If any of the candidates cannot weather what is thrown at them in the primaries, then they will falter and fail in general election. Case in point: the swiftboating of John Kerry. Kerry should have done some swift booting of those boys, but the timorous Dems had been so nice to each other that they couldn't fight back.
The one big piece of baggage that Obama carries that neither Clinton will attack is Ted Kennedy. For whatever (sick) reason that he has inserted himself into the fray (ego most likely) he is doing Obama no good. Read www.redstates.com for a glimpse of the future. Obama may not be ready.
Whether it is Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Gore, or someone else, we need at least eight years of Democrats, preferably more, to get this country out of debt, taking care of itself, and having foreign and domestic policies. I'd like some competence, too.
What's the Matter with Paul Krugman?
On February 11, Paul Krugman touched off a mini firestorm with his New York Times column, "Hate Springs Eternal," which asserted that Obama supporters had been infected with the disease of Clinton-hating spawned by the right wing. "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," wrote Krugman. Then, came the real fireworks: "I'm not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." While Krugman may not have been the first to compare the Obama campaign to a cult (see this insightful piece by Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News), being the first to do so in the pages of the New York Times raises eyebrows. This came on top of his assertion that it was not the Clinton camp, but the Obama camp that was playing the "race card."
Negative responses from readers came flying in fast and furious. Adding even more fervor to the argument, many expressed "say it ain't so, Joe" disillusionment. The arguments for and against Krugman's assertions can all be found in the comments left on his blog. And while I do think Krugman is dead wrong in his assessments, it is more important to me to dissect his method of reasoning. I have never met Krugman, but I have read enough of his work to recognize how his line of thought parallels that of many (not all) liberal academics I find myself surrounded by in my line of work.
During the Bush years, Krugman has been a champion of liberalism, his Times column providing an oasis in a sea of despair. I first encountered Krugman's writings more than a decade ago, when I was a grad student and he was a Princeton economist producing mild-mannered assessments of the pluses and minuses of free trade. In recent times, I have closely followed and generally agreed with his analysis of the housing bubble and other aspects of the coming economic crisis. But Krugman has become a prominent voice in politics primarily because of his scathing critique of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Not only does he expose the faulty logic governing the administration's actions, he also condemns such actions as unconscionable.
Nevertheless, times are changing. The wonderful development of the primaries is that anti-Bush voters are such a strong majority that the campaigns have had to articulate what they positively stand for. The basis of Krugman's anti-Bush analysis -- his distress that rational thinking has disappeared from politics -- was previously a source of both strength and inspiration. But this same mindset is now a limitation. I am not a foe of rational thinking, but whether a choice is deemed rational depends on who is deciding what the parameters of choice are. The rational analysis that may prove so vital to studying topics like climate change, demographics, or infectious disease does not equip academics to make sense of social movements. Academics tend to live in a bubble -- one to be sure that is enriched with a diversity of intellectual ideas and creativity. But it is a bubble, nonetheless, in that many academics are by and large divorced from what most Americans consider to be the real world. And this helps to explain why their political analysis can not only strike others as off the mark sometimes but also condescending.
"As I've said," Krugman wrote back to his critics supporting Obama, "you've been played like a fiddle by journalists who hate the Clintons, and just make stuff up about how evil they are." Translation: you are so easily manipulated you are starting to look like a cult. Or, in other words, you're thoughts and actions defy the rationality that is the universal standard for social order. Krugman apparently fails to see the irony in his remarks. In the name of liberal/progressive unity, he is warning Obama supporters not to embrace Clinton-hating because it will eventually be turned against Obama. Yet, what he has done is taken his condemnation of Bush's irrationality and focused the same critique on Obama supporters. What seemed righteous and yielding in the face of Bush now looks rigid and strident in the face of an emerging movement. It's what Obama would call "sloppy thinking."
The liberal side of Krugman's rational thinking is best expressed in his embrace of economic populism and praise for John Edwards's candidacy. Edwards "ran a campaign based on ideas," Krugman writes, changing the dynamic of what would otherwise have been "a cautious campaign." By contrast, Obama does not, in Krugman's eyes, represent real "change" because his call to transcend partisanship means he won't really fight for populist causes. In fact, Krugman has felt it his duty to point out that Obama is really not "progressive" at all, again implying that progressives are being driven by emotion rather than reason. That is why he has spent the last several months trying to demonstrate that Hillary has a more populist health care policy. His pose is something like: I've already thought through all of this, so now progressive change is just a matter of winning votes for the candidate with the best platform. These are the misguided sentiments of an academic with no concept of how social change actually happens.
While Krugman's rational assessment of the candidates' policy proposals is welcome, he should recognize that policy proposals are not the exclusive or even the most crucial site of new "ideas." Obama's first new "idea" is that real progressive change can only occur if we start by changing the way politics operates. This is not something than can be done simply by agitating the Democratic base harder and stirring up resentment of Republicans. It requires new energy to marshal change from the bottom up and new ways of engaging an active citizenry in participatory democracy. Whereas Howard Dean tried to give meaning to a campaign that his grassroots supporters were driving, Obama himself embodies bottom-up organizing. In the world I live in, it's not "cautious" but rather daring to run for President stressing your work as a grassroots community organizer as your formative experience in life. (This 1995 article on Obama's first electoral campaign reveals his progressive roots.) Hillary's suggestion that LBJ was the decisive figure who made Martin Luther King's dream a reality was not racist. However, it revealed her regressive top-down thinking and the limited appeal of her "experience" theme.
Krugman also misses Obama's second fresh approach: the call to shift the terms of political debate. He thinks Edwards did this by injecting economic populism into the campaign. When Krugman writes, "Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues," he is echoing Thomas Frank's "What's the matter with Kansa s?" argument that liberals need to stop fighting irrational "culture wars" and return to the rational bread-and-butter issues that were once the heart of the Democratic Party. In this way, they think the party can win back Reagan Democrats and low-income social conservatives. This type of populism is actually driven by liberal elitism and reductive economism. It assumes that those engaged in the "culture wars" suffer from the disease of false consciousness and the cure is rational economic thinking.
What Obama is proposing, and what Krugman only sees as moderation, is to engage Republicans and independents in a different way. The way to move beyond the "culture wars" is not to ignore culture but to stop seeing our divisions as impassable. Krugman says progressives should lead with their maximum proposals, then compromise only what's necessary to get measures passed. Obama proposes to start political debate by identifying the common values we share in order to develop policies that will be meaningful to a large majority. Evangelical conservatives, for instance, may not support abortion. But if progressives don't write them off as irrational, they may find that the value of compassion is a basis for common cause around issues like AIDS or Darfur. This is a strategy that recognizes the relationship between short-term reform and long-term transformation. Obama tried to point out that progressives needed to learn from the history of how Reaganism deployed such a strategy. The Clinton camp ignored the substantive point and made a guilt-by-association attack ad depicting Obama as a Reaganite.
Obama's third bold approach, which is really the foundation of everything else, is to insist that we need a politics based on hope rather than fear. It boils down to the question of how different America could be if we all bring out the best in ourselves and see the best in others; if we focus on what we are for rather than what we are against; if we unite to face the challenges of our lifetime rather than argue over who is to blame for our failures.
An injection of hope might just expand the realm of what's possible. It might even do so in ways that Paul Krugman's rational mind cannot imagine.
Scott Kurashige is an associate professor of American Culture, History, and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan and author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2008).
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GRAF 5: "you're" should be "your"
"Or, in other words, you're thoughts and actions defy the rationality that is the universal standard for social order."
GRAF 8: errant space in "Kansas"
"Thomas Frank's 'What's the matter with Kansa s?'"
Reagan's populist "morning in America" pitch turned out to be a smoke screen for the beginning of the decades-long war on the middle class, which we are still fighting (and losing) today. In this context, for Obama to invoke Reagan's name within his own "audacity of hope" campaign very rightly set off alarm bells within the progressive community.
Having professed to want to somehow compromise with the "conservatves" instead of acknowledging their crimes against the American people (not to mention the ordinary people in the rest of the world), Obama gives no indication that he has any progressive tendencies.
Sadly, neither does Clinton.
Obama the inspirational invoking Reagan the great communicator... makes me feel sad and cynical.
noam, examine what Obama really meant when he invoked Reagan's "morning in America". This country was down, really down on itself afte the Nixon fiasco, a mediocre Ford presidency followed by a pretty depressing Carter presidency (remember the malaise we were all suffering from? It was real). The country was ready for some beaming optimism. Those who might have agree intellectually with Carter's policies were, in many cases, thoroughly taken in by "the shining city on the hill" rhetoric, and lived to regret it. We have an optimist running for president who has substance (listen carefully to WHAT he says in his speeches, not just the "soaring oratory") and be truly hopeful. Obama spoke truth when he described what made Reagan successful in the public eye: it wasn't his ideas or policies, it was the way he made this country feel after a long dry, depressing spell. Personally I was horrified because I heard the policies behind Reagan's oratory, but everyone was so excited by how good he made us feel, it was impossible for intellect and reaso to break through and defeat him. I think if he had said the sky was blue because he made it so, people would have willingly believed it.
After reading Kurashige's piece and about 100 comments, I read Krugman's original article.
The responses don't match Krugman's work.
Krugman reminds us about Nixonland and the source of the 60's Culture Wars.
Lee Atwater and Richard Nixon started it, not Bill Clinton.
Perhaps reinforcing the Republican Party's myths about the Clintons is a sound way for Obama to establish a friendly working relationship with Republicans.
I'm not with either of the camps yet, as these are my 3rd and 4th choices, but many Obama supporters seem pretty cult-like to me.
Read Ted Rall if you want a more even-handed analysis of the candidates.
Was there a private deal somewhere? Was Hillary Clinton planning on nominating Paul Krugman Secretary of the Treasury?
Thanks to all who commented on my post, "What"s the Matter with Paul Krugman?" Some quick points of clarification (2 more to follow):
1. While he got carried away with his remarks, I was not accusing Paul Krugman of acting in bad faith, nor was I denying that he"s generally a very smart cookie. My point is that he revealed his own limitations as an intellectual: what he believed to be a secular and universal form of rational thinking turned into a sort of dogma when confronted with a phenomenon he was ill-equipped to understand. Krugman is not all "good" or "bad." Like all of us, he has his strengths and weaknesses. I especially encourage everyone to learn from his vital insights about the financial crisis. Here, Krugman is back on his home turf. The financial system is supposed to be governed by liberal conceptions of rational market behavior, but key players have violated these rules big time (e.g. subprime lending). Hence, the markets have been thrown into a tizzy, and dire consequences could await us all. (Of course, from an outsider"s perspective, one could question the rationality of giving these high-flying financiers that much influence over our lives in the first place.)
2. Now that Senator Obama stands a serious chance of being the nominee, all of us invested in the success of his campaign and potential Presidency need to make sure we do not get stuck focusing mainly on the question of Hillary vs. Obama. Victory is not guaranteed, but we need to be prepared for it. We need deepen our analysis of the meaning of his candidacy, making clear to ourselves and others what we stand for and what we mean by "change."
3. In response to the Obama movement being a "vague" phenomenon: I will try to add more detailed examples and arguments to support the points I made here about changing the way politics operates, shifting the terms of debates, and waging the battle of hope versus fear. For instance, I will contrast Clinton uber-strategist Mark Penn"s "niche-marketing" and "service-delivery" approach to politics with a different way of thinking about social change backed by a more holistic form of polling conducted by Paul Ray. In the meantime, see Ray"s article on the role of "the new progressives" in creating "the new political compass." (http://www.futurenet.org/article.asp?ID=874)
4. But more immediately, the thing I want to emphasize is that it"s not just the responsibility of Obama or various academics to give these so-called "vague" goals and proposals meaning. It"s the responsibility of all of us to give them meaning through our own thoughts and actions--not only for the duration of this campaign but also long after the election has been decided. We need to recognize that this struggle requires us to do our part not in the ballot booth but also in our daily lives. That"s the key distinction between a politics based on active citizens driving a participatory democracy and a politics in which we mainly expect, hope, or insist that politicians represent our "positions" on the "issues."
"It"s the responsibility of all of us to give them meaning through our own thoughts and actions--not only for the duration of this campaign but also long after the election has been decided."
Extended applause. This principle applies regardless of whom the nominee is!
Professor-
Just follow any thread at the HuffPO and every Obama Thugocrat comes out of the woodwork and attacks Hillary. The evidence is staring you right in the face. If you chose to ignore the evidence in your own threads here, then how can you be convinced otherwise?
Also, your notion that Obama is a candidate who have a transcendent message is a joke.
You wrote:
"Obama's third bold approach, which is really the foundation of everything else, is to insist that we need a politics based on hope rather than fear. It boils down to the question of how different America could be if we all bring out the best in ourselves and see the best in others; if we focus on what we are for rather than what we are against; if we unite to face the challenges of our lifetime rather than argue over who is to blame for our failures."
Yeah, Americans have short memories.
Remember, "I am a uniter, not a divider." Remember, "I am a compassionate conservative who wants to reach out to like-minded Democrats."
I think it is disturbing that you think Obama has a new fresh message about hope, change and transcendental politics when it is the same campaign that George Bush ran against Gore in 2000.
Do you REALLY see ANYTHING substantively similar to George Bush in Barack Obama? Seriously? EVERYTHING in thier respective biographies draws distinctions between them that should lead you to believe that they would govern in fundamentally different ways.
If you are listening to Obama and seeing GWB, that is not Mr. Obama's shortcoming, it is yours.
"every Obama Thugocrat comes out of the woodwork and attacks Hillary"
Yes, how civil.
As one who promotes neither candidate, my perception is that both sides do the same thing. Get a new meme. Or better yet, let's actually discuss the issues without resorting to name-calling.
Thanks, Scott.
That was a very interesting analysis that manages to put Krugman's Obama-bashing in perspective without actually bashing Krugman.
Krugman was catalyst for me to make a close comparison of the three leading Democrats' health care plans. That's when I realized, regarding Obama, Krugman has turned irrational. My esteem for Krugman has plummeted over the last months.
Ironically, Krugman's strident polemic reinforces my increasingly negative perception of the Clintons: They're not trustworthy.
I am not an Obama or Clinton supporter. But having said that every time I hear a commenter refer to the deviousness and treacherous ways of the Clinton's. Every time I hear the same words and phrases used in this Blog that the Republicans used against Bill Clinton during his administration my skin crawls. I can only assume that either those using them were too young at the time and believed everything the MSM was spewing at the time, or maybe it is the are Republicans who come into blogs like this to create division and disarray.
As I am tech savvy after more than 20 years in IT and I have googled many of the Obama advisors. I invite all Obama followers to Google and research the economic and foreign affairs advisors of both Obama and Clinton and then analyze your findings. If you do a thorough job you may get some enlightenment. I invite Clinton followers to do the same.
I don't really know who said it but someone did;
"There is more that unites us than divides us" or something to that effect.
Obama belongs to a religious cult, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he runs his campaign like the Reverend Moon. It should come as no surprise either that Daniel Ortega and Assad of Syria endorse Obama.
Well, ResidentChimp, I have to hand it to you... more than anyone else, you've put Paul Krugman's comments in prospective! It's comments like yours that are really beyond the pale!
I read Krugman all the time, but I hope he reads this well presented post and some comments here. I think that Krugman insults our intelligence when he suggests that our support for Obama is based on our falling prey to the media conspiracy against Hillary. We don't need Krugman or the media to think for us. Most Obama supporters are well educated and know how to research the facts for themselves. I am tired of people with a "father knows best attitude" and Krugman needs to drop his arrogance.
Krugman was right on the money with his article. The only thing I see from obama supporters are attacks on Hillary, instead of listing obama's qualifications and policies. It's always attack, attack, attack. I see it here every day. And this is an example of unity?
I am sick of obama trying to pin this war on a fellow dem, when he knows full well who's fault it is. And you lemmings fall right in line and jump on Hillary for her Iraq vote, a vote that obama was never required to make. Kinda sleazey if you ask me.
Not liking Hillary is not an "attack on Hillary". We have the right to support the candidate of our choice, for whatever reason, just as you have the right to support anyone you choose without being called names, etc. I have read Obama's website and I am satisfied with his qualifications and policies...I did graduate college at the top of my class and I also have a master's degree. You need to think for yourself and stop calling those who don't agree with you "lemmings". BTW, it is not "who's fault is is", but rather "whose fault it is".
I've noticed on the Left that there is always a reason people don't have their minds right. I heard about Krugman's little rant, and had to chuckle. May it be that Obama's supporters have come to the conclusion all on their own? That the famous, evil, cause of all problems - the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy - had nothing to do with it? That Obama's supporters are intelligent people who have arrived at their decision on their own? Where on the Right there is often an underlying feeling of self-righteousness, on the Left there is often a similar underlying feeling of arrogance. Krugman's thesis demonstrates this in flying colors.
Krugman's little rant? I read his article, and it was reasoned and well thought out. It wasn't a "rant." You say obama supporters are intelligent people. Well, I'm sure some are and some aren't. You may be intelligent, but when you let your emotions take over your power of reasoning, that is cult-like.
I say rant because that is how it appears whenever something doesn't go as planned on the left. It is always someone else's fault. Remember 1994? The Angry White Male. Remember the failure to recapture congress in 1998? The sex-obsessed religious right. Remember 2000? Bush stole the election via the Supreme Court (never mind Gore being the one who took it to court in the first place). Remember 2004? The evil swift boat ad (again, please ignore the similar ads aimed at Bush). It's always someone else's fault. One of the reasons for the fact that the Left still wonders if it can regain the presidency despite Bush's sorry record is that it refuses to simply be honest. Maybe, just maybe, the reason Clinton is struggling is because of (gasp) Clinton. Maybe they have done a poor job of it. Maybe they have done and said things that make them deserve to lose. Maybe, just maybe, it's their fault. The fact that Krugman dusts off stockpiled Leftist excuse H-5 - the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy - to explain this, and doesn't give the credit to Oboma, or more notably, the blame to the Clintons, is simply one more example of a long, consistent trend in the modern Left. By the way, lest you object, remember in 2006 when the Republicans lost by a slim margin to the Democrats? Most Republicans blamed, well, the Republicans. A noted difference (and I am not fan of the Republican party I might add).
What a delight to read such an intelligent, learned analysis. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
I don't expect Krugman could ever imagine, though, that he has something to learn. And now, his feelings are hurt. But the reaction of Obama supporters to his personal vendetta is understandable.
Thank god the country is changing. HOpefully this wiser and more perceptive generation will be able to bring us into the 21st century, and the Krugmans will lose their soffocating stranglehold on the American progressive mind.
... you refer to "this ( younger) wiser and more perceptive generation"...you mean the self-absorbed, know nothing about political history, tech gadget obsessed, pavlovian-like celebrity-worshipping , dutiful to the corporate zeitgeist mindlessly mega-consuming 20 somethings who think the trajectory of american history started in 1980 or so when they were born and who situate themselves in cyberspace hours a day frantically, shallowly "socializing" through a keyboard with a paucity of real life experience, 1/3 of whom still living at home with mom and dad in their mid-20's "wiser and more perceptive generation"?....thank you for starting my day off with a good laugh this early morn Bo....
No substance? What a grandiose dismissal of a man and his character.
Obama is a generous, public spirited man, and the idea that he has no substance is simply reprehensible.
Liberals should have some degree of nuance if they are going to argue.
I agree with Oscar Wilde on youth. Youth has more to teach the old than vice versa. In fact, everything. The maxim, there's no fool like an old fool, though, is wrong. They are the same. And the best old fools are those who have taken all their experience and learned nothing.
This kind of either or thinking is just what we need less of. As Mark Twain said, for any difficult problem, there's an easy answer, and that answer is wrong.
Jealous much?
Great! Very nice. What a way to engage the youth of this country! By stereotyping the whole lot of them, degrading, demeaning, debasing, and insutling them! Look, you can try to hang on tooth and nail to your old-school ideas, but the world IS changing, wheather you like it or not. We ARE becoming global and technology is here to stay. Just because YOU seem to be afraid of progress, don't project your fears onto an entire generation. I'm 33 and I WELCOME the next generations to get involved in this country, and applaud Obama for inciting that.
And what you insultingly point out: many kids are still living at home - maybe because in these hard times they can't AFFORD to make it on their own yet. Maybe because they can't AFFORD to pay rent and pay for college, because their parents couldn't pay their tuition or buy them a car. And MAYBE some of them are actually HELPING their parents (as I am) because even their parents can't afford to make it alone these days. Not to mention, in some countries, families stay close to home because they respect and love the family unit and help eachother. This is not necessarily a terrible thing or because they're lazy and shiftless.
When the next generations DO take the reins, would you like them to be uninformed and apathetic, or would you like them to be already involved in the democratic process and engaged in the issues facing ALL of us on this planet?
There is a little more than a hint of cultishness with Obama. Just the response of the bloggers on this site proves that. I'll vote for him if he's the demacratic choice, but I can't find much more reason to vote for him. He's still a politcian,and like all politicians, he's saying what he thinks people want to hear, so he'll become president. He seems to be pretty fuzzy on details. Snark!!
Posted February 14, 2008 | 02:56 PM (EST)