NYT's Predictable Advice for Kamala Harris: Go Right

Julie Hollar

As the Democratic Party began to coalesce behind Kamala Harris, the New York Times' popular Morning newsletter (7/23/24) quickly put forward the knee-jerk corporate media prescription for Democratic candidates: urging Harris to the right.

Under the subhead, "Why moderation works," David Leonhardt explained that "the average American considers the Democratic Party to be further from the political mainstream than the Republican Party."

As evidence, he pointed to two polls. The first was a recent Gallup poll that found Trump leading Biden on the question of who voters agreed with more "on the issues that matter most to you." The second was a 2021 Winston poll asking people to rate themselves on an ideological scale in comparison to Democratic and Republican politicians; people on average placed themselves closer to Republicans than to Democrats.

Of course, these polls, which ask only about labels and perceptions, tell you much more about the fuzziness—perhaps even meaninglessness—of those labels than about how well either party's policy positions align with voters' interests, and what positions candidates ought to take in order to best represent those voters' interests. Responsible pollsters would ask about actual, concrete policies in the context of information about their impact; otherwise, as former Gallup editor David Moore has pointed out (FAIR.org, 2/11/22), they merely offer the illusion of public opinion.

'Radical' Democrats

For the New York Times' David Leonhardt (7/23/24), the first question about Kamala Harris is "whether she will signal that she’s more mainstream than other Democrats."

And where do people get the idea that the Democratic Party is, as Leonhardt says, "radical," and misaligned with them on important issues?

Of course, the right-wing media and right-wing politicians offer a steady drumbeat of such criticism, painting even die-hard centrists like Joe Biden as radical leftists. But centrist media play a starring role here, too, having long portrayed progressive Democratic candidates and officials as extreme and out of step with voters.

For instance, the Times joined the drumbeat of centrist media attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders for supposedly being too far out of the mainstream to be a serious 2016 presidential candidate (FAIR.org, 1/30/20). Forecasting the 2016 Democratic primary race, the Times’ Trip Gabriel and Patrick Healy (5/31/15) predicted that

some of Mr. Sanders’ policy prescriptions—including far higher taxes on the wealthy and deep military spending cuts—may eventually persuade Democrats that he is unelectable in a general election.

As FAIR (6/2/15) noted at the time, most of Sanders' key progressive positions—including raising taxes on the wealthy—were actually quite popular with voters. Cutting military spending is not quite as popular as taxing the rich, but it often outpolls giving more money to the Pentagon—a political position that the Times would never claim made a candidate "unelectable."

Voters' leading concern this election year (as in many election years) is the economy, and in particular, inflation and jobs. As most corporate media outlets have reported recently (e.g., Vox, 4/24/24; CNN, 6/26/24), economists are warning that Trump's proposed policies—massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, as well as increased tariffs—will increase inflation. So, too, would deporting tens of millions of immigrants, as Trump claims he will do, as this would cause a major labor shortage in an already tight job market.

(It's also worth noting here that, even without being given more context, a majority of respondents oppose Trump's deportation plan—Gallup, 7/12/24.)

Representative democracy needs informed citizens who understand how well candidates will reflect their interests. Reporting like Leonhardt's, using context-free polling and blithely ignoring the disconnect between what people concretely want and what candidates' policies will do, only strengthens that disconnect and undermines democracy further.

'Promising to crack down'

As the New York Times (7/24/24) has elsewhere noted, crime rates are currently lower than they have been in more than a generation.

Believing he has established that Democrats in general are "radical" (or else believing it's more his job to pretend they are than to dispel the notion), Leonhardt in the next section asks, how can Harris "signal that she’s more mainstream than other Democrats"?

He offers "five Democratic vulnerabilities," the first of which he says is crime—"the most natural way for Harris to show moderation," since she is "a former prosecutor who won elections partly by promising to crack down on crime. Today, many Americans are worried about crime."

Again, Leonhardt takes a misperception among voters—that crime rates are elevated—and rather than attempting to debunk it based on data, which show that violent and property crime rates are lower than they've been in more than a generation (FAIR.org, 7/25/24), he allows the unchallenged misperception to buttress his move-to-the-center strategy recommendation.

Next is immigration, where Leonhardt wrote that, since

most Americans are deeply dissatisfied that Biden initially loosened immigration rules…I'll be fascinated to see whether Harris—Biden's point person on immigration—tries to persuade voters that she'll be tougher than he was.

The truth is, it's hard to get much tougher on immigration than Biden without going the route of mass deportation and caging children, as he kept in place many of Trump's harsh refugee policies, much to the dismay of immigrant rights advocates. But few in the public recognize that, given media coverage that dehumanizes immigrants and fearmongers about the border (FAIR.org, 6/2/23, 8/31/23).

'Outside the mainstream'

In the face of racist and misogynist attacks on Kamala Harris from the Republican Party (Atlantic, 7/25/24), Leonhardt demanded that Harris prove she's not "quick to judge people with opposing ideas as ignorant or hateful."

Leonhardt called inflation another "problem for Harris," again, without pointing out the reality that a Trump presidency would almost certainly be worse for inflation. And he closed with the problems of "gender issues" and "free speech," which both fall under the "woke" umbrella that the Times frequently wields as a weapon against the left (FAIR.org, 3/25/22, 12/16/22).

He argues that liberals are "outside the mainstream" in supporting "gender transition hormone treatment for many children," which he claims "doctors in Europe…believe the scientific evidence doesn't support." Leonhardt is cherry-picking here: While some doctors in some European countries believe that—most notably doctors in Britain who are not experts in transgender healthcare—it's not the consensus view among medical experts in either Europe or the United States (FAIR.org, 6/22/23, 7/19/24).

"If Harris took a moderate position, she could undermine Republican claims that she is an elite cultural liberal," Leonhardt wrote. By a "moderate position," Leonhardt seems to mean banning access to hormone therapy for trans youth—a decidedly right-wing political position that, through misinformed and misleading media coverage, particularly from the New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23), has become more politically acceptable.

Finally, on "free speech," Leonhardt wrote that "many Americans view liberals as intolerant," noting that "Obama combated this problem by talking about his respect for conservative ideas, while Biden described Republicans as his friends."

It's a topsy-turvy world in which the Black female candidate, who has received so many racist and sexist attacks in the past week that even Republican party leaders have asked fellow members to tone it down (Atlantic, 7/25/24), is the one being admonished to be tolerant and respectful.

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