i think there's a lot to criticize about Dem message discipline but the rules at the NYT changed kind of dramatically and suddenly to "a single on-background quote from basically any Dem is enough to peg an entire new story about Biden's age to" and idk how you control that basically
Maybe! "EMAILS" didn't burn itself out. A big problem with "Biden = old" as a narrative is that Biden will not stop being old and continuing to be old will allow them to run more stories on that fact through election day if they want to bsky.app/profile/mr-i...
might be cope but I feel like this is going to backfire. they’re going to burn the story out before the end of summer. eyes will glaze over reading the thousand and first “Biden old” headline.
maybe they know it, which is why instead of “drip drip drip”, they’ve turned on a firehose.
The context was that Biden was being asked to speculate on what his reaction would be if figures who were not currently calling on him to drop out were in fact doing that. In frustration with the absurdity of the premise, Biden offered the "Lord Almighty" response bsky.app/profile/imbe...
Did people think it would've been smart for Biden to instead answer the question and go like "uh Barack Obama if he asked me to drop out, that would do it" and conjure up an imaginary image of Barack Obama urging him to drop out?
The last week or so, the NYT was getting a ton of blowback on its barrage of BIDEN OLD stories on Threads. Today it seems they disabled their account there?
maybe, but “emails” had intrigue behind it. it always felt like there was more that could come out.
“Biden old” doesn’t have the same intrigue, which is why they’re trying to manufacture it with the background quotes and stuff like “Biden’s secret doctor hasn’t given him a cognitive test!”
I fully admit that I might be too optimistic here, but I think they are just moving the baseline. the only way this continues to hurt Biden is if he keeps getting worse.
imo the worst debate moment was the dead air because it’s something we hadn’t really seen before (unlike the misspeaks/gaffes)
Only solution is impossible since their comms team has been trash from day 1. You must go to war with that place but they lack the skills and will to do what’s necessary.
might be cope but I feel like this is going to backfire. they’re going to burn the story out before the end of summer. eyes will glaze over reading the thousand and first “Biden old” headline.
maybe they know it, which is why instead of “drip drip drip”, they’ve turned on a firehose.
The last week or so, the NYT was getting a ton of blowback on its barrage of BIDEN OLD stories on Threads. Today it seems they disabled their account there?
A paper *could* eliminate this with a single brief memo from the executive editor or editor in chief: except for very specific circumstances (listed) or with the express permission of the EE/EIC, anonymous, unattributed, or background quotes cannot be used in political articles and columns.
Even imagining the status quo holds, I’m getting apoplectic about the NEXT story they don’t contextualize well. There’s so many ways it could go sideways, worse. Debt ceiling. Nuclear foreign policy conundrum. Domestic unrest. You name it.
I have never wanted the NYT to disappear as much as I have during this election cycle.
If they put Trump in the white house, I really hope that all of their senior editorial staff is tortured and jailed. They can hand-wring while they're executed.
