“Punting 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.
Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut — The Rich or Everyone Else?
Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent — whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy — or the rest of us?
Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.
Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they’ll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.
But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they’ve got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day.
Plus, they have to stick together (Ben Nelson, are you hearing me? House blue-dogs, do you read me? Peter Orszag, will you get some sense?)
Not only is this smart politics. It’s smart economics.
Eric Alterman: How Obama Screws His Base
The president’s party desperately needs to rev up liberals to stave off disaster this fall. So why does he keep punching them in the face?
In case you hadn’t heard, yes Barack Obama did go before a $30,000-per-person Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut-the hedge-fund capital of the world-and (at the home, I kid you not, of a guy named “Rich Richman” ) complain about how silly his base was being. . . .
Look, we understand that politics is a frustrating business and holding together the disparate coalition that is the Democratic Party these days is no simple matter. But facing an “enthusiasm gap” of epic proportions between a right-wing base that is “loaded for bear” and a Democratic one that is bordering on catatonic, what possible sense can it make to unload on the folks you should be trying hardest to motivate? Just who the hell do you expect to go out and vote Democratic this November? Somehow I don’t think the pundits at the Post and Politico who enjoy this kind of thing are going to be enough.
David Sirota: Who Is Responsible for the Progressive “Enthusiasm Gap?”
f you believe there is an “enthusiasm gap” right now between a demoralized progressive base and a mobilized conservative base (and I certainly believe there is), then the logical question is why? This is a source of endless debate between two camps.
On one side are Democratic partisans who insist the gap exists because some progressive activists and media voices (ie. the so-called “Professional Left”) have been too critical of the Obama administration and too insistent that President Obama fulfill – or at least actually try to fulfill – his basic campaign promises. The underlying assumption on this side is that Democratic voters are largely stupid fools who simply follow voting orders from a handful of activists and media voices – and because those activists and media voices aren’t more enthusiastic, those lobotomized voters are reflexively reflecting that lack of enthusiasm.
On the other side are those progressive activists and media voices who say progressive voters are demoralized because the Obama administration hasn’t fulfilled – or even tried to fulfill – it’s most basic campaign promises (for a good list of those broken promises and positions where the Obama administration is worse than the Bush administration, see Glenn Greenwald’s recent post here). This side sees voters as fairly intelligent – or, at least intelligent enough to make voting decisions based on an analysis of concrete issues, rather than simply on orders from activists and media voices. As just one example, this side sees this story in the New York Times about union members being unenthused about the election as a reflection of those union members’ displeasure with the Obama administration’s weak economic policies and failure to champion the Employee Free Choice Act – not as a reflection of those union members being under the mesmerizing spell of the tiny handful of bloggers, columnists, activsts and MSNBC hosts who have dared to report the inconvenient truths.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Why not extend Obama’s stimulus tax cuts?
But notice that this entire battle is being framed around Bush’s proposals. The parts of the Obama stimulus program that never get discussed — one reason it may be so unpopular — are its many tax reductions.
John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress and White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, noted the Obama tax cuts also expire at the end of this year: “I don’t understand why we’re only talking about extending George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which are heavily skewed to help the wealthiest Americans, yet no one’s discussing President Obama’s cuts, which are exclusively focused on middle-class families.”
I don’t understand it, either. The stimulus included not only the broad Making Work Pay tax cut that gave most families an $800 refundable tax credit but also the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit, which were especially helpful to lower-income families.
Chris Cillizza: As November nears, voters turn backs on both parties
What happens if they hold an election in which voters don’t like either of their choices?
We’ll find out in 43 days, as poll after poll shows that both national parties are deeply unpopular with an electorate looking for something new and different. Democrats have suffered from being the majority party for the past 20 months – in control of political Washington and expected to do more by voters who elected President Obama to change the culture in the nation’s capital. But Republicans are not offering much that will earn them credit in the eyes of most voters, either.
Jason: The Political Peril of Dabbling
If I lived in Delaware I probably wouldn’t be voting for Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. This is based on the fact that my personal political views differ from hers, so I wouldn’t want her representing my state. However if, for the sake of argument, I agreed with O’Donnell enough to vote for her, I certainly wouldn’t be talked out of it because she once dabbled in Wicca (or maybe Satanism, it isn’t clear) back when she was in high school. . . .
The wisest thing O’Donnell could do right now regarding this is to say “so what”, I was a kid, I tried it, I didn’t like it, I returned to Catholicism (which seems to be the direction the campaign is heading). Her silence is only feeding speculation and encouraging her opponents to dig deeper though her old media appearances. Indeed, she has more troubling off-the-cuff statements to explain than this one, so waiting this storm out may not be the best option. In the meantime, Pagan faiths are sent the message that while they may enjoy some perks of mainstream acceptance, they, like other minority faiths, are not fully welcome into the halls of political power. Those trying to use this clip as a political club to hurt her candidacy may not realize that it is also damaging the advances of modern Pagans trying to work for equal treatment and an end to unspoken litmus tests.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose and criticize O’Donnell if you don’t like her positions, but this shouldn’t be one of them. That said, if she decides to respond to this mess by attacking modern Paganism that’s a different story, but so far the only people mocking us are those trying to embarrass this candidate. There should be no political cost to “dabbling” with our faiths, in fact, I wish more people would dabble in Paganism, if only to humanize our experience to those coming from a place of ignorance.
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