From the right: Dem’s Lame Reply to Murder Call
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger “is oddly reluctant to call for the withdrawal of her party’s vile nominee for Attorney General — Jay Jones,” fumes David Catron at The American Spectator.
In “a series of deranged texts sent by Jones to a Republican lawmaker in August of 2022,” Jones mused about Republican Todd Gilbert getting “two bullets to the head” and suggested that he hoped his children would die.
“Jones is not only unfit to be Virginia’s Attorney General, he is also a serious liability to Spanberger’s gubernatorial campaign.”
Indeed, her response was “woefully inadequate”; she failed to demand he drop out, because Spanberger “is afraid of her far left flank.”
“This is the dilemma that may well destroy the Democratic Party in the end.”
Liberal: The Left Needs ‘Pragmatic’ Populists
“Amid a dispiriting shutdown fight after a summer of drift,” snarks Justin Vassallo at the Liberal Patriot, Democrats must “do a bit of praying.”
Most important: “rebuilding the fabled Blue Wall remains the first order of business if the party is to have any hope in 2028.”
To that end, there is “a cohort of independent-leaning,” pragmatic Democrats who could have “an outsize impact — not just on the party’s morale” but on its long-term “trajectory.”
Their “pragmatic populism” means they’re sensitive to “the concerns of working-class Trump voters,” are “critical of tariffs” and “know firsthand the costs of offshoring and corporate mergers.”
Perhaps they can “reset the narrative in America’s rural and industrial heartlands.”
Legal take: Trump Could Face Global Lawfare
Having failed to destroy President Trump in local, state and federal courts, the “global deep state” is looking to prosecute him in the International Criminal Court, warns law prof Eugene Kontorovich at The Wall Street Journal.
“International lawyers are already developing multiple lines of attack against the administration and its officials,” with possible cases against Trump for killing Venezuelan drug traffickers or even for “immigration policy,” which has been called “a crime against humanity.”
A future US president could follow the example of the Philippines, where former leader Rodrigo Duterte’s “successor conspired with The Hague” to destroy him, since he was a political enemy.
Trump was taken by “surprise” by the “lawfare campaign” against him; he’d be wise to take proactive steps to “pre-emptively” head off similar efforts down the road.
From the left: Progs Are Sure They Know Best
“Progressive donor network Way to Win” recently held a “confab called Persuasion 2025” to “reassert the left’s strategy” to achieve “a national governing majority,” notes The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait.
But “the progressive movement’s hold on the party is no longer certain.”
The DEI-inspired rise of Kamala Harris in the Democratic Party structure “was already an awkward fit,” and “her defeat” demonstrated how “progressive activists” had “driven the entire field leftward” and latched her to a “toxic” social agenda that revolted voters.
Progressives have doubled-down, “irrationally” declaring, “No compromise with the electorate.”
The party’s progressives “seem determined to reeducate the public rather than compromise for their votes.”
This is a great strategy “if the goal is ideological purity” — but it won’t help win elections.
Libertarian: DC Permanent ‘Temporary’ Programs
“Milton Friedman liked to quip that there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program,” recalls Reason’s Christian Britschi.
“We’re seeing more evidence for this” as the government shuts down after Democrats insist on “an extension of ‘temporary’ Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, subsidies passed during the pandemic.”
The enhanced subsidies — scrapping “income-eligibility caps” and boosting benefits — are set to expire this year.
Yet the fact that their expiration creates a “crisis” is “a feature, not a bug,” laments the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon. It’s “how spending grows”: The 2021 expansion “attempts to mask the cost of rising premiums by shifting more of the expense onto taxpayers.”
It’s all a “fiscal illusion. They want to keep hiding the cost of Obamacare’s health insurance regulations.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board