Paul Krugman trains an eye on the GOP's "deep bench."
This was, according to many commentators, going to be the election cycle Republicans got to show off their “deep bench.” The race for the nomination would include experienced governors like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, fresh thinkers like Rand Paul, and attractive new players like Marco Rubio. Instead, however, Donald Trump leads the field by a wide margin. What happened?
The answer, according to many of those who didn’t see it coming, is gullibility: People can’t tell the difference between someone who sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about and someone who is actually serious about the issues. And for sure there’s a lot of gullibility out there. But if you ask me, the pundits have been at least as gullible as the public, and still are.
For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals.
Amen. The thing is, you could put anyone out there,
anyone and if they were screaming loudly enough they'd instantly be a GOP frontrunner. The GOP has discarded the idea that experience in government has value, that knowledge has value, that
reason has value. Only saying what they want to hear has value, and what they want to hear is someone acting like an asshole.
Having worked diligently to encourage the idea that Americans can't trust the government, shouldn't Republicans now be cheering the fact that their own candidates with government experience are getting bested by those with none? Having spent decades declaring that money is the only measure of a person, shouldn't the GOP be pleased that their leading candidate can get away with saying anything, so long as he also talks about his billions? Having dedicated so much time trying to tear down respect to every institution, should the GOP be pleased that they're now getting no respect? After all, this is exactly what they wanted.
Hey, Leonard Pitts is on vacation this week, but there are other people to read. So come on in.
Nicholas Kristof on America's increasingly impenetrable social strata.
We like to boast of America as the “land of opportunity,” and historically there is truth to that.
“We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots,” Senator Marco Rubio once declared. “We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and of people who will make it.”
That’s a lovely aspiration, the vision that brought Rubio’s father to the United States — and my father, too. Yet I fear that by 2015 we’ve become the socially rigid society our forebears fled, replicating the barriers and class gaps that drove them away. That’s what the presidential candidates should be debating.
Researchers have repeatedly found that in the United States, there is now less economic mobility than in Canada or much of Europe. A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in the United States has only a 4 percent chance of rising to the top quintile, according to a Pew study. A separate (somewhat dated) study found that in Britain, such a boy has about a 12 percent chance.
That "have and soon-to-have" bullshit is exactly the nonsense that Republicans use to defend giveaways to the rich and to rail against "class warfare." See, currently poor but soon to be rich people, you don't want to take a dime away from Donald Trump when you're surely going to be having giant gold-plated ego fetish buildings of your own any day now.
David Kirp on a radical approach to helping the poor: asking them what they need.
For decades, policy makers have treated poverty as a sign of helplessness and ineptitude. The worse off the neighborhood — the higher the rate of poverty, crime, and juvenile delinquency — the less influence it would have over its future. Social service agencies conducted “needs assessments” rather than asking residents what would strengthen their community. Government agencies or private entrepreneurs then delivered brick-and-mortar solutions — a new school, medical clinic or housing.
It seldom worked.
Kirp has an example of a local, bottom-up driven program that's been singularly effective. It's a good example. And no doubt impoverished communities
should have more say in the allocation of resources and programs. But that doesn't necessarily make the local nonprofit into the ideal vehicle for every program.
Ross Douthat is not content to rail against immigration in America alone.
This summer, a striking, often tragic story has been playing itself out on the outskirts of Calais in France, at the entrance to the tunnel that connects the European mainland to Great Britain. Thousands of migrants, African and Middle Eastern, have been trying to sneak onto the trucks and trains that traverse the tunnel, cutting through wire fences and evading the police along the way. Ten have died, but enough have succeeded for many more to keep trying, while politicians on both sides of the Channel point fingers and a refugee camp outside Calais remains swollen with would-be subjects of Elizabeth II.
In certain ways this crisis resembles last summer’s border surge in the United States, when a wave of juvenile migrants overwhelmed the border patrol’s ability to cope. But mostly Calais highlights two major differences between the immigration issue in America and Europe, two ways in which migration — from Africa, above all — is poised to divide and reshape the European continent in ways that go far beyond anything the United States is likely to experience.
Resembles the surge of juvenile immigrants... who were caught and held in detention. That wave? Douthat projects out to 2050 to find numbers scary enough to put fear into the hearts of European nationalists. And his point is... hmm. You got me.
The New York Times feels that the Obama administration has fallen way short in one area.
Even as support for ending marijuana prohibition is building around the country, Congress and the Obama administration remain far too timid about the need for change.
...Instead of standing by as change sweeps the country, federal lawmakers should be more actively debating and changing the nation’s absurd marijuana policies, policies that have ruined millions of lives and wasted billions of dollars. Their inaction is putting businesses and individuals in states that have legalized medical and recreational marijuana in dubious legal territory — doing something that is legal in their state but is considered a federal crime. Many growers, retailers and dispensaries also have to operate using only cash because many banks will not serve them, citing the federal prohibition. Recently, the Federal Reserve denied a master account to a credit union in Colorado seeking to provide financial services to marijuana businesses.
Because we still have a fear-dominated government more concerned with making money for private prisons than providing freedom to individuals. But at least we seem to be pulling back from the point where people cheered that attitude.
Eugene Robinson explains why Trump won the debate.
It was billed as The Donald Trump Show, and the Republican front-runner delivered. He mugged. He pouted. He projected outrage without being troubled by specificity or fact. When he got punched — and the moderators threw haymakers all night — he stuck out his chin and punched back.
Trump made it through the first Republican debate by avoiding the one mistake that could have seriously damaged his insurgent campaign: sounding like a professional politician. For that reason alone, he seemed to me the clear winner. ...
It was impossible this week to walk anywhere in this lakeside city’s revivifying downtown without bumping into members of the Republican Party’s political elite, and conversations with them suggested a kind of magical thinking: Somehow, they assume, this whole Trump thing will go poof and disappear. Order will be restored to the GOP universe.
Not going to happen. You can't run a party for three decades on the idea that people who know something are the enemy, then complain when people want to follow an idiot.
Dana Milbank on running a party with no institutional memory.
Maybe it’s time to exhume the body and have another look.
Back in 2013, the Republican National Committee “autopsy” of the 2012 election concluded that to win future presidential elections, Republicans would need to be more inclusive of women, be more tolerant on gay rights to gain favor with young voters, support comprehensive immigration reform to appeal to Latinos and stand strong against “corporate malfeasance.”
Well, the 17 Republican presidential candidates met in Cleveland on Thursday for three hours of debate, and Americans saw candidates: opposing abortion even in cases of rape or incest or to save a mother’s life; comparing the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage to one supporting slavery; and talking about building border walls and denying “amnesty.”
As for the autopsy’s charge that “We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed”? The man who dominated Thursday’s spectacle — and the polls — defended his companies’ four bankruptcies (the most recent of which caused lenders to lose $1 billion and 1,100 people to lose jobs), saying all the “greatest people” in business use bankruptcy law to their advantage.
Of course Donald Trump is going to screw all his employees, pocket a big wad, and move on to do it again. What are you, a dummy?
Ann McFeatters on why even Hillary fans should cheer for Biden to enter the race.
There aren’t many people who think Vice President Joe Biden could be elected the next president. But he is said to be thinking about running because Hillary Clinton is conducting a terrible campaign and Biden’s beloved son Beau urged his father to run shortly before he heartbreakingly died of brain cancer.
If Biden has the stomach for it, he should run because he would make the Democratic race more interesting — much more interesting — and he would make Clinton a better candidate.
With the Republican race currently Trumpified, the American people are getting short shrift. Too few candidates are talking seriously about issues that really matter, including Clinton.
She refuses to give her views on such vital matters as the pending trade deal and Keystone XL pipeline on grounds that this is up to the Obama administration. How infuriating! She parrots the phrase “Black lives matter,” which is the same as saying “Honesty is the best policy.” Well, duh. Of course! But we’re still waiting for a bold vision from her on anything.
If only a "few" people believe that Joe Biden could be elected president, count me as one of the few.