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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Paul Krugman: Trump Tantrums the Dems Out of a Trap
Build he won’t, and that’s a good thing.
I gotta say, it was very clever of Nancy Pelosi to steal Donald Trump’s strawberries, pushing him over the edge into self-evident lunacy.
As everyone knows, Trump stormed out of a meeting on infrastructure, apparently out of uncontrollable rage over Pelosi’s remarks pointing out that the administration’s stonewalling on all fronts, including raw defiance of the law requiring that it provide the president’s tax returns, obviously amount to a coverup of something (and maybe multiple things.) And Democrats should be grateful.
And I don’t just mean that they should be grateful to see Trump displaying his unfitness for office, which has long been clear to close observers, in such a dramatically unhinged way that only cultists can fail to see it. He’s also helped them with a political dilemma.
You see, a major infrastructure push is a very good idea, one that Democrats would find it hard to oppose in good conscience. Yet it would also be politically good for Trump, helping the economy, giving the public a sense of progress, and also making him seem more like a normal president. And Democrats would have had a hard time avoiding making him this gift.
John Atcheson: Law and Disorder: Why Corporatism Will Dominate US Policy for Decades to Come
Trump and McConnell are doing everything possible to pack the courts with folks who have a higher regard for business than they do for the Constitution.
Remember when Republicans ran on a law and order platform? Well, nowadays, we’ve got a President – in fact an entire Party — at war with the idea of the rule of law in general, and any constraints on corporations in particular. Democrats console themselves with the idea that this can all be righted in the next election. Vote Trump out, retain the majority in the House, and win the Senate. Problem solved.
Except it isn’t. McConnell and Trump are doing everything they can to hand over the Judiciary — lock, stock and barrel — to a collection of extreme partisans who have no regard for the rule of law and regardless of who wins the election, that could leave us with a country which is firmly in the hands of the oligarchy. Since 1801, when Marbury v Madison established the right of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution, the Judiciary has had the power to strike down laws, statutes, and some government actions such as executive orders. As long as this power remains in the hands of extremist ideologues, democracy and the rule of law are threatened, and corporations and monied interests will continue to get a free pass.
Jeffrey D. Sachs: China Is Not the Source of Our Economic Problems—Corporate Greed Is
The real battle is not with China but with America’s own giant companies, many of which are raking in fortunes while failing to pay their own workers decent wages
China is not an enemy. It is a nation trying to raise its living standards through education, international trade, infrastructure investment, and improved technologies. In short, it is doing what any country should do when confronted with the historical reality of being poor and far behind more powerful countries. Yet the Trump administration is now aiming to stop China’s development, which could prove to be disastrous for both the United States and the entire world.
China is being made a scapegoat for rising inequality in the United States. While US trade relations with China have been mutually beneficial over the years, some US workers have been left behind, notably Midwestern factory workers facing competition due to rising productivity and comparatively low (though rising) labor costs in China. Instead of blaming China for this normal phenomenon of market competition, we should be taxing the soaring corporate profits of our own multinational corporations and using the revenues to help working-class households, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, promote new job skills and invest in cutting-edge science and technology.
Eugene Robinson: Tune out President Trump’s propaganda machine
President George W. Bush once said that to get a message across, you had to repeat it over and over, “to kind of catapult the propaganda.” President Trump must have been paying attention.
I predict this will be a summer of nonstop, shameless propaganda from Trump and his minions. It will be clumsy, ridiculous and pathetic — but don’t ignore it. Call it out. Laugh at it. Recognize it for what it is: a sign not of strength but of fear. [..]
We will hear much propaganda about the economy, which of course made most of its impressive gains during the Obama years. We will hear Trump repeat the lie that somehow China is paying the tariffs he imposed, when really the cost is borne by U.S. importers and ultimately the American consumer. We will hear the president blame Democrats for legislative gridlock, even though it was Trump who declared last week that he will refuse to work with Congress as long as he remains under investigation.
As the congressional investigations gradually pry loose financial information that Trump has done everything in his power to keep secret, as pain from the tariffs increases, as Trump finds himself having to work with Pelosi whether he wants to or not, and as Trump worries more and more about his reelection prospects, the propaganda machine — using its megaphone, Fox News — will crank up the volume.
It’s just noise. Fight it with truth.
Catherine Rampell: Trump’s narrative is nonsense. So why is the media buying it?
Yes, Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. The problem right now is that all anyone ever asks about is the gum-chewing.
President Trump is steadily advancing a narrative that Democrats are unable to focus on a substantive policy agenda because they’re too fixated on investigating, subpoenaing and, eventually, impeaching the president.
Or, as our victim in chief tweeted on Monday: “The Dems are getting NOTHING done in Congress! They only want a Do-Over on Mueller!”
This sort of nonsense is something we’ve come to expect from Trump. But more troubling, perhaps, is that many of us in the media have also been amplifying his false narrative.
As I noted in The Post Opinions’ recent 2020 Power Ranking, the number of Democratic officials calling for impeachment has grown in recent weeks. Maybe they’re jumping on the impeachment train because they believe it’s the right thing to do, or because they think it’ll be politically advantageous.
But another plausible explanation for why so many Democrats are now talking about impeachment is that’s what we in the media, primed by Trump, ask them to talk about — often to the exclusion of other substantive issues that those Democrats are working on and that voters care about.