PAUL KRUGMAN: Way Off Base

[kevinmc]

Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public. You can see that happening right now to the Republicans: to have a chance of winning the party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls have to take far-right positions on Iraq and social issues that will cost them a lot of votes in the general election.

But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.

Iraq is the most dramatic example. Strange as it may seem, Democratic strategists were initially reluctant to make Iraq a central issue in the midterm election. Even after their stunning victory, which demonstrated that the G.O.P.’s smear-and-fear tactics have stopped working, they were afraid that any attempt to rein in the Bush administration’s expansion of the war would be successfully portrayed as a betrayal of the troops and/or a treasonous undermining of the commander in chief.

Beltway insiders, who still don’t seem to realize how overwhelmingly the public has turned against President Bush, fed that fear. For example, as Democrats began, nervously, to confront the administration over Iraq war funding, David Broder declared that Mr. Bush was “poised for a political comeback.”......

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/04/paul-krugman-way-off-base.html

[EFerrari]

1. Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions

:shrug:

[aquart]

3. I love the way he puts it.

[EFerrari]

4. Well, I guess it is their challenge to protect their position

and ours to drag them kicking and screaming.

I love the way he lays it all out, too.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. wow he is right

[anitar1]

5. Krugman has the message alright.

It is not fear that runs them imho. They are no longer used to being representatives for their constituents.

[Robbien]

12. Which of course begs the question

Who do they think they they been representing this past decade?

This puts the answer out there front and center. DC Dems are fooling no one.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Trust me when I tell you...

The average Beltway "Insider" is absolutely and utterly clueless about what goes on outside the beltway. It is especially frustrating to confront that from someone who is supposed to be on the same side as we are. They know Washington and its cultural and social memes, the know how to drive to their weekend retreat on the Maryland shore, they know what everyone has agreed upon as the presiding conventional wisdom at the last dinner party or salon, and that's about it.

My experience with the beasts left a rather bitter taste. Just another bunch of elitist, process-bound, meaningless-ritual-practicing pricks. As useless as mammalian protruberances on a male of the genus sus. But way snottier.

[grasswire]

7. It's heady stuff, there

The Cosmos Club, the Gridiron, the Alfalfa Society.....the A lists and the gossip...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. Funny...

But none of those places mean a Tinker's Damn to me. What do they do in them, get naked, rub themselves down with mayonaisse and have carnal knowledge of small, furry woodland creatures?

[Uncle Joe]

10. They're so high up, they can't see the people anymore,

and they're damn sure afraid to come down, so they never rock the boat and report risky news. You're right, they have to get their stories straight first and then pass their conventional wisdom on to the rest of us.

I believe Fox News is only the red flag, while we're busy charging at them, the rest of them are the sword. For example if Fox reported Mother Teresa was a murderer, the rest would say she was only guilty of man slaughter, instead of calling Fox on their B.S.

[Demeter]

9. The Clinton Health Plan DESERVED To Fail!

It was useless for people and another corporate banquet of plunder.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Paul Krugman knows how to tell it like it is...so anyone with a brain can see it clearly.

[The Count]

13. Didn't Kuchinich also propose Universal health care? Seem to remember from 2004

[yurbud]

14. Dems aint stupid or out of touch. They are just playing to corporate audience not us

hence Hillary's vocal support of the war well after Democratic voters especially in New York overwhelmingly oppose it.

We are secondary.

The sad fact is, we have to pick not the best candidate, but the best candidate big business will allow to get to the White House without being taken out by a character assassination or a bullet.

[MISSDem]

15. Your comment about being taken out by a bullet

worries me especially where Obama is concerned.