Delaying the end of the Gaza war, Democrats’ concerns about blue-collar workers, and additional commentary
Foreign Desk: Don’t Rush To End Gaza War
“The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” argues Eric R. Mandel at The Hill, brings “an understandable impulse to end the war immediately, presumably in exchange for release of the hostages.”
But a big opportunity “will be squandered if we lack the strategic patience to act wisely.”
“If the US doesn’t let Israel use its newfound leverage to get the best ceasefire agreement, it will set the stage for a resurgence of Hamas.”
President Biden “would like to ensure his legacy” now “by ending the war on any terms.” But “we need to help Israel” by “maximizing the leverage it has gained through its costly military achievements.”
Plus: “Being patient with Israel signals to our allies around the world that we stand with our friends.”
From the right: Why Blacks Are Ditching Harris
Robert Woodson Sr., who “has been coordinating development programs in poor black neighborhoods since the 1960s,” thinks Kamala Harris’ challenge with black voters “is part of a broader problem the Democratic Party faces with working-class voters generally,” explains The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley
Black men “are upset at the migrants in places like Chicago and Boston and California getting free cellphones and housing,” says Woodson, and “remember the unemployment and low inflation” of the Trump years.
Adds Riley: “Before Covid, black workers were making absolute gains and gaining on their white counterparts.”
While “there’s no guarantee that Mr. Trump will repeat that performance in a second term,” it’s still “hard to quibble with the growing number of black voters who want to see him try.”
Libertarian: Blatant Border Bungling
That “nearly one-third” of expensive border-surveillance towers don’t work “is big political news at a time when voters consistently rank immigration among their main concerns,” marvels Reason’s J.D. Tuccille.
Yes, “almost a third of the Remote Video Surveillance System towers are completely offline.”
Various parts of the “Integrated Surveillance Towers network” cost a total around $6 billion,” yet the “incompatible parts” in practice “work much like everything else that government does: inefficiently, expensively, and unaccountably.”
Indeed, “We shouldn’t be surprised when the implementation of an actual immigration and border policy, once one has been decided, looks a lot like expensive towers standing in the desert, doing nothing.”
College beat: Fear Rules the Campus
Yale poli-sci professor Gregory Collins was this year’s recipient of the Lux et Veritas award from the Buckley Institute, recognizing a teacher who fosters “open and civil discussion in the classroom even on contentious issues,” notes Daniel McCarthy at The Spectator.
Of course, William F. Buckley “advanced intellectual freedom by challenging it” and would blanch at today’s academia, which “has become a panopticon” where “students are the jailers and prisoners alike” and anyone can “turn informant at any time.”
Even profs “fear the watchful, censorious student eye,” which most often manifests as a “cellphone camera.”
Students “are terrified of being recorded saying anything out of step with progressive orthodoxy,” so they self-censor.
“Classrooms today threaten to make the malady” of intellectual cowardice into a full blown epidemic — “at least without the efforts of teachers” like Collins.
Election watch: Dems’ Blue-Collar Blues
Donald Trump’s visit to McDonald’s to “sling fries” highlighted his “cultural and economic outreach to working-class voters,” observes Fred Bauer at City Journal.
And, indeed, working-class voters have been “migrating from their old base in the Democratic Party to join the Republican coalition.”
The “priorities and cultural values of progressive elites have become increasingly estranged” from working-class voters; Kamala Harris’ “central issues” — abortion and anti-Trumpism — “seem more designed to turn out college-educated voters.”
Meanwhile, many voters “who feel left behind like [Donald Trump’s] style.”
And “today’s GOP is certainly more attuned to working-class voters.”
These people were the “pillar of the New Deal coalition that dominated American politics for decades. Now Republicans hope that offering some grand new bargain for workers could help them forge their own governing majority.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
