The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Schadenfreude Smorgasbord

Posted on | October 26, 2024 | No Comments

The resignation of Robert Kagan, in response to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos ordering the paper not to endorse Kamala Harris, is a preview of the open intermural warfare we’ll see among Democrats if Kamala Harris loses next month. Failure in politics requires scapegoats, and Harris herself is exempt from blame because (according to the rules that Democrats impose) anyone who criticizes her is a racist and a sexist and, perhaps, literally Hitler. Forbidden to blame the candidate who led them to defeat, therefore, Democrats will point the finger of blame at each other, and we will witness a Carnival of Recriminations — if, as I say, Kamala loses. The fact that the Washington Post is imploding now, less than 10 days before Election Day, is a sort of signal of which way the winds are blowing. Robert Kagan wouldn’t be resigning his job if he didn’t think a Trump victory was highly probable.

What’s going on here? Professor Glenn Reynolds floats the theory — relevant to Bill Clinton throwing shade on Harris — that there’s an internecine combat between the Clinton clique and the Obama clique, with the Clintons aiming to get a measure of revenge. Team Clinton wants to make sure that they get none of the blame for an expected Harris defeat. But what about this thing at the Washington Post? Certainly it strikes me as an omen of a Harris defeat — Bezos wouldn’t have held back the Post‘s endorsement if he thought Harris was on her way to the White House. And, in examining this — again, hat-tip to Professor Reynolds — Ann Althouse mentions the similar non-endorsement by the Los Angeles Times:

According to the daughter of the paper’s owner — Patrick Soon-Shiong — “This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children…. For me, genocide is the line in the sand.”
So, this may be all about Israel. The papers don’t want to elaborate the reasons for supporting Harris because they would need to avoid or somehow deal with the topic of Israel’s war against Hamas. Harris can’t explain her position very well either. She needs help, and she’s not getting it. She’s evasive, and the newspapers are — in this endorsement avoidance — evasive too.

Kamala is complicit in “genocide”? Who is saying this?

Nika Soon-Shiong, the outspoken pro-Palestinian activist daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, defended the paper’s non-endorsement of a presidential candidate on Friday . . .
The 31-year-old progressive activist for causes like Palestine and guaranteed income is a divisive figure in the Times’ universe, where her influence on editorial decisions has stirred internal controversy.

You can read her anti-Israel rant on X here. But if the LA Times didn’t endorse Harris because Harris is too pro-Israel, my hunch is that the opposite is more likely the case with Bezos and the WaPo. That is to say, I believe Bezos is, if not adamantly pro-Israel, certainly not pro-Hamas, and — this is pure speculation on my part — I’d furthermore guess that Bezos has been offended by the blatantly anti-Jewish nature of campus protests since last year’s October 7 massacre. Bezos has also seen Amazon targeted by various pressure campaigns, demanding he cut off any business with Israel, and perhaps that has alienated him even more from the pro-Hamas “progressive” movement. Whatever the case may be, the explanation for the non-endorsement of Harris at the Washington Post is likely to be much different, if not directly opposite, of the reasons the LA Times didn’t endorse her. And that’s fine with me.

Whenever there’s infighting among Democrats, the important thing — from a conservative perspective — is not to choose sides amongst the factions. Certainly I would never defend the sold-out and morally bankrupt establishment leadership of the Democratic Party, but at the same time I have nothing but contempt for the wild-eyed fanatics and fringe ideologues of the party’s left-wing grassroots. The really important thing is that (a) we defeat the Democrats at election time, so that (b) the simmering tensions between the Democratic Party’s establishment and the left-wing grassroots bursts into open conflict, thereby (c) inflicting permanent damage on the Democratic Party’s coalition.

You should probably stock up on popcorn. Just sayin’ . ..



 

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Category: Kamala Harris, Media Bias

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