NOTHING GOOD: What Happens After ISIS Goes Underground.

Taking away territory from ISIS is a temporary stopgap that will merely push the group toward more clandestine activity in the near term, as Craig Whiteside, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and other terrorism experts have repeatedly noted. In conjunction, the group will probably shift the locus of its activities to other enclaves where it continues to hold power and can remain capable of resupplying its organization with weapons and other materiel. And, the organization will undoubtedly redouble its efforts and presence in cyberspace, where for years it has enjoyed relative sanctuary in the conduct of offensive and support operations.

How else might ISIS seek to regain momentum once its caliphate is gone?

One concern is that a successful attack on American soil could invite a prompt military response, further galvanizing ISIS and its supporters and making it seem both more powerful and relevant than it actually is. The recent attack in Manchester, England demonstrates ISIS’ reach—it retains a remarkable capability to inspire or direct attacks abroad, including in the West.

ISIS has also proved highly adept at capitalizing upon sectarian tensions in the Muslim world to burnish its image as a protector of Sunnis. This is part of its strategy in Egypt, where recent ISIS attacks have targeted Coptic Christians. If this strategy is deemed successful, there is little doubt that ISIS will replicate this behavior in other countries where it retains a presence, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Still, if ISIS is close to being defeated—as many analysts have claimed in recent months—why is there heightened concern about its potential to conduct attacks?

Indeed.

THIS HAS LONG BEEN TRUE OF BOTH CLINTONS: Hillary Clinton is making fools out of feminists.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Oil slips on oversupply worries despite OPEC deal.

HMM: Millennial Behavior Is About To Make Fools Of Peak Energy Demand Theorists.

Start with the peak-driving proposition that’s been so eagerly advanced over the past half-dozen years. Here, wishful thinking aside, recent trends are unequivocal. America’s affection for cars is far from over.

Over the past couple of years, the data show travel on America’s roads has been growing at a record pace. By year-end 2016 road travel had hit an all-time high, north of 3.2 trillion vehicle-miles. Gasoline demand has followed apace, also hitting new highs. So much for peak driving.
…
What about the housing market? This sector lags automotive by a couple of years. Houses cost more and take longer to build than cars, but Millennials are starting to buy, rather than continue to share or couch-surf. They already make up over 40% of home buyers. This shouldn’t be surprising. As LendingTree CEO Doug Lebda has noted about Millennials: “I mean, you can’t obviously buy a house without a good job.” And the data show that “starter” homes for Millennials are nearly as big as the average sized home already owned by boomers. What does this imply about average home size as, in due course, Millennials move up market? Do we need to note that bigger homes consume more energy?

Here’s a prediction, given that homes are responsible for nearly 40% of the nation’s electricity consumption: As Millennials have kids and buy houses, the past eight years of flat electric demand will soon follow the same upward curve seen in road-miles. And imagine what happens to household electric meters if automakers finally make affordable and useful electric cars. But without regard to Tesla and its wannabes, peak electric demand is very unlikely.

Student debt loads, the Great Recession, and income stagnation created a situation where Millennials haven’t yet had the opportunity to spend like Boomers and GenX have. I suspect that their P.C. hosannas to the environment are masking a lot of pent-up demand.

The time to start building that Dyson Sphere was yesterday.

PATRICK RUFFINI: Black Voters Aren’t Turning Out For The Post-Obama Democratic Party.

Indeed, on April 18th in Georgia, black voters did not necessarily join their white counterparts in a surge of Democratic enthusiasm against Trump. Compared to turnout levels in the 2014 midterms — which, like this special election, was an off-year election where Democratic enthusiasm was low and Obama was not on the ballot — black Democratic turnout in Georgia’s 6th lagged around 10 points behind that of white Democrats, though black voters still turned out at a higher rate than Republicans as a whole did.

As in 2016, the Democratic coalition in the Georgia special election relied somewhat less on African-American votes, gaining numbers instead through higher-than-expected turnout from the district’s fast-growing Hispanic and Asian populations. Nonwhite voters make up a smaller share of the 6th District’s electorate than Georgia’s as a whole, but the trends shown below are consistent with ones we saw in many states in a post-2016 review of voter turnout.

Democrats may partially solve their midterm turnout problem before they repair the cracks in their Electoral College strategy. In 2018, Democrats may be able to win over and turn out the kinds of white voters who showed up for them in Georgia’s 6th — educated, left-leaning, but usually unlikely to vote in midterms — even as “the resistance” fails to appeal to the African-American community that has been a major element of Democrats’ traditional base.

The Democratic party has been captured by gentry liberals and tech titans who don’t share many interests in common with African-American voters, and President Obama’s race could provide cover for only so long.

GOODNESS: Congressman John Lewis Says Trump Budget Proposal Threat to ‘Maybe the Future of the Planet.’

GONE: Manuel Noriega, Ousted Panamanian Dictator, Is Dead at 83.

THE WAGES OF SOCIALISM: Zimbabwe tobacco is booming, but farmers growing it are not.

Many of Zimbabwe’s tobacco farmers share the same plight during the ongoing selling season of the crop, Zimbabwe’s second biggest earner after gold. While exported tobacco rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars, small-time farmers feel left out of the lucrative cycle.

A cash shortage that underlines the country’s deepening economic woes has left farmers who travel long distances to auctions unpaid, stranded and desperate.

Farmers like Kahari are not paid in cash because of the currency shortage. But they need the money because much of Zimbabwe, especially rural areas where there is little infrastructure, is a cash-based society.

Instead, their earnings are deposited into accounts that they must open at bank branches at the auction houses. Then the farmers must stick around for weeks, hoping for the daily withdrawal limit of $100 but often getting no more than $50.

Meanwhile, tobacco sales have jumped 30 percent from last year, earning $300 million so far, according to the country’s Tobacco Industry Marketing Board.

President Robert Mugabe and many in his government point to rebounding tobacco production as justification for often violent land seizures years ago. Many tobacco farmers were resettled on farms forcibly taken from whites, 20 years after Zimbabwe became independent from white minority rule in 1980.

Mugabe’s deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, said this month that tobacco sales mean “the cake is now spread to ordinary families in the countryside,” but many distressed people at a tobacco sales floor wore torn clothes. On May 4, police fired tear gas to disperse tobacco farmers protesting non-payment and hazardous living conditions at auction floors.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out where all that money is going.

GHIA NODIA: The End of the Postnational Illusion. [PDF]

So, what did we get wrong? Are we not rational creatures? Did the Enlightenment not really change the world? Should we give up on its legacy? No, there is no need to go that far. I am very far from being a proponent of “postmodernist” (that is, post-Enlightenment) thinking. The Enlightenment itself, however, can be understood in different ways. Our perception of it is too much defined by the ideas of the eighteenth-century French philosophes. Theirs is not the only way to respect progress and rationality; one can do that without enforcing too strict an opposition between reason and anything that looks like “prejudice.”

The Scottish (and, more broadly, the British) version of the Enlight- enment suggests a more nuanced approach that allows for development based on the spread of education, support for individual freedom, and toleration of differences, but without rejecting religion or respect for cultural traditions.14 The Scotsman David Hume was a great Enlighten- ment thinker and a friend of progress, but he also said this scandalous thing about reason: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”15 Contrary to what one might think, this does not imply a celebration of irrational instincts, or of any kind of “prejudice,” but al- lows for a more realistic understanding of the place of rationality within the structure of human nature.

The other general supposition that underpins the expectation of the coming decline of nations is the idea that human nature itself is largely constructed. Again, I will refer to Marx, who believed that there is no such thing as “human nature,” but only the “ensemble of social rela- tions.”16 We are all shaped by “social forces.” Some combination of these has made us nationalists, but some other combination will “cure” us of that, as well as of any tendency to be religious, or even (so Marx be- lieved) to be selfish. Humanity is plastic, the thinking runs. It can be made over, and made better. This Marxian vision is the wellspring of the social constructivism that has become so influential in the social science of our day.

The belief that humanity is plastic implies that some few should have the power to mold the rest.

WILLIAM MCGURN: Don’t Blame Hillary. “She was a flawed messenger, but her party has a problem with its message.”

It has been a consistent pattern for Mrs. Clinton. On almost any issue that energizes her party—from same-sex marriage to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal—Mrs. Clinton has gone where the party has pulled her even if it meant going against where she had been. This is what Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson meant last summer when she asked a group of Sanders delegates at the convention to understand that Mrs. Clinton “is not a leader, she’s a follower.”

But on what became the single overriding theme of her campaign, Mrs. Clinton was truly in sync with her party. This is the idea that she should be elected because she’s a woman, and that a coalition of millennials, minorities and women would come together to make it happen. So where Donald Trump had “Make America Great Again,” Mrs. Clinton had the identity project par excellence: “I’m with her.”

After all, who could be more deserving to succeed the first African-American president than the first woman president?

It didn’t turn out that way. And if you take the Trump blinders off for some perspective, there’s another dynamic that had little to do with Mrs. Clinton: the hemorrhaging of Democratic seats over the Obama years—from the governorships to state legislatures to Capitol Hill—to the point where the Democratic Party is now at its lowest levels in a century.

By the time Mrs. Clinton had secured the nomination for president, she had embraced everything a far more progressive party wanted her to embrace. But she also inherited a party that was losing elections all across the country.

Barack Obama said he wanted to be a transformative president in a way that Bill Clinton wasn’t, but I doubt this is what he had in mind.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief will get you started.

SARAH HOYT: Joining the Freedom Gang.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best and Worst Companies for Customer Service in 2017.

DREAM ON: Give Immigrant Entrepreneurs Path to Residency, Argues Bipartisan Legislation.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY YOU KNOW: Special forces are getting a stealth motorcycle that’s silent and deadly.

REMEMBER: About 20 veterans a day commit suicide, per the Veterans Administration: “In 2014, the latest year available, more than 7,400 veterans took their own lives, accounting for 18% of all suicides in America. Veterans make up less than 9% of the U.S. population.”

PATRICK POOLE: Muslim Brotherhood Incites More Terror Attacks Targeting Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

CHANGE: Congress Pushes to Counter Obama Labor Reforms.

GIVE ‘EM PARTICIPATION TROPHIES: Democrats still aren’t winning elections.

SECURITY THEATER: U.S. might ban laptops on all flights into and out of the country.

Kelly said the move would be part of a broader airline security effort to combat what he called “a real sophisticated threat.” He said no decision had been made as to the timing of any ban.

“We are still following the intelligence,” he said, “and are in the process of defining this, but we’re going to raise the bar generally speaking for aviation much higher than it is now.”

Airlines are concerned that a broad ban on laptops may erode customer demand. But none wants an incident aboard one of its airplanes.

“Whatever comes out, we’ll have to comply with,” Oscar Munoz, chief executive officer of United Airlines (UAL.N), told the company’s annual meeting last week.

No one has yet to provide an adequate explanation for why a cargo hold full of laptops is safer than a cabin full of laptops.

TO BE FAIR, SHE HAS ADMITTED THAT SHE DRINKS HEAVILY: Hillary Clinton Still Thinks She Beat Donald Trump in Election.

Guys, Hillary Clinton is okay. It’s super important that you all know that—and the media will try its darndest to make sure that message gets out. She’s just been dealing with a hard breakup: the American people left her for Donald Trump.

Thankfully, New York Magazine dedicated its cover story to covering Clinton’s journey from a one-time presidential loser to a two-time presidential loser. Deep inside the coverage is a key kernel of wisdom: Even if you lose, just pretend you didn’t so people keep giving you money.

It’s always about money with the Clintons, except when it’s about sex.

EMANNUEL MACRON: White-Knuckle Handshake with Trump Was ‘Moment of Truth’

DAMION DANIELS: No, You’re Not More Likely to Be Killed by a Right-Wing Extremist than an Islamic Terrorist.

The fact that the two deadliest attacks upon the U.K. in recent memory were at the hands of Islamic terrorists is not simply pub trivia. I mention it because when these apologists for Islam get bored of claiming that jihadists are incessantly and inexplicably lying about their religious motivations, they invariably engage in the crass exercise of throwing around skewed data in a desperate attempt to deemphasize the danger posed by Islamic terror. As far as I can tell, this is not due to some well-meaning concern for people worrying unnecessarily, or to ensure that counter terrorism strategy is accurately focused upon the most serious threat, it seems rather to be a tactical attempt to prioritize the protection of odious 7th century folklore over the welfare of real human beings.

More than that, it’s about keeping the proles in line and feeling guilty.

And do read the whole thing, which is chock full of fact and figures.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Liberals Are Shocked To Find We’re Starting To Hate Them Right Back.

Cue the boring moralizing and sanctimonious whimpering of the femmy, bow-tied, submissive branch of conservatism whose obsolete members were shocked to find themselves left behind by the masses to whom these geeks’ sinecures were not the most important objective of the movement. This is where they sniff, “We’re better than that,” and one has to ask ,“Who’s we?” Because, by nature, people are not better than that. They are not designed to sit back and take it while they are abused, condescended to, and told by a classless ruling class that there are now two sets of rules and – guess what? –the old rules are only going to be enforced against them.

We don’t like the new rules – I’d sure prefer a society where no one was getting attacked, having walked through the ruins of a country that took that path – but we normals didn’t choose the new rules. The left did. It gave us Ferguson, Middlebury College, Berkeley, and “Punch a Nazi” – which, conveniently for the left, translates as “punch normals.” And many of us have had personal experiences with this New Hate – jobs lost, hassles, and worse. Some scumbags at an anti-Trump rally attacked my friend and horribly injured his dog. His freaking dog.

So when we start to adopt their rules, they’re shocked? Have they ever met human beings before? It’s not a surprise. It’s inevitable.

It’s also inevitable, or nearly so, that the Left won’t enjoy the end result if they continue down their path of violence.

MICHAEL WALSH: Trump to Germany — Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.