Steve Benen/MSNBC:
Another election-fraud story touted by top Republicans unravels.
The back-and-forth is tiresome and predictable: Republicans, desperate to suppress voting and rationalize election defeats, will insist there's rampant voter fraud throughout the United States. Democrats will respond by asking for evidence that never materializes.
Once in a while, however, Republicans will claim to have credible proof of fraud. This generally causes a stir, right up until those claims are subjected to scrutiny.
That Big Lie can’t be undone, unseen or unheard. But we can work to make it matter less, and not happen again.
Jason Sattler/USA Today:
Democrats will have only themselves to blame if they let Republicans make voting harder
Ensuring people can vote and guarding against voter discrimination are necessities, not just priorities. And Democrats have the power to get them done.
All Americans should be appalled by this coordinated assault on what Ronald Reagan called “the crown jewel of American liberties.” But Democrats in Congress, especially in the Senate, don’t have time be disgusted. They need to focus on the sad fact that this pathetic plot to steal the elections for the next decade or more could very well work. Easily. Yet it could also be prevented, almost as easily, and with widespread support from voters. We know this because it’s already happened in my home state of Michigan.
Will Bunch/philly.com:
A mass shooting in Atlanta stirs the toxic, apocalyptic stew of America after Trump, COVID-19
On Tuesday, this young white male couldn’t wait any longer to bring hell to three separate spas, populated by female workers of Asian descent, that sheriff’s deputies claim the shooter blamed on what he believed was “a sex addiction” that conflicted with his years of Bible study at the Milton church. Even before a cop’s highway maneuver crashed the killer’s car en route to Florida — where he allegedly planned more violence — and Long was arrested without a shot, the nation’s worst mass killing of 2021 (so far) was fast becoming a Rorschach test for how we view America and its many social ills.
Michael Grunwald/Politico Magazine:
The GOP’s Political Nightmare: Running Against a Recovery
The Democrats just passed a massive spending bill with no GOP support. So why are Republicans talking about Dr. Seuss and the border?
President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill may have helped avoid a second Great Depression, but it was a political fiasco. As then-congressman Barney Frank liked to say: “Things Would’ve Sucked Even Worse Without Us” was an unappealing message for a Democratic bumper sticker. Republicans relentlessly mocked the $800 billion stimulus as a wasteful porkfest, while Democrats tried fervently to change the subject.
Twelve years later, the politics of stimulus has flipped.
Democrats are relentlessly hyping President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, while Republicans are trying to change the subject to Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and the Mexican border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, arguably the shrewdest Republican strategist in Washington, has started floating a half-hearted anti-stimulus message that the coming recovery would have happened anyway.
“We are about to have a boom,” McConnell said last week after the Biden bill passed. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”
As a message, this amounts to “Things Would’ve Been Just As Great Without It”—an even less appealing bumper sticker than Barney Frank’s.
Timothy Caulfield/Globe and Mail:
COVID-19, science and the uncertainty dance
In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, there was uncertainty about masks and asymptomatic spread. There was uncertainty about if and when we’d get a vaccine. There was uncertainty about what type of public health policies worked best and were most needed. We have all had to tolerate a lot of ambiguity. And as the vaccines roll out, we are being asked to tolerate even more. (When will I get a vaccine? Which one will I get? And what about the variants?)
For public health communications to be effective, the public must have confidence in the message. And, unfortunately, for some, that confidence isn’t there. A recent study from the University of Calgary explored pandemic communication and found, not surprisingly, that “participants felt that public health messaging to date has been conflicting and at times unclear.”
This perception is understandable. An atmosphere of seemingly relentless uncertainty and confusion has been created by a combination of scientific realities, media practices, some less-than-ideal communication from policy makers, and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
The science surrounding COVID was – and, for some topics, continues to be – highly uncertain. While a growing body of evidence has emerged around the most contested issues (such as the value of masks and physical distancing strategies), early in the pandemic there wasn’t much that was unequivocal. The science evolved and, as you would hope with any evidence-informed approach, the resulting science advice and recommendations evolved too. But for some, shifting policies, even if appropriate, just added to a sense, rightly or not, of chaos.
Parker Molloy/Media Matters:
The way Fox News hosts discuss vaccines is a public health nightmare
If there was ever a time for Fox to set aside its political agenda for the public good, it’s right now
Fox News’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, start to finish, a complete and total disaster.
Every step of the way, the conservative media behemoth has missed the mark: Fox News is one of the reasons masks became political. Fox News is one of the main reasons people thought hydroxychloroquine was some kind of miraculous COVID-19 treatment. Fox News is one of the reasons people believed the lie that COVID-19 was “just the flu.”
And now, just as the world can start to see a bit of daylight at the end of this long and dark tunnel, Fox News is politicizing the COVID-19 vaccination push.
Vaccines can bring an end to this pandemic if enough of the public gets inoculated, but this requires buy-in from the general public, and Fox News’ prime-time coverage has been undercutting those efforts in a nakedly and dangerously partisan play. In fact, while some Fox News hosts and anchors appeared in a public service announcement released last month urging its audience to get vaccinated, its prime-time hosts have led viewers in the opposite direction.
Nicholas Grossman/Bulwark:
Conservative Fanboys
The conservative cinematic universe is folding in on itself.
Fans of big fictional universes — Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Simpsons — often speak to each other in references. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” “BortaSnIvqu’ ‘oH bortaS’e’.”
These in-group references can sometimes be exclusionary—or even seem rude to casual fans. But they can also be a lot of fun, letting hardcore fans have faster, deeper conversations about stories they love.
In-speak has taken hold in right-wing media, too. Peruse Conservatism Inc. these days and you’ll see it’s become so dependent on inside references and shared fictions, that it’s inaccessible to the general public, even as it’s more thrilling to fans.
Except instead of “radiation can give you superpowers,” it’s stuff like “Donald Trump won the 2020 election.”
Thomas B Edsall/NY Times:
Biden Wants No Part of the Culture War the G.O.P. Loves
The generosity of his $1.9 trillion relief bill has the added benefit of shifting attention where he wants it.
The sheer magnitude of the funds released by the American Rescue Plan, the White House is gambling, will shift voters’ attention away from controversies over Dr. Seuss, who can use which bathroom and critical race theory. So far, the strategy is working.
Biden has a favorability rating of 52.9 to 41.9, according to the Real Clear Politics average of the seven most recent surveys, and a Pew Research poll the first week of March found that a decisive majority of voters, at 70-28 percent, have a positive opinion of the Covid stimulus bill.
According to a rundown by the Center for American Progress of the bill’s exceptionally generous provisions, the bill will cut child poverty in half, and a middle-income family of four with one child under age 6 and one child age 6 or above will receive $8,200 at minimum.