Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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: The Next Disaster Is Just a Few Days Away
Millions of unemployed Americans face imminent catastrophe.
Some of us knew from the beginning that Donald Trump wasn’t up to the job of being president, that he wouldn’t be able to deal with a crisis that wasn’t of his own making. Still, the magnitude of America’s coronavirus failure has shocked even the cynics.
At this point Florida alone has an average daily death toll roughly equal to that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population.
How did this happen? One key element in our deadly debacle has been extreme shortsightedness: At every stage of the crisis Trump and his allies refused to acknowledge or get ahead of disasters everyone paying attention clearly saw coming.
Blithe denials that Covid-19 posed a threat gave way to blithe denials that rapid reopening would lead to a new surge in infections; now that the surge is upon us, Republican governors are responding sluggishly and grudgingly, while the White House is doing nothing at all.
And now another disaster — this time economic rather than epidemiological — is just days away.
Eugene Robinson: For the next six months, we’re trapped on a leaking ship captained by a foolFor the next six months, we’re trapped on a leaking ship captained by a fool
This is the awful reality of our situation: For the next six months — at least — we are trapped on a badly leaking ship captained by an utter fool.
If he cared a whit about the well-being of the nation he is supposed to lead, President Trump would resign immediately. He would slink back to his gaudy apartment in Trump Tower, where he could look down at the new Black Lives Matter street painting on Fifth Avenue. Or he would flee to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where his rounds of golf might be disturbed by the sirens of ambulances rushing covid-19 victims to overburdened emergency rooms.
But it is absurd to imagine that Trump cares about anyone or anything but himself. He will not go voluntarily. So on Election Day, he must be made to suffer a humiliating defeat, and on Inauguration Day, he must be firmly escorted — bodily, if necessary — out of the White House.
This election is not about politics, ideology or even red vs. blue tribal identity. At this point, it’s about our collective survival.
Catherine Rampell: Who would kick millions off health insurance in the middle of a pandemic? Yes, Trump.
In the midst of a pandemic — when Americans most need health insurance, and millions can’t find work — the Trump administration wants to kick Americans off their health insurance if they aren’t working.
Heartless, but it’s true.
This week, the Trump administration and the state of Arkansas asked the Supreme Court to allow reinstatement of Medicaid work requirements. This disastrous policy was struck down by lower courts last year after causing 18,000 low-income Arkansans to lose their insurance. Subsequent research found that 95 percent of residents targeted by the policy were working, or had qualified for an exemption. They were kicked off Medicaid all the same.
That’s because the program’s reporting requirements were so onerous and confusing that it was nearly impossible to prove compliance.
These efforts to erect artificial barriers to safety-net services that Americans are legally entitled to, and desperately need, are of apiece with other Trump regulatory actions.
Timothy Egan: Our Life Was Languid. Then My Daughter’s Family Moved In.
It’s been exhausting and exhilarating.
When we lived in Italy some years ago, our family of four would sometimes visit a family of more — a married couple and nonna playing with her grandkids in the garden, an uncle with a mental disability, and the brother who never launched, all living in a modest house of weathered stone.
They argued without filter, finished each other’s stories, and each took a turn at cooking, cleaning or bringing money and food into the home. It was charming, particularly at the big afternoon meal on Sunday, and, we thought, anachronistic.
During the lockdown of 2020, our nest has been a quarantined family of six — our daughter and her husband, their twin 1-year old boys, my wife and myself. It’s been exhausting, kinetic, cramped, and one of the few consistent joys in this awful time.
But as it turns out, three generations living under one roof is not anachronistic; it’s the future. Or, more precisely, a past brought back to mainstream life. Two years ago, the Pew Research Center reported that 64 million Americans were living in multigenerational households — the highest number on record, and an increase of almost 70 percent from 1980.
Paul Waldman: How Trump’s war on the Postal Service could create an election nightmare
The Republican crony now running the USPS is making it more likely that your ballot will be tossed in the trash.
We should pause here to say that the USPS is nothing short of a national treasure. It’s older than America itself — Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general in 1775 — and every day it executes an astounding feat of logistics, delivering hundreds of millions of letters and packages to addresses across the country. They’ll take your letter from coast to coast not for the $30 or more that FedEx or UPS will charge, but for 55 cents. And they provide a stable, middle-class living for hundreds of thousands of workers who don’t need college degrees to succeed.
All of which is why the Postal Service is the most popular agency in the federal government, beating out the National Park Service, NASA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But now it’s under threat. And while untold numbers of customers missing their mail for a day or two is bad, on Nov. 3 it could turn into an absolute nightmare.
Thirty-five states now either allow no-excuse absentee voting or vote entirely by mail, and during this pandemic, more people than ever will choose to avoid polling places and cast their ballot that way. That already means that the Postal Service will have to handle more absentee requests and ballots than ever before — and Trump’s postmaster general has forbidden its workers from working overtime.
Now here’s the kicker. In 34 states, under current law it’s not enough that your absentee ballot be postmarked by election day. It has to be received by election authorities by election day.
That includes the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
So imagine you get your absentee ballot and finally fill it out on Saturday, October 31st. The next morning you drop it in the mailbox — but there’s no pickup on Sunday. It gets picked up Monday, but your local post office is so overwhelmed with thousands of mail ballots that your ballot doesn’t get delivered to your board of elections until Wednesday, November 4th.
If you live in one of those 34 states, your vote won’t count.
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