“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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Jeffrey Frank: There are no ‘qualifications’ to be president. What counts is judgment
It’s curious that the competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination – Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state – have struggled to extricate themselves from a “low-blow” fixation, which began some time ago and then, albeit briefly, moved to a new, lower level: whether either is qualified for the presidency.
This era probably began in February, when Clinton called it a “low blow” for Sanders to suggest that she’s a part-time progressive. Sanders had to fend off Clinton’s remark, during the first post-New Hampshire debate, that “the kind of criticism that we’ve heard from Senator Sanders about our president I expect from Republicans”. As those words were uttered, Sanders, looking outraged, called it “a low blow”.
All of this has managed to disguise the issue raised more or less directly by Clinton and Sanders: whether either one – or anyone – has the qualifications for a job that is possibly more stressful and difficult than any other.
Richard Wolffe: Donald Trump may be losing control, but he’s not going anywhere
For a man who brags endlessly about his deal-making skills, Donald Trump seems to know nothing about closing the deal on his latest venture.
Much like his unfortunate attempts at running a steak business and a university, Trump’s political machine has sky-high name recognition but a product that leaves a foul taste in your mouth.
Judging by his effort to wrangle loyal delegates to go to the Cleveland convention, Trump may be the most successful and least competent presidential candidate in living memory. [..]
If his books and speeches have any organizing thesis, it’s that Trump – and only Trump – understands the true dynamic of life and business. Somehow, he neglected to figure out that the true dynamic of a presidential primary campaign is to amass enough delegates to secure the nomination. All the rest is confetti.
This campaign is less The Art of the Deal and more Finger Painting a President.
Trevor Timm: Bernie Sanders’ focus on Clinton’s Iraq war vote isn’t harping – it’s necessary
If there is one thing Bernie Sanders never fails to reference in the Democratic primary, it’s Hillary Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq war. He brought it up after answering a question about gun control, he continually references the vote during Democratic debates and he’s made his opposition to the war a cornerstone of his foreign policy. Last week he said, “I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq,” and on Sunday, he again questioned Clinton’s judgment based on her vote.
The response from some journalists and Clinton supporters has been to derisively question whether he has any other notes, with a tone of: when is he going to stop complaining about something that happened over a decade ago?
He shouldn’t stop. If anything, more politicians should be bringing up the Iraq war at every opportunity. The dismissive tone Clinton supporters have taken to the issue belies a callous indifference to the most disastrous foreign policy calamity in our lifetime – a decision that continues to directly affect US foreign policy across the entire Middle East. It is dangerously shortsighted and an insult to the countless people who died as a result. If anything, we should be talking about the Iraq war more, not less.
Amanda Marcotte: Progressivism doesn’t die with Hillary Clinton: Debunking the myth that only Bernie can foster hardcore liberal ideas
Barring some kind of miracle landslide wins in New York and California’s primaries, it looks like the Bernie Sanders campaign is going to lose the race for the Democratic nomination. So now we’re onto the phase where his supporters argue that even though he lost the primary, he is still the winner anyway, of some large and abstract and noble battle beyond the griminess of the polls.
Enter Lincoln Mitchell of the Observer, in a piece titled “Hillary Clinton Represents the Last Hurrah for Centrist Democrats.” It’s a standard we-may-lose-the-battle-but-we-will-win-the-war kind of piece. [..]
Mitchell isn’t wrong that left-leaning Americans have been drifting leftward, but trying to turn that into a triumphalist narrative of Sanders over the evil centrists is just wrong-headed. If anything, the Sanders campaign is a throwback, recycling 90s-era complaints about neoliberalism and claims that the Democratic party is so hopelessly corrupt that only an outsider with no loyalties to the party can fix it. It’s as if the past two decades haven’t even happened.
The reality is that Clinton’s campaign is much more representative of the liberalization trend than Sanders is. Despite the loud honking about centrism and DINOs coming from the Sanders camp, the truth is that the Democratic party is not a cluster of recalcitrant centrists and conservatives. The Democrats have been drifting leftward for decades now. Not as fast as the Republicans have been drifting rightward, because that’s impossible, but, even though it might be hard for Sanders fans to swallow, the movement to the left has been quite steady.
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