FAST TAKES
Reporter: Dems Trying To Cuss Their Way Back to Power
Democrats seem to be taking a page from President Trump’s often-earthy language and “are letting loose four-letter words in public speeches and interviews,” notes McClatchy’s Alex Roarty. So much for the old maxim that “politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose.” Democratic Chairman Tom Perez has charged that Republicans “don’t give a s--about people.” And New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said that if Democrats can’t help people, “we should go the f--- home.” Perez, in fact, “has repeated his foul-mouthed criticism of Republicans in interviews and statements since, making it something of a catchphrase.” Apparently, last year’s “surge in [voter] anger” has left many Democrats “racing to catch up, hoping to prove they feel the same visceral disgust.”
Conservative take: New York AG’s Enviro Activist Pal
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer “appears to be the new owner of the New York State Attorney General’s office,” charges Drew Johnson at The Hill, asking what it took to make AG Eric Schneiderman “a pawn in his plan to vilify ExxonMobil and ramp up global warming hysteria.” Apparently, he says, “it was the prospect of campaign contributions,” since public records show the AG “launched a climate change investigation targeting ExxonMobil while he was urging Steyer to help fund” a possible gubernatorial run. And as the probe expanded, “Steyer began pouring money into rallies” supporting Schneiderman and his fellow AGs “through his political action committee, NextGen Climate Action.” In other words, “Steyer’s fingerprints are all over the ExxonMobil investigations.”
From the right: Did Assad Just Use Saddam’s WMDs?
Eliminating Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was a major justification for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, recalls Mark Hemingway at The Weekly Standard, “but they were nowhere to be found.” A popular theory at the time — proposed by, among others, James Clapper, who went on to become Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence — is that “they were smuggled into Syria.” Indeed, Clapper cited “a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria” just before the invasion. So “it might be time to reassess whether the intelligence that Iraq had WMD was as faulty as we thought.” Especially since we “now know that the Obama administration was knowingly spreading falsehoods about removing chemical weapons from Syria.”
From the left: All-Out Resistance Won’t Stop Trump
Ever since Trump’s election, observes John Judis at The New Republic, “the consensus view on the left” has been to demand “full-on resistance to everything this president does.” They argue that “it’s not merely a moral imperative: It’s also the smartest way for Democrats to stage a comeback,” citing how Mitch McConnell and the GOP opposed President Barack Obama. But, Judis notes, McConnell was “too crafty” for total resistance — and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats “should be, too.” GOP opposition “was actually quite selective,” focusing mainly on health care and the stimulus, because McConnell “knew that total obstruction was a dead end.” To regain voters’ trust “as the party that cares about ordinary Americans,” they shouldn’t “follow the path of all-out resistance” but of the “smartest resistance.”
Liberal take: The Millennial Left’s Rude Awakening
The millennial left “has had to deal with some uncomfortable truths” since Trump’s election, notes Erin Gloria Ryan at The Daily Beast. But one of the more “unmooring” truths is that “when it comes to issues like immigration and foreign relations, many of the actions that President Obama took, and many of the actions that President Hillary Clinton would have taken, are not necessarily in line with what they think those candidates’ values are.” Many on the left were disturbed by Trump ordering an airstrike against Syria. But then Clinton supported the attack. And “the similarity in their stances presents an important truth that people who consider themselves left-leaning should consider”: that “what young people on the left think their leaders are isn’t necessarily in line with reality.”