Democrats under threat as ‘Greenlash’ looms, Trump maintains strong lead for 2024, and other insights from commentators
Liberal: ‘Greenlash’ Coming for Democrats
In this month’s European parliament elections, the “Greens took big losses,” shedding 18 of their 72 seats, notes The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira.
A key reason: “backlash against green policies” — or “greenlash.” In America, Donald Trump is “getting traction” running “on exactly the same climate/energy issues” as the right populists in Europe.
Seems voters don’t want to be “forced, directly or indirectly, to get an electric vehicle”; they “really do care, above all, about cheap energy prices, not the provenance of that energy”; and most simply “do not care that much about climate change” vs. issues like the cost of living.
Yet Biden and the Democrats are “leaning into” the climate issue.
Beware: “Greenlash is here and coming for them, unless they change course.”
From the right: Trump’s Persistent 2024 Lead
It’s hard “to imagine [Donald] Trump’s support plunging after it has persisted despite multiple prosecutions and a guilty verdict,” argues the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone.
His “lead over President Joe Biden . . . was 0.9 percentage points when the verdict was handed down and 0.8 points as this is written;” in 2016 and 2020 “Trump trailed Hillary Clinton for all but a couple of days and Biden for every single day in the 12 months before the election.”
“Trump’s prospects this year look even better” when you consider that polls “have him ahead by around 5 points in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada — states he lost narrowly in 2020,” and “microscopic leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, which he carried in 2016 and lost in 2020.”
Libertarian: How the Feds Fuel Opioid Crisis
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s harsh oversight of “medications for pain and ADHD” leaves “doctors increasingly reluctant to prescribe any controlled drugs,” fume Jeffrey Singer & Josh Bloom at Reason.
“Patients desperate for pain relief” then “turn to street drugs, where they fall victim to counterfeit pills that contain fentanyl (or worse).”
Yet for decades “doctors in Australia, Canada,” and “throughout Europe have been using a fixed-dose, inhaled general anesthesia medicine that effectively reduces acute pain.”
But it’s blocked by the US Food and Drug Administration. Only now is the FDA letting supervised clinical trials for it resume; patients still must wait.
Congress can bypass this “long and arduous” approval process “through a reform called international reciprocity,” giving US “doctors and patients access to drugs and medical devices approved by regulatory agencies in similar countries.”
Eye on Albany: Hochul’s Costly Pandemic Miss
The state’s $4.3 million after-action review of New York’s “pandemic response falls far short of what Governor Hochul promised — and the state urgently needs,” grumbles the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond.
The Olson Group’s 262-page report is “thinly researched, poorly argued, ill-informed, sloppily presented and marred by obvious errors.”
It fails to “lay out a clear plan for improving public health surveillance so that the state is not similarly blindsided in a future pandemic” and its conclusions lack “enough evidence and detail to provide a useful guide for policymakers.”
“The 83,000 New Yorkers who died deserve better from the state’s leadership than a shoddy consultant’s report.”
Hollywoodland: Why Studios Can’t Save Joe
After Barack Obama led Joe Biden offstage in LA, chuckles Sasha Stone at Free Thinking, “it was hard not to see the whole thing as over. Like over over. Like the Fonz jumping the shark over.”
“These celebrities can barely get people to watch their films,” yet “still think they can use their celebrity to influence voters.”
Fact is, “Hollywood is barely surviving.” Once, “writers and directors told stories about the lives of ordinary people. That is no longer true because they, like the Democrats, have become disconnected from that reality.”
Serving as “Good Soldiers of the Left” has cost Hollywood “nearly everything,” and: “If their only solution is to blame the people for their failings, then it’s all over but the shouting.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
