Is the New York Times trying to make us dumber?

[Jefferson23]

The paper prints even more ridiculously ignorant political analysis from Matt Bai -- this time about Mike Bloomberg

Tuesday, Dec 14, 2010 11:27 ET
By Steve Kornacki

My colleague Alex Pareene recently dubbed the New York Times' Matt Bai "the political reporter who doesn't believe in political science." Not to pile on or anything, but it doesn't seem that Bai believes in -- or understands much about -- political history, either.

The main idea of Bai's latest piece is that most speculation about a potential independent presidential bid by Michael Bloomberg is flawed because it assumes that the New York mayor would need to build a third party organization of his own -- perhaps one that could grow out of the "No Labels" organization he addressed on Monday -- in order to run. This used to be true, Bai tells us, but not anymore, because "the Web has created an increasingly decentralized and customized society" that has pushed voters away from large institutions. Thus, there is an "unprecedented" opportunity for an independent candidate to run without a traditional organizational infrastructure:


All of this might just explain why Mr. Bloomberg would reject the idea of running in 2012 while at the same time continuing to level a candidatelike critique of the status quo in Washington. Since he wouldn’t need to build a party organization in the way Mr. Perot did in 1992, Mr. Bloomberg can wait considerably longer — perhaps even until the 2012 primaries — to assess whether a campaign might be viable. In the meantime, ruling himself out as a candidate only enhances his credibility as a national reformer.


This is just aggressively ignorant history. Bai seems to believe that Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who nabbed 19 percent as an independent in '92, created his Reform Party in advance of that election. He didn't. The Reform Party was launched after the '92 election as an attempt to capitalize on Perot's surprisingly strong showing and to keep the momentum alive.

in full: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/14/matt_bai_bloomberg/index.html

[stray cat]

1. In general I suspect its readers are better informed than average Americans

[Jefferson23]

2. In general I think that is not a safe bet considering what they print.

I would agree that it is more likely many of their readers cross check other publications that don't spew
such ignorant pieces as this one.

Charlie Savage writes for the Times, I always read his work..great stuff.