www.dailykos.com/.../509011

As a fan of Hillary Clinton's, I have always been a big fan of Paul Krugman. I reckon that his columns are awesome and unbiased. I find his political acumen astounding, and I get all frustrated when he writes about economics, which is a false science of shakedown artists and frauds:

I really wish he'd stick to political analysis though and just stay away from economics, because economists are elitist scum who are WORKING TO DESTROY THE LIVES OF THE COMMON MAN WITH THEIR HIGH FALLUTIN' IDEAS AND SCHEMES.

It was painful, but I sent Mr. Krugman an email and let him know (with my regrets) I would be cancelling my subscription to the New York Times because the Times is allowing ELITIST SWINE LIKE KRUGMAN to pollute front porches across small town America (REAL America) with ideas that are dangerous, destructive, and mathematical.

I don't trust him and his kind. They're a-schemin' in their ivory towers trying to come up with ways to keep the little guy down. I don't trust the way they look down at us little folk with their elitist opinion and big fancy graphs. They're always talkin' about supply and demand and inelastic supply as if that matters a hill of beans in this world. I don't need none of that fancy talk. I just need somebody to promise to put a few bucks in my wallet, say about right now. That's the kind of economics that I need. I don't want to think about it or nothing. And even if it might not ever happen and it's probably just a false promise, I don't care, as long as some politician's whoopin' and a-hollerin' about the common man all hysterical and such.

We need to do something. We need to write the NY Times letters and demand that they fire this elitist and take away his microphone that he's using to create pain for white working class voters in rust belt states or southern states.

We don't need no economists and their elitist egghead ivory-towerism. I just want a politician to tell me something stupid that sounds sort of good. And when they tell me it, I want them to pretend to believe it, and to get all indignant when fancy pants reporters get all incredulous and start questioning their commitment to the common man, who has never been lied to by rich self-serving opportunists who put on a phony folksy facade when running for election.

I am a supporter of Hillary Clintion which is practically heresy at this website but her remark is truly disgusting. I have loathed the faux populism of the right for years and now we are getting from the center - left in the form of a person who with her significant other earned $109 million in well less than a decade and is now slumming. Can this campaign descend any lower?

Hillary Clinton continues to scale every new heights of shamelessness.  After each magnificent episode of pandering to the lowest common denominator, she scales new heights and whole new vistas of shameless pandering open up before her.  

The Democratic party's very own George Bush and Karl Rove, all rolled into one.

The question, liberal reformer, is whether Hillary Clinton can descend any lower, and I think the answer has to be not only that she can, but that she surely will.  I wonder how many Hillary supporters are finally seeing what caused me and others like me, hardcore Dems, to abandon her quite a while ago.

What an absurdity.  Clinton is a Wellesly + Yale Law graduate, who has move amongst the power elite of this country for decades, and has recently, with Bill, become significantly wealthy trading on their supposed "public service."  For her to take a swipe at "the elite" is so laughable it hurts.  It's also obscene.  If Clinton wasn't so desperate to be the "elite of the elite" she wouldn't be in this race at all.  

And yet - it might just work.  Voters love to be pandered to, and they'd probably rather hear a recently converted "plain old gal" mouth apostasy against her elite friends and connections, than bother to think about real problems.

For my part, I want a smart, thoughtful member of the intellectual and political elite in the White House.  I haven't felt at all well served by the aw shucks, brush clearin', good ol' boy we've had there for the last 7+ years.

Maybe she's impersonating Colbert. She's pretending to adopt this far right tactic in order to implode it by making it appear absolutely absurd.

That would be pretty cool.

Let's hope Krugman has learned his lesson.

Can she try any harder (roi seems to think so, so, yes, she probably can)?

Cannily phrased, still, the holiday idea is basically sound in that people will feel better even if they don't really net much. Discounting it may be "smart" but can you really blame people for wanting a feeling of relief instead of a another kick in the teeth?

"Cannily phrased, still, the holiday idea is basically sound in that people will feel better even if they don't really net much."

And I'm sure those unemployed highway workers will feel just great.

Obama needs a more effective one-liner to bury this idiotic proposal. So far, I have heard him call it a gimmick, and that it would only save people $30 bucks or so, but those are really not punchy enough. Maybe he's been swatting it down at more length, but those are the things that have made the news. And I think that they are not all that compelling to the part of the electorate that has trouble thinking things through.

The irony of people criticizing Obama for being an elitist who was condescending because of the "bitter" remark, while Hillary is pandering to the uneducated and uninformed to such a level is pretty rich.

Hillary's proposal is like trying to pass a law against gravity. Or like the old story about the Indiana legislature passing a law to define pi to be 3.2 (why mess with all those extra digits?).

It may be an effective pander (at least for the least educated segment of the population), so perhaps Obama ought to couple his opposition to the idea with some giveaway that might actually work. Like a $250 per family refundable tax credit to help with energy costs. If the amount is taken off your tax bill, and comes to you in a check if it would make our tax negative, it would at least be highly progressive and help those hardest hit. I'm not a big fan of that sort of policy, but when you are stuck in a free-fall (or faster) race to the bottom, some pandering may be necessary because right now people really are hurting.

tomeg,

I read somewhere here that the economic incidence of the gas tax is believed to be about 50/50 between producers and consumers. That's actually the null hypothesis in microeconomics where the economic incidence cannot be known unless you have a pretty good idea of the supply and demand curves.  If, as seems likely, supply is more inelastic than demand in the short run, then the economic incidence would fall more heavily on producers.  Most observers seem to think this is the case.   If so, consumers would be better off with a tax refund, say a reduction in FICA, funded by an increase in the gas tax.  They would pay half or less of the tax and get 100% of it back and there would be an increased incentive to conserve.  If it is producers who do indeed bear more of the tax, we would also see a reduction in the amount of money we have to ship abroad to pay for our habit.  

Sadly, speaking the truth to the American public has become all but impossible since Ronald Reagan stepped off the planet Earth with his voodoo economics and Star Wars missile defense, taking a good portion of the electorate with him.

Didn't Bill Clinton 'put his lot in with economists'?  That means that during Bill's 8 years he was an elitist snob that didn't care one bit about the common man?  Is that what she's implying now?  That's what I took from this quote.

So what does this say about HRC's "experience" claim?  It means to me that her experience is a sham.

Thank God, yes God and the Clintons that all of here are cardcarrying members of the Laborers Union, ranchhands, or dishwashers. Hillary is a deeply religious person and I know she is on our side.

Just because TNR agreed with the war, it doesn't make Bush's foreign policy of "elite opinion".   Unless by elite you actually mean dogmatic.  That's an insult to pointy heads everywhere.  

So her "35 years of experience" was as a non-elite working woman?  Is she is no better than a labourer, why is she running for President?  

So unbelievable that Hillary is spinning that what was wrong with the Bush years was that they listened to the opinion of elites. If it weren't so craven, it would be hilarious. She's becoming a caricature of the Republicans. She has learned so well from their lessons that she can no longer distinguish between when it's sheer ballsyness (an allusion to her cajones) and utter absurdity. I think she's going cuckoo. It's frightening to watch.

I assume Hillary Clinton wouldn't be pounding the gax tax issue if she (and her advisers) didn't

headline:  HILLARY THROWS KRUGMAN UNDER THE BUS

isn't this the candidate that wants to end the bush "war on science"...  i guess economists don't make the grade...

and am i alone...  or did the entire "this week" show seem like some new form of propaganda:  the warm and fuzzy set, the softball questions almost lined up to play to her message, the sympathetic host who seems guilty (but determined) to pepper her with embarrassing questions...  

I'm not going to put my lot in with scientists, who claim to have a lock on understanding climate.

I'm not going to put my lot in with storm levy engineers.

I'm not going to put my lot in with so-called experts on terrorism.

I'm not going to put my lot in with doctors who have examined the patient.

I trust my gut.

Stgla: eight years as the wife of POTUS, and twelve as the wife of the "longest serving Governor", she's got a mighty gut to rely on.

Just as W, for eight years the son of a President and for four the son of a vice-President, eminently qualified to be POTUS, could rely on his gut for guidance ...

Personally, I rely on my thyroid gland for guidance.  It has never failed me.  Never.

Watch campaigns emit usual and customary campaign posturing on gas, gassy preachers, taxes etc

Watch TNR launch Snark Post #437 against Obama's opponents.

Watch usual suspects kick in with anti-HRC diatribes #437-499.

[yawn]

rinse, repeat, and play that funky music white boy--till ya die (uh huh, till ya die yowww)

...or through November, whichever comes first

If she means by "elite opinion", her descision to authorize Georgie Boy to invade Iraq, then I agree with her (horrors!).

Our greatest problem as a nation is that we have no federal policies to really address the problems we face, energy, health care, climate change, education, foreign affairs, millitary spending, you name it, they are all the victims of politcal persuasion.  Now she thinks elite opinions are worthless.  After 7+ years of pure political opinion policies what's left.  I guess she can govern based on poll results like Bill did.

tep - so do you think then that Hillary's proposal to suspend the gas tax is an intellectually defensible idea that deserves a sober, respectful response?  Do you also support her dismissal of expert opinion?  For those of us who don't, irony (which you call "Snark Posts" and "diatribes") is simply irresistable, undressing, as it were, the empress with no clothes.    

I look forward to Hillary's view of "elite opinion" and the theory of evolution -- then she would truly square the circle with Huckabee.

yeah tep, I don't get your point at all, she even said it on the Sunday morning news shows, just how many working class people even watch them? she is not even pandering to the right audience.

"so do you think then that Hillary's proposal to suspend the gas tax is an intellectually defensible idea that deserves a sober, respectful response?"

It deserves about as much scorn as "I can no more disown Wright than I can disown my grandmother"

The point is that balance, objectivity, a hostility to BS in all its myriad forms is a good thing in a journalist. TNR is becoming indistinguishable from HuffPo or any number of tedious, one-sided, snark-filled blogs. That's a major loss, IMHO

Well, whether Hillary's position is right or wrong kind of depends on what you think her goal is.

If the goal was to be highly regarded as economically astute, then she blew it, and on economic theorist grounds she will undoubtedly lose the pivotal Econ Professor voting block to Obama.  

On the other hand, if her goal was to reassure financially-strapped working-class voters that they won't have to pay as much for a gallon of gas as soon as she takes over, then she wins their votes on gut-instinct grounds.  

But if her goal was as you describe in your last point, dlrocdoc, then (a) the financially strapped working-class voters will continue to pay the same rising prices because her purported legislation isn't going to be passed in the Congress, and (b) she's going to change her mind about the idea as soon as she's president.  Thus, she wins their vote not so much on gut-instinct grounds as wrong-instinct grounds.  The voters are wrong to believe "instinctively" that the the tax cut will happen, and will take care of the longer-term problems.

On the other hand, maybe they aren't so darned stupid as she thinks . . .