Krugman Sticks it to Obama ... Again

For the umpteenth time, Paul Krugman has devoted his precious space in print and online claiming that Barack Obama is really speaking for Republicans when seeks to bridge the divide and tries to convince America that he's the right candidate. It's old hat. Mr. Krugman seems to ignore the awfully right wing fight that the Clinton campaign is engaging in. Krugman does mention her support of the Gas Tax Holiday as her pandering to the right or at least getting it wrong. Boo hoo. That's the least of what has been coming out of that camp, and it's certainly not the last.

I believe that there is a point at which all of us looking at the very important issues must step back from the ideology that guides us, and step into the shoes of our opponents. We might not agree with everything they say or claim or demand, but compromise is the cornerstone of progress. It is clear to me, as a regular person, that words like "mandate" when coupled with services like health care set off alarms for conservatives who are averse to big government. "Socialized medicine" is already the common slur against the Democrats' attempts at universal health care. Thems fightin' words. Words that need to be considered when planning the showdown that will occur when this plan actually hits Congress.

When the Clintons' original plan, which inflexibly included a mandate, made it to Congress in 1994 Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee, had already drafted a universal health care bill that "had 58 co-sponsors in the House — 26 Republicans and 32 Democrats". Both plans failed, because the Clintons' wanted nothing to with the Cooper bill over their own.

So here we are in 2008. Mandates or not, the Democrats are the only ones coming up with a solution and some of us feel so strongly about the minutia that it's worth constantly scratching away at the forerunner. It was annoying back in February, but now — after we've seen the O'Reilly show, the Richard Mellon-Scaife show, the "I'm more pious than he is" show — it sounds silly.