“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: Is Vast Inequality Necessary?
How rich do we need the rich to be?
That’s not an idle question. It is, arguably, what U.S. politics are substantively about. Liberals want to raise taxes on high incomes and use the proceeds to strengthen the social safety net; conservatives want to do the reverse, claiming that tax-the-rich policies hurt everyone by reducing the incentives to create wealth.
Now, recent experience has not been kind to the conservative position. President Obama pushed through a substantial rise in top tax rates, and his health care reform was the biggest expansion of the welfare state since L.B.J. Conservatives confidently predicted disaster, just as they did when Bill Clinton raised taxes on the top 1 percent. Instead, Mr. Obama has ended up presiding over the best job growth since the 1990s. Is there, however, a longer-term case in favor of vast inequality?
It won’t surprise you to hear that many members of the economic elite believe that there is. It also won’t surprise you to learn that I disagree, that I believe that the economy can flourish with much less concentration of income and wealth at the very top. But why do I believe that?
Trevor Timm: Bernie Sanders is winning with the one group his rivals can’t sway: voters
As Trump continues to dominate both parties for media attention, and Hillary Clinton remains a favorite to win with Wall Street, Bernie Sanders is suddenly surging again among those who actually matter: voters. But more important than his rise in the polls is how he’s doing it.
A string of polls over the past two weeks show that the once-independent Vermont senator is tied or in the lead in the two early primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and all of a sudden, in striking distance of Hillary Clinton nationally. With very little fanfare, he has been leading in New Hampshire for months, with some recent ones putting his lead in the double digits.
But Iowa seemed distinctly in Clinton’s corner for the last quarter of 2015 until this week, just a month away from the primary. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday night showed Sanders vaulted into the lead, with a slew of others show him pulling in close to a tie.
Amanda Marcotte: The base turns On Nikki Haley: They don’t want code words, they want to hear blunt racism
Hardline conservatives should be celebrating the Republican response speech to the State of the Union, offered by Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. The speech was a testament to how far the party is willing to go to cater to the putrid racism of the conservative base, as Haley, using her own background as the child of Indian immigrants, demonized immigrants and refugees fleeing war, and, in a particularly odious display, used the murder of nine people at the hands of a racist to scold Black Lives Matter protesters for speaking out.
But the right just ain’t having it, it turns out. That’s because, even though Haley was willing to sign off on most of the agenda items of the bigoted base, she insisted on doing so using the coded language that conservatives have used for decades now to convey racist ideas while pretending to be not racist. These days, the base wants to communicate racist ideas with bullhorns, not nudges. And Haley’s old school style, of declaring that conservatives aren’t racist while winking at the audience, just isn’t going to fly.
The backlash against Haley started immediately on Twitter, with prominent figures on the right such as Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, John Nolte, and, of course, Ann Coulter, flipping out and attacking Haley.
David Dayen: Paul Ryan is an anti-poverty con artist: The media has fallen for his “serious” right-wing agenda yet again
Tonight, the tableau at the State of the Union address changes for the first time in five years. Instead of John Boehner wreaking havoc with the color balance on television screens nationwide, House Speaker Paul Ryan will sit next to Joe Biden and behind President Obama. Of the three men in the picture, only Ryan will have a job in government next year, one he’s likely to keep for several more State of the Union addresses, thanks to the meticulous construction of Congressional districts.
It was inevitable, after Ryan was elected Speaker last fall, that he would enjoy yet another honeymoon period, when the media would label his agenda substantive, forward-looking, and laudatory, particularly relative to the traveling three-ring circus known as the presidential nomination. Ryan’s unearned reputation as a serious policy thinker not only causes pundits to swoon; it lets him get away with dressing up his most vindictive ideas as innovative breakthroughs in wonkery.
The most troubling part of the new Ryan hagiography is that he now commands a measure of authority on fighting poverty, for reasons that escape me. Ryan made a star turn at last weekend’s Republican poverty forum in South Carolina, which it should be noted lacked participation from the leaders of the nomination race, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. But the House Speaker got virtually every other major figure in the party to fall in line with his ideas on the poor, such that there was almost no disagreement for the entire forum.
Mark Wiesbrot: Democratic presidential primary gets real
The U.S. presidential primary race is getting interesting — perhaps more interesting than it has been for the past 80 years or so. I’m talking about the Democratic primary, although the Republican side is usually interesting in its own special way. Beltway pundits are beginning to think that Bernie Sanders has a good shot at the nomination. And it may be even better than they think.
A New York Times/CBS poll released late Wednesday showed Hillary Clinton leading Sanders, 48 to 41 percent — down from a 20 point lead a month ago. Sanders showed a nearly 2-to-1 lead among voters under 45 years old. A Monmouth University poll released on Jan. 12 showed Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire by 14 percentage points (53 to 39). A Quinnipiac poll released the same day showed Sanders erased Clinton’s lead in Iowa and was ahead by 5 percentage points.
On the standard political story, victories in Iowa and New Hampshire could provide momentum for Sanders and change the dynamics of the race. But the way in which this happens is also important for understanding the present situation. The Iowa caucuses will be held on Feb. 1, just 18 days from now. New Hampshire Democrats will vote on Feb. 9. The voters in these contests are the ones who have been paying the most attention to the candidates and to the issues. And Sanders is leading in both of them. This means that the national polls, which still show Clinton in the lead, may be skewed by the lack of engagement of these voters. The numbers could change quickly once people get to know a little bit more about Clinton’s challenger.
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