Dems’ leftward lurch may mean 2020 disaster and other commentary

Political scribe: Dems’ Leftward Shift Hurts Recruitment

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is busy recruiting Democrats to run next year and help the party recapture power on Capitol Hill. But as National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar reports, they’ll “need crossover support to win” — and so have to “keep their distance from polarizing progressive litmus tests.” Yet party leaders are wary of “progressive backlash” if they get behind moderate candidates. And challenges from the left undoubtedly will produce divisive primaries. But those who insist Democrats can win by stimulating a turnout of their base have to face the fact that this strategy failed in 2018, when moderate candidates won GOP-held House seats where radicals mostly fell short. Says Kraushaar: “If Democratic voters place ideological purity over electability, they’ll learn how tough it will be” to win “on partisanship alone.”

Foreign desk: Bibi’s ‘War’ Comment Was No Accident

Just before the start of this week’s Warsaw summit of Middle East nations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli TV that the gathering was a key step in pursuing their “common interest in advancing war with Iran.” His office later changed that to “combatting Iran,” pleading a translation error. But as Zev Chafets notes at Bloomberg, “It wasn’t. Netanyahu plainly said ‘war,’ and he meant war.” For despite its ostensible peacemaking purpose, the summit’s “real goal is to build a wartime coalition” — with the backing of Washington, which has “bought into Netanyahu’s view that regime change is the only real answer to the Iranian threat.” However, warns Chafets, President Trump “is an unreliable and unpredictable ally.” If he changes his mind, Israel “will be all alone on a very large and very bloody battlefield.”

Conservative: Don’t Underestimate Chameleon Gillibrand

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand likes to portray her childhood as “the stereotypical 1970s middle-class experience.” But as National Review’s Jim Geraghty points out, her “grandmother ran the Albany Democratic machine” for four decades and her “father was a well-connected lobbyist.” Indeed, her family “was one of the best-situated . . . if you wanted to rise in New York Democratic politics.” Fact is, “there’s a strange false modesty at work” in Gillibrand’s presidential campaign. Year by year, “she became exactly what is required to succeed in New York politics,” which meant “dramatic flip-flops” on issues like illegal immigration and guns. Think Super-Adaptoid, the old Marvel comics robot villain who “could adopt or mimic the powers of anyone it encountered.” That’s why Gillibrand’s foes “would be foolish to underestimate her.”

From the right: The Borking of Neomi Rao

Senate Democrats’ treatment of Neomi Rao, nominated for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, “suggests that fealty to the narrative of perpetual female victimhood is fast becoming a prerequisite for a judgeship,” charges Heather Mac Donald at Quillette. Rao found herself under fire for having written, as a Yale undergraduate, that “female students can control whether or not they get drunk, the usual prelude to the hook-up sex that the campus rape industry routinely classifies as rape.” Sen. Kamala Harris suggested that Rao “was engaging in victim-blaming of the most patriarchal, rape-culture-y sort.” So Rao “caved and said that she no longer stands by those comments.” Yet “every time a public figure repudiates a previous challenge to politically conformist thought,” he or she “gives credence to the idea that non-orthodox statements of reality are so patently offensive that they disqualify their holders from respectable office.”

Enviro watch: Look Beyond US for Climate Cure

The biggest problem with Green New Dealers, contends The Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, is that they “see clearly only what’s right in front of them, which is to say the United States, beyond which they perceive only the fuzzy outlines of a half-mythical European enviro-paradise.” Yet America currently accounts for only 15 percent of global carbon emissions from fuel consumption, while China produces 28 percent. And even if the US gets more energy-efficient, “that won’t prevent the planet from warming.” Simply put: The real energy problem are “the more than 6 billion people who aren’t living in the rich world.” And developing countries aren’t about to “put scarce resources into artificially expensive ‘green’ ways of replicating the rich-world lifestyle.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann

Source: Read Full Article