#Biden-Harris is a stinker and other commentary

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris.
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Campaign watch: Biden-Harris Is a Stinker

Any presidential running mate “should first and foremost ‘do no harm,’ ” Republican consultant Bradley A. Blakeman observes at FoxNews.com, yet Joe Biden’s pick, Kamala Harris, “will harm both” Biden’s election odds and “his chances of successfully governing” if elected. “She has zero foreign-policy experience and no economic gravitas,” for one thing, and she won’t help Biden “win in battleground states,” coming from deep-blue California. Her “radical positions on taxes, immigration, law and order, climate, energy and other issues,” meanwhile, will disturb “many voters in more moderate states, let alone conservative ones.” The Biden-Harris ticket, in other words, adds up to “very good news for the Trump-Pence campaign.”

Foreign desk: Trump’s Shrewd Poland Move

“Quick-shot critics” who blasted the Trump administration for reducing US Army troops in Germany, probably to move them to a reactivated headquarters in Poland, need “a map and 12 years of news updates,” quips StrategyPage’s Austin Bay. Poland, after all, is “the linchpin” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “current eastern flank” against the “expansionist threat” of Vladimir Putin’s “nuclear-armed Russia.” Though we’re not refighting the old Cold War, Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and blood-shedding in eastern Ukraine isn’t “small-case imperialism.” At the same time, “Poland is a worthy and responsible American ally that pays its fair share” and invests in “its own hard military power.” Placing a “US Army trip-wire force armed with 21st-century sensors and weaponry” in the country is the right move to hold off “the Kremlin’s violent bullying.”

Culture critic: Wokeness Hits Outer Space

At National Review, satirist Itxu Díaz mocks NASA — “an organization created to colonize the whole damn universe” — for suddenly seeking to erase “the names of possible colonizers” of cosmic objects, as part of its diversity policies. The first name to be deleted: the Eskimo Nebula, which the scientists consider “racist” and “colonial.” The second: the ­Siamese Twins Galaxy, though they don’t clarify whether it’s “offensive for galaxies, Siamese or twins.” Other places with “discriminatory” names include the Horsehead Nebula, which “harasses people who have long necks,” and the Spirograph Nebula, which ridicules those “who have no idea what a Spirograph is.” Once you could dream of “going to the moon” and living outside the “pressure” of “cultural Marxism.” Now the dream is over. NASA wants “all of space to be politically correct.”

Political scientist: ‘Break Our Windows’ Policing

Though a few “big city Democrats” are “fed up” with rioters’ “mayhem” and “want police to stop it,” most, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, ­“favor drastic concessions to the protesters, ­beginning with sharp reductions in police budgets,” University of Chicago professor Charles Lipson laments at RealClearPolitics. Such “hard-left” politicians are “reluctant to break with demonstrators,” even the “violent ones.” Progressive prosecutors now refuse to “try many crimes.” And that “soft-on-crime strategy,” which left-wing billionaires such as George Soros have promoted for years, is “working out just like you’d expect.” To prevent an even higher “rise in urban violence,” urban officials have to start “restoring public safety.” They have no duty “more fundamental” — or “more imperiled.”

Sports beat: Real Football, Please

“More than just a game, football forms a key pillar of our national culture and consciousness,” Steve Cortes argues at American Greatness — so college presidents and administrators’ decision to cancel their 2020 football seasons in light of the pandemic “understandably disgusts” many Americans. Colleges have made “bogus claims” about “science” to justify their decision when the fact is that young athletes are “nearly ­totally immune” to the virus’ worst effects. “Politics drives this dreadful decision-making”: Left-wing university officials “aggressively embrace a position of paranoia,” in contrast to President Trump, who wants young people to “return to normal routines” when it comes to “school, extracurriculars and sports.” That’s why pulling the sport of football will, in turn, affect the game of politics: Many gridiron-loving Midwesterners will know that “dishonest and conflicted political actors” have “robbed” them of our “national sport.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Adam Brodsky