New Yorker magazine endorsed Hillary Clinton in its latest issue set to publish this week.
“The election of Hillary Clinton is an event that we would welcome for its historical importance, and greet with indescribable relief,” the editors wrote in their endorsement published online Sunday.
In particular the editors played up the fact that Clinton would be the first female to win the White House, saying it will be “especially gratifying to have a woman as commander-in-chief after such a sickeningly sexist and racist campaign, one that exposed so starkly how far our society has to go.”
“[E]lecting a female President means imagining new possibilities: that a woman might survive that gantlet of derision to hold power with confidence, without apology, to enlarge our notions of authority and hasten an age when a female President will no longer be exceptional,” they wrote. “Just as President Obama was able at certain moments of glaring injustice and crisis to focus the country on matters of race in a potentially lasting way, Hillary Clinton, who has emphasized in her campaign and throughout her political life such issues as early-childhood education, paid family leave, and equal pay, could also change the nation in deeply consequential ways. That’s a thrilling possibility for all Americans.”
The editors condemned the “vileness” of the rhetoric used by her opponent, Donald Trump, adding that his record “has been so widely aired that we can only hope she will be able to use her office and her impressive resolve to battle prejudice wherever it may be found.”
Trump, they said, is “manifestly unqualified and unfit” to be president, and said he refuses to “accept the authority of constitutional republicanism,” as evidenced by his controversial proposals against certain groups, disparaging comments on the free press and “infringing on an independent judiciary.”
The editors also referred to the 60 Republican leaders and 50 national security experts against Trump, and newspapers that typically endorse Republicans for president, but chose not to this election cycle, as a starting point for both Democrats and Republicans to agree upon.
“At a time of alarming and paralyzing partisanship, this is an issue that reasonable voices in both parties can agree upon,” the editors wrote.
While the editors admitted Clinton is “neither saint nor prophet,” they said her pragmatism will serve as an asset in future political battles. They praised her tax policy proposals as well as her “wealth of knowledge” as secretary of state. But they said the most important reason to support Clinton was the Supreme Court.
“Over the years, a shifting alliance of Justices has protected certain key constitutional rights — notably, a woman’s right to choose and the right of universities to consider diversity in student admissions,” they wrote. “Clinton has a chance to lock in these gains, reverse some of the losses, and even augur a new, and very different, era on the Court.”
