Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: It's still the economy

_{Visual source: Newseum}

Greg Sargent:

Whatever happens in Wisconsin next week, this dramatic moment from last night's debate is definitely worth a watch, and it's got labor and Dems buzzing throughout the state.

Tom Barrett aggressively laces into Scott Walker over the Governor's vicious new ad that uses a severely beaten two-year-old to paint Barrett as soft on crime. Barrett blasts the ad as 'Willie Horton stuff,' and tells Walker he should be 'ashamed' of using a child to attack his integrity.

Barrett then closes with this: 'I have a police department that arrests felons. He has a practice of hiring them.'

NY Times:

Friday's weak employment report was a potential turning point, focusing new attention on the economic implications of the partisan standoff over tax and spending policy.

NY Times:

What began as a one-time jolt in 2008, an unprecedented effort to revive economic activity, has become an uncomfortable status quo, an enduring reality in which savers are punished and borrowers rewarded by a permafrost of low interest rates.

And the Fed, acutely uneasy with this new role in the American economy, may now find itself unable to avoid doubling down.

Dan Balz:

The election remains primarily a referendum on Obama's record, and his path to victory may lie less in trying to discredit Mitt Romney and more in winning a battle of ideas.

Charles Blow:

Florida ought to know better. And must do better, particularly on the issue of voting and discrimination.

But, then again, we are talking about Florida, the state of Bush v. Gore infamy and the one that will celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, with a statewide holiday on Sunday.

Chris Mooney:

Is it possible that, paradoxically, this is something conservatives could learn to accept or even respect? After all, it's kind of a basic human tradition. Liberals push the envelope, and err on the side of too much open-mindedness; conservatives pull us back again, and err on the side of too much closure. It could be a productive relationship. It could be considered normal, and even necessary.

But that won't happen until conservatives, and journalists, are willing to accept what the science of politics is now telling us.

Gail Collins:

John Edwards: Sort of not guilty. The Justice Department must now decide whether to retry him in another lengthy case during which we could relive his degrading affair, his awful marriage, his wife's fatal illness and watch his daughter and elderly parents loyally and miserably accompany him to court.

Finally, the American public has found something it would rather do less than have another Congressional debt-ceiling debate.