It shouldn’t have taken Woodward and Bernstein to sound the alarm about the 2024 election and possible consequences.
I left the Feb. 8 Boulder County Democratic Party biennial re-organization meeting feeling pretty good. We heard live speeches from our folks in Congress – Senator Michael Bennet, Senator John Hickenlooper, Representative Joe Neguse – and to a fault they spoke honestly about national chaos and the daunting challenges lying ahead. When we weren’t engaged in party business, we talked about the issues and what we can do about them, but when we stuck to business we elected a new local party chair and filled our leadership positions. It was the very definition of a functioning party. The meeting ran on time and under budget.
Fast forward to Feb. 9, and my decent feelings turned into ire because I spent a small part of my morning with a disappointing editorial from the Daily Camera, in which we were lectured remotely from on high about the need for a “functioning” Democratic Party. At this point, I shall return the favor, because we need a functioning local media, and here’s the top reason why I’m bringing this up.
The Daily Camera did not make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race at all.
NOAA is important for countless reasons, but Boulder media should have been all over the fact that Project 2025 called for breaking up an entity that’s so vital for Boulder and its economy.
Through this inaction, the Camera abdicated its responsibility as a local news outlet to stand for Boulder and America when it could have really altered the future – before the election. The consequences of a Trump election were brutally obvious, no mystery whatsoever. Locally, Project 2025 called for breaking up NOAA and eliminating the Department of Education, plus it included hundreds of pages worth of right-wing objectives that could still be quite bad for our local community. Nationally, pick your poison – a history of lawlessness that’s already included a brutal insurrection, troubling nominations for judgeships and cabinet positions, tax policy favoring the wealthy, or cancelling environmental regulations – all predictable like Old Faithful.
And the reality of the first few weeks of the second Trump administration has actually been far worse than what most of us could’ve easily predicted. Just wondering – who’s got my Social Security data right now?
Of course, this lack of even the simplest Kamala Harris endorsement from the Camera was a function of corporate policy. I’ll dare say the Camera itself traded the essential liberty of a free press, alluded to in our very First Amendment to the Constitution, for safety – since we can only assume there would be Dave Krieger-like consequences for defiance. Krieger, a former Camera editorial page editor, got canned a few years back for a piece attacking the Camera’s hedge fund owner Alden Global Capital.
Alden outlets like the Camera might not have made endorsements, but neither did the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post or the LA Times, owned by the wealthy Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. Furthermore, the corporate/conservative takeovers or makeovers in social media were exemplified when Elon Musk of what used to be Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook were seated in front of Trump’s cabinet picks at his inauguration. Today’s corporate mega-dominance portends a disturbing future of a media that won’t function as a watchdog for the people, if it means biting the hand that feeds their owners and CEOs and publishers.
Weak platitudes are agents for change as Pablum is a culinary masterpiece.
On Feb. 9, the Camera apparently did get the corporate green light to trash the Democratic Party. And that’s fine, constructive criticism can be quite beneficial, but instead of meaningful advice the Camera spoon-fed its readers a lukewarm cup of pablum – “must step up,” “common sense legislation,” “meeting voters where they are,” “how to best represent the needs and wishes…” Gee, thanks, that ought to get stuff done in a cage match against autocracy or oligarchy or plutocracy or anarchy.
The late former President Jimmy Carter once spoke of a national malaise, and the Camera accomplished nothing with this editorial except to make the already dark moods a little darker. And that’s too bad, because there are seeds beneath the surface that aren’t easily visible now, but hopefully will be not that far into the future.
Even in the “disastrous” 2024 election, only 7,310 total votes among three races separated Democrats from the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. As of Feb. 11, the balance was 218 Republicans to 215 Democrats, with two seats vacant. Even if Republicans win back both of those seats in 2025 special elections, Dems only need to flip three net seats in the 2026 general election to take back the House. In 2018, after Trump’s first two years, Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who’s honest saying the beginning of Trump’s second term hasn’t been more troubling than the first.
The Camera can give up on the party if it wants because the garden’s not rosy today, but a House majority is an actual lever of power, and it’s well within reach for Democrats in 2026.
As it stands now, Democrats don’t have majorities in the House or Senate, but to suggest the party isn’t doing anything would be lazy journalism at best. Check nearly any Democratic legislator’s press releases or video clips and you’ll see/hear the passionate language, which is often backed up with references to the laws or Constitutional sections in danger of being violated. A Boulder paper could’ve easily gleaned language from countless legislative press releases or confirmation hearings or media appearances, like this one linked here from Sen. Bennet, and here’s an excerpt:
“We write to express our grave concern with the illegal actions currently being undertaken by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which risk exposure of classified and other sensitive information that jeopardizes national security and violates Americans’ privacy.”
Someday I might understand why a nation interested in a prosperous future would want to eliminate its Department of Education, but the logic is escaping me now.
Maybe some pundits want stunts and demonstrations instead of policy focus, and that’s happening too. Members of Congress very visibly attempted to physically access the U.S. Department of Education and EPA offices and see for themselves what DOGE was up to. There were Americans marching or gathering in mass protest on Feb. 5, in all 50 states of the Union. Boycotts of private sector businesses owned by right-wingers, like Tesla? You betcha. Tesla sales are down about 12 percent in the Democratic and electric vehicle stronghold of California, and it’s far worse in Europe.
But the real battles at this moment are being waged in the courts. For the time being at least, court orders have blocked or enjoined executive orders or other actions on issues including 14th Amendment birthright citizenship, proposed buyouts for federal employees without having the funding appropriated by Congress, and DOGE access to personal data.
So, what does any of this have to do with the Democratic Party? In short, it’s the story of officials who were elected with support from the party and its members, good existing laws that were enacted by those elected officials, protests polite and not-so-polite from party members and supporters, and legal battles at least largely supported through Democratic resources and activism.
I don’t know or care if the Camera editorialist is a member of the Democratic Party, but I am. I know what it takes to work an election. I’ve done cold phone calls, door-knocking, fundraising pitches, mass messaging, petition drives, and all that stuff that’s far less fun than sitting back and typing up an opinion piece. I’ve faced possible physical danger on the campaign trail, but more commonly, I’ve been stressed out and exhausted from trying to track down every last vote possible, and occasionally getting shouted down or insulted in the process.
To be clear, I’ve campaigned or canvassed in areas far less Democratic-friendly than Boulder County, areas where the local parties and the media and the prevailing populace won’t buy what Democrats are selling – even if it’s better than the alternative. To assume that some type of magic messaging would have changed that in 2024 is a bit naïve or ignorant to begin with, plus it’s rare when people who criticize messaging actually offer a solution anyway. The Camera editorialist – a professional writer, by the way – offered no real suggestions beyond a basically meaningless “do better.”
Again, to say “do better” is fair, but it’s also something that’s seriously on the minds of most Democrats because the current scoreboard can’t be misunderstood. And we’re the ones who will be doing the work once again leading up to 2026 and beyond. On top of that, we’re the only existing party with the organization and resources to do this work. There is no “unaffiliated party” right now, only a mostly non-structured assortment of unaffiliated people with no unified platform or messaging whatsoever.
It’s not the job of the Camera to get people to love the Democratic Party, but it should have been its job to help make sure its readers knew in no uncertain terms what was at stake in 2024. The consequences still to come could even impact the Camera or its employees quite directly – if Boulder County loses economic activity, if journalists start getting imprisoned, if media outlets lose access to real information from other sources, or if tariffs on Canada inflate the cost of newsprint. None of this is horribly theoretical, it’s all within the realm of possibility.
Thomas Jefferson knew the importance of freedom of the press several hundred years ago.
I might not have done everything possible during this election cycle, but I did quite a bit as a member of the Democratic Party and as a writer. I can only guess, but I must believe the Camera’s editorial silence would have let Founders like Thomas Jefferson down, since he said the following:
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
I know the First Amendment says it’s “Congress” that shall make no law abridging freedom of the press, but this time, the limits on the free press came from the private sector and not the government. The Camera made that choice to acquiesce, but if that’s its choice, please spare me the lecture about the Democratic Party. Press outlets that didn’t endorse or didn’t sound the alarm in the fall of 2024 are as complicit in the current horrifying state of the nation as many of those they might criticize. On top of that, they can’t claim the credit active citizens and parties earned for getting their hands dirty in a tough struggle – in this case, perhaps a struggle for our very survival as a functioning democracy and/or republic.
