To hear President Biden “and his team tell it, he was dealt an unusually bad hand” on the economy when he took office — yet, in truth, corrects David Winston at Roll Call, it had “already begun to turn around” before then. Inflation was just 1.4%, and pandemic-era 14.7% unemployment had fallen to 6.3%. Biden then pushed “trillion-dollar spending bills” that sent inflation soaring: Prices are 16.6% higher than when he took office, though earnings are up just 12.2%, “leaving Bidenomics with a 4.4 [point] negative wage gap.” No wonder his job approval on the economy is only 34%, per CBS News: “People who fill their grocery carts and cars every week simply aren’t buying the Bidenomics’ narrative.”
A survey supposedly showing a “stark gender divide” in high-school seniors’ politics “has sparked misplaced panic,” explains Reason’s Emma Camp. “Yes, more boys than girls identify as conservative — about twice” as many — “and girls identify as liberal at a rate 17 percentage points higher than their male classmates.” But “majorities of both genders responded without identifying a partisan political identity.” Some 64% of boys and 58% of girls “didn’t identify as conservative or liberal — instead, they identified as ‘moderate,’ ‘none of the above,’ or ‘I don’t know.’” So “in reality, these surveyed high school seniors don’t seem to care all that much about partisan politics.” The poll warrants no concern over youth polarization and doesn’t justify “government regulation of social media or online speech.”
A recent analysis “reveals the critical weakness in the state’s energy policy — the need for long-term reliable backup power — and underscores the tremendous cost of heavy reliance on expensive and unreliable offshore wind,” warns the Empire Center’s James E. Hanley. The study found wind lulls are “dangerously common,” especially during the summer. So electricity users “will have to pay for very expensive offshore wind” plus “backup power due to the unreliability of that wind.” When the choice becomes “unprecedentedly high electricity costs or enduring regular blackouts, New Yorkers may find getting off the climate activism bandwagon their most attractive option.”
“China has spent tens of billions of dollars to boost its global popularity over the past decade. It hasn’t worked,” exults The Wall Street Journal’s Sadanand Dhume. “In soft power — the attractiveness of a country’s ideas, institutions and culture — the U.S. far outstrips China.” In a 2005 Journal piece, “Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor who coined the term ‘soft power,’ quoted a 22-country BBC poll that found more people viewed China positively (nearly 50%) than the U.S. (38%).” Pop culture, including the smash film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and Houston Rockets star Yao Ming, helped. But “global public opinion has soured,” with two-thirds responding to a 24-country poll seeing “China unfavorably. Only 28% held a positive opinion.” Yet “America shouldn’t be too sanguine,” as “raw military and economic power can still count for more than charm,” and China has plenty of that. And America “is prone to soft-power blunders of its own, for instance by attempting to export fashionable woke ideas about sex.”
Overlooked from the latest New York Times poll, frets The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira, is President “Biden’s weakness among nonwhite working-class (noncollege) voters” — he leads President Donald Trump “by a mere 16 points among this demographic” vs. a 48-point lead in 2020 and “Obama’s 67-point advantage in 2012.” This poses “a direct threat to the massive margins Democrats need to maintain among nonwhite voters to achieve victory,” since they’re “two-thirds to three-quarters of the nonwhite vote.” The issue: They’re not progressive, “while the Democratic Party has become more so.” On issues from public safety to renewable energy to Bidenomics, they feel the party’s left them behind. Remember Trump’s 2020 success, and don’t “be so sure it couldn’t happen again.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board