Libertarian: Hands Off Drive-Thrus

A “growing number of American cities” think banning new fast-food drive-thru windows is a “cure-all for much of what ails society,” sighs Baylen Linnekin at Reason. Banning easy access to fast food, supporters claim, discourages consumers from eating it, thus “reversing urban obesity rates.” But as a recent study by Canadian researchers found, the bans were mostly “aesthetic in nature: improving walkability; reducing traffic; protecting community aesthetics; and ‘urban design.’ ” Actual health gains look ­unlikely, because people are going to eat fast food if they want to — even if that means sitting in their cars “while a family member or friend runs ­inside.” Bottom line: “Fast-food drive-thru bans are really just another lame excuse to limit choice while claiming falsely to be combating obesity.”

From the left: Dems’ Lame Frontrunners

“If you paid close attention to the Democratic presidential debate last week,” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait writes, “you noticed something that Democrats might find disturbing”: Leading candidates Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden “faced tough questions,” and both appeared unprepared “to defend themselves.” Biden’s problem is a simple one “with no clear solution: His son, Hunter, clearly traded on his father’s name” by ­accepting a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. “Biden’s response to this dilemma has been to elide it completely.” As for Warren, she continues to get flak for refusing to “acknowledge the financing mechanism” of Medicare for All, her preferred health policy, while dodging other objections, as well. So how will the frontrunners answer President Trump when he presses them over the issues they dodge today?

Tech beat: Facebook’s Problem Is Facebook

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to portray his company “as a kind of night watchman looking after community safety” rather than as a “censor” doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, scoffs National Review’s Kevin Williamson. The social-media mogul claims it isn’t right “for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy,” with the exception of when “there’s a risk of real-world harm” or “voter suppression.” Yet, notes Williamson, private companies, like newspapers, exercise “editorial judgment” all the time — as does Facebook itself, even if Zuckerberg won’t admit it. “Fixing what’s wrong with Facebook must begin with conceptual reform and a new spirit of intellectual forthrightness,” Williamson insists. “A few policy tweaks, no matter how clever, are not going to get it done.”

2020 watch: Warren’s Endorsement Dearth

Elizabeth Warren is now a top-tier Democratic candidate, yet she “isn’t getting much support from Democratic Party elites, such as elected officials and members of the Democratic National Committee,” notes FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. In fact, no one candidate is yet garnering many endorsements, but Warren in particular has major problems with party elites. “There is the perception among some of them that her left-wing stands, such as Medicare for All, are too risky for the general election and decrease the party’s chances of defeating President Trump.” Electability aside, there is still a strong “center-left contingent” in the party that philosophically rejects her radicalism. Does that matter? You bet — “we haven’t yet had a recent Democratic presidential primary with a nominee strongly opposed by the party elite.”

Conservative: Liberals’ Post-Christian Vision

The “most remarkable” finding of a new Pew survey on religious affiliation “is the fact that white Democrats are, for the most part, not Christians at all,” argues Daniel McCarthy at Spectator USA. As Pew reported, “today, fewer than half of white Democrats describe themselves as Christians, and just 3 in 10 say they regularly attend religious services.” The Democrats’ progressive ideology, McCarthy suggests, no longer needs American Protestantism as it did during the civil-rights era. Today’s marquee causes — “from abortion to same-sex marriage to the new transsexual ideology” — only require the “new god-concepts of autonomy and rights,” supplanting “any need on the left for Christianity.” The result: “Democrats and the young are becoming less Christian most rapidly in what may now be a feedback loop.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board