Krugman: Hope is Not a Plan

[avalonofmists]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/things-to-come/


Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Krugman: Hope is Not a Plan


"The result, then, will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right and demoralized the movement that brought him to power. . . Maybe they’ll get lucky. But hope is not a plan."

-- Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal

[CrispyQ]

1. For those who think critics of Obama are 'haters,' the most important paragraph is the last one.

"What can the rest of us do? Progressives have to keep the pressure on. The time for trusting the administration to do what’s necessary is past — all indications are that it won’t, not on its own. But maybe, just maybe, the president can be brought to see the danger he’s running by playing it safe."

[Doctor_J]

3. Yes, the Afghanistan escalation is not the only reason his 60,000,000 voters

are discouraged. There's the bankers' windfall, the "Public" option, no torture prosecutions, and so on. He keeps doing these things to appease the ever-more-radical Repukes in Congress, and they never vote for anything anyway.

[depakid]

2. Can't say I didn't see this coming... back in February

[Demeter]

5. It's Pathetic, Truly

Like Charlie Brown and his football, with Obama as Lucy; like Linus in the Pumpkin path, like any other naive optimist.

[Skittles]

7. took you that long?

I figured it out before he was put in office :(

[avalonofmists]

8. +1

[katty]

4. amen, krug

[inna]

6. KR

a pretty strong statement for Krugman:

The result, then, will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right and demoralized the movement that brought him to power.

What can the rest of us do? Progressives have to keep the pressure on. The time for trusting the administration to do what’s necessary is past — all indications are that it won’t, not on its own. But maybe, just maybe, the president can be brought to see the danger he’s running by playing it safe.

[MasonJar]

9. I feel so trampled on. Why did he promise what he never intended to

give? We expectd so much and are getting so little. He lied Hillary out of the Presidency. That much is clear. She is left of Obama. But who knew from his campaign?

[pokercat999]

10. And the media kept repeating over and over how he was the

most liberal Senator, EVER. I feel like Brer Fox in the Brer Rabbit story, "whatever you do, please don't throw me in the briar patch".

[jaybeat]

11. That's part of the "fix"

Same with calling his middle-of-the-road policies (which, in America, means center-right to the rest of the civilized world) "socialist," whipping the teabaggers into a frenzy, etc. Make Mr. Business As Usual out to be Karl Marx, thus ensuring the "debate" (such as it is) stays on the far right third of the spectrum, where the corporatists want it to be.

Nevermind that huge majorities support single-payer healthcare, withdrawal from Afghanistan, climate-change policies with teeth, re-regulation of banking, etc., etc. Their plan is to make sure that no matter how fed up American voters get (we were pretty riled up in 2008, IIRC!), the "worst" we'll get from their standpoint is still no threat to their hegemony.

And as long as they have both the media AND the government bought and paid for, IMO we'd better cheer loudly for what modest gains we're making under Obama (and also advocate for what we really need, of course), or else we'll get George Bush III, and we'll be one false-flag attack away from finding ourselves in FEMA camps with teabaggers as the guards!

[JonQ]

13. "Why did he promise what he never intended to give"

He's a politician, that's what they do.

And had hillary won I suspect we'd be complaining that she lied about her intentions and drove poor obama out of the race, and he wouldn't be doing "x".

[JonQ]

12. What about change, is that a plan?