I don't really think that. I think some guys on the editorial board do not want Trump to win, and wrote this, and different guys who actually control where stories are placed, which get push notifications etc, as well as the politics desk, do want Trump to win, and those guys buried the endorsement

I think like, idk 80%? of the people who work for the New York Times want Kamala Harris to win the election but they apparently have very little power over the decisions made by the newspaper that could affect that outcome vs the 20% of Trump supporters.

Except that is the same placement for where opinion articles go on the NYT homepage for a long time now AFAIK. I don’t think they’ve ever put an opinion piece in the center well. I get many of your criticisms, but in this case the conspiracy would extend to the newsroom CMS developers apparently

If Democratic elites cared about any of this they could make a big deal out of it.