Why Krugman Is Wrong

Krugman says that pundits like me who reject sharp anti-corporate rhetoric and prefer cooperation are "projecting their own desires onto the public." We'll see. But last time I checked, millions of Americans still work for corporations or aspire to do so and bashing them wholesale is a loser politically. It works sometimes in Democratic primaries with a heavy labor vote (though not for Dick Gephardt). But not in general elections. The last two Democrats elected president-Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992-also campaigned during recessions. Both were smart enough to reject populism in favor of a responsive but upbeat message.

Krugman is an economist and I trust his forecast that things are going to get even worse for working-class Americans in the months ahead. The middle-class squeeze is real. Predatory lenders and CEO greedheads should be called out. So should insurance and drug companies. But it needs to be done in a way that produces results, not just spleen-venting.
How? Just after Clinton was elected, he convened a meeting of economists, CEOs, labor leaders and many others in Little Rock. The purpose of the meeting was to argue out what should be done about the ailing economy, with many of the ideas expressed there later becoming part of Clinton's successful 1993 economic recovery package. The whole thing was on television.

Sound familiar? This is essentially what Obama is proposing for health care after he's elected. If Hillary Clinton had done this on health care in 1993—instead of convening a secret task force—she might have been able to build a stronger public case for reform.

Edwards and Krugman think that's naïve. They want the evil drug and insurance industries excluded from any of these conversations. Edwards surely knows better than this. The drug industry that he seeks to bar from a seat at the table is the same industry working to save his wife Elizabeth's life and that of anyone else with a serious disease, including me. The answer to price-gouging is to force these companies to negotiate drug prices with the government, a reform any Democratic president would quickly enact.

Ideally, health insurance companies should be eliminated altogether. But a single payer plan isn't viable politically, as Edwards readily admits. The only option is to curb their power and expand coverage through more regulation.

When I asked Edwards how any agreement could be reached without at least talking to these players in the system, he said he would offer a seat at the table to members of Congress who represent their interests. In other words, it's OK to have the congressional stooges there, but not the interests that pull their strings?