The last few days, there’s been more talk about garbage and endorsements than I ever thought possible. The garbage stuff is exhausting. I won’t get into it except to say good lord and, as Karen Tumulty points out, neither disputed line was spoken by a candidate.
As for the canceled newspaper endorsements, that’s a trickier subject. It’s become something of a tradition for papers to endorse candidates. At the same time, it’s also become something of a tradition for them to endorse the same party’s candidate. Since reintroducing endorsements in 2008, The LA Times has only endorsed Democrats (prior to suspending endorsements in 1972, it only endorsed Republicans). The Washington Post began endorsing in 1976 and has never endorsed a Republican. The closest it ever came was declining to endorse Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988. And just because the Post isn’t endorsing this year doesn’t mean we don’t know whom its editorial board planned to endorse. Its members told us (as if we didn’t already know): Harris. Same for The LA Times.1
So there’s no mystery here. If there were — if opinion departments were a little more ideologically heterogeneous and a little less interested in staffing a token conservative or liberal to check a box — maybe endorsements would hold more sway. I’m not saying The Post or The LA Times should endorse Trump for the sake of mixing things up. But maybe if The Post had mustered the energy to actually endorse George H.W. Bush in 1988 and some other qualified Republican in the intervening 36 years, an endorsement for Harris would seem less like an obvious rubber stamp and more like thoughtful deliberation.
Case in point is today’s link, written by a party pundit making the case against his party’s candidate. This is the kind of thing you don’t see every day. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Someone saying, “I’ve taken each candidate’s measure and, much as I regret it, mine doesn’t stack up.” Again, I don’t want him to say that for the sake of mixing things up, but if he believes it — if he can make the case for it — then I’m there. And if I can find a pundit of the opposing party bucking its candidate before next Tuesday — rest assured I’m looking — you can count on it being here.
The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal isn’t on this list because it hasn’t endorsed a candidate since 1928.