The Daily Background

The Times’ Krugman has an opinion piece in today’s paper criticizing Obama, and his criticism is getting some criticism around the blogosphere. Here’s Krugman:

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?

Minipundit reacts:

There are several problems here, including Krugman’s claim that unions are somehow not special interests, and Edwards’ past opposition to exactly this type of special interest lobbying. But the biggest problem is that Krugman really doesn’t seem to know, or at least doesn’t note in the op-ed, the basic facts of the case. As Ezra Klein (no fan of Obama) says, the union 527s are running ads attacking Obama; I don’t know about Krugman, but I’m not generally surprised when candidates object to ads attacking them. Krugman also fails to acknowledge another person objecting to the ads. Edwards, at least publicly, opposes the ads, even as his former communications director is the one orchestrating them. So, evidently Edwards, Krugman’s obvious choice in the primary, hates unions too.

Krugman conveniently leaves out several facts in his piece. One of which is that these are misleading attack ads– not simply pro-candidate ads– financed by God knows who (527s like these, and the Swift Boaters that Edwards so loudly decried in 2004, are not legally obligated to disclose their funders and thus are widely considered the most unsavory campaign mechanisms).

While portraying these ads as merely wholesome, positive, union-funded health care ads that should appeal to Democrats, Krugman has also left out the fact that Edwards himself has (meekly) asked for the ads to stop running (Stop These Ads begins a statement issued by the campaign), and he has failed at having any effect on them, even though in 2004 he said that if Bush had called loudly enough for the Swift Boaters to stop, they would have.

Krugman also ignores one of the key reasons why this is a story at all: he doesn’t mention to his readers that the person running one of these shady 527s happens to be John Edwards’ former campaign manager, and one of his top aides and close friends. Finally, when Krugman talks about the 527 situation if Obama is the Democratic nominee, Krugman leaves out the context that Obama has himself addressed this topic:

Obama stopped short, however, of forswearing 527 spending on his own behalf in the general election, as the independent organizations appear likely to play a major role next November. He said he hoped that he and the Republican nominee could agree to press the other entities to stand down, a hope similar to the one he has expressed in accepting public financing.

“I’m not going to endanger the Democratic Party’s ability to win races,” he said.

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