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.

Rachel Maddow: The GOP’s Disturbing New Norm

Eugene Robinson: Can Obama deliver the black vote?

How the president looks on Election Day will depend in part on his ability to fire up the constituencies in the Democratic Party’s base. With different groups, he’s taking different approaches.

For progressives who have criticized his administration from the left, he has a stern lecture that might be paraphrased like this: “Come on, people, give us a break. Have you noticed that we don’t exactly have a liberal majority in Congress? Yet, look at all we’ve managed to accomplish.” For centrist Democrats who might have wanted him to spend more time on jobs and less on health care, Obama’s message is essentially apocalyptic, although it’s delivered in his customary no-drama way. Something like: “You’re right, things aren’t as great as we’d like. But just imagine the disaster if the Republicans take control of Capitol Hill.”

With African Americans, his appeal has been simpler and more direct: “I need you.” The response he gets from black voters may determine the outcome of some of November’s key races.

Joan Walsh: Playing fantasy politics

Why are Democrats pretending that spending on infrastructure has Republican support?

President Obama made a strong pitch for his $50 billion infrastructure proposal Monday morning, but against the backdrop of Paul Krugman’s “Hey, Small Spender” column  in the New York Times the same morning, it felt like too little, too late. The president brought along two Republicans, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as well as the man who had that job under George H.W. Bush, Samuel Skinner, harking back to a time when spending on roads, tunnels and bridges was a bipartisan issue. After all, congressional Republicans passed a record transportation bill after they took back Congress in 1994, right?

Those were different times. It’s no accident Obama dragged along a Republican from a 1980s White House. Now even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, touted by some as a pragmatist, is making a big show of canceling his state’s long-delayed rail-tunnel project. Republicans are rejecting infrastructure spending because they think it’s good politics to do so right now, and the fact that such spending creates jobs as well as builds or modernizes crucial public projects doesn’t seem to matter. In fact, the job-creation aspect of Obama’s infrastructure plans probably counts against it, as Republicans seem determined to block any effort to put Americans back to work if it could benefit Democrats politically.

Bob Herbert: ‘So Utterly Inhumane’

You have to believe that somebody really had it in for the Scott sisters, Jamie and Gladys. They have always insisted that they had nothing to do with a robbery that occurred near the small town of Forest, Miss., on Christmas Eve in 1993. It was not the kind of crime to cause a stir. No one was hurt and perhaps $11 was taken.

Jamie was 21 at the time and Gladys just 19. But what has happened to them takes your breath away.

They were convicted by a jury and handed the most draconian sentences imaginable – short of the death penalty. Each was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in state prison, and they have been imprisoned ever since. Jamie is now 38 and seriously ill. Both of her kidneys have failed. Gladys is 36.

This is Mississippi we’re talking about, a place that in many ways has not advanced much beyond the Middle Ages.

Paul Loeb: Stop the Anonymous Hit Men: Make Shadowy Campaign Money the Issue

I’ve been going door-to-door canvassing, and it’s not that bad — really. It’s actually kind of fun. But only because I’ve found a way to break through people’s cynicism.

No wonder people are cynical. Crashing from the sky-high hopes of two years ago, people are worried about jobs, the economy and their own uncertain futures, about the wars we’re bogged down in and the threats to our planet. They don’t like where America is headed, don’t like most politicians or candidates, and are often uncertain whether their vote even matters. But when I talked about the takeover of our politics by destructive corporate interests, culminating in the barrage of anonymous attack ads unleashed by the Supreme Court’s ghastly Citizens United decision, they quickly became willing to listen.

So I’m delighted the Democrats are finally hitting back at the US Chamber of Commerce and other Republican front groups for dumping millions of dollars of untraceable corporate contributions into the election, with the total likely to exceed $300 million. But the Democrats need to do more, and we do as well, as ordinary citizens. We need to make the buying of our democracy the salient issue of the coming election and beyond, because it affects everything else that we need to change.

Will Bunch: Palin, Beck, the Tea Party and the Big Lie About Saving “Children and Grandchildren”

We are going to protect our young, we are going to protect the next generation of Americans, so the Mama Grizzlies are growling, we are rising up on our hind legs and saying no, we are going to change course, we need that real hope, we need that real change.

— Sarah Palin, speaking this weekend to a Patriotic Gala Celebration in San Diego.

“…[C]hildren and grandchildren…”

During late 2009 and early 2010, I criss-crossed the country talking to the rank-and-file not just of the Tea Party Movement but the 9-12 Project, the Oath Keepers and others in the backlash movement that sprung from nowhere practically in the hours after President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

And there were days when it felt like if I collected a dime for every time a Tea Partier told me the main reason they threw themselves into the movement — spending seven hours in a dank arena listening to Glenn Beck and his pseudo-historian David Barton or marching against health care reform — was to save America for their “children and grandchildren,” I’d have enough cash to pay for my travels and maybe take in a couple of NHL hockey games with all the spare change.