Economist: Hating Trump Is Not an Actual Policy
Never mind the actual legal issues “or the possible impact on the White House’s ability to enact measures aimed at keeping the country safe,” says Liz Peek at Fox News. Democrats “are overjoyed” at the 9th Circuit immigration-order ruling for one reason: “It was a blow against President Trump.” Indeed, they’re “doubling down on the unprecedented vitriol with which they routinely attack Donald Trump, Donald Trump’s family, his cabinet picks, his advisers, his tweets, his policies, his hotels, his hats, his everything.” Yet where, she asks, “is the vision that will lead Democrats out of their self-inflicted political exile? Where are their policies that will boost incomes and win back the hearts of traditional bluecollar Democrats?” Sad to say, “they have none.”
Numbers cruncher: O’Care Was in Trouble Pre-Trump
ObamaCare exchange enrollment last month came in “well below what was anticipated,” and “those are scary numbers,” warns Megan McArdle at Bloomberg. Not so much for the 4 percent decline but “because any backwards movement is very bad news for the exchanges.” It bears out the prediction when last year’s premium hikes kicked in to make up for years of losses: “People who didn’t use a lot of health care would decide that at those prices, they might as well go uninsured.” And that just drives premiums higher, leading to the “adverse selection death spiral.” Amazingly, liberals are “blaming all this on President Trump,” even though he ”was only president for a few days’ worth of open enrollment.” Yet even if Hillary Clinton had won, “ObamaCare was poised for a decline.”
Centrist: What Milo and Liz Warren Have in Common
Both liberals and conservatives are discovering that “the best way to make sure a message gets heard” is “try to muzzle it,” notes Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post. Indeed, “provocateurs and activists” on both sides have learned how to “weaponize” this, “using censorship attempts to amplify their own voices.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren exploited it when she was sanctioned by Republicans for reading a “once-obscure” letter by Coretta Scott King, causing it to go viral and “energize the left.” Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos also understands how “to draw a foul” from his foes — and they “happily oblige, with hecklers, threats and sometimes even violence.” Proving, in both cases, that “forcibly silencing and thereby martyring your opponents . . . may be exactly what they want you to do.”
Culture critic: Stop Drugging Our Kids
Naomi Schaefer Riley reports on a new Australian study showing that “the youngest kids in any given class are twice as likely to be receiving medication for behavioral disorders as the older kids in the class. And the proportion of boys receiving such medication was three times as high as it was for girls.” This confirms earlier US studies, and means “we are putting kids on drugs for behaving in age-appropriate ways and in ways that are typical for their sex.” This, when “school has become a welcoming place for girls but a hostile place for boys.” So “rather than suppressing our kids’ natural behavior with powerful medications, maybe we need to learn to suppress our own.”
From the right: Yes, It’s Time for Nerdprom To Go
The editors of The Weekly Standard are “flattered” by the “gathering consensus” that the White House Correspondents Dinner — which defines “what Americans hate most about Washington” — may not be such a good idea after all, since that merely “catches up with our own prejudices.” They note that Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan has also chimed in, “but alas, for the wrong reasons”: not because it’s a “professional incestuous event that journalists should avoid,” but because she “cannot bear the thought of dining in the same room” with Donald Trump.” Seems “the media types who had such great fun laughing at Trump six years ago” when then-President Obama skewered him at the dinner, “aren’t laughing quite so mirthfully now.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
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