On Friday, the Washington Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced that the paper would no longer make endorsements for president—after its journalists had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision was made by Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner. Over a period of several ...
On Friday, the Washington Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced that the paper would no longer make endorsements for president—after its journalists had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision was made by Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner.
Over a period of several weeks, a Post staffer told me, two Post board members, Charles Lane and Stephen W. Stromberg, had worked on drafts of a Harris endorsement. (Neither was contacted for this article.) “Normally we’d have had a meeting, review a draft, make suggestions, do editing,” the staffer told me. Editorial writers started to feel angsty a few weeks ago, per the staffer; the process stalled. Around a week ago, editorial page editor David Shipley told the editorial board that the endorsement was on track, adding that “this is obviously something our owner has an interest in.”
“We thought we were dickering over language—not over whether there would be an endorsement,” the Post staffer said. So journalists at the Post, in both the news and opinion departments, were stunned Friday after Shipley told the editorial board at a meeting that it would not take a position after all. This represents the first time the Post has sat out a presidential endorsement since 1988.
I'm from Germany, which means that we learned an re-iterated the history around the crumbling of Democracy in the Weimar Republic and the rise of the 3rd Reich in school, in several different subjects.
And now, more than 20 years since I graduated, I still don't understand how people could vote for Hitler with his rhetoric and his hatefulness. I sit here and can't believe that Donald Trump has realistic chances to win, and he will get votes from people who should know better and not only the votes from obvious Nazis. It's depressing.
I believe you're thinking of Austria and while that's scary as fuck the party is so politically unpopular that while they won a plurality they've failed to form government.
You're right. Tge AfD won the most seats in Thuringia. History rhymes. I guess one important factor is cognitive dissonance. I understand that people are unhappy with current politics for multiple reasons and I think some want to believe the propaganda in tge hopes that things will get better but knowing deep in themselves that these demagogues don't promote any policies that will actually help them.
At least I hope so.
It’s here people. The oligarchs are taking over the US. It’s not just Trump, it’s the whole clique. To them Putin isn’t just daddy, Russia is a rolemodel. A society run by oligarchs held together by one strongman. And the people… whahaha.
That article was really worth reading. Thank you for posting it. I didn't know how much upheaval there has been surrounding endorsements in the field of journalism. It's crazy that we've gotten to the point where the owners of two major papers both got involved to stop an endorsement over the same election against the same candidate. The article mentions that people have been canceling their subscriptions in protest, but... it doesn't seem like enough.