Atrios pegs Obama with one line: "The system sucks, but I'm so awesome that it'll melt away before me."
Or as Paul Krugman terms it, Obama is "well, naïve."
Probably it was a mistake for Obama to attack our most progressive mainstream media columnist. Obama's attack on Paul Krugman was a move guaranteed NOT to capture the progressive vote.
Krugman has yet another column about Obama:
[I]t’s actually Mr. Obama who’s being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries — which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems — will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there’s no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste.
As a result, drug and insurance companies — backed by the conservative movement as a whole — will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms. And what would Mr. Obama do then? “I’ll get on television and say Harry and Louise are lying,” he says. I’m sure the lobbyists are terrified. . .
As health care goes, so goes the rest of the progressive agenda. Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world. Which brings me to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has in effect become the anti-change candidate. . .
[N]othing Mr. Obama has said suggests that he appreciates the bitterness of the battles he will have to fight if he does become president, and tries to get anything done.
Update -- Payback by Matthew Yglesias: Barack Obama reaps the harvest of his campaign's idiotic decision to start releasing oppo research on Paul Krugman as the latter unloads on Obama, slamming him as "the anti-change candidate" . .
Obama Paul Krugman Democratic News Health Care Politics Progressive Agenda
