To a certain extent, I've come to expect shoddy work from a group I call the "Looks." I call them the "Looks" because they're constantly telling us, in a condescending voice "Loooooooook, (progressive thing) can't happen because (conventional wisdom/incorrect analysis/faux centrism) reasons."
The Looks are out in full force today telling us that gun control laws can't happen for a variety of political reasons, so this whole "gun control" thing is just a waste of time by liberal elites. Leading the charge this morning is Josh "Romney will win Minnesota and an electoral landslide" Kraushaar, who tells us that gun control won't be a winning issue for Democrats in 2016. Fair enough, that may or may not be true. Certainly for a guy who terribly screwed up the 2012 election the weekend before it happened, it takes some brass to be making 2016 predictions right now. He then goes on to say that efforts by Democratic Governors like Cuomo (NY) and O'Malley (MD) are just transparent ploys to gain a temporary political advantage. He says that Cuomo, who managed to enact gun control legislation this week, is engaging in a "cat fight" with O'Malley about who can be more progressive on guns. Certainly there is nothing in this "analysis" about why we need sensible gun laws, how many lives could be saved, the devastating cost of the gun violence epidemic etc. I'm sure the families of the Newtown victims will be happy to go without gun control legislation because they don't want to see two potential candidates in an election 4 years from now try to score points by actually doing something!
We also get this doozy from the great purveyor of conventional wisdom, "The Fix" himself, Chris Cilizza. On the day of the Newtown shooting, Cilizza implored "the haters" on Twitter to leave him because the tragedy had so personally affected him. Apparently those feelings have dissipated, as he's out with a piece today telling us that President Obama shouldn't pursue any executive action on guns because it will harden GOP opposition to a more comprehensive bill. First of all, how about ignoring political strategy for five seconds and thinking about the tangible impact these executive orders may have on saving people's lives? There's nothing in this piece on that. But perhaps even more importantly, the whackos who think the government is coming to take their guns will be knee-jerk opposed to anything the President opposes on guns, probably enough to derail even a moderate bill in the House of Representatives. It won't take an executive order to poison the well with the nutjob NRA crowd. Given that intractable opposition, shouldn't we do whatever we can to prevent gun violence right now? The Chris Cilizza who told his Twitter trolls respect the moment after Newtown may even agree that we should do SOMETHING, anything at all, to prevent children from dying.
I understand that The Looks are paid to write about the horse race (even though they're both terrible political prognosticators). But for once, how about showing a bit of a human side and recognizing the seriousness of these issues.