Paul Krugman, who many of us remember loudly supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, has just
written a very solid progressive vindication of the six years of the Obama presidency. As you remember Krugman is the Nobel prize winning New York Times columnist and Princeton professor.
His support of Clinton surprised many of us because he’s not at all identified with Clinton economics or economists. For one, I was very disappointed Obama didn’t make Krugman his Chair of Economic Advisers.
So Krugman’s thoughtful and supportive analysis of the Obama Presidency is very interesting.
Krugman is a fan of the Affordable Care Act even though he continues to support a single payer Medicare for All type system. He points out that 10 million more Americans have been covered and costs have gone down. The number of covered Americans would be much greater if so many radical right governors hadn’t rejected the additional Medicaid dollars for the working poor.
On financial reform, Krugman says: “Let’s be clear: The financial crisis should have been followed by a drastic crackdown on Wall Street abuses, and it wasn’t. No important figures have gone to jail; bad banks and other financial institutions, from Citigroup to Goldman, were bailed out with few strings attached; and there has been nothing like the wholesale restructuring and reining in of finance that took place in the 1930s. Obama bears a considerable part of the blame for this disappointing response… But there’s enough evidence even now to say that there’s a reason Wall Street – which used to give an approximately equal share of money to both parties but now overwhelmingly supports Republicans – tried so hard to kill financial reform.”
On climate change as Chief of Staff for the Utility Workers, I was in the discussions and saw how hard the Administration was working to pass it. Unfortunately, that was the legislation when the Republicans said no more Obama victories.
On lgbt rights, the country is miles ahead of where we were six years ago.
Of course we needed a much more robust investment strategy and government funded jobs to recover from the Bush-Wall Street Depression. But we didn’t pursue austerity, which has hurt Europe so badly.
We have failed on workers’ rights, but the fault for that lies completely at the feet of Republicans who hate and disdain workers.
Image source: Zazzle Paper