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Over the past month, Barack Obama has been consistently
rising in the polls. The most recent Washington
Post/ABC News Poll had him on top with 33% of the vote -
4 points above the second candidate - and the most recent Boston Globe
poll has Barack Obama ahead in New Hampshire with 30% of the
vote as well. Finally, the most recent CBS poll
has him leading in South Carolina for this first time during this campaign
with 35%.
These numbers are making the establishment nervous, and that is leading
a whole lot of empty attacks against Obama. One set of attacks have been
offered by the NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman. In two recent columns, he
slams Obama for refraining from demonizing those who disagree with him and
on his opposition to 527 political - and often smearing - ads.
Krugman believes that in order for change to come, Obama has to maintain
a harsh anti-corporation and anti-Republican platform. But what Krugman
fails to recognize is that Obama is pursuing a strategy that is a whole lot
wiser and more effective. Instead of demonizing the other side as Hillary
Clinton, John Edwards and other conventional politicians do, Obama has
effectively brought moderates from the other side to his side time and
again for over 10 years to push for improving funding for public schools,
strengthening transparency, setting up the "Google For
Government" to publish where the federal money goes and bringing
about two great ethics reforms in both the Illinois legislature and the
U.S. Senate.
By focusing on the facts and problems, Obama has effectively changed the
rules of debate and neutralized attacks by Republicans who would love for
him to resort to politics of demonization and vilification that have
repeatedly failed. Edwards and Clinton think that the candidate with the
harshest rhetoric is the best candidate to bring about change. But the fact
of the matter is that while these candidates have talked about change,
Obama has delivered on that promise of change by forcing the republicans to
talk issues and defeating them based on merits.
And as for 527s, Krugman is upset about Obama's position against them
because Krugman essentially believes that 527s are okay as long as they
come from the left. But if they represent corporations, they must be
abolished. This is, of course, a fundamentally hypocritical position to
take. How can we legitimately do away with 527s and claim the moral high
ground if we are to allow certain 527s to get a free pass? Isn't this
double standard mentality why we have repeatedly been unable to get
independents to our side on issues? Isn't this a perfect example of the
kind of divisive methodology that has repeatedly failed us and kept this
country divided?
Maybe Paul Krugman doesn't believe this is hypocritical at all just as
he didn't think it was hypocritical when at the same time that he was
issuing such rhetoric against corporations, he
was serving on the advisory board of Enron for $50,000 a year before he
was forced by New York Times to resign from his board position due
to conflict of interest.
The problem with 527s is not that they represent corporations. What
makes 527s undemocratic is that unlike candidate committees and political
action committees, 527s are not regulated by Federal Election Commission or
a state election commission and are not subject to the same contribution
limits as PACs. Now one may think that as long as they represent unions, we
shouldn't care who is funding them. But because of a lack of transparency,
a major corporation can simply create an artificial organization that would
then claim to represent a certain group of workers and produce an ad that
would attack the candidate that has in fact been the strongest in defending
workers. And of course people see the ad and think that because it looks
like a workers' group, it must be right. If we are to open that door, to
embrace certain 527s while demonize others, who is going to decide which
527s are acceptable? How can we tell which ones' positions are truly
progressive? We obviously have no way of doing that.
Paul Krugman thinks that the reason why Democrats should continue to
support 527s is that Republicans are and they will use 527s against whoever
will be our nominee. But keep something in mind. When 527s are allowed to
function, they disproportionately help Republicans over Democrats because
most of them are funded by the power elite, which often come down on the
side of Republicans. But the Democratic nominee can effectively neutralize
the impact of 527s by distancing himself from them from the beginning and
asking the Republican nominee to similarly condemn them. He can even
challenge the republican nominee to support the idea of pushing for legislation
to curtail the power of 527s. But just as someone who voted for the war
can't effectively make a case for bringing our troops home now, if Obama
supports 527s now, he will be in no position to rally against Republican
527s after he wins the nomination without being called a
"flip-flop" or accused of being "for them before he was
against them."
Krugman's approach to this election represents the kind of strategy that
has repeatedly failed the Democrats. This is the idea that we can maneuver
around and play the game of partisan politics and simultaneously maintain a
credible position against partisanship. There is one cold fact that
Democrats have to accept: if we are to effectively see our policy ideals
realized and lobbyists abolished, we have to maintain those positions
across the board instead of playing the game when it's to our benefit -- as
John Edwards and Krugman want to do in case of 527s -- and still think that
we can be credible when claiming that the system is corrupt.
Link to the article on The Huffington Post.
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