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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- Kamala Harris: Reelection blessing or curse?
- Ukraine pines for aid from the House, and a NATO invite
- Rural broadband gets a $90 billion boost from Biden
What Harris means to Biden’s reelection
As all true Fox News heads know, though Joe Biden is ostensibly the president of the United States, he is actually a near-lifeless husk of a man controlled behind the scenes by a single, powerful puppet master: Vice President Harris. And unlike the manly model of, say, former president Donald Trump, who blessed the attempted execution of his own vice president and now has the enviable opportunity to choose a new one, Biden is a victim to norms under which an incumbent with a competent vice president just … runs with her again. Sad!
Well, that’s one spin on it. Gene Robinson, however, would like to offer a different analysis: Even granting that Biden, like Trump, is not the springest of chickens, he has a better backup than people realize in Harris. If anything, Gene argues, she’s more of an asset to the ticket in 2024 than she was in 2020.
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Why? As her recent visit to the Munich Security Conference shows, she has filled in what was then the one big hole in her résumé, foreign policy. “Early in her tenure, Harris’s words to [foreign] leaders about tough subjects would not have had the authority they have now. After 16 overseas trips as vice president, she has learned the issues. And she has met, and sized up, the players,” Gene writes. It’s just one reason the Biden team might want to ignore the 83 percent of Republicans who view Harris unfavorably, he says, and focus on the 86 percent of Democrats who approve.
Jen Rubin is also a fan: “Despite her near-flawless performance over the past year or so, do not expect the media to send out any ‘Kamala comeback’ stories, let alone mea culpas for their excessively negative evaluation that she would handicap Biden,” she writes.
Oh really? says George Will. Well, let him tell you a little story regarding what he calls Biden’s “most consequential mistake.” (That would be Harris.) It’s about that time Franklin D. Roosevelt replaced his vice president, little-remembered Stalin enthusiast Henry Wallace, with a 1944 running mate named Harry S. Truman — as it turned out, just in time.
Ukraine needs answers on NATO
Speaking of the Munich Security Conference, Josh Rogin spent some of his reporting time there talking to Ukrainian officials about their big concern beyond immediate funding issues: When exactly is that invitation to NATO coming in the mail? “For Ukrainians, that membership is not only about physical security; it speaks to Ukraine’s ability to determine its own future,” Josh writes. For the United States, that may mean a delicate dance of reassuring Ukrainians while not yet extending the offer they yearn for.
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Meanwhile, the Editorial Board sounds the alarm on Trump-aligned House members’ ongoing blockade of immediate aid to Ukraine in its fight to repel Vladimir Putin. “House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can bring a Senate-passed Ukraine aid bill to the floor, where it likely has the votes to pass,” the board writes. Refusing to do so “is a gross dereliction of responsibility, hurting Ukraine, the United States and the Republican Party.”
Is it asking too much that Dana Milbank, out on his farm in the Virginia countryside, be able to stream a movie with his family? When he tried to recently, he was thwarted by an unidentified chompy animal, a specific rotten tree the internet provider described as “reaching a point where our climbers are not really comfortable with it” and, oh yeah, the sorry state of our nation’s rural internet infrastructure.
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His column takes readers on a surprisingly fascinating journey — featuring both Elon Musk and a truck carrying a giant drill — into this frustrating, sometimes life-threatening communications problem, and what it means, politically and practically, for Biden to make significant moves to fix it.
Smartest, fastest
- Catherine Rampell writes about a new IRS program to crack down on the abuse of private corporate jets for pretend business travel. It’s the kind of enforcement ramp-up we should all welcome, she says.
- Karen Tumulty takes a look at how the race to replace Dianne Feinstein in the Senate is shaping up in California, and one tactic designed to best position contender Adam Schiff (facing Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, among others) for November.
- Keith Richburg argues that the United States needs to support the rebels gaining strength in their war against the military junta ruling Myanmar.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
You know what they say
Vote for Joe Biden, or else
Mice eat your WiFi
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/compliments/complaints. See you Monday!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
As all true Fox News heads know, though Joe Biden is ostensibly the president of the United States, he is actually a near-lifeless husk of a man controlled behind the scenes by a single, powerful puppet master: Vice President Harris. And unlike the manly model of, say, former president Donald Trump, who blessed the attempted execution of his own vice president and now has the enviable opportunity to choose a new one, Biden is a victim to norms under which an incumbent with a competent vice president just … runs with her again. Sad!
Well, that’s one spin on it. Gene Robinson, however, would like to offer a different analysis: Even granting that Biden, like Trump, is not the springest of chickens, he has a better backup than people realize in Harris. If anything, Gene argues, she’s more of an asset to the ticket in 2024 than she was in 2020.
Why? As her recent visit to the Munich Security Conference shows, she has filled in what was then the one big hole in her résumé, foreign policy. “Early in her tenure, Harris’s words to [foreign] leaders about tough subjects would not have had the authority they have now. After 16 overseas trips as vice president, she has learned the issues. And she has met, and sized up, the players,” Gene writes. It’s just one reason the Biden team might want to ignore the 83 percent of Republicans who view Harris unfavorably, he says, and focus on the 86 percent of Democrats who approve.
Jen Rubin is also a fan: “Despite her near-flawless performance over the past year or so, do not expect the media to send out any ‘Kamala comeback’ stories, let alone mea culpas for their excessively negative evaluation that she would handicap Biden,” she writes.
Oh really? says George Will. Well, let him tell you a little story regarding what he calls Biden’s “most consequential mistake.” (That would be Harris.) It’s about that time Franklin D. Roosevelt replaced his vice president, little-remembered Stalin enthusiast Henry Wallace, with a 1944 running mate named Harry S. Truman — as it turned out, just in time.
Speaking of the Munich Security Conference, Josh Rogin spent some of his reporting time there talking to Ukrainian officials about their big concern beyond immediate funding issues: When exactly is that invitation to NATO coming in the mail? “For Ukrainians, that membership is not only about physical security; it speaks to Ukraine’s ability to determine its own future,” Josh writes. For the United States, that may mean a delicate dance of reassuring Ukrainians while not yet extending the offer they yearn for.
Meanwhile, the Editorial Board sounds the alarm on Trump-aligned House members’ ongoing blockade of immediate aid to Ukraine in its fight to repel Vladimir Putin. “House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can bring a Senate-passed Ukraine aid bill to the floor, where it likely has the votes to pass,” the board writes. Refusing to do so “is a gross dereliction of responsibility, hurting Ukraine, the United States and the Republican Party.”
Is it asking too much that Dana Milbank, out on his farm in the Virginia countryside, be able to stream a movie with his family? When he tried to recently, he was thwarted by an unidentified chompy animal, a specific rotten tree the internet provider described as “reaching a point where our climbers are not really comfortable with it” and, oh yeah, the sorry state of our nation’s rural internet infrastructure.
His column takes readers on a surprisingly fascinating journey — featuring both Elon Musk and a truck carrying a giant drill — into this frustrating, sometimes life-threatening communications problem, and what it means, politically and practically, for Biden to make significant moves to fix it.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
You know what they say
Vote for Joe Biden, or else
Mice eat your WiFi
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/compliments/complaints. See you Monday!
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