Finally, on December 7th, Krugman wrote another column about Obama and health care, this time called "The Mandate Muddle" It was then that I knew for sure: these two distinguished liberals, one a NY Times columnist and Professor at Princeton and the other a former Secretary of Labor and Professor at Berkeley, had entered the primary wars.
Here at Daily Kos, we're used to the primary wars affecting our community.
I became aware of them during the 2004 primaries, when friends here became enemies before becoming friends again after it was all over. We have quite a few members of the community here now who openly support a Presidential candidate and write diaries either promoting that candidate or attacking the positions of other candidates. When this happens, we usually take the attacks with a grain of salt. That doesn't mean we dismiss them out of hand. We simply approach their diaries with the knowledge that they support one of the other candidates. So if they provide a fair and honest criticism, we can address it. However, if they veer off and launch an unfair and unjustified attack, we can call them out on it.
Just like any diarist here, Krugman and Reich have the right to critize a candidate they disagree with. And just like any diarist here, they deserve to get called out when they cross the line with unfair attacks.
While Krugman and Reich make some substantive policy points in their columns, they also go much further. In Krugman's case, this includes accusing Obama of spreading "right-wing talking points". In Reich's case, it is accusing of Hillary of spreading a "series of slurs". And while there have been many diaries addressing the policy points raised, there hasn't been much discussion of these accusations, which have really been the source of much of the controversy surrounding their columns. So that's what I'm going to focus on in this diary. It certainly doesn't mean we can or should dismiss those substantive points made in their columns
In his first column, while Krugman calls Obama a "sucker" and a "fool", he didn't go as far as he would later go in criticizing Obama for using the word "crisis" in reference to social security.
Nevertheless, he was unfair in singling out Obama for such criticism. Here's an excerpt from Krugman's column:
Lately, Barack Obama has been saying that major action is needed to avert what he keeps calling a "crisis" in Social Security — most recently in an interview with The National Journal.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
While he suggests that Obama has used that word "crisis" before, he provides no evidence for it and I could find none when searching for other instances. In fact, other than that one time, Obama's been consistent in saying there was no social security crisis. For example at the Philadelphia debate, Obama said:
"I absolutely agree that Social Security is not in crisis."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Of course, you wouldn't know that if you read Krugman's article or most of the subsequent media/blog coverage.
Meanwhile, Krugman neglected to say a single word about the fact that candidate Edwards used the exact same word ("crisis") in reference to Social Security (both in this campaign and as far back as 2002). For example, here is Edwards in October using the word in the exact same context that Obama would later use it, chiding Hillary Clinton for not addressing questions about Social Security:
"The American people need a president who will be straight with them -- who will be honest about the greatest challenges our government faces. And one of the most important of those is the looming Social Security crisis."
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...
Here are some other links to Edwards, from as recent as 2 weeks ago and far back as 2002, talking about a Social Security crisis, calling it an enormous issue, and talking about the problems it faces:
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://news.yahoo.com/...
http://www.gwu.edu/...
The point of this isn't to attack Edwards or argue about Social Security. However, it does raise questions about why Krugman chose to single out Obama. Until Krugman pointed it out in his column and on TV, Obama's comments in that National Journal radio interview had not been publicized. And it's not as though Krugman has been ignoring Edwards. This diary by an Edwards supporter has links to all the glowing words of praise he's given Edwards, including a number of columns solely devoted to praising or defending Edwards. Meanwhile, I couldn't find any negative words at all for Edwards in his columns. Nor could I find many positive words for Obama or Hillary (who he has criticized a number of times, even going so far as to say she might be the next Grover Cleveland), except of course when he was praising them for following Edwards' lead. Now if Krugman is giving Edwards preferential treatment, that's his right as an opinion columnist. It's just something to note.
Reich's blog post follows the same pattern as Krugman's columns It starts tough by asking why Hillary is "stooping so low", then turns to more substantive points, before it ends by unfairly going on the attack:
HRC’s campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold positions and continuously seek the political center, which is exactly what she’s been doing.
A Hillary supporter could just as easily substitute Obama and David Axelrod's name in there and it would have just as much validity. It's a cheap shot.
He then says:
...this series of slurs doesn't serve HRC well.
The problem is that Reich never references any "slurs". Surely pointing out flaws, real or not, with your opponent's plans on Social Security or health care is not a slur. The closest he comes is Hillary's answer to a question about whether she intended to bring up points about Obama's character, but I've never seen an actual quote of what she was asked and her answer ("It's beginning to look a lot like that") hardly fits the definition of a slur. So it looks like Reich is trying to conflate legitimate policy disagreements with slurs as a way of attacking Hillary.
So what is Reich's motive? Like Krugman, he has not announced a favorite candidate, but it is equally clear from his previous blog entries who he supports and who he doesn't.
Here are links to additional posts where he defends and praises Obama:
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/...
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/...
And while he did once call Hillary "one of the smartest people I know", he's quick to follow it up with references to "her movement to the right" and "her political timidity", before closing with: " I wish she'd either step aside or show some genuine outrage."
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/...
For those who question the idea of looking at his past work to see who he supports, note that Reich himself advocated doing that to a reporter who wrote a negative piece about Obama. And if someone here who claimed to be undecided was writing articles bashing one candidate while praising/defending another, we wouldn't have any doubt what the deal as.
Back to Krugman. In his articles on Obama and health care mandates, he did almost the same thing Reich did. Krugman mistakes policy disagreements not for "slurs", but with "right-wing talking points". Like Reich, Krugman never provides any actual quotes of these supposed "right wing talking points". He does go on to describe the common objections regarding enforcement, subsidies, and forcing people to buy insurance, but those are hardly "right-wing talking points". They are legitimate concerns raised by people from across the political spectrum. Just look at the debate going on in California right now:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
That's why California unions have been so suspicious of compulsory insurance and have pushed Democrats to demand higher subsidies for the nearly 5 million residents who have no insurance on any given day.
...
But Democrats are nervous about making it mandatory and Republicans reject the whole idea of expanding government's role in health care.
Here at Daily Kos and across the liberal blogosphere, there are many who make the same arguments against mandates, and not all because they support Obama, but also some who support single-payer health care. It's possible these people are all wrong, but that doesn't mean they believe "right-wing talking points". To top it off, Krugman even goes so far as to compare Obama's language (which he never provides a specific example of) to Giuliani's use of the phrase "socialized medicine", which is just a cheap shot like Reich's on Clinton.
Does Krugman also think Edwards was echoing right-wing talking points when he dismissed single-payer health care by saying "Do you think the American people want the same people who responded to Hurricane Katrina to run their healthcare system?" to Rolling Stone. I guess we'll never know. Despite those being similar to the words Mitt Romney has used, Krugman hasn't criticized Edwards for it and probably never will.
I don't think any of this discredits Krugman or Reich as commentators. We certainly shouldn't dismiss the substantive points they've made. It's just that, like many here, they got caught up in the primary wars.
And like any good primary war, once its over, we can make up and move on as we were before it began.
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