Irrelevant?

Randy Barnett does not allow comments on his posts, so I'll have to use this space to express my befuddlement at his latest, titled "Unpopular?"  in an apparent reference to another (fairly reasonable) post on VC by David Bernstein.  Randy reprints a celebratory item from the Weekly Standard about the victory in Ohio of a ballot measure stating that "In Ohio, no law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system."  The item admits that the initiative will have no legal effect (I know some have argued it will actually have negative effects with respect to the operation of other health laws, but I'll put that to one side here), but champions it as a "message" measure.  (I had thought many current politicians and citizen activists had said they were tired of "messages" and wanted actual results, but I'll leave that to one side as well.)  The item notes that high margin of success of the measure.  Randy then adds:

This in the same election that unions spent millions in a successful bid to repeal the Republican restrictions on the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

A lot of this confuses me, especially the "This."  

Does he mean "in a liberal state?"  Ohio is a swing state, not a liberal one, with a Republican governor.  If he just means "this, in a state that repealed the governor's restrictions on public sector collective bargaining rights," what does the relative unpopularity of one law have to do with the relative unpopularity of another?  If Ohioans love tangerines with breakfast but hate it when people cut in line at movies, does that tell us something useful?  

And what's with the one-sided reference to money?  Is he suggesting that the voters were cozened by the manipulative efforts and heavy spending of the unions?  If so, I have a story to tell him about gooses and ganders; as his blogmate Ilya could tell him, voters who can be cozened by one group on one question can certainly be cozened by another group on another question.  Is there a reason that he mentions spending in one measure, and lays it at the feet of "unions," without mentioning anything about spending or sources of funding in the other measure?  If so, why?  One reason might be that he believes the claims of the supporters of the healthcare nullification measure that they are a simple grassroots effort.  That could be true, for all I know (the pro-nullifcation group didn't seem to have spent much yet in the last campaign finance filing I could find), or it could be false (especially if there was substantial "independent" spending on ads and other materials by other groups).  That leads to the other possible reason: that he simply doesn't know.  I did my best to hunt for information about the sources of funding of the pro-nullification advocates, and came up a blank; the web page for one group is no longer operative and the web page for the other is vague at best about where its money comes from, so we'll have to wait for the next campaign finance filing to know more.

It seems to me that a post written in a reasonably scholarly, or even journalistic, way would have discussed all of this, at least to some degree, and would have avoided making claims of some connection between the two measures unless more information were available.  It would have acknowledged a lack of equal knowledge about the sources of funding of both groups.  It would have been more nuanced than suggestive.  It might even have noted that some argued that the nullification measure was worded vaguely in order to garner voter support (the title of the ballot provision says it is designed to "preserve the freedom of Ohioans to choose their health care and health care coverage"), might have confused some voters, and might not be a very good gauge of actual public sentiment in Ohio on the federal healthcare law, let alone its particulars.

Of course, there are arguments about whether a scholar is obliged to meet scholarly standards in all situations.  It's Randy's blog and Randy's choice.  But I suspect I was not the only one who came away from his post confused about its purpose and fairness, and convinced it was more of a press release or set of talking points than a thoughtful blog post by an academic with substantial knowledge of the issue under discussion.  Too bad.