POLITICS: Trump can win on character, no green tears over spilled oil and other commentary

From the right: Trump Can Win on Character

Friendly advice that Donald Trump should focus on the economy or “concentrate more on the issues in this campaign” is “ insufficient to making the case against Kamala Harris,” argues Rich Lowry at The New York Times: Character matters, meaning “the attributes that play into the question of whether someone is suited to the presidency.”

Make the case that “Harris is weak, a phony, and doesn’t truly care about the country or the middle class.”

Shift “scattershot” attacks to focus “on these character attributes.”

Thus: “She is too weak to hold open town-hall events or do extensive — or, at the moment, any — sit-down media interviews,” and “she is a shape-shifting opportunist who can and will change on almost anything when politically convenient.”

There’s “plenty of room for Mr. Trump, as he insists he must, to do it his way” and still “make a root-and-branch argument that she shouldn’t be — can’t be — president.”

Mideast Watch: No Green Tears Over Spilled Oil

As the “kidnapping, humanitarian-aid-obstructing, cholera-exacerbating Islamists who carried out a ‘partial and limited reintroduction of slavery’ are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill” in the Red Sea, thunders National Review’s Jim Geraghty, “you barely hear a peep from the green crowd.”

A State Department spokesman lamely calls “on the Houthis to cease these actions immediately.”

Where are the folks who’re “supposed to create and carry out policies deterring and punishing these sorts of reckless attacks”?

President Biden “has not made any substantive remarks about the threat from the Houthis since January.”

And one of his “first actions was to remove the Iranian-backed Houthis from the US list of global terrorist organizations.”

If he’s staying in office ’til Jan. 20, “is it too much to ask that he comes out and talk about these sorts of things once in a while?”

DNC beat: Dems’ Plan To Spread Poverty

While lots of “celebrities, labor leaders and politicians” spoke at last week’s Democratic National Convention, notes The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley, missing were “entrepreneurs who generate middle-class jobs.”

Democrats “took turns whacking ‘oligarchs’ and ‘corporate monopolists,’”; by the time Harris took the stage, “the pinatas’ pickings had been splattered around.”

This is “what Democrats plan to do if they win: destroy wealth creators so they can spread the booty among their own.”

They call for “taxing success so government can hand out money” and grow itself. “As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty, or to abolish special privilege,” warned Henry Ford, we’ll see “poverty spread and special privilege grow.”

That, sighs Finley, is “the joyous future Americans can expect during a Harris presidency.”

Conservative: Dems Pushed RFK Jr. To Trump

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump “sent shockwaves throughout the Democrat establishment,” writes the American Thinker’s Earick Ward.

“This was surely not an easy decision for RFK,” but “he believed” there are issues “ that needed to be addressed . . . that mattered to the Democrat electorate,” and the Democratic Party “kicked him to the curb.”

“It is reported that RFK reached out to the Kamala Harris campaign a couple weeks ago” and said “he’d be willing to drop out of the race, if he could be considered for a cabinet post,” and he “was rebuffed.” “What was he supposed to do?”

Eye on the economy: A Looming Inflation-Hiker

With inflation still a “top concern,” warns Diana Furchtgott-Roth at The Hill, “it appears more price hikes and supply-chain problems are coming.”

With East Coast labor contracts expiring Sept. 30, “the International Longshoremen’s Association is threatening to strike.”

The union wants a 32% pay hike and no more automation at ports.

Per one expert, “a one-day strike would take five days to clear,” while “a two-week strike wouldn’t be cleared until 2025.”

This could mean “driving up inflation and shutting down the nation’s economy.”

Hmm: “Railroad and airline crews cannot simply decide to stop working”; that port workers can is something “Congress should take another look at.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board