Foreign desk: The Specter of Labour Jew-Hatred
“At no point in post-World War II British history,” Toby Greene rues at NBC Think, “has anti-Semitism seen the prominence in national politics that it has in the lead-up to Thursday’s general election.” Thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party is widely seen as “institutionally anti-Semitic,” with “nearly half of UK Jews” telling pollsters “they would seriously consider leaving the country” if he becomes prime minister. Corbyn’s views, rooted in his hard-left view of Israel as a “racist colonizer” and “imperial power,” have led him to associate with those who express outright “hatred of Israel and Jews and even Holocaust denial.” Worse, he has transformed Labour: “Its radical left wing now dominates the party machinery, significant numbers of moderates have left and anti-Semitic attitudes have been unleashed.”
Conservative: Trump-Hate Is a Loser
“The Democratic party is dying from its hatred of President Trump,” Daniel McCarthy argues at Spectator USA, and “the impeachment fiasco is just the latest symptom.” Witness the embarrassing shifts in Democrats’ case for impeachment: from quid pro quo to bribery to vague and legally meaningless notions of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.” The outcome: “Trump’s acquittal in a Senate trial” and early “indications that the humiliating failure of impeachment will hurt Democrats in November 2020.” So why are they hell-bent on this futile path? The rise of a hard-left activist wing is part of it. But the party’s “bigger problem” is that it “has lost its identity, and only Trump-hatred keeps its factions” united. In Congress, Democrats might “derive solidarity” from the impeachment drive, but as an electoral matter a party defined by anti-Trump “rage” is likely to flail.
Freelancer plea: Don’t Outlaw My Career
“I’m terrified, and everyone who works happily as an independent contractor should be, too,” warns Kim Kavin in The Washington Post. Her career as a freelance journalist “will no longer exist if my home state of New Jersey and other states like it continue on their current path.” Jersey lawmakers last month introduced the “Uber Bill,” aimed at keeping gig-economy companies from exploiting workers classified as contractors; New York is expected to follow. “The laws are being marketed as pro-worker,” but they’re so strict, “they are already starting to destroy the careers of people such as me who prefer to work for ourselves.” Last year, 1 in 10 Americans worked as an independent contractor. “These states . . . are hanging a giant, toxic, neon sign around the necks of the middle class,” and “everyone from truck drivers to caterers to yoga instructors has their livelihood in the crosshairs.”
From the left: An Excoriating ‘Exoneration’
If Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation “constitutes a ‘clearing of the FBI,’ ” as many claim, then Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi pleads, “Never clear me of anything.” Sure, Horowitz found no FBI “political bias” in investigating Trump, but the media are overlooking the “ ‘serious’ procedural problems and omissions of ‘significant information’ ” Horowitz found. Notably, the agency soon realized that Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier was utter junk — yet it was still “crucial to the FBI’s decision to seek secret surveillance” of Trump aide Carter Page. And the media played along, reporting “on the FBI’s wrong reporting of Steele’s wrong reporting.” Bottom line: “Anybody who touched this nonsense in print should be embarrassed.”
From the right: Will Dems Accept 2020 Results?
When Donald Trump won in 2016, Ben Shapiro recalls at Creators Syndicate, Democrats blamed their loss “on Russian interference, on voter suppression, on anything but Clinton’s campaign performance.” Now they’re “already suggesting that if President Trump wins” in 2020, the election “will have been illegitimate.” That’s why House Democrats are impeaching him now, even without “proper evidence of a crime”: They believe they’re preemptively preventing Trump from “stealing the election.” And that, Shapiro warns, creates a “vicious cycle” of “illegitimate impeachments based on perceptions of illegitimate elections.” American politics is “already ugly” — and, if Democrats keep deeming elections illegitimate because they don’t like the results, it’ll just get “a lot uglier.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
