Good morning. It is July 22nd. It's pretty hot and pretty humid here in New York, but nothing to cower and hide from. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. And things may be going on around the world, but there's only one news story this morning. Eating up the whole width of the morning New York Times in gigantic type. “Biden bows out, late reversal upends race for White House as president endorses Harris to lead ticket.” There's a four column photo of guaranteed one-term president Joe Biden walking down airplane steps and a two column sub-sub-head “facing pressure. He writes, it's time to come together and beat Trump.” It's all straightforward because after weeks of speculation and jamming up the news agenda with lobbying and wish casting, the press ended up digesting a simple and direct fact. Joe Biden, with no advanced rumors and no leaks, put out a statement flatly saying he wasn't going to run for president, and then followed that up with another statement directly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place on the Democratic ticket. And that was it. Peter Baker's story describes it as a dramatic last minute bid to stop former President Donald J. Trump from returning to the White House. But the striking thing is how little drama was involved. Baker writes, “the president's decision upended the race and set the stage for a raucous and unpredictable campaign unlike any in modern times. Leaving Ms. Harris just 107 days to consolidate support from Democrats, establish herself as a credible national leader and prosecute the case against Mr. Trump.” But at least the front end of that task list appears to have basically gotten done with 106 and a half of those 107 days to spare. The next story down “Vice President suddenly enters spotlight after years in shadows,” which describes Harris as someone who has “struggled for nearly four years in President Biden's shadow,” says she is in a “powerful but not certain position to become the new face of the Democratic Party,” and writes about how “uncertainty swirled, about whether other Democrats might challenge her.” But it turns out that uncertainty didn't so much swirl as slosh around for a few seconds and sink straight to the bottom. As the story below says, “donors with renewed vigor flock to support a Harris bid. Advisors and major givers said on Sunday that they were being inundated with enthusiasm and word of planned donations to support Ms. Harris if she became the official Democratic candidate.” Next to that at the bottom is “rank -and -file Democrats greet news with hope and hesitation, divided over whether move was too late,” a quick round of reporting with Democratic voters available to talk to the New York Times. After weeks of coverage of how the party was going down to certain defeat, found mixed responses, ranging from someone who said they were elated at the prospect of Harris being the nominee to some guy who lost a Democratic primary in Georgia for the state Senate, a retired army officer named Osborne Murray, who said, “it's too late,” and “the election was lost when Trump survived that attack. He came out like a gladiator with his fist up in the air and an American flag behind him.” He also said of Harris, “what can you do when nobody likes you?” Not sure that guy totally representative of the current sentiment. But that's apparently who they could get on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, this morning, every single person who the dorks and donors fantasized about putting ahead of Harris at an open convention has emphatically stood down and thrown their support to the Vice President. The Democrats are, for now, in full array. And that's really all there is to the giant news story. Except a little self -parodying box on page A3 of the Times, under the rubric “Just one question. Times journalists share a key insight about their work. Just minutes after President Biden posted a statement on social media announcing he would drop out of the election,” The New York Times writes, “the reporter Nicholas Nehamas published this post on The New York Times' live blog. President Biden just announced on X that he would not seek reelection, writing” blah blah blah. Nobody cares. The one question is, “you were the first person to break the Biden news for The Times. Where were you? And what were you doing?” And who gives a shit? What the hell is “first person to break the news of a public announcement that already happened in the New York Times?” You all spent weeks trying to make this story happen, even if it meant inventing a totally nonsense story about the White House neurologist. And you didn't get the win, which is fine, because it's a stupid thing to want to win on. The president did a thing. The thing was news. You were the newspaper. Print that thing on yourself and get over yourself. You're not the protagonist here. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.