POLITICS: Progressive moment is done, Kam’s energy dishonesty and other commentary

From the left: Progressive Moment Is Done

“The progressive moment is well and truly over,” argues the Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira — because many of its ideas “were pretty terrible and most voters, outside the precincts of the progressive left itself, were never very interested in them.”

For example, “loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it.”

So too with “promoting lax law enforcement and tolerance of social disorder,” “insisting that everyone should look at all issues through the lens of identity politics” and “telling people fossil fuels are evil and they must stop using them.”

“Voters clearly aren’t buying what progressives are selling” and “the backlash against these ideas is strong.”

That’s why Kamala Harris “is furiously back-pedaling from all these positions.”

Foreign desk: The Best Gaza Aid Solution

Israel’s critics are “complaining about Israeli humanitarian-aid policy while Hamas is hoarding the aid that does come in and starving its own people,” fumes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.

Israel can’t deliver the aid itself, as any safe system “would look a lot like an IDF occupation.”

The UN Gaza team can’t handle “the most basic customs rules, including requiring ID from anyone entering the war zone and an accurate listing of the contents of the deliveries.”

Yet critics erupted over “reports that Israel is considering hiring private security firms to deliver aid.”

Fact is, “the most realistic solution is to let Israel win the war already and defeat Hamas, whose existence is the barrier to feeding and supplying the Palestinian residents of Gaza.” 

Libertarian: Phantom ‘Militias v. FEMA’ Menace

Reports of “trucks of armed militias” who were “hunting FEMA” workers “turned out to be something less serious,” reports Reason’s Matthew Petti: A lone man was arrested for allegedly making a threatening comment online.

“The Washington Post reported on the alleged threat” Oct.13; it later updated its story, “but other news outlets had already start[ed] to run with the story,” including a New Republic piece blaming “Trump’s criticism of FEMA for the alleged militia menace.”

“Every time America suffers a natural disaster, it seems, there’s serious anxiety about social collapse and mass violence. And the media often runs with the most fantastical version.”

But “these rumors by themselves can do serious damage,” causing panic and delays in relief.

Election watch: Dems Routinely Cry ‘Fascist’ 

Democrats have labeled Republicans “fascists” for decades, observes the Washington Examiner’s Christopher Tremoglie.

In 1964, Gov Pat Brown (D-Calif.) said Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech “had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.”

Hubert Humphrey compared Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign to the London blitz, Tremoglie notes, and in 1980, “Rep. William Clay (D-MO) stated that [Ronald] Reagan wanted to ‘replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.’”

George W. “Bush was regularly called every dirty name in the book, from racist to Nazi to fascist to war criminal,” while the chairman of the California Democratic Party compared 2012 veep nominee Paul Ryan to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “Does any of this sound familiar?”

From the right: Kam’s Energy Dishonesty

“One reason voters feel they don’t know what Kamala Harris would do if elected is because she isn’t honest about what she believes,” thunder The Wall Street Journal’s editors.

E.g., on energy policy: “Americans don’t know her position because she won’t state it clearly,” but may “infer that she wants to shut down fossil-fuel production” based on her policy hires.

Her climate engagement director, Camila Thorndike, “was a legislative assistant to Bernie Sanders and policy director for the leftwing Rewiring America”; she wants to “electrify everything,” has “called the fossil-fuel industry ‘a death cult’ and its CEOs ‘dictators’.”

People like her will be “running a Harris administration.” They know Harris’ true energy agenda “won’t play well in swing states, especially Pennsylvania, where fracking has helped revive coal towns.”

Voters can tell “Harris isn’t being candid and that her gauzy rhetoric is a disguise.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board