The thing about Paul Krugman is that he's deeply scarred from being passed over for the CEA Chair job by Bill Clinton in 1992, which is why on election years he shifts hard towards Democratic Party orthodoxy in a desperate attempt to position himself for a White House job.

People have noted this since at least 2000 but it's been particularly obvious in the last five years with the emergence of a distinct left flank in the Democratic Party.

He used his pulpit as the go-to left-of-center economist to trash Sanders in 2016, originally from a bad faith The Numbers Don't Add Up angle but went full pundit by the end of the primary, accusing Sanders of becoming a "Bernie Bro" himself. https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-bernie-sanders-bro-2016-4

Between 2016 and 2020, however, he changed his tune. His 2018 column endorsing Portugal's socialist government's anti-austerity program as a means to economic rejuvenation is a good example of this. https://nyti.ms/2LEq8gA 

I naively hoped that this was an indication he wouldn't revert back to his usual positioning in the 2020 primary. This, of course, didn't happen: He was even more aggressively anti-Sanders this time around.

In 2008, the Democratic Party relied on Iraq War fatigue to win the election. Krugman did the bidding of the party line, writing that Bush convinced the American public to go to war by stoking Islamophobic sentiment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/opinion/18krugman.html

Twelve years later, however, and the demographic of most interest to Democratic electoral strategy are former Republican voters who (allegedly, anyway) have a high opinion of Bush.

As Krugman wants a White House job, he thought it would be beneficial to partake in Bush's rehabilitation, arguing that the Bush Administration did their best to quell fear during a turbulent time.

Krugman is an intelligent man, albeit one with poor political instinct (he will never achieve any position of influence in the White House). He obviously knows that extreme anti-Muslim sentiment was what allowed Bush to sell the invasion of Iraq to the public.

As the excerpt from that '08 article (thanks @WalkerBragman for the find) proves, he's well aware of this. You can't argue with Krugman when he posts absurd out-of-context statistics on anti-Black vs. anti-Muslim hate crimes because he doesn't actually believe what he's saying.

Good piece about Krugman’s positioning as an Obama critic in 2009. (Krugman, like other left of centre economics sans a few like Jared Bernstein, were snubbed for White House roles).

What's most depressing about all of this is that I don't even take joy in Krugman's perpetual snubbing from economic advisory positions. He's a dishonest political actor but he's far more averse to austerity measures than the vast majority of economists who receive major WH gigs.

"Major WH gigs" is an ambiguous term: I'm referring to people who lead principle forums e.g. the Council of Economic Advisors. There's a surprisingly large amount of people who served as CEA staff economics/chief economists for departments who are very progressive.

Shoutout to @hshierholz (former DoL Chief Economist) & @Econ_Sandy (former CEA economist) in particular, both of whom are particularly impressive progressive economists who will surely play a role in a future progressive White House.