Krugman on Obama's Lack of Spine

Here is a cutting assessment of Obama's "performance" on health care from a progressive who warned during the primaries of 2008 that Obama would cave on health care. Krugman was for Hilary Clinton, but I couldn't see supporting her. Having swapping presidencies between the Bush clan and the Clinton clan made it far too obvious that the US was a banana republic in the grips of an elite that made a joke of the electoral process. So I was happy with Obama. Now I'm not. Krugman got it right:

A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.

One purpose of the public option is to save money. Experience with Medicare suggests that a government-run plan would have lower costs than private insurers; in addition, it would introduce more competition and keep premiums down.

And let’s be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers.

...

So there’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that’s why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar.

Now, politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted.

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.

So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.

I've thrown in the towel on Obama. He has failed litmus test after litmus test. I see his presidency as a weak 4 year interregnum. The culture wars will be back with a vengance in 2012.

As for Paul Krugman... I now agree with Brad DeLong's assessment:

1. Remember that Paul Krugman is right.


2. If your analysis leads you to conclude that Paul Krugman is wrong, refer to rule #1.