Eye on 2020: Why Bernie Doesn’t Worry Wall St.

“Pity those poor, oblivious bankers,” quips James Pethokoukis at The Week. “Don’t they know the Bernie Bros are coming for their loot?” Seems not: A recent Goldman Sachs report noted a “whopping 80 to 90 percent of participants at our client conferences thought that President Trump would win re-election in November.” It “seems inconceivable to many investors” that voters wouldn’t keep him in office, “with the unemployment rate at a half-century low and economic confidence at a 20-year high.” And Wall Street “might not be too worried” even if Bernie Sanders takes the White House. JPMorgan puts “the probability of major changes like Medicare for All or a wealth tax at less than 5 percent” — because he’d have to get legislation passed to enact the revolution, and a “plummeting Dow might give Congress second thoughts about Bernie’s war on wealth.”

Neocon: Dems Not Assured of Black Votes

“Democrats would suffer at the polls either by failing to win black voters or by losing them,” notes Commentary’s Noah Rothman — and they risk doing so “by regarding black voters as a monolith consumed by what progressives believe should be their concerns.” Dem contenders have proclaimed “America indelibly — perhaps irredeemably — racist and ­advocated reparative policies to level the playing field.” But many African-Americans don’t agree. In a Gallup poll after “a 2016 Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of using race and ethnicity to make college admissions decisions, non-Hispanic blacks were by far the most hostile toward the decision,” with just 35 percent approving. And 72 percent of blacks view violent crime as a pressing matter, which might be why Mike Bloomberg is picking up their support. Preventing “gun crime” is “a more tangible priority than amorphous promises to ameliorate ­racism through public awareness campaigns.”

From the left: Bloomy’s Big Break

Even while “standing on the sidelines” for the first four Democratic primaries, Mike Bloomberg has “changed the game by pledging to double his already sky-high spending,” Juan Williams notes at The Hill. Joe Biden’s fourth-place finish in Iowa gave Bloomberg “one big reason to double down,” and the Democratic National Committee’s rules changed to allow Bloomberg onstage at future debates gave the ex-mayor “another lift.” Bloomberg’s “biggest weapon”: As one of his advisers puts it, if socialist Bernie Sanders “soars through the first four primaries . . . Mike may end up as the only thing standing between Bernie and the nomination.”

From the right: Trump Realizes Obama’s Promises

In Barack Obama’s last State of the Union, he talked about “middle-class economics,” involving “entitlements and new mandates on employers.” In fact, the middle class has “made substantial gains since then” — but only, argues Issues & Insights’ John Merline, because “President Donald Trump ignored everything Obama said,” instead delivering tax cuts and deregulation. The result: Income inequality declined, while jobs rose by “6.6 million,” and “average hourly earnings rose 3.1 percent over a year ago.” In Trump’s State of the Union, he accurately noted, “If we hadn’t reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success” — probably the reason “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi felt the need to tear up her copy of Trump’s speech when he finished.”

Conservative: Coming Back to ‘Bork’ Biden

Ira Stoll at The New York Sun asks: “Who is to blame for an electorate that values youth over experience, that has elevated Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama over Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton?” The answer: Biden himself — by changing the rules of politics as when he brags, he “almost single-handedly made sure that Robert Bork did not get on the [Supreme] Court.” Those hearings made it an advantage to have “as short a paper trail as possible” so opponents couldn’t distort the record. Now Biden’s paying for his record in decades of Senate votes. Plus, “short-on-experience candidates are the personification of judging on intentions rather than on results” — a boost to Pete Buttigieg and even Bernie Sanders. It’s all what “Biden helped to create by blocking Bork.”

— Compiled by Kelly Jane Torrance & Karl Salzmann