| First, Ezra Klein initially characterized Obama's response as an "oppo document" - which made me think they'd gone after Krugman's kindergarten records, the price of his haircuts or his high school drug habits, or something. But no, it was just a response to his article. It didn't read like an attack to me at all. It read like engagement.
Was it world's most brilliant response? Maybe not, but I like seeing campaigns and movement thought leaders engage like this, and I want more of it! Much more, even. So I can't understand why the response was "my god they're criticizing Paul Krugman." It should be "yay, they're engaging with progressives!" If I'd gotten a response to the econ piece I wrote for DMI last month, I would have been beside myself, regardless of whether the "attacks" came from the left, right or from Mars.
Second, "campaign X is attacking idea Y... from the right" is not a trump card or a logical endpoint in a discussion. We have to start explaining clearly and succinctly why they're wrong, even if that means repeating ourselves a lot. In fact I think that's exactly what it means; this is what developing principles is all about. Starting very, very soon, these ideas are going to be attacked from the right a whole bunch harder than they are now. Our responses, whether they're sourced in the movement or out in a campaign, have to be sharp. This is how we develop them. There are going to be disagreements between campaigns and the movement.
Third, much as I respect his thinking, writing and policy expertise, I have strong concerns about Mr. Krugman's political judgment. I caught a few snippets of him on Book Notes on NPR the other night. He had a couple of howlers that were so shocking to me that I had to pull over and jot them down. I can't seem to find a podcast or a transcript, so these are approximate based on my scrawlings:
"Conservatives haven't really sold their economic agenda to the American people."
and
"There's no real mass demand in favor of tax cuts."
Wow. These lines are so far from my experience as an organizer that I don't even know what to do with them. I've found that the conservative movement owns the economic thinking of great swaths of people in the US down to the level of it being common sense. It's practically baked into a great number of people's assumptions about how the world works, including many who call themselves progressive. And while there may not be a great outcry for tax cuts if you ask people outright, any R can beat any D if they successfully paint the Dem as a tax raiser. Just ask Phil Angelides.
These comments sound to me like the thinking of someone who never gets very far outside of a particular policy-world bubble. Nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind that a campaign is, among other things, a gigantic machine for listening to where voters are at. That is invariably going to provide a different perspective.
Fourth, regarding the substance of the matter: I think starting with a mandate is a terrible idea, for two reasons. First, signing people into a broken system before taking any kind of cost containment steps isn't going to help; all you're doing is giving the insurance industry yet still more monthly checks! And second, it's likely the easiest point of attack. The ads would write themselves: "Obama wants to force you to sign up for socialized health care." etc etc. It seems likely that Obama is thinking more steps ahead on this than Krugman in terms of the political reality and getting 'er done.
Actually one more point, re-reading Chris's post about Obama's "schizophrenia" regarding how the campaigns engage with progressive new media. The campaigns have learned that behavior for entirely observable reasons. Look at the comments in Obama's first post on dailykos, or the fact of this site pronouncing his campaign dead in blaring headlines just five weeks ago. Think of things from the perspective of the campaigns. Of course you would have to keep such a site at arm's length, at least some of the time. So this schizophrenia is in part generated by blogs themselves - and may be something we can all strive to create less of. |
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