Paul Krugman Hits Obama’s Attacks on Edwards re 527s

BIG PICTURE Preface: This is about saving the imperiled MIDDLE CLASS.

In a nutshell, with a tip to Campskunk’s post: Both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (see a pro-Edwards diary) have received considerable support from unions. Obama has not gotten that support, or that money, so he’s pissed. His response? He attacks John Edwards, and the messages the unions are sending out. Which does not — I repeat, not — endear him to unions that regularly support Democrats.

Obama has not gotten support, writes Krugman in today’s NYTimes, “in part, perhaps, because his message of ‘a new kind of politics’ that will transcend bitter partisanship doesn’t make much sense to union leaders who know, from the experience of confronting corporations and their political allies head on, that partisanship isn’t going away anytime soon.”

[UPDATE: Time's Mark Halperin at The Page has this: "Edwards Campaign Charges Obama 'Wearing Rose-Colored Glasses'." I think that's a fair assessment: Obama's too green for a national race, especially a general election race. In time, perhaps. In time. He's young.]

Further, Krugman says, Obama may be preaching GOP talking points again — “carelessly and cynically” — just as Obama did on Social Security, which I’ve written about here before:

O.K., that’s politics. But now Mr. Obama has lashed out at Mr. Edwards because two 527s — independent groups that are allowed to support candidates, but are legally forbidden from coordinating directly with their campaigns — are running ads on his rival’s behalf. They are, Mr. Obama says, representative of the kind of “special interests” that “have too much influence in Washington.”

The thing, though, is that both of these 527s represent union groups — in the case of the larger group, local branches of the S.E.I.U. who consider Mr. Edwards the strongest candidate on health reform. So Mr. Obama’s attack raises a couple of questions.

First, does it make sense, in the current political and economic environment, for Democrats to lump unions in with corporate groups as examples of the special interests we need to stand up to?

Second, is Mr. Obama saying that if nominated, he’d be willing to run without support from labor 527s, which might be crucial to the Democrats? If not, how does he avoid having his own current words used against him by the Republican nominee?

Part of what happened here, I think, is that Mr. Obama, looking for a stick with which to beat an opponent who has lately acquired some momentum, either carelessly or cynically failed to think about how his rhetoric would affect the eventual ability of the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she is, to campaign effectively. In this sense, his latest gambit resembles his previous echoing of G.O.P. talking points on Social Security.

Read all.

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From my Nov. 15 post, links to more on Obama’s borrowing of GOP talking points on Social Security:

• “Obama clueless on Social Security — Mark Weisbrot: Memo to Obama: No Rush to “Fix” Social Security” (“The right has created powerful and lasting myths about the state of the program’s finances.”)
• “Why, Barack, why?” — columnist and economics professor Paul Krugman at his New York Times blog

There’s more in the Nov. 15 post, including a rant against Tim Russert’s “expertise” on Social Security.