“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
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Paul Krugman: How the Clinton-Trump Race Got Close
Monday’s presidential debate was a blowout, surely the most one-sided confrontation in American political history. Hillary Clinton was knowledgeable, unflappable and — dare we say it? — likable. Donald Trump was ignorant, thin-skinned and boorish.
Yet on the eve of the debate, polls showed a close race. How was that possible? [..]
What happened? Did she make some huge campaign blunders?
I don’t think so. As I’ve written before, she got Gored. That is, like Al Gore in 2000, she ran into a buzz saw of adversarial reporting from the mainstream media, which treated relatively minor missteps as major scandals, and invented additional scandals out of thin air.
Meanwhile, her opponent’s genuine scandals and various grotesqueries were downplayed or whitewashed; but as Jonathan Chait of New York magazine says, the normalization of Donald Trump was probably less important than the abnormalization of Hillary Clinton.
Eugene Robinson: Trump falls into Clinton’s artfully laid trap
It is hopelessly retro, but perhaps unsurprising, that womanhood has become a prominent issue in the presidential race. This has to be bad for Donald Trump, a hall-of-shame sexist — and good for Hillary Clinton, an actual woman.
It was political idiocy for Trump to fall into Clinton’s artfully laid trap at the debate Monday night when she mentioned how he treated the woman who won his Miss Universe pageant in 1996: “He called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.” [..]
When you watched the debate Monday night, you saw a woman who was prepared, poised and perfectly unflappable. And you saw a man who was trying to wing it, with little grasp of the issues and less ability to control his impulses. He bluffed and blustered. He insisted on “facts” that were unfactual. He interrupted his opponent constantly, apparently not grasping the concept of waiting one’s turn. He substituted chest-thumping arrogance for actual substance.
I’m guessing that many women who will vote in November might know a man or two who act that way. Not good for Trump.
Heather Digby Parton: Hate, unleashed: How Donald Trump unleashed the right-wing bigots that the GOP once kept under control
There has been a lot of talk over this presidential campaign about the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton compared to the excitement and energy among Donald Trump’s followers. It is a bit overblown — there are plenty of highly enthusiastic Clinton fans who are very excited to see the first woman president. But it is nonetheless true that Trump has inspired a group of remarkably passionate and committed followers. And while many of these people have legitimate economic gripes that are finding expression in Trump’s “angry outsider” populism, what electrifies many of them is something else entirely. [..]
This week’s story in the New York Times Magazine about the conservative media battle over Trump shows just how futile the #NeverTrump movement, led by Buckley’s successors at the National Review, has been. The rest of the right-wing media is reconciling itself to the fact that they are actually slaves to the mob rather than leaders:
This February, [Rush] Limbaugh, who has applauded Trump without endorsing him outright, posed to [Erick] Erickson the question of whether a commentator should try to act as “the guardian of what it means to be a conservative.” In effect, the legend of talk radio was laying down an unwritten commandment of the trade, which applies as well to cable TV: Do not attempt to lead your following.
That’s what Trump is doing too, saying out loud what unhinged right-wingers have long been thinking, and giving them permission to do publicly what they’ve wanted to do all along: rapturously, ecstatically and openly wallow in hate. They’re having the time of their lives.
Amanda Marcotte: Donald Trump is every woman’s workplace nightmare: Debate with Hillary Clinton was a crash course in everyday sexism
Most voters are women, a fact that only becomes more true every election cycle. Under the circumstances, one would think that the man running for president and his male supporters would be diligent in their efforts to not remind the female voter of every sexist boss, condescending ex-boyfriend and street-harassing chump she’s ever encountered.
But apparently, the sexist id is stronger than common sense, as demonstrated by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his legion of piggy defenders. One could nearly hear Kellyanne Conway’s teeth grinding as Trump abandoned the pretense of respect and swiftly devolved into the living incarnation of mansplaining — the art of pompously lecturing a woman who is clearly smarter than you — during the debate with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. [..]
This is what women have to put up with if they believe they have just as much of a right as a man does to be in public, to be ambitious and seek power. And then they have to put up with men scoffing at them and telling them they’re imagining how hostile the world is to a woman who truly thinks she is equal. Monday night, however, exposed the ugly truth: Women are not making this up, sexism is real and a lot of men are the worst. And hopefully they will be shown the door come November.
Dave Schilling Forget Gary Johnson. Trump’s presidency would be one long ‘Aleppo moment’
What does Gary Johnson know? After yet another easily avoidable televised blunder in which the Libertarian presidential candidate failed to name even one leader of a foreign country that he was fond of, it’s a fair question. [..]
If you think it’s scary that a presidential candidate polling around 8% nationally can’t identify the name of the city undergoing one of the most horrendous humanitarian crises of the last 30 years and is incapable of recalling any of America’s numerous foreign allies, you are not alone. If you see my hypothetical game show in which prepubescent moppets are more aware of global affairs than Gary Johnson, remember we have a real-life game show host running for president.
Donald Trump, a man who is happy to admit he doesn’t read, may become our commander-in-chief. If he does, these so-called “Aleppo moments” will become a daily fixture in our lives. What does Donald Trump know about the European Union besides cheeky Brexit slogans, floppy-haired twit Boris Johnson and where the nearest former Soviet bloc beauty pageant is? Oh right, he doesn’t even know that Belgium is a country, not a city.
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