Libertarian: Warren’s Misleading Claims

“Any time a politician makes an argument using a single, simple statistic, it is worth investigating its origins,” and “especially … when that politician is Elizabeth Warren,” snarks Peter Suderman at Reason. She claimed in last week’s CNN town hall that “70 percent of airborne carbon pollution comes from three industries.” But Warren’s source, an EPA report, cited three “activities, not industries.” Two are “transportation” and “electricity production” — and the third is “industry” in general. “ ‘Industry,’ I think it is fair to say, is not an industry,” laughs Suderman. Warren’s formulation conveniently implies that the only people who would be negatively affected by carbon limits are “rich industrialists,” instead of ordinary people. She made the point in calling a question about lightbulb regulation a “distraction,” yet her response “appears to have been constructed to distract from the issue at hand.”

From the right: Why NC-9 Should Worry Dems

Tuesday’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which Democrats had touted as “the first major contest of the 2020 cycle,” featured “certain voting patterns” that should alarm Democrats, argues David Catron at The American Spectator. In Robeson County, minority voters make up 74 percent of the population, yet the Democrat won the county by only 1 point — far less then he drew just last November. And, unlike last time, the Republican, Dan Bishop, actually won Cumberland County, where “nearly 60 percent” are “Black, Hispanic, or a member of some other minority group.” Notably, a September poll confirms that a majority of blacks and Hispanics nationally find the US economy “strong” under President Trump, who cited the economy in rallying for Bishop. That “should frighten the Democrats badly.”

Supreme Court beat: Liberal Justice’s Odd Logic

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s ruling on asylum Wednesday shows “the demented psychology of liberals who believe American taxpayers should support all of Central America’s poor,” Eddie Scarry contends at the Washington Examiner. The court ruled that the Trump administration can deny asylum requests for Central Americans who don’t first seek refuge in another country on their way here. Sotomayor argued that Americans ought to have a “chance to weigh in” on the new policy, even though it would only affect them if “they were hoping some relative or friend would illegally cross the border and then claim asylum.” Besides, “asylum is for the persecuted,” and if someone “feels persecuted in their own country,” asks Scarry, why travel all the way to the United States “before finally claiming asylum”?

From the left: The Anti-Trump

Joe Biden, who “sits squarely atop an unwieldy Democratic presidential field,” is “reassuring, not strident, and in that sense he is the anti-Trump,” Lloyd Green muses at The Guardian. Despite his “repeated gaffes” and “uneven debate performances,” he “runs well with traditional Democratic constituencies along with those swing voters necessary to cobble together a win on election day 2020.” He’s “a candidate for our tumultuous times,” a “mainstream economic liberal” who doesn’t want to “strip Americans of their health insurance policies” or decriminalize illegal immigration, and he “understands that culture and coalitions both count.” In short, Biden is leading because “electability is a real thing.”

Conservative: Economy’s Defying Dem Strategy

The new jobs report’s “verdict is clear,” says Andy Puzder at Fox News: “No one should believe a single word the Democrats say about the economy.” The share of the population that was employed “rose to 60.9 percent, the highest percentage since December 2008,” while “the unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent, near a 50-year low”; “unemployment among African Americans and Hispanics also hit all-time lows.” Plus, workers’ wages rose an “impressive” 3.5 percent, and “consumer spending increased 4.7 percent.” What accounts for the good news? In part, “the Trump administration made it easier for businesses to hire and invest by slashing hundreds of job-killing regulations.” It all makes Democrats’ “gloomy” recession warnings, “a political strategy” that the US economy “is not going to cooperate with.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann