◼ Time for Democrats to come up with their own Great Replacement Theory.

◼ Lincoln–Douglas or Webster–Hayne, this was not. Joe Biden and Donald Trump lived down to expectations. Neither explained what he intends to do with power the next four years. Both were lost at sea when confronted with questions about the nation’s finances. They were livelier comparing golf handicaps. But Trump sounded like the Trump we’ve long known: blustering, bragging, and spinning fantasies for the marks of his sales pitches. His lowest moments came with his voluminous baggage: One does not want to start a sentence with: “Number one, I didn’t have sex with a porn star . . .” But he drew blood with his visceral disgust at Biden’s policies on the border and late-term abortion, and by demanding about Afghanistan, “Did you fire anybody?” There’s no polite way to say it: Biden sounded weak, wheezy, decrepit, and overwhelmed. His best moments came when he got indignant, but even then, his mantra of “The idea!” got almost as old as he sounded. Democrats can scarcely hide their sense of panic and dread.

◼ Jamaal Bowman, incumbent representative for New York’s 16th congressional district, lost the Democratic primary to Westchester County executive George Latimer by 17 points. It was a richly deserved outcome for a congressman who stood out even in the progressive “Squad” as noxious and juvenile. Bowman’s unfitness for office was obvious enough when he was mostly known as the only member of Congress to have attempted to delay a House vote by yanking a fire alarm. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for it. Since the October 7 attack on Israel, Bowman has been a font of base antisemitism. A mere month after the attacks, he denied claims of Hamas rapes and atrocities as “lies” and “propaganda” disseminated by the Jewish state. (He only belatedly apologized, with truculent insincerity.) He fulminated conspiratorially to Politico about “the certain places where the Jews live and concentrate” in his district. He ended his campaign by shrieking vulgarly at a rally about how AIPAC was “coming for my family.” Voters were unpersuaded. Nobody doubts that George Latimer will be anything but a loyal party-line Democrat; that he is not a deranged antisemite is more than enough.

◼ Not at all chastened by the failure of his tariffs when in office, Trump seeks a much larger trade war if he becomes president again. The tariffs on China have not changed Chinese behavior, but they have raised prices for Americans, and the retaliation from China has harmed American exporters, especially in agriculture. Biden thinks they’re a good idea and has extended them—which should at least be a warning that maybe they aren’t a good idea. Yet Trump says he wants to go even further, with a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, completely belying any of the “strategic” justifications for “targeted” tariffs that protectionists invoke when they want to sound sophisticated. He now says he wants tariffs to replace the income tax. The individual income tax raised about $2 trillion last year, and total U.S. imports were valued at around $3.5 trillion. Squeezing $2 trillion in revenue from a $3.5 trillion tax base is economically impossible, and attempting to do so would be economically destructive. Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was a solid conservative tax reform that lowered rates and broadened the base, making the tax code less economically distortive. He should seek to build on that, not undermine it with Smoot-Hawley 2.0.

◼ In Los Angeles on Sunday, pro-Palestinian activists demonstrated outside the Adas Torah Synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, a center of the city’s Jewish community. They blocked the entrance to prevent the public from attending a real-estate fair for properties in Israel. Counter-protesters gathered, and fighting between the two camps soon broke out. Elected officials including Mayor Karen Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom, and President Joe Biden were quick to condemn the original protest and ensuing violence. “Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American,” Biden said in a statement on X. “Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship—and engaging in violence—is never acceptable.” Excellent. Now where are the prosecutions?