In his column in the NY Times today, Paul Krugman tries to work out why Hillary Clinton, despite clearly crushing Trump in the debate, still has only a slim lead in the election polls. Although Dr. Krugman does not mention it, one cannot help but observe that if Elizabeth Warren were the Democratic candidate, she would be crushing Trump in the polls and would be quietly planning her transition. Just imagine Senator Warren with over 80 million people watching on her at the debate; she would have made an incredible case for electing her. Secretary Clinton, for whatever odd reasons, stuck with her message that she is not as bad as Trump.
Dr. Krugman, although willing to correctly blame Republicans for the economic insecurity that affects the majority of the nation, is unable to identify the causes of the problem. Presumably this is because he does not want to offend the establishment and adversely affect his income prospects. Be that as it may, Dr. Krugman clearly does not want to address the existence of the problem or its causes and certainly not its solutions. Luckily, this is not really a problem, since Robert Reich is much better at dealing with all of those issues.
What Dr. Krugman could helpfully address is the fact that the so-called Chicago School of economics is clearly nonsense and, in fact, the cause of a lot of the bad economic and legislative decisions that have been made in the US for the last several decades. He could also make the economics based argument that anything that has come out of the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the economics department of George Mason University or a host of other conservative “think tanks” should just be ignored. Hopefully, he will help Hillary out by doing so quickly.
The bigger mystery is why Secretary Clinton, who has clearly spent a lot of her life working to become President, is unwilling to do what is necessary to be elected. The polls show that a majority of the country wants change. Anyone with any sense can see that the change they want is an improvement of the economic present and future. Secretary Clinton refuses to even acknowledge this, except in odd and not noticeable ways. Instead, she is running a campaign that seems based only on trashing Trump and focusing on women’s issues. Presumably, she refuses to talk about the need for change because she does not want to upset the members of the status quo who are her friends and some of whom are her neighbors in the Hamptons and in NYC. Whatever psychological problems cause her not to address the main concern of the voters, it’s amazing that her staff cannot get her to say what she needs to say to get elected.
If Secretary Clinton succeeds in electing Trump, she will have only herself to blame. Unfortunately, she and Dr. Krugman will still not understand how this happened.