Ezra Klein writes on what THE three key DIFFERENCES between HillBama. Here’s the best of his column, helpfully edited and commented on by me:
… So, without getting into who I support, I will say how I’m thinking about the election; what, after months of candidate speeches and adviser statements and policy papers and debates, I’ve come to see as the main differences [aside from “Obama and Clinton’s economic approaches and leadership styles”] between the candidates…
Ending the Rhetoric of Militarism. [symbolic politics bullshit or ‘spare us a second coming of Jimmy Carter’]
Health Care. . . . I should say that I don’t blame Obama for the Harry and Louise mailer. I don’t imagine it crossed his desk. [Yeah, rrri-i-ight!] . . .
The problem with Obama on health care, the one I fear will really impact his presidency, is not a fundamental conservatism, but a poverty of imagination. [See my diary, Obama’s 3 Right-Wing Economist Assholes, on the roots of the poverty, Obama’s economics as expressed in his three main and markets-are-god economic policy advisors] . . .
. . . An absence, if you will, of audacity. There are arguments to be made against individual mandates. But so far as those arguments are to be made by universal health care advocates, they better have an alternative. And Obama could have had one: He could have had automatic enrollment, or guaranteed government issue, or an opt-out, rather than opt-in, system. But he didn’t. [Well, no, [he did talk about doing those sorts of things.], but quit when he decided to make an issue of `Hillary’s gonna garnish yer wages!’] Rather than choose a better, more progressive mechanism to ensure universality, he chose none at all. And that doesn’t only harm him in a policy sense, but it impedes him from pushing forward on the politics of the issue. [Let me help ya, Ez: Obama doesn’t want to push forward on the politics of the issue cuz he doesn’t agree with the progressive take on it. Again, check out his U of Chicago advisors.] Obama is a guy who genuinely understands the potency of narratives and values and themes. [Yeah, he knows how to bullshit.] A nation as rich as ours can afford decency, and an economy as large as ours must be grounded in values. [Must? What happens when we don’t that implies a `must’? Cuz I don’t think we’ve been values grounding for awhile now.] Without health care, all we’ve got, at least domestically, is a lot of talk, and the occasional bout of anxious fretting when the numbers turn grim. [Yup, and isn’t always the plan? Dammit, ‘doing something’ sounds good, but it costs campaign contributors money!] . . . The centrality of our neighbor’s health and security is such an obvious Obama-argument, so in line with his belief in unity, [we see that belief in unity through his bashing of the 60s, boomers and the left] that 10 months ago, I would have laughed at you for saying he’d whiff on it. [Ez, you should’ve paid attention to Obama’s economic policy guys, not his rhetoric. Look up alternative definitions of `rhetoric’ as in empty.] Throughout this campaign, he has done worse: He has fled from it, and allowed short-term political pressures to box him into arguments that I imagine he knows conflict with progressivism’s long-term goals. [Yup, well, maybe he disagrees with the paths progressives want to take to get to those goals. Now are you starting to figure out why Obama admires the Republicans of the last 10-15 years as the ‘party of ideas’? Those neo-classical, market-incentives ideas? Did I mention my just-previous diary?]
By contrast, Clinton’s plan is excellent [Heahhuh? Her plan is a disaster waiting to happen, budget-busting madness unless you drastically cut back the flood of money to go to insurance companies, drug companies, doctors and so on], her command of the issue is masterful, and it’s clearly close to her heart. There is no doubt in my mind that she will do everything in her power to move us towards universal health care, and she will do so having thought long and hard about what went wrong in 1994. [I don’t get why we don’t see a replay of 1994. In contrast to the clarity of single-payer, her plan is still an only-wonks-could-love-it compromise that the insurance industry will be able to manipulate a groundswell of know-nothings against.] By contrast, it is not clear to me that Obama will gamble on health care, and given how he’s spoken about it throughout the campaign, it’s even less clear to me that he’s thought hard about how to enact it.
New Blood. [Age-ist or tweedle-dee-tweedle dum bullshit]
Well, there ya have it. I’m disappointed that Klein didn’t contrast Hillary and Obama’s environmental policy approaches. Again, I think he’d find that poverty of imagination, that restriction by Obama to approaches the U of Chicago Friedmanites find ‘possible’. That poverty of imagination that makes him such a cross-over favorite of mainstream Republicans. But I may be wrong; in any case, we MUST have a massive and expensive public works effort to repair and transform this country into a clean energy, small carbon-footprint society. Curing the planet of global warming ain’t a task for economic whimps, but its side benefit is something Keynesians love: a lot of good-paying jobs.
