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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: What’s Not the Matter With Georgia?

A Democratic win offers hope — but also a warning.

Right now, we all have Georgia on our minds. It’s probably going to end up called for Joe Biden; his lead is razor-thin, but most observers expect it to survive a recount. And the January runoff races in Georgia offer Democrats their last chance to take the Senate.

Beyond the immediate electoral implications, however, the fact that Democrats are now competitive in Georgia but not in Ohio, which appears to have become Trumpier than Texas, tells you a lot about where America is heading. In some ways these changes in the electoral map offer reason for hope; but they also suggest looming problems for U.S. democracy. [..]

Why, after all, did Biden win Georgia even as he was losing North Carolina, another relatively well-educated state with growing knowledge industries? The answer, in two words: Stacey Abrams.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump’s coup is morphing into a grift — but Mitch McConnell sees it as a power grab

Trump can’t steal the election now — but McConnell is seizing the chance to undermine Biden before he takes office 

Donald Trump’s attempted coup started as a clown show. Over the weekend as Joe Biden was declared the winner by the mainstream media, and then by the entire world, it morphed into an outright grift. In a hilariously weird press conference outside a Philadelphia landscaping company on Saturday, Rudy Giuliani and other Trump flunkies — including a registered sex offender — pushed the idea that they could somehow invalidate Biden’s robust electoral victory. On Twitter, Trump continued to hype the utterly false notion that there’s some pathway to invalidating opened and counted ballots in various states he has clearly lost, and somehow reverse the results of this election in the courts.  [..]

Trump’s attempted coup, to be clear, has zero chance of working. His election lawsuits are pathetic and keep getting thrown out, including by Republican judges. All the whining about “illegal” voters — which is mostly code for voters whose skin color or political leanings are not to Trump’s taste — amounts to nothing, since the votes he’s complaining about are already opened and counted. At this point, the main purpose of all the false promises that the courts will invalidate the election appears to be money — the fine print on the solicitations for Trump’s “legal defense fund” makes clear that the money will mostly be used to pay down Trump’s campaign debts. Since Election Day, more than 130 such emails begging for cash have gone out to gullible marks — sorry, I mean Republican voters. Considering what a practiced con artist Trump is, he’s probably already working out how to leverage his fake victim status to squeeze his hapless supporters for more cash down the road.

The problem, unfortunately, is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided to back Trump’s play, as I predicted he would a year and a half ago.

David Cay Johnson: Defeated Trump is already tearing our government apart

Three big firings in the wake of the election loss — expect more vandalism before he’s gone

America is entering a very dangerous time. For his next 11 weeks in office, Donald Trump will be in a position to exact revenge.

It’s a word that by his own account is his entire life philosophy.

We should all hope that he goes into one of his down emotional periods for an extended time so that lethargy, not blind rage, dominates his behavior until Jan. 20.

Through phony charges of ballot-box stuffing, firing officials, issuing pardons to friends and family and Trump can do great damage between now and Inauguration Day. On Jan. 20, his shield against criminal prosecution vanishes. He also can hobble the transition to a Biden administration.

Trump’s first act of post-election political vandalism came in the wee hours Wednesday morning. He claimed the election was being stolen (video at 8:00) through “a major fraud on our nation.” He has yet to show a scintilla of evidence to support that lie.

That’s the kind of immoral rhetoric that damages faith in democracy and furthers the goals of Russian leader Vladimir Putin who aims to undermine every major democracy because he considers self-governance a joke.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Progressives are an asset for the Democratic Party. It should treat them that way.

Democratic progressives are not an isolated fringe — and their ideas are popular. The party should not run away from them.   

Is the growing progressive wing of the Democratic Party an asset or a liability? Do the largest citizen mobilizations in history — galvanized by the Black Lives Matter demonstrations — alienate more U.S. voters than they bring to the polls? Before the presidential election was called on Saturday, and even as citizens filled the streets celebrating Joe Biden’s projected victory over President Trump, recriminations were flying among Democrats distraught over the unexpected loss of House seats and their narrowed hopes of winning a Senate majority.

First-term Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Va.), a former CIA analyst considered by many a “centrist” Democrat, reportedly blamed liberals who talked about “socialism” and “defunding the police” for losses in contested suburban districts. Veteran Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House, reportedly cautioned against running on Medicare-for-all or “socialized medicine.”

Before Democrats continue down this road, they should consider: Many of the progressive wing’s big ideas enjoy greater support than most Democratic candidates.  [..]

What’s clear, however, is that Democratic progressives are not an isolated fringe. Their ideas are popular. Progressives are calling for basic economic, health and social rights — and more and more Americans are standing with them. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said months ago that Biden could become the most progressive president since FDR. It’s no coincidence that, despite Trump’s claims about socialism, violent mobs and socialized medicine, Biden will be our next president.

Catherine Rampell:  Stop romanticizing divided government. If McConnell is majority leader, there will be no progress

His record stands in opposition to common ground.    

With Joe Biden now president-elect, and partisan control of the Senate hanging in the balance, pundits are already romanticizing “divided government” — a Democratic president alongside a Republican-controlled legislative chamber.

It sounds “inherently moderate,” wax some commentators; it’s “a good moment because in order to get something done, people are going to have to cooperate and compromise,” claim others. In this telling, “divided government” is, paradoxically, just what the country needs to heal our divisions.

It’s a nice thought.

Unfortunately, a single man stands in the way of this fantasy. And it’s not the guy in the White House. It’s the current Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — to whom Senate custom gives nearly unilateral power to block most initiatives from ever getting a vote, compromises or efforts toward common ground be damned. Over and over, McConnell has already exercised this power.

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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Eugene Robinson: Black lives matter — and so do Black votes

This election was an emergency. Black Americans rescued the nation and its ideals — once again.

It’s fitting that votes from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, cities with large Black populations and rich traditions of African American history and culture, put Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris over the top Saturday, making them the president- and vice president-elect. Once again, Black Americans have redeemed the soul of the nation. You’re welcome.  [..]

Once again, Black voters proved themselves to be both coldly pragmatic and politically savvy. The urgent task was to prevent the reelection of a president who ignored science and encouraged racial animus, who responded to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks by refusing to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism and instead demanded a vision of “law and order” that gave Black communities neither.

Rebecca Solnit: Biden’s victory is only the prelude. What happens now is up to us

We all have a role to play in persuading this administration to have more courage, go further and live up to its promises

Yes, this election victory may be time to pause and sigh with relief, but it’s no finish line. It’s only the starting line for the next round of work. If people who worked so hard to win, go home, and go to sleep, the Biden administration will accomplish little, and the right will have its usual opportunity to get back what it lost. We can’t allow that.

The clear and pressing danger is a repeat of the last few election cycles in which, when Democrats won, too many people who’d been the backbone of the resistance relaxed and assumed the government would do the right thing. They didn’t bother to participate much because they thought power rests in elected officials rather than the electorate. The fierce effort to push Donald Trump out of power, the unprecedented scale of this summer’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and the many forms of resistance that took place when Trump won should remind us that it is not so. [..]

We all have a role to play in persuading this administration to have more courage, go farther, live up to its promises, all the while being louder than the corporations and conservatives who want the opposite. If there’s one admirable quality about Biden, it’s his malleability – his positions have grown far more progressive, notably on climate. That malleability puts responsibility on the electorate to lead and shape this administration into what we want it to be. That is our duty now.

Robert Reich: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-donald-trump-election-healing-robert-reich

The nearest thing America has had to a dictator is beaten but unbowed. He will disgrace the national scene for some time yet

It’s over. Donald Trump is history.

For millions of Americans – a majority, by almost 5m popular votes – it’s a time for celebration and relief. Trump’s cruelty, vindictiveness, non-stop lies, corruption, rejection of science, chaotic incompetence and gross narcissism brought out the worst in America. He tested the limits of American decency and democracy. He is the closest we have come to a dictator.

Democracy has had a reprieve, a stay of execution. We have another chance to preserve it, and restore what’s good about America.

It will not be easy. The social fabric is deeply torn. Joe Biden will inherit a pandemic far worse than it would have been had Trump not played it down and refused to take responsibility for containing it, and an economic crisis exacting an unnecessary toll.

The worst legacy of Trump’s term of office is a bitterly divided America.

Karen Tumulty: Joe Biden is already showing he is the right president for the moment

Biden’s long-standing relationships on Capitol Hill could be invaluable when it comes to addressing the urgent problem of the coronavirus pandemic and getting badly needed aid to Americans who are suffering. 

As ugly as this election has been, a win is a win: Come Jan. 20, Joe Biden will be our 46th president.

Biden’s victory, which he claimed when Pennsylvania tipped into his column, was a solid one. His popular vote margin will rank somewhere around historic averages. He and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), got more votes than any ticket in history. 

But former vice president Biden will enter office with a specific set of challenges: a deeply polarized and intensely passionate electorate; a Senate that appears likely to remain in Republican control, with a majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will be as determined to thwart Biden’s agenda as he was Barack Obama’s; a graceless predecessor who is trying to foment unrest by hurling baseless charges that the election was “stolen.”

No one will be surprised if Donald Trump refuses to even show up for Biden’s inauguration. The bigger question is whether his Republican enablers are capable of turning their attention to the interests of the country as it turns the page.  [..]

In the way Biden ran his campaign, and in the measured statements he has made since the polls closed, he has shown that he recognizes what he is up against, and just as important, that he understands what the country needs most right now is a healer who is willing to tell it the truth.

Charles M. Blow: Third Term of the Obama Presidency

Joe Biden represents a move back to normalcy, but progressives will push for change.    

Barack Obama — his policies and his posture — just won a third term.

Joe Biden will be president because of his close association with Barack Obama, because he espoused many of the same centrist policies and positioning and because of public nostalgia for the normalcy and decency the Obama years provided.

Biden is a restoration president-elect, elected to right the ship and save the system. He is not so much a change agent as a reversion agent. He is elected to Make America Able to Sleep Again.

He doesn’t see his mission as shaking things up, but calming things down.

But, just as was the case with Obama, many of the people who made Biden’s win possible are far to the left of him. As Biden told a Miami television station last month: “I’m the guy that ran against socialists, OK. I’m the guy that’s the moderate. Remember, you guys were all talking, you’d interview me and say, ‘Well, you’re a moderate, how can you win the nomination?’ It’s who I am.” But progressives are not likely to be as silent now as they were during the Obama years.