John Cassidy's Blog, page 41

The Task Facing Joe Biden

With more rumors circulating that Vice-President Joe Biden is about to enter the 2016 race, it’s a good time to take a look at what he might face. A couple of months ago, I suggested that Biden could be a more serious candidate than some people thought. But the obstacles he would face are formidable, and he will have made things even more difficult for himself by not declaring his candidacy prior to last week’s Democratic debate, in Las Vegas. In almost any other country, it would be crazy to suggest that a candidate announcing his candidacy more than a year before Election Day had missed his or her chance. The United States is different, however.

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Related:
With Webb Out of Race, Chafee Surges to Two Per Cent
Benghazi Hearings Cancelled After Clinton Drops Out of Race
Comment from the October 26, 2015, Issue

Did the Media Get the Democratic Debate Wrong?

In the media coverage of Tuesday’s Democratic debate, there was almost universal agreement that Hillary Clinton came out on top. In online polls, several focus groups, and much of social media, though, the story was rather different. Many people insisted that Bernie Sanders was the victor, and that the lame “M.S.M.” had gotten it wrong again.

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Related:
Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden
Bernie Sanders’s Challenge to Clinton
Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, October 14th

Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden

I’ve already given my instant verdict on Tuesday night’s Democratic debate: in terms of the horse race, Hillary Clinton was the clear winner, although Bernie Sanders also did pretty well. But it was a long discussion about serious issues, and some of the exchanges bear closer inspection—including the one about Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who is currently languishing in Russia.

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Related:
Bernie Sanders’s Challenge to Clinton
In Serious Gaffe, Sanders Treats Opponent with Dignity and Respect
Hillary Clinton Wins Big in Vegas

Hillary Clinton Wins Big in Vegas

Since Tuesday night’s Democratic debate was held in a Las Vegas hotel, let’s start with the money question: Who won and who lost?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden
Bernie Sanders’s Challenge to Clinton
In Serious Gaffe, Sanders Treats Opponent with Dignity and Respect

Angus Deaton: A Skeptical Optimist Wins the Economics Nobel

Back in the late nineteen-nineties, I was working on a piece about the stock market and consumer spending, both of which were surging. Looking for a respected economist to provide a pithy quote backing up my thesis that rising stock prices were driving individual spending decisions, and that the stock-market bubble was likely to end badly, I called Angus Deaton, the Scottish-born Princeton University professor who has just been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for economics.

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Related:
Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel Win
The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P.
Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is a Predictable Cop-out

Can Paul Ryan Save the Republican Party?

Some years ago, well before Paul Ryan ran for Vice-President alongside Mitt Romney, I asked Grover Norquist, the veteran anti-tax campaigner and conservative organizer, what role the Wisconsin congressman played in the Republican Party. “Paul Ryan is the prophet,” Norquist replied, not missing a beat. “He points the way to the Promised Land.”

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Related:
Daily Cartoon: Friday, October 9th
A New Clue Suggests Biden May Run
How Dodd-Frank Hurts Governors in the Money Primary

Republicans and Gun Control: A Sad Mantra

Over the past few days, as family members of the nine people killed by a gunman at Umpqua Community College, in Oregon, prepared to bury their loved ones, many of the G.O.P. candidates for President have been offering their thoughts on what to do—or, rather, what not to do—about gun violence.

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Related:
Ben Carson: Pompeii Victims Should Have Outrun Lava
The Real Value of Jeb’s “Unfortunate Comments”
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, October 6th

The Good (and Bad) News About Poverty and Global Trade

What’s the big news about the world economy this week? If your answer is that the United States and ten Pacific Rim countries have agreed on the terms of a new trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, you’re half right. The completion of the T.P.P., which Bernie Sanders and others on the left regard as a sop to Wall Street, Big Pharma, and other big-business interests, is a significant moment, and it sets up yet another political battle on Capitol Hill.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Corporate-Friendly World of the T.P.P.
The Slow Global Spread of Savings Accounts
The Biggest Threat to America’s Future Is … America

Obama, Guns, and the Politics of Hopelessness

Like many parents, I suspect, my first reaction to the news of the shootings at Umpqua Community College, in Oregon, on Thursday was to think of the families of the victims, and my second reaction was to turn away and mutter some obscenities. With the implacable grip that the gun lobby has on Congress, there is virtually no prospect of the United States following the example of nearly every other advanced country and restricting the supply of deadly firearms to civilians. Given that seemingly immutable reality, what is there left to say? Quite a lot, it turns out.

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Related:
The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, September 1st

Is Jeremy Corbyn a Fox or a Hedgehog?

On Tuesday afternoon, Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the British Labour Party, delivered a long speech at the party’s annual conference. His remarks left his audience cheering, and even garnered grudging praise from some of his critics. Having been portrayed in some quarters as a fire-breathing Marxist and a danger to the security of the United Kingdom, the sixty-six-year-old leftist sounded more like the Archbishop of Canterbury, defending the values of fairness, social justice, and solidarity with the downtrodden, and calling for “a kinder politics, a more caring society.”

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Related:
Jeremy Corbyn Takes the Stage
Five Things Jeremy Corbyn Has Right
The Corbyn Supremacy