Oh, Paul Krugman. At it again. Good economist, poor partisan fighter.
He’s out telling Bernie to watch his tone. But in late April 2008, he told Obama to toughen up because the Republicans would attack him far more than Hillary was attacking him. And saying he could lose to McCain because Obama could not win “white working class” voters:
Well, now [Obama] has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class.
As a result, he keeps losing big states. And general election polls suggest that he might well lose to John McCain.
snip
But how negative has the Clinton campaign been, really? Yes, it ran an ad that included Osama bin Laden in a montage of crisis images that also included the Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina. To listen to some pundits, you’d think that ad was practically the same as the famous G.O.P. ad accusing Max Cleland of being weak on national security.
It wasn’t. The attacks from the Clinton campaign have been badminton compared with the hardball Republicans will play this fall. If the relatively mild rough and tumble of the Democratic fight has been enough to knock Mr. Obama off his pedestal, what hope did he ever have of staying on it through the general election?
Paul Krugman, April 25, 2008
Note the nastiness about Obama’s “pedestal.” Lots of negative memes in that post, including saying Obama could not win white working class voters. Obama kicked McCain’s ass that fall.
The only consistent thing about Krugman’s political polemics between 2008 and 2016 is that they favor Hillary. In 2008, she should harshly criticize Obama in late April, which was much further along because New York and California had voted, and Obama should toughen up; in 2016, Bernie should not criticize Hillary regarding the way in which she finances her campaign.
Of course, Mr. Krugman never seemed to like the Obama supporters:
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
Hate Springs Eternal, 2/11/08
I like Paul Krugman. Think he is a great economist. But that does not mean his political opinions are always right. As the foregoing shows, he has a blind spot for Hillary. I’d take what he says about Bernie watching his tone with a grain of salt. As they say, your mileage may vary.