I am going to dial back the extent of this. I keep hoping that someone will contact me saying that they will take it on if we can find funding for it, but nobody has.
Tuesday’s paper included a front-page story about Planned Parenthood which begins
Planned Parenthood officials are scrambling to prepare for the likelihood that Congress next year will cut off more than a half-billion dollars in federal funding to the group, fulfilling the wishes of abortion foes who are planning an aggressive push to roll back abortion rights under President-elect Donald Trump.
The headline is “Planned Parenthood ready for abortion war.” That sounds like a fund-raising appeal for Planned Parenthood, and I am sure that the group was very happy to see the story on the front page. But it is not news.
The newspaper had the Russian hack story on the front page every day except Friday and Sunday, but with nothing new to report. This seems to be the story around which Democrats who want to re-litigate the election are coalescing. But I do not see where they are headed. Citizens who cast ballots for Trump are not raising their hands to say they want to change their votes. Congress cannot impeach Putin. Even if Trump were to be impeached and removed from office, all the people next in line are Republicans.
If the Russian hacking story does not pan out as another Watergate, what do you think that the Post will do? (a) eat humble pie; or (b) keep trying to promote other scandals, trying to find The Big One that brings Trump down?
Through Thursday, the paper continued to attack Trump’s cabinet picks in news stories, especially on page one. They are (gasp!) businessmen. They are too friendly to energy producers. And they got their world view from Ayn Rand. For the Post and its sympathetic readers, the incoming Administration is just one outrage after another. However, Friday there was nothing either on the Russian hacking story or the Trump cabinet. (There was a fair story on the appointment of an ambassador to Israel who has supported settlements.)
They Post continued to run op-eds (by E. J. Dionne, for example) asking the electoral college to reverse the election result. No one who favors this seems to want to talk about what the response might be from the other side, either in the short run or in the long run.
On Sunday, the attempt to overturn the election in the Electoral College received lead-story front-page coverage. The story jumps to page 18, where there is another analysis, by Aaron Blake, that finally speaks to what might happen if Trump were not chosen.
But the fact remains that the electoral college, if it were to deprive Trump of the presidency, would risk massive public backlash and a potential constitutional crisis. It would also be doing something even many non-Trump voters aren’t comfortable with.
My guess is that if it were Republicans trying to overturn an election this way, we would be hearing a lot more about the adverse consequences. In addition, we would be reading about the nuttiness of the people behind the attempt.
And if Hillary Clinton has expressed an opinion about whether she wants this effort to take place or not, I have not seen it. That seems odd.