“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: Health Care Is Still in Danger
Will Senate Republicans try to destroy health care under cover of a constitutional crisis? That’s a serious question, based in part on what happened in the House earlier this year.
As you may remember, back in March attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act seemed dead after the Congressional Budget Office released a devastating assessment, concluding that the House Republican bill would lead to 23 million more uninsured Americans. Faced with intense media scrutiny and an outpouring of public opposition, House leaders pulled their bill, and the debate seemed over.
But then media attention moved on to presidential tweets and other outrages — and with the spotlight off, House leaders bullied and bribed enough holdouts to narrowly pass a bill after all.
Could something similar happen in the Senate? A few days ago the Senate’s equally awful version of repeal and replace — which the C.B.O. says would leave an extra 22 million people uninsured — seemed dead. And media attention has visibly shifted off the subject, focusing on juicier topics like the Russia-Trump story.
E. J. Dionne Jr.: The Trump election commission exists solely to justify a Trump lie
President Trump had some remarkable things to say at the inaugural meeting of his Commission to Promote Voter Suppression and Justify Trump’s False Claims, which is formally known as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He also asked a question that deserves an answer.
Lest anyone believe Vice President Pence’s claim that “this commission has no preconceived notions or preordained results,” Trump was on hand last week to state clearly what its agenda is.
With the resignation of Sean Spicer as White House press secretary and the rise of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications czar (an appropriate word these days), the television cameras are riveted on the latest reality show, “Spicey and The Mooch.” But we dare not lose track of the threat the Trump administration poses to the most basic of democratic rights.
Charles M. Blow: The Kook, ‘the Mooch’ and the Loot
On Friday, a “president” with no political experience brought on a communications director with no communications experience.
Trump tapped Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street snake investment huckster, to be the new communications director, a move that caused Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who The New York Times reported “vehemently disagreed with the appointment,” to resign.
So, let me get this straight: Spicer was just fine with regularly walking out to that podium to spew and spin Trump’s lies, but hiring “the Mooch,” as Scaramucci is known, was the back-breaker? O.K., whatever, Sean.
This illustrates best what is wrong with this communications shop, and by extension, this administration: No one is concerned with the truth; they are only concerned with their own trajectories.
Steven W. Thrasher: The Democrats’ performance as an opposition party? Pathetic
Six months into Donald Trump’s term, and Democratic politician’s ability to be an opposition party is, in a word, pathetic.
When the poll came out saying that “Democrats stand for nothing more than opposing” Trump, I thought to myself, ‘If only that were true!’” But they can’t even do that well. When House Democratic Caucus chairman Joe Crowley was asked by the Associated Press just what his party’s core message was, he “hesitated” and then said, “That message is being worked on.”
It was as tone deaf (but honest) an answer as when Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum – as sycophantic a representative of the Democratic party in the punditocracy as there is – wrote about how people would have to be “crazy” not to “have a reflective disgust” of people who are homeless and mentally ill.
Richard Wolffe: Exit Spicey, enter the Mooch: another day in Trump’s tragicomic America
Sean “Spicey” Spicer, we knew ye all too well. Six months of shambolic press briefings, incoherent communications strategy and endless rumors of your demise. It was all too much for us, and ultimately for you too.
How satisfying it must have been to quit just as the asylum came under new management. How pleasurable for you to watch Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci take your podium as the new communications director and literally struggle to make the microphones work. That’s what we like to call a political metaphor.
To be fair for a brief second or two, the notion of Trump’s communications director is obviously a contradiction in terms. How can anyone direct the communications of a man who tweets at the TV? We all know, as you do, Sean, that serving as Trump’s press secretary is the Worst. Job. Ever.
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