Casting your ballot in bad times

Anti-endorsements fit for the hellscape

These things never make sense. We watch, them, follow the blow-by-blow news, and could narrate the stream of events that got us here. But even knowing all the icky parts, it's hard to fathom their horrifying sum total. There will always be a part of me that simply can't get how the U.S. presidential election is this close, or that the country could be on the verge of passing all the branches of government over to this level of far right fuck wittery, at federal and many state levels. I get it, but I also really can't.

If only we had a Fourth Estate to capture, analyse and make sense of this moment. Unfortunately, much of it has abdicated that responsibility, but there are elements of it fighting the good fight. Journalists here and there at many publications churning out good work. I tend to aggregate these the best I can instead of throwing my lot entirely into this or that news entity. There are still some mastheads that are often doing the hard work, being bitterly honest with their audiences on the situation, and we should applaud these when they do their bit and maybe even toss them a few quid for their pains.

There have always been low-level debates about whether newspapers should endorse political candidates. Doesn't it show a publications bias? Is it fair? To me the same answer applies to both questions: No. In election years of the past, newspapers often would dedicate their editorial pages to endorsements, weighing up the pros and cons of different candidates and having an opinion about it. In more media literate times, readers understood how this worked. We are no longer in those times.

Interlude

Hey! Welcome to the presidential campaign edition of the Dystopia Report. The blog is still new. The paint is wet, watch yourself and don't use the handrails. I'm still putting it together, tweaking the design, deciding what it's about, mulling over my commitment to keeping it updated, dithering over whether I can produce content someone would actually think is subscribe-worthy, and generally just ruminating over what I want to do with it. And I'm doing all of that live, 'on prod,' as they say. I didn't really plan to write an election post, but I also decided to let whims take the site where it's going to go. Roll with it.

The opt-outs and the no-shows

The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Sun Sentinel, Minnesota Star Tribune, the Tampa Bay Times, and Omaha World-Herald are some of the prominent daily newspapers that Newsweek noted had endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and are now going mute in 2024. Here's a highlights reel:

• At the Washington Post, editorial independence lost when its owner and aspiring Lex Luther character Jeff Bezos stopped an already written endorsement for Harris from being published. A few thousand subscribers canceled and editorial board members have resigned, eventually causing Bezos to be late for another rave so he could double down on his control of WaPo's content, causing a wave of more than 200,000 subscription cancelations. There are now rumours that the paper may be up for sale. Responsible journalism is a drag, apparently. As of this writing I have not yet scraped together the seed money for this acquisition.
• At the LA Times, another billionaire has declared it's really been his own 'zine all along. Its owner Patrick Soon-Shiong demanded that the paper not endorse anyone running for president. Its editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned and three members of the LAT editorial board left as a result. Pat's daughter Nika, the family's version of Succession's "Shiv Roy" claimed in the New York Times that her family made “the joint decision” over the White House support of war crimes in Gaza, but her dad was quick to demand a follow-up article to clarify that neither his daughter or U.S. complicity in an ongoing genocide played any part in the decision. Pat to Nika: "fuck off, Shiv."
• USA Today announced it won't publish and endorsement "because we believe America's future is decided locally — one race at a time,” in a statement that mentioned its 200+ local newspapers also won't be allowed to endorse anyone. The Gannet style guide has no entry on irony.
• The rest are a mish mash of strange, sweaty handed deflection. The Minnesota Star Tribune says it "endorses voters, not candidates" whatever the fuck that's about; The Sun Sentinel bizarrely yet brutally takes a Tom Petty song out of context over this, the Tampa Bay Times suddenly announced "we never planned to" as if that means anything; And then there's the Omaha World-Herald. Does anyone outside of town give a shit about it? Exactly.

All of these newspaper owners are operating on fear. Unlike what most popular analysis suggests, I don't think it's directed at a potential new round of President Trump, but a fear of their readers, the subscribers and anyone who may start harassing their advertisers. The U.S. is hyper polarised. On the one side we have a candidate that more or less represents damp squib continuity. And on the other side is an angry cocktail laced with overt misogyny, racism, xenophobia, a disdain for the Constitution and fondness for authoritarians... And America just can't decide ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In most of the above examples, the newspaper staffs and editorial teams were dismayed if not offended by these decisions. U.S. media doesn't have a cowardice problem, it has a newspaper owner problem (the owners are the cowards, fyi.)

Insufferably, in his WaPo screed defending a mandate most of the paper's editorial staff seems to disagree with, Jeff Bezos uses "we/us" instead of the more honest "I/me." Everyone is free to choose their pronouns, though it reads more like the royal we than the editorial we when Jeff does it. But he's using it to evade responsibility. These publications are on par with voter opt-outs and those people spoiling their ballots with fringe third-party and independent no-chancers and then virtue signalling all over the internet like they've just overthrown neoliberalism in one fell swoop instead just being another data point in favour of putting every woman around them in greater danger of being subjected to a White House run by a guy found guilty of rape who threatens "whether the women like it or not, I'm going to protect them."

A journalistic enterprise can — and should — point out all the flaws and weaknesses of anyone trying to run for public office. And trying to be president should be a pain gauntlet. There may be no great candidates, but there are certainly, objectively, worse ones. A candidate found guilty of multiple felonies, many related to their last stint in the Oval office, and a string of sexual assault allegations, who is prone to inciting violence against his critics is the worse one, in case this is difficult to fathom. But at times like this, when you don't want to say nice things, there is a tool for the job: the anti-endorsement!

Traits of a good anti-endorsement for our times

While Wapo, LATimes and the rest examples of news rags working hard to ignore Rule 1 of Tim Snyder's On Tyranny, there's a more interesting phenomenon that I want the bulk of this post to look at: the anti-endorsement.

The anti-endorsement fits our current dystopia of no real good options, only degrees of bad possibilities. It is still an endorsement but it's one that doesn't shy away from the warts and strange odours of the less bad viable option up for grabs. It is one that empathises with the human in the voting booth and doesn't try to convince them that the more preferable candidate farts rainbows. The anti-endorsement will just point out that that they seem less likely to inspire racist thugs to take over the streets, or don't seem inclined to remove women's rights over their own bodies, or that they probably won't start rounding up the immigrants en masse for the camps.

One of the Harris campaign mantras that has caught on a little too much for my taste is this appeal for people to not give into the politics of despair. That's fine, but it's the political equivalent of an emotional support animal. There is a constituency that doesn't need that, or won't be receptive to it, and it's not small in an election this close in which her campaign — the nearest best opponent to a resurgent brand of American fascism — is not doing much to win back the many thousands of disengaged and tuned out would-be voters. To quote the late Shannen Doherty's politically astute character from the 1988 classic Heathers, "Some people need different kinds of convincing than others."

This is the anti-endorsement's role. It is a cold shower, strong cup of coffee and a caustic warning about the real stakes in the voice of Werner Herzog with a mitigatory recommendation you can take with your expectations firmly managed. It may have some limited positive things to say about the candidate it's backing, but it doesn't really have to, that's not the point. The best-of-class ones are openly hostile toward the candidate they want you to vote for and just get down to the brass tacks about why you need to put your ✓ next to that name on the ballot.

Editorial boards or oped writers can turn out an anti-endorsement that speaks to the skeptics, cynics, and pessimists out there. Those of us who trend toward light misanthropy before 10 a.m. on a weekday. They go negative and then more negative. They may not hate on their preferred candidate, but they certainly aren't stanning them. Really, it's often the more courageous approach. 'Yes, dear reader, the fix is in, that Leonard Cohen song was right. Here's the best you can hope for.'

Now for the twist: paradoxically, they can be absolutely inspiring. Anti-endorsement authors know the score. To rally people they have to find other points of inspiration. This often focuses on what people can do, that we all have agency, can do hard things, etc. They go big picture instead of fawning all over who they're endorsing. They don't fall into cults of personality because their target audience isn't down for that flavour of Kool-Aid.

The Economist did this, which you can see even on the plebeian's side of the pay wall. More accessible in every way is Teen Vogue, possibly the most consistently clear headed voice in American politics and often, it seems, the only adult in the room. Versha Sharma, its editor-in-chief, addresses head on that the "Democrats’ policy on Israel has been disastrous" while illustrating all evidenced the ways Trump will be worse. It is hardly fawning in its 10 mentions of Harris, but absolutely clear in it's 25 references to Trump what a clear threat he represents, and has all the receipts from his previous time in office and his spoilers of what would come next. It's a banger.

"No one is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves, and each other. Any of the issues you care about will be impossible to fight for under a Trump administration." — Versha Sharma, Teen Vogue

Nikolas Kristoff was also there this week with an anti-endorsement approach on why we need to tick Harris like it or not. What many anti-endorsement writers understand is just how much the Biden administration's devotion to Israel's unrelenting assault on all Palestinians has damaged the Democrats' credibility. And anti-endorsement authors aren't hiding from it. While the Harris campaign is sending Bill Clinton to Michigan to gaslight more people into opting out of voting and making everyone's job of defeating the saffron tinged fascist harder, columnist such as Kristoff are giving it a go: "So to those so upset about Biden’s policies in the Middle East that they are thinking about voting for Trump, staying home or voting for a third-party candidate — I understand. But don’t allow this anger to elect Trump, for that would amplify the suffering abroad that rightly upsets you. Refusing to vote may seem a noble gesture, but it’s a self-marginalization that could mean even more starving children, even more displacement and even more death." A key attribute in almost any anti-endorsement is consequences.

“This is not the election you want. It’s the election you’ve got. You can be as pissed off as you want to be at Democrats. But don’t forget who Donald Trump is and what he represents and what will happen in the next four years of his presidency. ... Your principles can’t be greater than the suffering of the people who will pay the price for a Donald Trump presidency.” — James Zogby, a co-founder and the president of the Arab American Institute (cited by Kristoff)

The top 5 presidential anti-endorsements you can find in the current dystopian presidential race...

1 / Ruwa Romman sets the example of how to show up

The DNC Tried to Silence Her. Here’s Her Plan After Voting for Harris

Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman says she is voting for Harris “for the people in my district and state who cannot survive another Trump presidency.”

Rolling StoneRuwa Romman

It may be the best piece of political writing I've ever encountered. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian–American serving in Georgia's state House of Representatives, has nothing good to say about the Harris operation, or the horrendous treatment she was subjected to at the Democratic National Convention this year, and is up front about Harris' part in this White House' slavish devotion to supporting Israel's endless war crimes and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But a key piece of an anti-endorsement is taking the long view.

"Voting this year carries a heavier weight, as it feels like choosing between survival and surrender. Please know this is not fear-mongering. It is a reality. Organizing around Palestine is difficult already with unprecedented efforts to silence and punish advocates. I don’t believe there’s anything worse than genocide. But the reality is a second Trump presidency would ensure continued disaster for our community and far too many other allied communities as well." — Ruwa Romman

It's both heartbreaking and stunningly sharp. Every line of this had to be painful to write. The DNC threw her under the bus, but she's not doing that to her constituents. This is what being a representative is, and it speaks directly and frankly to the voters that Harris' campaign has abandoned. Romman is not the hero the Harris campaign deserves, but she's one it really needs.

2 / Bernie Sanders on how we can disagree without disaster

In this video appeal, Sen. Bernie Sanders is turning in some quality anti-endorsement work. He's got little positive to say about the Biden administration's approach to Israel's attack on all of Gaza, from which Harris has not distanced herself, but he pivots on emphasising what remains more possible with her in the White House and will be impossible under Trump.

"Let me be clear: we will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing U.S. policy with Kamala Harris than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded, right-wing extremist ally." — Sanders

3 / The Verge shows us that presidential anti-endorsements are not about the candidate, but about the future

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles

Trump doesn’t care about any of this.

The VergeNilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.

We're used to The Verge telling us if we should get this season's iPhone or wait for the next release, but then it drops some big-brain political theory on you in the morning. It's maybe the most Kamala optimistic of my Top 5, but it applies as an anti-endorsement because its authors leverage bigger issues than a single candidate to make their point. Instead of just "vote Harris" we are given a rapid course on the Collective Action Problem, a "term political scientists use to describe any situation where a large group of people would do better for themselves if they worked together, but it’s easier for everyone to pursue their own interests." A vote for Harris is not just picking a candidate, it's choosing society. Letting Trump win is an act of civilisational self harm. And it works. The Verge should be writing some Harris campaign material, things would be a lot better in the polls right now with a lot of groups it's struggling to engage.

"It is extremely frustrating that the Harris campaign keeps going on about Trump being a danger to democracy without explaining why his whole deal is so deeply incompatible with America, so here’s the short version: the radical founding principle of the United States of America is the idea that the government’s authority to make laws and solve collective action problems comes from the consent of the governed. A clean rewrite, replacing centuries of architectural debt with what was, at the time, a cutting-edge foundation mostly unproven at scale. We vote for our leaders, they are given the power to tell us all what to do so that we might help each other reach better outcomes and be happier, and if they are bad at their jobs, we can simply throw the bums out. We open-sourced the authority, in other words. It was a big bet, and so far, it’s paid off." — Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge

4 / The New York Times 27 Oct. 2024 Sunday Opinions Page

The NYT had already issued a more traditional endorsement of Harris a month earlier, so it's interesting that it's gone back and done another one, but it is also fairly obvious that this one has a message aimed at a different group, and it's responding to the Harris campaign's worsening polls by targeting the voters who may be dropping out, mostly do to the Democrats inability to properly engage progressive voters and its apparent apathy or hostility to Muslim voters. Anti-endorsements of course go negative, there's no getting around it. They remind you that there are worse possible outcomes. The NYT's just done it in line with Rule 17 from Stunk & White's The Elements of Style: "Omit needless words." It may be the only guidance from that book I can remember verbatim, while obviously not following any of them.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” ― William Strunk Jr.

5 / This thing. I don't know who wrote it or turned it into a jpeg (are they the same person?!) but this thing.

What few social media followers I have will not have to see this jpeg after Nov. 5th this year. Since happening on it a few months ago I've re-tooted it in my Mastodon feed a few times and re-skeeted it on Bluesky whenever the fever pitch from some corners of the Left that thinks somehow letting Trump will win will teach the libs a lesson as opposed to just putting many more people at risk of being detained, deported or worse and further worsening the deteriorating state of women's rights in the country. I have no idea of its provenance, but whomever put it out onto the internet is a kindred spirit. Maybe it's a famous line, but my Googling and Duckduck Going has produced no verified source. I learned a while ago that I don't have a fixed home on the Political Compass. When it comes to parties and candidates, I am Mercutio's death scene.

"A plague o’ both houses! I am sped." — My guy

Voting is often just harm reduction. Someone on the internet once accused me of being an "incrementalist" for suggesting that. I blocked them. Life is short. They may have been right.

Honourable mentions

Shouts out to my home region. The Seattle Times' endorsement is really less about Kamala Harris and more about patting itself on the back for being a family-owned newspaper, which is an anachronism these days. It issued a more full-throated endorsement of Harris in September, but by November seems to have caught the new mood, and wants you to think of the Blethen family doggedly fighting the "demise of local newspapers across our country" when you vote. Meanwhile, The Stranger really leans into the anti-endorsement vibe in true bad timeline style, giving Harris the nod with the caveat... "But we live in a fallen world."

An appeal: Support some good journalism

In the worst times we need the best reportage and strongest voices. If you canceled your WaPo or LAT subscriptions over waffling and excuses on their editorial pages, there's no shame in that. I was one of the 200k+ who turned off auto-renew on the Post over the Bezos veto, but then I subscribe and unsubscribe from publications all the time for all kinds of reasons. And it doesn't mean there aren't amazing journalists at either of those publications, there are many. But there are also amazing journalists working under other mastheads, or who are running their own shows entirely. You can pocket that cash, sure. Inflation's a bitch and money's tight. But if this is your mad money pot for being a news junkie, then I suggest you put it back into some brave journalism somewhere. It's sad that the most important information often comes with paywalls while the disinformation flows free, but journalists need to get an income, propaganda campaigns are monetised in different ways. Find your own, but if you want some pointers...

Here are my current top five picks for your news enabling subscriber/supporter cash:

• Byline Times: Great coverage, analysis and opinion from the UK. British oriented but with a lot of global content. Yes, it's not American. If I could get Americans to be interested in anything it's more media from other places about other places. Read widely like fixing America's foreign policy depended on it.
• 404 Media: journalist-founded, owned and operated, it's covering all the ways technology helps and harms the humans, from every angle.
• New Lines Magazine: Focused primarily on the Middle East, but with increasing amounts of more global coverage, it's full of voices and views that don't conform to your expectations. Yes yours.
• ProPublica: Hey, it's an American dedicated one. Supporting real investigative public interest journalism that you'll read about a month later in the commercial press when they get around to quoting it if they do.
• +972 Magazine: A project run by Israeli and Palestinian journalists putting out some of the best analysis and at times ground breaking investigations that can't come from anywhere else. There is no paywall, supporting their work will help keep it that way.

Or just slide that cash by way of a donation toward the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, it has been supporting and publishing cutting-edge investigative journalism for years, shining a light on people who really hate that sort of thing, to the point that a few of them will hire thugs when the lawyers fail to try and stop it.

And that's a wrap. Thanks for reading my rambling inaugural blog post on the latest incarnation of what's been an ongoing experiment over the years across domains and platforms. Okay, technically the last post was first, but it was mostly written to test out the CMS on this platform it doesn't really count.

Updates as situation develops. Watch this space.