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

Jennifer Rubin: How big a Republican wipeout are we looking at?

Trump and the GOP’s geographic footprint is shrinking.

The expansion of the presidential map into states where Democrats have not made inroads for many election cycles (e.g., Georgia, Texas and Arizona) has two critical ramifications.

First, a strategy of discrediting an election or challenging its results becomes untenable when Biden’s electoral count rises above 300. The public perception of the legitimacy of a Biden win increases, and the inclination of a court or a state legislature to engage in gamesmanship diminishes. The adage that “if it’s not close, he can’t cheat” certainly has relevance here.

Second, the incentive for Republicans to rethink their narrow-casting approach to politics, to stop relying on the politics of White grievance and to shed their dependence on voter suppression techniques increases when it becomes clear that they are at risk of becoming a regional, niche party. It is only when Republicans understand that such tactics cannot succeed as a national message that its primary proponents will lose power. If the Trumpers’ approach means Republicans cannot even hold Texas or Georgia, then their dominance of the party is threatened. In other words, a devastating, geographically broad defeat for the Republican Party may be critical to its recovery and reform.

Amanda Marcotte: Mitch McConnell admits he’s blocking coronavirus bill — will media finally stop blaming Democrats?

Republicans clearly never intended to pass a new relief bill — so why has the media consistently blamed Democrats?

For months, Congress has failed to pass a coronavirus relief bill, despite the widespread economic devastation and the fact that, under Donald Trump’s malicious mismanagement, the pandemic has spiraled out of control, infecting 8.25 million people and killing more than 220,000, as of Wednesday morning.

The mainstream media has firmly decided who they blame for the lack of a bill: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who control the lower house of Congress. Blaming Democrats has been the dominant press narrative, even though it’s been obvious from the get-go that Republicans don’t want more relief legislation.

Now we have concrete proof that Republicans are to blame: Late Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “has warned the White House not to strike an agreement,” on the grounds that any new deal struck with Pelosi and the Democrats and “could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week.”

To anyone unburdened by the delusion that “balance” is a more important journalistic principle than truth, it was always obvious that Republicans were the reason no coronavirus bill was getting passed. For one thing, House Democrats already passed a robust relief bill in May, which Senate Republicans have basically ignored while avoiding any substantive efforts at negotiating a bill that can pass both houses. For another thing, there are obvious ideological differences between Democrats, where even the party’s “moderate” wing supports increased social spending, and Republicans, whose only real goal is moving as much wealth as possible from the hands of working people to the rich.

Robert Reich: How to stop Trump from stealing the election

Donald Trump will stop at nothing to retain his power

Trump is likely to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife with “fraud like you’ve never seen,” as he alleged during his debate with Joe Biden — although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

So we should expect him to dispute election results in any Republican-led state he loses by a small margin — such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.

The 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides that if state electors deadlock or neither candidate gets a majority of the votes in the Electoral College needed to win the presidency (now 270) — because, for example, Trump contests votes in several key states — the decision about who’ll be president goes to the House, where each of the nation’s 50 states gets one vote.

That means less-populous Republican-dominated states like Alaska (with one House member, who’s a Republican) would have the same clout as large Democratic states like California (with 53 House members, 45 of whom are Democrats).

So if the decision goes to the House, Trump has the advantage right now: 26 of state congressional delegations in the House are now controlled by Republicans, and 22 by Democrats (two — Pennsylvania and Michigan — are essentially tied).

But he won’t necessarily keep that advantage after the election. If the decision goes to the House, it would be made by lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on January 3 — three days before they’ll convene to decide the winner of the election.

Greg Sargent: How the Iran news actually undermines one of Trump’s biggest lies

Trump’s own director of national intelligence accidentally gives away the president’s game.

There’s a lot to scrutinize about John Ratcliffe’s big announcement about Iran and Russia, but an important piece of news about it is getting lost: Without doing so directly, President Trump’s own director of national intelligence actually debunked one of the president’s biggest lies about the election.

Much discussion of Ratcliffe’s remarks to the media has focused on his claim that Iran is sending fake threatening emails to voters — purportedly from the right-wing extremist Proud Boys — to help Trump. As many have noted, the idea that this benefits Trump makes little sense on its face.

But Ratcliffe also said something else in his Wednesday evening comments that is oddly getting overlooked: He indirectly but unequivocally confirmed that the claims that Trump has been making about voter fraud, particularly in vote-by-mail, are false.

Dan Froomkin: If Joe Biden wins this election, mainstream media has plenty of catch-up work ahead

After Nov. 3, comparing Biden to Donald Trump may no longer be enough. It will be time to ask the hard questions

There’s a lot we don’t know about what kind of leader Joe Biden will be if he wins the presidential election.

None of it matters very much before Nov. 3, because this is not a normal election. There is nothing we could possibly learn about Biden that would make him a worse candidate than Donald Trump. We know Biden is a fundamentally decent man, with flaws. Trump is a disaster and an existential threat to core American values.

But the political press corps has never pressed Biden hard on, well, anything — not even when he was running for the Democratic nomination against several strong competitors. Reporters failed to aggressively question him during the primaries, a professional lapse I still don’t understand.

(And no, I don’t mean bogus questions about planted conspiracy theories. I mean tough questions about his history, his policies and his campaign.)

Once it was clear Biden would become the nominee, everything suddenly became relative — relative to Donald Trump, that is. So the press corps’ docile stance was largely appropriate. I was initially more worried that reporters might repeat the journalistic failures of 2016: blowing Democratic mini-scandals out of proportion, while underplaying Trump’s unbounded corruption and tragic incapacity, to create the appearance of balance.

But Trump’s clueless and disastrous response to a deadly pandemic — on top of his unhinged lies and some excellent investigative reporting on his finances — made that kind of false equivalence impossible even for the most jaded political journalists. The few attempted Biden gotchas have fallen terribly flat.

It wasn’t Biden that the Washington press corps needed to hold accountable. He simply was not the story.

But all that changes if and when he becomes the president-elect.

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

Amanda Marcotte: Mitch McConnell admits he’s blocking coronavirus bill — will media finally stop blaming Democrats?

Republicans clearly never intended to pass a new relief bill — so why has the media consistently blamed Democrats?

For months, Congress has failed to pass a coronavirus relief bill, despite the widespread economic devastation and the fact that, under Donald Trump’s malicious mismanagement, the pandemic has spiraled out of control, infecting 8.25 million people and killing more than 220,000, as of Wednesday morning.

The mainstream media has firmly decided who they blame for the lack of a bill: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who control the lower house of Congress. Blaming Democrats has been the dominant press narrative, even though it’s been obvious from the get-go that Republicans don’t want more relief legislation. [..]

To anyone unburdened by the delusion that “balance” is a more important journalistic principle than truth, it was always obvious that Republicans were the reason no coronavirus bill was getting passed. For one thing, House Democrats already passed a robust relief bill in May, which Senate Republicans have basically ignored while avoiding any substantive efforts at negotiating a bill that can pass both houses. For another thing, there are obvious ideological differences between Democrats, where even the party’s “moderate” wing supports increased social spending, and Republicans, whose only real goal is moving as much wealth as possible from the hands of working people to the rich.

Heather Digby Parton: GOP’s invented Hunter Biden scandal isn’t going away: Are they shooting for 2022 already?

Republicans know they may face a sweeping defeat in two weeks. But their latest pseudo-scandal may keep hope alive

One of the many nerve-wracking questions Americans facing with the 2020 presidential election is whether all the bizarre conspiracy theories that have sprung up in the last few years will outlast the Trump administration. Are we in for a prolonged period of this level of lunacy in our politics? [..]

The fever may break once the chaos agent is out of the White House. As Bump pointed out in that Washington Post article, part of the reason some people gravitate to these elaborate conspiracies is because they need to feel that someone, somewhere, is pulling the strings because otherwise everything feels out of control. Perversely, if Trump loses, these people may actually calm down. Even if they don’t, what’s left of the GOP establishment is likely to distance itself as much as possible from the kookier conspiracists. It’s bad for business.

But that doesn’t mean that they’re going to give up conspiracy theories and pseudo-scandal-mongering altogether. It is, after all, one of their favorite political weapons. [..]

The Hunter Biden “scandal” has all the hallmarks of one of those patented GOP mudslinging operations. It’s not as wild as a pedophile ring in a pizza parlor, but it’s got lots of hurtful personal slander and ugly calumny to keep the folks entertained. That it has a Russia-Ukraine element makes it especially fun for those who want payback for Donald Trump being exposed as the most useful of idiots in the past four years.

Stuart Stevens, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and Reed Galen: Republicans, it’s time to choose between autocracy and a republic

Republicans Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson are co-founders of the Lincoln Project. Stuart Stevens is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project.

This is for the many men and women in Washington with whom we have worked over the past 30-plus years. Some of you hold elected office. Some are officials in the Trump administration. Many of you are members of the consultant and lobbyist class.

In two weeks, the most consequential election of our generation will come, and your time for choosing will arrive. As Republicans, will you stand with President Trump, or will you stand with, and stand up for, America? Will you protect democracy or protect a single person and his family?

We’re not merely talking about your vote.

We’re talking about what comes next.

Never before in U.S. history has an incumbent president refused in advance to accept the outcome of an election. In the days ahead, your party may call upon you to support efforts by a White House that refuses to transfer power after a loss at the polls. The weapons won’t be tanks but thousands of lawyers backed by an attorney general who works for the president, not the people.

This effort will succeed only if a Republican Party power structure offers blind allegiance to one man instead of the republic. Every Republican elected official, staffer, consultant, operative and sympathizer will face a choice: my party or my country?

Paul Waldman: Think things are ugly and divisive now? Just wait until 2021.

If they lose in November, the party of Donald Trump will only double down on divisiveness.

In our more innocent pre-2016 days, politicians often accused each other of being “divisive,” which often meant little more than “You’re advocating policies I don’t like” or “You’re criticizing me and I don’t like that either.” Donald Trump showed us what divisiveness really is, with two campaigns and a presidency devoted to fomenting hatred and resentment, all based on his belief that if Americans were at war with one another then he could profit from the conflict.

As he closes out his term, Trump is leaning ever harder on division, and other Republicans are enthusiastic participants in his project. But what if he loses? Will they decide that their path back to power might be found somewhere other than telling some Americans to focus their anger on other Americans?

The sad answer is no. This is driven home by a new report that you may have to read two or three times to actually believe it

Greg Sargent: Why Trump’s endgame is to rage at Lesley Stahl

Trump had hoped to wage this campaign in a fictional universe of his own creation.

Now that President Trump has gone on the attack against CBS’s Lesley Stahl, some observers appear puzzled: Why would Trump squander his final chance to close his big polling gap with Joe Biden on unhinged public fights rather than on winning back voters who’ve been alienated by exactly these sorts of meltdowns?

The fact that this comes after Trump waged a public assault on Anthony S. Fauci, his own leading infectious-disease expert, only seems to compound the folly here, since voters are surely looking to the popular Fauci for advice with the coronavirus again spiking around the country.

But in a very real sense people such as Stahl and Fauci actually are the chief opponents Trump must contend with in the campaign’s final days. They are the figures he perceives to be standing in the way of his effort to conduct this campaign in an entirely invented universe that he’d hoped to manufacture for this very purpose.

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: Why Biden Will Need to Spend Big

The economic case for deficit spending is overwhelming.

What should Joe Biden’s economic policy be if he wins (and Democrats take the Senate, so that he can actually pass legislation)? I’m pretty sure I know what his economists think he should do, but I’m not equally sure that everyone on his political team fully gets it, and I’m worried that the news media will experience sticker shock — that is, they may not be ready for the price tag on what he should and probably will propose.

So here’s what everyone should understand: Given the current and likely future state of the U.S. economy, it’s time to (a) spend a lot of money on the future and (b) not worry about where the money is coming from. For now, and for at least the next few years, large-scale deficit spending isn’t just OK, it’s the only responsible thing to do.

Today’s column will be about the economics; I’ll talk about the politics another day. [..]

It’s a given that Republicans, who turned silent on deficits under Trump, will suddenly declare debt an existential threat with a Democrat in the White House. The real questions are whether centrists and the news media will buy into deficit hysteria, the way they did in the Obama years, and whether members of the Biden team will lose their nerve.

More on those risks in a future column.

Heather Digby Parton: Don’t let Trump and his minions get away with this — or it will happen all over again

Historian Jill Lepore thinks a post-Trump “truth commission” isn’t needed because America’s doing A-OK. Hello?

After Richard Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Congress set out to create numerous reforms designed to rein in future presidents. After all, Nixon had set forth a view of the presidency that was downright un-American: “If the president does it it’s not illegal,” essentially saying that no law can apply to the executive branch. [..]

There were committee investigations, such as the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House which delved deeply into the intelligence community’s abuses, resulting in the permanent select committees on intelligence in each chamber. Later reforms required the president to inform congressional leaders of both parties prior to major covert actions, and for leaders of the CIA to regularly brief the committees.

Unfortunately, those reforms were of limited utility. The Iran-Contra scandal and the pardons that followed mocked the idea of intelligence oversight. The CIA black sites and torture program program during the George W. Bush administration pretty much destroyed the illusion that Congress had any control over the intelligence services. Throughout this period, the War Powers Act, which was enacted over Nixon’s veto in the first place, has been a joke. As for campaign finance and ethics reforms, well, those were nice ideas. The Supreme Court took care of the first with the Citizens United ruling, and the second turns out to be almost entirely dependent on a sense of shame — a thing that turns out to be easily discarded.

And yet, for all of that, no one has come close to abusing the power of the presidency as Donald Trump has done. He didn’t do it on his own. Yes, his personal inclination has been to treat the government as his private fiefdom, demanding loyalty oaths, conducting purges and using the office for his personal profit. But people such as Attorney General Bill Barr and others in right-wing legal circles who were politically baptized by Nixon’s downfall have used Trump’s authoritarian instincts to institute the “imperial presidency” that Nixon once espoused.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump is falling way behind with female voters. His response? “Lock her up!”

Misogyny helped Trump in 2016, and he wants to repeat by attacking Gretchen Whitmer — but so far it’s not working

Donald Trump is getting hammered, badly, by female voters in the national polls. In the latest NPR/PBS poll, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is leading Trump among women by 25 points. The Washington Post/ABC News poll shows a similar spread, with Biden beating Trump by 23 points with women. Even the Fox News polling data puts Biden ahead of Trump by 19 points among female voters. Trump is doing much better with male voters, but considering that women tend to vote at higher rates than men, Trump simply can’t count on male support to push him to another Electoral College victory.

Facing a very high chance that female voters will send Trump packing in November — FiveThirtyEight’s odds of a Biden victory, as of Monday morning are at 88% — how did the pussy-grabbing president react? By laughingly encouraging a crowd in Michigan, at another of his largely mask-free rallies, to chant, “Lock her up!”

“Lock her up? Lock them all up!” Trump responded in glee. [..]

But what may have changed is that there’s a strong feminist response to this misogyny this time around. In 2016, American women who didn’t like this kind of sexism were cowed by sneering accusations of being “vagina voters,” sometimes even from the left. There was a general fear of being seen as hysterical for raising the alarm about sexism, especially when it seemed almost certain that Clinton would win the election.

Clinton’s defeat came as an emotional shock to the system, not just for many American women, but also for men who feel repulsed by the levels of sexism that clearly still exist in our society.

Michelle Goldberg: Is the Trump Campaign Colluding With Russia Again?

Giuliani’s dirty tricks are the scandal, not Hunter Biden’s hard drive.

The Treasury Department last month imposed sanctions on four people linked to Russia for attempting to influence the presidential election, including a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach, who has worked with Donald Trump’s consigliere Rudy Giuliani to smear Joe Biden. According to the Treasury, Derkach has been “an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian intelligence services.” [..]

Giuliani probably can’t sabotage Biden the way WikiLeaks sabotaged Clinton. The Clinton leak was damaging because many voters already believed there was something sinister about her hidden emails. Burisma never stuck to Biden in the same way, so there’s less payoff in forcing it back into the news.

But Giuliani’s tactics aren’t any less foul for being ineffective. It’s hardly surprising that the president’s bottom-feeding lawyer has shown himself open to working with Russian intelligence. It’s striking, though, that no one expects better.

Eugene Robinson: Trump isn’t even trying to slow the virus’s spread

What sort of president tries to make a desperate national situation worse?

The coronavirus pandemic in the United States is rapidly climbing toward a third peak, and President Trump is doing more to boost the infection rate than reduce it.

It’s hard to believe, but Trump doesn’t even seem to be trying to slow the spread of the deadly virus that has killed nearly 220,000 Americans, ravaged the economy and seriously damaged his chances of winning a second term. With the election just two weeks away and polls heavily favoring Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump has been spending his days frantically jetting around the country to campaign rallies that look like potential superspreader events — big, tightly packed, noisy gatherings where most people are not wearing masks. [..]

Two of Trump’s personality traits, his impatience and his narcissism, stand between the nation and success against covid-19. He is obviously sick of dealing with the pandemic, which hurts him politically. And since he beat the disease — with the help of experimental treatments not available to the rest of us — he figures everybody else should be able to beat it, too.

With cold weather coming and most Americans having to spend more time indoors, this third wave of covid-19 could be truly horrific. Trump’s tragic legacy will be that he met a crisis — and instead of making it better, he made it worse.