We don’t need newspaper endorsements when Trump is losing this thing all on his own, writes SFGATE’s Drew Magary
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, laughs as he speaks during the Economic Club of Washington’s Milestone Celebration event in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2018. SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
By Drew Magary, Columnist Oct 31, 2024 (SFGate.com)
I’d like to tell you that history will remember the week when the proprietors of both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times quashed respective endorsements of Kamala Harris for president, but history has a nasty habit of leaving out the fine print. A 2050 history textbook, especially one in Texas, won’t tell you that WaPo owner and Amazon e-lord Jeff Bezos opted to sit out endorsing any presidential candidate in 2024, and then had the predictable billionaire gall to say that it was because Americans don’t trust the media. It won’t tell you that pharma baron Patrick Soon-Shiong, who once lobbied Donald Trump for a cabinet position, yanked his LA Times out of the presidential endorsement biz for vaguely stated reasons that did not explicitly say “MONEY” but should have. It won’t tell you about the journalistic cowardice that these men engineered specifically to avoid Trump f—king with their money should he win on Tuesday. We’ll have to tell that story to ourselves in the future.
And we will.
Because while Trump’s 2016 election victory symbolized how much online discourse, much of it drenched in lies, shaped the prevailing attitude of the general electorate at the time, 2024 stands to embody the opposite dynamic. Canny voters are no longer using the erstwhile Twitter as a primary news source. In fact, they’re not using Twitter at all, and they know which news outlets they can rely on to tell it straight and which ones are officially washed. Voters under 60 aren’t getting their information from Facebook, and many young voters never even bothered to create an account there to begin with. And no one is swayed by Gannett newspapers, USA Today foremost among them, declining to endorse, because every Gannett website is malware without boob shots. The first suggested question when you Google “Gannett newspapers” is “How do I cancel my Gannett newspaper subscription online?”
Bezos was correct in saying that Americans don’t trust the media, but it goes further than that. Thanks to feckless profiteers like himself, Americans don’t really trust anyone. I know I don’t. I’ve learned not to take polling data from strangers. I’ve learned that all of the publications sitting out this election are run by, no surprise, men … men who can afford to safely arrange an abortion whenever they’re in a bind. And I’ve learned that Donald Trump, probably dancing around on a stage to “Memory” somewhere right now, no longer knows how to talk to anyone save for the invisible goblins living inside his brainpan:
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This is the sight of a snake eating its own tail. The legacy publications that are choosing to remain conspicuously silent in this moment are, by extension, writing themselves OUT of that moment. They’ve declared themselves willing to fall for anything, and the result has been a sudden plunge in subscription rates that has reduced their influence dramatically. You and I must be the heralds now. We watch the game with our own eyes and tell ourselves, honestly, what we see.
This is, against all odds, a positive development. Because Bezos and the like have barged in and snuffed out the judgment of their own editorial departments, they’ve handed those judgment powers back to the citizenry: We The People, Me The Person. I can see it. I see the hundreds of thousands of people — perhaps the same people who canceled their WaPo subs — flocking to Harris rallies while Trump plays to a half-empty ballroom. I see Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, yoinking ideals long owned by the GOP (patriotism, freedom, football) and weaving them into their stump speeches with a deftness that Clintonite Democrats lacked. I see the women in my life leaving nothing to chance after their first opportunity to elect a woman president cruelly slipped through their fingers eight years ago. I see Harris getting more public endorsements from prominent Republicans than the current standard-bearer of the GOP is. All Trump has behind him right now are JD Vance, our dimmest Bosa and Elon Musk.
This is why I see a shaken Trump preemptively disputing voting results in Pennsylvania when the election is still a week away. This is why I see the big fella trying to steal credit for capping insulin costs when even our worst informed citizens know that Joe Biden was the guy responsible for it. I see Vance getting wrecked by Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan! I see all of that, I know which way the vibes are flowing.
Most importantly, I can see a ballot that my home state sent me in the mail, and I’m reminded that I, as a voter in a blue state, DO have power. I DO have agency. I DO matter. I hold the pen. I write the history, as do you. Not Bezos, not Soon-Shiong, not one of the Nates, not a f—king needle, not the Electoral College, not a bunch of yahoo Trump judges, not a political media that insists every general election will come down to six people living in some anonymous Pennsylvania town, and not a half-assed patchwork of Stop the Steal losers that we can all see coming from miles away. None of them matter. I can see that as clear as day right now. Elections do not happen to you and me. We MAKE them happen, and the only endorsement that matters now is our own. We’re the ones who can finish off Trump for good next week, so let’s get to it. Let’s kick his sorry ass, and end this once and for all.
Oct 31, 2024
COLUMNIST
Drew Magary is a columnist for SFGATE and a co-founder of Defector. His new book, “The Night the Lights Went Out,” is available right now.
