Election Journal: Joe Biden — Luckiest Pol Ever
Joe Biden has got to be the luckiest politician in US history, snarks David Harsanyi at Creators. He spent the 1970s “sucking up to segregationists” and eulogized Strom Thurmond, yet he was still able to run this year as “the candidate of the Great Racial Reckoning.” In 1988, he ran “one of the most disastrous” presidential campaigns ever. In 2002, he voted for the Iraq War. In 2008, he called Barack Obama “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.” This year, he aligned himself with the progressive left and ran “from his living room against Donald Trump in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic.” If there’s anything to learn from the presumed presidential winner’s “good luck,” it’s that “there is no meritocracy in politics.”
From the right: Socialist Image Hurt Dems
Democrats “have tried to explain away the inroads President Trump made with Latino voters” by saying the GOP used “disinformation” to “falsely tie Joe Biden to socialism,” observes Susan Crabtree at RealClear Politics. Yet immigrant communities swiftly took issue with that. Their votes weren’t based on “media manipulation of a vulnerable, uneducated community,” but rather “a wholesale rejection of the government-heavy leftist policies” the Democratic Party has come to stand for. The “anti-socialism message” likely “prevented anti-Trump momentum from building into a blue wave resulting in a Biden landslide.” And now the Dems’ socialist leanings will deny him “a national mandate among the working-class Americans” who once formed “the backbone of the Democratic Party.”
Health expert: Distorted Picture of COVID in US
Mainstream media outlets often suggest America’s COVID woes are worse than elsewhere, but the truth is “the virus is out of control in much of the world,” especially Europe, reports Alex Berezow at the American Council on Science and Health’s Web site. Sweden experimented with a “laissez-faire approach” during the summer but was unable to avoid a severe second wave. Belgium’s cases are off the charts, and even “countries that once had the virus under control, like France, Italy and the UK, have now completely lost control.” We tend to think that “the US is somehow uniquely bad in terms of controlling the coronavirus,” but our stats are “not unusual” compared to Europe. That doesn’t mean “the American response was flawless.” But it’s comforting to “put things into context.”
Culture take: A Welcome Change on Nudity
“When are nude scenes essential, and when are they gratuitous?” asks Reason’s Liz Wolfe. It’s a question a new documentary, “Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies,” takes “seriously.” The film explores “Hollywood’s working conditions before the business developed clearer expectations about the need for contracts detailing how much breast or cheek an actress must show to earn her paycheck.” Yes, nudity is sometimes a “crucial storytelling tool.” Yet actors haven’t always known about the extent of it in advance. The late Maria Schneider said she was unaware of what a rape scene in “Last Tango in Paris” would entail and felt humiliated by it. Hollywood used to ignore the need for advance consent about nudity, “but this documentary suggests that might be changing for the better.”
Conservative: Trump’s Gains Among Minorities
The “experts told us” President Trump “would be a death sentence for the GOP with black and Hispanic voters,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney. “The experts were wrong.” The president “appears to have won a higher share of the nonwhite vote than any Republican” since 1960, expanding his support among blacks and Hispanics, including doubling “his share of the black female vote.” And those “nonwhite voters” for Trump “have really disappointed our commentariat.” One example: The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott said he was often reminded “that you do not have to be white to support white supremacy.” In other words, you’re a white supremacist even if you’re black, if you vote Republican. To the elites, that is, “racist” and “white supremacist” really mean “Republican or conservative.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board