. Increase the penalties, eliminate exceptions, tighten monitoring. 
• Costs again: Trump says that he has a brilliant plan to reduce premium costs by increasing competition. I don't think there is any such plan, but if there is, go for it. Part of this alleged plan is to allow insurance to be sold across state lines, which is already legal and encouraged under PPACA. The House bill that was passed and now the Senate bill that is being considered do not address this at all. 
• People just on the other side of the subsidy cut-off? Increase subsidies
• Find a way to cover the people who cannot get affordable coverage because their state did not approve Medicaid expansion. Put pressure on Republican governors or find a way to expand coverage federally. 
• Insurers leaving the marketplace: Require all plans to be offered on the Healthcare exchanges, possibly loosen the requirements of what has to be offered in each plan. This would allow for a wider range of options, but would give consumers a better tool for comparing all policies and give eligibility for subsidies for any and all policies. 

Understand that the American Healthcare system is very complex with many moving parts. There is no simple fix, despite political posturing to the contrary.