Fast Takes: Dem’s rotten record on pump pain, Chicago rebukes teachers union, and other commentary

Conservative: Dems’ Rotten Record on Pump Pain

“Democrats won” the midterms “largely on the issue of higher gas prices,” notes Fox News’ David Asma, but “those same Democrats have done everything they can to raise gas prices when they’ve been in power.” President Joe Biden “cancelled the 1,200-mile-long Keystone XL pipeline,” which provided “exactly the kind of fuel we’re in most need of right now.” And the “multi-trillion-dollar green energy spending boondoggle” in “Biden’s infamously named ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ ” was “a major factor in the Biden administration’s 21.5% cumulative inflation, which is still part of the unaffordability crisis that Democrats blame on President Trump.” Yes, “voters became understandably frustrated” with higher prices as the Iran war dragged on, but “Democrats are in no position to criticize current gas prices with their history of policies that increase the price at the pump.”

Education beat: Chicago Rebukes Teachers Union

The Windy City just saw “the clearest voter referendum yet” on the Chicago Teachers Union’s “militancy and outsized impact on city politics,” cheers the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. Voters elected independent Jessica Biggs as school-board president over union-backed Hilario Dominguez; the CTU’s “strained and absurd efforts to tie Biggs to Trump” totally “fell flat.” The board will be split “between those supporting CTU’s agenda and those who are independent,” but her tie-breaking vote keeps “control of the board out of the hands of the union” in the “near-bankrupt” district. CTU members should “take stock of their union’s unpopularity and consider a change in direction.” Biggs must steer the board away from “agitating for more cash to prop up a bloated system,” prioritizing the 304,000 public-school students who’ve been “pawns in CTU’s ideological crusade.”

Republican: GOP Lost Because Prez Can’t Listen

“Trump has run on instinct and whatever courtiers and hangers-on whisper in his ear, ignoring public opinion,” argues Keith Naughton at USA Today, “but that run is over.” Inflation has been voters’ No. 1 concern since 2022, yet Trump “pushed up tariffs across the board,” hiking costs, while also ignoring “rocketing cost of health care and health insurance.” He “cut a couple of deals for cheaper drugs, but that barely scratches the surface of a $5 trillion health-care system with massive administrative bloat, uncapped liability and almost no price transparency — problems Trump and the GOP did little to fix.” Yet “that’s how Trump handles complex policy problems: He nibbles around the edges”; “it’s like replacing the gold faucets in Trump Tower while the foundation crumbles.” 

Democrat: Moderates Take Charge in House

Ex-Rep. Steve Israel at The Wall Street Journal flags the “crucial dynamics in the new Congress”: “The size of the Democratic majority will have a moderating influence,” so “leadership won’t need to rely on a small number of hard-core members for every party-line vote” — including electing Hakeem Jeffries as speaker. The largest bloc “isn’t the hard left,” as the DSA reps only “doubled their numbers, from four to eight,” but the 114-member New Democrat Coalition—“more than half of the current Democratic Caucus.” Voters elected New Dems to “lower costs”— for “more-affordable groceries, housing, health care and child care” — and “to check” the president’s “worst impulses.” And these New Dem “majority makers” are “already getting to work.”

Culture critic: Revisionists Push a New ‘America’

“In the 20th century, a new anti-American counter-history started to develop,” painting America as rooted in “injustice,”  “private property” as “the source of selfish pride, violence, and inequality,” and Western civilization grown prosperous by being “unjust,” thunders Daniel McCarthy at Imprimis. A big sign of the revisionists’ success: In this 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, our “institutions of public history” have “failed to celebrate” as they did at the bicentennial. They seek “a new political order through a revolution against America”; we now “must take action,” or patriotism will “wither” and Americans will “cease to be a people.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board