Ignorant Or Calculating?

At least the latest Clinton pander - her vow to break up the OPEC cartel- has some manner of logical sense in that I can't see anyone in the US being against that if they thought it could actually happen, which, um, it can't. But Yglesias and others are right - the price of gas is not rising because of a cartel, it's rising because global demand is skyrocketing, particularly in China and India, and as demand rises, the price rises. I really don't think there's a whole lot of extra supply out there that oil-producing nations aren't pumping - at $120 a barrel they'd be idiots not to get as much out of the ground as possible.

I'm fairly certain that Clinton knows this, as do most politicians who are afraid of telling the truth to cash-strapped American consumers. But Clinton, at least, isn't really interested in reality, she's interested in using the issue as a blunt instrument to show voters that she's "on their side" and Obama's some elitist fruitcake.

On a related note, Lambert Strether has lost his mind. But in his defense, it made for one of the better Sadly, No posts ever.

Look, forget about the usefulness or uselessness of the gas tax holiday for a moment. Put aside the fact that Obama, unlike Clinton and McCain, is clearly in cahoots with Chevron executives to hoard all the extra ketchup packets that could be feeding working families throughout the Rust Belt for decades to come. Is it not abundantly clear that both Democrats’ plans for phased troop withdrawals from Iraq will save taxpayers orders-of-magnitude more Ramen packets than thirty bucks’ worth? Important as it is to keep the noodle-wolf at bay, is this not the issue upon which we should be judging these candidates?

Indeed.

UPDATE: I could also mention that a gas tax holiday would cost millions of dollars and thousands of highway construction jobs, and that past experience with gas tax holidays suggest that the savings are not passed on to the consumer, but I won't. Oh wait, I just did!