Sulzberger and the New York Times political desk are engaged in an interesting experiment, to wit: whether it’s possible for a newspaper to direct the outcome of a campaign and election through sheer, relentless posting
The relentlessness of the Times’ Biden Age coverage has been an obvious power play on Sulzburger’s part. It’s an assertion that the NYT should be able to single-handedly dictate popular opinion and thus political policy.
But “should” isn't necessarily the same as “can”
And “can” isn’t the same thing as “will,” when it comes to that. Pundits and journalists care what the New York Times says about politics, sometimes. Whether anyone else does has never been entirely predictable!
Today michael shear and the editorial desk has decided the most important story is whether or not an 82 year old guy with a lifelong speech impediment said “as good as” or “goodest” in an interview.
One group of people who is not coming out of this looking any good is the New York/DC media elite. Times/New Yorker/WaPo writers are outing themselves as out of touch elitists who think of politics as just a bit of fun - let them eat Trump.
I think 2016 is a much weirder case, given that you had a genuine exogenous shock with the Comey letter that publications like the NYT chose to run with, amid polling that had Clinton pretty comfortably ahead. This year has been a considerably more naked and sustained effort
The “Biden is old” media freak out (which I think is somewhat distinct from the facts around Biden’s age and diminished capacity!) is almost entirely a New York Times created- and sustained project, seemingly at Sulzburger’s direct behest
This is “But her emails” all over - it’s the exact same playbook of normalizing the abnormal shitshow of a confederate circus while dragging down and relentlessly shanking the “normal” side then calling the result balance. We just notice it more when it’s run against a white guy than *any* minority.
Biden’s age was already his number one weakness and the debate fed into that. I agree that the NYT is piling on for its own cynical reasons, but if a presidential campaign and national party can’t counter some hostile coverage then what’s the point? Whining about how unfair it is? Loser behavior.
I would argue different bases sometimes means different results. Ive seen a lot of backlash and cancelling because it turns out relatively educated groups don’t want to be told what to think
I’m not arguing it’s not dangerous overall, its incredibly reckless, but I do think if the NYT thinks it can just spoonfeed its audience like Fox News does, they are sorely mistaken
Sure but, in my opinion, Biden is probably the worst candidate we could have to try to push back on this.
The media tried to make hay about Clinton’s health in 2016 and she did a good job of refuting it.
