“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: Hillary and the Horizontals
I spent much of this politically momentous week at a workshop (pdf) on inequality, where papers were presented on everything from the causes of wage disparities to the effects of inequality on happiness. As so often happens at conferences, however, what really got me thinking was a question during coffee break: “Why don’t you talk more about horizontal inequality?”
What? Horizontal inequality is the term of art for inequality measured, not between individuals, but between racially or culturally defined groups. (Of course, race itself is mainly a cultural construct rather than a fact of nature — Americans of Italian or even Irish extraction weren’t always considered white.) And it struck me that horizontal thinking is what you need to understand what went down in both parties’ nominating seasons: It’s what led to Donald Trump, and also why Hillary Clinton beat back Bernie Sanders. And like it or not, horizontal inequality, racial inequality above all, will define the general election.
You can argue that it shouldn’t be that way. One way to think about the Sanders campaign is that it was based on the premise that if only progressives were to make a clear enough case about the evils of inequality among individuals, they could win over the whole working class, regardless of race. In one interview Mr. Sanders declared that if the media was doing its job, Republicans would be a fringe party receiving only 5 or 10 percent of the vote.
But that’s a pipe dream. Defining oneself at least in part by membership in a group is part of human nature. Even if you try to step away from such definitions, other people won’t. A rueful old line from my own heritage says that if you should happen to forget that you’re Jewish, someone will remind you: a truth reconfirmed by the upsurge in vocal anti-Semitism unleashed by the Trump phenomenon.
Timothy Egan: Lord of the Lies
Earlier this month, the world’s most battle-scarred cable news network did something extraordinary in this year of vaporous political contrails. While Donald Trump was delivering one of his easily debunked lies, CNN fact-checked him — in near real time at the bottom of the screen.
“Trump: I never said Japan should have nukes (he did).” Thus read the chyron that shook the television world — maybe.
I no more expect CNN to set Wolf Blitzer’s beard on fire than to instantly call out the Mount Everest of liars. Trump lies about big things (there is no drought in California) and small things (his hair spray could not affect the ozone layer because it’s sealed within Trump Tower). He lies about himself, and the fake self he invented to talk about himself. He’s been shown to lie more than 70 times in a single event.
Given the scale of Trump’s mendacity and the stakes for the free world, it’s time that we go into the fall debates with a new rule — an instant fact-check on statements made by the candidates onstage. The Presidential Debate Commission should do what any first-grader with Google access can do, and call out lies before the words hit the floor.
Robert Reich: Bernie Sanders proved politicians can make it this far without selling their souls
I don’t know what Bernie Sanders is going to do from here on, and I’m not going to presume to advise him on his next steps. He’s earned the right to figure out for himself what’s next for his campaign and the movement he has launched.
But let me tell you this: He’s already succeeded beyond anyone’s imagining.
I remember when he launched his campaign in April 2015. The media labeled him a “fringe” candidate. Comedians made fun of his hair and his frumpled look.
Political junkies smirked. How could a 74-year-old, political Independent, Jewish, self-described democratic socialist take on the most powerful political machine in modern history? How dare he rail against the establishment, the mainstream media, and the moneyed interests? They said he had a “zero chance” of getting anywhere.
Then he won 22 states.
Lucia Graves: Clinton’s victory is a stellar start for feminism – but it is just a start
Hillary Clinton’s victory securing the Democratic nomination this week shattered a glass ceiling for women across the country. And with the endorsement of a popular Barack Obama newly in hand, she may be on track to shatter the greatest one of all come November.
It’s a sign of feminist progress, and it’s a sign that we’re thinking differently – not just about her, but about the intersection of women and leadership, and even about the sometimes invisible and often insidious ways that gender affects our perceptions of political power.
But Obama becoming the first black US president didn’t mean that racism ceased to be a problem in America. Far from it. And similarly, Clinton’s victory this week doesn’t mean that the work of feminism is done. The danger, as we celebrate this most recent milestone for American women and look ahead to the bigger prize of the general election, is that we’ll lose sight once again of just how far we are from gender equality in America.
Amanda Marcotte: Does Rep. Marsha Blackburn know where babies come from? Her congressional panel activities suggest she doesn’t
Does Rep. Marsha Blackburn know where babies come from?
One would think that Blackburn, the mother of two children she presumably gave birth to, is well aware that babies come out of a woman’s body during a process that is physically taxing, painful, dangerous and frequently requires hospitalization.
But recent maneuvering by Blackburn in her role as the head of a congressional “investigative panel” (read: McCarthyist harassment campaign) into abortion providers suggests that Blackburn is completely unaware that pregnancies that are continued to term end in childbirth.
At issue are some justifications Blackburn has been rolling out for her subpoenas and other pseudo-investigations of abortion providers. Blackburn claims that the subpoena of Dr. Leroy Carhart, who is one of the few doctors in the country who offers post-26 week abortions to women in the case of serious pregnancy complications (usually severe fetal defect or death/injury to the woman), is necessary because five whole women who have been to his clinic since December reportedly had complications requiring hospitalization.
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