1. The surprise move has sparked a “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias” spectacular! Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, resigned in protest. “People are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member. Wait: why does the staff care so much that the Post isn’t officially endorsing Harris? They care because they are partisan and biased. They want their paper to do everything it can to help Harris and defeat Trump, not to to report the news objectively, and not to be officially neutral. That the staff reacted this way tells us all we need to know about the Post’s trustworthiness, if we didn’t know it already.
2. Endorsements were justifiable when newspapers maintained some semblance of objectivity. In today’s rotting journalism, however, with “advocacy journalism” holding sway and the Post being a particularly flagrant offender (I cancelled my Post subscription because the New York Time was less biased!) an endorsement doesn’t mean what it once did. That was, “We have assessed the candidates and their positions. We now can state our measured conclusion: X is the responsible choice for voters.” Now, an endorsement only means, “We have been favorably reporting on the Democratic candidate while being relentlessly negative about the Republican candidate, and all our reporters and editors are Democrats and progressives. Of course we’re endorsing X.”
3. Reportedly Post subscribers are also upset, which says something about what D.C. readers want in their newspaper: not objective reporting, but political activism that aligns with their partisan loyalties. And this is one of the reasons the Post had devolved into what it is.
4. Democrats are in denial, at least publicly. The signs all point to a collapse of the Harris balloon, but the desperate Trump Deranged refuse to see it. My T-D relative said, “So what? The Post’s non-endorsement won’t cost Harris a single vote.” Wrong. The cumulative effect of multi-lateral displays of doubts about Harris along with her own self-evident ineptitude will erode the likelihood that borderline and undecided voters will vote for her. If the Post’s move didn’t threaten to harm Harris’s prospects, the biased Post staff, who should be more politically astute than the average citizen, wouldn’t be upset about it. As loyal employees, they should be supportive , since the decision could well enhance the paper’s credibility, or be the beginning of much-needed ethical reform. That. however, is not their mission. Their mission is to elect Democrats and facilitate a progressive, woke transformation of American through propaganda.
5. Proving just how left-biased the Post opinion-writers are, 14 columnists signed onto a joint post whining, “The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them…” and so on. You could write the rest. Rama Lama Ding-Dong…These are the same talking points the Axis has been flogging for eight years.
Ethics Alarms 
#4
Not to be a cynic but I think we’re being gaslit beyond anything we’ve ever seen. I think they’re out to skew the polls again and give republicans a grossly inflated false hope. I think they’re hoping for an incredible reaction to the election after telling the republicans it’s extremely likely that Trump wins.
Here in Texas people who I know who are seemingly conservative have Harris Walz signs in their yard. So unless this election is genuinely a realignment election something’s weird about the polling claims and the reality. Of course I’ve said we’re 4 years into a decade long realignment. So who knows.
But I do really think we’re gonna wake up at the end of the weeks long vote counting and find out either the biggest heist has been pulled or conservatives have naively believed polls showing Harris failing and this country is going to have another dismal DNC administration at the helm.
It is a statement of how much trust our institutions have lost that anyone, specially someone as perceptive as you, would be in such a state of mind. But if you are correct, it would be a conspiracy of such massive complexity as to make the Truther theories seem reasonable by comparison. Occam’s Razor applies. Harris is a terrible candidate, she has run a terrible campaign, the Democrats know it, and there’s not a thing they can do about it now. The news media’s trust and popularity is finally so low that they realize they are risking becoming irrelevant and bet on the wrong horse. This is damage control, or maybe disaster control. Yesterday, Trump said, “I’m not supposed to say this, but we’re doing very well.” He didn’t need to say it. The resort to “Trump is Hitler” (again) said it already.
I thought Althouse’s reaction to the Post’s move was interesting:
“Great! I prefer this policy, especially if it is based on a real commitment to professional, high-level journalism. There’s a crazy amount of bias, which drives me away from whatever they are hoping to push. My sympathy for Donald Trump, the target of so much unfairness, is a bit absurd. I’m supposed to hate him? You idiots have made me love him. But somehow now you are drawing the line. What game is this?”
The Post: “We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for….”
“But why make the change right now?”
… and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”
“Which was, presumably, true all along, so why change now?”
We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.
“Interestingly, I am undecided, and wouldn’t it be funny if it was because I was waiting for The Washington Post to tell me what to do?!”
Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds.
“Yeah, could you do that too? Time to get back to that as well.”
Most of all, our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent. And that is what we are and will be.
“Okay. Fascinating. But why now? Why withhold support from Kamala Harris? It can’t possibly be that you’d support Donald Trump. I mean, I could understand, if you felt you needed to support Trump that you’d resort to this idea of not telling us, but that can’t be what’s going on here. I am amused at the thought though.”
——-
Althouse keeps saying that she’s undecided, though she has literally said almost nothing positive about Biden, Harris or the media coverage of Trump for months. If she votes for Harris after all that—and we will never know—she’s been misleading her flock.
As with the Spanish Inquisition, you never know when to expect the Dems pulling off last minute wins. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
At a certain point, assuming the impossible is just paranoia. The GOP was asleep at the switch in 2020, and the chaos of the pandemic lockdown made mischief inevitable and difficult to trace.The GOP and Trump stupidly discouraged early voting and mail voting by their supporters: not this time.
I suppose the fact Harris isn’t eight points ahead in the polls may mean she’s going to be defeated by eight points. But people are so Trump deranged. There are “Republicans for Harris” signs in our very wealthy neighborhood in Phoenix. What’s that tell us? Yes, maybe I’m being paranoid, but it just feels as if the Left has taken control of the country and all its levers of power: academia, K through 12 schooling, state, local and federal bureaucracies, media, the arts, corporations, organized religions, the professions, and so forth. They’ve simply taken all the air out of the room. Sure, Harris is terrible, but people are voting for the regime, not its nominal head. Are there any independent or undecided voters out there? I doubt it. And sadly, if Harris loses, we’re back to 2016 and four more years of impeachments and relentless attacks on a sitting president.
“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.”
if Harris loses, we’re back to 2016 and four more years of impeachments and relentless attacks on a sitting president.
That’s by far the most likely scenario.
I can’t help but wonder: could it be they’re actually trying to help Harris with this, knowing that their reputation among independents is on a level somewhere between pig manure and the maggots that live in it?
Here’s some interesting context from New York Magazine, of all places:
Before Harris Snub, Washington Post Refused to Endorse Doomed Dukakis
This seems to warrant a “What’s going on here?”
Some fresh baked pie in the sky from Jonathan Turley:
Bravo, Washington Post: Ending Media Endorsements Could Help Restore Trust – JONATHAN TURLEY