begin rant

Now, if Hillary Clinton manages to wangle the nomination, I'll vote for her, don't get me wrong. But I hope against hope that by then she will not say anything as colossally stupid as she says in this AP release about the contributions of economists. The two highlights are 1) waving away as "elite opinion" the observations by economists that a holiday gas tax rollback would do nothing to help consumers, and 2) when asked to provide the name of one economist who endorses the plan, HC replies "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."

Any president who won't listen to economists would be a scary president. And I'm not sure which word--elite or opinion--pisses me off more, but I think it might be opinion. Because heaven knows (don't you, heaven?) that GWB and his administration have used similarly dismissive strategies with scientists for the past eight years.  Maybe those scientists who have "opinions" about global warming ought to be consulted about the gas tax rollback proposal. That is if they're not too busy sitting at the opera.

End rant.

Comments

[J. K. Gayle]

Are you kidding? Clinton's a fantastic listener, Clinton the campaigner that is. She hears us saying "We should move on because there's so many important issues facing our country that we have to attend to." We've wanted to move on past the ABC "This Week" (and general media) obsession with the distance between Obama and his pastor. She hears what we're saying, and Clinton the campaigner mimics verbatim.

Her econ comments? Well, she has to name at least one of our "so many important issues." As you say, how could Clinton the President not listen to the economists? But Clinton the campaigner does say: "We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans." She's listening to the media basing Obama as "somehow elite." The younger campaigning Senator, of course, gets that and calls the elder out on it. A Clinton Prez gas-tax? Yeah, right. It's just a Clinton Campaigner gimmick, "a classic Washington gimmick." Is Obama making it tougher for me to have to vote for Clinton if she gets the nom? No, she is.

[Joshie Juice]

Gawd! I saw the comment last night on the News Hour and laughed aloud. Not only is it a stupid thing to say, but it's part of Hillary's populist rhetorical turn. Guess who's next?

The elistist academy, of course.

[E!]

i know this wasn't the spirit of her comment, and i'm about 60% obama anyway (not that it matters anymore, officially), but i am increasingly convinced that economics is kind of a scam anyway, and more about maintaining a culture of expertise about economic matters than about actually being experts about economic matters. it's abstract knowledge about concrete stuff, and it tries to predict based on the past, and it almost always fails. it's also deeply conservative and classist. (but doesn't have to be!) i'm just saying the work it actually does is quite a bit different than the work it claims to do. which is to say i wouldn't mind if a president said that he or she would listen to economists, if they had some other legitimate source of information in mind.

which is a lot different than suppressing scientific knowledge, of course, as GWB has done, officially and unofficially.

[e!]

sorry, that 2nd last sentence should read: ". . .i wouldn't mind if a president said that he or she WOULDN'T listen to economists. . ."

[E!]

i should have added: all this being said, anyone who thinks the gas tax holiday is a good idea is retarded.