Inside-the-beltway pundits believe that not much store should be set by a newspaper’s endorsement of a candidate in an election. No matter how consequential a publication is, no matter the authoritative sweep of its editorial voice, its endorsement doesn't move the needle, pundits contend. I guess they are right. Or are they? Consider: ostensibly fed up with George W. Bush after his first term, all the major publications in the country threw their weights into the scale on the side of then Senator John Kerry just before the 2004 presidential election. And if you were someone not pretty well informed about the dynamics of American elections, you very well might be forgiven to think at the time that the election was Kerry's to lose just for that. Not so fast. Bush presided over another four years during which he would help run the nation’s economy aground.
Fast forward to most recently. The Concord Monitor and the Boston Globe, two influential newspapers in and around New Hampshire, for example, gave the thumbs up to Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders ahead of that state’s primary election on February 9, 2016. The sweet words offered by the papers about Clinton didn’t save her from the terrible shellacking she got from Sanders. By the time the last vote was counted, the former secretary of state had lost to her opponent by a whopping margin of 22 points.
In a two-way race, such as we have in a general election, or as currently exists in the Democratic primary between Clinton and Sanders, a publication’s endorsement of a chosen candidate follows an all too familiar pattern. The rejected candidate is first of all damned with faint praise, next the publication plunges the dagger into the candidate’s soft underbelly as it simultaneously pivots to sing praises of the favored one to justify its endorsement.
In its endorsement of Clinton on March 23, 2016, Rolling Stone magazine applies the same template just described above. However, there are things about that endorsement that set it apart from the usual run of editorial approbations. Written by publisher Mr. Jann S. Wenner, that endorsement is as weighty in its sweeping deconstruction of the erroneous concepts held by the public about Clinton over the years as it is penetrating in its demythologization of Sanders as a harbinger of the much-vaunted, but consistently elusive, change. The writer wonders thus:
I keep hearing questions surface about her honesty and trustworthiness, but where is the basis in reality or in facts?
He then offers the answer which even reflexive Clinton critics will continue to ignore.
This is the lingering haze of coordinated GOP smear campaigns against the Clintons — and President Obama — all of which have come up empty, including the Benghazi/e-mail whirlwind, which after seven GOP-led congressional investigations has turned up zilch.
Mr. Wenner does love Sanders, no question. But that love doesn’t blindfold him to the truth:
It's hard not to love Bernie Sanders. He has proved to be a gifted and eloquent politician. He has articulated the raw and deep anger about the damage the big banks did to the economy and to so many people's lives…” But here comes the unvarnished truth everyone should know about the Vermont senator. During his 25 years in Congress, Sanders has stuck to uncompromising ideals, but his outsider stance has not attracted supporters among the Democrats. Paul Krugman writes that the Sanders movement has a “contempt for compromise."
Every time Sanders is challenged on how he plans to get his agenda through Congress and past the special interests, he responds that the "political revolution" that sweeps him into office will somehow be the magical instrument of the monumental changes he describes. This is a vague, deeply disingenuous idea that ignores the reality of modern America. With the narrow power base and limited political alliances that Sanders had built in his years as the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, how does he possibly have a chance of fighting such entrenched power?
A very pertinent question, you have to concede. But how many, alas, would be impressed by it?Certainly not when you're a dyed-in-the-wool Sanders supporter. Indeed, not many settled minds would be persuaded that the man from Vermont, though a good and decent man by any stretch of the human imagination, is offering snake oil for the enthusiastic consumption of the young and the helplessly idealistic.
On the contrary, what you get is a barrage of blistering condemnation directed at Rolling Stone and the author of the piece by readers who are clearly Sanders supporters. The last time I checked, more than 8,000 readers had weighed in on the issues raised in that endorsement, an overwhelming majority of whom would neither spare the author, nor Clinton of vicious attacks. Some even said they had cancelled their subscriptions. It was that pathetic. Maybe we should look at some of the comments sans the names of the authors.
The Rolling Stone endorses Hillary? Wow. Just, wow. Rolling Stone embraces fear, and politics as usual; hard to get my mind around this. The editors of the Rolling Stone keep making strategic mistakes. I thought your Sean Penn debacle was your low point, but now this. Rolling Stone = status quo. Rolling Stone endorses the military industrial complex. Rolling Stone becomes part of the political establishment. Rolling Stone becomes another gutless part of the it's-okay-to-have-a-corrupted-political-system machine.
As a kid my dad had a subscription and I looked forward to each months edition. I tried to carry on the tradition but my kids could care less and neither could I. I cancelled my subscription a few years ago but come on here to mouth off. Make America Greater. Vote Bernie Sanders.
I was so disappointed in this, Jann, that I immediately sent money to Bernie Sanders. What happened to you? Did you forget yourself?
"Rolling on"? Bill looks like a zombie these days: a recent video of him showed involuntary chewing of his mouth indicative of Parkinson's or tardive dyskinesia. Hillary is one step away from a stroke herself, while several years older Sanders is as lively as ever.
Mercifully, a smattering of readers, not necessarily Clinton supporters, have equally been taken aback by the viciousness of the remarks coming from Sanders supporters, and have accordingly expressed disappointment. The comment below shows that.
Wow, so many mean, petulant comments from Sanders supporters. Kinda proves the authors point about him being the anger candidate. What happens if he wins? You all graduate to torturing small animals?
But characterizing those remarks as petulant would be hardly enough. They're mean-spiritedly childish, churlish, evil.
The hostile reactions should by no means cause Rolling Stone to regret the endorsement. In fact, as Mr. Wenner rightly said, Clinton is a better general election candidate than Sanders. If the endorsement left anything out, it was its omission to address the endlessly talked-about Sanders's poll numbers in hypothetical head-to-head contests against the Republican candidates. As I once noted in my blog on January 20, Sanders is doing better than Clinton now because he has yet to be subjected to withering fire from the Republicans and their super pacs. Those propagating this line of thought ought to pause and ask themselves why in the world Republican super pacs are spending millions of dollars going after Clinton in the Democratic primary and not Sanders. Any thinking mind should have no difficulty concluding that it is because they see Clinton as a more formidable opponent than Sanders.
All said, the Rolling Stone offering on Clinton is as great as they come. Unlike other endorsements, this is the one editorial endorsement that should reorient public perception about Clinton and Sanders. And for all the right reasons, too.
Mudiaga Ofuoku owns a blog at mudiagaofuoku.com. He can also be followed on twitter @MudiagaO.