How Do Democrats Explain Biden?

Will Weissert reports today for the Associated Press on Ohio Democrat Greg Landsman. Mr. Weissert writes that Mr. Landsman won’t say if the president will help or hurt his campaign and reports:

[Mr. Landsman] doesn’t think the president will visit the southwest Ohio swing district before the November midterm elections and insists that, in thousands of conversations while campaigning, Biden usually “just doesn’t come up.”

In political conversations during a campaign for federal office, the president of the United States usually goes unmentioned? This sounds like a job for those vaunted fact-checkers that new and old media companies keep telling us they employ.

Mr. Weissert reports on another Ohioan who has perhaps been hearing voter complaints about Mr. Biden a little too often:

Two hundred miles north in Toledo, Democratic Rep.

Marcy Kaptur,

the longest-serving woman in House history, has been more direct, producing an ad saying she “doesn’t work for Joe Biden” mere weeks after greeting the president at the Cleveland airport in July.

But avoiding Biden campaign events wasn’t always so popular among Democrats. Way down south from Ohio, current gubernatorial candidate

Beto O’Rourke

(D., Texas) still seems sore about the places Mr. Biden wouldn’t visit while he was running as the shutdown candidate in 2020. Patrick Svitek quotes Mr. O’Rourke in the Texas Tribune:

“Candidate Biden didn’t spend a dime or a day in the Rio Grande Valley — or really anywhere in Texas, for that matter — once we got down to the homestretch of the general election.”

O’Rourke said Democrats also erred by campaigning remotely during the pandemic while Republicans stumped in person.

Now Republicans are aggressively targeting South Texas, both in the governor’s race and down-ballot contests.

“I am making sure that we do not commit the same sin as some Democrats before me have committed, which is take voters of color — Black voters and Latinos — for granted,” O’Rourke said.

One has to appreciate Mr. O’Rourke’s candor on this issue, but Democratic campaign consultants might prefer that he had opted instead for the full Landsman.

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One recent campaign event where the president not only appeared but was warmly welcomed occurred on Friday in Washington at the headquarters of the National Education Association. It’s not news that the giant teachers union is at the heart of the Democratic coalition. But what is perhaps striking is that the union doesn’t even labor to present itself as something other than partisan and ideological. The gathering was officially described by the White House as a “Democratic National Committee Event” and Mr. Biden’s speech was only occasionally about education as he attacked Republicans and ran through the comprehensive leftist agenda from climate to corporate taxes to abortion.

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The Tragedy of Defunding
Rob Kuznia reports for CNN on what happened to Minneapolis after the 2020 murder of

George Floyd,

when the city became “the epicenter of the culturally seismic ‘Defund the Police’ movement”:

… the city of 425,000 is trying to find a way forward amid a period of heightened crime that began shortly after Floyd’s death.

That year, the number of murders soared to nearly 80 — dwarfing the 2019 body count of 46. It has cooled somewhat this year, though the amount of killing — and violent crime in general — remains elevated far above 2019 levels and homicides are on pace to surpass the 2020 figure…

KG Wilson, a longtime resident of the Twin Cities, said police withdrew from violent neighborhoods in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing — a common sentiment among locals.

“The criminals were celebrating. They were getting rich,” he said.

The real estate website

Redfin

finds that Minneapolis is among the cities where the locals are most eager to buy homes in some other jurisdiction. In fact, many Minneapolis residents are so eager to move that a common destination is Chicago, which has itself been suffering a significant outflow of home buyers amid rampant crime.

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‘Does anyone want to work anymore?’
In “A Nation of Quitters,” the Journal’s Andy Kessler writes:

The unemployment rate was 3.5% in July, the same as in February 2020, but the U.S. has three million fewer workers. Where did everyone go? This in an economy with 11.2 million job openings… Does anyone want to work anymore?

Everyone has an explanation for the Great Resignation: extended unemployment benefits, eviction moratoriums, baby boomers retiring, work-from-home complacency, anxiety, long Covid. Sure, all reasonable excuses. Here’s my theory: Too many got a taste of not working and liked it. A lot. Until recently, many people could make more money by not working and became glued to screens, Insta-Tok-ing and living the easy life by sponging off the rest of us. What’s not to like? Parisians called those with unconventional lifestyles “bohemians.” Now we have unemployed, perpetually plugged-in, dopamine-addled Cyber Bohemians—let’s call them Cy-Bos.

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One might expect to find more than a few members of the non-working population hanging around nonprofit educational institutions. But from Duke University of all places comes a refreshing call to embrace hard work from basketball coach Kara Lawson. She tells players that life never gets easier, only harder, and that they must become better at doing hard things.

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Also giving us a lift today is an obituary of all things, about a life well-lived. The Journal’s James R. Hagerty reports:

The U.S. Army shipped Arnold Fisher to Korea, where he served as a corporal during the Korean War. After Mr. Fisher returned home to New York, he married, had children, joined his family’s real-estate development company, Fisher Brothers, and oversaw construction of skyscrapers.

His military mission had only just begun.

Supporting the troops was a family tradition. One of his uncles, Zachary Fisher, saved a World War II aircraft carrier, the USS Intrepid, from the scrapyard in the 1970s and turned it into a museum on the Hudson River in New York. He also headed the Fisher House Foundation, which provides free lodging for military families while their loved ones are in hospitals.

After Zachary Fisher died in 1999, Arnold Fisher helped run the foundation and expanded the family’s support into new areas…

“We don’t want government money,” Mr. Fisher said. “I can build these things in half the time at half the cost and twice the quality as the government.”

Rest easy, Arnold Fisher.

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Mr. Freeman will host “WSJ at Large” Friday at 7:30 p.m. EDT on the Fox Business Network. The program repeats at 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. EDT on Saturday and Sunday.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Tony Lima and Monty Krieger.)