From the right: Why Don’s Pleasing America

“As the coronavirus crisis unfolds,” Scott Jennings notes at CNN.com, President Trump’s “numbers are going up.” Gallup this week recorded all-time-high approval for the president: 49 percent, against 45 percent disapproval. Why? For one thing, centrists think “the press along with Democratic politicians have gone overboard criticizing” him during the national emergency. Plus, “the Democratic rush to call the president racist over his terming . . . ‘the Chinese virus’ backfired”; to most Americans, he’s just describing reality. Then there was the nonsense Dems tried to stuff into the rescue bill, and the fact that people give wide “latitude” to the commander in chief during crisis. Still, it’s up to Trump to “get this right,” and it seems “an increasing share of the American people may believe he is on his way to doing just that.”

From the left: Dems Aren’t in Love With Joe

To supporters, Joe Biden exists more “as an idea” than a “candidate,” Alex Wagner sighs at The Atlantic. During the early primaries, almost no Democrats said they would vote because anyone, “especially Biden,” made “their hearts sing.” Bernie Sanders’ backers said they would vote for Biden reluctantly, to stop Trump. Union members weren’t “fired up” by any Democrat but saw an “existential threat” from President Trump. Even before the pandemic, the sense of voter “anguish and urgency” was striking: Democrats were “terrified” at the prospect of four more years of Trump. “Biden was never really convincing anyone,” says Wagner. His “political power” amounts to an “idea” about how to beat the president. The trick for Dems now is to “keep that idea convincing enough, for long enough,” for the “corporeal man to actually win.”

Health beat: Trump Needs a Bioethicist

Someone is “crucially absent” from President Trump’s coronavirus task force, Jonathan Tobin argues at National Review: a bioethicist. “The core issue that influences decision-making when shortages of equipment such as respirators arise is more ethical than medical” — a problem that’s now affecting Italy, where guidelines suggest the elderly “be allowed to die.” So far, “the Trump administration has yet to put forward any coherent response to questions about how the elderly will be treated if the coronavirus crisis should overwhelm American health-care facilities.” Trump needs to appoint “his own national bioethics commission” to “help craft” an ethical response and “ensure that the needs of elderly victims are not sacrificed to expediency.”

Culture critic: A Crisis Made Just for Gen X

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, many are finally recognizing Generation X’s “inherent risk aversion” as an “asset to the survival of the species,” Gen X-er Megan Gerhardt half-jokes at NBC Think. After all, Gen X-ers have a notorious “independent streak,” and they’re comfortable “hanging out and doing nothing” — ideal when everyone should self-quarantine. Also, X-ers have always taken on “dual responsibilities for caring for aging parents while still being in charge of growing kids.” And their upbringings have prepared them for “stomping [their] feet” at boomers, millennials and Gen-Z-ers who don’t take ­orders about social distancing seriously. In this crisis, X-ers are sharing “sage advice” from their childhood days with other generations about going outside: “Just Say No.”

National-security beat: Hostage-Takers Beware

At The Hill, Eric Lebson recalls the hostages still in captivity in Iran, “along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border” and “in Venezuela, Syria” and elsewhere. Their captors may think they can get “something else of value” as ransom. Yet “hostages take a lot of work,” and during the coronavirus pandemic, that effort is clearly not “worth it.” Iran, for example, has “one of the largest numbers of COVID-19” and “must be worried that an American citizen” could be “exposed.” The risk of reprisals has also gone up. “As a former national-security professional, I can confidently say that our government will remember who is with us and who is against us at a time of great crisis.” The hostage-takers’ “best move”: release all remaining captives now.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board