Joe Biden’s one hope for November, America’s culture of death and other commentary

Election beat: Biden’s One Hope for November

“Whether the 2024 presidential race is a referendum on [President] Biden’s performance or a choice between Biden and Donald Trump, polls show voters have little interest in another four years of Biden,” observes Stuart Rothenberg at Roll Call. Yet despite his poor poll numbers, many Democrats believe the prez can still “fundamentally change the trajectory of the campaign.” Of course, there’s no evidence for that, since voters know “the two men very well” already. Trump has survived his “outrageous comments and behavior” while voters give Biden “little credit for his accomplishments.” Still, making the November election about Trump “may be the only way” for Biden to turn out the “demographic groups and swing voters he needs to win.”

Media watch: A Necessary New Prize

Notes Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner, the RealClearPolitics Samizdat Prize, named after the “underground press in the former Soviet Union,” is meant to honor “our cornerstone political value,” the First Amendment. (As witness inaugural winners Matt Taibbi, Post columnist Miranda Devine and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.)

In a recent survey, “almost a third of both Republicans and Democrats said they believed the First Amendment goes ‘too far,’” while “a Gallup poll released late last year showed an abysmal 7% of adults in America have a ‘great deal’ of trust in news media” and “a whopping 38% said they have none at all.” Do news media really need “a rival to the Pulitzer” that celebrates free speech? Given the ugly data, the answer’s “a resounding yes.”

From the right: America’s Culture of Death

After “attempts to transform” US airman Aaron Bushnell’s suicide while protesting the war in Gaza “into something heroic” spread across social media, W. James Antle III laments at The American Conservative: “The discourse surrounding his death says many things about our society, none of them positive,” and “it is evident we don’t attach sufficient value to human life, even when the loss of human life is the matter under debate.”

Bushnell’s “viral demise and the subsequent celebration of his final acts will be seen and remembered by people who are mentally unwell or struggling with suicidal tendencies.” “We live in an age of war, terrorism, torture, abortion, euthanasia — and sophisticated apologetics for all of the above from the commanding heights.” “No one is alive today because that young man is dead.”

From the left: A CIA ‘Pre-Bunking’ in the Times?

After reading Sunday’s New York Times jaw-dropper about a decade of deep US-Ukrainian intelligence cooperation, Racket News’ Matt Taibbi wonders about hidden agendas: “When intelligence sources line up by the hundred to fill newspapers with ‘secret’ details, they’re almost always doing one of two things: spreading disinformation, or ‘pre-bunking’ embarrassing future revelations.” Case in point: A 2017 Washington Post piece by one of these same reporters, Adam Entous, that now “reads like a grand piece of inspired bulls–t, designed to ‘pre-bunk’ inevitable leaks” about Obama-era CIA chief John Brennan’s manufacture of the bogus Russiagate scandal. Notably, “Brennan is to an almost humorous degree the hero of the [Times] article.” Is this a setup to “patriotically ignore” a “possible leak of damaging true material”?

Culture critic: Reboot — or Replace — Google

Google’s Gemini AI rollout “was an absolute disaster,” roars ex-FCC policy adviser Nathan Leamer at The Federalist. It not only “erased white people” but offered just “far-left ideological answers” — providing a telling “peek behind the curtain of Google’s entire corporate culture.” “Anyone with a pulse should now realize that the concerns over Google’s censorship and bias are warranted.” “Major questions” focus not only on Gemini but also Gmail and YouTube during the pandemic, when Google staffers worked “closely with the Biden administration” to censor COVID ideology they disliked. Fact is, “the rot” of the tech company’s “radical leftist ideology permeates everything” it does. It’s time for “new entrants into the arena” to break “the cycle of censorship and gatekeeping.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Page