RICHARD BEN CRAMER TRIED TO WARN THEM:

Joe Biden Is a Lousy Politician (Matthew Continetti, May 14, 2024, AEI)

We pretend that the chief executive and his inner circle have a deep and mystical insight into the mood of voters and how best to shape public attitudes. The reason for this illusion is that there is only one president at a time. Winning the White House is an enormous task. To achieve it, the president and his team must build a national coalition. They must earn a mandate. They have got to know what they are doing.

That’s the cover story. Every so often, though, a president comes along who dashes the nation’s expectations of fitness, capacity, and suitability for office. The president may be an honorable man or an effective demagogue. His record may be admirable or mixed. But, at some point, his poll numbers go south. Nothing goes right. None of his solutions work. Looking back, it appears as if he were doomed from the start.

Such was the fate shared by Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump. They belong to a club no one wants to join: a motley crew of one-termers. It may soon welcome a new member named Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

All Joe was hired to do was beat Donald. No one thought he’d be an effective executive. He should have chosen a capable vp and resigned once his job was done.

STOP IT, YOU’RE SCARING THE CHILDREN:

The myth of “woke” indoctrination at American universities (JUDD LEGUM, MAY 16, 2024, Popular Information)

Open Syllabus, a non-profit group, collects syllabi from colleges and universities. The group has collected over 5.5 million syllabi at more than 4,000 American institutions of higher learning. The data is not comprehensive because Open Syllabus relies mostly on publicly available data. But it is the most robust database of what is actually taught on campus in the U.S.

Data collected by Open Syllabus reveals that, in 2023, “woke” terms like “critical race theory,” “structural racism,” or “transgender” appear in just 0.08% of college and university syllabi. These are all legitimate areas of inquiry but are derided by critics as evidence of academia’s decline. In any event, the data shows they are not significant components of college and university curricula.

Even generic terms that encompass these terms appear in relatively few syllabi. The term “race” — allegedly an obsession of the modern university — appears in only 2.8% of the syllabi collected by Open Syllabus in 2023. Moreover, the prevalence of “race” in syllabi has remained relatively consistent over the last 15 years. Similarly, “gender” appeared in 4.7% of syllabi in 2023 — a rate that has held fairly steady since 2008.

IT’S ALWAYS THE TRUMPISTS:

A gunman shot Slovakia’s prime minister. Here’s what you need to know. (MICHAL ONDERCO, MAY 15, 2024, Good Authority)

We do not know much about the motivation of the alleged shooter, who was apprehended quickly. While his immediate comments at the police station hinted at his political opposition to some of Fico’s recent domestic policy moves, journalists quickly dug up earlier racist anti-Roma texts, and his earlier affinity with Slovak Levies, a paramilitary group with ties to Russia.