Sorry for harping on this point, but here’s another NYT piece, this time by David Leonhardt, that shows why class is so important in this year’s presidential election – and how it’s playing out among Black and Hispanic working-class voters. …

The NYT’s Nate Cohn has some explanations about why Dems are losing so many Black and Hispanic voters to Donald Trump. He doesn’t address the working-class/non-college voter component that I raised in a previous post, but it’s still a very good list. …

One of Nate’s explanations isn’t misogyny, the classic all-purpose hectoring explanation that fits so neatly into many (though not all) progressives’ identity-politics view of the world. I gotta say I’m kind of disappointed Obama made/hinted at this overly simplistic misogyny explanation. To be clear: there’s some misogyny at play, but not nearly to the degree the poll numbers suggest for both Black and Hispanic workers. Burrowing down into the survey results, you see a lot of explanations for the shift (such as concerns over the economy, crime, immigration, etc.), not one single explanation, as Cohn notes. Many Dems have foolishly ignored these and other factors in the past — and they’re doing it again now.

From chip shortages to exploding pagers, MGB’s suspension of non-emergency surgeries due to an IV shortage is yet the latest example of how vulnerable critical supply-chains are to natural and man-made disruptions.

The latest evidence that the media is going way overboard with its coverage of pro-Palestinian campus protests: The NYT’s oh-so-serious, blow-by-blow coverage of a “tense, simmering” student government meeting to restore funding for campus activities and clubs at the University of Michigan. … Do you know what the final vote means? The university’s Ultimate Frisbee, ballroom dancing, Black Undergraduate Kinesiology groups etc. etc. have their semester funds back! … Thank God.

Btw: Turns out the groups never really went without funds (see part about how the university “stepped in.”) So it was a kind of pretend controversy that the campus grown-ups let play out. But no matter. It was an historic campus protest! 

Solar and wind power have come a long way, so much so that you’ll start to see many more huge battery-storage systems around, such as those proposed for Brighton and Roslindale/Hyde Park. They don’t hold that much power right now, but they’ll keep getting better. … One non-clean-energy concern in this otherwise welcome clean-energy development: what chemicals are in these batteries? … The Globe wrote about a planned Everett battery-storage system in May.

With college football becoming increasingly professionalized and detached from the colleges they claim to represent, why should we care about college football? That’s the question John Branch asks at the NYT. And the answer is … because it’s fun and shared fun. … Put another way: I was so happy the Celts won the NBA championship last spring? Weren’t you? You get the picture.

Btw: Here’s a fun Onion headline that Branch cites in his piece: “Deion Sanders Admits He Has No Idea What School Colorado Buffaloes Play For.”  

At the bottom of the Onion piece are “related” sports stories, including : “NFL Sunday Ticket Allows Viewers To Simulcast Up To 4 Domestic Violence Trials At Once.”

As a moderate liberal (whatever), I admit it: I was one of those who was glad to see Eric Adams elected mayor of NYC, viewing it as a sign Dems were putting the brakes to the leftward drift of the party. … Bottom line: Right message, wrong man.

 I wonder what percentage of Steward Health Care’s executives, board members and investors are big Ayn Rand fans. Probably a high percentage of them, even though they’re the antithesis of the innovative, risk-taking, get-government-off-our-back capitalists glorified by Rand in her novels. Ultimately, they used government tax, incorporation and bankruptcy laws to make their profits – and then hid behind mama government’s Chapter 11 skirts to protect their wealth from screwed over creditors and stakeholders. And don’t forget where much of Steward hospitals’ revenues came from: government Medicare and Medicaid programs. …

The reason for this rant: the Globe Spotlight Team’s latest stories (here and here) ripping into the owners and investors of the now bankrupt Steward hospital chain.

This is obviously a good intentioned lawsuit. But it’s also, when you think about it, a very strange lawsuit by AG Campbell et gang. Imagine years ago AGs going after Teen magazine or TV shows deliberately designed to be as appealing (i.e. ‘addictive’) as possible to youths, all to make a profit via ads purchased by firms pitching their own ‘fear of missing out’ products. …

FYI: I fully support restricting what’s pitched and sold to teens (i.e. porn, booze, tobacco, firearms, etc.) But going after an entire media platform is a different matter.