Once the country elected a reality television villain with no governing experience as President, the bar for what counts as surprising was significantly raised. And yet, the New York Times Editorial Board’s announcement on Sunday that the paper would be endorsing not one but two candidates—and one of those candidates is Amy Klobuchar—came as a shock, especially those of us who forgot that Klobuchar is still in the race.

The Times Editorial Board, which also endorsed Elizabeth Warren, acknowledged that this dual endorsement is “a break with convention.” And the organization certainly treated the endorsement as an Event—or at least an excuse to make content: In addition to publishing transcripts of the Editorial Board’s interviews with each of the candidates, the Times published endless pieces about the process, a limited-run podcast, and even a TV episode that aired on the Times' FX show The Weekly. The paper said this was all in an effort to be transparent, and that very well may be true, but the hype around this announcement seemed, if I’m being cynical, a bit like a circus—which, in the reality-TV-star-as-President era, makes perfect sense. Politics, and this race, has become a sort of terrible hobby for many of us. Why not milk it?

And yet, as much as the NYT pushed this as a good-faith effort to be transparent in an era of declining trust in the media, when I watched the Weekly episode on the endorsement Sunday night, I was struck but how edited the whole thing came across.

During deliberations, what you saw was 17 people calmly asking questions and discussing the candidates’ merits and that’s basically it. It looked less than any editorial board meeting I’ve witnessed than a church potluck. Where was the passion? Where were the fights? I have a hard time believing that when making a decision this important—when trying to weigh pragmatism versus passion versus who can actually beat Donald Trump—the members of the Editorial Board voices didn’t once raise their voices.

The Stranger Election Control Board (our version of the Times Editorial Board) is less ideologically diverse than the Times's, and yet, when tasked with endorsing candidates, our meetings, whether for school board or Senate, rapidly devolve into fights. That’s what happens when a group of people is tasked with debating who an entire city or country should vote for. The Times, for all their talk of transparency, showed none of that.

Of course, the Times isn’t The Stranger and it’s totally possible that they are better behaved in Manhattan than we are in Seattle. But my big takeaway from this process, and the surprising results of it, is that the paper of record is just as conflicted about this primary as the rest of the country.

Choosing two candidates reflects, I suspect, deep divisions in that room, even if they didn’t actually show any strife on air or in print. It says, “We don’t know who the fuck can beat Donald Trump either so let’s just hedge our bets and go with two.” Is this helpful? To Amy Klobuchar, sure. Klobuchar has gotten so little media attention this campaign that I’m guessing most Americans couldn’t pick her out of a line-up, or pronounce her name without help. But what is the voter at home supposed to do with this result? Write in "Klobuchar/Warren"? Pick a name out of a hat? Vote by coin-toss and hope you choose right? What this says to me is that the Times, like many of us voters, is terrified of making the wrong choice. And who can blame them when the consequences of endorsing the wrong candidate could mean four more years of Donald Trump?

Whoever wins this primary—be it a more moderate candidate like Klobuchar or a progressive like Elizabeth Warren—will be given a potentially impossible task: Beating a man to whom the normal rules just don’t apply. And who among the candidates is up to that task? I have no idea, and it seems now that the New York Times doesn’t either.

The Times, it should be noted, is not the first paper to endorse more than one candidate for office. In the 2016 primary, this very paper endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Half the papers had Clinton on the cover, the other half had Sanders, and the point was: Just vote, people. Perhaps that’s what the Times is saying as well. When it comes to beating Trump, hold your nose if you have to, but just vote.