The New York Times editorial board on Monday endorsed Kamala Harris, calling the Democrat “the only patriotic choice for president” in the race against Republican Donald Trump.
But the newspaper did not even mention the vice president by name until the fourth paragraph of its written endorsement – instead focusing on Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, calling him morally and dispositionally “unfit.”
“This clear, disappointing truth – Donald Trump is not fit to be president – should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.”
It’s the same “anybody but Trump” approach that The New Yorker adopted a day earlier, with the magazine’s editors saying the Republican represents “an ongoing assault on the stability, nerves, and nature of the United States.”
In its lengthy endorsement, the Times acknowledged that Harris “may not be the right candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry at our government’s failures to fix what’s broken.”
“Yet we urge Americans not to compare Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s,” the newspaper said. “Ms. Harris is more than a necessary replacement.”
The Times editorial board has not thrown its weight behind a Republican for president since 1956 when it endorsed Dwight Eisenhower.
But the newspaper stressed that this election is “about something more fundamental” than “competitive politics and principles” in a two-party system.
“Unless American voters stand with him, Mr. Trump will have the power to cause deep and lasting damage to our democracy,” the newspaper wrote.
The Times said voters have the right to ask more of Harris when it comes to policy specifics: “Given the stakes of this election, Ms. Harris might think she’s designed to minimize the risk of an unforced error. Gaya is running the campaign … under the belief that being the only viable alternative to Mr. Trump could be enough to give her victory.”
“That strategy may ultimately prove victorious, but it is a disservice to the American people and to his own record.”
Meanwhile, it called the Republican Party “little more than an instrument” of Trump’s “attempt to seize power” and claimed that Trump’s second term would be “much more damaging and divisive than the first.”
“Kamala Harris is the only choice,” the editorial board said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
