#Joe Biden is alienating the middle class and other commentary

Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination by claiming that he would “restore American values, overcome petty politics and get government working again.”
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Democrat: Joe Is Alienating the Middle Class

Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination by claiming that he would “restore American values, overcome petty politics and get government working again,” Democratic consultant Scott Street recalls at The Federalist. Yet “Biden’s messaging has changed” in recent weeks. Now, he has forged a “new alliance” with “far-left” politicians, offering “bureaucratic gobbledygook” instead of clear policy ideas and kowtowing to “activists who want to ‘defund the police,’ ” neither of which appeals to the “middle-class voters” he needs to win over in November. President Trump, meanwhile, “is following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan” to appeal to those voters, who “could easily lift Trump to a second term.” If that happens, “Democrats will have only themselves to blame.”

Pandemic journal: Debunking the Lockdown Myth

“From the beginning of time,” humans have used myths to “make sense of a chaotic natural world,” Stacey Rudin recounts at RealClearPolitics. One such is the claim that lockdowns stop pandemics. “Decades of evidence,” in fact, prove that lockdowns rarely, if ever, work, and even Imperial College London’s “dire projections” admitted lockdowns would only “delay” infections. The real solution is “herd immunity, preferably sooner than later,” as Sweden’s anti-lockdown experiment has proved: The country’s per-capita 2020 mortality rate is “approximately 290 per million” above average, while “lockdown-loving New Jersey’s is almost 1,900 per million” above average. Politicians, however, love lockdowns, which allow them to “take credit” for “COVID-19 ‘results’ ” — just as tribal leaders once took credit for precipitation after ordering rain dances.

Libertarian: States Need Tough Love

State and local governments that want “$500 billion” more in “bailout cash” should really “start fending for themselves,” snarks Reason’s Veronique de Rugy. Among other things, they’ve already “received large amounts of federal funds to pay for their coronavirus-related expenditures,” and bailing them out will only curb their incentive to “plan better for the next time around.” Meanwhile, several states haven’t been “getting the money to local governments,” with many not spending any of their bailout money yet. They also want “more flexibility” in using the funds, but they simply shouldn’t “be asking federal taxpayers” to pay for non-coronavirus-related expenditures. Instead of relying on Uncle Sam, states should figure out how to become “healthier and more responsible” on their own.

Sports take: BLM and LeBron’s Willie Horton

LeBron James, who rails against President Trump and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, is “a political activist” whose “magic trick is the left-wing dog whistle affectionately referred to as the race card,” charges Jason Whitlock at Outkick. James, Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party are now using George Floyd much in the way George H.W. Bush used “black career criminal Willie Horton.” Horton was serving a life sentence and raped a woman while out on furlough back then, and Bush made him “the star” of his 1988 campaign — just as Floyd “is the star of this election cycle.” It’s all “divisive racial politics devoid of truth,” laments Whitlock. He “didn’t like it when Republicans exploited” Horton. And “the exploitation of George Floyd is just as repulsive.”

Culture desk: Americans Need More Intimacy

“Why are Americans so lonely?” asks Matthew Walther at The Week. Even before the lockdowns, “60-some percent of adults in this country” reported “feeling lonely, and data suggests that these figures are trending upward.” Walther believes “workplace culture” has something to do with it. And also social media, “heavier use of which generally tracks with increased feelings of loneliness.” What people seem to actually be missing is not “ordinary human contact but intimacy, truly deep and meaningful emotional connections with other people.” Walther suspects “the relentless casualization of American life might be one of the biggest obstacles to intimacy.” We are “vastly more comfortable telling strangers about our lives — where we come from, our line of work, stories about our families, and so on — than people in almost any other country.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board