From the right: Why Sen. Sinema Quit the Dems
“Gee, Democrats, maybe you shouldn’t have chased [Sen.] Kyrsten Sinema into the bathroom” last year but instead denounced that attack on her more loudly, snipes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. True, “it wasn’t the bathroom incident alone that made Sinema leave the Democratic Party” Friday, but that affair did show that her party’s activists prefer “harassment to persuasion” and that its leaders don’t feel compelled to defend her. Sinema wants to steer legislation in a center-left direction, while “a certain segment of the Democratic Party’s base” believes anyone “who hinders or delays them from getting what they want is an enemy.” Trouble is, if “you keep treating a member of your party” like an enemy, sooner or later she’ll “decide she might as well become an enemy.”
Media desk: NYT Staff’s Play-Acting ‘Strike’
“We’ve witnessed relatively paltry gestures like” Thursday’s walkout before by New York Times staffers, scoffs Politico’s Jack Shafer — and “management didn’t suffer even a pin prick.” Newspaper unions once “were powerful enough to drive newspapers under with prolonged strikes,” but “advances in computer typesetting and other technologies . . . have altered the union-management dynamic, favoring management.” Also, newspapers “have lost the economic and cultural centrality they held 60 years ago.” That’s why the NewsGuild has “almost no leverage in its struggle against the paper.” Indeed, “even the most ardent New York Times reader will admit that newspapers are fungible” — readers can turn “to the web for timely news.” So while “fighting the bosses has never been easy . . . play-acting at strikes has never won a new, juicy contract.”
Libertarian: City Council’s New Attack on Jobs
Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán’s Secure Jobs Act claims to be about protecting workers “against unfair and arbitrary firings,” but its “mandates would likely make work much more precarious for many New Yorkers,” contends Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Indeed, the measure threatens to destroy at-will employment, which lets employers fire poorly performing workers without “facing a complicated and time-consuming process.” In European countries with such laws, “workers face a ‘treadmill of temporary work’ contracts” — and a “cycle of constant job searches.” This has proved especially bad for workers aged 24 and younger, with 42% of them on “temporary contracts.” In short: “The Secure Jobs Act could drive jobs out of New York City” and make employment a much more dubious prospect “for a huge range of workers.”
Conservative: Pooh-Poohing Musk’s Twitter Files
No sooner did writer Matt Taibbi post relevant information from Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, about censoring The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting, than “a liberal network” of “Twitter personalities and journalists quickly got to work” aiming to “dismiss” the notion that anything “untoward had occurred,” quips Karol Markowicz at Fox News. But it had: The info showed Twitter worked “closely with the Biden campaign to remove tweets” it disliked, providing assistance Team Trump could never even hope to get. Of course, that makes it “important for the left that this story goes away,” because it confirms that there’s not equal treatment for “both sides of the political aisle.” Yet the files are important: “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”; Americans should see the “clear bias” of social media.
Progressive: How Dems Can Expand Their Base
“Democrats need a new strategy for breaking America’s political stalemate . . . by dramatically expanding their coalition,” argues Will Marshall at The Hill. Step One: “Stop hemorrhaging” minority working-class voters. “Black, Hispanic and Asian voters . . . are strongly opposed to ‘defunding the police.’ ” Dems’ “economic message also reflects the ideological predilections of college-educated professionals,” rather than “the aspirations of non-college voters.” Ditto for the left’s “fanciful ‘Green New Deal,’ the environmental equivalent of a Soviet-style Five-Year Plan.” Democrats “can stay their current course . . . or aim higher by embracing a tiebreaking politics of persuasion.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
