USA Today supports Joe Biden in first ever
presidential endorsement
Paper makes appeal to undecided voters, saying Trump
has handled the pandemic poorly and made over 20,000 false claims
Martin
Pengelly in New York
@MartinPengelly
Tue 20 Oct
2020 13.26 BSTLast modified on Tue 20 Oct 2020 16.13 BST
.Saying
“this is not something we do lightly or do eagerly”, USA Today has made its
first ever presidential endorsement – of Joe Biden.
In 2016,
the widely read paper, which was founded in 1982, urged readers not to vote for
Donald Trump. But it did not endorse Hillary Clinton.
On Tuesday,
the editorial board wrote that four years ago, it called “the Republican
nominee unfit for office because he lacked the ‘temperament, knowledge,
steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents’.”
It did not
endorse Clinton, it said, because she was “polarising”.
But, it
said, “this year, the editorial board unanimously supports the election of Joe
Biden, who offers a shaken nation a harbor of calm and competence”.
Bill
Sternberg, head of the board, told Axios: “This is not something we do lightly
or do eagerly.”
Clinton won
the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots but Trump won the presidency in the
electoral college. Two weeks before election day, Biden has healthy leads over
Trump in most national and battleground polls.
Saying it
was targeting the few voters who remain undecided, USA Today said: “Beset by
disease, economic suffering, a racial reckoning and natural disasters fueled by
a changing climate, the nation is dangerously off course.
“We spoke
to dozens of people in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, battleground states that
helped propel Trump into the White House in 2016. Many declined to comment,
citing a general disgust with the election or fear of speaking out publicly.
While some said they were personally better off, most of those willing to talk
on camera expressed anguish and dismay about the nation’s direction.”
The
editorial presented some such views, then said: “When you are a passenger on an
airplane, you root for the pilot, even one who has never been in a cockpit
before.
“Whether
you are a pilot or the president, the most important part of your job is crisis
management. But when confronted with an emergency – Covid-19, the biggest
public health threat in more than a century – Trump didn’t land the plane
safely on the Hudson river.”
That was a
reference to the “Miracle on the Hudson” in 2009, in which an airline pilot,
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, landed his plane on the river on the west side of
New York City, saving all on board, after losing power.
Sullenberger
has endorsed Biden, too.
USA Today
became one of a number of local and national publications to make Biden its
first endorsement a day after Trump attacked his coronavirus advisers as
“idiots” and called respected public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci “a
disaster”. At the same time, the Washington Post reported on opposition within
the White House task force to the controversial Dr Scott Atlas, Trump’s
favoured adviser on Covid.
More than
8.2m cases have been recorded across the US and nearly 220,000 have died. Cases
are rising steeply, with positive tests at record levels in key electoral
states.
“There is
little doubt that Biden would have handled the crisis more capably,” USA Today
said.
The paper
based its endorsement on wider criteria, however.
“For nearly
four decades,” it said, “the editorial board has stood for certain core values:
truth, accountability, civility in public discourse, opposition to racism,
common-ground solutions to the nation’s problems, and steadfast support for
first amendment rights. These aren’t partisan issues, or at least they
shouldn’t be.
“Donald
Trump has trampled each of these principles, making more than 20,000 false or
misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams
of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fear-mongering, governing
more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and
relentlessly attacking the free press.
“Everything
about Biden’s nearly half-century political career suggests he would do a far
better job of respecting these values.”
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