Brit Hume: "Doin' Fine" Was No Gaffe

Brit Hume posted this tweet, with what I imagine is a screenshot of his Notepad take on the subject.

A larger shot of the comments are here.

Mickey Kaus agrees, and chides liberal pundits for pretending this is just some silly slip of the tongue.

However, Kaus himself gets it wrong by suggesting the "private sector is doing fine" is just a misstatement. (If this seems contradictory, he's nuanced: He thinks Obama's statements about the primacy of the public sector are the real gaffe. My disagreement with him is that both parts are "the real gaffe.")

It's not.

I am searching for this now, and have not yet found the articles to prove it, but I will, because I read them.

This argument has been trotted out numerous times by left-wing analysts and commentators.

It's not new.

It's what the left believes.

And it is, I think, what Obama himself reads.

And it's what he believes, even though he's been cautioned not to say it.

If there were no general chatter on this point, perhaps one could claim Obama "misspoke."

But there has been general chatter on this point. The left has been making this argument on blogs for months. The left has been claiming for a year that the private sector is "doing fine," we just need to give money to state governments so that the Democratic Client Class of bureaucrats can be spared any cuts in benefits.

They view this as a type of stimulus spending -- the best kind, because it flows into the hands of the Democratic Client Class.

So this did not come out of nowhere. This as been written about, and argued, and urged, for a long time.

Obama made a mistake, but he did not "misspeak." His error was to say aloud the talking point he's been reading -- and believing -- for months.

If anyone wants to assist me in the hunt for proof of what I remember, I believe the agitation for this proposition must have come from the only liberal analysts I occasionally read: Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Ezra Klein, Greg Sergeant, various folks at Talking Points Memo, and possibly ThinkProgress and Matthew Yglesias (though I almost never see anything they write).

Boom Goes The Dynamite: Harry Reid said the EXACT SAME THING last October.

Thanks so much to @last_train.

Video below the fold.

This statement was made as part of Obama's failed "Pass this Jobs Bill" blitz, so this message was likely part of the White House strategy on that.

More: Krugman too, from April 22, 2012.

Check the ninth paragraph.

Same claim.

Misstatement? Or just ill-advisedly stating the actual liberal belief on the point?

Temporary New New Comments Thingy

posted by Ace at 02:04 PM