Is the New York Times up to the job of reporting on the Democratic Party's future?
The first article in an "occasional series" on this topic is woefully inadequate. A lesson in how not to do journalism.
Questions about why the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump have been subject to debate for months. I don’t intend to weigh in on them at the moment, other than to say that readers of this newsletter will not be surprised to learn that I don’t think it was because the party did not tack hard enough to the political right.
Understanding the past is, of course, a potential guide to what to do in the future. So readers will also not be surprised that I don’t think we should take James Carville’s advice and do nothing at all. Does he still think that? Because in my view, only a complete idiot (or a Democratic Party hack who would rather lose than let the left wring of the party have any influence) could or would.
For the moment I just want to briefly discuss how our “paper of record,” the New York Times, is handling things journalistically. On May 25, the paper published a piece entitled “Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward,” by reporter Shane Goldmacher. His byline identifies him as “a national political correspondent currently focused on the rebuilding efforts of the Democratic Party.”
Many paragraphs into the the story, we are told this:
“The Democratic Party’s tarnished image could not come at a more inopportune moment. In this era of political polarization, the national party’s brand is more important and influential than ever, often driving the outcomes of even the most local of races.
And so The New York Times is beginning an occasional series of articles about the Democrats and their predicament: how it got so dire, what comes next and who could lead the way.”
I find it odd that readers were not told that this article was part of a series at the top of the story, but only as a kind of throwaway line way in the middle of it. Does that mean that the Times does not really want to commit itself to reporting on this topic? (Although it certainly has published many other pieces, especially opinion pieces, on the subject.) Is the term “occasional” an escape hatch in case the paper and its reporters find that they don’t have much to say? I don’t claim to know.
But we can ask how serious this effort by the Times to look into a pretty burning issue is so far. We can do some journalistic analysis by examining what sources Goldmacher talked to for this lead-off story.
Here they are:
— Anat Shenker-Osorio, a “longtime Democratic researcher.” She has looked at around 250 focus groups of swing voters, and found that Republicans are seen as “apex predators” like lions, tigers, and sharks, while Democrats are “typically tagged” as tortoises, slugs or sloths…” So a zoological analysis.
— Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris last year. So, a key member of the losing team.
— Representative Jason Crow, “a Colorado Democrat who is charged with recruiting candidates to help Democrats win back the House in 2026.”
— Jaime Harrison, “who stepped down in February as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.” Again, a member of the losing team.
— Zac McCrary, “a Democratic pollster.”
Goldmacher also obtained the prospectus for a project Democratic strategists have been working on. Here is how he describes it:
For now, Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.
The prospectus for one new $20 million effort, obtained by The Times, aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM — short for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” — and promises investment to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.” It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.
“Above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone,” it urges.
I think, or hope, that my readers are getting the point. Perhaps at some point in the future, when the Times does the next of its “occasional” pieces on the future of the Democratic Party, it will quote alternative or dissident or progressive voices in the party—or all those—rather than Democratic Party operatives, including those who fully participated in the disastrous loss to Donald Trump. Would Bernie, AOC, Indivisible, progressive members of Congress, or other activists who have not yet given up on the Democratic Party, be among them?
Time will tell. Except that we don’t have a lot of time. But we have the Times, which apparently can be counted on to slow walk us into one of the worst nightmares our country has ever experienced. Fortunately, there are other publications, and other journalists, working on the same basic story. I will discuss them in future installments of “Words for the Wise” and provide some detailed bibliographies.
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