The New York Times Opinion Pages

by Don Wheeler

Here's an interesting exerpt from an editorial titled: The Candidates Discover The Economy

The Democratic front-runners have been slow off the mark, but they're catching on. Last week, Hillary Clinton called of a robust short-term stimulus package, including more federal for jobless benefits, home heating aid and grants to states to help prevent forclosures. John Edwards has been pushing a similar plan for weeks. Barack Obama announced a rescue plan that relies more heavily on targeted tax cuts to get the economy moving, and less on direct spending.

The proposals from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards are closer to what's needed and the type of stimulus that Congressional leaders and the White House should begin to discuss...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinion/14mon1.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

And in Paul Krugnman's column, "Responding to Recession", once again we find critical analysis of Presidential candidates proposals generally favor the underdog - former Senator John Edwards.

On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.

He also seems to give credit to Sen. Clinton's more recent proposal. But he has some doubt's about Sen. Obama's ideas.

The Obama campaign’s initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I’m sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from “morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending.” Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure — doesn’t that sound familiar?

Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.

For example, the Obama plan appears to contain none of the alternative energy initiatives that are in both the Edwards and Clinton proposals, and emphasizes across-the-board tax cuts over both aid to the hardest-hit families and help for state and local governments. I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.

In short, the stimulus debate offers a pretty good portrait of the men and woman who would be president. And I haven’t said a word about their hairstyles.

I think we know who's the real progressive in the race.