“Democracy Dies in Darkness”, huh?

The Washington Post added that tagline to its masthead in February of 2017, claiming that it wasn’t an attack on newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, deciding “to come up with a slogan nearly a year ago, long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee,” though nobody in particular believed that. I question the timing, as Robert Stacy McCain would say.

The paper’s owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, used the phrase in an interview with The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, at a tech forum at The Post last May. “I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light,” he said at the time, speaking of his reasons for buying the paper.

I am glad that my favorite reporter, Heather Long, stepped back from the newspaper’s Editorial Board a couple of months ago, so that she can’t be blamed for this drivel.

Trying to protect Biden, Democrats sacrificed their credibility

Democrats’ coverup of the president’s decline hurt their claim of being the party of truth.

by the Editorial Board |Friday, November 8, 2024 | 7:19 PM EST

Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t just call special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate” when it came out in February. She claimed he was “clearly politically motivated” and impugned his integrity. Mr. Hur, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified material, recommended that the 81-year-old president not face charges, partly because a jury could reasonably conclude that he’s “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” That assessment was based on Mr. Biden’s frequent forgetfulness and hazy answers during five hours of interviews with prosecutors. Speaking to reporters, Ms. Harris reacted furiously: “The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong.”

Mr. Hur has been repeatedly vindicated during the intervening nine months. The interview transcripts, when they came out, bolstered his conclusions. If anything, the truth was worse than what Mr. Hur described.

And the third paragraph has the money line:

It’s now acknowledged almost universally that Mr. Biden should not have sought a second term, but the Democratic establishment denied the obvious and propped him up politically, even as evidence of his decline mounted. Prominent Democratic politicians changed their tune only after a disastrous debate performance in June made it impossible to conceal Mr. Biden’s frailty from the public any longer — and forced them to confront the possibility of electoral disaster in November.

I’m laughing out loud. “(T)he Democratic establishment denied the obvious and propped him up politically, even as evidence of his decline mounted”? How about the credentialed media, including Washington Post reporters?

Independent blogs saw this all along. William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove noted several times how Mr Biden and his staff were capping off his days during the 2020 campaign, yet did anyone on the Post try to investigate that? Conservatives on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — have been pointing out his stumbles, physical and mental, for years now, but somehow, some way, the journolists at CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, and seemingly everyone else in the media, never noticed and never knew?

Democrats tried to make fidelity to science, facts and truth their distinguishing characteristic as a party. The White House’s aggressive coverup of Mr. Biden’s decline undermined that claim. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) was the only lawmaker willing to challenge Mr. Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was ostracized and lost his spot in House leadership. Mr. Biden’s allies concocted terms such as “cheap fakes” to dismiss embarrassing video clips in which Mr. Biden appeared dazed, confused, tired and inaudible. Allies of the president frequently labeled content they didn’t approve of as “disinformation,” cheapening the term. When a few journalists reported accurately on Mr. Biden’s decline, the White House fed critical talking points about their stories to others in the media.

That last link, when a “few journalists reported accurately on Mr. Biden’s decline,” wasn’t from the Post, but The Wall Street Journal. Apparently, the Editorial Board were unable to come up with such a link to their own newspaper.

This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.

The White House kept close tabs on some of The Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers. After the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked, some of those lawmakers spoke to the Journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden’s strengths.

“They just, you know, said that I should give you a call back,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, referring to the White House.

There’s a lot more at the original, but the obvious question is: if Journal reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes could investigate this, why couldn’t the reporters at the Post?

This wasn’t the only Wall Street Journal article noting that Mr Biden’s physical and mental condition had deteriorated, though this one appeared after the debate.

Minutes into Thursday night’s presidential debate, the concerns began gushing into the open.

Yet they had already become increasingly apparent in Washington’s corridors of power and across the world for months. In interviews, top officials abroad and Democrats said they have witnessed other moments when Biden’s behavior concerned them. Some were quickly relieved when Biden appeared to regain his footing. Others were left shaken by the experiences.

European officials had already been expressing worries in private about Biden’s focus and stamina before Thursday’s debate, with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer. There were real doubts about how Biden could successfully manage a second term, but one senior European diplomat said U.S. administration officials in private discussions denied there was any problem.

The journolists knew; they all knew. In a climate where no secret other than Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list can be kept, and with 434 Representatives and 100 Senators running around, gossiping among themselves, does anyone seriously believe that the reporters didn’t know? Republicans had already been telling us that, and the non-credentialed media were touting the story, but somehow, some way, the reporters with the legacy media either never investigated the story themselves, or had the reports quashed by their editors if they did. The Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s investigation of President Nixon and Watergate, bringing down a Republican president, chose to protect a Democrat.

It’s pretty obvious that when the Editorial Board wrote, “(T)he Democratic establishment denied the obvious and propped him up politically, even as evidence of his decline mounted,” they were including themselves in “the Democratic establishment”.