“In a strict quantitative sense,” marvels the Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira, Republicans are now “the party of the American working class. That is, they currently get more working-class (noncollege) votes than the Democrats.” In 2022, the GOP “carried the nationwide working-class House vote by 13 points”; in 2020, Donald Trump carried it by 4 points over Joe Biden. And “Democrats’ hold on the nonwhite working class has also been slipping.” Plus, on race, “Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates.” Dems, don’t be “blasé about” the ongoing shift: If Republicans pick up another 5 points among these voters from 2020 to ’24, it “produces a solid 312-226 GOP electoral vote majority” and an Electoral College lock through 2040.
If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “has charged a whopping 34 counts against Trump” in a case “ federal prosecutors decided wasn’t worth charging at all,” explains Andrew McCarthy at Fox News, it’s “ a classic abuse of power,” a bid to “camouflage with quantity” the case’s “lack of quality.” Fact is, “when serious crimes have been committed, prosecutors do not need to run up the score with a high number of counts.” But “ if prosecutors do not have evidence of a serious crime, by loading up an indictment with dozens of charges, they can try to signal to the eventual trial jury that the defendant must be guilty of something.” It’s “a significant enough due process abuse” that the federal Justice Department directs “prosecutors not to engage in it.” So: “If Bragg is indicting 34 counts over this nonsense, it’s because he doesn’t have one count he would be indicting if he were doing his job right.”
Nouriel Roubini argues at MarketWatch that “US banks’ unrealized losses actually amount to $1.75 trillion, or 80% of their capital,” by the end of 2022, but the “‘unrealized’ nature of these losses is merely an artifact of the current regulatory regime.” Indeed, “Judging by the quality of their capital, most US banks are technically near insolvency.” Looking ahead, “The credit crunch caused by today’s banking stress will create a harder landing for the real economy.” And: “Borrowers are facing rising rates,” while “the increase in long-term rates is also leading to massive losses for creditors holding long-duration assets.” Worse, central-bank “liquidity support cannot prevent this systemic doom loop,” so “everyone should be preparing for the coming stagflationary debt crisis.”
“What happened to Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford University was repulsive and unacceptable,” declares Betsy DeVos at The Wall Street Journal, but “the other Stanford DEI scandal” is also “worthy of attention and outrage.” A Stanford employee last month “was criminally charged with falsely reporting two on-campus sexual assaults,” apparently “part of a revenge plot against a failed romantic interest.” The “dubious from the start” accusations “sent the Stanford Title IX apparatus into full swing.” Unfortunately, “weaponizing Title IX” became “an unfortunate trend” in the Obama administration, and the Biden team is set to return “to the bad old days.” Both scandals came with “the incessant buildup of nonteaching bureaucrats.” Stanford “employs more administrators than it enrolls undergrads — focused on an agenda, not education.”
“Predictably, politicians are using fears that the popular social media service is spying on behalf of the Chinese government to propose broad legislation that threatens to affect much more than one app,” thunders Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. Though it’s said to stop TikTok abuses, the RESTRICT Act “doesn’t mention ‘TikTok,’ or parent company ‘ByteDance,’ or even ‘social media’” — but hands broad authority to the commerce secretary to address risks “regarding information and communications technology.” Rather than a TikTok-targeted solution, the RESTRICT Act is “so broad it’s difficult to see where its authoritarian powers end” — a testament to why “bills crafted to exploit popular panics make for terrible legislation.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board