The New Republic

Krugman is correct.. both on Keynesian economics as the only valid economic theory and on the problems of the Obama administration. tnr should be pushing Obama hard to support Progressive policies, not begrudgingly admitting that Progressives might have a point. tnr has largely gone from a a Progressive publication, to the Blue Dog Jewish Outlook (with a reduced readership appropriate for a rather restricted target group). Chait, Cohn and Galston are exhibits A-C-- and Peretz provides exhibits D-Z. Walter Lippmann has been spinning in his grave for about a decade.

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 8:51am

Obama has made a severe strategic error n not trying hard to move public opinion-- and a severe tactical error in not making elimination of the Senate filibuster the highest priority. All else follows from these two errors that the administration and Senate Democrats continue to make.

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 8:57am

Many of the criticisms of Obama are valid, but as an explanation of liberal apathy I think they are overly wonky and unrealistic. People who read The Nation cover to cover each week did not make up the bulk of the giant surge of support that got Obama elected. The people who DID make up the bulk of this wave were from groups that vote in notoriously small percentages. There was never any reason to think their voting behavior would not soon return to its historical norm. Also, the type of people who are too apathetic to be counted on to vote Democratic -- or vote at all -- this fall are not the kind of people who are sitting around thinking, "I'm disgusted that the senior members of the Obama economics team are Robert Rubin proteges." They are the kind of people who two years ago said, "I'm sick of Bush and his bs. I'm voting for Obama!" and are now saying, "Nothing's changed. Politics sucks." Unfortunately, politics DOES suck, in that it is a messy and incremental and rarely produces optimal results. There is absolutely no way in hell that Obama, no many how aggressively he pursued a liberal agenda, was going to maintain the interest of the bulk of his supporters for very long. And of course, the country is going to suffer for it.

- Fishpeddler

July 30, 2010 at 10:22am

Replace "no many how" with "no matter how". :)

- Fishpeddler

July 30, 2010 at 10:23am

Brilliant as Krugman is, he suffers from the common malady of progressive commentators -- namely, the inability to understand that there is a dichotomy between getting stuff done as President and scoring political points for the benefit of the base. His and Drum's recommendations (other than the garden-variety griping about this or that executive branch appointment) basically amount to a call for partisan trench warfare between a liberal administration and just about all Republicans in Congress as well as a many conservative or moderate Democrats whose constituencies are more influenced by Fox News spin than the good folks of the Upper West Side, the Gold Coast or Brentwood. Sure, Obama could have pushed really hard for a much larger stimulus package focused on infrastructure, a public option on health care, a large-scale energy bill with a carbon tax, reinstaing Glass-Steagall and appointing Erwin Chemerinsky and Stephen Reinhardt to the Supreme Court -- but would he have actually gotten any of that passed? Or would he be more like Carter, unable to implement much of his legislative agenda because of opposition from his own party in Congress and branded a failure by the media mid-way through his first term? I think that Krugman et al really suffer from envy of conservatives, in the way that Reagan and Bush II managed to bully Congressional Democrats into having their way on tax cuts, Iraq and many other issues. Now, one may say that Reagan was dealing with a more ideologically fractured Democratic Party than the one we have today (Ben Nelson and all) and that Bush wilfully exploited a national tragedy in a way that Krugman could never countenance for a liberal. But at the end of the day Krugman, Drum and their friends simply for more effective bullying, rather than for more effective governance.

- wildboy

July 30, 2010 at 10:26am

Wildboy. Obama never tried. What if he had made busting the filibuster the #1 priority and passing an adequate stimulus package??? We'd all be singing a different tune, in spite of the mistakes of Afghanistan, BP, Guantanamo, health care, and UUSDA non-racial firings. Among many others. In fact, many of those mistakes would never have been made. It is like what if the French had acted differently to the re-occupation of the Rhineland? or Chamberlain in Czechoslovakia??

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 12:11pm

Fishpeddlar. Politics may suck, but politicians can craft policies that are popular and whose effects are rapidly seen. Obama and the Senate Dems repeatedly fail in both regards. They didn't/don't have to.

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 12:18pm

I think Krugman -- brilliant as he is -- is way off base here. The President promised in the campaign to escalate troops in Afghanistan. I don't agree with his campaign pledge, or his move to send more troops to Afghanistan, but the President made a pledge. On Elizabeth Warren, she's not going to outlive President Obama's administration; health care reform will. On detainee policy, had the President adopted a more humane detainee policy, then Senate Republicans would have forced Senate Democrats to cast all kinds of uncomfortable votes, and that would have sapped the political capital Obama needed to spend to get HCR done. On offshore drilling, that was done as a small price to lure moderates into voting for cloture on a bill that prices carbon. Oh, and all those new investments in Pell Grants, Title I, Head Start, home weatherization, mass transit, high-speed rail, etc. from the stimulus and other appropriations bills are nothing to sneeze at. Dreams aren't meant to be free. They're meant to come true. Democrats have waited a long, long time for health care reform. And they got it. And with a Democratic President and a Democratic majority next Congress, the work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on.

- jimbomoron

July 30, 2010 at 12:51pm

Drofnats, I beg to differ (and not just to your sneaking the Hitler references through the back door, either -- Godwin is watching). In case you remember, the winter of 2008-09 was as miserable a time for the US economy as any that I can remember since the early 1980s. It was not a time for political brinksmanship, successful though it might have been. How do you think the MSM and those who follow it (i.e., the vast majority of mid-term voters) would have portrayed Obama as insisting on a $1.2 trillion stimulus package weighted toward infrastructure and aid to states and refusing to accept anything less meaningful? Would that kind of strident progressivism have swayed Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and other Senate moderates to embrace him as a new FDR or to cavil and trim their sails toward their own conservative voters? How much credibility would he have had after 1/4 of his former Democratic Senate colleagues would have been heading for the hills on his first major legislative initiative three months after his inauguration? As for the filibuster, what would voters who don't read elite news magazines have thought about an Administration that announced its #1 priority as the elimination of a Senate procedural rule, instead of stimulus, financial reform, health care reform, Afghanistan, etc, etc? After all, FDR did not run for election or re-election promising to pack the Supreme Court so as to create a clear path for New Deal legislation. It only makes sense to focus on eliminating the filibuster after the MSM and the general public have clear evidence that the filibuster prevents the passage of necessary or desireable legislation. That might be starting to occur now, but it was hardly evident in January 2009 or, I would argue, at any time until crunch time on health care and the Cornhusker Kickbacks in December 2009.

- wildboy

July 30, 2010 at 12:52pm

wildboy. sorry.. your response doesn't cut it. and raises straw men. Use Ethiopia instead if you want-- unless all of 20th century history is off base for you. “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.” — Abraham Lincoln From the beginning (the stimulus bill), Obama has accepted unnecessary limits on the breadth and depth of the changes he advocated. In fact, he has been less of a public advocate as opposed to one of many negotiators around a table. Obama and the Democrats won the election convincingly with large majorities in Congress. Voters, more than they have been in years, are (or at least were)receptive to broad, deep and fundamental shifts in the direction this country is headed. What holds (held) back most of this change is a President more concerned with process and procedure rather than removing major obstacles [especially the filibuster] so as to effectively use his electoral mandate. The most effective presidents have understood that speaking publicly and rallying people is one of their primary powers-- greater than their veto, ability to command armies or crafting regulations. Great presidents have made broad claims of power because of their popular support. Take FDR: “I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” Where is the Obama equivalent of a freshly elected FDR telling Congress that if it does pass not his agenda, he's going to demand something like the Enabling Act of 1933-- or exercising martial powers as great as those that Lincoln used during a period of armed insurrection! ?? Intransigent opposition politicians repeatedly called FDR a dictator, much as they did Lincoln. But in part because public sentiment was mostly with him and their political futures depended on his success, Congress decided it had better pass the New Deal. Not all of it, but most of it. And the beneficial effects of the legislation were easy to immediately discern its --- unlike complicated insurance reform with most benefits (if they survive) obvious four years hence. Reformist presidents, at their best, capture the public sentiment and use it to push through measures that entrenched interests are firmly against. Obama has taken on some very tough and complicated issues. But as a political leader, he has largely withdrawn from engagement and has acted as “Compromiser in Chief”. Democratic government is inherently a political business and any president is inherently a political leader. When making fundamental change, politics must be played—and played to win. For Obama and he Dems, the problem underlying all the partial or complete failures in passing bills for really effective economic stimulus, health care reform, financial system reform, carbon emission reforms, etc., etc.---- is the Senate filibuster requiring 60 votes for cloture rather than a simple majority. Break that--- and effective legislation and popular legislation that has immediate and obvious benefits rapidly follows. The filibuster could have been/can be broken with 50 votes plus Biden. To many, if not to all, this problem was obvious in early 09. Senate Dems and Obama especially never made the effort. Obama especially still doesn’t seem to recognize the real tacktical problem of the filibuster and has made no real effort to move public opinion to help solve his strategic problem. Obama and the Democrats are suffering the consequences of not having moved public sentiment and broken the filibuster that may be very severe in the 11/10 elections--- and will only get worse after 11/10.

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 3:44pm

Re: Drum's comment: what, exactly, DID make liberal hearts sing prior to 2008?

- RerunStubs

July 30, 2010 at 4:54pm

jimbomoron. What a pile of....Dumb promises are not to be kept and circumstances change. The great ones know that. FDR campaigned in 1932 on balancing the budget!!! Lincoln initially agreed to re-admitting rebelling states with no black voters and Rebels in charge. You sound like a charter member of the Cult of the President.. as often do Chait and Cohn.

- drofnats1

July 30, 2010 at 9:51pm

"As for the filibuster, what would voters who don't read elite news magazines have thought about an Administration that announced its #1 priority as the elimination of a Senate procedural rule, instead of stimulus, financial reform, health care reform, Afghanistan, etc, etc?" drofnats1, you never addressed that question from wildboy. For me, killing the filibuster is a shortsighted move. Even the usually arrogant and shortsighted GOP understood that, hence their back-off from their "nuclear option" threat when they had control of both houses of congress during heady days of W in the White House.

- scrubby

July 30, 2010 at 10:31pm

Fishpeddler is correct: the huge surge in 1st time and/or infrequent voters put Obama on top. And these people aren't getting (or aren't noting that they are getting) what the voted for. So this makes an even bigger battle for the election. It's going to be about turnout and guess who's more motivated? For me, who recognized where Obama was going to be when he was still losing here in Illinois, I was most disillusioned (after healthcare/single payer went down) by the whole MMS/Ken Salazar point of view. That Rolling Stone article is something that had me so sick. I counted on this group to put grown ups, thinkers, the best minds and managers in place--the way they promised. And in so many places, they failed there. I believe that if Obama can have the 2nd term, potentially great things can still happen. But it takes Congress and these wusses are killing me/us/him.

- ericad

August 2, 2010 at 1:43pm