Satirist: The Tyranny of Aging Boomers

“Why have national Democrats . . . fallen under the tyranny of the 70-somethings?” asks The Atlantic’s Andrew Ferguson. His answer: Aging coastal boomers refuse to give up the ghost — much less their political sinecures and ambitions to ever-higher office. “People in their mid-to-late 70s are thick on the ground nowadays,” quips Ferguson, “while in an earlier era, of course, you’d have been more likely to find them under it.” This is especially the case in the Beltway region, “a leader in ‘senior labor force participation,’ ” per ­researchers — a demographic phenomenon mirrored in Joe Biden’s and Bernie Sanders’ dominance over the Dem 2020 field. “I’m not saying one of the [two old men] won’t succeed in his quest,” says Ferguson. “But in a saner world, it would be obvious that the quest itself is unseemly.”

Iconoclast: The Rise and Rise of Josh Hawley

The Week’s Matthew Walther thinks Missouri’s Sen. Josh Hawley is “the most interesting Republican elected official in the United States.” Following in the footsteps of Sen. Marco Rubio, Hawley has begun to “question his party’s libertarian economics” while lending vociferous support to a “conservative ­social agenda.” His views place Hawley squarely in the so-called fourth quadrant of politics — combining cultural traditionalism with trenchant “criticism of America’s most powerful corporations” — which happens to represent “what a majority of us actually believe.” Because he defies GOP orthodoxy, Hawley is well placed to make bipartisan moves and form “alliances with ­either party, depending upon the issue in question,” Walther says. The bottom line: In a chamber where outcomes often turn on a single vote, fourth-quadrant lawmakers can be “tactfully savvy while holding fast to their principles.”

From the right: Hail Queen Kamala

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Even if a Democrat wins next year’s presidential election, “the odds are heavily stacked against” the GOP losing control of the Senate, notes National ­Review’s David French. That might be why one candidate, California’s Kamala Harris, is already vowing to ram her progressive vision without bothering to ­enact legislation. Harris’ immigration plan, for example, is an “immense” change from the status quo that would expand President Barack Obama’s DACA program and make so-called Dreamers eligible for green cards. But to achieve these goals, French worries, Harris would have to “wave the executive magic wand” and further empower the administrative state. Which isn’t exactly a departure from the current norm: Just like her two immediate predecessors, a President Harris would perpetuate “one of the most malignant practices in modern politics,” taking it as a given that it is the duty of the president to single-handedly fix the failures of the legislative branch. “Why run for president,” sighs French, “when you can run for queen?”

Albany vet: A Quiet Champion for Life

Sheila Blasch was 18 when a drunken driver slammed into her family’s car, leaving her severely burned. Forty-four years later, Blasch spends much of her time “standing outside the Assembly Chamber in the Capitol, surrounded by signs and posters decrying abortion,” the Times Union’s Chris Churchill reports. “Her quiet protests began when the Legislature was weighing the Reproductive Health Act.” While “it isn’t entirely accurate to draw a line from the crash to Blasch’s activism,” Churchill says, “she also believes the tragedy gave her a perspective others don’t have . . . When she was suffering in the burn unit, some onlookers may have believed she would be better off dead or her future would be without value.” But that suffering only heightened her appreciation for the dignity and purposiveness of all human life. As she tells Churchill, “We’re here for a reason. We’re created for a reason.”

Culture watch: Getting Farklempt Over Yiddish’s Popularity

It’s “easy, too easy” for American Jews to worry about their haters and “overlook the good,” writes Micah Halpern in The Jerusalem Post. One sign of Jewish cultural strength in the United States: the widespread adoption of Yiddish words by gentiles who often “don’t even realize what they’re saying.” In the recent national spelling bee, for example, children were asked to spell “Yiddishkeit” and “keriah,” both Yiddish words. Halpern admits: “When I think about how lucky America’s Jews are to be so deeply embedded in American society, I get all farklempt.”

Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari & Ashley Allen