This is interesting, I think, and bodes poorly for the Democratic presidential candidate, whoever it may be.
In today’s New York Times (the paper version), right next to the two articles about the Barr hearings, neither of which headlines the fact that he lied his way through his testimony, is an article about Joe Biden. It starts on page one, takes up the entirety of page 10, and extends onto page 11. It concerns allegations of a conflict of interest involving his son’s activities in the Ukraine, and is titled For Biden, a Ukraine Matter that Won’t Go Away. Not until you get to page 10 (and, really, who ever reads that far) does it become clear that this is a story being pushed by the Trumpies, which the Times, dutifully carrying water, has promoted to front page news.
So, I went on line to get a linkto the story (doing my duty as a blogger), in order to make point one of two I intend to make in this post: that the mainstream media is always ready to dutifully chase whatever way Republicans point while somehow ignoring Republican transgressions. Before the election, anyway, how often did the Timesmine the various conflicts of interests, criminal activities and frauds in which Trump engaged. Okay, I understand. There wasn’t room to print them next to all those stories about Hillary’s emails.
Point one made.
Before going on, let me relate what I found on-line. The title to the article has been changed for the on-line version. It reads: “Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies”. A little better anyway, though it might have been useful had the Times noted that nothing in the “questions” being promoted rises to the level of corruption in which the Trump family daily engages. But the damage was done in the print edition.
On to point two.
Someone near and dear to me has been repeatedly making the point that unless the Democrats pursue impeachment this is what we can expect from now until the election: the press chasing adverse stories about Democratic candidates like hounds chasing foxes while Trump escapes scrutiny since, after all, he’s just being Trump. Like this one, those stories will be invented, promoted, or blown out of proportion by Republicans, but it won’t matter. Like Hillary’s emails they will dominate the news. If we want to throw the dogs off the scent, we have to give them something else to chase, and a constant drumbeat of disclosures from impeachment hearings (they don’t actually ever have to hold a vote if they prefer) is part of what we need to do that.
Caveat: This doesn’t mean I’ve become a Joe Biden fan. I’m still convinced he’s the worst of the actually viable candidates.
UPDATE: I see digby came to the same conclusions I did. For once I got a post off before the big players.
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