Paul, do 20 seconds of research first

Paul Krugman in his NYT column today:

And what I’m not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they’re about to face. Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change.

But there’s a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.

Barack Obama at the University of Iowa, March 29. 2007:

To help pay for this, we will ask all but the smallest businesses who don't make a meaningful contribution today to the health coverage of their employees to do so by supporting this new plan. And we will allow the temporary Bush tax cut for the wealthiest Americans to expire.

Paul Krugman is a terrific economist, a great columnist, and close to the MVP for moving this country back towards decency in our government. However, he doesn’t know squat about communications in this context. Yes, Obama may be downplaying raising taxes on the wealthy, and he is distinctly tying it to raising some of the revenue needed to fund a universal health insurance coverage. (Whether his plan is presently universal or not without a “mandate” that everyone buy insurance, and how much the detailed specifics of a candidate’s plan matters at this time, is another debate.) If you think about it, though, these are tactical maneuvers, smart ones, designed to make it harder for Republicans to throw up their typical “will raise taxes” propaganda and make it stick.

But the fact is, he has made that formal, declared commitment to “let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire.” Whether his campaign language is as starkly focused on rich vs. everyone else as Krugman would prefer is of no significance in the face of that formal commitment that mirrors the formal commitment that virtually every other Democrat is currently making. I’m getting a bit disgusted with important commentators who declare their “worries” about a candidate, whether Obama or Clinton, by extrapolating unintended meanings out of language designed to turn off as few viewers as possible, and to make Republican counter-attacks as awkward as possible when the general election heats up, without consulting what the candidate has formally committed to on his or her web site. An academic like Krugman especially should know better.