“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”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Robert Reich: All progressives must vote for Hillary
I continue to hear from many people who call themselves progressives or liberals, but tell me they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.
With due respect, I believe they’re wrong.
Herewith, their three major arguments and my responses.
Some claim she’s no better than Donald Trump. “He’s bad, but she’s just as bad,” they say.
I’m sorry, but anyone who equates Trump with Clinton hasn’t been paying attention.
Donald Trump is a dangerous, bigoted, misogynistic, narcissistic megalomaniac with fascist tendencies. If elected president he could wreak irreparable damage on America and the world.
Hillary isn’t perfect but she’s able and experienced. I’ve known her for almost fifty years and worked with her closely in her husband’s administration. She will make a good president.
There is simply no comparison.
Jessica Valenti: If only women voted, Trump would lose. We need men on our side
If only men voted in the upcoming presidential election, Donald Trump – a man who brags about sexually assaulting women and deliberately walked in on naked teenage pageant contestants – would be our president. And here it was women who had to spend years convincing the country we weren’t too stupid to vote!
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver released a map this week showing Trump’s men-only win alongside a map of a Hillary Clinton landslide should only women vote. In that scenario, Silver estimates Clinton would take the presidency with 458 electoral votes, a landslide victory. [..]
It cannot be up to just women – whether by our voices or our votes – to end this madness. Men need to step up. The white male voters who tend to vote Republican need to look at that map of red and feel ashamed. Women will likely be the ones who stave off armageddon this time, but we sure would like some company.
E. J. Dionne Jr.: How The GOP’s Big Tent Turned Into A House Of Horrors
What is the Republican Party?
Suddenly, this has become one of the central questions of the 2016 campaign. It’s not simply a matter of whether the GOP is the party of Donald Trump or the party of Paul D. Ryan. It is also an issue of whether Republican congressional leaders have any connection with the seething grass roots whose anger they stoked during the Obama years but always hoped to contain. Trump is the product of their colossal miscalculations.
And then there are the ruminations of millions of quiet Republicans — local business people and doctors and lawyers and coaches and teachers. They are looking on as the political institution to which they have long been loyal is refashioned into a house of bizarre horrors so utterly distant from their sober, community-minded and, in the truest sense of the word, conservative approach to life.
Amanda Marcotte: Hip to be square: Is there really a feminist, secular anti-choice movement? (Spoiler: no)
Every few years, there’s some effort to portray today’s religious right as hipper and younger than the Bible-thumpers of old: Christian rock, evangelical ministers with spiky hair and goatees, Jesus-friendly hip-hop performed by awkward white guys rapping about side hugs.
In this grand tradition, Ruth Graham of Slate has rolled out a piece arguing that the fusty old anti-choice movement has gotten a makeover and is now composed of hip young people who are totally feminist. Hell, she argues that you can’t even consider them the religious right any more, because these hip young vagina police consider themselves secular. [..]
Sounds exciting, right? Some of them even have their hair dyed in fancy colors. But none of that should fool anyone: This movement is anything but secular or progressive.
Heather Digby Parton: Peak Trump madness: With a month to go, Donald Trump’s supporters descend into conspiracy-theory insanity
It’s dizzying trying to keep up with the craziness in the Trump campaign these days. On Wednesday we had rolling revelations of sexual assault and misconduct, lies about the WikiLeaks data dump of hacked private emails and Trump pretty much coming unraveled on the stump, with a Mussolini-esque speech promising to put Hillary Clinton’s lawyers in jail. It was quite a day. [..]
What this has led to is a campaign with millions of followers so deeply mired in convoluted conspiracy theories that they have completely lost touch with reality. Most obvious of these, of course, is the birther conspiracy which held that Barack Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen and was therefore an illegitimate president. Trump didn’t publicly indulge in the more sinister of theories which suggested that Obama was some sort of “Manchurian candidate” planted by a foreign power. But it fits so well with his xenophobic worldview that it’s fair to assume it played some part in his obsession with the tall tale.
Recent Comments