Krugman, Krugman, Krugman. Saturday morning, Paul Krugman wrote, Wonks and Minions. We liberal true believers are being mean to him and other people for all their ridiculous anti-Sanders articles. I have little doubt that many Sanders supporters are just as silly as supporters of every other candidate and go on tilt when they read negative things about their candidates. But this is a straw man. Who cares that Sanders’ supporters are angry? Maybe it is time for Krugman and company to look at why they are angry.

Yesterday, I wrote The Complete ‘Bernie Sanders Can’t Win’ Liberal Pundit Article Kit. And my point was not that it is wrong to complain about Sanders. Have at it! Attack Sanders all you want. Just don’t sit around and write more of these articles about how you love his policies but that it would be a big mistake to vote for him. I have policy differences with Sanders myself. I simply have bigger policy differences with Clinton. None of them are that big a deal.

But Krugman mentioned that Mike Konczal (who I really like) is getting some grief about saying that Sanders’ focus on Glass-Steagall and too-big-to-fail banks is all wrong. I agree! As everyone should know, the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause the 2008 financial crisis. Then again, Sanders has not been talking about just reinstating Glass-Steagall; he’s been talking about a Glass-Steagall for the 21st century. Truthfully, I don’t much care. But there are some thing that I care about very much.

Let’s just look at two things very quickly. First, there is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I hate it. I think it is a very bad thing. There is no doubt that it would die under a Sanders administration and almost no doubt that Clinton would sign it. Then there is the financial transaction tax that Sanders is a big supporter of. Clinton was forced to propose something similar, a high frequency trading tax, which Dean Baker says is unworkable and is regardless, not the same thing. That’s Clinton all over: protecting Wall Street.

But somehow, we hear liberals complaining about Glass-Steagall. Well, this is a tactic I’ve seen elsewhere — you know, on places like Fox News. For example, have you been hearing all the big news about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal? Most people probably think that’s a thing of the past. But if you’ve been watching Fox News for the last week, you’ve seen little else.

Well, that’s what we are seeing in these recent attacks on Sanders. Are we just going to avoid Clinton’s negatives now? I think it really comes down to the electability issue. And I’m fine with that. I have my own concerns. But let’s make that argument. Let’s not make the argument that Sanders’ policies are bad. This article is sort of the other side of yesterday’s article. There you have people saying, “I love Sanders, but he can’t win.” The problem there is that there is no argument that he can’t win — just the proclamation. And here we have cherry picking of issues.

There is another issue there I tend to side with Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric. I think we need to gradually expand Obamacare to the point where we have universal single-payer health insurance. But are we going to get there via Hillary Clinton? Her pragmatic approach might do it, but it is more likely that it will end in things like getting rid of the taxes on premium private plans and medical devices — things that are part of a pragmatic approach that has already resulted in Obamacare being less secure.

I doubt I would make a big deal of all this liberal Bernie Sanders sniping. But it all came together. As long as Sanders was getting 30% or less nationally, everyone was fine. But now that he’s sitting at 40%, there is a sudden freak out. And it is a freak out from people who have generally been very favorably inclined toward Sanders. Krugman’s sudden attacks on Sanders don’t surprise me. I’ve long said that he was quite a lot more conservative than I am. But it bugs me that he isn’t being honest about what he really thinks.

And now, he’s whining about being attacked from the left. Oh, I know: it isn’t him. He’s just defending the feelings of Mike Konczal. But as far as I remember: Konczal is for a financial transaction tax. Krugman is for one. But it is only Dean Baker who has attacked Clinton on the matter. I don’t expect Sanders to win the nomination. I’m not certain that he should win the nomination. Maybe Clinton really is the better choice. But that is the case that has to be made. And Krugman can whine all he wants. But there are real reasons to complain about his recent anti-Sanders writing.

We writers are very busy. I know, right now, I have an article on SSH that I really need to finish. I wanted to finish it last night, but I was so tired. Really: I spend about 10 hours per day writing and doing reading in support of it. And admittedly, that is my life. I don’t have much else that I even want to do. But I feel totally rushed all the time. It’s after 3:00 pm today, and I have next to nothing done. I haven’t gotten to the SSH article. I’ve written one Frankly Curious article. My anxiety level is so high, I’d take a Valium, but that would make me fall asleep, get further behind, and make me even more anxious. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

Look at Paul Krugman. He writes a lot. And in addition to that, he has to go out to cool concerts where he hangs out backstage and he has to eat expensive dinners with important people. And he has to go to conferences all over the world. He’s a busy guy. And it must be crushing to use all the time that could be spent talking to John Paul White to write yet another article about how it would be wrong to vote for Bernie Sander like the one he wrote yesterday, How Change Happens.

But I do have more free time because John Paul White never returns my calls. So I thought I would use the one advantage I have over him to help Krugman out. And not just Krugman. What I’m proposing here will help out lots of other people. For example, it will save Jonathan Chait a lot of time. And Martin Longman. And Erik Loomis. And plenty of other liberal commentators who I very much like. That is why I’m doing this. It is a gift. It is a free tool to make their lives better.

So here it goes. It’s really simple, but I can’t pretend that it’s my own idea. I’ve just systematized the process. In general, none of these people are thinking very deeply about any of this, so I’ve just created a system where they don’t have to think at all. Here it goes:

1. Start with some recent good news for the Bernie Sanders campaign: polls or a famous person saying something or money raised. Or nothing at all. Here’s a generic opening that I release to the public domain. I hope that everyone finds many uses for it, “Despite what everyone expected, Bernie Sanders has really caught fire. He’s packing people in at his rallies. And he looks certain to win New Hampshire, and has a good shot at Iowa.”
2. Next, use several paragraphs to talk about how much you like Bernie Sanders. Now if I were writing this for new writers, I’d have to provide a lot of details. But for the top tier writers I’m talking about, it’s easy. All they have to do is go back and look at pretty much every article they wrote about Bernie Sanders as long as he was polling at less than 25%. Don’t plagiarizer! But professional writers know how to rip themselves off without technically plagiarizing. It’s quick and easy. Exactly how many paragraphs you want to spend on this will depend upon your editorial needs. But don’t go overboard, or you’ll make the rest of this harder. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you actually have to argue against yourself!
3. Now turn everything you’ve just said (and written for months) on its head. Point out that this is pie in the sky. Note that no one will elected a socialist. Write whatever you want. Just make the point that despite everything, it would be wrong to vote for Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t even have to make sense. For example, Krugman wrote, “Mr Sanders is the heir to candidate Obama, but Mrs Clinton is the heir to President Obama.” See that?! Candidate and president Obama are the same guy, so that statement actually means the opposite of what Krugman means, given both Sanders and Clinton are in candidate mode. But it doesn’t matter. Clinton is good because whatever and Sanders is bad because whatever, but make sure everyone knows that you actually agree with Sanders more.

Done! File that and go spend some more time with John Paul White. You’ve done enough thinking for a career. As for me, I just made a contribution to the Bernie Sanders campaign and bought a very cool shirt. So I feel I’ve done a good turn for both camps. I’ve given money to Bernie, and I’ve allowed otherwise decent liberals to write their hack Hillary articles more easily.

I’m like a saint or something!

Update (23 January 2016 5:45)

Robert Reich takes on Krugman directly and persuasively, Bernie’s Movement. It’s really short. Give it a read.

I feel like a guy walking around town wearing a sandwich board that read, “The End Is Nigh!” How long can we continue to pretend that the Republican Party is rational? It really is very simple. You have the Republican elites. They are more or less what used to be called the Country Club Republicans: rich people who want the party to give them more money through less taxation, less regulation, and more direct giveaways like bank bailouts. If the Republican Party as an institution stands for anything, this is what it is. They don’t care about balanced budgets; they don’t care about abortion; and they sure as hell don’t care about same sex marriage. In other words, they don’t care about what the Republican base cares about.

The problem, of course, is that a party that is really only interested in catering to the wishes of the 1% (more like 0.01% — but the 1% does very well too) is only really popular with the one percent. And that’s about how much of the vote the party would get if it were honest about what it is all about. Now the knock on the Democratic Party is that it is all about identity politics. This is nonsense. It is the Republican Party that is all about identity. It was Barack Obama who said, “There are no red states or blue states, just the United States.” It’s the Republican Party that talks incessantly about the “real” America, as though anyone not voting Republican isn’t an American. According to them, the Republican base is the only “real America.”

The the Republican elites — starting most profoundly with Ronald Reagan — came up with this idea that they could pander to the Christian social conservatives. They could, as Thomas Frank put it, get them riled up and angry at rich rock stars so that the Republican base would march down to the polls and lower those rock stars’ taxes. These are people who are not interested in more tax cuts for the rich. They don’t think that it is okay to poison a generation of people in Flint, Michigan. They don’t think that trillions of dollars should have been spent bailing out the banks.

So now The National Review is out with a whole issue dedicated to trashing Donald Trump. And I suppose that Jonathan Chait is more or less correct in his assessment, “Conservatives fear him not because he is an ignorant demagogue, but because he’s not their ignorant demagogue.” But the issue is that Republican politics is a con. It is a way of getting a bunch of people to vote about issues that the Republicans won’t do much about, even while the party does do things that the Republican base isn’t that keen on.

Obviously, the Republican Party is reaping what it has sown. But this is always the case. And it is especially true of The National Review. This is the magazine that was originally started to pretend that the conservative movement wasn’t really about hatred but about high minded ideals. The fact that it immediately picked a fight with the Civil Rights movement and showed itself to be a bigoted publication just makes for great irony. But now it is against Donald Trump because he’s a bigot and not a real conservative and ignorant and whatever else the 19 writers I will not be reading have to say.

As with everything Trump on the right, the real issue is that they think he cannot win. Because Trump will provide them with tax cuts. He will cut regulations. He will protect the interests of the power elite. They don’t care about anything else. And Trump is using the same tactic that Republicans have been using to win elections ever since Eisenhower. Whoever the Republicans nominate will not be nominated because he is a big believer in supply side economics; he will be nominated because the rage filled base hears in his rhetoric what they believe: that they are being unfairly attacked by “those people” — where “those people” are anyone you want to name, except for the people who are really responsible: the Republican establishment itself. And if the Republican base thinks that Trump is not part of that establishment, it is just another sign that you Lincoln’s “some of the people all of the time” is the Republican base.

I really like Erik Loomis. He’s a brilliant academic and I’ve learned a whole lot about the labor movement from him. But he really annoyed me yesterday with this article, So What Would Happen if Bernie Sanders Won? For one thing, it is part of the genre that I’ve come to despise: “I love Bernie Sanders but…” Give it a rest. If you want to support Clinton or Martin O’Malley, support them! They are both fine candidates. The Democratic Party is truly blessed to have such fine candidates. And out of a dozen and a half Republicans, they can barely find someone who isn’t a bigot.

Erik Loomis begins by noting that the most important thing the president does is make appointments. And Sanders’ grand rhetoric has made Loomis believe that this means that Sanders is as clueless about this as Barack Obama was. Well, maybe. What I think is what I’ve been saying for months: from a practical standpoint, there wouldn’t be much difference between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years! He does know the system a lot better than Obama did when he came into office. It is presumptuous of Erik Loomis to simply assume (and that’s all he’s doing) that Sanders is going to be lackadaisical about this like Obama was.

But this isn’t Erik Loomis’ big complaint about Sanders. No, the big problem will be that “his base would almost certainly abandon him within a year.” You see, “The left has learned nothing since 2008.” Really?! Was the left all excited about Obama? I don’t remember that. I remember the left thinking that he was a standard variety centrist Democrat — just like Clinton, although mildly more liberal. Actual leftists thought his “hope and change” rhetoric was a joke. They didn’t think or expect much of him and they were fully satisfied.

Now if Loomis wants to say that the whole Democratic base will be disappointed with Sanders, fine. That’s kind of like saying that after a storm, the sun will come out. Everyone is always disappointed with their politicians, because that’s what politics is like. But you will notice that even all those Obama true believers from 2008 still showed up to vote for him in 2012. So liberals will be disappointed with Sanders within a year? And that matters why? Liberals will be disappointed in Clinton on the same time scale. Who cares? This is not an argument for Sanders or Clinton or Donald Trump for that matter.

The truth is that by election day, the Democratic base will be very happy about their candidate — whomever it happens to be. So it is going to take a little time for the base to become discourage. Is it supposed to go something like this? Clinton steps into office, and makes a middle of the road budget deal with the Republics. The entire Democratic base, having such low expectations of her (but still managing to drag themselves out to have elected her) will rise up and cheer, “She’s living up to our low expectations! Hooray!”

As for the almost daily articles that liberals write complaining about Democratic politicians? Well, this is called content creation. It’s an industry. Things that people would have just groused about in private now show up on Huffington Post because God knows nothing more 12 hours old is ever worth reading.

I’m a Sanders supporter. But I have real concerns about him. His association with socialism scares me a bit. His age scares me even more. Yet I will almost certainly vote for him because I think he is the best candidate for the things that I care about. I have no problem with people disagreeing. But the fact that if elected, Sanders will disappoint the Democratic base — just like every other president ever — is stupid.

Do you know what Erik Loomis’ article reminds me of? Something he would just grouse about in private if he didn’t feel that he has to keep the content flowing at Lawyers, Guns, & Money.