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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Time for generational change? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-17
New York Times:
The Interview Chuck Schumer on Democrats, Antisemitism and His Shutdown Retreat The backlash to Schumer from his own party for what some see as capitulation to Trump has been swift and loud, including calls for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to challenge him in his next Senate run. In our second conversation, I asked Schumer about the furious response to his vote, how he can lead a party that seems to be enraged at him and his relationship with Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.
x The Democrats’ CR strategy (if you can even call it that) was a discombobulated mess. Clinging to FY25 approps deal after Trump/Johnson killed it. Assuming Johnson can’t pass a CR. Lacking a counteroffer after he does. Threatening to filibuster then caving in 24 hrs empty-handed. — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 14, 2025
Dan Pfeiffer/The Message Box:
The Art of Losing: Why Senate Democrats Folded to Trump and Musk
This was a failure long in the making that doesn't bode well for future fights This is a failure of leadership. No plan, no strategy, and no attempt to communicate honestly and forthrightly with the base. At no point did we know what Dems were fighting for or what victory would look like. Schumer and some Senate Democrats wanted to be seen as “fighting” up until the moment the fight was set to start. Everyone hoped that Johnson would fail to get the votes in the House, which would force them into negotiations with Democrats. But that didn't happen; and there was seemingly no plan for what Senate Democrats would do if Johnson did get the votes. This is a pattern with Senate Democratic leadership. There is a reticence to have tough conversations with the base, to tell them that this is a fight we can’t win or shouldn’t pick for the reasons Schumer laid out in his op ed. You have to set expectations. Senate Dems should have signaled their worries about the shutdown weeks ago. But because they raised expectations for a fight and pulled the rug out at the last minute, people are enraged — and for good reason. Democrats need to treat our voters like adults and be willing to have tough conversations.
x HOW DEM VOTERS HAVE SHIFTED SINCE 2017
“Do you think the Democrats should mainly work with the Republicans to try to get some Democratic ideas into legislation or should mainly work to stop the Republican agenda?”
2017: work with GOP +51%
2025: work to stop GOP + 15%
66% swing pic.twitter.com/jvFpBFEPpu — Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) March 16, 2025
New York Times:
Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest The figures underscore the dramatic impact that a trade war could have on American workers, potentially causing Mr. Trump’s economic strategy to backfire. Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs will help boost American jobs. But economists say that retaliatory tariffs can cancel out that effect. The countermeasures are aimed at industries that employ roughly 7.75 million people across the United States. The bulk of those — 4.48 million — are in counties that voted for Mr. Trump in the last election, compared with 3.26 million jobs in counties that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a calculation by The Times that included examining retaliatory tariffs on more than 4,000 product categories.
x In latest @CNN poll, 56% of Americans disapproved of Trump's handling of the economy. In new @NBCNews poll 54% disapproved. In neither of those polls did a majority EVER disapprove of his economic performance during his 1st term. HIs latest Gallup eco approve was his lowest ever
https://t.co/tZG0M74YDk — Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) March 16, 2025
x New NBC poll: the big story in all the polling is voters feel worse about the economy than they ever did in Trump’s first term pic.twitter.com/BTmVp2WSP0 — Conor Sen (@conorsen) March 16, 2025
David Remnick/New Yorker:
Hundreds of Thousands Will Die The writer, surgeon, and former U.S.A.I.D. senior official Atul Gawande on the Trump Administration’s decimation of foreign aid and the consequences around the world. This damage has created effects that will be forever. Let’s say they turned everything back on again, and said, “Whoops, I’m sorry.” I had a discussion with a minister of health just today, and he said, “I’ve never been treated so much like a second-class human being.” He was so grateful for what America did. “And for decades, America was there. I never imagined America could be indifferent, could simply abandon people in the midst of treatments, in the midst of clinical trials, in the midst of partnership—and not even talk to me, not even have a discussion so that we could plan together: O.K., you are going to have big cuts to make. We will work together and figure out how to solve it.” That’s not what happened. He will never trust the U.S. again. We are entering a different state of relations. We are seeing lots of other countries stand up around the world—our friends, Canada, Mexico. But African countries, too, Europe. Everybody’s taking on the lesson that America cannot be trusted. That has enormous costs.
x Trump's approval among independents
CBS/YouGov: 47-53 (-6)
Quantus: 44-52 (-8)
AtlasIntel: 42-58 (-16)
Quinnipiac: 36-58 (-22)
Marist: 34-57 (-23)
TIPP: 35-61 (-26)
CNN: 35-64 (-29)
Cygnal: 33-65 (-32)
NBC News: 30-67 (-37)
——
AVERAGE
🟢 Approve: 37% (-22)
🟤 Disapprove: 59%… pic.twitter.com/RdBm5rWIuX — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) March 16, 2025
Trump is unpopular. Republicans are unpopular. The problem for Democrats is that they, too, are unpopular. Still, the current generic ballotis +3 D.
Zeynep Tufecki/New York Times:
We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world — no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization. So the Wuhan research was totally safe, and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission — it certainly seemed like consensus. We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax.
Is that an exaggeration? Maybe not. See Zeit Online:
Stamped in deep red as "Secret" What if the coronavirus did originate in a Chinese laboratory? German agents have followed a lead all the way to Wuhan. But the Chancellery has kept the suspicions strictly under wraps for five years. It would not be the first time that the BND was wrong, say the sceptics After evaluating all the evidence, the BND [German Intelligence] is convinced that the coronavirus likely originated in a Chinese laboratory. The intelligence agency assesses the probability using a special system, the "Probability Index," a measure of the reliability of information. The BND classifies the laboratory theory as "likely," and is "80 to 95 percent" certain. However, the agency does not have definitive proof.
On the other hand, there’s no proof. We don’t know the origins but we do know the Wuhan lab is sloppy and remains sloppy (by that, I mean this is not stuff that should be researched at a low containment facility). And it remains a hot topic.
Public health people need to be transparent, always. When you’re not, doubt of the experts does more harm than anything you thought you were protecting the public from. Some officials learn that lesson, some don’t, or won’t, or can’t.
x The architect of Project 2025 says the plan is working perfectly: “It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams.”
Paul Dans, the project’s ousted former director, on how Trump is implementing his agenda after all👇
https://t.co/c0OvRCarLY — POLITICO (@politico) March 16, 2025
Mat Robison interviews ProPublica’s Eli Hager on Social Security:
[END]
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