Liberal: Why Dems Must Moderate

The Democratic Party desperately needs to embrace “moderation in the pursuit of votes,” argues the Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira. The party just did pretty well thanks to “independents and Republican leaning or supporting crossover voters — not base voters mobilized by progressivism” — because Dems “in key races were perceived as being more moderate” than their GOP opponents. Moving left in recent years has cost the party support among nonwhite and even young voters, and nonwhite turnout fell in 2022, too. Why? “Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans prioritized the cost of living and crime,” not hot-button progressive issues, and “common sense suggests you should pay attention to the issues voters are most concerned about.” Time and again, “Moderation = Democratic votes.”

Schools watch: ‘Silent Majority’ Want Choice

“Educational choice emerged this year as one common-ground issue where the election results are catching up to the polling,” notes Colyn Ritter at The Hill: “School choice has support from a silent majority of Americans.” And it “has bipartisan support.” “Democrats support school choice programs like vouchers and tax credit scholarships at” 50% and 64%, respectively,” while 49% of “Republicans support vouchers” and 59% “support tax credit scholarships.” “Affluent families” have “always had options when the district-assigned schools fall short.” It shouldn’t be “out of bounds for parents of all incomes to expect better.” In fact, “providing a more equitable education landscape” is not “just a winning political platform, it is the common ground that we desperately need as Americans.”

Culture critic: Art’s Turbulent Year

The Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke predicts the art world’s 2022 will be remembered most “for climate activists broadening their protests from motorways to museums.” The “trouble with iconoclasm” is “that it’s catching, like the plague.” Thus, “as if following an atrocious recipe from The Activist Cookbook,” vandals “hurled tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers,” “lobbed mashed potato at a view of haystacks by Claude Monet” and “smeared a cream cake across the glass that protects the Mona Lisa.” A “remarkable aspect of this vexing phenomenon has been the humming-and-hawing of museums around the world in response,” with the International Council of Museums even calling museums “allies” of the hoodlums “in facing the common threat of climate change.” The “most lasting effect” may “be the destruction of old certainties about what museums and galleries are even for.”

Foreign desk: Erdoğan’s Biggest Fear?

“Turkey will hold national elections this coming summer, and annual inflation reached a 24-year high of 85.5% this fall. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan must be worried,” muse The Wall Street Journal’s editors. Last week, “a court convicted Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu on a trumped-up speech offense.” The “ruling disqualifies” the “prominent opposition figure” from “holding or running for political office.” The mayor decried that “the judiciary has been transformed into an instrument to punish the dissidents.” But it may backfire on Erdoğan: When Imamoğlu beat the prez’s favored candidate in the 2019 mayoral race, a new election was called — and “in a rebuke to the ruling party,” voters “gave him a landslide victory” in the “do-over.”

Neocon: Facing Facts on Long COVID

“Long covid patients and researchers alike are coming for your taxpayer dollars,” concludes Commentary’s Noah Rothman of a Politico piece raising alarms on the syndrome. Some facts: 78.5% of “deaths attributed to long Covid were among white Americans,” though “affluent” may be more apt. In fact, it’s plain that many long COVID sufferers “never had Covid-19 to begin with.” One “of the few features that reliably indicate an individual’s increased risk of suffering from the residual effects of a Covid infection was ‘preexisting psychological distress’” a JAMA study found. In short, “mounting evidence . . . suggests this ailment is psychological in nature.” That “doesn’t detract from the physical ordeal endured by those who suffer from it,” but “proper classification would, in fact, help ease the suffering of those who are struggling.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board