“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: Who Loves America?
It has been quite a week in politics.
On one side, the Democratic National Convention was very much a celebration of America. On the other side, the Republican nominee for president, pressed on the obvious support he is getting from Vladimir Putin, once again praised Mr. Putin’s leadership, suggested that he is O.K. with Russian aggression in Crimea, and urged the Russians to engage in espionage on his behalf. And no, it wasn’t a joke.
I know that some Republicans feel as if they’ve fallen through the looking glass. After all, usually they’re the ones chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” And haven’t they spent years suggesting that Barack and Michelle Obama hate America, and may even support the nation’s enemies? How did Democrats end up looking like the patriots here?
Amanda Marcotte: Kudos to Hillary for playing the woman card: If people are going to call her a witch, she’ll tell them she’s Hermione Granger
Hillary Clinton ascended the stage on Thursday night in Philadelphia, having to face down the nuttiest political season in my lifetime and quite possibly in hers. Her opponent is a madman. Russian spies are trying to dupe her left-leaning critics into thinking she’s conspiring against them. For a couple days there, it looked like her primary opponent’s supporters were going to prioritize their hurt feelings over preserving the progressive movement.
On top of that, she is facing a wall of resistance that’s so sexist that it probably stuns even her. Oh, Clinton haters, both on the left and right, never admit it’s about gender, but the fact that she draws so much more hate than male Democrats who have the exact same political views as her belies that claim. The claims that her haters make about her — that she’s mendacious, manipulative, bossy, and shrill — bear no relationship to the woman herself, but sure do sound exactly like the same things people have always said about women who seek power and independence, since the days such women were burned as witches.
Hell, Ben Carson even fiddled with the idea that Clinton consorts with the devil.
Richard North Patterson: America Meets Hillary Clinton
Who is Hillary Clinton?
For 25 years now, an infinity of ink and airtime has been expended on that very question, reverberating in cyberspace until it overwhelms us. But the Democratic convention asked us to consider a remarkable proposition: that a woman we thought we knew well — for some, too well — would turn out to be, as president, the best blind date we ever had.
Getting there was no small thing. The convention opened in the sour spirit of imminent divorce, with the email crisis serving as a last bitter quarrel before someone called a lawyer. Indeed, Sarah Silverman was forced to remind the combatants to remember the kids. Even then, it took the gracious neighbor, Michelle Obama, to invoke what the kids could be, and gruff uncle Bernie to spell out the horrors awaiting them in the custody of Donald Trump.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Clinton takes the fight to Trump
Charging that Donald Trump “wants us to fear the future and fear each other,” Hillary Clinton took him on with the most powerful line in her party’s tradition.
“Well, a great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than eighty years ago, during a much more perilous time: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”
Clad in white, the color of the women’s suffrage movement, she noted her special role: that this convention marked “the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president.” It was, she said, happy news “for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between.”
But she spoke first of her hopes for the country and how her vision and approach to governing contrasted so sharply with her opponent’s divisive, angry and self-centered campaign.
Jared Berstein: Trump’s negativity is wrong. Real paychecks are growing.
Conventional wisdom, for what it’s worth, holds that once the nominating conventions are over and both sides get their bounces, most people’s votes are well along to being solidly locked down. The state of the economy matters a lot at this point as well. Typically, that would matter less in an election like this one, where the incumbent isn’t running. But this time may be different, as a key part of Trump’s case is that the economy is in terrible shape, and Hillary Clinton, like President Obama, believes that while serious structural problems exist, there are ongoing, favorable trends that can potentially be built upon.
I’d like to briefly get into one of those trends: wages. Wage growth has accelerated of late, and not just for those at the top. Meanwhile, low inflation has meant that these faster nominal gains have turned into significant real gains.
I don’t want to oversell the case; anyone who has followed this and most who’ve drawn a paycheck know that there’s a ton of catch-up to do. But I’ve long argued that the tightening job market will give working people more of the most important thing they generally lack these days: bargaining power. We’re not yet at full employment, but we’re getting closer, and when that happens, employers must bid wages up to get and keep the workers they need. Let me show you what I mean.
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