Find a Paul Krugman column in which he blames Hillary Clinton for something she has done, rather than what appears to be his favorite thing to do lately- blame Obama and Obama supporters for things Hillary Clinton has done.
Bonus assignment- find a Krugman column in which Obama’s name is mentioned where he does not go ballistic over his health care plan.
Christ on a crutch the Clinton kool-aid is some powerful shit.
*** Update ***
Much, much more here.
rob!
Paul Krugman makes me sad. emo sad.
he was on NPR’s Fresh Air back in 2003, when 90% of the country was ready to put Bush on Mt Rushmore, slamming him for his economic policies, and saying that the real goal to was to bankrupt the government so it could stop with all those silly programs that help people. and he was right, way ahead of the curve.
so it saddens me that anyone who supports Hillary–no matter how bright they are–eventually turns into a dishonest talking point-spouting shill, as Krugman has become–he twisted himself into knots trying not to take Hillary to task for her Gas Holiday nonsense.
how does she do this to normally sane, reasonable people? does it take place gradually over time or is it a pill you swallow?
JL
It appears that Krugman insulted Hillary’s supporters also because she is going to win and how dare he assume the nominee will be Obama. Jeralyn’s (Talk Left) commenters were hilarious.
Quiddity
The Krug-Man wrote:
But doesn’t say who she has received unfair treatment from. For the most part, it’s been the press.
But it gets better:
So P.K. is expecting Obama to control the press? If only.
Finally:
Besides the insanity of a BO/HC ticket, this question: Who made it an ugly primary fight?
Has Krugman never seen Terry McAuliffe or Lanny Davis on television?
(John: Thanks for posting on this. I was beginning to wonder if anybody else was noticing Krugman’s odd behavior.)
bub
I believe he heavily criticized Hilary’s Gas Tax Holiday. I don’t know if in it he explicitly favored Obama’s plan.
bub
Eh, nevermind
I found this link
In which he mentions Obama’s health plan.
Antonius
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed. Normally a Krugman fan, I’ve been dismayed to read his series of columns on the Democratic primary.
Bill H
I read that column just a few minutes ago and wondered what planet I was on. I looked out my window.. Hmmm, looks like Earth.
ThymeZone
It is sad, the collapse of Krugman’s command of respect and credibility among crowds who formerly held him in very high regard.
But I look at the phenomenon as a correction. I don’t think he ever really had the grasp of the strange nexus between politics and values that we thought he had. I mean, the guy is an economist. For me, that’s about one notch away from being a “software engineer,” one of the great oxymorons of our age. He practices an art that has long been considered worthy of derision. It’s not a science.
See linky.
They call Economics a “social science.” That’s just about food-spitting funny, isn’t it?
Krugman is a bright guy, but he’s a bright guy who has fallen in love with some of the ideas in his head, and like the neocons, or the libertarians, or the Dobsonites, or for that matter, Al Qaeda, he now is loyal to a position and no longer loyal to any intellectual integrity the position once represented.
He has always been This Krugman, it’s just that he wasn’t writing about it every other day.
jimchaos
Krugman’s going so thoroughly in the tank for Nixon-in-a-Pantsuit, and staying submerged in the face of any and all new information, has been probably the second most depressing event of this primary season. (Number one in a landslide: realizing that the nuts on the right were substantially correct about the character of the Clintons, if not their actual nefarious acts.)
A few months ago I read an interview Krugman did with, I think, Josh Marshall, in which he really gave away the game. Marshall asked him about Clinton’s Iraq vote and whether that bothered him; his response boiled down to “I don’t think any Democrat would start another war, so I’m not concerned about what seems like the differences between them on foreign policy because in reality there won’t be any differences.” I can’t remember whether or not Kyl-Lieberman had come up by then–but Clinton had never repudiated her Iraq vote. In the last few months, as she’s threatened to “obliterate” Iran, not a peep from Krugman.
It’s terribly sad. This guy really was the single most courageous and insightful progressive voice in the country–and arguably the only one with any kind of hearing–from 2001 through 2005. My initial theory was that he supported the Clintons because he didn’t think Obama hated the Republicans enough and Krugman wanted to punish them to the maximum extent possible, but if that were true, you’d think Clinton’s embrace of Scaife, Rove, and so many other monsters of the radical right would bug him. Evidently not.
johninpt
I’d be worried that the spiteful Clinton Kool-aid drinkers could deny Obama a general election victory, except that they’ve proven themselves every bit as inept and unconvincing as their candidate.
marjo
TPM has a nice distillation of all the Sunday talking heads about the Clinton gaffe. When Bob Sheafer asks Wolfson about Terry McAuliffe’s insistence that Clinton doesn’t have to apologize to Obama because it “wasn’t about him,” Wolfson says he agrees with McAuliffe and that Obama’s camp came out Friday attacking Clinton over the remark. Wolfson said that the Obama’s attack was “unfortunate.”
Of course, what was it that the Obama camp (Burton) said that was so “unfortunate” on Friday?
Clinton’s words were “unfortunate and have no place in this campaign.” So Wolfson uses the same word back to describe the Obama “attack.” Through the looking glass?
This was after Obama was directly quoted as saying that he accepted Clinton’s apology and “let’s move on.”
So, will the Clinton camp now accuse Obama of shamefully accepting her apology when she did not have to apologize to him because it wasn’t about him?
am I confused yet?
Notorious P.A.T.
Ahahahahahahahaha!
ThymeZone
Good info. I think it sort of reinforces what I am saying about the K-guy also. He seems to be one of those who look at policy summaries and conclude that there isn’t much profoundly different between the policy resumes of a Clinton or an Obama, so, the details don’t matter, and the personalities don’t matter. Just plug in the policy variables and get the desired result. Sort of like running a spreadsheet.
Unfortunately, as we have discovered to our horror in the last 16 years, these president folks are not boxes of policies, they are people, with all the hideous warts and faults and defects we associate with people, and they are prone to behaving in colossally bad ways at our expense.
After 16 years of having this crap acted out on us we are just a little tired of it, and we want a new kind of personality to have a go at it. That’s why people flock to Obama, because they see him as something different and probably better. And they have run away from Clinton because they see her as something we are sick to death of.
It’s really that simple.
And of course, who better to not get that, than an economist in love with his own ideas?
Eural Joiner
I’m beginning to suspect that Krugman will soon be joining the hallowed hall of “Really Smart Guys I used to Respect But Now Find Ludacris (Not the Rapper).”
Other names on said list: Tom Friedman (prior to 2000 a great writer/analyst; post-2001 not so much) and Victor Davis Hanson (who writes great history and then completely ignores it to come up with some bullshit reason to support our disaster in Iraq).
Oh, well. C’est la vie, no?
Robert Johnston
Krugman took so much unfair heat for his thoroughly appropriate, accurate, and exceedingly mild excoriation of Obama on his health care “plan” that the coverage of Obama became personal for him. Clinton and her die-hards have since shown themselves to be every bit as insipid and substance free as Obama and the Obamabots were on health care, but they’ve never lied about Krugman and questioned his integrity simply because he told the truth, even if they’ve acted that way towards other people. Krugman’s human, and taking things personally is just how humans react to being vilified for telling the clear-cut truth.
mr. whipple
“Bonus assignment- find a Krugman column in which Obama’s name is mentioned where he does not go ballistic over his health care plan.”
Dunno if anyone has mentioned it yet, but Krugman lauds both Edwards’ and Obams’s health care plans in his “Conscience of a Liberal” book. He doesn’t mention Hillary’s AT ALL.
Clearly, he’s just become a douchebag of late.
ThymeZone
Only if you try to see all that as if it were a rational discussion of facts and ideas.
If you see it as theater, it all makes perfect sense.
It’s all theater.
If we had a media that were capable of being more than just stagehands and prompters in this theater, it would be terrific. They could, you know, call out the actors and steer them towards actual facts and ideas, and toward some notion of accountability to … us. But, they see their job as one of theatrical production, not information, and so … without a program, it’s hard not to be confused.
John Cole
That makes sense and would explain why every time Obama’s name is mention Krugman feels the need to trash his health care plan.
KCinDC
(Copying my comment from the other thread now that this more appropriate thread exists.)
Krugman really needs to go back to writing about economics. His political insights are no more interesting than those of some random blogger. Why should the NYT publish them, any more than they’d publish his recipes?
Shade Tail
Robert: That may be true, but it doesn’t excuse Krugman for mischaracterizing both the Obama *and* Clinton camps with his simplistic “good vs evil” false dichotomy. He might have been right about his health care criticism (*I* agreed with it), and he might have been unfairly attacked for it by a particular crowd of people, but extrapolating from that to the entire pro-Obama movement really is an unforgivable lapse from someone as smart as him. And it really isn’t difficult to stay unbiased and avoid letting your emotions take control of you. I can manage it, so Krugman can also.
Bottom line: He should know better, and letting his own passions get the better of him is no excuse.
Rick Taylor
I had a huge amount of respect for Krugman during the Bush years; he was one of the very rare voices of sanity in the main-stream media shouting the emperor has no clothes. He was influential in convincing me to lean towards Clinton early on; I still think his criticisms of Obama attacking from the right on health care had some merit. He’s very much a policy wonk, which Clinton tends to appeal to. It’s been sad to see him get so far in the tank for the Clinton campaign.
ThymeZone
What a crock, sir. First of all, Krugman’s healthcare schtick was entirely subjective and a matter of his opinion, not “clear cut truth” as you call it. The clear cut truth is that Clinton’s approach to reform of healthcare hasn’t changed in 15 years since the last time she totally fucked up a good opportunity to make progress in that area, and left us screwed for the 15 years since and for at least a good slice of time into the future from now. I hold her and her fatheaded husband personally responsible for that failure and for the miserable situation we are in now. Mister Clinton’s response to that debacle was to sulk and get himself blowjobs in the Oval Office and then impeached, which also greatly advanced our progressive causes.
Krugman became a fucking pitchman for a couple of snake oil salesmen, Billary and Hillary and Traveling Remedy Show. That’s the clear cut truth.
And then, when he exposed himself as a sellout, he decided to “take personally” his hurt feelings and act it all out on the pages of the New York Times, where, you know, they give him a soapbox on a world stage. He owes better than that, and that’s why he is being flayed here today.
KCinDC
Bub, I don’t think it counts as heavily criticizing the gas tax holiday if he says her policy is wrong but it’s no big deal.
Will Danz
I didn’t think much of either Obama or Clinton’s health care plans — too mild for the crisis we’re actually in. But I also think Krugman overstated Clinton’s plans virtues, while exaggerating the weakenesses of Obama’s.
But to paraphrase his candidate Hillary — if he can’t handle some heat, he’s in the wrong damned job. ALL political opinion columnists get heat, and a fair amount of it nasty. Welcome to the internet. But if they let that get in the way of their analysis, then they’re not fit for the job.
Chris Andersen
Krugman’s political analysis of the Clinton/Obama race has been spotty at best. However, I have never read a column of his about Obama’s health care plan that I would characterize as “ballistic”. He has been critical of Obama’s plan, but his criticism has been reasoned, not emotional.
Queixada
I think I’m losin’ it man..
I can’t even stand to watch her attempt to act like a normal human anymore. I actually shrieked in terror and agony. Then I started talking to myself. Man I’m sick.
ThymeZone
I’m with you, that is WAY too painful to watch.
Oh sweet Jesus. I need to wash my eyes out with soap.
Rick Taylor
It was this article that convinced me Krugman was unable to be objective regarding Obama and Clinton. It was a bizarre attack on a straw man. It does reveal why there’s some division there. He’s a policy wonk, and Obama is very much an inspirational leader. I had an interesting conversation with my sister, back when I was still supporting Clinton, and I was stressing policy proposals and she was stressing Obama’s ability to inspire people, something that’s going to be very important in the trying times to come. In retrospect I believe my sister was right and I was wrong; the policy proposals are there in Obama’s campaign, but making them the centerpiece is not the way to win elections or to get things done; this is politics.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Agree with much of the above re: Krugman. I love the guy for standing up against the wind during the Bush years, but the quality of his political analysis of late has been a let down.
There is a larger subtext IMHO. Both the New York and Chicago media have adopted a significant home-town bias in favor of their respective Senators during this contest. You still see an across the board spectrum of opinion in both markets, but the Chicago media taken as a whole are noticeably skewed pro-Obama and anti-Clinton, while conversely the NY media are skewed anti-Obama and pro-Clinton.
Krugman is showing signs of the NY-centric intellectual circles he travels in.
One of the interesting things to watch in an Obama administration will be whether this Northeast vs. the Midwest phenomenom is temporary, or is part of a longer-term shift in cultural and opinion shaping influence away from NY.
I’m watching especially for signs indicating what sort of relationship Obama and his group will have with the bond market-industrial complex on Wall St. that Kevin Phillips is always harping about. Obama has been one of the big beneficiaries of contributions from the hedge funds (along with HRC), but I don’t know if that is a temporary alliance of convenience or not. Time will tell.
Rick Taylor
I really do wonder what’s going on. It’s like you said, it drives both her supporters and her detractors crazy.
Cain
I was reading some article on the washington post about Clinton blaming Obama. The article mentions that Clinton campaign is partially pissed because after Obama sent out a statement saying he believes Clinton at her word but behind the scenes he’s been sending out communications pointing out her remarks. From the article:
Pony’s showing his teeth. He’s obviously want to get this over with and is being more subtle. The likely effect though is that it’ll drive Clinton supporters crazy. I haven’t seen these commentaries posted anywhere… So I have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. Has anybody else seen them?
The article is here
On their part though, Clinton needs to stop whining.. considering that Clinton made a lot bigger deal when the MUP made a graffe (if you want to call it one). Lastly, the MUP should not say one thing in public and allow his campaign to do something else. He doesn’t need these cheap tricks to win. He’s already got it in the bag.
cain
Brachiator
Good stuff. Krugman and Sean Wilentz are running neck and neck for the honor of being previously respected columnists willing to sacrifice their reputations to become Clinton kool-aid drinkers. Wilentz is currently best known for a notorious piece in The New Republic where he blamed the Obama campaign for practically every negative attack which occurred during the primary campaign while vigorously denying that Bill or Hillary Clinton were responsible for anything.
This is political hack work at its finest. Despite widespread negative public sentiment at Senator Clinton’s recent RFK remarks, Clinton supporters are strongly pushing Hillary for the VP slot in a desperate attempt to salvage her political career, as noted in recent NY Post articles.
By the way, the fiercest Sun Queen acolytes who insisted that Hillary in the only woman who can be the first woman president are now insisting that she is the only woman who can be Obama’s VP, dissing potential contenders such as Kathleen Sebelius (Ambinder Veepstakes Lists).
The Clintons are working hard to stoke this sense of resentment and entitlement in Hillary’s most devoted worshipers, because the VP slot is their last chance to preserve their political legacy. Somebody finally noticed that she ranks about 36 out of 48 in the Senate, so the idea that she can rise to Senate majority leader or become a major player there is just as fanciful as the the math that she uses to “prove” that she can win the nomination.
Similarly, another fanciful notion, that Obama can put Hillary on the Supreme Court is being countered by the fact that Hillary has never demonstrated any legal acumen much above the level of a Harriet Miers.
And although the mainstream media has been too lazy to even begin to broach the subject, my cynical side believes that the $109 million that the Clintons have amassed over the past few years includes quite a few IOUs from people who expected to get favors or influence when Ms Inevitable became president. These people will be pissed big time if their potential gravy train gets derailed. The VP slot is the last chance for the Clintons to get any of their friends into government jobs where they can dispense favors.
I think you have this wrong. Krugman is a universal health care zealot who assumed that all the Democratic presidential contenders would bow down to him on this issue. Krugman was insulted that Obama refused to kiss his butt on the matter of health care plans.
Tom in Texas
Maybe Michelle said something in his Economics class that still bugs him.
Davis X. Machina
Krugman was gunning for CCEA, just like Gregory Mankiw, or maybe even Treasury, like Larry Summers — he’s twice the economist either one of them is, and the party owes him — and now it’s gone.
Of course he’s angry.
Cain
Weird, wordpress ate my link!
here it is again
cain
Tom in Texas
Didn’t Hill basically discount his entire profession during the gas tax thing. You know, the whole “who ya gonna trust, a buncha Ivy League eggheads or this old gal tellin ya what it is.” How the hell could he not hold a grudge when she disowned his entire reason for writing?
Rick Taylor
Rehashing old ground and old opinions that don’t matter anymore, Krugman’s criticism of Obama’s health care originally made sense to me. If you make health care optional, people who are less at risk are less likely to buy into it, driving up the costs for everyone. Since then, I’ve learned from other economists there may be more to it than that; if 1jpb is reading this, perhaps he’ll make some comments, as he was pressing this point hard on Talk Left. The bottom line is, Krugman’s argument sounds good, but I just don’t know enough about health care myself to really know how sound it is.
He also made the political argument that by attacking Hillary from the right, pushing the theme she was forcing people to buy health care, and resorting to Thelma and Louise like adds, he was going to make it more difficult for health care reform work by cutting off our options. This is one when he came out more strongly against Obama, I still think this point has merit. It’s just that since then, Hillary has slammed Obama from the right on so many issues (beginning with the commander in chief threshold remarks), it’s rendered the point moot, to say the least.
Hillary Clinton does seem to appeal to smart wonks; I’d put a number of generals who support her in that category as well. I’m not sure what to make of that; I originally I assumed it was she because she listened to people had a depth of understanding of policy that they respected; now I honestly don’t know.
J. Michael Neal
On the health care plans, Krugman is right that, on the margins, Clinton’s plan is better than Obama’s. However, the difference isn’t that great, because neither of the plans make long term sense. If we’re going to continue to use private health insurance, then a mandate is a good idea. The stupid part isn’t the lack of a mandate, though; it’s keeping private health insurance around. I have to think that both of the candidates know this, and their plans are really about getting universal coverage in the door, and then moving all the way to single payer. Given that, the important question is which plan is most likely to get itself through the door. In that regard, I don’t think it makes much difference.
The other thing about Krugman is that his political analysis has never been that impressive. It only seems that way because, for several years, he was the only one with a major venue who was critical of the Bush administration. Now that others are on board with that, it was inevitable that his stuff was going to seem worn. Give him credit for the courage to criticize Bush when no one else would, but don’t mistake that for penetrating insight.
Rick Taylor
Actually, ignoring healthcare, Krugman’s most recent articles remind me of BTD more than anything else. Obama has to reach out to the disaffected wing of the party, Hillary as vp, recognize Florida, etc. Krugman stretched way beyond his field of economics during the Bush years, and I believe he was successful, though obviously I’m biased. Here it just feels like he’s out of his depth; his work feels hackish. There’s a diary from another economist at kos commenting on the lastest article here
.
ThymeZone
I do. I call it AUMF.
Calouste
It has been mentioned a few times on this blog that it looks like the Clintons have written IOUs on a future presidency in exchange for $109 million, and now it looks like the IOUs are going to be worthless.
So what do we expect the holders of those now as good as worthless IOUs are going to do? Throw another million or two towards some private eyes to dig up the dirt? What about Murdoch? He gave Clinton the help of Fox, and he can turn it around again in the blink of an eye. Same for Sciafe.
eric jung
yeah, i remember krugman did give hillary shit for her gas tax holiday. and then he said “oh it’s a minor issue and i still think she’s better than obama”, since he’s incapable of making any point about anything without adding some snide comment about our muslim lord.
Mary
I haven’t been able to listen to Clinton make a speech for several weeks (her speech-making voice really bugs me, her interview voice is fine), but that little bit of dancing was actually rather endearing in its goofiness.
montana
Krugman has always suffered from hubris. Once he takes a stand he cannot be wrong, he cannot change his mind and his defense gets more and more outrageous. It is too bad, because he does have some good ideas, but cannot see the distinction between honest criticism and blind opposition.
For example, I agree with his pinning significant blame for the current financial crisis on Greenspan. I believe he missed the boat on the comparison between Clinton’s and Obama’s health care plans. But, in each case, and regardless of whether I agree with his position or not, he bangs out a one-note song over and over that eventually makes me just tune him out.
Screw him and the entire NY times opinion writer stable (sometimes not Frank Rich, who can be thoughtful at times). They are just corporate media sell-outs with a big “look at me” factor, hiding behind the legend of the NY Times. They contribute to their own celebrity not pushing towards a better answer.
Wilfred
Krugman is just another blowhard. He bet the house on Clinton and now has no other choice but to keep on keeping on; maybe he was promised something in a Clinton administration.
All of the pro-Clinton hacks – him, Begala, Carville et al. are going to find it a lot harder to be important after Obama is elected. I don’t see how any of these people are going to get a reprieve from the sort of nonsense they’ve put out during this campaign. Good riddance to all of them.
Notorious P.A.T.
She’s drinking beer! ! ! *She’s drinking beer!* That means she’s one of us and we should totally vote for her! because she’s drinking beer which is how I know she can relate to us common folk who all drink beer so OMG OMG I’m gonna vote for her ! !! ! ! !
Brachiator
This is an oversimplification, and Krugman knows it, but is not intellectually honest enough to admit it. It’s kind of like insisting that you can’t raise the minimum wage because business owners will have to increase prices.
This is just pointless fear mongering. Krugman has a hard on for universal health care. He is not interested in debating options, he wants everyone to simply acknowledge the Inevitability of his approach.
By the way, Massachusetts has a health insurance mandate. If you do not obtain a plan, and cannot prove to MA that you have a good reason for doing so on their form HC (such as a religious objection), you lose your personal exemptions on your tax return. This is punitive by any reasonable definition. But no one has been able to show that overall health outcomes have improved in the state.
And as a current NYT story demonstrates, some of the issues over health care costs are more about the poor and the affluent, not the sick and the healthy (In Central Europe, Better Health Care Comes With a Cost)
There is a strong case to be made for health care reform. But it’s going to need something more than Krugman’s rigid prescriptions. And besides, isn’t he now to be dismissed as a know-nothing elitist?
Policy wonks may make great advisers, but they are not necessarily good leaders. They don’t know how to compromise or to transform policy ideas into workable proposals or law. Sometimes, they don’t even have a lick of common sense.
I noted how during one presidential debate Hillary dazzled the crowd with her detailed and nuanced knowledge of Pakistan foreign policy, but then crashed to earth with the idiotic idea that she would get Pakistan to put their nuclear weapons under UN control.
She bashed Obama for being inexperienced and unready for suggesting that he might consider unilateral action in Pakistan to attack Osama bin Laden, but cannot admit that US military planners have developed plans to do exactly that because Pakistan is trying to placate both Bush and local fundamentalists, and are not as invested in the “war on terror” as the White House and the Pentagon might like.
Queixada
Check this out
When you see stats like that, it worries you less that there are Clinton supporters out there who seemingly have been watching a completely different Democratic Primary than we have.
Queixada
Using that logic, I’d be much more inclined to vote for her, under the ruse of being ‘one of the guys’, if she’d prove herself by making an appearance on Jackass and out drinking that one guy. You know, the guy who drank horse jizz?
I digress, my mind sinks deeper into the abyss as long as she’s on the news forefront.
KCinDC
LeftTurn, that pro-Clinton New York environment must be part of the reason TPM keeps posting a front-page story every time there’s some poll somewhere that favors Hillary. Sure, there’s plenty of criticism of Hillary from Josh Marshall, but the poll stories in particular — often by Greg Sargent or Eric Kleefeld — seem biased in their selection, especially as Hillary’s chances of getting the nomination become increasingly fanciful.
Brachiator
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the political waters, here comes Bill to work the theme of “Hillary is a Feminist Goddess Being Brought Down by a Vast Sexist Conspiracy.” The latest here: (Bill Clinton: ‘Cover up’ hiding Hillary Clinton’s chances)
The Clintons are masters of bullshit. They have not strayed from their message for a second, which is to do everything possible to deny, attack and belittle the legitimacy of Obama’s candidacy. Hillary is the Once and Future Candidate, She Who Must Be Nominated.
The math doesn’t matter, the delegate count doesn’t matter, the popular vote (an irrelevant metric) doesn’t matter. Hell, space and time apparently don’t matter since according to Bill, Hillary has already won the general election, and we are all sexists if we do not acknowledge She Who is and Always Will Be Inevitable.
Ron
I find Krugman to be eminently fair, but he’s going to do this until Hillary drops out.
Brachiator
Then I guess that we will be stuck with Krugman’s worst side for a long time. The latest comments from Bill suggest that he is willing to accuse the superdelegates of defying “the will of the people” if they don’t give in to Hillary’s demand that she be made the nominee.
Although I don’t often agree with him, I think that Andrew Sullivan gets to the sad, despicable heart of Krugman’s Obama problem:
Rome Again
If Obama wins the nomination, why is he not allowed to pick a VP like all other nominees have? What is this bullshit about allowing others to pick your VP for you?
If Obama were to cave in to this Hillary for VP crap, then, he would lose MY vote.
Chuck Butcher
RE: health care plans, WTF? Congress will do what they will do and the difference between what either proposes and what is needed is so vast as to make their differences immaterial. Right, for profit health care is the answer, it has worked ever so well…
Why an economist would say, ooooh cooool about either of these plans is completely beyond me. You could run a lot of countries with the associated costs of our for profit system. Oh, look – a pony…
Jack Roy
I’m pretty sure Krugman has at times criticized Hillary Clinton for loving America too much.
Rome Again
There is good and bad in everyone. No one person is all good and all right, or all wrong and all bad. I’m sure even GWB has some endearing quality about him, although I’ve never been able to pinpoint it myself.
Robert Johnston
That’s the difference between the political and the personal. Clinton’s idiocy about economists was political, not personal to Krugman. He would have been much harder on her for it if he didn’t hold a personal grudge against Obama and his supporters. This, in fact, should serve as an object lesson to the people who’ve been hardest on Krugman: if you deliberately and speciously alienate your natural allies, they won’t be your allies.
Krugman was accused of personal intellectual corruption just because he pointed out that Clinton’s health care plan is better than Obama’s. He was, if anything, too mild in his criticism on that point precisely because he is an economist and he criticized the plans only on their economic merits, without considering what passing a weaker plan destined for ineffectiveness like Obama’s might do to the political viability of a genuinely universal health insurance plan in the future.
Krugman is still Krugman, but anything he has to say about Obama and Clinton has to be interpreted though the lens of the past. Frankly, I’ve been quickly skimming or skipping his more recent Obama columns. They’re not particularly readable. But they’re also not reflective of any genuine political change on Krugman’s part, and to whatever extent the quality of his analysis has slipped in those columns, it hasn’t slipped in his other columns. Once the Democratic primary is a distant memory he’ll get over it, if progressives let him. If so-called progressives continue to blast him for merely being human, he’ll be lost to the cause for the duration of an Obama presidency, and that would be a shame and a significant loss.
oh really
I’ve been sending dismayed (at first; later totally disgusted) email to Krugman following each of his columns. I no longer have any respect for the man. He latched onto health care early on as the reason why Obama would be the worst thing to ever happen to the planet Earth, and in succeeding columns always found a way to excuse or ignore Clinton’s missteps, while faithfully returning to hammering Obama’s health care plan.
As I pointed out to Krugman, the only significant difference between the two candidates’ plans is that Clinton’s uses mandates to achieve universal coverage. Both plans stink in that they continue to rely on employers and insurance companies, but Krugman ignores the real difference between the two plans — Clinton’s offers the Republicans the sledgehammer they will use to defeat all health care reform — mandates. Krugman’s analysis of the two plans has been done in academic isolation. In the real world, mandates have zero chance of getting through the Senate. Worse still, they will be used to taint any health care plan they are associated with. Unless Krugman expects the Democrats to hold 70 seats in the new Senate, there is no way he can possibly believe that mandates will survive to become law. If Clinton were elected, I fully expect mandates would be the cross on which her plan would be crucified, and with it any chance for meaningful reform in the foreseeable future.
I have been mystified by Krugman’s behavior. He’s not an intelligent, even-handed analyst. He’s a shill for Clinton. He’s shown it over and over and it’s become really embarrassing.
mere mortal
ThymeZone wrote
Read some history, moron.
And Cole, I hate these assignments, unless you can guarantee that a successful completion of the task will lead to some change or realization on your part. In short, the response to this assignment is “to what end?”.
You have assured your readers that you cannot be reasoned with in regards to the Clintons or Hillary Clinton’s campaign, so I feel that this is a fool’s errand.
The fool being you, of course. I’ll take Krugman’s side vs. yours in any attempt at reason, bar none.
Tom in Texas
Talking reason with Clinton supporters is like talking Spanish to Lou Dobbs. It’s useless since they are willfully proud of their ignorance and don’t hear anything other than the voices in their heads anyway. All you end up doing is raising their blood pressure.
bernarda
From the article you link, “His health care plan is seriously deficient, but he will nonetheless be running on a far more worker-friendly platform than his opponent.”
Is that going ballistic over Obama’s plan? Maybe I will have to look up the word. And I guess this must be an example of him blaming Obama supporters and not Clinton.
“Mr. Obama will be the Democratic nominee. But he has a problem: many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment.”
It is Clinton’s supporters he is mentioning, not Clinton. Of course it is possible he has read this blog and has an idea of how sectarian so many Obama supporters are.
“So what should Mr. Obama and his supporters do?
Most immediately, they should realize that the continuing demonization of Mrs. Clinton serves nobody except Mr. McCain.”
Maybe the demonization(see this blog)was justified, but do Obama supporters want to win the general, or just hate Clinton?
“Mrs. Clinton needs to do her part: she needs to be careful not to act as a spoiler during what’s left of the primary, she needs to bow out gracefully if, as seems almost certain, Mr. Obama receives the nod, and she needs to campaign strongly for the nominee once the convention is over.”
That is at least an implicit criticism of Clinton. In a previous thread you should see the vulgar insults I got for suggesting that Obama supporters should try to be as classy as their candidate.
pinola
Appears to me that Krugman just may have gotten some hatemail from some overzealous Obama supporters and he took it personally and conflated it to the Obama campaign.
Only rational explanation I can find for an otherwise rational man.