“Pondering 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: Trump Is No Accident
Establishment Republicans who are horrified by the rise of Donald Trump might want to take a minute to remember the glitch heard round the world — the talking point Marco Rubio couldn’t stop repeating in a crucial debate, exposing him to devastating ridicule and sending his campaign into a death spiral.
It went like this: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” The clear, if ungrammatical, implication was that all the bad things Republicans claim have happened under President Obama — in particular, America’s allegedly reduced stature in the world — are the result of a deliberate effort to weaken the nation.
In other words, the establishment favorite for the G.O.P. nomination, the man Time magazine once put on its cover with the headline “The Republican Savior,” was deliberately channeling the paranoid style in American politics. He was suggesting, albeit coyly, that a sitting president is a traitor.
And now the establishment is shocked to see a candidate who basically plays the same game, but without the coyness, the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Why?
Jared Bernstein: The Era of Free Trade Might Be Over. That’s a Good Thing.
FOR decades, free-trade agreements, called F.T.A.s, have been one of the most solid planks in the platform of economic elites and establishment politicians. True, the occasional political candidate like Ross Perot argued against one deal or another and even President Obama ran on “renegotiating” the North American Free Trade Agreement, but once elected, presidents of both parties sought and ratified trade deals with a wide variety of countries.
Those days may well be over. What changed?
For one thing, the economic populism of the presidential campaign has forced the recognition that expanded trade is a double-edged sword. The defense of globalization rests on viewing Americans primarily as consumers, not workers, based on the assumption that we care more about low prices than about low wages.
Bernard-Henri Lévy: The World According to Trump
The word “trump,” according to the dictionary, is an alteration of the word triumph. And because Donald Trump, the US presidential candidate, appears likely to become the nominee of the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, we owe it to ourselves to ask in what sense and for whom he represents a triumph.
One thinks of a segment of the American population angered by the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, a group that is now feeling vengeful. And one also thinks of the white supremacist, segregationist, nativist strain represented by former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, whose noisy support Trump was so hesitant to reject last week and for whose constituency Trump may be a make-or-break candidate.
One easily gets the sense, when trying to take seriously what little is known about the Trump platform, of a country turning in on itself, walling itself off, and ultimately impoverishing itself by chasing away the Chinese, Muslims, Mexicans, and others who have contributed to the vast melting pot that the most globalized country on the planet has alchemized, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, into prodigious wealth.
James P Hoffa: Nation’s Water Crisis Extends Beyond Flint
Flint, Michigan residents are in crisis, placed in a situation no one in this country should have to face. Their water is contaminated with lead, putting their health at risk. But while the city’s situation is extreme, it is not alone in its challenges.
Other communities nationwide could face a similar public health emergency if elected officials don’t act to beef up U.S. water infrastructure. In recent years there have been reports of high levels of lead in the water supply in Washington, D.C. and Providence, R.I., among other places. However, public concern should also be focused on the state of the aging pipes that deliver water to the homes of millions of Americans.
This matter is a ticking time bomb that must be addressed by policymakers at all levels of government. That’s why the Teamsters last year rolled out its “Let’s Get America Working” platform that specifically addressed the need to invest in better water facilities.
Amanda Marcotte: The payback candidate: Trump’s campaign is for conservatives seeking revenge on everyone they think disrespects them
Over the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns published a fascinating story in the New York Times about how much of Donald Trump’s presidential bid is rooted in his desire to be taken seriously and his resentment against political elites, both on the left and right, who see him as a joke.
“Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: A desire to be taken seriously,” they write. Events in recent days suggest that since that will never actually happen — even as people fear Trump’s rise, they still don’t see him as a legitimate or serious political thinker and never will — his campaign has turned into an act of revenge against those who shun him.
Trump’s personal motivations are fascinating, but what is even more so is how much his pettiness, his hurt ego, and his desire for revenge on those who think aren’t giving him his due is what compels his supporters to rally around him. A lot of his support comes from people who see themselves in him: People who believe they — white conservative Christians who shun city life — deserve to be at the center of American life and culture, but look out and see a world where the president is a black man from Chicago, the charts are ruled by Rihanna and Beyoncé, and Lena Dunham is a celebrity.
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