The strange dual endorsement aside, the Times editorial is consistently incoherent logically. Maybe this is the inevitable consequence of a consensus-driven, group written effort, but I think it also speaks to institutional issues. /thread maybe? nytimes.com/interactive/20…
The framing paragraph makes no sense. To imply that Klobuchar is "sensible" and Warren is not fails to consider the underlying definition of "sensible." It puts a value proposition on the word that doesn't follow. 
And look at that, the paper undermines its own framing in the very next paragraph. This is deeply strange. It's a contrast except, not really? What is the message?
This paragraph is very telling for me. I think this is the crux of the internal Times issue. The nature of the capital-I "Institution" points to Klobuchar, but there's clearly a faction that sees through the Times' own mythos. The board punted on that struggle.
Here's another contradiction. The assertion that polling is "in tatters" is incorrect. Polling is more sophisticated than ever. What's happening is voter suppression and manipulation. The Times doesn't get it in one paragraph and gets it in another.
Lots of people have been pointing out this contradiction, framing Warren as "radical" and Klobuchar as "realist" as though these are objective categories. I find Warren more realistic because I think she better understands the nature of the problem. Who's right, me or the Times?
The Times describes the "radical" candidate's policy approaches as deeply "realist" here. "Urgently needed." "Accurately describes."
Warren seems to primarily lose on style points, and also that the (actually) "radical" Republican congress and judiciary would make it heard to pass her preferred legislation. Op-ed fails to identify the interesting irony/tension in their own thinking.
In polling, the American public is already unified behind doing something about gun laws and climate change. This paragraph is another self-contradicting argument.
The piece does better with Bloomberg, actually identifying the core irony of a candidacy without campaigning. Why can they see him relatively clearly, but not the two women they're co-endorsing?
Again, incoherence. Klobuchar is beyond incremental, yet also she somehow has a better chance of enacting progressive plans in a polarized atmosphere. Why? Because she's Midwestern?
All of these things sound good to me relative to the status quo, but what evidence is there that a Republican opposition would be any less opposed to them than Warren's proposals?
In reality, the endorsement itself draws very few distinctions between the two candidates. Maybe this speaks to the difficulty of the choice, but I think it's more the problem of how the Times views itself and some of the leadership at the top.
The inability to make a choice speaks ill of the paper and the incoherence of the paper's statement explaining that non-choice is even worse. I get that these are challenging times, but it's a failure to work through these challenges.
All that vaunted transparency is window-dressing, something to show that they're serious and deliberative, but what is the point of having an august institution like the Times if it neither shits nor gets off the pot?
In the end, I think the Times' non-endorsement endorsement, and weird op-ed speaks to the broader collapse of institutions. The sober editorial is not up to the task of explaining the period we're living through. It's a form ill-suited to the moment.
Imagine an honest version of the Times' op-ed: Honestly, shit is fucked-up, the methods we thought meant something to discuss and endorse a candidate don't mean much anymore, we don't really know what's best, so here's two candidates who seem good to us, but seriously, who knows?
I think a more interesting experiment would've been to let the institutionalist faction at the Times write their endorsement and the other group in this tug-of-war write their endorsement. Both could stand under the Times banner. It would've been more transparent than this.
As is, it's almost as though the two Times factions traded off paragraphs, even sentences within paragraphs. It makes for an interesting object of study, but a lousy op-ed if the goal is to present a coherent argument in favor of a position.
