Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has written a long response to Ezra Klein’s fantasy idea of persuading President Biden to drop out of the campaign and throw the nomination open to the Democratic National Convention this August. The whole thing is worth your time, but here’s Marshall’s bottom line:
In life we constantly need to make choices on the basis of available options. Often they are imperfect or even bad options. The real options are the ones that have some shot at success. That’s life. Klein’s argument really amounts to a highly pessimistic but not unreasonable analysis of the present situation which he resolves with what amounts to a deus ex machina plot twist. That’s not a plan. It’s a recipe for paralysis.
Klein is smart and thoughtful, and his proposal is not a lazy one-off but, rather, well argued and evidence-based. But it’s not going to happen, and it almost certainly shouldn’t happen. Marshall has found the flaws.
Good Jack Shafer interview in Politico with Margot Susca, the author of “Hedged,” on how private equity helped destroy the newspaper business. I reviewed “Hedged” for The Arts Fuse last month.
Many thanks to old friend Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) for featuring the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” on his Sunday “Keller at Large” program. You can watch our two-part conversation here.
Best wishes to Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who’s recovering from heart surgery. Spring training isn’t going to be the same without him.
Then-candidate Joe Biden. Photo (cc) 2019 by Matt Johnson.
You may have heard that Ezra Klein has called for President Biden to pull out of the campaign and let a younger generation of Democrats compete for the nomination. Klein, who hosts a podcast and writes commentaries for The New York Times, is someone I look to for guidance. This isn’t just the Times being the Times; Klein was a prominent thinker and commentator before coming to the Times, and he will continue to be long after he leaves.
You can listen or read what Klein has to say here. There’s not a lot of analysis I want to add except to say that he’s thought through most of the objections. He believes Biden has been an effective president and could continue to be in a second term, but that his age has become a real obstacle to his re-election — and that the stakes are way too high to take the chance that Donald Trump could return to the White House. Yes, Trump is nearly as old, far more addled, and, unlike Biden, faces 91 criminal charges and has all but pledged to rule as an authoritarian. Klein believes that anything that keeps Trump out of power is worth doing, even if it means somehow persuading Biden to call it a career.
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Probably my main objection to Klein’s idea is that it’s so late. If Biden had pulled out a year ago, we could have had a proper primary campaign. So what is Klein’s alternative? Throwing it to the Democratic National Convention in August, a truly risky move. “There is a ton of talent in the Democratic Party right now,” Klein writes, and he offers a long list that, intriguingly, omits California Gov. Gavin Newsom and includes Georgia Sen. Ralph Warnock. I’m skeptical of Newsom, and I have to say that I like the idea of Warnock.*
Another problem that Klein has given some thought to is what to do about Vice President Kamala Harris. His answer is that she is a better and more appealing politician than she’s generally given credit for, and that she could compete at the convention like everyone else. If she wins, she wins; if she loses, that’s not a reason to believe that the party would be torn apart. I’m not so sure about that, but Klein puts it this way:
Could it go badly? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it will go badly. It could make the Democrats into the most exciting political show on earth. And over there on the other side will be Trump getting nominated and a who’s who of MAGA types slavering over his leadership. The best of the Democratic Party against the worst of the Republican Party. A party that actually listened to the voters against a party that denies the outcome of the elections. A party that did something different over a party that has again nominated a threat to democracy who has never — not once — won the popular vote in a general election.
I’d say my biggest objection is that Klein would reward special counsel Robert Hur, who recently cleared Biden of criminal wrongdoing in his retention of classified documents but then gratuitously smeared him by suggesting that the president is senile. It was a gross example of prosecutorial misconduct. But that doesn’t mean concerns about Biden’s age aren’t real. As Klein notes, he may be sharp and focused in private (just ask Kevin McCarthy), but he’s slowed down in public, and his own campaign seems to be trying to hide him from scrutiny.
The issues involved are difficult to sort out. In addition to Hur’s actions, which ought to be investigated, there is also the media’s wildly disproportionate coverage of Biden’s age. It’s a legitimate story, of course, but it’s gotten far too much attention when compared with more important stories, many of them having to do with Trump’s dangerous and outrageous pronouncements. In addition, the notion that Biden will stand down is almost certainly wishful thinking — that is, if you’re even wishing for it. “The sky is blue and Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee,” as Josh Marshall puts it.
Anyway, Ezra Klein’s piece is worth a read or a listen at least as a thought exercise. It seems pretty obvious that if we’re going to stop Trump, it’s going to have to be with Biden. But Klein’s counter-factual is pretty interesting.
*Correction: I swear I can’t read. Newsom is on Klein’s list. I’m still skeptical of him, though.
If you received an email in the past day or so telling you that you are owed money resulting from a legal settlement with The Boston Globe, I’m here to tell you that it’s legit.
The email, from the “Ambrose v Boston Globe Settlement Administrator,” pertains to a $5 million settlement that the Globe reached last May for grabbing the identifying information of users who watch videos on its website and sending it to Facebook. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub and I both wrote about it at the time (here and here), but I could barely remember it when I got my notice on Friday.
Subscribers are receiving anywhere from a week’s extension to, in my case, $158.03, which is also the amount reported by several other people I’ve been in contact with. I don’t know how they arrived at that exact figure, but I’ll take it.
Donna Ladd, the editor and CEO of the Mississippi Free Press, took issue with my post arguing that her regional news outlet ought to stick with covering state issues rather than weighing in on national politics. She voiced her opinions on Twitter/X, noting that the Free Press is in the process of hiring a Washington-based reporter to cover state issues from the nation’s capital. (Good move, although unrelated to the concern I raised.) She tweeted (among other things):
“You might’ve used a different phrase than telling us to stay in our lane, Dan. Or, maybe talked to us as @jbenton did. Our ‘lane’ has always included pro-democracy reporting and Voices, and nothing about our decision means we will do less local reporting.”
Because she and others thought my observation that “local and regional news organizations ought to stay in their lane” was condescending, I’ve gone back and changed it, even though that was not my intent. I think holding power to account at the state and local level is an honorable and much-needed lane, but obviously I failed to make myself understood. That’s on me.
The state Capitol in Jackson, Miss. Photo (cc) 2007 by Jim Bowen.
I want to push back ever so gently against the widespread praise the Mississippi Free Press has received for telling the truth about Donald Trump. As you may have heard, the ex-president was at his outrageous worst at a rally in South Carolina last Saturday, inviting Russia to attack members of NATO that in his view don’t contribute enough money to cover U.S. defense costs. “I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump said of his friends in the Kremlin.
Much of the media fell down on the job, giving exponentially more coverage to the special counsel’s gratuitous claim that President Biden is dealing with age-related memory problems than to Trump’s dangerously unhinged rhetoric. So the Free Press, a nonprofit news organization that covers public policy in Mississippi, decided to publish a corrective. Under the byline of news editor Ashton Pittman, the website ran a headline that read: “Trump Encourages Russia to Attack American Allies: ‘Do Whatever the Hell They Want.’” Pittman’s lead:
Former President Donald Trump would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies whom he claims do not contribute enough to NATO defense costs, he told a crowd of supporters to cheers at a South Carolina rally on Saturday.
Now, this was all true, and the Free Press handled the story with far greater urgency than, say, The New York Times, which buried Trump’s remarks while publishing multiple stories about Biden’s alleged forgetfulness. But why was a regional news organization leading with a national story from another state?
In an editor’s note, Pittman said he was encouraged to do so by his editor, Donna Ladd, explaining: “Several major national media outlets were fumbling the ball and either ignoring those remarks or giving them less weight than they deserve. Donna said we should set an example for how national media ought to cover such extreme policy declarations, and I agreed. So we did.”
My objection to this is that there are good reasons why local and regional news organizations ought to stick with their mission. Multiple studies show that people trust local media more than they do national outlets. At the local level, we should be working to rebuild civic life and help people find ways to come together over local issues even as we are being torn apart by partisan polarization over national politics. Yes, the problem is mainly with the political right, which has become increasingly extreme during the Trump era. But the Mississippi Free Press and outlets like it should stand as an alternative not just to the toxic rhetoric of cable news (and especially Fox), but also to serious purveyors of journalism like the Times and The Washington Post.
Apparently the Free Press is in the midst of a reshuffle. According to Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab, the Free Press recently became an Associated Press subscriber and is starting a national news section. At the moment, the Free Press’ homepage is featuring two AP stories about the fallout from Trump’s remarks. I wonder if that might be a mistake, too. While it makes sense to run AP content with a Mississippi focus, I question the value of running national and international stories on a site whose principal mission is statewide news.
Another, similar site, Mississippi Today, has stuck to its knitting — and won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its coverage of a welfare scandal that implicated, among others, former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. (CEO Mary Margaret White was a guest on our “What Works” podcast in November 2022.)
I don’t want to be too critical of the Mississippi Free Press. We need more projects like it, digging in and holding power accountable in statehouses across the country. What it published about Trump was true and righteous, and stands in welcome contrast to the both-sides timidity of the national press. I’m concerned, though, that the siren call of national politics is a distraction from its main mission, and may alienate some readers who might otherwise be reachable.
No doubt some on the political right already castigate the Free Press as a tool of the liberal elite, because that’s what right-wingers do. And no, the Free Press shouldn’t pander to them. But this strikes me as an unforced error.
Update: Donna Ladd has taken issue with this post, and I write about that here. I’ve also tweaked the wording, which I explain in my new post.
Remember Vinay Mehra, the former Boston Globe Media president who sued the company for compensation he claims he was owed after he was fired in 2020? Well, his suit continues to wend its way through the legal system, but Suffolk Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp trimmed back Mehra’s demands recently, ruling that Mehra is not entitled to triple damages should he prevail. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, channeling Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, has more.
Adrienne Johnson Martin, executive editor of MLK50. Photo (cc) 2023 by Dan Kennedy.
Ellen Clegg and I have written a commentary for Poynter Online about our book, “What Works in Community News.” The piece is focused on Ellen’s reporting in Memphis, Tennessee, where two nonprofit startups, MLK50 and the Daily Memphian, are filling the gap created by Gannett’s hollowing out of the legacy daily, The Commercial Appeal. Our bottom line:
We are heartened by the work being done by these news entrepreneurs. At a time when advocates are proposing solutions to the local news crisis such as tax credits, legal action to force Google and Facebook to share advertising revenues, and expanded philanthropic efforts, we’ve learned that there is no substitute for the dedication of grassroots news activists. We hope our work will inspire others to start similar efforts in their own communities.
