An Open Letter to the Editors of the New York Times

You need to get your s**t together

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Dear New York Times editors,

Hey guys, it’s me, Dan. I used to write for the competition, but you’ve also published me in the past. As an avid consumer of news and opinion I care a great deal about your paper being a bastion of journalistic credibility and analytical insight. This is why so many people pay attention to what and how you write about something: you set the standard.

Now it is true that I have noted some oddities in your political coverage earlier in the year. But I have also defended you in response to some truly off-the-wall criticism that wildly exaggerates your political influence. So take the following as a piece of friendly criticism.

Yesterday Nate Cohn, your chief political analyst, wrote a Tilt memo entitled, “If Harris Is the Nominee, It Still Won’t Be Easy to Beat Trump.” In theory this is exactly the kind of astringent analysis that Cohn should be writing. Amidst a wave of Democratic Party enthusiasm that Harris is now the nominee instead of Biden, Cohn makes some solid points:

• Harris’ polling has also been underwater for quite some time

• The polling numbers do not compare favorbly to the 2020 race;

• Voters are still concerned about the economy and immigration, and so forth.

I could nitpick on some of these — polling suggests that voters do not blame Harris for economic ails in the same way they do Biden — but that is minor.

Cohn’s analysis would ordinarily be the kind of piece that I would be defending on social media against those who say, “I cancelled my Times subscription months ago!” But then I got to the last paragraph, which included a particularly jaw-dropping sentence:

In fairness to Ms. Harris, it would be challenging for any Democrat today to advance a clear agenda for the future. Mr. Biden struggled to do so in his re-election campaign. The party has held power for almost 12 of the last 16 years, and it has exhausted much of its agenda; there aren’t many popular, liberal policies left in the cupboard. As long as voters remain dissatisfied with the status quo and the Democratic nominee, a campaign to defend the system might not be the slam dunk Democrats once thought it was (emphasis added).

I am not a Democrat. There are parts of their agenda in their cupboard that I do not want to see implemented. But I have to ask: how in the name of all that is holy did that tendentious sentence get put into Cohn’s piece?! Are you trying to troll the libs?

Just to quickly list what is wrong with this claim:

1. Controlling the White House is not the same thing as holding unconstrained power. Obama and Biden commanded party majorities in Congress for exactly four of those twelve years. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what they wanted to do did not get through Congress.

2. Polling shows that Democrats have some agenda items in the cupboard that are pretty popular: expanding access to women’s reproductive health, gun control, bolstering U.S. alliances, reforming the judicial branch, providing a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers; heck, even DEI polls well. In contrast, the Trump-affiliated Project 2025 agenda is ridiculously unpopular.

3. As Cohn would hopefully acknowledge past Democratic policy initiatives, like the Affordable Care Act, used to be unpopular but have become quite popular over time. When Harris said at her Wisconsin rally that, “we are not going back,” the point is that she can justifiably claim to be defending popular Democratic policies.

My point is that it’s a horrible, unnecessary, inaccurate sentence does not even fit with the rest of Cohn’s essay. So what were you thinking when you dropped it in there? Was it the same person who thought publishing predictable op-eds about the current state of politics from Bill Maher or Aaron f**king Sorkin was a nifty idea?!¹

I had a discussion with someone who writes for your paper after Cohn’s piece dropped who mentioned the “same five dinner parties problem” of your editorial staff. You keep talking amongst yourselves so much that the result is an insular conversation in which your perception about what the American people think and want is badly distorted. And then you react to the criticism with vindication — that if you’re getting heat from “both sides” then you must be doing something right.

With Biden’s departure you have an opportunity to do a reset of how you cover and interpret the 2024 election. Please, for the love of God, take it. Get better op-ed submissions. Be better at your jobs!

Wishing you the best of luck,

Dan

1. I’m looking in your direction Maureen Dowd.