Reply #25: Well, Krugman has really blunted Obama's momentum with all those columns, hasn't he? [View All]

[BeyondGeography]

There are easy answers to your questions.

Insurance mandates do not in any way guarantee universal health care and will be used by the Republicans to short-circuit the entire discussion. "Hillary's coming for your paycheck." Game over for HillaryCare, part deux. Children have no say in the matter and need to protected. They are also the cheapest to insure, so that's the least expensive and least politically risky mandate. Once an affordable, cost-effective alternative to the private market is in place, Obama has said he has no problem with triggering mandates to make compliance universal. He has the sequencing right, in the eyes of many people.

The payroll tax is regressive and creating a bubble between $97K and $200K will eliminate the need to keep increasing the retirement age and/or reduce benefits (it's something Hillary even said she favored in a rope line in Iowa when she didn;t know an AP reporter was listening).

More important, you and Krugman are wallowing in the death-trap of conventional Democratic thinking about what it takes to win presidential elections and be an effective leader. The wonk who gets all the questions right on the multiple choice test is not the person we should be looking for. You'd think having lost seven of the last ten presidential elections going with the CW would have taught us something. Hopefully, the voters will save us from ourselves this time and make it impossible not to nominate Obama.