Got it.
This is more than reasonable, but long form journalism.of the Bob Woodward sort is going to find out something significant and surprising.
It is hard for daily journalism to do this because the Biden administration doesn’t leak much, and they need multiple sources.
If Harris wins, everything little thing was done perfectly. If Trump wins, the timing was atrocious. Or so many pundits will say.
Well, they were hitting Biden much harder than they hit trump. They have a fued with Biden as he doesnt give them special privileges.
Yep.
Anecdotally, there were several dozen self-professed NYT cancellations just from the readers of the liberal Substacks Status Kuo and Hopium Chronicles. Cancelling was — and is — worn like badge of honor.
The most charitable thing you could say is that the NYT has been generally unbothered by the prospect of a second Trump term.
If the political reporting was anywhere near correct, sometime after July 10th, Pelosi privately told Biden things were bad and the Demos would probably lose the House. Pelosi said no such thing publicly, but reportedly Biden pushed back. On the 17th, Adam Schiff publicly called on Biden to drop out. Schiff is very close to Pelosi and I believe he would have cleared that comment with her before going public.
There’s probably no one in politics who could make Biden change his mind except Pelosi, so it took what she said in private, and Schiff being Pelosi’s messenger in public, to persuade Biden to decide the cause was lost.
In other words, somewhere between three days before and the night before Biden dropped out. Hardly enough time for a game of five-dimensional political chess.
All that was pure speculation.
Pure speculation by a lot of different reporters from a lot of different organizations with a lot of different political leanings. Just search Google.
You see this all the time in football. If a coach takes a risk and succeeds they’re a genius, if it fails they’re an idiot.
I’ve found that the feel of the Times since the announcement is that a weight has been lifted and it’s sunnier days ahead and all those cliches. You could never pinpoint a sentence that was overtly in favor of Trump, but every article stressed Biden’s age and inability to communicate properly, without mentioning Trump’s similar problems. They finally got to the point where they could print the word “lie” in an article about Trump but refrained from outwardly attacking him.
With Harris as the candidate, the paper can print positives about her and the acclaim she’s received. Democrats are now getting better coverage than Republicans.
Without being on the inside of the paper - there’s a book that will be read avidly by upwards of a hundred people when it comes out - I can’t say whether this is a deliberate editorial decision or just being forced to acknowledge the truth of the past weeks.
One thing I do trust about the Times is that if information about Biden’s having made the decision long in advance and used anyone on his team to fool the public is findable, they will find it and print a two-page article on it.
I’ll grant the possibility that Biden made up his mind a night or two earlier but hoped against hope that he could be shown a way out. But, like you, not enough time to execute a deception.
Yeah, but they are still sniping at her, and it could turn ugly is she doesnt do what they want-
The New York Times editorial board urged Vice President Kamala Harris to “do better” than her former running mate in answering reporters’ questions.
“Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee, has the opportunity to encourage and embrace the kind of scrutiny the public has so far had little opportunity to see in the 2024 race,” the Times editorial board wrote Friday.
“Americans deserve a campaign that tests the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, that highlights their differences and allows for scrutiny of their plans, that motivates people to vote by giving them a clear sense of how their choice in this election will affect their lives. Americans deserve the opportunity to ask questions of those seeking to lead their government.”…In April, the New York Times editorial board criticized Biden for “dodging interviews and questions from major media outlets” in a scathing article. The newspaper also called on the president to drop out of the race after his disastrous performance in last month’s debate.
So, that is an out and out threat- give the NYT the special precedence they think they deserve or they will turn against her also. They should be ashamed of themselves. I hope Biden bans them from news conferences.
Yep, apparently they are the arbiters of what “we” want to hear. All I heard them ask since the debate is, something like: So nice NATO meeting…so when are you going to step down as the Democratic candidate. Did you know (big name congress critter - donor - Hollywood star - talking head) is calling for you to not accept the nomination? Do you know you’re old? Oh and by the way other people have noticed you’re old…So when are you stepping down 'cause you’re old? Pretty much how many of them interviewed … well anyone they could ask.
The reporting lately doesn’t mean much. It takes years for the real story to come out, but when it does your skepticism will look very foolish, I predict.
Biden would be an idiot (which he is not) and a naive politician (which he definitely is not) to make ANY important decision on the fly. One’s instinctive response to anything could be seriously flawed, which is why pols try to take their time mulling over their decisions and try to get input from their most trusted advisors. There is no reason to imagine that in this instance Biden didn’t do both.
I’m pretty positive it will come out that he consulted with a few closemouthed advisors shortly after the disastrous debate, and they discussed the wisdom of dropping out of the race, passing along messages from powerful Dems as to his fading support within the party, and he made the call at least a week, probably at least two weeks, before his announcement, and it was also decided in those meetings to deny vigorously that he was even considering stepping down, so as to maximize the GOP’s inability to tack against their wind.
I’m as certain as it is to be in such matters that Biden did not make his decision at “the absolute last minute” or anything resembling “the absolute last minute.”
CNN reports sources saying he made the final decision in 48 hours. And actually it sounds like closer to 24-36 - A source familiar with the matter said the plans to exit the race began Saturday night and were finalized Sunday.
Now it does appear like he was maybe being a little deliberately obfuscatory in those last 48 while plans were set in motion. But I still sit with the skeptics. Party operatives like Pelosi may have been aggressively working for a couple of weeks to smooth the path, but I really don’t think Biden was the scheming, play-acting genius behind it all.
We’ll see - it WILL come out eventually.
The NYT is certainly not the only source that noticed Biden had been dodging the media, nor are they the only media source he’s been dodging; he didn’t even do a Super Bowl interview! They may be narcissistic and self-interested, but this is a legitimate complaint.
I doubt there was any conspiracy. People started freaking out after the debate, and then it took a few weeks for enough pressure to build up to force Biden out of the race, which seems like about the timeframe you’d expect. He might have delayed the announcement for a day or so for the sake of the news cycle, but I’m not seeing any facts here that can’t be easily explained without resorting to conspiracy theories.
I agree. I think that people close to him made him watch his debate performance. And he didn’t want to drop out, and was afraid the party would self-destruct. And then he contracted covid and felt really shitty, and contemplated his own (political) mortality.
I think that case of covid made a difference, as well as pressure from his political allies.
He might have made the decision a day or two before the announcement, and held the announcement to derail post-convention boost that the Republicans should have gotten. But i didn’t think it was a conspiracy, and i doubt he delayed acting on his decision for more than a couple of days.
I’m not sure where the word, “conspiracy,” was introduced. No one said that. I simply said there was more organization to the switch than may at first appear obvious.
I am sure Biden himself resisted the change, initially. But once persuaded of its inevitability, he understood the importance of a careful, organized rollout. I credit Pelosi and Jeffries working behind the scenes to orchestrate that. Pelosi is an assassin when it comes to pulling the Democratic caucus together.
As for Biden being good at rope-a-dope, I was referring to his speech at the State of the Union where he got Republicans to agree they wouldn’t mess with Social Security and/or Medicare. There was also another instance of Biden working Republicans into a corner and forcing them to capitulate to his point of view in a public way, but I can’t recall the details of it.
Once persuaded it was the right move, he would have appreciated the dexterity of switching candidates at an opportune moment that put egg on the faces of Republicans – which it did.
“Conspiracy” not required. Just more planning than is presently confirmed.
Grant that Biden pulled off a masterpiece of timing, stepping down right after the bullet and the convention when otherwise nobody would be talking about anything other than Trump.
Unless you subscribe to the wildest conspiracy theories, he could not have not known about the bullet at all, much less that it would do the least, albeit bloodiest, amount of damage that getting struck by a bullet could produce.
Nor could Biden foresee the overwhelming - almost instantaneous - outpouring of support for Harris that turned the campaign around in three days. The “almost” part is important. If Biden had been plotting to step down for weeks, then one must also suppose that he coordinated a playscript in which the leadership of the Democratic Party fell into place like marching band members, with the lowest Representatives dribbling in first, then the governors, then the Congressional leaders and lastly Obama. You do that on Broadway so that the stars can take the fanfare. In real politics, the leaders announce first and the lower ranks follow.
It’s not enough to believe that Biden for unknowable reasons plunged his party into what seemed to all outside eyes like chaos and weakness; to do so one must also believe that all the victory that banished the despair was also planned, else sure destruction lay ahead.
All superhero movies seem to have the same plot: the heroes are defeated, disgraced, disbanded and the villains utterly triumphant, until the big turnaround at the last minute and victory is pulled out of a hat. Script writers can generate such plots. I don’t believe them in a cat-herding business like politics.