Obama shows a little economic policy leg.

Paul Krugman has been telling us that Obama is to the right of Hillary Clinton on economic issues, but apparently he's not to the right of Bill Clinton.  Obama has just hired Jason Furman as Director of Economic Policy for the general election campaign.  Furman worked in the Clinton Whitehouse and was most recently Director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.  Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, is the main Hamilton Project driver.  Thanks to Politico for the news and background. 

Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, and the Hamilton Project are all part of the "redistributionist" wing of the Democratic Party.  They are opposed by the "predistributionists," who would alter the playing field so that a bigger share of income goes initially to the middle class and doesn't have to be "redistributed" there.  For two long articles about these differences within the Party and what "Rubinomics" is, read Matt Bai here and Robert Kuttner here. 

Update on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 09:44AM by Skeptic

Furman says Obama's economic advisors will be a diverse group, including Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Blinder, Jared Bernstein, James Galbraith, Austan Goolsbee. 

Update on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 03:13PM by Skeptic

And here's what Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein say on their blogs about Furman and the implications for which way Obama leans. 

Update on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 08:43AM by Skeptic

This Jonathan Cohn post describes a little of the Democratic intra-party economic debate and how he expects Jason Furman to fit in.  Cohn's perspective is that practitioners of Rubinomics have been chastened by how things didn't work out as they predicted and are moving left, but the policy battle is far from over.  Thanks to Ezra Klein's blog for bringing this to my attention.  Both posts have links to other sources on the history and status of the economic policy struggle within the Democratic Party.