From the left: Pelosi & Co. Yearn for Obama

“Moderate progressive Democrats” now “mounting a sustained counter to the party’s lurch to the left” privately “would like an assist from the only Democrat who might make a difference: former President Barack Obama,” reports Al Hunt at The Hill. Though he has warned against ideological “purity” in the party, Obama “has kept a very low profile,” even as 2020 candidates and The Squad “are forcefully pushing extremely liberal positions on issues like immigration, free college tuition and slavery reparations.” At the least, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other mainstream and moderate party figures wish he would “directly call on Democrats” to save the Affordable Care Act from the threat of single-payer — which polls “and most Democratic House members from swing districts” see “as a general election disaster.”

Iconoclast: Blame US Hawks for Global Migration Crisis

The recent drowning of some 150 Italian-bound African migrants in the Mediterranean “is a tragedy for which the United States is ultimately to blame,” fumes The Week’s Matthew Walther. “Our disastrous interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen have turned North Africa and the Middle East into a hellscape.” The sheer number of migrants fleeing from these regions has forced immigration to the center of European politics: “Parties that promised to restrict it have won elections and referendums throughout the continent, from Britain to Switzerland to Hungary.” Too bad “none of our own leaders have accepted responsibility. The idea that the American foreign policy consensus is largely responsible for the rise of xenophobic nationalist parties throughout Europe seems never to have occurred to the luminaries at the Council on Foreign Relations who wag their fingers at the European far right.”

From the right: ‘Woke’ Racism

At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson takes aim at “the woke identity politics movement” where “obsessions with racial privilege and tribal exceptionalism are justified by accusing others of just such bias.” Thus the “hip new racists” cheer Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s claim that “We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice” — which, Hanson notes, is “the classic anti-Enlightenment mindset: we are all permanent captives of our superficial race, religion, and sexual orientation.” As a result, “intersectionality becomes a logical contest among professed victims to acquire preeminent tribal victimhood” — which “leads to sectarian warfare, not harmony.” The madness won’t end until “the majority of Americans of all racial heritages are brave enough to call out” these radicals as “the purveyors of hate themselves.”

Subway beat: Will Cuomo Show His Hand on Homeless?

The new Metropolitan Transportation Authority task force to address the problems homeless people cause the subways “provides an opportunity for Governor Andrew Cuomo to show his hand as to what he thinks should be done,” notes Stephen Eide at City Journal. Though Cuomo’s work on homelessness goes back to the ’80s, he “has rarely intervened” in recent years “as New York City’s crisis drags on.” One big thing “Cuomo could clear up is what role nonvoluntary approaches should play.” And the biggest key to success is for the task force “to consult less with experts in poverty services and more with those who work closely with the seriously mentally ill.”

Media watch: CNN’s Biased Chyrons

At The Washington Examiner, Quin Hillyer wants to know if CNN has “lost all standards” for “distinguishing news from opinion.” He cites screen-bottom chyrons the network recently displayed reading “Politics of Hate” with the subhead, “Trump using racism as a political strategy in new rhetoric.” Those are not “incontrovertible facts,” Hillyer argues, but “assertions” quite “unmoored” from “dispassionate reporting,” and so they amount to “bias, pure and simple.” The network shouldn’t call what it does “news.” Rather, CNN should rename itself the “Cable Opinion-Spewers Network.” Until then, “get some professionalism. Let viewers think for ourselves. Get a grip.”

— compiled by The Post Editorial Board