The New York Times has made its endorsement
From the New York Times:
There are legitimate questions about whether our democratic system is fundamentally broken. Our elections are getting less free and fair, Congress and the courts are increasingly partisan, foreign nations are flooding society with misinformation, a deluge of money flows through our politics. And the economic mobility that made the American dream possible is vanishing.
Both the radical and the realist models warrant serious consideration. If there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. If there were ever a time to seek stability, now is it.
That’s why we’re endorsing the most effective advocates for each approach. They are Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
(Featured image is “November 6” by gtmcknight. Used under creative commons license.)
I watched the TV reveal. The interviews, according to them, ar 30K word transcripts of which about 7 minutes per candidate aired so there is a ton of editing here. Still, Amy Klobuchar they pretty openly dismissed in the program, but then split the endorse with her and Elizabeth Warren. It’s so ridiculous, that conference room needed to be cleaned up with a mop and bucket after the gushing over the senator from MA, they clearly wanted to pick her, but for some insipidous reason decided that would be too obvious, but they can’t NOT pick her, so someone else had to join her, but it cannot be a man cause they feared that backlash, so they put the Amy Klobuchar up there, even after hating her interview and deriding her, just for the optics. The “this is the debate in the party” is such a cop-out. Its self-indulgent cowardice. RidiculousReport
It seems such a weird conclusion to jump to.
You never were going to make everybody happy… but there are ways to avoid making everybody unhappy.
Some of those even overlap with retaining editorial credibility!Report
Did not watch the reveal, but my assumption would be they probably liked Pete a lot more than Amy. However liking someone and thinking they’ve done enough to show themselves ready to be president is not the same thing. If this were 2028 or beyond they’d have endorsed Pete over her.
Their reasons for not going with the other candidates were clear. That left Warren who many of them obviously loved, and Klobuchar to represent the realist side which does not elicit so much emotion but was nonetheless quite important in the internal debates they had, at least according to this piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/reader-center/weekly-candidates-nyt-endorsement.html
I see no mystery in how it played out, much less cowardice. Seems to me you’re tilting at windmills.Report
A windmill tilt is picking two when the stated purpose is to pick one.Report
Additional useful info, I guess:
My take on this is that HOLY CRAP THEY COULDN’T CONVINCE EACH OTHER TO CHANGE. THEY COULDN’T BUDGE THE BLOOMBERG, BOOKER, BUTTIGEIG, OR BIDEN STANS TO CHANGE TEAMS EVEN THOUGH EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM KNEW THAT THAT WOULD RESULT IN A DOUBLE ENDORSEMENT.
HOLY CRAP.Report
Were they swayed by Warren’s recent assertion that she’s the only remaining candidate with “executive experience”? I guess an actual executive branch position doesn’t count, like Buttigieg, Sanders, and Bloomberg, who were all mayors,, or even being the #2 man of the entire executive branch like Biden. I’m not sure why she constantly does things like that, but lying like a six-year old seems to come very easily to her.Report
George, your charge of “lying like a six-year old” would carry more weight if there weren’t a guy in the White House that lies every day with whoppers that are pretty obvious to anyone who cares to check. What you are complaining about has a lot more behind it than stuff he says on a daily basis. He got in the White House doing that. Why should anyone else do anything different?Report
George’s charge would carry more weight if he weren’t a right-wing fanatic troll without an ounce of good faith who gets way too much leeway from the PTB.Report
Trump’s lies are like the spin you get from ad men. “We had the biggest crowds ever seen!” “Let me tell you, my hotel has the best taco bowl in the country!” “I married the most beautiful woman on Earth!” Of course some of these things might be true.
Warren’s lies are different. She claimed to be an American Indian, on applications and other official documents, to get jobs and privileges she did not merit. She worked desperately to keep the lie going, even taking a DNA test and trying to spin the result as confirming her claims. She recently lied about being forced out of school because she was pregnant. She also falsely claimed her children only attended public schools. She claimed her father was a janitor, which pissed off her brother and her father.
She claims she’s a socialist, which is almost certainly a lie because she spent most of her life as a right-wing conservative Republican until it was more beneficial to her to be seen as a left-wing Democrat. He claims that Sanders said a woman would never be President are very likely a complete fabrication. There’s a big difference between saying Nancy is an out-of-control wacko crazy lady, or saying some general is a moron, as Trump does, and, if Bernie is to be believed, bearing false witness against him. People who do that are the kind of people who go tell your boss that you were telling horrifying sex stories about their wife just to get you fired.
Nobody ever respects them, and few people believe a word they say for very long.Report
She claims she’s a socialist
Does she? I’ve only ever heard of her denying being a socialist, and saying that she’s a capitalist.Report
I know that *I* am saying this but try to read what I’m saying instead of who is saying it and then coming to a conclusion based on *THAT*:
“Warren isn’t a worse liar than Trump!” is not a winning play.Report
As a double endorsement, this makes no sense. Warren is a candidate with policy agenda (whatever you think of it) and plans to get there (whatever you think of them). I don’t know what Klobuchar stands for except possibly that it is acceptable to be mean to your employees. In my view, more than any other candidate, she is the one most likely to say no to anything the base wants. No too college-tuition relief or lowering the cost, no to higher pay and worker benefit’s, no to universal healthcare. What is her positive agenda?Report
During the 2016 election, some people argued that young people like Sanders because he was the cool grandparent that told you interesting stories and gave you stuff while Clinton came off as the tough grandparent as the tough grandparent that dispatched hard truths and was stingy in gift giving. Klobuchar is basically the tough aunt.Report
It makes sense once you realize that they took a vote and went with the two largest pluralities (who were a vote away from each other) and neither had a majority nor even a third of the votes.Report
Ridiculous. I wish I could say I was shocked they’d issue such a risible, non-endorsement endorsement but…Report
Okay. This crap made me laugh out loud.
Report
I see this endorsement is burning up all the air on the blogs this morning. But I’m having a difficult time getting worked up about it.
It seems very much something that is of interest to the extremely online, extremely inside baseball types of politicos.
Not that it isn’t dumb. Just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that will leave a mark beyond today’s news cycle.Report
So… the largest, most respected newspaper in the country (perhaps even in the world) has made its endorsement and it doesn’t matter to anybody outside of a handful of insiders?
Yeah. That sums it up.Report
Compared to Brad and Jennifer’s backstage meeting? No it probably doesn’t.
The NYT’s coverage of events has a big influence but its endorsements never seem to move the needle of public opinion much.Report
Did its endorsements ever mean anything?
There was a point at which we were at least willing to pretend that they did.
When did that stop?Report
I can’t remember an election in which they did matter.
But also, as long as I’ve been aware, loving/hating on the NYT has been a liberal pastime.Report
Surely there’s a Wikipedia page, I thought. There is!
Yeah, if I had to guess, I’d say the NYT stopped mattering somewhere in the 70’s.
But it at least was able to provide the illusion of relevance as recently as Bill Clinton.Report
So… the largest, most respected newspaper in the country
Are we still pretending that the NYT is a serious newspaper?
This is the same one that just got fact-checked by the World Socialist Web Site (italics for emphasis, not just title).Report
On the liberal blogs, they call it FTNYT as in “F**k The Ney York Times” and canceling their subscription is a daily occurrence for many of the commentors.
But of course, for nearly any event, the paper they reference is the NYT. I notice it is much the same for the conservative blogs.
For both tribes, whenever there is some event, they get the basic facts from the NYT or WaPo or whatever, then spin it with references to whatever source rocks their boat.
Not that I think the NYT is always accurate or fair. Just that , for better or worse, it still is the paper of record.Report
I think, at most, its another chip off the “Biden is the safe pick” block. If he can’t get the NYT endorsement, who exactly is he appealing to?
For Bernie, by contrast, I see it having no impact. He was never going for this type of support.Report
That’s fair to say. It probably boosts Warren to some extent among the more centrist Dems.Report
Biden’s base are Democratic voters not likely to post to political blogs. As always, it is mainly older voters and/or African-American voters. Obama needed a victory in the Iowa caucus to convince African-American primary voters that he was a safer bet than Clinton in 2008. The question is whether Klobuchar or Warren winning in Iowa and/or New Hampshire produces some similar peel away. I still have my doubts.
Lots of older boomer Democrats seem to fear Warren as ripping out everything they were taught was great about American root and branch. If older boomers have concerns about Biden’s age, they tend to go for Mayor Pete. Biden is “return to normalcy” for Democrats who desperately want it so.Report
Yeah… the Biden snub is probably the main story.
And then there’s this.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The Biden phenomenon is giving me flashbacks to Romney… every other candidate was given a chance to “be the one” but none of them could. In the end, it was Romney.Report
At this point, I think a core of Biden’s appeal is that the NYT editorial board isn’t for him but the nice elevator woman is.
Biden is become the establishment candidate that the elites don’t care for, its an underrated position in this politicial enviroment. It gives him an sympathetic underdog energy despite being in the lead.
He’s also got the best defense against an opposition smear campaign you can hope for at this point, an already defined public identity that’s a relative asset (unlike H. Clinton, whose public identity was a liablity).Report
Mmf, I’m not impressed and not surprised.Report
What’s odd to me is how Warren and Klobuchar are supposed to be taking the country in different directions.
I could see a Warren/Sanders… the time is now for Social Democracy!
I could see Klobuchar/Other… what we need now is Pragmatic leadership to put us back on track!
etc. etc.
Endorsing a “direction” then offering two options based upon a couple of other secondary items/nuance could make sense… but this isn’t an endorsement so much as a food fight made public.Report
I was googling the difference between a “prelude” and an “overture” and they have a lot of similarities. The big difference seems to be that an overture has an end to the song while a prelude just seamlessly segues into the start of the opera.Report
I’m not sure of the technical musical differences, but sure… if the Prelude is just taking all the existing themes and mashing them up into a song that suggests these are all the things you have to look foward to… then ok, NYT gave us a prelude.
If an Overture is a song that sets the tone for the upcoming work, evokes all the important themes but does so in a way that set’s them up rather than simply echos them… then yes, NYT decided not to do that… there’s no theme that the NYT is emphasizing.Report
The song isn’t who they picked. It’s the number that weren’t willing to budge away from who they picked.
A mash-up of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 and Dessa’s The Bullpen segues into You Can’t Always Get What You Want.Report
Yes? That is the cacophony we call the Democratic Party.Report
The differences between any two of the Dems is a narcissism of small differences.
A Klobuchar Administration would have a practical outcome only slightly different than a Warren Administration.
Its that whole Three Equal Branches thing.
ETA I shouldn’t overstate the case. They would govern differently, just that the main bulk of their staff and Cabinet nominees wou,d come from the same Dem pool, we would still have McConnell and Pelosi and Roberts to deal with.Report
Possibly, I personally think there’s probably more differences among the candidates than you allow… sure, they are all going to say certain things that need to be said vis-a-vis the perceived locus of the party faithful that will determine the primary.
But I think you are overly sanguine on the interchangability of the candidates… Its really not clear that Sanders/Warren/Klobuchar/Biden would prioritize exactly the same way to spend any sort of political capital they will amass should they win. Sussing those directions out would seem to me the only useful thing the NYT might provide.Report
Agreed. I bet Warren gets one big thing done, spending all her capital and time unless/until Congress improves. Klobuchar probably gets a dozen marginal improvements by trading away things that would piss me off (like the actual political deals of the Bartlett admin).
That said, I agree their goals would be pretty similar.Report
A lot would come down to how/why they won — at this moment it seems like a President Klobuchar would’ve won by being the candidate of normalcy and moderation, winning back some of the center while still getting enough lefty votes motivated by getting rid of Trump, so she would be rather less politically motivated to push through any ambitious liberal agenda; whereas a President Warren would’ve won by energizing the base, and would probably be under more pressure to pass at least one major progressive policy. Obviously would also depend on what happened in the house & senate elections.Report
Right… what I’d expect from any endorsement would be a recommendation on which path to trod because how to win matters on who to win.
But, if the tweeted votes are true… what it shows is that the NYT is split on both How and Who. Which strikes me a plausible.Report
One could perhaps read the board’s vote spread as an indication that none of the candidates particularly stood out in comparison to the others, or that each candidate’s particular flaws prevented them from getting a really strong plurality of support. Where each candidate’s supporters the ones wiling to overlook that candidate’s particular flaws and weaknesses, whereas most of the board weren’t willing to overlook those flaws, and so couldn’t be won over, even tepidly?
That could be an indication that none of the candidates are particularly good picks, that under serious scrutiny none stand out from the pack as being the ideal candidate who will be able to go the distance and make a very good showing.
I don’t know if that’s particularly worrisome or telling, since this board might be some particularly cantankerous editors and the earlier candidates might have barely squeaked by with a plurality. But earlier boards did manage to agree that Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, and Kerry stood out from the pack enough to get the endorsement.
I guess the field could come together and all quote Obama’s line “We are what we’ve been waiting for,” but that doesn’t really help the situation. I’ve often said that if the field had a really strong candidate like Obama, the rest of this slate would look like third stringers. I still think that’s true.Report
“One could perhaps read the board’s vote spread as an indication that none of the candidates particularly stood out in comparison to the others”
Eh, that doesn’t grab me as the situation here… as a Rorschach test I think it shows that the NYT editorial board is split between Progressive and Establishment directions for the party. But, even the Establishment side has moved away from Biden to a slightly more Progressive update to Klobuchar. Less talked about is whether Warren is seen as a sort of “house Progressive” vs. a real radical (like, say Bernie or [whispers] Yang).
So in many (all?) ways its a story about the NYT and helps to explain why we see certain leftists call it a sell-out Neo-Lib Establishment rag, and other times its leading the charge in various culture war endeavors.
Its the story of the Overton Window of the NYT.Report
The Nation’s Katrina van den Heuvel (who may have Russian sympathies) gives her take.
Is there anybody who looks at this endorsement and says “you know what? They made a good call!”
So far, I’ve only seen “this was a bad move” and “it doesn’t matter if this was a bad move or not because it doesn’t mean anything”.
Have we seen any “Yes! Finally!” kinda responses?
(And if we haven’t, is not seeing any of them something that could have been foreseen?)Report