‘Moderate’ Joe Biden has embraced hyper-liberalism and other commentary

2020 watch: Biden’s Hyper-Liberalism

“The coronavirus outbreak and the resulting massive surge in unemployment have moved American political discourse to the left,” observes FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr., and you can expect Joe Biden “to do the same.” The ex-veep was called “a centrist or a moderate during the Democratic primaries,” but he actually doesn’t “have any kind of set ideology at all.” He has always followed the party line, not led it, and the “center of the party is a moving target”: Democrats have shifted left since President Barack Obama stepped down, and so has Biden. If he makes it to the White House, “we might look back at how Biden won the Democratic primary — by emphasizing his moderation — and marvel that he became the most liberal president in recent history.”

Pandemic journal: No Proof Lockdowns Work

The Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-69 claimed 1 million lives, but Bloomberg News’ Joe Nocera can’t recall it — not just because he was in high school then, but because it got little media attention, and with no “discussion of lockdowns.” By contrast, the COVID pandemic “will be ­indelibly seared in the memory of those who lived through it.” Kids now “wearing masks, doing schoolwork online and staying indoors will never forget it.” Yet he wonders: Given the economic damage, is today’s lockdown “worth it”? Quarantining “an entire population is not some set-in-stone technique.” And there is “little evidence” it works. Meanwhile, there is a “high likelihood” of another wave of the coronavirus this fall. “If that happens, are you truly ready to lock down again?”

From the right: What the Welfare State Can’t Do

Judging by her recent comments, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks “neighbors helping neighbors” would be a “break from American tradition,” marvels City Journal’s Howard Husock. Yet “the tradition of American mutual aid long predates the welfare state.” Any progressive celebration of such aid is “a welcome, if ironic, acknowledgment of America’s self-help muscle memory.” Sure, there is a “long history” of believing government can and should replace such efforts. But “even the welfare state’s architects” doubted it could substitute for the kind of community assistance — “conviviality” and “fellowship” — mutual-aid organizations provide. AOC’s comments “suggest a rediscovery of the limits of the welfare state,” notes Husock. “But don’t expect her to acknowledge that such views reflect those of millions” of Americans, let alone that they “go back to our country’s earliest days.”

Health beat: Cuomo’s Rep Will Take a Hit

Gov. Cuomo’s “deadliest mistake,” charges Glenn Harlan Reynolds at USA Today, was requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients. More than 5,300 nursing-home patients in New York died from COVID-19, and critics blame Cuomo’s policy. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis protected such patients, and only 3.5 per 100,000 nursing-home residents got the disease, versus 27 out of 100,000 in New York. Cuomo’s decisions prompted “a giant ‘Cuomo Killed My Mom’ sign” by an upstate overpass — “possibly unfair but certainly indicative of how some New Yorkers feel.” And while he has “gotten a lot of mileage out of an engaging TV manner,” as folks start “looking at the results, they’ll be asking more and more questions. And the answers are likely to be bad for Andrew ­Cuomo’s political career.”

Conservative: Surrogacy’s Dark Side

In a little noticed move last month, New York legalized gestational surrogacy — which, Jennifer Lahl fumes at First Things, is nothing less than “the contractual renting of wombs and the buying and selling of newborn babies.” Gov. Cuomo “buried his surrogacy proposal in the state budget,” sidestepping the debate over thorny bioethical issues and potential for abuse, including medical risks to the women involved in embryo implantation, the cruelty of ripping newborns from biological mothers and the fact that “abortion . . . clauses are routinely written into all surrogacy contracts,” that is, terminating some of the babies if the implantation yields too many. No doubt, though, “surrogacy brokers, lawyers and fertility doctors will profit handsomely.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board