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.

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Paul Krugman:Doubling Down on W

2015 was, of course, the year of Donald Trump, whose rise has inspired horror among establishment Republicans and, let’s face it, glee — call it Trumpenfreude — among many Democrats. But Trumpism has in one way worked to the G.O.P. establishment’s advantage: it has distracted pundits and the press from the hard right turn even conventional Republican candidates have taken, a turn whose radicalism would have seemed implausible not long ago.

After all, you might have expected the debacle of George W. Bush’s presidency — a debacle not just for the nation, but for the Republican Party, which saw Democrats both take the White House and achieve some major parts of their agenda — to inspire some reconsideration of W-type policies. What we’ve seen instead is a doubling down, a determination to take whatever didn’t work from 2001 to 2008 and do it again, in a more extreme form.

Start with the example that’s easiest to quantify, tax cuts.

Amy B. Dean: Will the next president prioritize workers’ rights?

Late in his second term, President Barack Obama has finally started speaking forcefully about strengthening workers’ rights. Over the past two years, as Republicans have obstructed progress in Congress, the White House has issued a raft of executive orders — raising wages and establishing paid sick leave for federal employees and contract workers, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for contractors and raising overtime pay for 5 million white-collar workers.

Also, he has sharpened his tone on the need for employee collective action to improve wages and working conditions. “The middle class itself was built on a union label,” he said in September at the White House Summit for Worker Voice, adding, “as union membership has fallen, inequality has risen.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s conversion may be a case of too little, too late. And this is part of a pattern. [..]

As the 2016 election cycle heats up, are any candidates willing to break this trend? Rather than treat workers’ rights as an afterthought, could the next Democratic president make it a real priority once in office?

Robert Kuttner: Democracy Trumped

I’ve been having incessant conversations with friends, family and colleagues about politics, and they all boil down to the same question. Could Donald Trump be our next president? [..]

There is no right answer to this debate, of course. We will find out soon enough. But at the very least, American democracy is in uncharted territory.

Democracy has been seriously weakened by the role of big money on one flank, and by massive voter cynicism about politics and government on the other. In a national security crisis with no easy solutions, it is a sitting duck for a demagogue like Trump.

Working and middle class voters have been taking an economic pummeling for decades. The Democrats have tried harder than the Republicans to remedy that, but they haven’t tried hard enough. The voters are right when they see both parties in bed with Wall Street.

The fact that the populist candidate is a billionaire is an emblem of just how messed up is the misalignment of self-interest, general disaffection, and voting preferences. What the hell, at least the man can’t be bought.

Christopher Moraff: The DEA’s crackdown on pain meds

Over the summer, a federal appeals court in Washington state ruled that pharmacies do not have a right to refuse to fill a patient’s prescription on moral grounds. The plaintiffs in the case, Stormans v. Wiesman, were three pharmacists who denied emergency contraceptives to dozens of female customers, saying that doing otherwise would violate their Christian principles.

While the ruling served as an important test case for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the likelihood of a religious fanatic trying to come between you and your medication is minuscule compared to the threat posed by well-meaning public officials who think the best way to prevent people from getting addicted to prescription drugs is to make them harder to get for everyone.

I wrote about the ancillary impact the war on drugs is having on patients back in 2013. We now have a clearer picture of the scope of that collateral damage, and it’s worse than even I expected.

Jessica Valenti: Why are top women politicians still peppered with gender-specific slurs?

There seems to be no end to the number of insults that are tailor-made for women. And for those who decide to run for office, the sexist slams seem to never end. For as long as women have wanted to have a voice in our political process there have been men looking to shut them up with slurs and condescension. And it shows no sign of stopping – or even slowing. [..]

Thankfully we’ve entered an age when women who run for office or are in the public eye can start to name and point out misogyny. The sexism that was commonplace in 2008 will not be tolerated in the same way this time around for Clinton, and feminism’s foothold in culture right now will hopefully ensure that sexism in politics hurts the men who peddle in it more than the woman who are its victims.

But so long after women entered the political arena, it’s distressing to see the same tropes, stereotypes and names still lobbed at women. That some men are as afraid of women in power as they were years ago. What’s the name for that?

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Capitalists should listen to Bernie Sanders

There is an irony to the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders: The senator from Vermont is often cast as exotic because he calls himself a “democratic socialist.” Yet the most important issue in politics throughout the Western democracies is whether the economic and social world that social democrats built can survive the coming decades. [..]

Moreover, the vast majority of “democratic socialists” are now properly described more modestly as “social democrats” because most on the left believe in a successful private sector. But they also favor a government that achieves broad public objectives, from a clean environment to wide access to education, and regulates and redistributes in ways that strengthen the bargaining power of those who don’t own much capital.

When Sanders defined his own brand of socialism this year in a speech at Georgetown University, he made clear he’s in this camp. “The next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, remember this,” he said. “I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.”