New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn recently said the paper needs skeptical editors, including those on the political right, to ask “what are we missing here.” A Tuesday piece headlined “How Economic Anxiety Is Driving the Democratic Socialists’ Surge” illustrates his point, the Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll writes. The piece consisted of interviews with socialists who delivered a Marxist analysis of the situation, arguing that “economic frustration”—particularly “layoffs in white-collar industries, the threat of job displacement from artificial intelligence, rising costs of living”—is prompting them to join the Democratic Socialists of America. Stoll responds: Had a Times editor pushed the reporter to interview people outside the socialist-progressive bubble, the economic explanations might have met with some skepticism. After all, the economy is fairly strong. The stock market has been testing record highs, and government-measured inflation has come down along with the prices in dollars of gold and Bitcoin. The unemployment rate in June was 4.2 percent. And even if people are feeling economic strain or anxiety, a resort to socialism isn’t necessarily the most logical reaction. People reacted to the stagflation of the 1970s by turning not to socialism but to President Reagan’s emphatically capitalist pro-growth tax-cutting. Plenty of people reacted to the Bidenflation of the early 2020s by electing Republicans, not socialists. And plenty of people react to economic challenges by moving out of New York City to lower-cost places, or by figuring out a way to earn more money by creating more value, rather than by trying to vote in socialists to destroy the free enterprise system and to confiscate and reallocate the hard-earned wealth of people who have succeeded in that system. The Times reporter, Emma Goldberg, didn’t reply by deadline to my email asking “did you think about expanding the pool of people interviewed to the story to non-socialist, non-progressive sources?” Had she done so, she might have encountered some political analysts who attribute the turn to socialism to youth too young to have remembered the disaster that was the Soviet Union’s communist economy. Or to a U.S. education system that is failing at teaching reading and math, let alone history or economics. READ MORE: ‘Crushing Cost of Living’ Driving Youth to Socialism, New York Times Claims Additional reading: The Socialist Democrat Melat Kiros, who is set to represent Denver in Congress next year, said U.S. leaders need to “tone that temperature down” and “prevent” antisemitic violence—by “reevaluating our relationship with Israel.” We’re learning more about the final hours of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign, which ended with a bizarre 11-minute selfie video in which an angry Platner ranted about how “they” took the nomination away from him. Politico reports that several Platner advisers urged him to take a more “conciliatory” tone, but Platner “bucked their advice and made it a condition of dropping out of the race that he get free rein to assail establishment Democrats and blame them for the ignominious end to his rapid political rise.” We’re also learning just how high the “strategists” who recruited Platner got on their own supply. The New York Times reports that Platner adviser Morris Katz, who has also worked with Zohran Mamdani, was privately promoting Platner as a 2028 presidential candidate. “They told him that he was ‘the guy.’” Now that Platner’s out, the Maine Democratic Party will hold a nominating convention between now and July 27, the deadline to select a nominee, that will reportedly include “roughly 600 delegates made up primarily of local party officials from around the state.” County-level parties will have to elect hundreds of those delegates in the coming weeks. Happy Friday, our full lineup is below. Committee to Protect Journalists’ Staff Packed With Anti-Israel Agitators Amid Boardroom Feuds Over Group’s List of ‘Journalists’ Killed in Gaza ‘Terribly Corrupt’: Coalition of Anti-Trump Prosecutors—Bankrolled By Secret Donors—Raises ‘Stunning’ Constitutional Concerns, Legal Experts Say ‘Crushing Cost of Living’ Driving Youth to Socialism, New York Times Claims Denver Socialist Melat Kiros Says America Must Address Antisemitic Attacks—By Reevaluating Its Relationship With Israel Dem House Nominee in Pennsylvania Operated Business Without Workers’ Comp Insurance in Apparent Violation of State Law, Records Show Colorado House Candidate Manny Rutinel Backed $12 Million in Taxpayer-Funded ‘Transgender Healthcare’ for Prisoners Thanks for reading the Washington Free Beacon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.