Liberal Dilemma

Yes we have a liberal dilemma! You all know I was a big supporter of John Edwards and if his name is on the ballot tomorrow in Georgia I will be hard pressed not to vote for him. There are things about both the remaining candidates which are attractive. Obama and his rhetoric and youth and Hillary with her experience and razor focus on what she thinks is right. I am having a hard time. It is hard not to get caught up in the excitement over Obama with the Kennedy endorsements and all and since I seem to be on the fence in my thinking I am going to have to steal a march from MyDD. Todd focused on Paul Krugman's concerns about several of Barack Obama's positions . First there is Obama and on his treatment of Social Security:

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. Progressives who fought hard and successfully against the Bush administration's attempt to panic America into privatizing the New Deal's crown jewel are outraged, and rightly so.

Krugman has also identified Obama's stimulus package as the least progressive of the Democrats' plans:

The Obama campaign's initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I'm sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama's top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from "morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending." Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure -- doesn't that sound familiar?

Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan...[H]is stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.

One of my key issues and why I was supporting Edwards is healthcare and Krugman has a big issue with Obama's health care proposal which does not include an individual mandate and thus is not universal. Obama claims that health care under his plan would be affordable and therefore would permit the uninsured to buy in.

Krugman has a serious problem here.

Why have a mandate? The whole point of a universal health insurance system is that everyone pays in, even if they're currently healthy, and in return everyone has insurance coverage if and when they need it.

And it's not just a matter of principle. As a practical matter, letting people opt out if they don't feel like buying insurance would make insurance substantially more expensive for everyone else.

Quoting MyDD :

"If you'd like specifics as to the difference a mandate makes, take a look at this chart Krugman posts on his blog citing a study by leading health care economist Jonathan Gruber, which outlines the vast difference in both coverage and cost of a mandate plan vs. a non-mandate plan. Upshot: non-mandate plans cover only about half the uninsured and, subsequently, the cost per newly insured is $4400 vs. $2700 under a mandate plan. No wonder Senator Clinton has taken to touting it as her prime point of distinction with Senator Obama."

An then there is Krugman's indictment of Obama's non-mandate strategy:

From the beginning, advocates of universal health care were troubled by the incompleteness of Barack Obama's plan, which unlike those of his Democratic rivals wouldn't cover everyone. But they were willing to cut Mr. Obama slack on the issue, assuming that in the end he would do the right thing.

Now, however, Mr. Obama is claiming that his plan's weakness is actually a strength. What's more, he's doing the same thing in the health care debate he did when claiming that Social Security faces a "crisis" -- attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points.

Quoting MyDD again:

"Krugman wrote that on November 30, 2007. Remember what I said about Krugman's prescience? Cut to Krugman's February 1st post on his blog titled "Obama Does Harry and Louise Again" in which he draws our attention to a particularly problematic mailer from the Obama campaign that uses a not so subtle anti-government message to criticize Clinton's plan:

The way Hillary Clinton's health care plan covers everyone is to have the government force uninsured people to buy insurance, even if they can't afford it.

Ohhh, big government baaaad. But that's not the worst of it. Krugman updates his post:

Ezra Klein adds a screenshot of the original Harry and Louise ad -- they've obviously deliberately copied it. Just to remind everyone, Harry and Louise were the center of the vile smear campaign the insurance lobby waged against health care reform in 1993 -- and this time a Democratic candidate is doing the smearing for them. [...]

I know that Obama supporters want to hear no evil, but this is really, really bad.

So one has to wonder, when trying to differentiate himself from his rivals on various domestic issues, why does Obama go consistently to the right? Krugman nails it."

Your going to say I'm putting too much weight on what Krugman thinks and that may be true but no one in the media has been on target about the effects of the Bush economic policies since 2000 than Paul Krugman and that gives him a lot of credibility with me.

The final point I would like to make is that whoever gets the nomination and hopefully wins the White House it is going to be a sorry job. Ugly even. Obama's reach across the aisle and build a bipartisan consensus talk is scary. We have seen what bipartisan looks like for the last 10 years and I don't think it will work. When is comes to the down and dirty politics that will be required to put this country back on the right track I think Hillary might be the better in-fighter. She is tough and smart and has had a long time to thicken her skin and sharpen her nails. I am not necessarily looking for the nice guy or gal or the person I would like to have a drink with. We have seen where that got us. I want a cunning alley fighter and I think Hillary matches that description better than Obama.