The front of Monday’s New York Times continued the paper’s relentless and one-sided assault on Donald Trump’s campaign. First up, “Public Jolted As Campaign Turns Coarser -- Across Nation, Ripples From an Ugly Race” by Patrick Healy and Farah Stockman slanted toward Hillary Clinton while blaming Trump's comments for traumatizing women nationwide. In the lead slot story, Times reporters forwarded the worries of hard-left “civil rights” groups, while ignoring justified Republican concerns over vote fraud while ignoring justified Republican concerns over vote fraud and relegating the firebombing of a local GOP headquarters to a single paragraph.
In high school civics classes, the usual assignments about political parties and the Electoral College have given way to anguished venting about groping and sexual violence.
In therapy sessions, patients feel triggered and even retraumatized by Donald J. Trump’s graphic remarks about women and his boasting about forcing himself on them and getting away with it.
And in conversations before and after church services, the stench of moral decay has stirred discussions about Bill Clinton’s behavior with a White House intern in the 1990s, and whether his conduct was actually worse than Mr. Trump’s.
This supposed attempt at balance was slanted toward the Democrats.
Among many Democrats, despair is setting in that the next president could be, in their minds, a sexual predator. Among many Republicans, disgust is widespread that the next president could be married to a man who was, as they see it, a serial adulterer at best.
Those negative feelings are intensifying, to judge by the increasingly angry crowds at Mr. Trump’s rallies and the soul-baring support for Hillary Clinton from Michelle Obama and others. The election result now seems guaranteed to feel like a violation of the body politic for one half of the country or the other.
The Times soft-pedaled Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Clinton’s victims, and what her husband is accused of doing with women, without using the name “Juanita Broaddrick” or the phrase “rape accusation.”
For some voters, Mrs. Clinton’s harsh remarks about some women who had been sexually involved with her husband, and the thought of Mr. Clinton back in the White House, are loathsome. Mr. Trump stoked that discomfort last week by publicly appearing with several women who had accused Mr. Clinton of misconduct and by bringing them to the second presidential debate.
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But others were appalled by the comparisons of the Clintons and Mr. Trump. Mrs. Clinton has not made sexually lewd remarks or been accused of physically harming anyone, as Mr. Trump has, and it is the Trump campaign that has been far more aggressive in throwing mud.
Next to that story, in the lead slot: “Officials Fight Trump’s Claims Of A Rigged Vote – ‘Irresponsible’ Speech – Fears of Chaos as G.O.P. Nominee Plays Up a Vast Conspiracy.” Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns forwarded the worries of “civil rights” groups, while ignoring justified Republican concerns over vote fraud.
Republican leaders and election officials from both parties on Sunday sought to combat claims by Donald J. Trump that the election is rigged against him, amid signs that Mr. Trump’s contention is eroding confidence in the vote and setting off talk of rebellion among his supporters.
In a vivid illustration of how Mr. Trump is shattering American political norms, the Republican nominee is alleging that a conspiracy is underway between the news media and the Democratic Party to commit vast election fraud. He has offered no evidence to support his claim.
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary -- but also at many polling places -- SAD,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
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Mr. Trump’s words, though, appear to be having an effect on his supporters, and are setting off deep concern among civil rights groups....
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American elections are, unlike those in many democracies, largely decentralized, rendering the possibility of large-scale fraud extraordinarily unlikely. Further, the balloting in many of the hardest-fought states will be overseen by Republican officials, individuals who would be highly unlikely to consent to helping Mrs. Clinton rig the vote.
The reporters managed to put a firebombing of a local GOP headquarters below someone carrying an apparently legal gun.
Also, elements of Mr. Trump’s crowds have turned violent. At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, in which he alleged a large-scale conspiracy against him, one supporter lashed out physically at a protester in the crowd. And a CBS affiliate in Virginia reported over the weekend that pro-Trump demonstrators had flashed firearms outside the office of a Democratic congressional candidate near Charlottesville, in a threatening signal.
Republicans are also facing signs of menace: A party office in North Carolina was set on fire and spray-painted over the weekend, an act Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter was the act of “animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.”
The Times idea of a “civil rights group” is often a left-wing ethnic advocacy group.
Civil rights groups have begun to express alarm at remarks from Mr. Trump that they see as goading his supporters to intimidate minorities at the polls.
Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund, said he planned to formally contact the Justice Department as soon as this week, to ask that it guard against the kind of voting disruptions Mr. Trump has encouraged.
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And Michael Podhorzer, the political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that progressive groups were deeply concerned about the possibility of disruptions at the polls on Election Day. Mr. Podhorzer said that Mr. Trump’s recent comments about a rigged election had the potential to “incite violence and bloodshed.”
Mr. Podhorzer said that Democrats would be closely monitoring polling places for signs of interference in states where voters can cast their ballots before Election Day.
Are Republicans really the party to criticize when it comes to actual voter intimidation? The last major incident of interfering with the vote came in 2008 in Philadelphia, when two members of the hard-left New Black Panthers, carrying a billy club and shouting racial slurs at potential voters. Obama’s Justice Department let the charges of voter intimidation drop.
The front page also included a story on Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, but the tone of its shallow peek into the workings of the Clinton Foundation was meek and mild: “Line Between Public and Private Blurs for Inner Circle of Clinton.”
