When you think of the fake Indian, what’s the first word that comes to your mind?
Truth?
No? Well, you’re not on the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, which just endorsed Elizabeth Warren over the weekend, just in time for the Iowa caucuses next week.
All of the Democrat candidates, the newspaper opined, including Warren, “would treat truth as something that matters.”
You don’t say. Now, this wasn’t the first “respected” newspaper to endorse the fake Indian this month. Last week, she received the nod (along with Amy Klobuchar) of The New York Times.
The Old Grey Lady described the fake Indian as “a gifted storyteller.”
Which is at least somewhat accurate. She certainly does tell a lot of, uh, stories, but how “gifted” is she, really, considering how often she’s busted for speaking with forked tongue?
Apparently the fake Indian was thrilled by the Register’s nod — she broke out into a war dance of sorts. But then, her campaign has recently been mired on a political trail of tears. With all her falling polls and drooping fundraising, it’s like some rival campaign surreptitiously dropped off smallpox-infected blankets at her headquarters in yuppie Charlestown.
Do you know how desperate Lieawatha has to be if she’s dreaming that a newspaper endorsement will pull her out of her tailspin?
Newspaper endorsements have always been overrated, now more so than ever. Look at 2016 — of the 100 largest-circulation dailies in the US, exactly two endorsed Donald Trump. (The Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Times Union in Jacksonville.) Gary Johnson, the weed-addled Libertarian who didn’t know where Aleppo was and who thought Bill Weld was a serious person, got four major endorsements — double Trump’s number.
Hillary Clinton had 57 of those very, very thoughtful endorsements. How’d that work out for her?
Before the fake Indian got so ecstatic about the Register’s nod, maybe she should have checked out which Democrats the Register has endorsed in the caucuses since they began the practice in 1988. Disregarding favorite sons (Tom Harkin) and incumbents, here are the recipients of the Register’s nods:
Paul Simon (the senator, not the singer) 1988, Bill Bradley 2000, John Edwards 2004, Hillary Clinton 2008. None of them were nominated, let alone elected. The paper did endorse Hillary four years ago … a lot of good it did her.
The only time I can remember the Register ever having the slightest impact on a presidential race was in 1988, the first time Joe Biden ran. Gov. Mike Dukakis’ dirty tricksters in Boston discovered video of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, which Biden had lifted, word for word.
A Dukakis campaign hack was dispatched to Des Moines to drop an anonymous videotape of the two identical speeches into a mailbox, addressed to the Register’s top political reporter, a guy named Dave Yepsen.
Say goodnight, Creepy Joe.
That was a long time ago. The Register’s circulation is maybe one-fifth of what it was then, it’s been sold at least once, the number of daily editions has been reduced, it’s moved out of its downtown headquarters to a space more appropriate for its decimated staff, etc.
If you read their endorsement of the fake Indian, it appears the Register’s editors have confused their own employer’s straitened circumstances with the overall economy, which they claimed is “so stacked against working Americans that the gap between rich and poor is the highest in more than 50 years.”
Then why are wages for the two lowest quintiles increasing faster than for that of the top wage-earners? Why is the current Trump economy being called a “blue-collar boom?”
The fake Indian, we are informed, “looks beyond the stock market and the unemployment rate to judge health of the economy.”
Hmmm. On the other hand, the parlous state of the Register’s balance sheet is not exactly a mirror to the state of the overall GDP either.
After the fake Indian is decimated in Iowa next week, her gut-shot campaign limps on to New Hampshire, where the Manchester Union Leader occupies the same crumbling position as the Register in Iowa — overrated and under-read.
In 2016, the Union Leader attacked Trump, and he laughed and said the paper had gotten thinner than a supermarket flier. It heartily endorsed Gov. Chris Christie, who proceeded to finish sixth with 7% of the vote. Trump won going away. After Christie endorsed Trump, the Union Leader denounced him and switched to Gov. John Kasich, whose campaign promptly collapsed.
Doesn’t matter how many newspapers endorse the gifted story teller. She’s going down. And that’s the … truth.