“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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Dean Baker: Obamacare Isn’t Just Dying, Trump And Republicans Are Trying to Kill It
After their efforts to approve a replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went down to defeat (again), the Republicans came up with a new strategy on health care. As Donald Trump put it, they are going to “let Obamacare fail.”
The idea appears to let the health care exchanges, which are the centerpiece of the ACA, fall apart as more insurers leave. Then, when there are few exchanges operating with any substantial level of competition, Trump and the Republicans will sail in with some version of the plans that have collapsed in the last five months. They will now have the compelling argument that their replacement plan is better than nothing, since there will be little or nothing left of the health care exchanges.
While it is possible that this strategy could work, there is a really important point that often gets left out of the picture: The exchanges are not dying. In fact, according to experts who study this issue and aren’t on Donald Trump’s payroll, the exchanges are actually doing quite well.
Eugene Robinson: Forget ‘A Better Deal.’ Here’s what would actually work for Democrats.
“A Better Deal” is not the worst slogan I’ve ever heard, but it’s far from the best. The Democratic Party has overwhelming support from the “creatives” on Madison Avenue and the marketing geniuses in Hollywood. Why are Republicans so much better at coming up with pithy phrases that pack a punch?
It was not always thus. John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” were aspirational in a reach-for-the-stars kind of way; Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” invited Americans to feel good about themselves and their collective potential. “A Better Deal” leans in the right direction, but betterness is relative. Why cede rhetorical absolutism — “Make America Great Again” — to Donald Trump, on his way toward being remembered as the least great president in our history?
David Leonhardt: G.O.P. Support for Trump Is Starting to Crack
Again and again over the past year, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have had to decide what kind of behavior they are willing to tolerate from Donald Trump. Again and again, McConnell and Ryan have bowed down to Trump.
They have mumbled occasional words of protest, sometimes even harsh ones, like Ryan’s use of “racist” last year. Then they have gone back to supporting Trump.
The capitulation of McConnell and Ryan has created an impression — especially among many liberals — that congressional Republicans stand behind the president. McConnell and Ryan, after all, are the leaders of Congress, and they continue to push for the legislation Trump wants and to permit his kleptocratic governing.
But don’t be fooled: Republican support for the president has started to crack.
Michael Winship: Trump’s disordered personality has spawned a level of mayhem and incompetence that defies imagination
Fish stinks from the head, as the ancient Greeks first said, and right now there’s a 250-pound flounder stinking up the White House and all those around the place.
Mark Shields said it well on the PBS NewsHour Friday night:
“Everybody, I can honestly say, with rare exception, who has been associated with this administration and this president has been diminished by it. Their reputation has been tarnished. They’re smaller people as a result of it. And that’s tragic.”
Six months in and we’ve reached a level of mayhem, compulsive lying and incompetence that defies the imagination. Just to mix the animal metaphors, there’s more bull running through Washington right now than the streets of Pamplona, and for our nation’s capital, that’s saying something.
Or, in the words of the British actor and veteran Ernest Thesiger, when asked to describe what it had been like on World War I’s Western Front, “The noise, my dear, and the people!”
Do you have a problem — trouble at work, relationship stress, or just some really hard math homework — that you can’t resolve on your own? You should turn to the man who is fixing problems for more than 300 million Americans.
You should ask Jared Kushner.
President Trump does it. When he needed somebody to negotiate peace in the Middle East, he asked Kushner. When he needed somebody to be his point man with China and with Mexico, he asked Kushner. When he needed somebody to solve the opioid epidemic, reform veterans’ care, overhaul the criminal justice system and reinvent the entire federal government, Trump again turned to Kushner. Even when he just needed somebody to strap a flak jacket over his navy blazer and fly off to Baghdad, Kushner was the one he asked. [..]
But what happens when Jared Kushner has a problem? What happens if — and I’m speaking strictly hypothetically here — Kushner were to neglect to mention in his security-clearance forms that he had had more than 100 meetings with foreigners, including some Russians? Sure, you can ask him. But he won’t have a good answer.
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