From the left: Why Biden’s Losing the Young
“Disapproval of Biden is widespread among young voters” and not just because of “American support for Israel’s war against Hamas,” explains Jeremy Etelson at The Hill. “Beyond Biden’s personal cognitive challenges, his administration’s policies are having indefensible consequences.” “Rent prices are still above pre-pandemic levels”; homelessness “spiked from 2022 to 2023 to the highest level since 2006.” And “an imminent national security risk has been generated by the border crisis,” with perhaps “10 million undocumented immigrants” entering the country. Biden’s legislative successes, like the Inflation Reduction Act, haven’t “tipped the scale,” as inflation remains at an “historic” high. “The future looks dire for middle-class and low-income Americans”; “many voters in the younger generations are thinking about these various crises,” not “just one issue.”
From the right: A White House in Denial
“The White House and its media allies are in full defensive mode over videos of President Joe Biden” at recent events, observes The Washington Examiner’s Byron York. Some may be convinced by quibbles about the Normandy walk-away or how Barak Obama seemed to guide Biden offstage at that LA fundraiser, but that Juneteenth concert — where “Biden stood perfectly motionless, his eyes seemingly fixed on some distant point” — “was not a misleading video” created by Republicans: “Something was going wrong with the president, and it makes no sense to pretend that it wasn’t.” And if there is “some sort of problem with the president, it will happen again. The White House will not be able to say ‘This did not happen’ whenever something does indeed happen.”
Eye on the Economy: Joe’s ‘Job Growth’ Baloney
“Last year, countless polls showed widespread disapproval of the state of the economy, especially regarding inflation. In response, the Biden administration hung its hat on supposedly blockbuster monthly job gains. But new data show those numbers overestimated job growth by almost 800,000 in 2023,” chides E.J. Antoni at The Washington Times. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “monthly reports are subject to a variety of statistical problems that can sometimes produce significant errors,” but “many news stories don’t report on the downward revisions to previous months’ data.” Now the more-accurate quarterly census “is finally in for 2023, and it shows the previous estimates were off spectacularly, even after the huge downward revisions,” meaning “about 1 in 4 jobs that were supposedly added last year never existed.”
Conservative: Trump’s Appeal to Black Voters
“One reason Democrats are struggling with black voters is that Mr. Trump can run on his economic record and Mr. Biden can’t,” argues The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley. “Between 2017 and 2019, median household income rose by 10% for whites and 12% for blacks, and pay at the lower end of the wage distribution was rising at almost double the rate of pay at the upper end.” Even “if you’re making more money today, you’re still falling behind because of higher costs for gas, food and housing.” And polls show Trump’s right to say, “the black population wants law enforcement more than any other population. Riley thinks Trump’s wrong “to paint illegal immigration as the biggest threat to public safety and black upward mobility,” but on-point in calling out “ progressive mayors who are diverting limited resources away from struggling black communities to house, feed and educate people who came here unlawfully.”
Media watch: The Times’ ‘Resistance’ Reveal
“The New York Times thinks it’s important to tell you that ‘The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started,’ ” groans National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. That tells you: “The Times senior national political brain trust thinks Joe Biden is going to lose. It’s time to start preparing for the wilderness.” It also exposes “the legal and cultural left’s utter incapacity for self-awareness,” with one prog stalwart claiming, “We have to democracy-proof our actual institutions and the values that we share.” Snipes McLaughlin: “Democracy-proof. Can’t have the voters spoil the party.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board