Democrats admitting reality too late and other commentary

Conservative: Dems Admit Reality Too Late

“That screeching noise you hear is not just the sound of Democrats wailing over their collapsing popular support,” snarks Hugo Gurdon at Washington Examiner, “it is also the squeal of their tires as they race away from their anti-law-and-order policies in hope of avoiding an electoral smash against reality.” San Francisco Mayor London Breed “announced a 180-degree turnaround” regarding her policing policies, launching emergency police intervention in the “city’s crime-wrecked Tenderloin district.” But it’s not likely enough for Democrats to salvage the next election: It “would take Houdini to escape the bind” they’ve “put themselves in after allowing, indeed warmly welcoming, a large phalanx of extremists into their midst.” Dems’ “extreme progressivism, with its attendant lunacies on immigration, spending education, and a host of other matters, is alienating minority voters” that Dems need.

Economist: War on Carbon Fuels Stagflation

When President Biden “canceled the Keystone Pipeline and ended the leasing of Federal lands for oil and gas exploration, he not only ensured an energy price shock. He would spike food prices. To understand why is to understand the stagflationary morass America now finds itself in,” explains Peter Navarro at Fox News. “Energy price shocks also beget food price shocks. Petroleum is THE most important production input for fertilizer. It also takes a lot of now expensive fuel to transport products from farm to market and table.” Other issues —- from Democrats’ flooding the nation with new debt-fueled spending to Federal Reserve policies to supply-chain woes, droughts and rising food demand China — play big roles, too, as does the “global computer chip shortage which has crippled US auto production.”

Giving watch: Progressive Philanthropy Bullies

“It took only a few days for MacKenzie Scott to cave,” report James Piereson & Naomi Schaefer Riley at City Journal. The “philanthropist ex-wife of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos” wanted “a little less publicity for her donations,” so announced she’d leave it to recipients “to speak for themselves.” But “critics denounced her approach,” so she apologized and promised “a full public account of each gift she makes.” Her donations, critics argue, “should be made public because the wealth in her foundation is really public money. After all, Scott receives a tax deduction” for it. By “that logic, we might require homeowners to report how they spend money, since the public subsidizes their mortgage deductions.” In fact, “the liberal philanthropic establishment” wants “to pressure or even cancel donors who don’t give to progressively approved causes.”

From the right: Joe’s Clueless ‘Caring’

“For the totality of his public career, Joe Biden has ‘known’ that problems are solved by spending money,” grumbles National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “Upon taking office, President Biden believed the single most important thing he and his congressional allies could do was enact a ‘COVID-relief bill.’ Never mind that the previous year, Congress and President Trump had enacted the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, the $484 billion Paycheck Protection Program and an $8.3 billion supplemental appropriations bill.” Putting $2 trillion more into an already-recovering economy “where the supply of goods was still limited by the effects of the pandemic around the world” had “predictable effects”: “We’ve now experienced six straight months in which inflation has surged more than 5 percent, year over year.” But hey, Biden believes “spending is caring” — damn the consequences.

Libertarian: Manchin’s Inflation Fear

“Plans by congressional Democrats for trillions of dollars in taxes and spending hikes” are stymied thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin, notes Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. “Publicly and loudly concerned about the so-called ‘Build Back Better’ bill’s near-certain escalation of already worrisome federal debt and inflation” even “inflation has hit a year-on-year rate of 6.8 percent, the highest level since 1982,” Manchin rightly blocked the bill to avoid the horror of the “impoverishing impact of escalating government debt and the resulting inflation.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board