Paul Krugman doesn’t get the whole “Obama should have focused on the economy instead of health care” meme:

In my view, there are two defensible hypotheses:
1. Obama was doomed to have a bad economy regardless.
2. He missed a key window, early on, back when some of us were screaming at him to go bigger; but that window closed by the summer of 2009.
Either way, I don’t see how punting on health care would have helped.

Really? You don’t think hanging the prospect of massive new taxes, regulations, and penalties over the heads of business owners like a sword of Damocles had a chilling effect on hiring? No, of course not. Regulatory uncertainty just isn’t that big a deal, unless you take polls into account (and those nefarious business owners obviously can’t be trusted to answer truthfully).

And business owners have no legitimate reason to be concerned, anyway. Everyone knows that the Senate bill is “a centrist document, which moderate Republicans should find entirely acceptable.” The only real reason business owners might object to it is that they are Republicans (shudder) who want to deny Obama a political victory, and they’re probably racist too.

Reading Krugman on policy is like listening to a colorblind person talk about art. There are certain things that he just cannot see.