New York Times reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien made Wednesday’s edition with a poor-Kamala Harris “news” story, “Michelle Obama Decries a ‘Double Standard’ in Treatment of Trump and Harris.”
It’s an echo of a recent front-page Times story blaming sexism for Harris’s failure to have the 30-point lead over Donald Trump that she’s apparently entitled to. It’s another sweaty attempt by the Times to haul Harris over the finish line on Election Day.
For three months, as Vice President Kamala Harris has pressed her case for the White House, some voters have insisted they just don’t know enough about her. Pundits have grumbled that she is light on specifics; journalists have lamented that she wasn’t doing more interviews, or answering tougher questions, or answering easy questions more crisply. Her opponents have cast her as an “empty suit,” a lightweight with dangerous ideas.
Michelle Obama was fed up.
Stop the presses! O'Brien lapped up the former first lady's fulminations as fact.
At a rally on Saturday night in Michigan, the former first lady reflected, with palpable disbelief and outrage, on the double standard she believes Ms. Harris faces.
“When you lay out the options, this choice isn’t even close,” Mrs. Obama told the crowd. “But whether it’s online or in the media or in our social circles, there are folks who say they’re not sure about Kamala. They accuse her of not providing enough policy detail. Some wonder: Do we really know her? Is she too aggressive? Is she not aggressive enough? There are folks sowing seeds of doubt about whether she’s who she appears to be.
“Voters have every right to ask hard questions of any candidate seeking office,” she continued, “but can someone tell me why we are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent?”
The question suggested an impatience not just with this campaign, but with the entire political career of Donald J. Trump, and the perception that he has now twice competed against accomplished female politicians who faced scrutiny and doubts that Mr. Trump, time and again, is allowed to escape.
Mrs. Obama and other prominent Democrats are now, in the final stretch of the campaign, giving voice to a frustration that has animated many Harris supporters from the get-go. Some frame it explicitly as a matter of race and gender....
O'Brien also allowed 2016 election loser Hillary Clinton to "attribute[d] voter hesitation to sexism" and claim "a double standard" without rebuttal.
There was an eventual nod to the Republican argument against the liberal media.
Trump supporters, including some commentators who acknowledge his inarticulate free associations, say the real double standard at work is a liberal press that gives Ms. Harris a free pass while seizing on every utterance of Mr. Trump as evidence of a slipping mind, or fascist inclinations, or criminality.
Harris supporters really don’t like their candidate being challenged, and O’Brien seemed to sympathize.
But when reporters note her weaknesses in interviews, or when voters say they need more information about her policy positions, Ms. Harris’s supporters throw up their hands. To them, Mr. Trump’s very candidacy, after he was impeached for inciting insurrection, seems unfathomable.
Sexism is everywhere!
Ms. Harris herself may not have the luxury of frustration -- this itself, of course, might be considered a central component of the double standard -- but Mrs. Obama does. She is one of the most beloved members of the Democratic Party. And, with her husband’s political career behind her, she can afford to let loose, even if it means pointedly criticizing the public. On Saturday, she did not outright accuse anybody of racism or sexism, but she made it clear she saw these forces lurking beneath the surface.
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” Mrs. Obama said. “But for Trump, we expect nothing at all. No understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
Who needs journalistic discernment when you can just transcribe an embittered former first lady ranting about Republican sexism?
