Does anyone remember a presidential election when the press openly advocated for candidates to drop out in favor

[FSogol]

of one candidate? What the press is doing to clear the path to the GOP nomination for Trumpy is beyond despicable. Since when should a race be decided after 2 out of 50 primaries? WTF media?

[brooklynite]

1. What "press" is advocating for this?

[odins folly]

2. Just one primary

Last week’s circle jerk was a caucus. New Hampshire is the first primary.

[Charging Triceratops]

3. It's too hard for the media snots

... to cover more than one or two people, dontcha know?

[thomski64]

4. ..were they to advocate that.

..tRump withdraw, because of his manifestly obvious criminality, incompetence and mental collapse, I would consider that responsible journalism..

[The Roux Comes First]

5. Oh It's Far More (and Worse) Than That

With few exceptions, the key decisions about what to cover on the election and how to "cover" it at little sweatshops like the NYT and WaPo seem to reflect the desperate need to prop up printed news by manufacturing a balanced, fair horse-race election from decades ago (it likely never existed even then) in the fact of blatant criminality and actual voter-suppression fraud by the party that has sold whatever passed for a soul and is quite prepared to abandon democracy.

[Autumn]

6. Second? They were doing it midway though the first primary.

[Renew Deal]

7. Yes, all of them

[FSogol]

8. This early? Example? n/t

[Renew Deal]

15. Gore-Bradley

[former9thward]

9. Just the opposite of what you say.

Many in the media want this to be a two-person race -- not to help Trump -- but to consolidate the anti-Trump votes behind one candidate.

[Wonder Why]

12. Aren't they called Democrats?

[former9thward]

16. Not in the Republican primary.

[Sympthsical]

10. If you're anti-Trump, you want the Republican field cleared early

To coalesce very early into a contest between Trump and one anti-Trump person people can unite behind instead of splitting votes all over the place.

It seems we're now here. Haley is just . . . yeah. She's who she is. But if you're a Republican trying to get rid of Trump, this is probably the best case scenario for you.

Which is definitely saying something. Because it's Haley.

[Wonder Why]

11. Commentators, opinion writers, influencers and the new "press" are not reporters.

[karynnj]

13. It has happened before

On the Democratic side, here are examples from recent elections. Ari Melber before the recent Iowa caucus, showed various articles, one being in the WP that questioned when Kerry would drop out. From memory, after NH in 2008, there was pressure for Edwards to drop out ( slightly before his affair was known which made it even more likely he had no chance.) There was pressure for people to drop out at various times in 2020.

What surprises me this year is that all the examples I listed, it was possible that the writers of these articles hoped a reduce field would benefit someone they hoped would win. Now, the Republican race is just 2 and Trump is very very likely to win the nomination, whether Haley backs out or not. Why the urgency? Consider that 48 states have not voted. What happens if Trump is convicted or in some other way becomes unacceptable? Could the media that has repeated ad nauseum that the country does not want a Trump/Biden rematch wants that rematch.

[Model35mech]

14. I believe that such was done for Clinton's 2016 primary campaign

although not nearly so early as this

[Raine]

17. The media likes to get the candidates narrowed down as soon as possible

so they don't have the expense of so many reporters following them around, it's all about going on the cheap. It's not like they old days when wanted to actually do they good job informing the voters.

[FSogol]

18. +1 n/t