Conservative: Who To Blame for the Mueller Debacle

“Democrats are, without question, worse off now than they were before former special counsel Robert Mueller gave his five hours of testimony” Wednesday, argues The Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry. For some reason, they “thought it wise to drag out this never-ending nightmare.” But the show “amounted to a colossal waste of time.” And it’s their own fault — not just for holding the hearings but also for their questioning, which was so “weak” that they even managed to turn New York Times columnist Charles Blow against them. Democrats “beat this dead horse, resurrected it and then beat it to death again,” Scarry sneers. “If they’re upset with the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing, they can blame themselves.”

From the left: No Knight in Shining Armor for Democrats

Bob Mueller’s testimony actually left both parties “disappointed,” concludes Cynthia Alksne at Talking Points Memo. Democrats “hoped there might be a smoking gun” or at least a “sensational new revelation.” Republicans hoped “they could embarrass or discredit a man” who spent his career serving the country. But nothing new came out. The obvious question: “Now what? If the hearing this week is prologue,” Alksne believes, “Trump is going to get away with it.” Democrats need to admit “there is no savior here, no knight in shining armor” who’s going to magically make it easy for them to impeach the president. They must decide “whether they follow the polls or whether they follow the evidence.”

2020 watch: Biden Starts Fighting Back

Sen. Cory Booker is “ready for his moment with Joe Biden” at next week’s second Democratic debates, having just started a fight over the ex-veep’s criminal-justice record, report the Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick and Hanna Trudo. “Previewing what promises to be a contentious issue among the two rivals,” Booker painted Biden as an “architect of mass incarceration” and criticized his recent apology for it as “too little too late.” Yet “Biden and his campaign were not going to be caught flatfooted for a second time,” after Sen. Kamala Harris’ attack during the first debate. So they issued a “rare on-the-record attack” of Booker, reminding voters of his own admissions of failure in handling police while mayor of Newark. “Tension had been building between Booker and Biden” for weeks “with new force,” and next week’s debates will show a new dynamic, now that Biden and his campaign have “leaned in” to Booker’s taunts.

Urban beat: Gentrify for Social Justice

For the left, gentrification remains a dirty word, often equated with “racism, oligarchic developers” and even “genocide,” observes Kay Hymowitz at City Journal. Yet a new Federal Reserve study “could shake up the conversation.” The study compared 2000 Census data for residents of “low-income, central-city neighborhoods of the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S.” with data on the same people in the 2010-2014 American Community Survey. Turns out, “gentrification displaces very few people” and has little effect on rent for “less educated residents.” Most intriguing: It “increases the probability that children of less educated homeowners will attend and graduate college.” Hymnowitz admits that more research is needed. “But for now, how does the slogan ‘Gentrification for Social Justice’ sound?”

Culture desk: How Hollywood Sucks Up to China

At the Washington Examiner, Matt Daniels blasts the American movie industry for ignoring China’s abuse of human rights. “Hollywood has voluntarily self-censored to appease a regime known for its brutal repression of all the freedoms that artists, writers and filmmakers supposedly cherish most.” Why? Because China is the second largest movie-going country in the world and because it “has shrewdly begun to invest in American movies to further control their content.” Filmmakers “desperately” want Chinese approval. So avoid making movies that show uncomfortable truths about the Beijing government. “Do we really want another country to dictate to us what stories we can or cannot tell?” asks Daniels. Consider Hollywood’s record on China the next time you watch “a self-righteous Oscar diatribe,” he suggests. The “silence is deafening.”

— Compiled by Ashley Allen & Adam Brodsky