The Week

• Andrew Cuomo has done the impossible: make us miss Mario Cuomo.

• The great Postal Service coup of 2020 is over, at least for now. Democrats alleged that the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor, was working to thwart mail-in voting by delaying delivery of the mail. Characteristically, Trump stoked the controversy by saying that if Democrats didn’t get the additional funding for the post office in their latest stimulus bill, there could be no universal mail-in voting. In fact, the proposed $25 billion is for a general bailout that has nothing to do with mail-in voting. And the policies pursued by DeJoy that have caused such consternation are either longstanding (decommissioning underutilized collection boxes) or overdue (changing delivery routines to eliminate excessive overtime pay). There is no reason to think the post office, which handles almost 3 billion pieces of mail a week, can’t handle the increased volume from mail-in voting. But to assuage any fears, DeJoy has paused his reforms until after the election. This outrage should be returned to sender.

• President Trump took four executive actions to provide economic relief during the pandemic. Two were small-bore, while two others raised constitutional concerns without giving Americans much real help. Having failed to get either party in Congress interested in a payroll-tax holiday, Trump suspended enforcement of the tax through the end of the year. But most companies will probably send the money to Washington anyway, rather than leave employees (or perhaps themselves) on the hook for the full amount in January. Trump also authorized a new channel for states to get federal money to provide extra unemployment benefits. But his scheme does not appear to be workable, and the administration keeps changing its story about key details. Trump is not the first president to succumb to the allure of acting in place of the legislature. In this case, however, there is no substitute for having the real one do its job.

• Trump said that his action on the payroll tax is a prelude to a second-term push to abolish the tax altogether. It’s an interesting idea, if an unlikely prospect. The payroll tax reduces employment and wages, and it contributes to the damaging fiction that Social Security and Medicare merely give back what taxpayers have put into the programs. But getting rid of the payroll tax — the largest tax most Americans pay — would require the federal government either to borrow even more or to raise other taxes that have their own harms. Spending on those programs continues to grow every year, faster than inflation and faster than the rest of the budget. Getting a handle on that problem is, unfortunately, something that the president, like most of our other political leaders, won’t even muse about.

• Two retired Army officers wrote a much-publicized open letter to General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging him to order Trump’s removal from the White House should Trump lose the election and then barricade himself there. It is irresponsible to indulge in such speculation, particularly without giving the matter serious thought — which the authors didn’t do. If they had, they might have noticed that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs has no power, by statute, to give orders to anyone in the military; and it might have occurred to them that in the scenario they conjure, there would be a new, lawful president who could. In this febrile moment in our politics, some on the left are rationalizing a military coup in the name of saving the republic.

• In a campaign ad, Joe Biden touts his 2016 meeting with Pope Francis and his subsequent encounter with a group of religious sisters outside St. Peter’s Basilica. The nuns, Biden says, reminded him of his Catholic education and upbringing, and of the teaching that each of us is our brother’s keeper. The ad appeared just weeks after Biden promised to reinstate Obamacare’s coercive contraceptive mandate, which compels all employers, regardless of religious belief or conscience, to subsidize employees’ birth control, including methods that can induce abortion. Responding to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the Trump administration to exempt religious orders such as the Little Sisters of the Poor from this mandate, Biden averred that his administration would undo those exemptions entirely. In characteristically disingenuous fashion, Biden praises nuns out of one side of his mouth while vowing from the other to compel them to violate the very faith he claims to profess.

• QAnon has achieved a political breakthrough. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been an avid promoter of the deranged and elaborate conspiracy theory, won a House GOP primary runoff election in a heavily Republican Georgia district. As Greene explained at length in a bonkers 2017 video, supposedly QAnon is a high-ranking government official who is posting messages that cryptically reveal how President Trump is secretly working to take out a “global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” that includes prominent Democrats. Trump tweeted praise for Greene, but there’s no reason that congressional Republicans need to go along. They should shun her and deny her committee assignments. Any such move would surely lead Greene to conclude there is a conspiracy against her, but some paranoids deserve enemies.

• The investigation of the investigators produced its first charge. John Durham, the Connecticut U.S. attorney assigned by Attorney General William Barr to examine “Russiagate,” charged former FBI associate general counsel Kevin Clinesmith with making a false statement. The offense arises out of Clinesmith’s tampering with a document: an email chain in which a CIA liaison informed him that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had been a covert CIA source. In the emails, the CIA recounted that, even before the FBI began seeking surveillance warrants against Page from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the CIA told the bureau that Page had actually worked for the U.S. against Russia, not the other way around. Clinesmith’s actions concealed Page’s CIA status from the agent who was about to apply to renew the warrant, and concealed it from the court, too. His lawyer publicly insisted that Clinesmith had not intended to deceive his FBI colleagues or the FISA court, but Clinesmith ultimately pled guilty. This is good work by Durham, and there may be more to come.

• The statistics are stark: The CDC estimates that this will be the worst year for gun-related homicides since 1999. The instances are wrenching: children shot and killed in strollers, at picnics, stepping from a parent’s car. Summer always sees a spike. This summer’s Matterhorn spike is enhanced by COVID cabin fever and protest saturnalia. But surely the main driver is the great unlearning of the lessons of the Nineties. It is possible to drive crime, including fatal shootings, down. Intelligent policing, backed by ample resources and determined politicians, did it first in New York City and then across the country. Fetishizing instances of police brutality and demeaning cops generally cause the public, politicians, and police officers to stand down. What fills the gap is not nice. “If men were angels,” James Madison memorably began a sentence. They aren’t; and too many of them are armed, dangerous, and unopposed.

• Chicago residents beheld a strange and worrisome sight on the morning of August 10. A series of bridges across the Chicago River to the city’s inner core had been raised, severely limiting access to that area (along with other restrictive measures). The day before, Chicago police officers had returned fire on an armed, fleeing suspect about whom they had received a 911 call. Social-media rumors turned the still-living 20-year-old into a slaughtered 15-year-old. By nightfall, the now depressingly familiar spectacle of rioting and looting flared up once more, as many took advantage of the ensuing chaos and lawlessness to raid and plunder some of Chicago’s finest establishments. Hence the need for temporarily restricted downtown access, last enforced in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in May. But unless Chicago successfully restores civil peace and order, it seems inevitable that the bridges will go up again sometime soon.

• Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, campaigned on the promise of investigating and doing damage to the National Rifle Association, which she describes as a “terrorist organization”; and, would you believe it, having conducted her investigation, she has determined that the group must be entirely and irrevocably dissolved! That James’s political aims and the results of her investigation have lined up so perfectly must be one of the luckiest coincidences in recent memory. James claims that the NRA is guilty of “fraud.” But she has presented about as much evidence for this proposition as she has to back up her claims of “terrorism.” Like many political organizations in the United States, the NRA is indeed imperfect. But the imperfections she has examined are quotidian — misspent funds and the like — and their negative consequences attach solely to it and its members. Nobody could reasonably believe that the NRA has done anything so egregious as to justify having been singled out by New York. This is an abuse of office, and it must be rejected as such — by the voters, by the courts, and by any citizen who does not wish to see the precedent set, and repeated.

• The New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America sent a list of questions to candidates for local office: routine for political groups of every stripe, possibly important in a midnight-blue locale like Gotham. The last two questions, the only ones related to foreign policy (not a heavy responsibility of local pols), stood out: Would candidates promise not to travel to Israel? Do they support the BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions — against Israel)? The best response was from Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a candidate for Manhattan district attorney. “So let me get this straight. Per this questionnaire it would be ok for me to travel to Iran, the country of my birth, which hangs men for being gay and may stone women for adultery, but not to Israel.” The answer would seem to be, Yes, it would. Anti-Semites and democratic socialists have no problem with Iran.

• Speaking of that chapter of the DSA: A leading socialist scholar, Adolph Reed — who grew up black in the segregated South — was invited to speak to it, but then disinvited for his unfavorable view of identity politics. Reed planned to discuss how the Left’s focus on race, at the expense of class, was insufficient as an explanation of racial disparities in the pandemic and ultimately counterproductive in achieving social justice. After numerous complaints, the DSA leaders and Reed agreed to cancel the planned Zoom talk. If even a black Marxist is prevented from disagreeing with “anti-racist” orthodoxy, what hope does anyone else have?

• After a two-year investigation, the Department of Justice has concluded that Yale’s racially weighted admission policy violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband gave the university until August 27 to rectify the situation before the United States government will sue “to enforce Yale’s Title VI obligations.” Because Yale receives millions of taxpayer dollars each year, it’s required to uphold the statutory standards outlined in the act. The investigation, triggered by complaints from Asian-American groups, found that the university has fallen spectacularly short of these standards. Race is not only used “at multiple points in [Yale’s] admissions process,” it is also the “determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.” “Asian American and White applicants,” the report continues, “have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission [of] African American applicants with comparable academic credentials.” If “systemic racism” means anything, this admissions process surely counts.

• A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit — yes, that Ninth Circuit — has struck down California’s ban on “high capacity” firearm magazines, which has been in place since 2000. Writing for the majority, Judge Kenneth Lee reminded the state that “even well-intentioned laws must pass constitutional muster,” and concluded that, because California’s statute “strikes at the core of the Second Amendment — the right to armed self-defense,” it has to go. As Lee noted, the government’s claim that its measure is narrowly tailored is patently false, given that it applies even to the standard-issue magazines that ship with most new guns. At root, this case considered whether the government may bend reality to its will. The mere labeling of a device as “high-capacity” does not make it so, and, as Lee observed, the consequence of California’s linguistic gamesmanship has been that “half of all magazines in America are now unlawful to own” in the state. A welcome reprieve for the Bill of Rights — for now, at least.

• The United Arab Emirates will become the third Arab state to normalize relations with Israel, President Trump announced from the Oval Office. In return, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to pause Israel’s plans to declare sovereignty over West Bank settlements. And in addition to trading ambassadors, the UAE and Israel will ink a number of bilateral agreements on everything from technology to culture. While the two countries have long cooperated on security matters under the table, normalization is a historic development, and already other Arab states are using it as political cover to pursue their own rapprochements with Israel. All of this furthers the prospect of stability in the region. Talks between Israel and Palestine have stalled, and by facilitating the UAE–Israel normalization agreement, President Trump has found another path to Middle East peace. Who stands to lose? Iran, Hamas, and jihadists, among others.

• A catastrophic explosion on August 4 in the port of Beirut killed an estimated 163 people and injured thousands more. The explosion was caused by 2,750 tons of the volatile chemical ammonium nitrate that had been improperly stored in a warehouse at the port for six years. The unstable Lebanese government — composed of numerous factions, including Hezbollah — was blamed for its inaction and lack of oversight, which led to the explosion, as well as its poor response to the ensuing devastation. The government’s ministers then resigned as a group in acknowledgment of their culpability. Already suffering under the strain of both the coronavirus and hyperinflation, Beirut’s residents must now deal with a physically shattered city.

• Edward Snowden first fled to China. The United States charged him with espionage. Then he fled to Russia — where he has been since June 2013. In 2016, after the House Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report on Snowden, Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said, “Edward Snowden is a traitor who is currently under the care, custody, and control of Russian security services.” Snowden, he said, “has done irreparable harm to U.S. national security.” Therefore, “any thought to pardoning Edward Snowden should be immediately dismissed by President Obama, or anybody seeking to hold the office of the president.” President Trump has signaled that he may soon pardon Snowden. Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) said that Snowden is guilty of “the largest and most damaging” release of classified information in American history. “He handed over U.S. secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence, putting our troops and our nation at risk. Pardoning him would be unconscionable.” Strong words, and justified.

• President Trump issued executive orders targeting two Chinese technology companies that have millions of users outside of China. Effective September 20, the orders prevent U.S.-linked enterprises from doing business with TikTok, a popular video-sharing social network, and messaging app WeChat. This will essentially ban the apps, which the Trump administration and others worry will collect Americans’ data on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok has an off-ramp, being forced by Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in the form of a potential deal in which Microsoft will purchase it from its parent company. WeChat has no such option, and a ban seems imminent. That app, however, is also more insidious than TikTok. It’s a highly effective conduit of Communist Party disinformation meant to sway the Chinese diaspora in Western democracies. And it surveils those overseas Chinese, trapping them in Beijing’s digital panopticon. The CCP’s influence over the Internet must be rolled back.

• In the past few weeks, the White House has also levied sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for human-rights violations and designated Beijing’s “Confucius Institutes” as diplomatic missions. While the second measure received the least press, it ranks among the most important steps toward ending Chinese subversion of American institutions. Ostensibly language-education centers, Confucius Institutes have long served as platforms for propaganda and espionage. In 2014, the American Association of University Professors found that “most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China.” So pronounced is their effect that in the communities where Confucius Institutes are established, local news outlets grow friendlier towards Beijing, according to a study from University College Dublin. The new designation requires the institutes to disclose employee lists, funding sources, and details concerning their operations. It is long overdue.

• Beijing’s campaign to remake Hong Kong in the authoritarian image of ordinary Chinese cities continues. The Hong Kong police force arrested pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai and paraded the septuagenarian around his newspaper’s headquarters in handcuffs for a photo op. In addition to Lai, the authorities swept up some of his sons and executives, as well as pro-democracy campaigner Agnes Chow. They were all released on bail within 48 hours, but the arrests were a new nadir for the city’s democrats, who have suffered a series of blows in recent weeks. They’ve continued their fight, albeit with increased caution, and it’s not clear how the cases will proceed. Like everyone else, though, they know that Hong Kong is not the city it once was, and that the Chinese Communist Party has finally acted on its hypothesis that the international response would fall short. As it has: The U.S. has imposed some sanctions, but few other nations have followed. The Trump administration should coordinate an international response, move to activate its congressionally authorized powers to go after banks that do business with the CCP’s enablers in the city, and welcome fleeing Hong Kongers to the United States with open arms. It’s time to take Beijing to the mat over Hong Kong.

• Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar visited Taiwan on August 12 — the first cabinet-level trip to the country in four decades. Against the backdrop of China’s belligerence, Azar’s trip was a necessary indication of Washington’s commitment to protecting freedom and the rule of law. Indeed, a keen awareness of the Chinese threat pushed Taipei to impose a travel ban before any other country had done so. As Azar noted, the island nation contained COVID-19 despite being barred from membership in the World Health Organization. Successive administrations have waffled on the Taiwan question; Azar’s visit is a welcome sign that the White House is prepared to buck that trend.

• Alexander Lukashenko is known as “Europe’s last dictator.” He has ruled Belarus for 26 years. He has stolen election after election, including the latest, on August 9. As before, democratic protesters spilled into the streets — and their blood spilled, at the hands of Lukashenko’s security forces. Yet the current demonstrations are bigger and bolder than ever before. Lukashenko is very concerned, and said, “Until you kill me, there will not be any more elections.” Like all dictators, everywhere, he has linked his own fate to that of the nation: “If you destroy Lukashenko, it will be the beginning of the end for you.” The United States should do all it can to assist democratic forces in Belarus. President Trump, in particular, should make clear that the United States is on the side of democracy, standing for the rights of men and women against their tyrants and torturers.

• Earlier this year, U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson dealt with a particularly nasty bout of the coronavirus. He recovered, but the experience has changed him. For one, he has decided that his being “too fat” before infection made him more susceptible and his bout more painful. Obesity is indeed a coronavirus risk factor, and his honest self-assessment is welcome. But he also wishes to impose his health consciousness on the nation he governs. One aspect of this anti-obesity push is a “ban on advertising of food high in fat, sugar, or salt on television and online before 9 p.m.” in the words of a U.K. Department of Health and Social Care official. We tend to recoil from the coercion of such government impositions, just as we question their utility. Promoting health and fighting obesity are noble goals. But Johnson ought to start with the man in the mirror, change his own ways, and try to lead by example.

• At the foot of Willow Peak, believed to be Mount Horeb, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, Saint Catherine’s Monastery has stood for 15 centuries, a node of Christian prayer in the desert of the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly visited in August and met with monks there, to announce the government’s plans for restoration projects within the walls of the monastery complex and for development of the airport at the nearby small city of St. Catherine, to facilitate travel for pilgrims and tourists. The “government is interested in boosting religious tourism,” the chairman of the Egyptian Cultural Heritage Preservation Organisation explained to the website Al-Monitor. With refreshing candor, he added that Egypt would benefit from Turkey’s recent decision to convert Hagia Sophia, originally an Orthodox church, from a museum into a mosque, suggesting that Christians who have an interest in holy sites and know where their faith is disrespected should understand that Egypt welcomes them. Given all the troubles faced by Christian communities striving to preserve their religious heritage in the Middle East, the cradle of the Church, be grateful for the government’s somewhat mercenary but frank and genuine ecumenism and goodwill.

• Kanye West courts risk. Some years ago he began designing clothes, actually trying to create something fresh, unlike the typical celeb influencer lending a name and a pout to the work of others. More recently, he became a Christian, courting the jibes of the cynical and the comfortable. Last month he announced that he was running for president. One might analyze his positions — he opposes the prison–industrial complex (left/libertarian), abortion (right), and vaccines (nuts) — but that would be a category error. He has missed the ballot deadlines in 22 states and seen his petitions rejected in two. This is not a serious effort even by the looking-glass standards of Eric Swalwell or Ben Carson. It is a gesture of concern and, alas, delusion. West has been open about his struggles with bipolar disorder. He is blessed with talent, a business, family, and faith. That should be enough, and more than enough.

• Edward Ball is among the many white Americans who have in their family tree at least one member of the Ku Klux Klan. To do “the unusual thing” and bring his white-supremacist ancestor “out of the closet to interrogate under light,” he wrote Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy, published in August. A reckoning, it follows Slaves in the Family (1998), his account of his attempts to find and meet descendants of some of the nearly 4,000 men and women whom his family over the course of more than a century and a half had held in bondage. He was scheduled to speak at Tulane University in August, but the university canceled at the last minute, under the pressure of protest from students, alumni, and employees. “The last thing we need to do is allow someone who is even reflecting on the hatred of their ancestors to speak about white supremacy, even if their efforts come from a place of accountability,” wrote a student on Instagram. The campus anti-intellectual we will always have with us. In this case, the best revenge against him would be to buy and read Ball’s book.

• In July, the presidents of the eight Ivy League universities, responding to the pandemic, announced a suspension of intercollegiate sports until January at the earliest. In the Patriot League, which includes Annapolis, West Point, and Colgate University, fall sports will be played, but with adjustments, including a ban on air travel to away games. In Division III of the NCAA, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and Grinnell, among others, have canceled sports until next calendar year. In August, the University of Connecticut became the first Football Bowl Subdivision team to cancel its season. “These young men’s lives are more important than money,” said coach Randy Edsall. The financial squeeze that the pandemic has put on colleges has led some to eliminate their programs for golf, tennis, and even soccer, baseball, and, in one case, football. In the contest between COVID and the NCAA, the wrong side appears to be winning, so sports fans will do what they have always done. They’ll wait until next year.

• Jerry Falwell Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from the presidency and chancellorship of Liberty University, at the request of its board of trustees. The announcement came days after he posted on Instagram a photo of himself, jeans slightly unzipped, with his arm around a young woman in a similar state of dishabille. The tawdriness of the mock-salacious pose was mild by some standards but not those that the administration of the Evangelical institution of higher learning expects its students and faculty to meet. Since Falwell, a lawyer, succeeded to the throne after the death of his father in 2007, he has been in the news too often for the wrong reason, including purported involvement in a complicated but lingering scandal said to involve hush money and racy photos of him and his wife. He has done himself and Liberty no favors by pressing every hot button he could find over the years, behaving as if the heart of his job description were to live large while owning the libs. Use your respite wisely, Mr. Falwell.

• When Mel Brooks’s raunchy Old West comedy Blazing Saddles was released in 1974, it was rated R. In those days, the letter was enough to convey that there was sex in the movie, but not too much, and some vulgar language to go with it. Now the film is available on HBO Max, and it comes with a full-blown three-minute content warning. One might think the release date alone — or maybe even a brief notice along the lines of “WARNING: Old movie. Contains ethnic, sexual, and digestive humor” — would make it clear that Blazing Saddles does not live up to modern standards of wokeness. Instead, HBO hired a University of Chicago professor to explain that, “as the story line implies, the issue of race is front and center in Blazing Saddles.” Can’t argue with that. Moreover, “racist language [yes, she means that word] and attitudes pervade the film. But those attitudes are espoused by characters who are portrayed here as explicitly small-minded, ignorant bigots.” True enough. She goes on: “The real and much more enlightened perspective is provided by the main characters played by Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder.” Blazing Saddles is a lot of things, but one we wouldn’t have guessed is too mature and sophisticated for HBO viewers to handle on their own.

• For about half a century, the name “Brent Scowcroft” was a byword for wisdom and sobriety in foreign policy. No one believes that Scowcroft was right about everything — who is? — but his knowledge, seriousness, and patriotism were respected by all. Scowcroft was born in 1925 in Ogden, Utah, the son of a grocer. He went to West Point, then joined the Air Force. He retired as a lieutenant general. Along the way, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University (international relations). He was a constant in the orbit of Henry Kissinger. He succeeded Kissinger as national-security adviser to President Ford. More than a decade later, he served as national-security adviser again, this time to President Bush the Elder. Other presidents, he served in a variety of capacities. He received nearly every relevant award you can think of, including an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Brent Scowcroft was the kind of person who gives “Washington establishment” a good name. He has died at 95. R.I.P.

• Bernard Bailyn was the last of a cohort of scholars who revolutionized the teaching of the American Founding in the Fifties and Sixties, overthrowing the progressive paradigm that saw American patriots as motivated by their balance sheets. Bailyn and his peers — Edmund Morgan, Douglass Adair — instead took seriously what the Founders thought, said, and wrote. This focus kept their quadrant of academia safe from the storms of theory that battered the other humanities in the Seventies and later. Now it looks as if popular interest in the Founding must protect it from the newest wave of leftist disdain. Dead at 97, R.I.P.

DEMOCRATS

Kamala Harris Is No Moderate

As soon as Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, we were assured that she is a “moderate.”

A moderate what? Moderate compared to whom?

Senator Harris is a moderate autocrat. During the Democratic-primary debates, she vowed to ban so-called assault weapons by executive order. When Joe Biden pointed out that the president has no such power and is obliged to follow the Constitution, she laughed in his face. As attorney general in California, she abused her investigatory and prosecutorial powers to harass conservative-leaning policy groups and was part of an alliance of Democratic attorneys general that tried to make a crime out of “climate denial,” effectively seeking to criminalize dissent by pretending that it amounts to securities fraud, of all things. She sought to incarcerate the parents of truant children, and she worked overtime to uphold unjust convictions obtained through official misconduct and the fabrication of evidence.

Senator Harris is a moderate anti-Catholic bigot. Together with Senator Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii), Harris argued that Brian Buescher, currently on the U.S. District Court for Nebraska, was unfit to serve on the bench because he is a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic social-service organization — “an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men,” as Harris and Hirono put it. Senator Harris demanded: “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?” As though that were distinct from what the Catholic Church teaches at large.

Senator Harris is a moderate monopolist on health care, one who promised to abolish all existing health-insurance plans in favor of a single government-administered system (before retreating a couple of steps to allow for Medicare Advantage-style plans under the new system). We are squinting to see a definition of “moderate” in the American context that is “slightly to the right of Norway.”

Senator Harris’s health-care moderation is complemented by her moderately fervent embrace of open borders. She favors providing federal health-care benefits to illegal immigrants, but that’s presumably on its way toward being a moderate position too, since they wouldn’t be illegal if she had her way. That is because on immigration, she is a moderate in the sense that she endorses the decriminalization of unauthorized entry into the United States but would not actually load up a truck and make a coyote run herself.

Put another way: She would decriminalize unauthorized border crossing while criminalizing health insurance. This is a funny kind of moderation.

Senator Harris is a moderate ignoramus on the Constitution, proposing that the states be forced to obtain “pre-clearance” from the federal government before making changes to their abortion policies. Her moderate ignorance here is deployed in the service of her instinct toward moderate abortion fanaticism.

About all this, she has been, at best, moderately honest.

Her moderate honesty was very much on display during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, when she made a despicable spectacle of herself and the Senate in her treatment of the tawdry — and, it is worth remembering, false — allegations against Kavanaugh. She insisted that Democrats’ losing that fight would “cloud the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”

It is possible to exaggerate the legitimate concerns about Joe Biden’s age and health. But it is not unreasonable to understand, as many Democrats and Republicans both do, that a Biden presidency might very well evolve into a kind of regency in which the fragile-seeming and forgetful man who would be 82 years old at the end of his first term acts as a placeholder until a suitable replacement comes of age, as it were. The leading candidate for such a successor would be his vice president, in this case a self-serving and dishonest politico who was moderately corrupt as an attorney general and moderately abusive as a senator, and is now moderately dangerous to the rule of law.

Americans should be moderately terrified.