Political scribe: Dems May Regret a Kavanaugh Win

Democrats suddenly smell potential victory in the bitterly partisan dogfight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination following Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations. But The Week’s Noah Millman warns that if they score a surprise win, don’t be surprised if Democrats face political “blowback.” Even if Kavanaugh withdraws his nomination, “Democrats should be prepared for the politics to shift swiftly and rapidly against them.” Because “if the Republican base becomes convinced that Kavanaugh is completely innocent . . . that could motivate them powerfully to go to the polls.” And control of the Senate “depends overwhelmingly on who turns out in a number of deep red states where the issue favors conservatives.” Closing the partisan enthusiasm gap, he says, “could make the difference between victory and defeat.”

Historian: Those On the Left Are Losing Their Marbles

The progressive street “is leading fossilized Democrats into a sort of collective madness,” suggests Victor Davis Hanson at National Review, explaining that “the dinosaurs of the party” are desperately seeking relevance “by sounding crazier than the new unhinged base.” Witness Dianne Feinstein trying to “strut her ossified progressive bona fides” at the Kavanaugh hearings. Or Elizabeth Warren invoking the 25th amendment as a way to remove President Trump based on the anonymous New York Times op-ed. Or Maxine Waters, once known primarily for “using her office for personal and family gain,” now being hailed as a “self-appointed spokeswoman” of the emerging progressive party. Says Hanson: This new progressivism “operates outside the realm of reason and truth as it descends into collective madness.”

Iconoclast: Bernie Sanders Wants To Privatize Socialism

Who, asks Charles Lane at The Washington Post, “should bear primary responsibility for ensuring an adequate social-safety net and a reasonable level of economic equality?” According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, “that’s a job for corporate America” — a strange position for a self-proclaimed socialist. He wants to tax large employers “$1 for every dollar their workers and their family members get in means-tested federal benefits such as food stamps or Medicaid.” But that would “be counterproductive: a huge disincentive to hire poor people possessing only entry-level job skills.” Generally, “government is better positioned to address poverty and inequality than private businesses are.” Says Lane: “You’d think Sanders, author of a single-payer Medicare-for-all health-care plan would understand that.”

Media critic: Bombshell WashPost Story Was a Dud

On Aug. 29, The Washington Post published an explosive report charging the Trump administration with systematically denying passports to Latinos born along the border. But as the Huffington Post’s Roque Planas reports, that story “withheld key data, mischaracterized information and lobbed an allegation of fraud at a deceased doctor without speaking to his family members, who complained publicly.” In fact, the Post article has already “been substantially altered three times” online, including after his own “multiple queries.” The story cited three “specific policies to support its allegation of a crackdown.” Yet “all three practices predate Trump.” Still, the article “remains misleading. It relies on anecdotal evidence to make an explosive claim that’s contradicted by official data.”

Foreign desk: Moscow Still Denying WWII History

After complaints from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Associated Press revised its story about a Holocaust commemoration in Ukraine that described Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as “former allies.” This references the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, which paved the way for Germany’s (and, soon after, the USSR’s) invasion of Poland. The AP agreed the pact “didn’t constitute a formal alliance.” But as Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky notes, “this isn’t how history is seen by many people in Poland and the Baltics.” Indeed, Vladimir Putin sticks “to the Soviet version of history: that the pact was necessary for the Soviet Union’s security in the face of a treacherous Western appeasement policy toward Hitler.” But while the pact “didn’t purport to describe a formal alliance,” the term “former allies . . . isn’t much of a stretch.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann