Conservative: Why McCabe’s Account Is So Unbelievable

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is having his moment in the sun, trying to sell a book with explosive allegations. But Quin Hillyer at The Washington Examiner charges that McCabe “undermines the believability of any of it by his outlandishly embittered descriptions of former ­Attorney General Jeff Sessions.” McCabe depicts Sessions as “openly racist” and “lacking basic knowledge” — which Hillyer, who has covered the former Alabama senator closely for 21 years, calls “sheer calumny and ­utterly unbelievable.” But then, these accusations originate from a man “not only with an axe to grind against Sessions (who fired him),” but one who “lied three times under oath,” according to the Justice Department ­inspector general. Frankly, “Sessions is far more credible than McCabe.”

Political scribe: Bernie’s Moment Has Come — And Gone

In announcing his candidacy for president, asserts The Washington Post’s David von Drehle, Bernie Sanders is “making the same mistake” as Eugene McCarthy, who forced LBJ into retirement in 1968 but then ran four more times through 1992. Both men “were improbable candidates whose willingness to challenge a giant paid off in a transient flash of glory. But Sanders ­appears no more aware than McCarthy that the moment doesn’t last.” In fact, “neither candidate grew into the larger force that can take an impulse and turn it into victory.” Sanders’ moment in “the heart of a buzzing, sparking madness” ended “with the weird, flawed figure of Donald Trump in the White House.” All that’s left for him now is “the residue of unslaked ambition.”

Foreign desk: Suddenly, Putin Is Looking Homeward

In his state of the nation address Wednesday, notes Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to respond to a steep drop in his popularity by focusing on “improvements to welfare, education and health care as well as economic development, instead of foreign policy.” One problem: “The ­improvements he seeks are being held back by the oppressive and corrupt system of government he has built and, judging by the speech, has no intention of dismantling.” In other words, Putin “wants Russia to go down China’s path,” but “without China’s competitive advantages.” Yet Russians are “unlikely to be impressed with promises” of massive spending and regulatory reform — especially as they come “so transparently after an anti-Putin turn in the polls.” Fact is, everything Putin is promising “could have been done earlier, and with more resources.”

Sociologist: How TV May Be Leading Trump Astray

The New York Times report that President Trump is spending “ever more time in front of a television” is “too much a theme of the Trump presidency to be dismissed as more fake news,” suggests Musa al-Gharbi at Spectator USA. Yet a serious consequence of this nonstop media diet is that, “if mainstream media are systematically wrong about something, the president’s thinking would likely be distorted, too.” And journalists “consistently correlate Trump’s perceived ‘racism’ with his popularity among whites,” when, in fact, “the reverse is true.” Indeed, “Trump’s racialized ­remarks” have been “more a drag on his support among whites than a key to his electoral success.” Since most pundits don’t understand “how anyone could reasonably vote for Trump,” they don’t “get his base, and they never have.” Yet Trump seems “poised to let them lead him off a cliff.”

Policy wonk: Public Unions Face Ominous Future

The percentage of government workers who belong to a union dipped again in 2018 and hit a 40-year low at just 33.9 percent, reports City Journal’s Steven Malanga. The reason: “the failure of government labor groups to bounce back from a steep decline in government employment that began in 2009” and which, ominously for them, “doesn’t seem to be slowing.” This trend “is steepest in heavily unionized, labor-friendly states” like New York and California. Most of these declines “reflect cost-cutting amid a slow recovery of state and local tax revenues and relentlessly rising employee costs, especially for pensions and health care.” And the news “is unlikely to get better for unions anytime soon,” given the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which “effectively institutes right-to-work in government employment.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann