Dem analyst: Biden’s Hopes Fading Fast
In March, President Biden’s surge in the polls “seemed poised to revive his campaign and reenergize the Democratic Party.” But now “it increasingly appears that Biden’s quiet comeback is running out of steam,” grumbles Douglas E. Schoen at The Hill. Biden’s approval ratings are “underwater — 42 percent on the economy, 42 percent on foreign affairs and 38 percent on immigration.” From “inflation” to the “still porous southern border” to the “chaos on college campuses,” Biden seems “unable to effectively manage or lead the country.” Though it once “looked like Biden had finally found his groove, his numbers are once again dropping while Trump’s rise” — Democrats should be worried.
From the right: Who’s Setting the US on Fire?
“Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of support for terror on elite college campuses,” notes Tablet’s Park MacDougald. It’s not kids spontaneously taking up the cause: As in the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, “professional radicals and organizers” have “played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests.” And they’re all “ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party” like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. “That leads naturally to a question: To what end?” Likely “a display of force” by the Dem faction “that has already won, complete with a message for the losers: This is who we are now. Get in line or be destroyed.”
Green beat: X’d Wind Projects Saves Taxpayers
“The cancellation of planned offshore wind projects” is “good news for the upstate families and businesses who would be paying more than half the cost,” rejoices the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. “Since offshore wind isn’t economically competitive,” the state must subsidize it “by forcing utilities and large electricity customers to buy credits once the projects come online in the second half of the decade.” And with “a statewide approach to financing renewable energy,” 54% “of the cost of offshore wind would fall to the 50 counties north of New York City, which generally wouldn’t use any of the electricity from the turbines.” So “upstate ratepayers are saving $840 million” this year as the projects are postponed.” Yet Gov. Hochul remains committed “to offshore wind, in part because the effort is a much-needed jobs program for inefficient but politically powerful downstate construction unions.”
Conservative: Key Trump Witness Muzzled
Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman, should “one of the critical witnesses” for the Trump team in the current trial, by showing there was no attempt to influence the 2016 race by “unlawful means,” a claim central to the prosecution’s case — but Judge Juan Merchan “has forbidden Smith from testifying about most of the issues involved in the case,” thunders the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. He won’t even allow Smith to testify about “the FEC’s decision to dismiss a complaint against Trump for this very matter and the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Trump for the same set of actions,” or “that there had never been a case in which anyone had been convicted of a federal campaign finance law violation for the making of ‘hush money payments.’ ”
Campus watch: Protesters Have Even Lost ‘SNL’
“The ‘Saturday Night Live’ cold-open sketch” last weekend made clear that campus “encampments are for rich white kids” — and when “you’ve lost ‘SNL’ . . .” snarks The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. Indeed, “the mini-Gazas” seem like “summer camps.” Instead of singing “If you’re happy and you know it,” they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Yet the “adults at colleges” have obligations as educators, and their “indulgence of the drama” is “an abrogation of these duties.” “There was a day when Americans looked at universities as ideals for how to live peacefully in a free society”; now, they “see them as home to the unreasonable and mindlessly destructive.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board