Libertarian: The Press Is Normalizing Neo-Nazis
At Reason.com, David Harsanyi asks: “Why does the March for Life, a rally that attracts tens of thousands of anti-abortion Americans to Washington, DC, every year, get less prominent media coverage than a fringe neo-Nazi gathering?” His answer: mutual benefit. The media use the outrage to boost ratings. The neo-Nazis, meanwhile, get a boost from the visibility. This doesn’t mean we should pretend they don’t exist, Harsanyi says, or that their ideas aren’t noxious: “We have a responsibility to use morally precise language when referring to this group (which, in this case, is the neo-Nazi group); contextualize their influence (which is little but more than it should be); and unequivocally call them out. We should never, ever glamorize them for political purposes.”
Elections expert: GOP’s Demographic Challenge
After the GOP’s drubbing in 2012, the party conducted an “autopsy” to determine what went wrong. That report recommended, among other things, a less antagonistic posture toward immigrants and minorities. Yet, writes Stu Rothenberg at The Washington Post, Republicans “nominated a 70-year-old white man” who then “spent his campaign criticizing Mexico, Mexicans and Americans of Hispanic ancestry.” And he won. So does this mean the autopsy was wrong? Not so fast. “Even with Trump’s victory, the nation’s demographic shift continued,” he writes. “Whites constituted 70 percent of all voters earlier this month, down from 72 percent in 2012, 74 percent in 2008, 77 percent in 2004 and 81 percent in 2000.” The autopsy, then, “was not amiss in urging party strategists to remember that demographic changes are afoot.”
From the right: Dems Aren’t the Party of FDR Anymore
If Republicans should heed 2016’s demographic warning, Democrats should heed the geographic one, Noah Rothman points out at Commentary. The left’s rage against the Electoral College misses a key point: “What the results of the 2016 presidential election should be communicating to Democrats is that they need a more efficient geographic allocation of their vote share, and that means recreating a more robust coalition of voters.” Their focus on the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, by contrast, is leading them to misread the electorate — and their own belief in being the party of FDR: “That Democratic Party was a party of productivity, not dependency. It was a party of disparate cultural and intellectual traditions, not homogeneity.”
From the left: Pelosi Must Plan for Succession
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, notes Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg, has maintained her power despite losing because “party leadership choices are about internal congressional politics, not electoral politics, and by all accounts she has been first rate at managing the Democratic coalition.” Yet, says Bernstein, “new blood is needed to lead the Democrats.” Meanwhile, Pelosi is 76 — and the second- and third-ranking House Democrats, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, are 77 and 76, respectively. Meaning Pelosi & Co. need to think about a succession plan: They “should be angling now to find a new leader who can represent the Democrats as well as the current leader has.”
Foreign-policy wonk: The Fragile Iran Nuke Deal
Amid the talk of Donald Trump possibly killing the Iran nuclear deal, the truth is he could also just let it die. Suzanne Maloney, a foreign-policy senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes that Trump will “have his pick of coercive economic measures to wield against Iran, with nearly three dozen bills circulating in Congress penalizing Tehran for its missile program, regional power projection and human-rights abuses. New sanctions could stymie Iran’s efforts to attract foreign investment and rebuild trade ties with Europe and Asia.” And those sanctions bills could “prompt Tehran to abrogate the deal.” Yet the deal’s supporters should accept their role in the deal’s fragility: “The American commitment to the JCPOA hangs from the narrow thread of executive authority: the president’s power to temporarily waive or suspend economic sanctions on Iran.”
— Compiled by Seth Mandel