The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

What's the Deal With Paul Krugman?

Wouldn't you love to know the back story on Paul Krugman's column today? Because without knowing that his real beef is that his wife can't stop singing "Yes, we can," or maybe that his idiot nephew won't shut up about how all the cool people are on the O Train, it's all very mysterious: What is he referring to when he says "most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody''? That Obama's supporters are not chill like Hillary Clinton's?

That is a fresh take, definitely, but where did he get the impression that "many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of 'Clinton rules'—the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.'' Then he draws a straight line from there to ... Whitewater? Suggesting what? That if not Obama then those who mindlessly follow him approved of the vast right-wing thing? I'd hate to put this non-sequitur on a par with Krugman's buddy Bush mentioning 9/11 in the same breath with Saddam—but we're all in some danger, aren't we, of mirroring what we loathe?

His least original point, about how "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality,'' is one I hear all the time from Hillary supporters who claim it is a sign of immaturity to support Obama and that to believe there is any other way of doing business is really to believe in a fairy tale. But thinking that any one group or campaign or party has cornered the market on "most of the venom'' is what seems like kid stuff to me.

We Need To Talk

Melinda and Rachael, your recent posts about knee-jerk political assumptions and the trend toward only listening to people we agree with really resonated for me. In years past, I had no trouble finding my political tribe. As a lefty lesbian, I might occasionally roll my eyes at the bourgeois liberalism of the mainstream American left, but I knew the difference between us and them.

And then, to oversimplify matters, came 9/11. Suddenly, I was out of step with a lot of my friends on national-security and foreign-policy issues, and conversation became more difficult. Should I tell my pals they sounded naive and disturbingly isolationist? Could they disagree with me without denouncing me as a deluded cog in the Bush-Cheney war machine? (The answer to both questions is sometimes.)

It's tempting to stay silent, but while I occasionally rely on a rueful smile to convey, "I think you're totally wrong, but now's not the time for that conversation," I've mostly learned to express my dissent. For one thing, it's more honest: To paraphrase a line from this week's Exes and Ohs, "You start be saying nothing ... and soon you have nothing to say." (I get all my political philosophy from bad TV shows.) But it's also damaging to pretend we all agree when we don't. One of the reasons I've found the anti-gay-marriage referendums of the last few years so hurtful is that, judging from the wide margins most of them have passed with, lots of Democratic voters supported them. My assumptions about what Democrats believe betrayed me.

We need to talk. The Democratic Party needs pro-life progressives. And the GOP needs social liberals (pro-life or not) like you, Rachael.