The New York Times editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Saturday. That is not surprising. But the way the board did it is.

“In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year,” the Times admitted in its first sentence. It continued:

A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)

So Clinton is being propped up by the so-called newspaper of record, and that newspaper is openly conceding that the issues have nothing to do with it. Predictably, it is all about Trump. But the Times, in defiance of the standards of coherent literature, also shoots down the very premise that it established in its opening sentence, claiming, “Running down the other guy won’t suffice to make that argument. The best case for Hillary Clinton cannot be, and is not, that she isn’t Donald Trump. The best case is, instead, about the challenges this country faces, and Mrs. Clinton’s capacity to rise to them.”

Also, she’s a woman. The Times opines:

The 2016 campaign has brought to the surface the despair and rage of poor and middle-class Americans who say their government has done little to ease the burdens that recession, technological change, foreign competition and war have heaped on their families.

Over 40 years in public life, Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena.

When the Times finally does address some issues, the endorsement reads like a carbon copy of Clinton campaign literature:

Mrs. Clinton’s record of service to children, women and families has spanned her adult life. One of her boldest acts as first lady was her 1995 speech in Beijing declaring that women’s rights are human rights. After a failed attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system, she threw her support behind legislation to establish the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now covers more than eight million lower-income young people. This year, she rallied mothers of gun-violence victims to join her in demanding comprehensive background checks for gun buyers and tighter reins on gun sales.