A Look at the New York Times' 2020 Endorsement

Members of the editorial board of the New York Times (FX via Slate)

After much anticipation, the editorial board for the nation's Paper of Record, the New York Times, has unveiled its endorsement for the 2020 Democratic primary—and for reasons best understood to the board members themselves, they've decided to endorse both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. The endorsement has little to offer in terms of helping voters make a well-reasoned decision, and isn't even particularly interesting in its choice of candidates. But I want to take a look at it because of the extremely revealing window it offers into the minds of the intelligentsia that plays such a major role in shaping policy and public opinion in the United States—in manufacturing consent, to use the term adopted by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. And, as we shall shortly see, much of what that window reveals should be extremely disturbing.

The endorsement article starts off okay, noting correctly that we are faced with three visions of the country's future: on the one hand there is the nativist vision offered by Donald Trump; among the Democrats,

an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation. Some in the party view President Trump as an aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible. Then there are those who believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten that they must be replaced.

It then moves on to noting the commonalities among the Democrats, saying that "[w]here they differ most significantly is not the what but the how, in whether they believe the country’s institutions and norms are up to the challenge of the moment" (their emphasis). That seems like a pretty major difference, but all right. After that, we get this brief commentary on the notion of "electability":

Many Democratic voters are concerned first and foremost about who can beat Mr. Trump. But with a crowded field and with traditional polling in tatters, that calculation calls for a hefty dose of humility about anyone’s ability to foretell what voters want.

I guess that is what you would write right before endorsing Elizabeth Warren, given her lousy performance in head-to-head polls with Donald Trump.

After (again, largely accurately) summarizing the problems the country faces, the article offers this bit of preamble before it finally gets to the Big Reveal:

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.

Already, we're getting some revealing bits of ideology coming through: the "radical" model is contrasted with the "realist," as if these two things are inherently antonymic: you can't be both realistic and a radical (whatever that means) at the same time. Even more revealing is the idea that Elizabeth Warren represents any sort of radicalism (or that Amy Klobuchar represents "realism" for that matter). What proposals exactly make Warren a radical? Her wealth tax? Her healthcare plan (which she's already generously watered down to appease her more conservative critics)? Her proposal to cancel some (but not all) student debt? In any other developed country, none of these would stand out as particularly radical ideas; indeed, with her vehement commitment to markets and capitalism, Warren might well be seen as center-right. But for the Times editorial board, any deviation from neoliberal orthodoxy, no matter how cautious, is "radical," and their willingness to even consider this radicalism is because they "are rattled by the weakness of the institutions that we trusted to undergird [our] values." Rightly so.

After announcing the endorsement picks, the article moves on to explain its support for Warren. "[S]ome of the most compelling ideas are not emerging from the center, but from the left wing of the Democratic Party," it explains, though "[w]e worry about ideological rigidity and overreach, and we’d certainly push back on specific policy proposals, like nationalizing health insurance or decriminalizing the border." Yes, of course: while a certain dose of "radicalism" might be permissible, the board could never embrace "overreach" such as the end of the bloated and inefficient for-profit health insurance industry, or the reduction of unauthorized border crossings from a criminal to a civil offense. Some things are beyond the pale, after all.

The board then addresses why it isn't endorsing Bernie Sanders. After making sure to mention that he has been "adjacent to the Democratic Party but not a part of it" and briefly touching on his health, the article discusses Sanders' approach to politics:

He boasts that compromise is anathema to him. Only his prescriptions can be the right ones, even though most are overly rigid, untested and divisive. He promises that once in office, a groundswell of support will emerge to push through his agenda. Three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.

Here is the ideology of the New York Times and the intelligentsia it represents in a nutshell. Bernie Sanders is bad because he believes too firmly in the things he says he believes in, and thinks that diluting one's ideas is undesirable (we should note that Sanders supported, for example, the Affordable Care Act, which was a compromise measure to modestly improve the American healthcare system, and has reliably endorsed Democratic presidential nominees well to his right—so it might not be quite correct to say compromise is "anathema" to him). Even worse, those ideas are "rigid, untested and divisive." Yes, ideas like Medicare for All, free college and high taxes on the rich are "divisive" (despite finding strong majority support in polls, depending, in the case of Medicare for All, how the issue is presented), "untested" (despite being similar or identical to existing programs in other economically developed countries) and "rigid" (whatever that means). They are these things, empirical evidence be damned, because they are offensive to the members of the New York Times editorial board.

To cap it off, we then have the grouping of Sanders together with Donald Trump as just another "over-promising, divisive figure[.]" Yes: because both he and Trump are "divisive" (even though Sanders is more popular, and polls better against Trump, than Warren does), they are the same; it doesn't matter that Trump's "divisiveness" is directed at immigrants and religious minorities while Sanders' is directed at the rich and powerful, or that Trump's "divisiveness" takes the form of deportation, ripping children from the arms of their parents and violations of basic civil rights, while Sanders' takes the form of higher taxes: both forms are morally equivalent and deserve to be condemned in the same breath. And Sanders' promise to help build a popular movement of regular people that can take on the privileged elite is just as ludicrous as Trump's promises to build a wall at the southern border and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. This is the worldview of the insufferable, morally bankrupt, sheltered nerds who sit on the editorial board of the Paper of Record.

It is, indeed, "[g]ood news" for them "that Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic left"—or it would be, if it were true. Currently, she's polling well behind Sanders nationally and in third or fourth place in Iowa, which, it seems, might somewhat damage any claim to be the "standard-bearer for the Democratic left."

The board proceeds to laud Warren as a "gifted storyteller" (if only the stories she told, such as the one about being a Native American, were true, one might add) and claims that "[s]he speaks fluently about foreign policy[.]" An odd claim, given that she was recently humiliated on air by noted idiot Meghan McCain when the latter grilled Warren over her response to the Soleimani assassination. Indeed, it's difficult to think of any impressive moment or accomplishment Warren has had when it comes to foreign policy. Contrast that with Sanders, who helped pass through Congress a resolution that would have ended US support for Saudi Arabia's near-genocidal war in Yemen. Of course, the New York Times is home to Thomas Friedman, who has at times acted practically as a PR representative for the Saudi monarchy, so it's unsurprising the editorial board would not be keen on this sort of foreign policy experience. Instead, they are delighted that Warren speaks about "how to improve NATO relations, something that will be badly needed after Mr. Trump leaves office." Left unanswered is the question of why NATO—a Cold War-era alliance whose stated goal was to deter Soviet aggression—continues to exist decades after the fall of the USSR, especially given its obvious role in increasing dangerous tensions with a nuclear power (Russia). This sort of triviality is not worth the board's time, obviously.

After praising Warren's widely lauded "she has a plan" approach, the board notes:

Carrying out a progressive agenda through new laws will also be very hard for any Democratic president. In that light, voters could consider what a Democratic president might accomplish without new legislation and, in particular, they could focus on the presidency’s wide-ranging powers to shape American society through the creation and enforcement of regulations.

Because the idea of forming a mass popular movement that challenges the normal modes of politics is (to the Times editorial board) just an empty promise, as we have seen, they are left with the most technocratic aspect of the presidency as the way to make important changes. And despite (or, more accurately, because of) Warren's record of capitulating to the forces that oppose a left-wing agenda, and her already-stated plans to appoint business-friendly centrists to her administration, it is she who is qualified to exercise this power, rather than Bernie Sanders.

The board qualifies its endorsement by noting that Warren "has shown some questionable political instincts." No denying that. Those "questionable...instincts" though are not her decision to campaign as a centrist after facing criticism from her right (a decision that coincided with a major dip in her poll numbers), they are that she "sometimes sounds like a candidate who sees a universe of us-versus-thems [sic], who, in the general election, would be going up against a president who has already divided America into his own version of them and us." Again, we get the moral equivalence seen before: promoting division based on race, religion, nationality, etc., as Trump does, is the same as accurately recognizing the defining division in the United States (and the world): that between the exploited and powerless on the one hand and the wealthy, powerful elite on the other.

The article offers us a specific example of what it means: "This has been most obvious in her case for 'Medicare for all,' where she has already had to soften her message, as voters have expressed their lack of support for her plan." This statement is objectively false. Polling released in November of last year found overwhelming support among Democrats for a single-payer plan. It was not "voters," but Warren's opponents and critics in the media who scared her into effective abandoning Medicare for All. To answer the question of what the voters wanted, one can simply look at the polls: over the past few months, as Warren has become increasingly centrist in her rhetoric, her numbers in national polls have declined. At the same time, Bernie Sanders, who unequivocally supports Medicare for All, has seen his standing improve. But the members of the editorial board are not ones to let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

Not shockingly, the board also feels obligated to defend the private health insurance industry, arguing that "[t]hat system, through existing public-private programs like Medicare Advantage, has shown it is not nearly as flawed as [Warren] insists, and it is even lauded by health economists who now advocate a single-payer system." Left out is the fact that administrative costs for Medicare Advantage are "considerably higher," and that "beneficiaries continue to rate traditional Medicare more favorably than Medicare Advantage plans in terms of quality and access, such as overall care and plan rating," in the words of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Surely just an oversight.

Continuing on the same theme:

American capitalism is responsible for its share of sins. But Ms. Warren often casts the net far too wide, placing the blame for a host of maladies from climate change to gun violence at the feet of the business community when the onus is on society as a whole. The country needs a more unifying path. 

Of course: what's needed at a time of record economic inequality isn't to threaten the "business community" but rather to put the "onus" on "society as a whole" and to put the country on a "unifying path." It's no secret whose interests we would be unifying behind, of course.

While "Ms. Warren’s path to the nomination is challenging," the board says, it is "not hard to envision. The four front-runners are bunched together both in national polls and surveys in states holding the first votes, so small shifts in voter sentiment can have an outsize influence this early in the campaign." This claim is particularly odd. In national polls, per RealClearPolitics' average*, Joe Biden is in the lead with 28.4% of the vote while Pete Buttigieg is in fourth (nearly tied with Michael Bloomberg in fifth) at 7.2%. Even if we ignore Buttigieg (who isn't the focus of the New York Times article in any case), Warren has less than 75% of the support Sanders does and barely more than half the support Biden has. While the board is not wrong in its claim that Warren could be the nominee (as I've noted, a possibility that is real and extremely dangerous), it fails to even accurately reflect the existing polling data in this claim—a mistake that, while minor, reflects the concern for factual accuracy consistently displayed in this article.

Moving on to the Klobuchar section of the endorsement, the board begins by laughably singing the praises of "the talents who did throw their hat into the ring and never got more than a passing glance from voters" such as Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet (those two are actually among the examples they cite) and admitting that "[t]hose [moderate] candidates who remain all have a mix of strengths and weaknesses." Not surprisingly, the members of the board "look forward" to Pete Buttigieg's "bright political future" and make sure to note that Michael Bloomberg "was endorsed twice by this page" for mayor of New York City and "would be an effective contrast to the president in a campaign[,]" before offering some criticism of the latter for "his belated and convenient apology for stop-and-frisk policing" and the fact that he "has spent at least $217 million to date to circumvent the hard, uncomfortable work of actual campaigning." To its credit, the board does at least correctly note that Biden's "agenda tinkers at the edges of issues like health care and climate, and he emphasizes returning the country to where things were before the Trump era. But merely restoring the status quo will not get America where it needs to go as a society." Mildly insightful comments such as these are like oases in the intellectual desert that is this article.

But thankfully there is good news: "Amy Klobuchar has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic center." Given her current standing in the polls (around three percent nationally), the word "standard-bearer" is being used here even more loosely than it was the first time around. "Her vision goes beyond the incremental," the board crows. "Given the polarization in Washington and beyond, the best chance to enact many progressive plans could be under a Klobuchar administration." This is genuinely delusional thinking. The Republican Party spent eight years demonizing Obama as a socialist and obstructing his agenda as he bent over backwards to compromise with them. The idea that this wouldn't happen to Klobuchar is ludicrous, and the fact that her stated plans are more modest than Warren's or Sanders' only means they would be watered down all the more before they got through Congress (if they ever did). But the board is convinced that "[h]er lengthy tenure in the Senate and bipartisan credentials would make her a deal maker (a real one) and uniter for the wings of the party—and perhaps the nation."

After summarizing Klobuchar's supposedly impressive domestic agenda (a public option, but no single-payer plan; free community college for all, but not free four-year college), and praising her ability to speak with an "empathy that connects to voters’ lived experiences, especially in the middle of the country" (why is she polling in the low single digits, then?) we get further illustration of what the New York Times editorial board values in foreign policy: that Klobuchar "promises a foreign policy based on leading by example, instead of by threat-via-tweet" and "has sponsored and voted on dozens of national defense measures, including military action in Libya and Syria." It's unsurprising but still disgusting that supporting the military intervention in Libya (which helped reduce the country to a failed state with a flourishing slave trade) and proposing to intervene further in Syria (where the US has already helpfully supplied "moderate" rebels with weapons that fell into the hands of ISIS) is a plus in the minds of the imperialists running the national "newspaper of record."

Klobuchar, the board gushes is "the most productive senator among the Democratic field in terms of bills passed with bipartisan support, according to a recent study for the Center for Effective Lawmaking." We might think that the content of those bills would be relevant, but never mind that. Reading on, we are told:

When she arrived in the Senate in 2007, Ms. Klobuchar was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that proposed comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants, before conservative pundits made it political poison.

Conservative pundits would simply observe a respectful silence if Klobuchar were elected president, we can assume, allowing her to pass her agenda with no trouble. We also learn of Klobuchar's "background as the chief prosecutor in Minnesota’s most populous county"—just who the country needs as president, at a time when the US is already a world leader in incarceration rates.

The editorial makes sure to briefly address the elephant in the room, noting that "Reports of how Senator Klobuchar treats her staff give us pause. They raise serious questions about her ability to attract and hire talented people." But we are reassured that "Ms. Klobuchar has acknowledged she’s a tough boss and pledged to do better." Besides, "Bill Clinton and Mr. Trump—not to mention former Vice President Biden—also have reputations for sometimes berating their staffs, and it is rarely mentioned as a political liability." The Times editorial board knows very well that this is an inadequate and misleading description of the allegations against Klobuchar. Their own paper previously reported that Klobuchar "was known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides," according the former aides interviewed, and that "Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning—a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber." While Klobuchar's behavior toward her staff is hardly the most major issue in this election, the board's unwillingness to honestly address it after bringing it up themselves is yet another illustration of their character, or lack thereof.

After mentioning Klobuchar's popularity in Minnesota (a state carried by every Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter), the article informs us that "it’s far too early to count Ms. Klobuchar out—Senator John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee in 2004, was also polling in the single digits at this point in the race." We've practically reached the point of self-parody with this claim. Amy Klobuchar is, again, polling at about three percent nationally and has less support among black voters than even Pete Buttigieg. In Iowa, where John Kerry won the 2004 Democratic caucuses, she's polling in a distant fifth place. Klobuchar's odds of being the Democratic nominee are roughly the same as mine, and if the New York Times editorial board believes otherwise it's only through an extreme act of self-delusion.

To conclude, the board summarizes several major world problems (wildfire in Australia, instability in the Middle East, a "historic flood of migrants" at the southern border) which both of its endorsed candidates are ill-equipped to deal with, before urging the removal of President Trump and addressing how the aftermath of his presidency can be dealt with:

Any hope of restoring unity in the country will require modesty, a willingness to compromise and the support of the many demographics that make up the Democratic coalition—young and old, in red states and blue, black and brown and white. For Senator Klobuchar, that’s acknowledging the depth of the nation’s dysfunction. For Senator Warren, it’s understanding that the country is more diverse than her base.

Once again, we get a paean to "unity"—not justice, not equality, not democracy, but only a vague notion of "unity." The idea that the divisions in the United States might stem from structural inequities that require more than token reform efforts to rectify is left unaddressed. Also unmentioned is the reality that eight years of Barack Obama—whom it seems likely the board would agree possessed "modesty, a willingness to compromise and the support of the many demographics that make up the Democratic coalition"— left the country more divided than it was before he took office. Some might foolishly think that is because the "divisions" in the United States need to be addressed with more than kind words and attempts to compromise with the opponents of social and economic equality, but the members of the editorial board are not among those ignorant peons.

While recognizing that "There will be those dissatisfied that this page is not throwing its weight behind a single candidate, favoring centrists or progressives," the board magnanimously writes that that fight "should be played out in the public arena and in the privacy of the voting booth." Of course, given that the board has passed over and openly disparaged the only candidate who actually represents a fundamental break with the political status quo, it's quite clear which side they're actually on. Unable to disguise their neoliberal approach to politics, the board continues: "That’s the very purpose of primaries, to test-market strategies and ideas that can galvanize and inspire the country." Some would say that the purpose of primaries is for an electorate to choose their party's candidate, and the direction the party should go in; but the editorial wisely reduces voters to the level of passive consumers to be used as a test audience by the candidates as they search for a successful way to brand themselves. The article then closes out on a feminist note that's as vacuous as anything else in it, concluding: "May the best woman win."

While, as previously noted, the New York Times editorial board's endorsement article is more or less useless for voters interested in giving future generations a decent existence, it is highly informative in other ways. The fact that the board opted to endorse one candidate who is much more likely to split the progressive vote and give Biden the nomination if she stays in the race than she is to be the nominee, and another candidate with no realistic shot of winning the race, speaks volumes about where their heads are at. Plainly, they cannot reconcile themselves to Bernie Sanders (no surprise), but they recognize that Joe Biden is too much a relic of a past era to save the Democratic Party from the left-populist insurgency Sanders represents. While the editorial board may very well be secretly hoping he manages to secure the nomination over Sanders, openly throwing their weight behind Biden would be a transparent admission that their primary objective is to protect the status quo from any radical disruptions. Only endorsing Klobuchar would, for obvious reasons, border on farce. Best, then, to also support the faux-progressive who might engage in "divisive" rhetoric occasionally, but would pose little threat even if she were elected.

The one encouraging aspect of the whole affair is how it reeks of desperation on the editorial board's part; the intelligentsia are getting nervous. They should be. If we are lucky, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of their relevance.

ADDENDUM: While the New York Times editorial board's endorsement article was rather dismal, I do feel obligated to mention that its interview process produced an extremely enjoyable exchange in which Binyamin Appelbaum grilled Pete Buttigieg about his time at McKinsey. From this incident as well as some of his other political commentary, I am inclined to believe that if there is one good member of the editorial board it is Appelbaum, in which case he should obviously be exempted from my description of the board members as "insufferable, morally bankrupt, sheltered nerds"—a description which, to be clear, was never intended to necessarily apply to every board member to begin with.

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*The averages I cite here and elsewhere in this post have shifted slightly since I started writing this blog post, but I'm using the older ones since they're more reflective of the polls that were current when the New York Times published their endorsement. The changes that have happened since, it's worth noting, have not done much to improve Warren or Klobuchar's standing in the race.