Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo:
‘Do Something’ Is Not A Plan Or Wise Counsel Or A Way Out
INSIDE: An Anthropology Of The 'Do-Something’ Caucus
Fast forward to the political crisis that President Biden is facing today. Unlike the Deepwater Horizon disaster, you can properly lay the debate disaster and his failure to reckon with his own aging it at his feet and his alone. But the feeding frenzy that has ensued, the type of coverage that we’ve been bombarded with for the last 12 days, and the expectation that this drumbeat demanding that he and/or the Democratic Party “do something!” is a choice, a whole series of choices in fact, rooted in a particular kind of news judgment. That news judgment is itself a product of a certain way of seeing politics and political journalism. A prism with some utility sometimes. But it also has its own distortions and limitations.
The greatest of these limitations is that much of political journalism is divorced from policy and the substance of politics. It’s the horserace coverage, the who’s up and who’s down, the who’s in and who’s out. And no matter how complex the topic, or carefully balanced the various competing public interests are on a given issue, or how long the history of tackling the issue in a substantive way, once it enters the realm of political journalism it goes through a reductive process that distills it to whether it’s good or bad politically. Does it help or does it hurt? And if it hurts, what are you going to do about it?
Margaret Sullivan/The Guardian:
The media has been breathlessly attacking Biden. What about Trump?
The bigger story is Donald Trump’s appalling unfitness for office. He tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon
It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.
And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.
First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.
Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.
That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.
The kids are all right.
Dan Diamond/”Dan Diamond’s Newsletter” on Substack:
Quick thoughts on the latest Biden health reports
Some context on the Parkinson's expert who examined the president
Like many reporters, I have real questions about the 81-year-old president’s health.
It was obvious to anyone who watched the debate that Biden was struggling for words, losing his train of thought and having other problems. The White House has also shielded Biden from scrutiny for years, claiming that the president was always sharp behind closed doors — claims that haven’t held up the more we dig.
It’s also true that Dr. Cannard is an expert in diseases like Parkinson’s, and that he’s made frequent visits to the White House. I don’t know exactly what he did there or who he treated, beyond his exam with Biden.
So I can understand why reporters’ antennae went up with the first inkling that Dr. Cannard was visiting the White House.
But I didn’t see this detail in other stories about Dr. Cannard: he has apparently gone to the White House dozens of times dating back to when he became the on-call neurologist over a decade ago.
Jon Allsop/Columbia Journalism Review:
Demystifying France’s ‘political miracle’
The whiplash-inducing headlines offer globally relevant lessons about the folly of journalists assuming the popular will ahead of its expression. But the surprising topline results risk masking a much more complicated ongoing story. For starters (and as many headlines did also attest overnight) it’s highly uncertain what will happen next: no party or bloc has a legislative majority, leaving the identity of the next prime minister unclear and elevating the odds of long-term chaos. (Macron is slated to remain president through 2027 whatever happens, but the new legislative arithmetic could significantly erode his power and force him to “cohabit” with a prime minister from a rival party.) Nor should the underperformance of the far right obscure the extent to which it has already eaten its way to the heart of French public life—not least in the media arena. The election campaign offered further evidence of this trend, even if many voters ultimately said no.
Navigator Research:
The Policies of Project 2025: A Guide for Progressives
Americans oppose all the key elements in Project 2025, with the greatest concerns around health care, worker’s rights, and dismantling federal programs.
Over four in five Americans oppose an array of policies proposed in Project 2025 such as “allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime” (87 percent oppose, 84 percent find harmful to the country), with bipartisan opposition including over nine in ten Democrats (94 percent), and four in five independents and Republicans (81 percent each). Additionally, four in five oppose “allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry” (85 percent oppose, 78 percent find harmful to the country). Other deeply opposed policies include:
- Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions (83 percent oppose, 82 percent find harmful to the country);
- Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires (82 percent oppose, 77 percent harmful to the country);
- Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families (81 percent oppose, 79 percent harmful to the country);
Isaac J Bailey/X via Threadreader:
Hal Sparks and Cliff Schecter talk about the recent ruling on Trump's immunity:
