Dear Weekend Jolter,
With characteristic confidence, President Biden (or whoever posts his tweets) declared a few days ago that if Republicans in Congress “get their way,” inflation will worsen. “It’s that simple.”
On what basis does he predict this? He doesn’t say. In all likelihood, he hasn’t thought it through, other than to presume this kind of proclamation adequately answers voters’ concerns on the economy in the way titling a climate-change bill the “Inflation Reduction Act” signals to the electorate that the problem is being handled. The same disconnect was on display when the president, chewing ice cream, declared the economy to be “strong as hell.” It’s of a piece with the White House insisting inflation was “transitory” or mocking American consumers for their concerns about the supply-chain crisis or downplaying inflation or blaming Russia or Big Meat or Republicans for it.
If there is a red wave or something approximating it in a couple of weeks, it will be because voters are tired of being fed plain BS about their top-of-mind issues. Rich Lowry diagnoses the problem with Biden’s response, and his instincts, in predicting an unmistakable midterm rebuke:
There are deft political maneuverers who react to circumstances as necessary, and then blinkered and mulish politicians who can’t or won’t acknowledge reality.
There are policy-makers whose worldviews line up with basic economic laws, and then those always bound to be confounded by the real-world consequences of their ideological fixations.
There are master communicators who can make anyone feel better about anything, and then there are stumblebums whose evasions and lapses in logic are painfully obvious.
Joe Biden is emphatically the latter on every count.
He likes to say fighting inflation is his foremost priority, but it’s hard to identify any major initiative of his that would be any different if the annual inflation rate were under 2 percent rather than over 8 percent.
The polls tell the story: Voters are increasingly concerned about the economy and trust Republicans more to handle it. Maybe it will turn out this trust is misplaced, but Biden has demonstrated so little recognition, not to mention ownership, of the realities on the ground that it’s no surprise voters are in a penalizing mood.
Let’s roll the poll footage:
• A New York Times/Siena College poll now shows a 32-point swing toward the GOP among independent women.
• Charles C. W. Cooke notes that the same poll shows 49 percent of voters say they plan to vote Republican next month, compared with 45 percent in the Democrats’ corner. Biden’s disapproval rating dwarfs his approval rating, the “wrong track” number dwarfs the “right track” number, and the economy gets top billing as the issue voters care about.
• A poll from the Associated Press–NORC Center of Public Affairs Research reflects a similarly dour attitude, with voters saying they trust the GOP on the economy by 39 to 29 percent. Democrats are far more trusted on abortion policy, but the polling indicates that this issue, even in the aftermath of Dobbs, does not rate close to the economy and inflation.
• The generic congressional ballot shows Republicans widening their lead.
Matthew Continetti noted last weekend another curious Biden line concerning his commitment to the economy: that rising costs were a key reason he ran for president. “I don’t remember Biden staking his 2020 candidacy on inflation,” Matt countered. “He couldn’t have. The inflation hadn’t happened.”
Chalk it up to another instance of Biden “embellishing narratives to weave a political identity,” as that rascal is prone to do. Voters just might be tiring of the routine, though. “If [insert name of opposing party] wins, all your problems will get so much worse” is the kind of breezy thing Donald Trump would say every time he stepped on the stump. The act got old. The warning wasn’t remotely sincere, either. Biden’s approval ratings offer no reason to think voters find his inflation deflection any more so.
So rather than massage that message — and after having been told “as recently as Monday that American voters prioritize the state of the economy over the question of abortion by a ratio of 44:5,” as Charles calculates — the president decided this week to double down on the abortion theme for the final stretch. This may reassure part of the base. But it, too, fails to signal seriousness about voters’ top priority. And in case the DNC thinks Stacey Abrams just squared the circle, so does the creative suggestion that abortion can mitigate inflation by reducing the number of mouths to feed, which, even with the most generous of sloganeering, can only inspire the bumper sticker: Bet You Wish You Stopped at One.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Igor Danchenko was acquitted, but he wasn’t the only one on trial: John Durham Exposed the FBI’s Misconduct
Hochul hasn’t earned it: Give Lee Zeldin a Chance to Bail Out New York
For a sense of the hypocrisy in the treatment of John Fetterman’s medical issues, look to the coverage of Republican Mark Kirk’s stroke: Media Malpractice on Fetterman’s Health
ARTICLES
Philip Klein: Can People Just Stop Talking about ‘the Jews’?
Isaac Schorr: ‘We Don’t Need You’: How Local Dems Are Handcuffing Cops and Driving the Rise in Crime
Isaac Schorr: Pro-Life Activist Facing Eleven-Year Prison Sentence Speaks Out: Biden ‘Using DOJ as a Weapon’
Rich Lowry: Raphael Warnock’s Hideous Abortion Extremism
Charles C. W. Cooke: Trump Puts Himself above the Republican Party Again
Caroline Downey: Georgia Breaks Record for First-Day Midterm Turnout after Abrams Alleges Voter Suppression
Andrew McCarthy: Steele-Dossier Source Igor Danchenko Acquitted, but Stain of FBI Conduct Remains
Jim Geraghty: Arizona Democrats Begin to Recognize the Consequences of Their Actions
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Coming Drug War
Brittany Bernstein: Abortion vs. Inflation: Upstate N.Y. House Race Offers Pure Test of Dueling Party Strategies
Jimmy Quinn: State Department Plans Ten-Day DEI Fest, Promoting ‘Psychological Safety at Work’
Ryan Mills: Flushing Money: San Francisco to Spend $1.7 Million to Build a Single Public Toilet
Dan McLaughlin: How the Senate Races Are Breaking
Jay Nordlinger: The struggle for basic rights, &c.
CAPITAL MATTERS
Jeff Luse makes the case for ridding America of one of its worst laws: It’s Time to Repeal the Jones Act
Dominic Pino checks in on the baby-formula shortage, and finds there still is one: No, Biden Has Not Fixed the Baby-Formula Shortage
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White checks out the film adaptation of . . . Hunter Biden: Sympathy for the Screwup Son
Come for the Philly jokes, stay for Brian Allen’s look at the magical side of Venice: An Enchanted Castle in Venice: The Fortuny Museum
EXCERPTS, SERVED THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY
Your tax dollars at work, building the world’s most powerful HR department, with some diplomacy in the mix. From Jimmy Quinn:
The State Department is planning a massive DEI-focused event expected to involve more than a dozen federal agencies and up to 50,000 government employees, National Review has learned. The overarching goal is to mobilize department employees around diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) principles and “psychological safety at work,” and it’s a “mission imperative,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NR in a statement.
Called the “10 Day DEIA Interagency Equity Pursuit Challenge,” the initiative will involve purely voluntary activities, during non-work hours, intended to educate federal-government employees about a range of topics. The program in November will conclude with a Jeopardy-style game that organizers hope will actively involve participants. Then, in December, there will be a “reflection rally.”
“Mental health and diversity equity inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) are closely connected,” reads an overview of the event posted on the State Department’s website. “Employees from diverse backgrounds can face a lack of representation, micro-aggressions, unconscious bias, and other stressors that impact their mental health and psychological safety at work.”
The launch of this event comes amid a highly visible push by the Biden administration to implement DEI principles throughout the federal bureaucracy. Over the past year and a half, the State Department has hired a chief “diversity and inclusion officer,” appointed a “special representative for racial equity and justice,” and mandated that U.S. diplomats “advance” DEI as part of the criteria for promotions. The department has also pledged to take further steps to “embed intersectional equity principles” in its communications.
Isaac Schorr has an interview with a young pro-life activist who is facing more than a decade in prison for blocking an abortion-clinic entrance:
On Friday, October 14, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted 25-year-old Herb Geraghty on charges of participating in a “conspiracy against rights” and violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Now he’s facing up to eleven years in prison in addition to a $260,000 fine for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic.
Geraghty, a board member of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) and Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, as well as the executive director of Rehumanize International, is the tenth activist to face charges pertaining to an incident that occurred in October 2020. The rest of the indictments were handed down in March of this year. Geraghty and fellow pro-life activists are alleged to have “engaged in a conspiracy to create a blockade at the reproductive health care clinic to prevent the clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services.”
According to the indictment, Geraghty and the others forcefully entered a clinic, blockaded the entrance, and used “a physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient.”
In an interview with National Review, Geraghty accused the Department of Justice of “trying to use fear and isolation tactics to scare pro-life Americans out of acting in defense of the unborn,” and said that his prosecution should serve as a warning that “the DOJ seems to be ramping up this targeted campaign against pro-life activists.”
“The Biden administration is using the Department of Justice as a weapon against peaceful pro-life activists and leaders,” argued Geraghty.
Jay Nordlinger marks another troubling stretch of headlines about basic human rights being violated:
There is something that Donald Rumsfeld often said — some form of, “People want to get up in the morning and do what they want to do. They want to live their own lives. When they get up in the morning, they don’t want other people telling them what they must do.”
He was talking about dictatorship versus individual rights, or ordered liberty. Rumsfeld often used the phrase “get up in the morning,” when he was talking about all sorts of subjects.
I have been thinking about him when reading the news. Russian forces occupying Kherson wanted a Ukrainian conductor, Yurii Kerpatenko, to conduct a propaganda concert for them. He refused. So they shot him dead, in his home. (I wrote about this here.)
Kerpatenko wanted to live his own life, as a free man. The Russian forces had other ideas. They ended his life.
Then there is this: “Iranian schoolgirl ‘beaten to death for refusing to sing’ pro-regime anthem.” (I have linked to an article in the Guardian.) Dictators and their agents are always telling you what you must do. And if you don’t do it — they may well kill you.
NR’s editorial puts in a good word for Lee Zeldin in the New York gubernatorial race:
Lee Zeldin offers New Yorkers a real choice. The four-term congressman and former state senator from eastern Long Island served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne, and would bring a no-nonsense approach to restoring law and order in the state, from repealing the bail-reform law to Zeldin’s pledge to remove Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for refusing to enforce state criminal laws. He has been as solidly conservative in the House as one could ask from a suburban New Yorker. He has not renounced his pro-life principles under fire, but he has bowed to political reality in vowing not to change New York’s liberal abortion laws. The simple fact of disrupting the dysfunctional Democratic status quo would do wonders for Albany.
Zeldin has faced no shortage of hazards. In July, he was attacked by a drunken man with a small handheld blade while giving a speech in upstate Fairport; Zeldin correctly predicted that the man would be immediately released under the bail-reform law. Just last week, two people were shot outside his home while his teen daughters were inside.
It has been a long time since New York gave a serious hearing to a Republican in a statewide election. . . .
Does Zeldin have a realistic chance at unseating Hochul? Polling in the race has been inconsistent, with some pollsters showing a wide Hochul lead, but Trafalgar’s two most recent polls show Zeldin narrowing to a five-point and then a two-point race. The latest Marist poll also has a single-digit race, with Hochul up eight points, and a poll by Schoen Cooperman Research shows Hochul up six. Certainly, Hochul is no political juggernaut. Elected lieutenant governor in 2014 and 2018 on Cuomo’s ticket, she last ran for office in her own right in 2012, when she was defeated for reelection to her single term in the House. Before Congress, the highest office she held was as a county clerk. With little to tout, she has taken to running a barrage of television ads focused entirely on abortion and January 6.
The choice belongs to New York’s voters. They should choose Lee Zeldin.
Shout-Outs
Josh Rogin, at the Washington Post: Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets
Josh Christenson, at the Washington Free Beacon: How an Iowa Democratic Senate Candidate Pads His Résumé
Hannah E. Meyers, at City Journal: The Left Faces a Reckoning on Criminal Justice
CODA
I’ve prattled on before about the excellence of British musician/producer/bandleader Steven Wilson. He works in prog territory, but his music has soul, something that is not always a feature of the genre. This is a live version of “Ancestral,” from a pre-Covid concert at Royal Albert Hall. It builds, to put it mildly.
In other news: Kevin Antonio responds to last weekend’s call-out for “blasphemous” cover songs, offering David Johansen’s take on “Build Me Up Buttercup.”
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.