The New York Daily News has given a full-throated endorsement to Hillary Clinton, providing a major boon to her campaign just one week out from the New York primaries.
In a lengthy editorial published Tuesday night, the Daily News praised Clinton as “a superprepared warrior realist,” while dismissing her opponent Bernie Sanders as “a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality.”
The harsh critique of Sanders was to be expected after his poor showing at an April 1 sit down with the paper’s editorial board. Throughout that interview, the Vermont senator had difficulty clearly answering some questions about both foreign and domestic policy, including the implementation of his much-touted plan to break up large banks and reform Wall Street.
Following the endorsement, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon told CNNMoney that Sanders interview “was a watershed that fully exposed his inability to explain how he would make good on any of his promises.”
But the enthusiastic endorsement for Clinton, who gave a much stronger performance, was nevertheless a surprise for the progressive New York City tabloid.
The editorial board said Clinton was “unsparingly clear-eyed about what’s wrong with America while holding firm to what’s right with America,” that she “fully understands the toll that adverse economic forces have taken on the country.”
“She is supremely knowledgeable about the powers a president can wield to lift fortunes in need of lifting,” it continued. “She possesses the strength and the shrewdness to confront the tough politics of advancing an ambitious Democratic agenda in the White House.”
“Still more,” the board said, “she is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumb’s up for taking out Osama Bin Laden and who is far the wiser about the use of American power, having served as secretary of state and seen the consequences of the war in Iraq.”
Clinton already has a significant lead over Sanders in New York, besting him 53% to 40% according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday. But the Daily News editorial will help her shore up — and perhaps expand — that support.
Elsewhere in Manhattan, the New York Observer — which is owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — endorsed Trump, surprising no one.
But the Observer’s editors said they did not endorse Trump because he “is the father-in-law of the Observer’s publisher,” but rather because he is “giving millions of disillusioned Americans a renewed sense of purpose and opportunity is.”
“The media and cultural elite’s inability to grasp the profound alienation, anger and disillusionment of millions of Americans has fueled Mr. Trump’s popularity,” the editors wrote. “The media’s enthusiastic embrace of the Obama narrative—that America should be willing to accept a dimmer future—has blinded it to the appeal of the Trump candidacy, and of an alternative, more compelling narrative.”