Since this Thursday night President Joe Biden offered a disastrous performance in the debate that pitted him against Donald Trump in Atlanta, the barrage of liberal-leaning media (that is, close to the Democratic Party) that has asked the candidate to withdraw has become incessant. Some of the most renowned columnists of newspapers such as The Atlantic either The New Yorker were added to the chorus of voices calling for a replacement on Friday. And then, at around 6:00 p.m., The New York Times raised or even more the pressure on the re-election campaign with an editorial titled If he wants to serve his country, President Biden should drop out of the race.
“He has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and has begun to address a number of long-term challenges, as well as the wounds opened by Trump, which thanks to him have begun to heal. But the greatest public service that Biden can do right now is to announce that he will not continue running for reelection,” argues the article, signed by the editorial board, a group of journalists from the Times who works independently of the New York newspaper’s editorial staff.
The text is harsh, but it also warns that if Biden decided not to withdraw – and the signals he sent this Friday, day one after one of the most disastrous nights of his long political career, indicate that he does not intend to do so -, “the president in office would be the unequivocal choice of this council.” That is one of the functions of this class of bodies, which represent something like the gray matter in the American media: to ask for votes for one candidate or another. It is much less common in the history of journalism in this country for a newspaper to step forward to beg a candidate for the White House, much less if he is president, to think better.
Biden’s campaign reacted to the publication by downplaying it. “The last time Joe Biden lost the endorsement of the editorial board of The New York Times “It turned out quite well,” campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond said in a statement, referring to the fact that in the 2020 Democratic primaries, the newspaper’s opinion journalists preferred to support Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren, senators from Minnesota. and Massachusetts respectively, before Biden. In the general election they did ask for a vote for him, when he faced Trump in November.
A “bad night”
The editorial denies the argument of those who have been defending Biden since Thursday, who the article says showed himself to be “a shadow of the great public servant that he is.” That argument considers it to have been just a “bad night.” The Times is more in line with the idea that what the 50 million viewers of the debate saw was a reaffirmation of “concerns that have been mounting for months or even years” about his health and the mental and physical abilities that aid him as an 81-year-old man.
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The editorial board also recalls that Biden, who “failed his own test” (the debate was requested by him and the rules were set by his own campaign), “has carefully limited and controlled his public appearances.” Among other things, by repeatedly denying an interview with the New York newspaper. At the last White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, the president even made a joke during the traditional humorous monologue about the alleged animosity of The New York Timesto him.
The publication of the editorial generated a considerable shockwave in Washington, and renewed the arguments for the debate, which has not stopped on cable television news channels in the last 24 hours.
It also sparked some criticism, including from media theorist Jeff Jarvis, professor emeritus at the City University of New York (CUNY), who lamented the publication in a post X. In an email to Morning Express he elaborated a little more on his reasons: “I am concerned that the editorial board of The New York Timesis rushing to judgement based on a television performance. Times and his editor, AG Sulzberger, have been attacking Biden throughout this campaign and petulantly complaining that he wouldn’t give them an interview. Many re-election candidates, including Barack Obama, have had terrible first debates. He Times “Ignored that,” Jarvis warns. “Also did CNN’s irresponsible performance, which refused to do the most basic journalism, while Trump was throwing [durante el debate] lie after lie after lie. The problem is that it’s not just about the Times;It is also the crisis of Post, CNN’s turmoil and the triumph of [el editor australiano, dueño de los medios conservadores Fox News, New York Post o The Wall Street Journal] “Rupert Murdoch, who will bring Trump to power and help destroy institutions. We are facing a terrible crisis in American journalism.”
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