In response, Summers is seeking to bolster his credentials among liberals. He's rumored to be having lunch with Gloria Steinem to repair his reputation as a sexist, and he's now breaking out his allies to appear liberal to make Obama think that he's got support on the left. In this Wall Street Journal blurb, journalist Sara Murray and Gerald F. Seib take the bait (though they may not have written the title) and write A Vote for Summers-From the Left, in which they cite The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn as a liberal supporter of Summers. Cohn dutifully discusses Summers's credentials on various keynesian economic policy concepts, but who exactly does Cohn represent?
He's an editor at the New Republic, a mostly centrist ideologically muddled magazine that comes out with occasionally interesting insider gossip-style pieces. He's written a book on health care, and written articles for "the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and Slate." How does that validate him as a liberal supporter of Summers? He was not, for instance, elected into office and did not join the progressive caucus. He has not worked on elections on behalf of liberal candidates, and he has not as far as I know successfully moved forward liberal policies in liberal coalitions. He hasn't built a popular power of liberals, and he hasn't started a left-wing activist blog, written a self-consciously progressively ideological book (like Naomi Klein) or organized workers or engaged in voter registration in disenfranchised communities or any number of other activities that would validate him as a spokesperson for 'the left'.
What, exactly, is Cohn, except a journalist with instincts towards liberal policy solutions? There's nothing wrong with being a journalist putting out reasonable solutions to vexing policy problems, but the game whereby people at The New Republic get to reap the credibility of being nonpartisan Village journalists while also being selected to speak on behalf of the left should stop. I mean, it's 2008.
... I've made the case against Summers multiple times, but for those of you who weren't paying attention, he was a key figure in deregulating our financial system and a cause of the current meltdown. I deleted a bunch of concern troll comments and will begin banning shortly. |
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