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.
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Paul Krugman: The Pandemic and the Future City
Lessons from Alexander Hamilton and the book trade.
In 1957 Isaac Asimov published “The Naked Sun,” a science-fiction novel about a society in which people live on isolated estates, their needs provided by robots and they interact only by video. The plot hinges on the way this lack of face-to-face contact stunts and warps their personalities.
After a year in which those of us who could worked from home — albeit served by less fortunate humans rather than robots — that sounds about right. But how will we live once the pandemic subsides?
Of course, nobody really knows. But maybe our speculation can be informed by some historical parallels and models.
First, it seems safe to predict that we won’t fully return to the way we used to live and work.
A year of isolation has, in effect, provided remote work with a classic case of infant industry protection, a concept usually associated with international trade policy that was first systematically laid out by none other than Alexander Hamilton.
Eugene Robinson: Ron Johnson’s racism is breathtaking
Once, the party moved away from abhorrent views. Today’s GOP is going backward.
It has become perfectly acceptable in the Republican Party to just go ahead and say the racism out loud — and to do so with apparent pride, and with no fear of consequences.
The most recent proof came from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who said last week that he “never felt threatened” by the overwhelmingly White crowd of insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, chanting, among other things, “Hang Mike Pence.” But, depending on who the protesters were, Johnson said, well, it might have been a different matter.
Johnson made the comments on conservative talk-radio host Joe Pagliarulo’s nationally syndicated show. “Now, had the tables been turned — Joe, this will get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
But Johnson described the White mob this way: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.”
As anyone whose brain is not addled by white supremacy recalls, the rioters showed how much they “respect law enforcement,” with their actions leading to the death of one police officer who was defending the Capitol and the injury of some 140 others. One policeman was beaten with a pole bearing the American flag, which is a strange way for his attackers to demonstrate love of country.
Karen Tumulty: Cuomo deserves due process. He should quit trying to interfere with it.
If the governor and his allies have faith that an investigation will exonerate him, they can show it by backing off and letting the process play out.
Although it is hard to see anything positive as claims of sexual misconduct have mounted against New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), the controversy seemed, at least for a while, to offer a test of whether the #MeToo movement has evolved to the point where due process is possible for those accused of wrongdoing.
Given the volume of allegations against Cuomo involving sexual harassment, and separate questions about whether his administration attempted to conceal the number of covid-19 deaths in New York nursing homes, whatever investigators turn up is not likely to be flattering. But the fact that a fact-finding inquiry is underway over the harassment claims itself breaks new ground. [..]
Cuomo’s best protection at the moment is the fact that an independent investigation is underway, overseen by New York Attorney General Letitia James and conducted by two lawyers that she chose. Separately, he is facing federal and state inquiries into what may have been efforts to cover up the number of covid-19 deaths that occurred in New York nursing homes.
Whether all of this amounts to grounds for removing him from office remains to be seen.
Michelle Goldberg: How the Left Made Cuomo Vulnerable
The governor tried to ruin the Working Families Party. It helped ruin him instead.
The Working Families Party doesn’t act as a spoiler, like the Green Party. It tries to push the Democratic Party leftward by backing progressives in Democratic primaries, while supporting Democrats in general election contests against Republicans. Because New York has what’s called fusion voting, progressives can vote for Democratic candidates on the Working Families ballot line, allowing the party to show its strength and maintain the threshold of votes required to stay on the ballot from year to year.
Cuomo has tried all sorts of things to kill the W.F.P. In 2014, he created the shell Women’s Equality Party to siphon votes from Working Families. Unions allied with Cuomo have left the W.F.P., threatening its funding; W.F.P. leaders believe Cuomo twisted their arms. The governor reportedly pressured Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and a longtime W.F.P. stalwart, to reject the party as a price of his support in her 2018 race. He maneuvered to end fusion voting — while denying that that was what he was doing — and used the state budget to triple the number of votes third parties need to keep their ballot lines. According to Politico, the governor has told people he wants to destroy the party.
Even allowing for his reputation as a vindictive control freak, I never fully understood the amount of energy Cuomo seemed to put into this vendetta. But it turns out he wasn’t being paranoid in seeing the W.F.P. as a threat. The 2018 victories of W.F.P.-backed state legislature candidates, part of that year’s blue wave, set the stage for Cuomo’s current crises.