Political Odds–Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump Newspaper Endorsements
The political process is almost quaint as we get deeper into the 21st century. All of the statist adherents running around acting like the occupant of the White House matters. Now that the party conventions are over and we’ve got two major party nominees the 2016 Presidential Campaign can begin in earnest. In this article we’re going to lay out betting odds on one of the things that people who think politics still matters concern themselves with. Maybe not as meaningless as labor union endorsements (since union membership now makes up less than 10% of the US workforce) but not far from it.
A quick history lesson for younger readers. At one point, serious thinking people got their news from newspapers. Even after television started to take over, newspapers still held the intellectual high ground when it came to reporting the news and setting the national agenda. Even after 24 hour news channels like CNN and their cross eyed offspring began to gain a larger share of the news viewing offices the newspapers still mattered.
Newspapers no longer matter. The only people that read newspapers are old people who read the local newspapers to see obituaries and get grocery coupons. Yet the political ideologues will be anxiously awaiting to see which candidate the major fishwraps of this country will endorse or, in some cases, whether they choose to endorse a candidate at all.
HILLARY CLINTON/DONALD TRUMP NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENT ODDS
Rules: Newspaper must make a formal endorsement of a candidate or run an editorial indicating that they will not be giving an endorsement. Op-Eds don’t count–only official declaration of the newspaper’s editorial board.
Here are the US newspapers that political types care about along with betting odds on what each will do relative to the 2016 Presidential Election:
NEW YORK TIMES:
WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON -750
WILL ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP +500
WILL ENDORSE ANOTHER CANDIDATE +900
WILL NOT ENDORSE A CANDIDATE +1500
The New York Times is as reliable as it gets for mainstream pseudo intellectual liberalism. They endorsed Barack Obama twice even after he morphed into ‘Bush 2.0’ with his domestic spying and love of drone warfare. They endorsed John Kerry. They will endorse Hillary Clinton. The Times operatives are similar in mentality to the CNN staffers that ran stories by the Democratic National Committee before reporting them–power and access to power trumps everything else. And speaking of ‘Trumps’ (see what I did there) even if they were predisposed to withhold an endorsement or endorse a third party candidate to make an ideological point they always have the ‘out’ of suggesting that preventing a Trump presidency is all that stands between the United States and oblivion.
NEW YORK POST:
WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON +450
WILL ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP +100
WILL ENDORSE ANOTHER CANDIDATE +1500
WILL NOT ENDORSE A CANDIDATE +100
This is a tricky one. The New York Post is usually a dependable endorsement for the Republicans having endorsed Romney and McCain in the past two elections. They don’t like Hillary Clinton. But they also don’t like Donald Trump–or at least they didn’t before he started to run for President. They won’t endorse a third party candidate like Libertarian Gary Johnson to make a point–they love fluffing up ‘hero cops’ and cheerleading the ‘war on terror’. They’re in the strange position where both major party candidates are to some extent personal enemies of the newspaper. They did endorse Trump in the primaries but the stakes are higher here They’ll likely make a big point of not endorsing a candidate and use that platform to slam both Clinton and Trump.
SEATTLE TIMES:
WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON -300
WILL ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP +2500
WILL ENDORSE ANOTHER CANDIDATE +450
WILL NOT ENDORSE A CANDIDATE +100
The Pacific Northwest’s largest newspaper might not be a major influence in most years but they’ll be closely watched this year. They were the largest paper to endorse Bernie Sanders in the primaries. So what do they do now? They won’t endorse Trump but will they a) fall in line and give the rub to Hillary b) withhold an endorsement entirely or c) encourage some type of grassroots write in campaign for Sanders?
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE:
WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON -150
WILL ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP +1500
WILL ENDORSE ANOTHER CANDIDATE +300
WILL NOT ENDORSE A CANDIDATE +150
Salt Lake City is not as conservative as it used to be–in fact, the SLC Tribune endorsed Obama twice. They also endorsed Bush in 2004. Although their readership leans Republican I can’t see them liking Donald Trump–Utah GOP backers tend to either prefer the ‘mainstream’ type Republican (think Jeb Bush) or are of a more Libertarian bent (think Rand Paul). They’ll likely grudgingly endorse Clinton using the ‘gotta stop Trump’ rationale.
WASHINGTON POST:
WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON -500
WILL ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP +2500
WILL ENDORSE ANOTHER CANDIDATE +450
WILL NOT ENDORSE A CANDIDATE +300
Washington DC is a two newspaper town–the right leaning Washington Times will reflexively endorse the GOP nominee even if it is Trump and the Washington Post will reflexively endorse the Democratic nominee even if it is Clinton.
In the next week or so we’ll have some more newspaper odds including the major ‘national newspaper’ aka the Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY.