The Front Page: Niall Ferguson on the ‘Barbenheimer’ Election. Plus. . .

It’s Wednesday, August 21, and this is The Front Page from The Free Press. Today: Our own Eli Lake says no, Mr. President, the protesters don’t have a point, Intern Julia visits the DNC’s abortion and vasectomy RV, and Peter Savodnik looks at the contrast between Barack and Michelle’s speeches. Plus: Nate Silver (the only stats guy that matters) on Honestly. And more. 

But first, our lead story, from historian and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson, who has come to a surprising conclusion about our crazy campaign season: It’s the Barbenheimer Election, with Kamala as Barbie and Trump as Oppenheimer. Here’s Niall: 

Since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for the presidency, the architects of her campaign have managed to create their own Dream House. This one isn’t bubblegum pink, but it has the policy equivalents of a pool party. “Why Kamala Harris’s New Politics of Joy Is the Best Way to Fight Fascism” is such a perfect headline. (I wonder which liberal propaganda organ will risk “Strength Through Joy”?) 

While Kamala reads scripted lines, strikes staged poses, and avoids all press in a campaign of vacuousness unsurpassed in the history of American politics, on the other screen we have a different docudrama: The dark, fissile energy of Donald Trump, reviving his nightmare vision of American Carnage and taking it global. 

Trump’s interview with Elon Musk last week was very Oppenheimer not just because of its tone, but because one of his central themes was the risk of nuclear war. “The biggest threat is not global warming,” Trump told Musk. “The biggest threat is nuclear warming because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power. . . . Let me tell you, it can lead to World War III. That can lead to World War III, the Middle East can lead to. . . . We have numerous places that could end up in a World War III right now for no reason whatsoever.” Click to read more from Niall Ferguson on why this is the Barbenheimer election.

Barack and Michelle Obama brought the house down at the DNC last night. But they did so with starkly different speeches, writes Peter Savodnik, who was in the arena for both. While the former president offered a characteristically upbeat message of hope and change, his wife—wearing all black and in her hometown for the first time since the death of her mother earlier this year—struck a less rosy note, which was perhaps even more rousing. Because it is Michelle Obama, Peter argues, who was willing to acknowledge the uncertainty of the road ahead. Click to read Peter on the contrast between the two Obamas at the DNC.

Election season is upon us, and if you’re forecasting wizard Nate Silver, that means everyone wants to ask you one question, and one question alone: Who’s going to win? So Nate devised a cunning scheme to force people to ask him about more than presidential politics: He wrote a book about something bigger than his election model. 

In On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, Nate outlines his theory on why successful people love risk, how they think, and what motivates them. The way these risk-takers make decisions is, according to Nate, the key to understanding the forces driving technology and the global economy.

On the latest episode of Honestly, Nate talks to Michael Moynihan about his book, risk, poker, what frustrates him about his haters, and—yes—a bit of politics, too. 

Listen to Nate and Michael’s full conversation by clicking play below. Or catch it wherever you get your podcasts. 

President Joe Biden, in his Chicago swan song, offered a sop to the forces that seek to spoil the Democratic National Convention. In a section of his speech calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden said, “Those protesters out on the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.” 

Really? Maybe some protesters are genuinely concerned with the toll the Gaza war has taken on both Israelis and Palestinians. But the leaders of the organizations trying to cause trouble this week are concerned only with the casualties on the Palestinian side. We know this because the groups behind the agitations since October 7 have praised the bloody massacre that kicked off the war. 

To take one of dozens of examples, just peruse a letter sent to Columbia University’s administration on October 9 from its chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. It said, “Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years.” 

That’s certainly one take. But most American voters after October 7 felt nothing but contempt and scorn for the perpetrators of the mass murder of 1,200 people in Israel that day. In this respect, it’s just wrong to say the masked troublemakers screaming about “genocide” in Gaza are anti-war. They are not. They want Hamas to win. 

Then there is the issue of the ceasefire proposal itself. The protesters are not asking for a negotiated agreement whereby Hamas returns the hostages (or those who are still alive) in exchange for a period of calm, which has been the approach of Biden’s administration. They seek an end only to Israel’s actions in Gaza and have not made any demands of Hamas, the terrorist group that started the war on October 7. 

Biden himself, in his remarks in Chicago, even acknowledged that Hamas is “backing away” from its earlier acceptance of a ceasefire deal, something this terrorist group does every time an agreement seems near. Perhaps the president can dispatch one of his aides to ask the river-to-the-sea crowd whether it would protest the embassy of Qatar, a country that has been one of the most important patrons of Hamas in recent years, instead of Israel’s consulate in Chicago. We all know what the answer would be. 

It’s not even clear if the DNC spoilers would ever be enticed to support Kamala Harris in November. As our own Olivia Reingold reports from the convention, many of the anti-Israel shouters are not trying to change the next administration’s policies so much as heap scorn and shame on a government they see as complicit in a genocide. Many are self-described “communists” and “anarchists.” So even if Biden or Harris changed America’s policy on the war, there is no guarantee these malcontents would actually end up voting for the Democrats come November. After all, before he dropped out of the race last month, this crowd called the president “Genocide Joe.” 

Now the anti-Israel mob, which showed up outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago on Tuesday, has a new target: “Killer Kamala.” The dozens of protesters, 13 of whom ended up arrested, spontaneously broke out into chants of “fuck Kamala” while a masked man waved a Samidoun flag and others held up signs declaring Biden and Harris were “different heads, same beast.”

In their more than hour-long confrontation with the police, the protesters told at least three entities to “go to hell”: Israel, the DNC, and the Chicago Police Department. They burned an American flag in the street. As rows of police stood about twenty feet away, their batons at the ready, activists were told to take to the microphone and “speak your bitter, speak your venom.”

A man in yellow latex gloves, with his entire face concealed, told the cops: “Fuck every single one of you until you quit your jobs.”

They called this a march for Gaza, but this could hardly be a march for anything—only against. Against the Republicans, against the Democrats, and against America. If they have one point, Mr. President, it’s that they are not worth listening to.

From protests. . . to the abortion and vasectomy van: Yesterday, we reported that Planned Parenthood has parked a mobile clinic outside the DNC, offering free abortions and vasectomies. (A giant inflatable IUD was also erected nearby.) You may wonder how Democrats went from advocating for abortion that is “safe, legal, and rare” to the celebration of pregnancy termination. So did we, which is why we sent Intern Julia—who fans of TGIF will know well—to investigate.

The Free Press team will be live from the DNC on X during prime time tonight. Follow us and tune in later on.

1. Senior Harris adviser David Plouffe says that the Sun Belt is back in play. “A month ago, I think it would have been hard for Democrats to compete in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina to win,” he said Tuesday. “I think those are all back as credible states Kamala Harris could win.” (Axios) 

2. But Democrats abandon the “Blue Wall” at their peril, argues Michael Baharaeen, about Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—the three states still crucial to a Democratic victory. It is “the party’s last connection to Middle America,” and ceding it risks “reinforcing a growing image of Democrats as the party of the elites.” (The Liberal Patriot) 

3. Most Democrats are relieved that Harris, not Biden, is their candidate. But not all of them think the late switch was a game-changer—and are convinced Biden would be doing just as well as Harris. Meet the DNC’s die-hard Biden fans. (New York magazine) 

4. Some 50,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to have deserted since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Struggling to backfill its massive war losses, Russia is hunting down deserters and then deciding: prosecution or redeployment? (Wall Street Journal) 

5. Most of the Hamas leadership is hiding out in Arab countries. But the terror group has “also long operated within the United States via a series of U.S.-based nonprofits.” (Air Mail)

6. Federal prosecutors in California charged five people, including two doctors, over the 2023 drug-induced death of actor Matthew Perry, who, at the time of his death, was demanding six or more intramuscular injections of ketamine a day. The tragic case is a reminder that “no dealer is more dangerous than one wearing a white coat,” argues Alex Berenson. (Unreported Truths) 

7. U.S. companies could unintentionally be profiting from clinical trials in which the Chinese Community Party “forced victim patients to participate,” a bipartisan group of House representatives warned in a letter to the Food and Drug Administration. (Semafor) 

8. As a new academic year dawns, universities are in exceptionally low repute. But Yuval Levin finds some hope in the campus crisis precipitated by October 7. The “character of the dispute is clearer than ever,” and he thinks that means the “potential for some effective action against the academic revolutionaries” is greater than it has been for 50 years. (American Enterprise Institute)

9. On a recent podcast, Nicole Shanahan explained two options for her long-shot ticket with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Stay in and “run the risk” of a Harris presidency by drawing votes from Trump. (Since Harris became the nominee, polls show Kennedy is a greater threat to Trump.) Or “walk away right now and join forces” with the Donald. (Politico) 

10. Asteroid mining sounds like the stuff of science fiction—or the kind of thing Elon Musk, and no one else, thinks is just around the corner. But asteroid mining start-up AstroForge has raised $55 million. Later this year, it plans to fly by a near-Earth asteroid, taking pictures and gathering data. If successful, it would be the first-ever private space mission to fly past a solar system body other than the moon. (ArsTechnica) 

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