Punting the Pundits

“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.

David Weigel: So Long, Jerk

Why liberals will be glad to see Rahm Emanuel go

Every two or three days, the Obama administration tries out a line intended to shame liberals into voting. “Folks, wake up,” said President Obama last week. “Those who didn’t get everything they wanted,” said Vice President Biden this week, “it’s time to just buck up here.”

If the early leaks are right, the “professional left”-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s instantly immortal, probably accidental term-is about to get all the bucking-up it needs. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, according to just about everybody, is probably leaving the White House this week to prove that Chicago can be governed by someone not named “Daley.” He is being treated to more of the rose-scented superlatives that followed him since he returned to politics in 2002, when he ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, and when he joined the Obama administration. “He began each day before the sun did,” said Jake Tapper of ABC News, reporting last night, “often by swimming a mile, and he was perhaps the hardest worker in the White House.”

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Arianna Huffington: Replacing Summers: Will Obama Please Wall Street or Struggling Americans?

Help wanted: one of the leading political administrations in the world seeks to fill senior economic position. Duties include putting an implausible spin on dismal economic conditions. Being skilled at improving actual economic conditions not a requirement. Experience as a corporate CEO preferred.

Sadly, if reports are correct, that seems to be the gist of how the Obama administration is going about filling Larry Summers’ soon-to-be vacated seat as the director of the National Economic Council.

According to the New York Times, “News of Mr. Summers’s departure set off speculation that Mr. Obama would replace him with a corporate executive to counter the impression that he is antibusiness.”

Politico was even more specific: “President Barack Obama’s team already knows the ideal candidate to replace him on the National Economic Council — a woman CEO.”

John Dickerson: The Buck Starts Here

President Obama tries to push Democratic voters out of their seats.

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, President Obama tried to stir Democratic voters this way: “People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up. … If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.” Insofar as a campaign strategy can be contained in a quote, it’s an interesting one. But before I continue with this story, allow me to interrupt with a question. If you’re a Democratic voter, what do you hear when the president says, “Buck up”? Enter your response in the box below or in the comments section.

The president must already miss his soon-to-depart Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. When people in the White House say, “Buck up,” they often receive Emanuel’s favorite epithet in return. (Hint: The first word of the phrase rhymes with buck.) Telling people to “buck up” suggests they are ignorant, inattentive, or lazy. This doesn’t seem a promising approach to bringing Democrats out of their fuming repose.

Of course, for those who already share the president’s point of view, this call will seem reasonable. For the last few weeks the president has been telling Democrats “wake up” to what’s at stake in this election. If they don’t participate, Republicans will take over. Whatever the Obama administration’s deficiencies, Republican control of either or both houses of Congress will be far worse.

(my emphasis)

Jane Hamsher: A Battle of Ideologies, Not Cults of Personality

The primary value of Peter Daou’s piece on liberal bloggers yesterday was that it named names, and it gave outlets like Politico an excuse to link to something. Although journalists won’t say so publicly because they’ve been told such things “off the record,” they well know who gets under the skin of people at the White House. And that’s why things said by Glenn Greenwald, or John Aravosis, or on FDL  consistently get picked up in the media as prime examples of the “professional left.” We hear about it when they call us for comments, or when they want to book us to respond.

Daou’s piece offered a good rundown of some of the issues, but it got a lot of notice principally because it appeared at the right time, and the list of suspects was accurate enough that people said “it’ll do” as a source for what they already knew but couldn’t say.

However, I disagree that what Obama is experiencing has to do with people on the left “turning” on him. I think he may perceive it that way, but in reality he’s just living through the phenomenon of being President in an era of “big data,” where passionate issue advocates can communicate with each other directly and immediately.

Dean Baker: Bankers Running Wild: Foreclosure Flurry in Florida

Virtually everyone has had the experience of being forced to pay a late fee or a bank penalty because of some fine print provision that we overlooked. Sometimes begging by good customers can win forbearance, but usually we are held to the written terms of the contract no matter how buried or convoluted the clause in question may be.

That is the way it works for the rest of us, but apparently this is not the way the banks do business, at least when those at the other end of the contract are ordinary homeowners. As a number of news reports have shown in recent weeks, banks have been carrying through foreclosures at a breakneck pace and freely ignoring the legal niceties required under the law, such as demonstrating clear ownership to the property being foreclosed.

Thomas L. Friedman: The Tea Kettle Movement

There are actually two Tea Party movements in America today: one you’ve read about that is not that important and one you’ve not read about that could become really important if the right politician understood how to tap into it.  

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” – because all it’s doing is letting off steam.

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be). But affecting elections and affecting America’s future are two different things. Based on all I’ve heard from this movement, it feels to me like it’s all steam and no engine. It has no plan to restore America to greatness.

Dana Milbank: Alan Simpson and NOW, chest-bumping

The feminist movement has a new slogan: “Tits for an Ass.”

This felicitous phrase was coined by none other than the National Organization for Women, which Wednesday morning arrived on Capitol Hill with 1,500 nipples — the rubber kind from baby bottles.

The nipples, in cellophane gift bags with purple ribbon, were presented to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform by NOW “as part of its ‘Tits for an Ass’ campaign calling for the removal of Alan Simpson.”

Simpson, the one-time Republican senator and now a co-chairman of the commission, got in some trouble this summer when, in an e-mail about Social Security to an official from the Older Women’s League, used an old H.L. Mencken line to describe the government as “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”

NOW President Terry O’Neill had planned to present the nipples to Simpson outside the Senate hearing room where the commission was holding a public meeting this morning, but when Simpson slipped in a back door, O’Neill marched into the committee room and up to the dais to hand over the T&A package.