The Editors Speak – Will the People Follow?

Several major print sources recently published their endorsements for the 2024 Presidential race. This is traditional every four years. Due to the advent of early voting and more permissive and extended absentee voting allowances, these events appeared earlier this year. However, with fewer people tuned into print media, and newspapers in general, I wonder if these messages are still being received as before and do they reach the necessary voters who used to value these opinions?

Does the online presence of such media giants allow them to expand their reach and influence? Or are influencers on TikTok and YouTube reaching a wider audience? Do celebrity endorsements sway voters?  Since 2020 was an unusual election year with much of the country under COVID social and health restrictions, and workers and students experiencing virtual offices and classrooms the usual discussions about anything were muffled. Many then turned to the anonymity of the internet sources they could explore. Some, such as Alex Jones, now disgraced, promoted lies and hatred.

The 2020 election saw anonymous groups such as Qanon with its theories of, among others, Satan-worshipping elites, conspiracies, and global rings of pedophiles explode into the mainstream. It especially disliked Democrats and prominent entertainers and believed many to be among the child-killing conspiracies they espoused. It became a catch-all for those who questioned the death of President John Kennedy, the 911 attacks, and other widely discussed conspiracies such as the so-called Deep State. In 2016 cryptic online comments promoted the election of DJT and claimed he was chosen to prevent this evil from infiltrating the country. After his election, he appeared with QANON symbols at his rallies. Some of the more radical sites were removed by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter at that time, but this movement became a worldwide phenomenon.

This group is hard to define, it includes right-wing members, religious fundamentalists, social outcasts, and many who were just looking for a community to engage with. The Georgia Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor-Greene climbed onto this bandwagon, before her election in 2020. One aspect of this group is that it has no visible leader, no official spokesperson, and no one to take any responsibility for the lies and half-truths it supports.

The Anti-Defamation League noted that the blood ritual claims harken back to the anti-Semitic beliefs from the Middle Ages and explained how the movement is kept alive by its supporters.

The MAGA mouthpiece on “Truth Social” regularly re-posts QANON content and DJT sometimes wears the Q symbol to show his alliance. Of course, since the January 6^th Insurrection, QANON has regularly returned the favor and supported the disgraced former president. Elon Musk, once he bought Twitter and revised it as X, allowed Q and its content to return and expand its presence. A recent article in the New York Times noted that Musk is going all out to elect DJT and some note his PAC has so far spent over $80 million dollars and could spend as much as $500 million.

The Times technology report noted the following:

“Over half the accounts tracked by The Times have discussed baseless rumors that the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump in July was orchestrated by powerful Democrats. Combined, their posts were shared three million times in the 24 hours after the shooting.

Every day, about a quarter of a billion people use X, which remains a popular destination for news. The power of the reinstated accounts to shape the discourse on the platform is enormous, as is the risk, said Isabelle Frances-Wright, the director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization.

“X has gone from being a social network to, frankly at this point, an online opinion news network where the majority of the narratives and hateful content come from a very small group of people who affect the entirety of the platform in an outsized way,” Ms. Frances-Wright said.

In late August, Mr. Trump claimed on X that Ms. Harris would destroy Social Security by allowing undocumented immigrants to tap into the program — a fear-mongering tactic that has informed false narratives claiming that Democrats are enabling noncitizens to vote.

As the election nears, some of the high-profile reinstated accounts have begun to pre-emptively cast doubt on the results. Much of the commentary is reminiscent of the conspiracy theories that swirled after the 2020 election and in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot.”

So, we do not know the effects of this non-traditional approach to electioneering. I assume that X will influence many voters. Whether this scurrilous rant will influence the electorate enough to elect the MAGA team, I don’t know. I wish that more members of the media would also stop using the site, but it has become a necessary stop along the online circuits.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowed this to happen when it said money is speech and permitted unknown payers with millions and billions in their pockets to fund election campaigns. The FCC regulates campaign ads to a point, but many lies are spread routinely because candidates know that restraint is cumbersome and may not ever happen before the voters make their selections. So they put falsehoods out there and say “my bad” when caught, but they got their message out on the airwaves, so they truly do not care.

Now to get back to traditional media. Does it still play a role in these high-stakes games? Truly they are not games, as I believe, with many, that the future of our democracy is on the line more than ever before in this election. I hope that they will reach a wide audience of responsible voters.

Several media editorials appeared recently and gave their reasons for supporting VP Kamala Harris for election. I only list three here …and even though I truncated them, they are long, so bear with me.

The Atlantic Monthly rarely endorses but it did so this year here

It explained that it endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. The following is only a portion of the editorial.

“About the candidate we are endorsing: The Atlantic is a heterodox place, staffed by freethinkers, and for some of us, Kamala Harris’s policy views are too centrist, while for others they’re too liberal. The process that led to her nomination was flawed, and she’s been cagey in keeping the public and press from getting to know her as well as they should. But we know a few things for sure. Having devoted her life to public service, Harris respects the law and the Constitution. She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans. She’s untainted by corruption, let alone a felony record or a history of sexual assault. She doesn’t embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior, or pit them against one another. She doesn’t curry favor with dictators. She won’t abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it. She believes in democracy. These, and not any specific policy positions, are the reasons The Atlantic is endorsing her.”

If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health—then you’ll be free to oppose President Harris wholeheartedly. We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.

If you’re a progressive who thinks the Democratic Party is a tool of corporate America, talk to someone who still can’t forgive themselves for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000—then ask yourself which candidate, Harris or Trump, would give you any leverage to push for policies you care about.

Trump is the sphinx who stands in the way of America entering a more hopeful future. In Greek mythology, the sphinx killed every traveler who failed to answer her riddle, until Oedipus finally solved it, causing the monster’s demise. The answer to Trump lies in every American’s hands. Then he needs only to go away.”

The New York Times also endorsed VP Kamala Harris and said this in its editorial (partially copied below)

“It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, and discipline — that he most lacks. This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.

For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president. And is a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence, and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution. Ms. Harris stands alone in this race. She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.

Ms. Harris is more than a necessary alternative. There is also an optimistic case for elevating her, one that is rooted in her policies and borne out by her experience as vice president, a senator, and a state attorney general.

Over the past 10 weeks, Ms. Harris has offered a shared future for all citizens, beyond hate and division. She has begun to describe a set of thoughtful plans to help American families. While character is enormously important — in this election, pre-eminently so — policies matter. Many Americans remain deeply concerned about their prospects and their children in an unstable and unforgiving world. For them, Ms. Harris is clearly the better choice. She has committed to using the power of her office to help Americans better afford the things they need, to make it easier to own a home, to support small businesses, and to help workers. Mr. Trump’s economic priorities are more tax cuts, which would benefit mostly the wealthy, and more tariffs, which will make prices even more unmanageable for the poor and middle class.

Ms. Harris recognizes the need for global solutions to the global problem of climate change and would continue President Biden’s major investments in the industries and technologies necessary to achieve that goal. Mr. Trump rejects the accepted science, and his contempt for low-carbon energy solutions is matched only by his trollish fealty to fossil fuels.

In 2020 this board made the strongest case it could against the re-election of Mr. Trump. Four years later, many Americans have put his excesses out of their minds. We urge them and those who may look back at that period with nostalgia or feel that their lives are not much better now than they were three years ago to recognize that his first term was a warning and that a second Trump term would be much more damaging and divisive than the first.

Kamala Harris is the only choice.”

 

The Nation made its endorsement for Harris in a long editorial,  here and which is only quoted partially. It noted some disagreements with Harris, but said the alternative is not acceptable.

 

“The great strength of Kamala Harris’s unlikely but existentially important campaign for the presidency is her powerful grasp of what is at stake in this election. “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” Harris declared in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. But as she reminded the delegates, “the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”ocracy posed by a reelected “Donald Trump with no guardrails”—especially after the Supreme Court’s recent 6–3 decision granting him “presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution for his official acts—Harris urged Americans to “consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol. His explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents, and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active-duty military against our own citizens.”

We believe those threats are real. Of course, we endorse Harris over Trump. But we also endorse Harris in her own right, as an experienced and capable leader with a vision for America’s future that—while not as progressive as we might prefer, particularly when it comes to foreign policy—represents a clear advance on the Democratic presidential nominees of the past half-century.

Harris has long been an eloquent and tireless fighter for reproductive freedom. She spent the months following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization highlighting the connections between that assault and the other Republican efforts to roll back our rights. …Some of these proposals outlined in Project 2025.

And although some of her wealthy backers haven’t been shy in pressing her to fire Fe deral Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, Harris has, so far at least, stood firm behind Khan and the anti-monopoly agenda she has pursued at the FTC.

On foreign policy, however, the positive case is harder to make. Her change in tone, and her statements taking note of the horrendous death toll among Palestinian civilians, while welcome, might also be little more than the standard “pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, but subtly more pro-Israeli…

On the war in Ukraine, Harris’s position is hawkish. On relations with Russia and China, she has done nothing to indicate any departure from the Biden administration’s belligerent rhetoric….Still, anyone promoting Trump as a peace candidate needs to check their eyesight. Or their privilege.

Donald Trump has been a cancer on our public life since his days posing as a successful casino operator. His pervasive influence not just on our politics but on our manners, conversations, imaginations, and media developed a momentum that, until Biden withdrew, seemed likely to carry this habitual liar and adjudicated rapist back to the pinnacle of power.

Leftists contemplating voting for a third party in protest of Harris’s shortcomings—or out of discontent with our two-party system—need to ask themselves why their particular cause, or their personal discomfort, is more important than making sure that Trump, JD Vance, and their claque of congressional collaborators are defeated decisively….

Harris deserves credit for moving nearly $25 million from her campaign to down ballot races. The vice president knows she can’t afford to win narrowly in the battleground states; for her and Walz to govern effectively, to break the fever of Trumpism, they also need to lift Democrats in the races that will decide control of the House and Senate.

The insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, may have been unsuccessful. Their aims, however, were part of a long campaign to drag this country back ….(in the words of the Dred Scott decision), women had no control over their own bodies, corporations were free to pollute our air and water, and employers were allowed to terrorize and discard their workers.

Job one for Harris, then, is to defeat Trump—and Trumpism—decisively this November. Yet the current moment, and Harris’s campaign, offers more than merely a chance to wake from our long national nightmare."

Til next week-Peace!