The second columnist resigned from the Washington Post on Sunday following the outlet's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the 2024 election while others defended the move.
Michele Norris said the non-endorsement was a “terrible mistake” and an insult to the paper’s longstanding practice of endorsing a candidate--almost always a Democrat.
As a Black female, she is probably taking the news outlet's snub of Kamala Harris personally.
Robert Kagan also resigned, and 18 other Post journalists signed a written dissent of the decision.
They said that it “represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 228 years.”
Ruth Marcus and Karen Tumulty also wrote columns expressing their views that the decision damaged the publication’s credibility.
Over 200,000 readers canceled their digital subscriptions to the paper over the decision, but others said that was only helping former President Donald Trump's cause and letting him win.
The cancellations represent 8% of the total number of about 2.5 million, including print subscriptions.
The race is extremely close, with Trump only polling .2% above Harris nationally and .9% in battleground states with only a week until the election, according to RealClearPolitics.
Still, it is a far cry from 2020, when Biden was polling with a 7-point lead nationally.
Biden won the popular vote by 4.4%. But he only won in several swing states by a fraction of a percentage, meaning that if the electorate has moved six or seven points to the right, Trump will have an easy time amassing the 270 electoral votes he needs.
The fact that the Post--or its leader Jeff Bezos--has withheld any endorsement says that maybe the whole "threat to democracy" narrative is nothing more than a political hammer to wield.
If Bezos truly thought Trump would bring an end to democracy, his paper would have endorsed Harris.
In truth, Harris has promised more policies that threaten democracy than anything Trump has done or said he would do. And Bezos knows it, no matter his own personal leanings in politics.
