This morning brings us a new Paul Krugman op-ed entitled "Deliverance or Diversion?" The article hits Obama with some standard Clinton talking points: his relative inexperience, the media's favoritism of him over Clinton, his supposed preference for rhetoric over substance. And it his with his rhetoric, seen as bipartisan and not explicitly liberal enough, that the thrust of this editorial is aimed. Will an Obama candidacy deliver the Democratic party not just the presidency but the progressive policies it seeks to institute? Or will it simply divert the party, by dint of personality and empty rhetoric, from its true goals of policy enactment. If the latter happens, Krugman concludes, it "could tear the party apart."
There is little substance behind Krugman's piece, but the issue behind Obama's rhetorical style could be important to the progressive movement as a whole and is worth some discussion. Follow below the fold for a more sober assessment of Obama's lack of explicit liberalism made by Kevin Drum back in January: