OPINION:
Progressives are aghast. Populists have won elections in the Netherlands and Italy and are ascending in Germany. Despite indictments on 91 counts in three states and Washington, D.C., former President Donald Trump leads President Biden in the polls.
For good reason. Where progressives control the levers of government — for example, America’s big cities — crime and homelessness abound, and immigration spinning out of control threatens the social order.
San Francisco is a dystopian hellscape with rampant larceny, criminals ramming trucks into stores to clear the shelves, drug addicts, streets strewn with human waste and crumbling buildings. It’s Rome after the barbarians broke the aqueducts. Major retailers can’t do business in West Coast cities run like those in Venezuela or Colombia.
Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom continues his progressive agenda as if all of mankind’s problems could be solved with more taxes on the rich. More alarming, progressives see him as a viable Democratic presidential nominee if Mr. Biden ever concedes that voters question his age.
New York City is not safe for evening commuters, but Mayor Eric Adams is boxed in by the legacy of progressive excess. His budget will reduce the police force to its lowest level in 30 years and slash trash pickup and other public services by 15% to pay $394 per household to shelter homeless immigrants.
Anyone with a plausible claim for asylum must be admitted by immigration authorities, and the federal government takes up to 12 months to issue these people work permits.
Even if they get working papers, where could most afford an apartment? Close to half of this country’s homeless work but can’t afford rent where jobs are available — especially in progressive paradises such as Los Angeles and New York.
Yet Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, fences with House Republicans on budgets with little interest in tougher immigration laws, though he’s pushing the White House to accelerate processes for issuing work permits.
Mr. Biden has an answer — when he’s awake: Have the U.S. Border Patrol drive the aliens it admits in unmarked vehicles from the border to bus stops and train stations in San Diego and let them spread across the country from there.
He doesn’t cope effectively. Take the facts on Gaza, his policies and the irrational behavior of people who should be supporting his foreign policy.
Jews constitute less than half of the population west of the Jordan River. Consequently, no solution legitimate to the international community is possible without both a secure Israel and a Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t move on that due to the influence of ultraconservatives, who are a growing share of his country’s population. But the United States has leverage: Washington foots one-third of the war costs in Gaza, and Israel can’t continue its war without buying arms from the United States even if it could print dollars in Jerusalem.
America’s campuses are devoid of reasoned discourse. Ivy League presidents should know the difference between Hamas’ barbaric acts and legitimate resistance and political action.
To question decolonization is to be a racist, and to question the legitimacy of Zionism is to be antisemitic when neither is true.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken advocates a two-state solution, but the Biden administration doesn’t address the obvious problem.
Appeasement of Iran has not worked. It funds terrorists that attack Israel, and no matter how many terrorists the Israel Defense Forces roots out in Gaza and the West Bank, Tehran will be able to find new ideologues to attack Israel.
We can’t have peace without a two-state solution, and we can’t have a two-state solution without taking on Iran directly. But that would require the secretary of state to recognize the legitimacy of military force beyond token retaliation.
Have you heard Mr. Schumer or Mr. Blinken talk about that?
If Mr. Blinken’s wife had cancer, he’d want a diplomatic solution with the tumor, Mr. Schumer would blame conservatives in the Republican-controlled House, and Mr. Biden would likely take another nap.
No wonder Mr. Biden trails Mr. Trump by 2 points, but more importantly, he is at risk of losing the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he is barely holding on in Wisconsin.
More voters disapprove than approve of Mr. Biden’s crime, immigration and foreign policies by more than 25 points.
The progressive intelligentsia is convinced that new economics has taken hold. Fiscal restraint, monetary discipline and free markets are out. Spend, print money and protectionism are in. Industrial policy is the new catechism and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo the evangelist.
My mailbox is full of such pronouncements from the Roosevelt Institute and David Leonhardt at The New York Times.
Tax the rich more and more.
On the economy, Mr. Biden’s disapproval spread is 22% and for inflation it is 32%.
It’s the economy, stupid. “Woke” doesn’t work.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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