22 February 2016
Paul Starr ought to admit he’s really a red-baiting Republican
As a young man in 1984, Princeton professor Paul Starr won a Pulitzer Prize for The Social Transformation of American Medicine. With Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich, he founded The American Prospect magazine, generally a liberal publication, in 1990.
His fall into sin began in Bill Clinton’s administration when he helped devise Hillarycare, the private health insurance based scheme that would have condemned tens of millions to health maintenance organizations. His input into the development of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act is a bit murkier, but in Remedy and Reaction (2011), he defends the ACA and attacks advocates of a single-payer health care system.
Starr supports Hillary Clinton — and despises Bernie Sanders.
Today in Politico, Starr excoriated Sanders, arguing that the Vermont Democrat is an old-fashioned, private enterprise hating socialist who probably is a closet Bolshevik:
Socialism and Sanders have their heart in a different place—economic equality before all else. Socialism is still the dream of those who don’t worry about concentrating power in the state or about the perverse effects of making goods and services available at a zero price.
Starr, of course, does not worry about concentrating power in corporations, Wall Street investment gamblers, or reactionary billionaires like the Koch brothers. His faith is in the Invisible Hand and the wisdom of the market, not in the benevolent hand of we-the-people working collectively for the common good through democratically elected government.
That’s the Republican economic philosophy.
Why, then, is Starr supporting Hillary Clinton instead of someone like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Rand Paul?
Simple. Starr is a social liberal. He’s pro-choice. He believes in affirmative action and race based remedies. Like Bill and Hillary Clinton, he’s a private enterprise worshipping social progressive known as a New Democrat.
And he’s a McCarthyesque red-baiter who impugns Sanders’ patriotism:
In 1980, Sanders served as a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers Party, which supported the nationalization of industry and expressed solidarity with revolutionary dictatorships, including Iran (this at the time Iran was holding American hostages).
The Princeton professor who wrote that paragraph wants us to believe that Sanders — who is Jewish — is an economic totalitarian with a traitor’s soul who loves Islamic theocrats more than he loves America.
Will Hillary Clinton disown Starr’s scurrilous hatchet job? Or will she remain silent, hoping the professor’s diatribe helps put her in the White House?
Will Paul Starr stop pretending he’s a Democrat and admit he’s really an Adam Smith Republican? Don’t hold your breath. And remember to duck when the mud he slings flies your way.