Krugman WTF?

Does anyone know what Paul Krugman is smoking? Is he drinking Contrarianberry juice or just plain old Haterade? I mean, okay, criticize Obama, fine. I get it. The media's giving him a free pass and Krug patrol is here to collect fare. Try to counterbalance the hope-mongering Rich-Dowd Dream Team. (Psh, as if.)

Do what you gotta do, Krug. Fine.


But to call Obama "an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg" is just disengenuous. No one seriously thinks Bloomberg is an ineloquent Obama. Bloomberg's a short, Jewish, billionare businessman; he and Obama have about as little in common as two people can. (That said, endorse away, Mr. Mayor!)

The real accusation, of course, is that Obama is, like Bloomberg, a centrist. Which I guess is what Obama is if you insist on measuring people's politics with some kind of left-right pH test kit. Barack Obama's Senate votes give him a damn pH of 7. (Maybe 8, slightly on the sweet side?) But it's patently obvious to millions of people the nation over that he's more than that. And specifically, that he's more than that in terms of progressivism.

And wait, who are we comparing him to again? Like Dennis Kucinich or something, right? Bernie Sanders? Oh. That's right: Krugman is calling Obama a centrist compared to Hillary Clinton. The word "Clinton" has like eight definitions, but I'm pretty sure one of them is "n. centrist."




You feelin okay, buddy?

But none of that matters. Why? Mandates! Mandates! Freaking mandates, they're all Krugman can think about! His obsession with the health care mandate issue is incomprehensible to me, especially since he's an economist.

He's swinging away at the mandate piñata again today, referring to Obama's "adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care." (At least, I assume he's referring to mandates there. Otherwise, we'd have a Krugman column free of mandate references, and that just wouldn't be right.)

Here's what a damn mandate is: it requires people to buy health insurance, just like we Californians have to buy car insurance. Hillary Clinton's health care plan has a mandate. Obama's doesn't. Otherwise, their plans are virtually identical.

Clinton has seized on the difference. She is shocked! shocked! that anyone calling himself a Democrat would propose a health care plan that "leaves people out" and "isn't universal." If you've watched any of the debates recently, you know this is totally her favorite riff.

I'm not a health care expert and don't presume to know whether mandates would be helpful in getting more people insured, but I do know that advocates of single payer (total, all-out, "SiCKO"-approved, publicly-financed health care) think mandates are total bullshit.

Here's why: if you require people by law to purchase health insurance, you have to penalize them for not doing so. So when you're dealing with poor people, it's kind of a doozy. Do you exempt them from the mandate? (Oh my god, then it's not universal! Gotcha, Hillary: You're leaving people out, too!) Or do you leave people who can't afford to buy insurance to pay a fine for noncompliance? (Then poor people are paying out for a fine and they're still uninsured. Sucks, don't it.)

And that's exactly the explanation Obama has given in debate after debate. (I mean, not in those exact words.) But it's all so tedious that one starts to zone out when they argue about it and the audience is left with the vague sense that Clinton's plan somehow keeps it realer.

And, wonder of wonders, Paul Krugman, Princeton lefty economist, seems to agree.

See, I can make it all about mandates too. Uh! Who's the centrist now, byeeitch?

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