Seriously I read the Times, and I have no idea what you're talking about. Firstly, nobody was blindsided by Biden's "deft" move of endorsing his own VP! Of course he endorsed her, and the articles I read in the Times about what would happen if Biden dropped out all expected it. There have been articles critical of Harris, sure, but just as many celebratory and positive ones. The Times is not some monolithic entity in which every piece is shaped by some overarching conspiratorial agenda. It's a collective of various, generally left-aligned journalists, who express divergent views, as they should.