The shared starting point here is that we are in a situation in which the Fed would clearly cut rates if it could; based on historical relationships between unemployment, inflation, and policy rates, the Fed funds rate "should" be something like -4 percent. But the Fed can't do that. What it could do, however, is try to reduce real interest rates by raising expected inflation.
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Changing inflation expectations may be similar in its implications to just cutting rates, but it's very different in terms of implementation. The Fed can cut rates simply by telling the open-market desk to make it so; it can only change expected inflation by shifting market beliefs about what it will do some years down the road — by credibly promising to be irresponsible, as I put it way back when — which is a much more iffy task.
So the zero lower bound does matter. By all means, let's harass the Fed from the left, and demand that it do more. But I hope it's possible to accept simultaneously the insight that the Fed could and should do more, and that it's hard at the zero lower bound, and it would really help if the Fed had fiscal help
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