2020 watch: Bernie May Be Dems’ Best Bet
After Wednesday’s Democratic debate, Creators Syndicate’s Neil Patel wonders: Who is “left to take on Trump?” Mike Bloomberg seemed “guilty, nervous and flat-out unprepared,” while Joe Biden is “becoming a sad afterthought.” So “unless you think Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar have a real shot,” only Bernie Sanders’ left. But “is America ready for a socialist president?” Sanders “helped himself a lot” in the debate, with his “tear-it-all-down attitude” appealing to the “growing number” of people “who see our system as rigged.” Like Trump, he has “a feel for the frustrations of regular Americans.” Dems may find Bernie “risky,” but after Bloomberg and Biden’s disastrous performances, Sanders “may be their best chance at victory.”
From the right: Mike Can’t Win by Being a ‘Jerk’
Mike Bloomberg’s “reckless rhetoric and noxious generalizations” could “consume enough media bandwidth” to offset the “avalanche” of money he’s spending, predicts Commentary’s Noah Rothman. Yet it’s not his “benighted” outlook that would crash his prospects — but “his penchant for being a jerk about it.” Outside progressive networks, after all, voters (including Democrats) may be more forgiving. “Cancel culture, while formidable, is survivable.” Yet unlike Joe Biden, who has owned up to his mistakes, Bloomberg’s unable to “evince sincere remorse.” He won’t be undone “because he’s not woke enough,” but if he can’t “summon some sincerity,” efforts to “highlight his chronic boorishness might work in a way the attacks on Biden did not.”
Ex-Soviet: Sanders’ ‘Staggering’ USSR Naivité
Bernie Sanders markets himself “as a wise old man,” notes Katya Sedgwick at The Federalist, but his recently surfaced 1988 remarks on returning from his honeymoon in the Soviet Union provide a “great example of leftist naiveté about totalitarian regimes.” He praised Soviet culture — from the “beautiful” metro stations to the free theatres, to, as his wife Jane put it, “the way they dealt with children, and the cultural life of their community.” Sedgwick, who grew up in Ukraine when the Sanders visited the USSR, points out what Sanders missed: the “atrocious” roads, the “tyranny and lies” promoted in those theatres, and the hard fact that this was “a country with a very low level of trust, no meaningful civic culture, and lots of alcoholism.” In all, “For Bernie to fawn over Soviet culture the way he did indicates a staggering degree of incuriosity.”
Conservative: Left’s Schizoid Take on Economy
Democrats can’t decide how to respond to the Trump economy, snarks Thomas McArdle at Issues and Insights. “It’s extremely difficult if not impossible to defeat an incumbent president when the economy is doing well” so Democrats must either “argue that our prosperity is grossly exaggerated” or “claim they deserve the credit for it.” But they’ve picked “both.” House Majority Whip James Clyburn compares the economic situation for blacks to the “slave” economy, while Clintonite economist Joseph Stiglitz now pooh-poohs Gross Domestic Product as a measure of economic health. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama claims it was his 2009 stimulus that produced “more than a decade” of growth — though he himself warned in 2011, “We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless.” Either argument, says McArdle, is “absurd,” but Dems need to “decide which side of their split personality they think gives them any chance of ousting President Trump in November.”
Legal beat: Stone Sentence Proves Barr Right
Former Donald Trump associate Roger Stone got slapped with a 40-month prison sentence Thursday — proving, contends Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett, that “Attorney General William Barr was correct” in believing prosecutors had sought “an unduly punitive sentence.” After a jury found Stone guilty of “false statements, obstruction and witness tampering,” prosecutors asked for “an absurd seven-to-nine-year prison sentence.” When Barr called that “excessive” and lowered the recommendation, Washington insiders demanded he resign. Yet Judge Amy Berman Jackson “agreed with Barr’s assessment” and “meted out” the 40-month punishment — proving that the anti-Barr criticism was “nothing more than a vacuous and petulant protest.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Page
