Lou Dobbs: Wrong, wrong and thrice wrong

I was at an economics conference today - of which more later - in which Paul Krugman said he wasn't all that worried about what he called the "Lou Dobbsification" of the American economy. Dobbs has another book out, so we can expect to see more of him frothing, foaming, raging, rallying and - damn it! - standing up for the little guy, swaggering by with a full arsenal of economic bungles almost certain to make the little guy, and the little guy's children, worse off. Timely, then, that the pen of Peter Beinart is let loose on the man today:

Who is the most left-wing commentator on mainstream television? Keith Olbermann? Bill Maher? Not even close. I'm talking about a man who says both parties are "bought and paid for by corporate America," and calls lobbyists "arms dealers in the war on the middle class." This latter-day William Jennings Bryan denounces the "corporate supremacists" in Congress who write "consumer-crippling" bankruptcy laws, pass job-exporting free-trade deals, and raise the interest on college loans.... I refer, of course, to Lou Dobbs..... To some degree, the left's response has been to treat Dobbs as two different people. In August, in an article devoted to Dobbs's immigration rants, The Nation accused him of "hysteria and jingoism" and called him "McCarthyesque." By contrast, Mother Jones, in 2005, published a friendly interview with the man it called "mad as hell about offshore outsourcing and faith-based economics."