CJ Pearson, the 13-year-old conservative social-media star, could use a few good role models, suggested TNR’s Brian Beutler in a Monday article. After noting that Pearson has been “revealed as the perpetrator of a number of hoaxes,” Beutler mused that such behavior isn’t surprising given the ideological company the youngster keeps.

“He's coming of age in a movement that often treats reality as subordinate to perception; that will embrace obvious distortions of facts if doing so might move the needle of public opinion,” alleged Beutler, who claimed that some of those factual distortions were found in Carly Fiorina’s statements about the Planned Parenthood videos during the recent Republican presidential debate.

In the week since the Supreme Court upheld certain Obamacare subsidies, some on the left, applying the wisdom that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” have gratefully praised majority-opinion-writer John Roberts. But now liberals need to put their warm fuzzies for the chief justice behind them and guard against “complacency” regarding the court, advised Brian Beutler in a Tuesday article.

“Nothing inspires spasms of rage on the right quite like Obamacare, which explains why the conservatives feel as if Roberts has betrayed them on a Shakespearean scale,” wrote Beutler. Nonetheless, Roberts has established his right-wing bona fides on many other matters, including “affirmative action, voting rights, [and] campaign finance regulations,” and conservatives see the Roberts court as a “useful tool” in their effort to “litigate federal regulatory laws.”

The title of a famous essay by Jonathan Swift and that of Tuesday's article by Brian Beutler each starts with “A Modest Proposal.” There are, however, many differences concerning the two pieces. One is that Swift’s was a satire, whereas Beutler’s is a fantasy. Another is that pretty much anyone who somehow took Swift’s proposal seriously would find it horrifying, while Beutler’s suggestion -- that the 2016 Democratic ticket should consist of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- will horrify mostly conservatives (and opponents of dynastic politics who already were upset over the prospect of a Hillary v. Jeb race).

Well before Obama moved into the White House, he believed his presidency would have “the potential for shifting the national paradigm” to the left as Reagan’s moved it to the right, and Brian Beutler contends that such a shift still could happen if “the economy’s rapid growth in recent quarters” continues.

Elias Isquith contends that “after eight years of George W. Bush,” America “was in such rotten shape that Obama had little time to do more than stave off the next crisis,” but that by this past Tuesday night, favorable economic developments gave Obama “an opportunity to boast of changing the ‘trajectory’ of the country like few presidents before him and none since Ronald Reagan.”