On Analyses of Sanders' Economic Plan, Friedman, and the Democratic Party Witchhunt(!)

As an initial point in this commentary, it is really difficult to predict the future.  This point applies as much to meteorologists as it does to economists (Nobel prize winners as well as us indiscriminate schmucks, whether we graduated from Harvard or missed out on graduating from UMASS-Amherst because key members of our  dissertation committees passed away).  It might always be worthwhile to listen to a Nobel prize winner like Paul Krugman, except when he's on a partisan tirade to expose an errant defector who happened to piece together some statistical data to evaluate, in reference to (I'm guessing) simplistic macroeconomic models, the economic policy proposals of a democratic socialist in the Democratic Party primaries (see Krugman, "Varieties of Voodoo," New York Times (19 Feb 2016), at: .http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/varieties-of-voodoo.html?_r=0)  For the record, I haven't seen Gerald Friedman's analysis of Bernie Sanders' economic policy proposals, but I would err on the side of caution before dismissing their validity, if only because it is really difficult to make detailed predictions on the future of the U.S. economy, when the range of endogenous variables that have to find their way into macroeconomic models, expressing growth projections in relation to the elasticity of macroeconomic capital investments relative to changes in marginal tax rates, can be really nebulous!  That said, my larger point in this post does not concern Gerald Friedman's analysis.
              For the record, Jerry Friedman was the first person I encountered, as an undergrad handing in a final paper for an upper-level economics class on labor economics in the spring 1997, who suggested to me that I should embark on a graduate career in economics!  Acknowledging that Jerry has a long history in economic analysis, grounded in his own graduate work studying economic history with, among other instructors, Robert Fogel, during the developing stages of the Cliometric revolution in historical research at Harvard, I'm fairly confident that Jerry's research on Senator Sanders' proposals produced a valid analysis, acknowledging further that such proposals are unlikely to ever enjoy statutory enactment in the Congress that Sanders would face!  That said, I am less concerned with Sanders' economic proposals or Jerry Friedman's analyses thereof than I am concerned with the state of discursive contestation of economic policy over the course Democratic primaries and the idea that someone with Jerry Friedman's credentials could advance analyses and be thoroughly derided as some sort of leftist traitor to the project of getting a Democratic candidate elected to the Presidency!  On the academic end of the American electorate, I have to question what the hell is going on with the democratic process, especially within the Democratic Party, that we cannot honestly debate the potential benefits and costs of nominally progressive economic proposals without bringing down the wrath of party insiders for insinuating that Sanders might actually be serious and that it might be worth devoting at least some attention to his ideas before we race to anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee.  In these respects, I can fathom why such committed progressive economic thinkers as Alan Krueger and Christina Romer would justifiably fear that evaluating and debating the economic proposals of a political figure who labels himself a democratic socialist, even in academic circles, much less in the mainstream media, cannot play well to moderate electoral constituencies (see "An Open Letter from Past CEA Chairs to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman," at: https://lettertosanders.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/open-letter-to-senator-sanders-and-professor-gerald-friedman-from-past-cea-chairs/).  It is, however, condescending to publicly disparage the credibility of one set of analyses without a serious effort to identify its faults and posit an alternative analysis, assuming that under a different set of assumptions, the merits of Senator Sanders' proposals might prove substantially less robust.  As such, notwithstanding Jerry's apparently expressed support for Hillary Clinton's candidacy, I will continue to find obstructions to my support for Clinton, if only because of the witch hunt that has seemingly been waged against someone who I consider a sincere and committed economic historian and one of my personal influences in moving forward as a student of economics.