From the left: A DNC Alarm Sounds

“Several Democratic National Committee members have a message to their organization’s top leadership,” The Daily Beast’s Hanna Trudo reports: “President Trump is crushing us.” Even though swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were vital to Trump’s 2016 victory, “multiple DNC members” have “privately sounded alarms,” saying that party chief Tom Perez hasn’t reached out to voters in those states ahead of 2020. As pollster Jim Zogby told The Daily Beast, “Irish, Italian, Polish, Eastern Central European, Arab and Armenian-American” communities are facing “sheer neglect” from the DNC — all while “the Trump campaign is already reaching out to swing voters.”

From the Right: Automakers Cave to Cali Greens

It may seem counterintuitive, but “four major carmakers are embracing California’s plans to kill the internal combustion engine” — even while “the Trump administration is pushing much-needed regulatory relief,” John Merline writes at Issues & Insights. Early on in his administration, President Barack Obama “cajoled automakers into agreeing to impossibly strict fuel economy standards of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by model-year 2025,” which would eventually force “a mass conversion to electric cars.” Team Trump, however, wants standards “that will let automakers continue to build cars consumers want and can afford.” But carmakers like Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW have embraced the Obama plan, which California has more or less adopted. “These carmakers have been dumping money into electric cars because of government prodding” — and now want to protect their investment. The question, Merline concludes, “is whether other car companies will have the fortitude to stand up for car buyers.”

Foreign desk: BoJo’s Offer MPs Can’t Refuse

“Boris Johnson’s team want the choice for members of Parliament to be between their Brexit strategy and making Jeremy Corbyn prime minister,” James Forsyth notes in The Spectator. Johnson is gambling that more MPs would prefer a hard Brexit from the European Union to having the radical left Labour leader win No. 10. BoJo’s decision to suspend Parliament is designed to prevent the opposition from figuring out a way to block his plan to leave the EU definitively on or before the deadline of Oct. 31. The prorogation also “sends a message” to lawmakers who’d dare force the prime minister to ask for an EU deadline extension. “If MPs are to thwart this strategy, they need at a minimum an alternative government ready to go” — an unlikely prospect.

Libertarian: Dems Ditch Medicare for All

In recent years, single-payer health care has migrated from the Democratic fringes to the party mainstream. Yet now “the momentum has slowed,” Reason’s Peter Suderman says, as “some Democrats are retreating — or at least proceeding with caution.” Most notably, Kamala Harris, an original sponsor of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill in 2017, now expresses discomfort “with the Sanders plan” and has released “her own (confused) competing plan.” Meanwhile, the party old guard “continues to think Medicare for All is a bad idea.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has “repeatedly” questioned it, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has warned that it will prove “a problem for Democrats to back it in the 2020 election.” Even Sanders has modified his original proposal to appease labor unions. Bottom line: Medicare for All “will probably remain out of reach” for the foreseeable future.

Historian: Poland’s Moment of Truth

This Sunday marks the 80th anniversary of the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. And as Filip Mazurczak recalls at First Things, “Poland’s wartime legacy is overwhelmingly one of heroic resistance and bloody martyrdom.” The Nazis utterly destroyed Poland’s elites, “yet they arguably faced more backlash in Poland than in any other occupied territory. The Polish underground published clandestine anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet writings, engaged in sabotage and even assassinated high-ranking occupying officials.” But the Soviet domination of Poland postwar meant the country’s epic of resistance has remained buried and distorted. Yes, “the Polish government’s legislation regarding its wartime past is often misguided,” but “the goal of informing the world of Poland’s wartime legacy is noble.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann and Sohrab Ahmari