2020 watch: After Joe, Who’s the Elites’ Pick?

“Establishment Democrats will have to face the reality that Biden, for all his personal virtues, probably doesn’t have what it takes to win the nomination,” warns The New Republic’s Walter Shapiro. If not the ex-veep, “then who” do “Democrats frightened by the prospect of their party following a Pied Piper named Bernie Sanders” back? Billionaire Mike Bloomberg “is even less of a real Democrat than Sanders,” while Pete Buttigieg is hardly “the charisma candidate” he pretends to be. Liz Warren “is mired in the low double digits.” Maybe it’s Amy Klobuchar, who “dominated Friday night’s debate from the beginning.”

Libertarian: Is #Resistance Worth a Recession?

At The Hill, Kristin Tate asks: “Why would voters cash in their gains this year for a return to bad economic times?” The unemployment rate “remains at a near-historic low of 3.6 percent, and black and Latino ­unemployment rates are now at record lows,” while the stock market “has been rising due to regulatory and tax reform.” A Democratic president would “jeopardize this goldilocks era,” leading to “stock-market disaster” and an “average tax burden” that would “balloon by more than 25 percent.” When “the pink slip comes for you” after a Democratic victory, “you will need to ask yourself . . . why did we not act sooner?”

From the right: Why Social Cons Back Trump

In 2016, religious conservatives voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and “if trends hold, there will be a similar turnout in 2020,” ­Andrew Walker predicts at National Review. It will earn them accusations of hypocrisy, but that’s false: “Millions of religious conservatives will approach their votes with a political realism that requires balancing undesirable tensions and conflicting realities.” They will vote not so much for Trump, “with his uncouth speech and incessantly immature tweets,” as “against the worldview of the Democratic platform”: abortion, gay marriage, etc. — and the likelihood that “churches failing to toe the line on gay and transgender rights would lose their tax-exempt status.” Thus, “the choice for so many religious conservatives is between someone who is crude and profane but who will defend their values and an ­eloquent politician who will undermine their faith and advance an agenda they see as barbaric and unjust.”

Foreign desk: Dems Flop on Soleimani Question

Asked “whether they would have authorized the US military strike which killed Qassem Soleimani” at Friday’s debate, all the Democrats “failed,” says The Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan. Buttigieg only “offered platitudes” about the right kind of “intelligence,” apparently unaware that “perfect intelligence doesn’t exist.” Biden got “angry with Trump for killing Soleimani.” Warren “talked about Afghanistan.” Bernie Sanders gave “the stupidest answer,” wailing about “how the Soleimani strike has opened the ‘door to international anarchy,’  ” when, in fact, Russia and Iran have both conducted assassinations on Western soil “because they believed they could get away with it.” If Democrats get their way, “our enemies will try to get away with as much mayhem as possible.”

Culture critic: The Age of Celebrity Is Dead

The Internet “killed the Hollywood star,” argues Spectator USA’s Freddy Gray. They’re still celebrities, but “nobody cares what they think.” In natural-enough denial, “they convince themselves that any angry reaction to their moralizing is an indication that they have dared to speak truth” — so that “actors end up almost trolling the public, and the public trolls them back on social media.” And while “the Oscars have always been fundamentally silly,” they were once “a major event,” and people listened to the “annoying, self-congratulatory” lectures, so stars “slightly restrained their sanctimoniousness.” Now viewership is way down, from 44.6 million in 2000 and 41 million in 2010 to 23.6 million in 2020. Social media “mean we don’t have to ogle stars anymore; we are too busy ogling ourselves.” And so “the age of celebrity, of mass entertainers mattering as anything other than entertainment, is dying. It won’t be missed.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board