Pondering the Pundits

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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James E. Clyburn: Runoff elections should be a relic of the past

The recent results in Georgia demonstrate the continued effectiveness of the runoff requirement in keeping Black candidates from reaching elected office.

As a lifelong student and short-time teacher of history, I am often reminded that “those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” I can think of no period in my lifetime that better reflects that truth than the past four years.

On Dec. 12, we marked the 150th anniversary of Joseph Rainey’s swearing-in as the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The once-enslaved South Carolinian was elected in 1870 during the roughly 12 years of Reconstruction. He served eight years before losing his seat when President Rutherford B. Hayes terminated federal oversight of the former slave states.

Southern states responded with all kinds of creative devices designed to disenfranchise Black voters, purge Black elected officials and relegate Black people to second-class citizenship. [..]

Some of the most pernicious devices, which included racialized campaigning, numbered posts, full-slate voting, and the “50 percent plus one” voting requirement, purposefully diluted Black votes and helped produce decades of white-only elected officials. This led my home state, which had eight Black members of Congress in the 19th century, to go 95 years — from 1897 to 1992 — without African American representation in Congress. Although the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed some of these devices, several remained, including the “50 percent plus one” requirement, known today as the “runoff” election.

Elizabeth Rosenthal: Some Said the Vaccine Rollout Would Be a ‘Nightmare.’ They Were Right.

There are already signs that distribution will be messy, confusing and chaotic.

Even before there was a vaccine, some seasoned doctors and public health experts warned, Cassandra-like, that its distribution would be “a logistical nightmare.”

After Week 1 of the rollout, “nightmare” sounds like an apt description.

Dozens of states say they didn’t receive nearly the number of promised doses. Pfizer says millions of doses sat in its store rooms, because no one from President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed told them where to ship them. A number of states have few sites that can handle the ultracold storage required for the Pfizer product, so, for example, front line workers in Georgia have had to travel 40 minutes to get a shot. At some hospitals, residents treating Covid patients protested that they had not received the vaccine while administrators did, even though they work from home and don’t treat patients.

The potential for more chaos is high. Dr. Vivek Murthy, named as the next surgeon general under President-elect Joe Biden, said this week that the Trump administration’s prediction — that the general population would get the vaccine in April — was realistic only if everything went smoothly. He instead predicted the summer or fall. [..]

So kudos and thanks to the science and the scientists who made the vaccine in record time. I’ll eagerly hold out my arm — so I can see the family and friends and colleagues I’ve missed all these months. If only I can figure out when I’m eligible, and where to go to get it.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump’s loss was radicalizing: His promise to “cheat” the system has further deluded his fans

Trump got elected by promising he knew how to cheat “the system”— now his voters can’t believe he’s failing

For years, many liberals have been confused by why so many Donald Trump voters seem unperturbed by all his criming and cheating. To understand Trump’s supporters, it’s important to understand that they don’t believe he’s a good person. On the contrary, the appeal of Trump from the beginning was a belief that he’s a liar, a cheat, and a crook — but one who would implement his evil-doing skills towards goals Republican voters support, with triggering the liberals and snagging all the government goodies for their tribe at the expense of other Americans at the top of the list.

This wasn’t exactly subtle. Trump repeatedly promised his supporters during the 2016 campaign that “Nobody knows the system better than I do.” He often bragged about his supposed skills at buying off and working politicians. [..]

The key is realizing that the typical Trump supporter, as I explained in the Standing Room Only newsletter, sees himself as in on the con. Indeed, the easiest way to hoodwink someone is to convince them that they’re part of the conspiracy, that they’re the ones getting one over on someone else. Trump’s story for his supporters was that all of politics is a rigged game, but this time he was rigging it for them.

All of which explains why Trump supporters, like their idol, are losing their minds right now. They elected a man who assured them he knew all the tricks and could get away with breaking any rule. But despite all his efforts at stealing the election from Joe Biden — and all the money he’s raised from them to do so — Trump is failing. Trump’s voters never believed he was an honest man, yet they got snookered by the biggest lie of all: that he had almost god-like powers to cheat the system.

Richard WolfeThe Trump White House has entered its final stage: complete meltdown

Trump has retreated to the proverbial bunker with an ‘elite strike force’ of wingnuts and lackeys. They’re all he’s got left

The last days of the Trump presidency increasingly resemble the fictional presidency in the movie Monsters vs Aliens.

In case you missed this 2009 animated masterpiece, President Hathaway (voiced by Stephen Colbert) responds to an alien invasion with a team of unlikely heroes, among them a giant-sized TV reporter from Modesto, a cockroach-turned-mad-scientist, and an enormous blob of Jell-O.

One of the running gags is that the president has installed two red buttons in his situation room. One is to make his morning latte, the other to launch all his nuclear weapons. He can never remember which is which.

In the final month of Donald Trump’s time in the Oval Office, he has at last assembled his own team of outsized odds and ends, self-aggrandizing wingnuts, and brainless lumps of gelatin. You can decide for yourself if this latest incarnation of his “elite strike force” of advisers is more likely to launch all the nuclear weapons or make a fresh cup of coffee.

At the center of the team to save Planet Trump are the unhinged characters of Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, who reportedly met with the soon-to-be-ex-president in the White House over several hours on Friday.

Greg Sargeant: The Biden team does not seem spooked by the ghost of Stephen Miller

A glimpse into Biden’s plans on immigration hints at a clean break with Trumpism.

When it came to asylum seekers and refugees, President Trump’s agenda, crafted by adviser Stephen Miller, was largely animated by a few core principles.

Among them: Migrants are primarily a threat, and should above all be feared. They’re largely driven by nefarious motives, looking to scam their way into the United States and get over on us, rather than being driven by larger forces that rendered their decisions to migrate understandable, earning them just treatment.

And because of those, their efforts to migrate must above all be crushed through the deterrence of maximal cruelty and hardship, and migration flows must be mercilessly reduced to the lowest levels possible.

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is sending early signs that the break with this worldview will be comprehensive, substituting an entirely new vision. And the rough outlines of this vision are heartening, though details will matter greatly. [..]

Again, the details will matter, and unwinding Trump’s horrors will be extremely hard. Politics could also intervene. Another crush at the border and the Biden administration might fear liberalizing too quickly. They may be reluctant to quickly lift Trump’s coronavirus-inspired limits on legal immigration.

But the early returns suggest solid, reality-based, humane principles are outweighing political concerns.