WhoWhatWhy has traditionally remained impartial at election time. The present situation compels us to break with that tradition.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
At WhoWhatWhy we pride ourselves in casting a coolly critical, nonpartisan eye on our nation’s politics. That is why in 15 years of publication we have never endorsed a particular candidate for any political office. But we can no longer remain silent on this election.
In explaining our position, we would love to compare economic policies, health care plans (or “concepts” of them), or how the candidates plan to handle immigration. However, these all pale next to the unique danger one party poses to the United States and, ultimately, the world. Therefore, this is less a piling up of one candidate’s praises than a reminder that there is no choice this time around.
That is why we are taking the opposite approach to that of news outlets like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, whose billionaire owners, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, spiked endorsements already drafted. The moguls seem to be either concerned over how their vast wealth may be slightly diminished if they don’t bow to Donald Trump, or fearful of the even darker consequences of finding their businesses and themselves on Trump’s list of “enemies from within” — or maybe both.
In truth, one thing should now be apparent: This election is not simply about choosing one candidate or another. At least not in the traditional sense: Jimmy Carter/Gerald Ford, George W. Bush/John Kerry, Barack Obama/John McCain or /Mitt Romney.
Rather it is about which direction the United States should take at this most divergent of forks. Stay the democratic course toward a better country for everyone? Or veer sharply right toward authoritarianism, with its inevitably ugly consequences for all Americans? We are thinking especially of those vulnerable Americans in marginalized communities — and of the survival of democracy itself in the global community of nations.
Media outlets, from WaPo to X, should be neither weapons (Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch) nor toys (Bezos, Soon-Shiong) of billionaires. Democracy may die in darkness, but it rarely thrives in penthouses and yachts.
To us, therefore, there is no choice, and it is our obligation to use this platform to make this crystal clear.
It would be one thing if we were basing our opinion on hypotheticals. However, as the coup attempt of 2021 has shown, the GOP is willing to do anything for power. And since then, Republicans, and especially their leader, have only lurched more radical, amassed a longer list of “enemies,” and grown more determined and sophisticated in how they would (ab)use power beginning on January 20, 2025.
Many people have come to question the pragmatic value of endorsements by media outlets, small or large. After all, few undecided voters are likely to be found among The Washington Post’s readers (or among ours), and the horse race has proven impervious to much more seismic jolts.
And yet, in an election in which the margin of victory is likely to be razor-thin, the symbolic and semiotic sound of the Post’s and LA Times’s silence is deafening.
Indeed, no words could underline Kamala Harris’s campaign message more meaningfully and forcefully than the two newspapers’ surrender to Donald Trump without a shot being fired. It is the kind of bent-knee submission that one might expect from cowed news outlets in a managed “democracy” like Turkey or Hungary. As such, it does not augur well for our own future should Trump regain power.
In that event, the best-case scenario would be a long slate of policy choices ranging from ill-advised to cruel to ruinous, the worst case being a reign of terror and failure to keep our republic.
Should that come to pass and we find ourselves drafting our republic’s obituary, a full column will be devoted to journaliism’s failure.
Media outlets, from WaPo to X, should be neither weapons (Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch) nor toys (Bezos, Soon-Shiong) of billionaires. Democracy may die in darkness, but it rarely thrives in penthouses and yachts.
Democracy thrives wherever its many beneficiaries have — and demonstrate — the courage to defend it.
We, who count ourselves among those beneficiaries and will never take the gift for granted, endorse Kamala Harris for president consistent with the high value we place on what we have been given.
With any politician it is easy enough to point to weaknesses or imperfections. But Kamala Harris is at her core a public servant. Those whose views align more closely with one or another of the third-party candidates, or who are considering registering their sweeping disapproval by not voting, might bear in mind that Donald Trump is the antithesis of a public servant. He has — as businessman, as president, and as candidate — shown himself to be a public parasite and predator.
A singularly dangerous predator. Judging by his Madison Square Garden rally, he seems less interested in winning this election than in stealing it, overcoming the public will and the democratic process — by violence, if that’s what it takes. He seems to want to establish that way of gaining and holding power — as he has established grifting, mocking, and lying — as the new normal, a new preamble to the authoritarian rule he imagines in place of our Constitution.
He and his running mate, JD Vance, lead a MAGA army into a war whose tactical battle plans extend past Election Day into the fraught months that lie beyond — a potential post-election struggle in which control of Congress may well play a decisive role.
In the fight to save our democracy and our nation, therefore, the choices — from the top of our ballots on down — should be clear and compelling.
