FAST TAKES
From the left: Andrew Cuomo’s Worst Nightmare
Gov. Cuomo, suddenly “discovering his inner liberal,” has launched a crusade to unseat all of New York’s Republican US House members — an effort “sure to be spun as an act of Democratic heroism by people who don’t know much better,” observes Ross Barkan at the Village Voice. Yet it “conveniently ignores the Democratic fight that matters more, and the one Cuomo could tilt if he ever wanted to” — pushing for a Democraticcontrolled state Senate. Why his reluctance? “A fully Democratic state Legislature would force Cuomo to be far more liberal than he wants to be.” And that’s “his nightmare,” because “it would put to death every last triangulating fantasy he holds.”
Conservative: Times Recklessly Exposes CIA Operative
The New York Times “seems to be working overtime” to confirm President Trump’s charge that the news media are “the enemy of the American people,” contends Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post. The paper’s front page last week “exposed the identity of the covert operative running the CIA’s Iran operations.” And not just his name, but “his alleged role in the killing of a senior Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist leader” and in overseeing the hunt for Osama bin Laden — putting his life, and that of his family, at risk. Says Thiessen: “The Times justified its shameful exposure” by noting that his name had previously been published “in news reports” — namely, reports in the Times, though the paper never said so.
Columnist: Linda Sarsour’s Strange Defenders
Liel Leibovitz at Tablet is astounded by a public letter signed by “a roster of rabbis and Jewish communal leaders” supporting Linda Sarsour, the hard-left activist whom many see as “a harbinger of a particularly vitriolic strand of progressive politics that is particularly hostile to Israel and, perhaps, Jews.” Last month at Dartmouth, he says, she refused to answer a white male student’s question because she was discussing “communities of color.” In other words, “your right to speak . . . depends on your group affiliation.” The issue, says Leibovitz, is “whether one is willing to align oneself with a bigot who proclaims herself a victim while working assiduously to shut up anyone who dares to question her views.” The Anti-Defamation League, he notes, was formed “to defend us from people like Sarsour” — yet now it’s defending her “in a misguided attempt to appear righteous.”
London calling: Could Jeremy Corbyn Possibly Win?
When British Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election in April, her Conservative Party was “seen as a shoo-in,” notes Andrew Stuttaford at The Weekly Standard. But as polls open Thursday, Labor challenger Jeremy Corbyn — once widely “seen as dangerous, dimwitted or both” — is within striking distance. A series of May missteps, he says, “drew the public’s attention away from where it belonged — on the extremism of a Labor leadership that at times . . . was strikingly at odds with much of Labor tradition” and a potential prime minister — Corbyn — with a “poisonous past.” If Corbyn wins enough seats to form a “coalition of chaos” with the Scottish National Party, “jump to one side as the pound plummets past you.”
From the right: A Nationalist Plan for Climate Change
President Trump “has been defending his plan to withdraw from the Paris climate-change accord on nationalist grounds,” says Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg. But there’s a stronger case to be made — “even a stronger nationalist case.” Simply, “the costs of restricting energy use . . . are likely to exceed the benefits of mitigating global warming.” So “it makes more sense to devote resources to researching how to mitigate and adapt to the effects of warming than to discourage energy use.” Ponnuru notes that “sometimes our interests will counsel breaking with the rest of the world.” But the withdrawal looks especially bad because of Trump’s trash talk about NATO and the World Trade Organization. “Criticism of Trump,” he says, “often dwells on matters of tone at the expense of substance. But sometimes, and especially in foreign policy, tone is substance.”