Sunday, January 5, 2025
It Looks Like Democracy Has Died at the Washington Post
It looks like the Washington Post, whose owner Jeff Bezos is making nice with the incoming Trump-Vance Administration, is proving their slogan that "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
Bezos, whose influence nixed the papers ready endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris before the November elections, apparently put his foot down on an unpublished editorial cartoon by cartoonists Ann Telnaes which shows billionaire sycophants and Mickey Mouse bowing to the idol of Donald Trump and offering financial tribute at it. Viewers can clearly recognize a caricature of Mr. Bezos in the below piece.
With Bezos apparently instructing his employees at the Post to kill the cartoon, Ms. Telnaes left the position she has held since 2008.
She also penned a piece describing the actions she took. Please read that below.
"I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now."
"The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner."
"While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press."
"Over the years I have watched my overseas colleagues risk their livelihoods and sometimes even their lives to expose injustices and hold their countries’ leaders accountable. As a member of the Advisory board for the Geneva based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and a former board member of Cartoonists Rights, I believe that editorial cartoonists are vital for civic debate and have an essential role in journalism."
"There will be people who say, “Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company”. That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press."
As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”.
"Thank you for reading this."
What has happened at the Washington Post proves again what happens when corporate interests have ownership of the free press and those individuals steer the flow of information in order to advance their own financial well being at the expense of keeping their readers informed.
There were already too many low information/uniformed/historically illiterate voters who participated in the last election.
Look how that worked out with the more uninformed voters siding with Mr. Felon in Chief.
There are rumors that journalists led by Kate Swisher are trying to put an investor group together to buy the Washington Post from Mr. Bezos.
Good. Hope they succeed.
Democracy can not be allowed to die with owners like Jeff Bezos cherry picking what he thinks is newsworthy by putting personal financial security over the need to keep the American People informed.
The sooner he and other corporate interests are bought off and dislodged from owning news organizations, the better.
Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Throws Down the Rhetorical Gauntlet at MAGA Republicans
It was really a tale of two opening speeches today in the House of Representative after Mike Johnson and soon to be Felon and Sexual Assaulter in Chief Donald Trump twisted the arms of two Republican House Members to change their minds to cast the deciding votes to elevate Mr. Johnson again to the Speakership.
While Speaker Johnson's speech had several nice nuggets like the customary call to bipartisanship and saying there should be no D's and R's by members names, just U.S.A., his first address to the 119th Congress was filled with the same MAGA/America First lies, misinformation, and preoccupations on issues like the border, the rate of inflation, energy output, the state of economy, getting rid of clean energy tax credits, tax cuts, and increasing the defense budget that all political observers have grown accustomed to with the Reagan through Trump versions of the Republican Party.
However, in delivery, prose, and accuracy, it was Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries who delivered the far superior remarks, bordering on Presidential, to the 119th Congress before passing the gavel to Mr. Johnson.
Also pledging bipartisanship and a desire to come together, secure the border coupled with comprehensive immigration reform, and make middle class and working class lives affordable again, Mr. Johnson took time to credit President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the historic accomplishments of their Administration like the 15 million jobs created, rescuing the economy from the Trump mismanaged pandemic, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, gun safety legislation, expanded health insurance for veterans, investing in clean energy, and the Prescription Drug Benefit that helped seniors.
Mr. Jeffries also earned thunderous applause from the Democrats after saying "There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle" after acknowledging Mr. Trump's victory last November and adding "You see, one should love America when you win and when you lose. That's the patriotic thing to do and that's the America that House Democrats will fight hard to preserve because we love this country."
Before the above remarks, the Democratic House Leader threw down the rhetorical gauntlet toward Republicans, telling them that while they are willing to work in a bipartisan fashion on lowering prices and immigration reform:
"At the same period of time, we will push back against far right extremism whenever necessary. So let me be clear. Social Security and Medicare not entitlement programs. They are earned benefits...So Democrats, our promise to the American People is that we will fight hard to make sure that no one in this town takes away Social Security or Medicare from the American People. Not now. Not ever. No means ever. Our position is it is not acceptable to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid, cut Veterans benefits or cut nutritional assistance from children and families in order to pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires and wealthy corporations. As Democrats, we'll fight hard to protect working class Americans and the things that matter to them, not the wealthy, the well off, and the well connected. Ke
Watch Possible 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidate Andy Beshear Talk About the Issues
Let the 2028 Presidential sweepstakes begin.
There will be many Democrats vying for the party's nomination in 2028 including perhaps well known names like Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.
Several of these leaders made names for themselves over the summer by coming under consideration for Vice President Harris's running mate which ultimately went to Governor Walz.
Democrats have a deep reservoir of governing talent that will be an asset going into 2026 and 2028.
It is also possible that someone not mentioned above or popularly known may gain the Presidential and Vice Presidential nods in four years.
Think Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale in 1976 or Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992 or even Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2008.
Carter, Clinton, and Obama were not polling well, if at all, four years before they won the Presidency.
Mondale dropped out of his Presidential run in 1976.
Gore, his son recovering from injuries at the time, did not enter the 1992 race after not doing well outside the South in the 1988 primaries.
Biden withdrew from the 2008 races after faring poorly in Iowa.
That said, readers should watch Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear give a year-end interview earlier this month to his local ABC Station.
It should be noted that Governor Beshear has won Red State Kentucky twice.
In the interview, he discussed:
- The gains in his states economy.
- His goals for giving teachers pay raises.
- Giving state residents the option of Universal Pre-K.
- Becoming the Chair of the Democrat's Governors Association where he could develop greater networking opportunities for a national run of his own.
- The need to pursue common ground saying the people want their leaders to focus on looking "forward."
- How Governors, because of their executive experience, make better prepared Presidents.
- How Presidents, like him, should be pragmatic and focused on improving people's lives and "building a brighter future."
- His deciding not to run for Mitch McConnell's Senate Senate.
- Staffing shortages at Child Protective Services and how recent pay raises are helping alleviate that situation.
- Sleeping accommodations for foster children, saying "no one was sleeping on the floor."
- Out of state vendors getting licenses to sell medical marijuana, stating that his goal is "to put patients first."
During the interview, the Governor came across as upfront, positive, hopeful, empathetic, and well-informed. All qualities that people may find appealing in a potential Presidential Candidate.
Improving Voter Persuasion and Being Strong on Border Security are Key to Democrats' Resurgence in 2026
One post-election analysis conducted by the Center-Left organization Third Way found that despite the Harris/Walz ticket's valiant efforts, Trump had the advantage on the issues of the economy and border security. Those surveyed felt the 45th President, despite his mismanagement of the Coronavirus, inability to solve immigration reform during his first term, and incitement of the Jan. 6 domestic insurrection, was less extreme than Democrats.
Please see the survey results below.
While it is mind-boggling to people in the world of informed reality that people would think Donald Trump would be trusted more to protect Democracy, Democrats, according to the leaders of Third Way and other progressive-leaning organizations, do agree that the party needs to do a better job of communicating its message, the one, unlike Musk-Trump, that is actually pro-worker and middle class, to the people in all possible media outlets.
The party also needs to do a better job convincing people that they, unlike the Republicans who have continually obstructed legislative efforts over the last 20 years, believe in strong border security coupled with immigration reform.
Third Way Senior Director of Communications Kate deGruyter graciously took the time to respond to questions about the 2024 elections and the best ways for Democrats in Arizona and across the country to move forward.
The questions and her responses are below.
Arguably, the Biden-Harris Administration, despite the inflation peak in 2022, had a better first-term legislative record and economies than Reagan, Clinton, Bush Two, and Obama for the working middle class in their first terms before running again. In your opinion, why did that not resonate with voters especially with most battleground Senate Democrats prevailing?
“Look, I think one thing is clear in the initial analysis that cost of living was a driving factor for a lot of voters, and while Democrats delivered a number of really serious and consequential policy victories, they were largely about the future, and voters are really anxious about what's happening right now. What we've seen is that there are a lot of policies and issues that voters trust Democrats more on that they don't care very much about. And unfortunately, we saw that play out this year. We did some post-election polling in the battlegrounds to just really understand what voters were telling us.
People were hungry for change, and they saw Trump as the candidate of change and Harris represented more of the same. And they made clear to us, that on their top priorities like immigration, crime, and the economy, they trusted Trump by more than double digits. They trusted Trump more on the border by 21 points. So, I think that the Vice President did a very commendable job of leaning into that issue, but it's clear that was an area where voters saw a major problem.
And worse, she had taken some far-left positions years earlier that Republicans used to paint her as extreme, like support for decriminalizing border crossings. Voters wanted to see order at the border, and I think Democrats were too slow to confront that issue. We have to really be mindful that this is an electorate that was looking for some concrete solutions right away.”
Since 1989, Republican Presidential administrations and their legislative allies have advocated policies that led to three recessions, three pieces of tax cut legislation that mostly benefited the rich and ballooned the national debt, two mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a mismanaged global pandemic, obstructing at least three attempts at immigration reform, and election denialism that led to an attack on the nation's capital, in your opinion, why do voters continually reward that track record?
“Isn't that a staggering list? And we saw Republicans struggle again with the basic responsibility to keep the government funded and open. Trump and Musk torched a bipartisan deal and nearly forced a Christmas shutdown before cooler heads prevailed. You know, given all of that, I think it should really trouble every Democrat that voters continue to say that they actually see Democrats as more extreme. We did a post-election survey, and our finding was they said by just a tick that Democrats were more extreme than the Republican Party. Which just makes my hair stand up. We have to really grapple with how we win the battle of reasonableness.
Voters did agree that Donald Trump is extreme. They see him as extreme in his behavior, which, my goodness, it certainly is, but they see Democrats as being extreme on policy, and they are punishing us more for that. While she worked hard to run to the middle this fall, Republicans were able to tie Harris to some toxic positions she took back in the 2020 primary that proved costly. And as you see in the chart above, those positions put Democrats out of step with voters on some of their top priorities. We have to remember that this is actually more of a center or even center-right country, and I think you see that a lot in Arizona.”
“Democrats have to have a different coalition to win than Republicans. There are simply more conservatives in America than there are liberals, and that’s especially true in the battleground states like Arizona. That means Democrats have to win a larger share of moderates to prevail—more than 60%. Actually since 1980, Democrats have only won one Presidential election where we didn't get a supermajority of moderate voters, and in that exception of a year, we got 56%. Moderates are the majority makers for Democrats.
In Arizona, AP Votecast found that only 28% of voters in 2020 were liberal, 33% were moderate, and 39% were conservative. So together, that's 2/3 of the state’s electorate that isn’t liberal. In our post-election poll that I mentioned earlier, we did a survey question that I think is really interesting. We asked voters to put the candidates on a scale where zero is very liberal, 10 is very conservative, and five is right in the middle. They put Harris at a 2.5, and they put Trump at a 7.8. So, both fairly equidistant from the middle. But do you know where voters place themselves? At 5.6, a full point closer to Trump than to Harris on net. That sounds like a small number but in presidential politics, the person you are closer to matters a lot. Harris did end up winning moderates but she didn’t win enough.
So I think where we have seen Democrats succeed, it’s been folks who have been really focused on showing some distance from the party brand that, frankly, a lot of candidates feel they have to outrun because it is more baggage than helpful. I think we saw Senator-Elect Gallego really focusing hard on how to do that, trying to show some distance from the party on immigration. He was a bit more forceful in speaking out about where he had concerns about that issue, which we know have been a weakness for Democrats.
He approached voters as persuasion targets, really tapping into the angst and frustration with costs that we saw among voters without degrees, which we can talk about more. That was certainly true as we think about Latino voters, who are behaving more like swing voters, and how he was able to really focus on winning Latino voters. We've seen nationwide that Democrats have lost support from Latinos that we had in previous cycles.”
As a brief follow-up Kate if I may. You would say probably the number one mistake of the Biden/ Harris Administration was not doing that border security executive order two years ago?
“Yeah, I think that, you know, as they started to lean in on the issue, there was a lot of room to run but voters were skeptical and they, I think, were looking for more of a track record. What we’ve seen in polling throughout the year was that, it wasn't just Republicans who were concerned about the border, but groups that people tend to associate as parts of the Democratic coalition that were expressing concern about this growing sense of chaos at the border. Voters don't like chaos and so that that visual and that perception, I think really hurt Democrats for too long.”
Moving forward, what are at least three steps Democrats need to do to regain the support of more of the American people?
“Well, I think, number one, we need to elevate mainstream voices from the interior of the country, Harris won 14 of 19 states that touched either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Trump won 26 of 32 states that do not, and two of those states were Vermont and DC. DC is not even a state. As the next census approaches, the electoral path that Democrats have relied on is going to shift. Winning just the Blue Wall States would have gotten Harris to exactly 270 electoral votes but by 2032, those same states will only represent 256 votes. That's 14 electoral votes short. There are just too many places where the Democratic Party is not competitive, and it wasn't always that way.
One, we really think we need more mainstream voices from the heartland. I am not that old, but when I started my career in Washington, there were Democratic senators in the Dakotas and a whole bunch of states in the middle of the country. That’s one reason Third Way recently, backed Ben Winkler for the DNC chair. He's the Democratic party chair for Wisconsin. ”
“Two, we need to expand our coalition and I think winning back working voters and really listening to their needs has to be at the forefront. There's obviously a major economic piece about that. Turnout among college-educated counties exceeded 2020 levels in the seven battleground states so we maxed out on that part of our Coalition. But it is just not sustainable to be losing Americans without a degree in the long term. And it’s very clear that isn’t just about white working-class voters. Support dipped with Black voters but it really dropped with Latino and Asian voters. We did a lot of research after 2020 and when we think about, especially Latino and Black working Americans, these are sometimes viewed as Base Democrats who are just automatically going to be with the party. And what we found is that we need to be thinking of them as persuasion targets who could swing either way. That's something that I've seen Senator-Elect Ruben Gallego talking about, too. How he really focused on recognizing Latinos as persuasion targets and not just base voters to be mobilized. That people really have a lot of angst about their personal economic circumstances and really needed an empathetic ear from their leaders.”
“Third, we have to meet voters where they are on policy. We've talked a bit about immigration, and so, I would say the other piece is really leaning in on this issue. Like I said, I think it came too late. Voters said they trusted Trump on the Border by more than 21 points, and that was the best performing issue for Trump among Latino voters as well, although, you know, broadly, they tended to trust Harris more. I think that was a piece of why he made such strong gains with that demographic. It is very hard to take that data and square it with some who would argue that Democrats would have done better with these voters by moving even further to the left. We are a country that benefits significantly from immigration, and we should have a system that reflects our values as a nation of immigrants.
But the American people also want to see order at the border and so I think for too long that conversation has been one that Democrats wanted to avoid, in part because lots of advocacy groups opposed any focus on enforcement. We have to really grapple with the challenges of migration in a modern era to make sure that voters trust us to handle that problem.”
And yet voters tended to ignore Trump killing the border security bill?
“Yeah. Well look, I think the voices that took the lead on this were some key leaders in Congress. And I think we didn't see the administration really leaning into it until the last year of their term and I think for a lot of voters, they've been wanting to hear more from the administration earlier on. I think you saw that message resonated well, but I think voters questioned Democrats’ commitment to tackle the chaos they were seeing. I think that it is absolutely true that Trump and Republicans were looking to exploit the issue for political gain and unfortunately voters were more concerned that Democrats wouldn't actually fix the problem then they were about how Trump and Republicans would handle it. That's something the Democratic party has to address.”
In addition to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats have a deep bench of talent among their Governors, Mayors, and Senators. In your opinion, what are the names of at least three or five of them, that would be appealing to a cross-section of the American people in 2028.
“There's a ton of talent in the party. I think that's one of the bright spots for Democrats in this moment where there's a lot of darkness. You can see rising stars among Governors. You've got Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear. In the Senate, you have Raphael Warnock or certainly Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona are also names that are floated around potentially. I should also note at this point in the cycle Barack Obama wasn't on anybody's radar before he went to went on to win the White House in 2008. I think there's an opportunity and an imperative here to be building up that bench of talent in state legislatures and in Governor's offices across the country. It's going to take a lot of us working together to elevate those folks into positions of leadership so that we can take House in 2026 and then hopefully the White House in 2028.”
Is there anything not covered in the first four questions that you would like to add for the readers? I don't think we talked about Democratic media outreach in terms of non-mainstream sources. But if you want to touch on that or anything else that we may have missed, please do so.
“I think that that's a really particular challenge for the Democrats. There is some recent data coming out showing that cable news viewership is cratering at the moment and a lot of these traditional media sources are simply not reaching voters who are tuning out of politics altogether. They are getting their news in a very diffuse set of alternate media outlets and from different personalities that they had in the past. I think Republicans have invested a lot more in that kind of infrastructure and I think that we've got to really be cultivating a broader set of platforms, personalities, and voices that reflect everyday people to really be working on getting our message out there. This is a moment where we've got to do some building on the center left. And that's something we're doing a lot of thinking about.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
