Good morning. It is September 9th. A cool and sunny morning in New York City. Though it's supposed to be warming up a little bit ahead of where was yesterday. And this is your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The lead story on the front of this morning's New York Times is about the New York Times. They did a poll. “Poll finds race for White House is neck and neck. A Times -Siena survey, voters still unsure about Harris, but Trump's base holds firm.” The poll got a lot of attention when they released it yesterday, because it's a bit of an outlier in the polling about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. As the Times puts it, the poll found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris 48 % to 47%. “Within the polls, three percentage point margin of error and largely unchanged from a Times -Siena poll taken in late July, just after President Biden dropped his reelection bid.” Where other polls found Harris opening up a two or three point lead on Donald Trump and maintaining it. The Times finds Harris treading water slightly behind Trump. “The national results,” the Times writes, “are in line with polls in the seven battleground states that will decide the presidential election, where Ms. Harris is tied with Mr. Trump or holds slim leads, according to New York Times polling averages.” I'm not sure those polling averages really are in line with what the Times found in its poll, given that if Harris is tied with Trump or leading him in the battleground states, she would pretty much definitionally be ahead of him in the popular vote. 

But then you might not pay attention to the Times -Siena poll, whose purpose on the calendar is to introduce high narrative stakes for Tuesday's debate between Harris and Trump. The Times can now say that 28 % of likely voters said they felt they needed to know more about Ms. Harris, which gives the political media a task that they can assign her for the debate, and judge her on, in the name of highmindedly informing the public about policy, which is sure to be the thing that the debate moderators are focused on. So this is a very important poll, as The Times will tell you. “Overall, the poll may bring democratic exuberance back to Earth after a buoyant party convention in Chicago last month and rapid gains in support from Ms. Harris after Mr. Biden's poor showing in the polls.” The poll, the Time's Siena poll, may do that. Pretty remarkable degree of agency to assign to what's meant to be a survey of objective facts about public opinion. 

Elsewhere on page one, Musk's ability to sway Trump carries pitfalls. A look at the alliance between America's two most vocal fascists, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, because it's pegged to Trump's announcement last week that he wants to put Musk in charge of slashing government waste. The piece inherently starts off with its shoelaces tied together, making the question of the Trump -Musk partnership a question about what it would be like if they did work together in the name of improving the government's performance. “Their political friendship is particularly tricky,” the Times writes, “because Mr. Musk has a sprawling set of businesses which may present conflicts of interest if Mr. Trump is elected. Notably, Mr. Musk's rocket maker, SpaceX, and his electric automaker, Tesla, have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and subsidies. Mr. Musk and some of his companies are also under scrutiny for various infractions from federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.” The idea that conflicts of interest are going to be any sort of political pitfall or even obstacle in a new Trump administration is entirely missing the point. Elon Musk, completely corrupt and completely transactional, is the ideal client in Trump's vision of government. 

Musk has already held on to his lucrative government contracts and the security clearance those contracts require, despite being a fraud with an out -of -control illegal drug habit, who has deep and subservient financial relationships with hostile foreign powers, including China. So on the ethics side, it's hard to see what Trump would really do, except make Musk's de facto impunity into official policy. But what the story has essentially no room for, is Musk's role as the leading banner carrier for racist and incel propaganda on Trump's behalf. The closest The Times comes to that is saying “Mr. Musk has long used his account on X, where he has nearly 197 million followers, to push his political views. In recent weeks, he has posted messages excoriating the Biden administration's policies on government spending and criticizing the campaign promises of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. Some of his posts,” The Times continues, “have become more erratic. On Sunday, Mr. Musk endorsed a post that suggested that women did not have the ability for critical thought and should not participate in government or democracy. On Monday, he shared an artificial intelligence -generated image of Ms. Harris dressed as a communist.” 

Saying women don't have the brains to be in government might not even be in the upper half of Musk's demented bigotry. The timeframe in which he has become more erratic in posting is strangely vague, but he's been bombarding people, and not just his 197 million followers, but thanks to his control of the algorithm, anyone who looks at his accursed site with unhinged misogynist, racist, and otherwise fascist posting, including political disinformation, for a long, long time now. “Potential conflicts of interest” is just not the framework for describing Musk and Trump's shared vision of American politics. 

And while the Times is being categorically unprepared to describe what's happening in this country, right down below the jump on the Musk and Trump story is “North Carolina governor's race showcases a deep divide.” The story begins with a little cross -partisan back and forth in which a Democrat in Durham tells the paper that Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the current Republican gubernatorial candidate, “honestly scares me.” And then a Republican from Clyde, North Carolina, says Robinson is what he wants. “He refers to the Bible, and it makes a difference in the South, Mr. Connor said, his voice breaking, my grandkids lives are at stake and the future of this country.”

The Times then opens its desktop guide to euphemism to tell the readers, I was going to say inform, but inform is definitely not the verb, that Robinson is “an evangelical firebrand who has faced criticism for his extensive record of incendiary remarks.” Then there's a long bit of generic explanation of North Carolina politics. Democrats tend to win the governorship there, while losing presidential races. And down at the bottom of the second column, we return to a mention of Robinson's MAGA -aligned views and bellicose style. The third column talks about the Democratic nominee, current Attorney General Josh Stein. Now he was “raised in the politically liberal college town of Chapel Hill, graduated from Dartmouth and Harvard, and served seven years as a state senator.” The Times goes on. “Some political strategists have questioned how much Mr. Stein's elite credentials could hurt him in the race, saying they could turn off the rural voters who helped elect current Governor Roy Cooper and former Governor Jim Hunt, both of whom came from rural areas.” 

Only after that does the story circle slightly closer to the question of what Robinson's deal is. “Some of his Facebook posts and speeches have been widely criticized as conspiratorial, racist, anti -Semitic, transphobic, and hateful. Mr. Robinson said in one post that he was skeptical of everything he heard on television about 9 -11. He has quoted Hitler on Facebook, called Michelle Obama a man, and said that Kwanzaa, an African -American and Pan -African holiday that celebrates history and community, is ‘Hanukkah on food stamps.’ Mr. Robinson, who is black, also once said that Black History Month was for, ‘a people who have achieved so little.’” This is not a “critics say” deal. This is a guy who puts scare quotes around the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He already holds elective office and the North Carolina Republican Party wants to see him go higher. 

That is where American politics is at, even if the New York Times would rather not tell you so or tell itself so, upfront. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Max Scocca-Ho.

Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we'll talk again tomorrow.