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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Richard Wolffe:Don’t look to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting
This is no time to talk politics, we’re told by gun-loving conservatives.
This is a time for prayers, we’re told by Donald Trump.
“There really are no words,” we’re told by the local sheriff.
So it’s OK, everyone. We can get back to the latest blather about tax cuts for corporations or billions for a border wall. Those are the things that politics, and presidents, and words, can handle.
But if we can’t talk about saving the lives of our children, if our politics can’t keep our schools safe, if we can’t talk about the mass murder of innocence, then what on earth are we talking about? What’s the point of any politician if they can’t do this one simple thing: protect our youngest citizens?
If this was the eighth terrorist attack of 2018, don’t you think every member of Congress – not just Democrats – would bleat on about taking urgent action? If Isis-inspired gunmen had just mowed down 17 high school students in their classrooms, how long would it take before our president spoke in front of the nation’s TV cameras?
Instead, we’ll have to settle for a tweet. Because when we need leadership the most, there’s no point in raising your hopes with the man who watches Fox News all day inside the White House.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Forget Trump… His Party Is the Problem Now
It’s Political Messaging 101: You can’t beat Trump by talking about him all the time.
We should be talking about our economic future, but all we’re talking about our 45th president. [..]
When everyone is focused on our 45th president, how can Democrats hold your attention long enough to make the case that they will make people’s lives better? [..]
Two stories seem to have staying power across all four categories: the Russia investigation, and healthcare. One of those stories involves Trump and the people around him, but doesn’t address the issues that affect people’s day-to-day lives. The other affects their lives – and sometimes deaths – directly. [..]
It’s true that the Democratic base loves to dish about Russia, and loves to trash Trump. These stories have probably played a significant (though hardly exclusive) role in a string of off-year victories since Trump took office. Democrats still face a struggle trying to retake the House, but things are looking better.
Still, what happens if Democrats eke out a slim majority and retake the House? Will they pass a bold series of bills that show voters what their party would do if it took back the Senate and White House? Or will the party avoid alienating its funders by restricting itself to hearings about Trump and Russia?
E. J. Dionne Jr.: A groundswell for sanity
The split in American politics we may be missing is not left vs. right or pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump but normality vs. the Trump-inspired Washington circus.
If the doings in the nation’s capital seem strange when you are there, they look positively lunatic at any distance from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
First, the entire White House is seized by vicious infighting over its inability to tell the truth about what it knew when concerning allegations of domestic violence against a top aide. It’s remarkable how sealed off from reality this self-involved snake pit has become. President Trump has ratified the maxim that a leader gets the staff he deserves.
Combine this with the astounding disconnect between what Trump’s own intelligence officials told us on Tuesday about the threat of Russian meddling in our midterm elections and Trump’s denials and inactivity. The signal is that Trump doesn’t care what happens to the nation he leads. He is only concerned that Russian meddling taints the triumph he loves to boast about and that further investigations of it could get him into real trouble.
Thomas B. Edsall: Why Is It So Hard for Democracy to Deal With Inequality?
In theory, in a democracy, the majority should influence — some would even say determine — the distribution of income. In practice, this is not the case.
Over the past few decades, political scientists have advanced a broad range of arguments to explain why democracy has failed to stem the growth of inequality.
Most recently, Thomas Piketty, a French economist who is the author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has come up with a straightforward answer: Traditional parties of the left no longer represent the working and lower middle classes.
In a recent Power Point presentation, “Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right,” Piketty documents how the domination of the Democratic Party here (and of socialist parties in France) by voters without college or university degrees came to an end over the period from 1948 to 2017. Both parties are now led by highly educated voters whose interests are markedly different from those in the working class.
The result, Piketty argues, is a political system that pits two top-down coalitions against each other:
Charles M. Blow: Scandal-Ridden Scoundrel
Donald Trump has turned the political world upside down, again and again, like a kid flipping a coin. Every day we wake up to either a new scandal or several lingering ones.
It is astounding. It is maddening. It is numbing. [..]
America, what is left of it, is slipping away a little bit more every day, with a blessing and a wave from the truculent Trump supporters who simply get giddy whenever liberals lament.
This is the politics of the petty, where people dance and shout as the republic burns.
We patriots and dissidents, we many, we strong, we steadfast, are the last hope the country has of returning to what remains of a pre-Trump America, where porn stars weren’t paid off, accused wife beaters weren’t valorized and our president showed more allegiance to our country than to another.
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