Media beat: Whoopi vs. the Blacklist

Whoopi Goldberg just slapped actress Debra Messing for “demanding a list of attendees for [an] upcoming fundraiser to support President Donald Trump,” reports Mediaite’s Joe DePaolo. Goldberg may loathe Trump’s politics, but targeting his donors is “not a good idea,” she said on “The View”: “Your idea of who you don’t want to work with is your personal business” but “the next list that comes out, your name will come on, and then people will be coming after you!” She then invoked the McCarthy era blacklists, whose targets “lost their right to work” over mere accusations. “In this country,” she thundered, “we don’t go after people because we don’t like who they voted for … We don’t print out lists.” In short, “Remember what the blacklist actually meant to people and don’t encourage anyone, anyone, to do it.”

2020 Watch: Where the Dems Stand

As fall begins, Joe Biden’s support still “looks impressively durable in one light” — polling — but “acutely vulnerable in another” — a “series of mildly clumsy performances,” notes John F. Harris at Politico. What changed over the summer? “Razzle-dazzle has fizzled” as candidates aiming for Kennedyesque charisma are either “laboring to stay in the first tier (Buttigieg and Harris) or penetrate it at all (O’Rourke, Booker, Castro).” Plus, the party’s left “is more complicated than meets the eye,” as Liz Warren’s backers are more elite and whiter while Bernie Sanders’ “are a little bit more diverse, younger, more male, less college-educated.” Plus, “this is the year of the selfie,” as candidate-supporter photos “symbolize campaigns that are based around intimacy, or at least the illusion of intimacy.”

Foreign desk: Brexit Is About Liberty

“Anti-Brexiteers” searching for ways to stop Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s October prorogation of Parliament “plead they act in the spirit of British democracy,” but their “machinations” are actually “in direct defiance of the people’s referendum vote three years ago,” Stephen MacLean storms at the American Spectator. Rather than holding “the Executive to account,” as is the House of Commons’ historic role, Remainers aim to “usurp and abrogate authority” to themselves, “in defiance of the party in power.” What if the resistance triggers a general election? Johnson’s Conservatives lead “their Labour opposition by 11 points, 33% to 22%,” according to an August poll.

From the center: Federalism & the Abortion Fight

Diversity may be “a mantra in modern America,” but “when it comes to hot-button public policies, Americans prefer procrustean conformity to state experimentation” — including on abortion, argues William J. Watkins Jr., at The Hill. Yet Georgia’s Legislature this year passed a “heartbeat law,” prohibiting “most abortions once a physician detects a fetal heartbeat,” while Illinois “declared abortion a ‘fundamental right’ and removed sundry regulations on abortion clinics.” For all the “strong feelings” here, a “proper understanding of our Constitution” shows that “the regulation of abortions is clearly part of the residuary sovereignty of the states concerning the lives and liberties of the people.” And: “If we want to live together in peace, we should let the federal system work and not demand uniformity, which increases internal political tensions and rivalries.”

Fiscal wonk: DiNapoli’s Positive Pension Nudge

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is dropping the expected rate of return for state pension-fund investments from 7 percent to 6.8 percent assumption for state pensions, and the move “is a good one” even though it will tend to require higher taxpayer contributions to the funds, E.J. McMahon writes at the Empire Center. “Mind you: the rate will still be much too high by private-sector standards,” which assume about a 3 percent return, but “DiNapoli deserves credit for continuing to at least nudge this crucial key variable slightly further in the right direction — down” so that taxpayers face less risk of suddenly having to bail out the funds. It’s also “far more prudent and responsible” than the higher returns assumed by trustees of other New York pension funds. “This is a rare instance,” McMahon notes, “of an elected official putting the taxpayers’ long-term interests ahead of his short-term gain.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann