Harvey Weinstein’s Brand of Liberalism

Harvey Weinstein’s association with American liberalism wasn’t merely about proximity to political power or “moral absolution” — giving money to progressive causes, decrying racism and sexism — according to Thomas Frank at The Guardian. It was a certain strain of Democratic Party elitism: “Most people on the left think of themselves as resisters of authority, but for certain of their leaders, modern-day liberalism is a way of rationalizing and exercising class power,” specifically the so-called creative class, “by which they mean well-heeled executives in industries like Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.” It has buoyed the party’s fund-raising and helped them win over suburban voters, Frank writes. And “Harvey Weinstein seemed to fit right in. This is a form of liberalism that routinely blends self-righteousness with upper-class entitlement.”

No, Niger Isn’t Trump’s Benghazi

Democrats are trying to turn the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger into the Trump administration’s “Benghazi.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gave oxygen to the bogus theory that Americans died because President Trump’s travel ban caused Chadian troops to redeploy from Niger, leaving US soldiers vulnerable. Nonsense, writes Laura Seay, professor of African politics at Colby College. Chadian troops were on the other side of the country: “Maddow incorrectly claimed that Chadian forces were protecting civilians from the ISIS-affiliated ISGS. This simply isn’t true; Chadian forces were never fighting ISGS in Niger. They were fighting a completely different enemy in a different part of the country.” Seay’s message for Dems: “politicizing a tragedy with factual errors . . . won’t bring the answers we, and the families of the Niger fallen, so desperately need.”

Obama’s Own Russia Scandal

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in approving the sale of US uranium to a Russian state entity while her husband and a Clinton Foundation donor benefited is more than a Clinton scandal, says Andrew McCarthy at National Review. It’s an Obama administration scandal, too: “At the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.” The Obama administration kept the racketeering quiet and even reportedly threatened an informant who wanted to tell Congress what he knew. Declares McCarthy: Obama “was knowingly compromising American national-security interests.”

The Chilling Spanish Cyber Civil War

The Spanish government’s attempts to suppress the Catalonian independence vote involved a cyber campaign, explains Christian Caryl at The Washington Post: “Telecom companies received instructions to shut off user access to information sources provided by the Catalan government,” and “Spanish police even shut down the entire ‘.cat’ domain by occupying the offices of its registry and arresting its head.” Independence supporters created an app to help Catalans locate polling places, but “After Spanish officials learned about it, a court order was sent to Google Play, the Android-based app store, demanding its removal — and the Americans complied.” Some likened it to behavior of autocratic governments. “One can only hope that the Catalonian cyberwar does not mark the start of a new illiberal era among Western democracies,” says Caryl.

How Not To Stop Trump

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen has a warning for the left: “Without hard-nosed realism about the state of the country and Trump’s talents, you lose.” Dems who think Trump might get impeached should think hard instead about his chances at re-election. Cohen says just being against Trump isn’t enough, and that the Democratic Party “hasn’t grasped the degree to which it lives, still, in a coastal echo chamber of identity politics and Trump-bashing.” The president, Cohen says, “winks at white supremacists, thrives on confrontation and debases the Oval Office.” But that doesn’t make his defeat “inevitable,” nor does it mean “his supporters do not include millions of decent, smart Americans who just view the world differently.”

— Compiled by Seth Mandel