The stark rebuke to the reactionary government of Jair Bolsonaro, predicted by the polls and desired by millions, didn’t come to pass. Brazil is on edge.It wasn’t all bad. In Sunday’s presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the center-left former union leader who governed Brazil ably from 2003 to 2011, took roughly 48 percent of the vote, a healthy performance within the final polls’ margin of error. But Mr. Bolsonaro exceeded his presumed ceiling, taking 43 percent — far above previous predictions — and setting up what will most likely be a closer than expected runoff on Oct. 30. What’s more, several of Mr. Bolsonaro’s former cabinet ministers and allies across the country rode his coattails to success in local elections.The results showed beyond any doubt that Mr. Bolsonaro is no accident of history. It might have been possible to dismiss his surprising election four years ago, when he rose to power on a wave of widespread anti-left sentiment, as a fluke. No longer. Underlying his vague appeals to “God, fatherland and family” is a bedrock of support, spread across the country and encompassing a wide cross-section of society. Irrespective of the result at the end of the month, the spirits Mr. Bolsonaro animated and the politics he cultivated are here to stay.Mr. Bolsonaro’s beginnings in Brazilian politics were ignominious. An army captain, he first came to national attention in the mid-1980s as the armed forces were beginning a tactical retreat from political life after two decades of military rule. A leading newsmagazine revealed that Mr. Bolsonaro, resentful about poor remuneration, was planning to bomb a barracks in Rio de Janeiro. The goal, he told the reporter with remarkable directness, was to embarrass the unpopular army minister.After a flurry of publicity and an internal investigation in which Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to threaten the journalist for testifying against him, the incident was largely forgotten. But the macho bluster was typical of Mr. Bolsonaro, a lackluster soldier whose outsize political ambitions often rubbed senior military figures the wrong way. Even so, his military background proved electorally useful. In 1988, after the restoration of Brazilian democracy, he began a political career as a representative of the interests and perspectives of the military Everyman.Over time, his appeals assumed a more general right-wing tenor, embracing the conservative thrust if not the theology of evangelical Christianity. Mr. Bolsonaro’s politics — a medley of bigotry, authoritarianism, religious moralism, neoliberalism and freewheeling conspiracy theorization — were largely sidelined in the wake of military rule. But 13 years of progressive Workers’ Party governments gave rise to discontent on the right. To figures there, the left’s repeated electoral victories smacked of foul play and discredited the very notion of democracy itself. At the head of this charge, possessed of inimitable ideological bombast, was Mr. Bolsonaro. In Latin America’s biggest democracy, he now speaks for tens of millions.Sunday underscored this sorry state of affairs. Mr. Bolsonaro’s endorsed candidates overperformed everywhere, claiming major victories against candidates backed by Mr. da Silva in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, the first round of voting suggests not only that the political project that prevailed in 2018 — in a word, “Bolsonarismo” — is alive and well but also that it has room to grow. Considering Mr. Bolsonaro’s disastrous handling of Covid-19, his consistent threats to Brazilian democracy and the rash of corruption scandals surrounding him and his family, this is a grim prospect.Yet not an inexplicable one. Though there’s a lot we don’t know — the census, delayed by the pandemic and institutional sabotage, is over a decade old — some things are clear. While Mr. Bolsonaro retained his overwhelming advantage in the western and northwestern parts of the country, the most striking aspect of the election was how cleanly it fell along established lines of regional support. In the southeast, a traditional bastion of conservative politics, Mr. Bolsonaro prospered. In the northeast, a redoubt for the Workers’ Party, Mr. da Silva excelled. Mr. Bolsonaro’s success has been to retain and extend the traditional conservative base of support, enthusing it with his bitter denunciations of progressives, the justice system, journalists and international institutions.Yet for all of Mr. Bolsonaro’s show of strength, the most likely outcome remains a victory for Mr. da Silva. After all, no runner-up in the first round of voting has ever won the second. The candidates who finished third and fourth — the center-right Simone Tebet and the center-left Ciro Gomes — will probably support Mr. da Silva, too. The former president’s relish for campaigning, evident in an upbeat message he wrote on Twitter once the results were clear, is another advantage. Four weeks in campaign mode should suit him well.But extending the campaign is a dangerous proposition. Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have already engaged in numerous acts of violence against Mr. da Silva’s supporters. It would not be surprising if “Bolsonarismo,” a movement rooted in violent rhetoric, claims more lives before Oct. 30. Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro, gifted time and greater credibility by his surprising success, can continue plotting against Brazilian democracy.Several hurdles remain in the way of a power grab by Mr. Bolsonaro. But he has just cleared a major one.Andre Pagliarini (@apagliar) is an assistant professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College, a fellow at the Washington Brazil Office and a columnist at The Brazilian Report.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Donald Trump is using the dying embers of his US presidency to hastily push through a procession of environmental protection rollbacks that critics claim will cement his legacy as an unusually destructive force against the natural world.Trump has yet to acknowledge his election loss to president-elect Joe Biden but his administration has been busily finishing off a cavalcade of regulatory moves to lock in more oil and gas drilling, loosened protections for wildlife and lax air pollution standards before the Democrat enters the White House on 20 January.Trump’s interior department is hastily auctioning off drilling rights to America’s last large untouched wilderness, the sprawling Arctic National Wildlife Refuge found in the tundra of northern Alaska. The refuge, home to polar bears, caribou and 200 species of birds, has been off limits to fossil fuel companies for decades but the Trump administration is keen to give out leases to extract the billions of barrels of oil believed to be in the area’s coastal region.The leases could result in the release of vast quantities of carbon emissions as well as upend the long-held lifestyle of the local Gwich’in tribe, which depends upon the migratory caribou for sustenance. Several major banks, fiercely lobbied by the Gwich’in and conservationists, have refused to finance drilling in the refuge but industry groups have expressed optimism that the area will be carved open. More

A slice of voters would vote for Vice President Harris but not President Biden, reflecting his challenges and opportunities.Bridgette Miro, 52, a retired state employee in Glendale, Ariz., is a Republican, but said she would vote for President Biden because Kamala Harris was on the ticket.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesIn our recent poll of voters in battleground states, we asked how people would vote if Kamala Harris were running for president. Though Donald J. Trump still led in this hypothetical matchup, Vice President Harris performed slightly better than President Biden.She did particularly well among young and nonwhite voters — voters who were a key to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory but who the poll suggests are less supportive of him this time.The voters who backed her but not Mr. Biden — about 5 percent of swing-state voters — would have given Mr. Biden the lead in the New York Times/Siena polls if they had supported him.We called back some of these Harris supporters to understand why they didn’t support Mr. Biden, and whether he could win them over.They show the serious challenges Mr. Biden faces. Some said he was too old, or they didn’t think he’d done much as president. Black voters in particular said they didn’t believe he was doing enough to help Black Americans.They also point to the opportunities for Mr. Biden. Though many said they’d probably vote for Mr. Trump, nearly all said that they weren’t excited about either option, and that Mr. Trump had personally offended them. For some, Democratic messaging on issues important to them, like abortion and the economy, hadn’t reached them.In a telling indication of how unsettled voters remain with a year to go, many of them expressed different opinions during the follow-up interviews than they did during the survey. In response to neutral questions, some who had said they were unsure became more sure of their support for either candidate by the end of the interview, and others switched their support after recalling their impressions of both candidates and talking more about their priority issues.A telephone call with a New York Times reporter is not the same as a conversation with friends or family. It’s not the same as a campaign advertisement, either. But it was an opportunity for a group of voters, some of them relatively disengaged, to think about the candidates, issues and campaigns.Here’s how the Harris supporters broke down:Harris superfansIf Ms. Harris were running for president, Bridgette Miro, 52, a retired state employee in Glendale, Ariz., who is Black, would vote for her “one hundred thousand percent.”She likes the work Ms. Harris did in California, where she was attorney general and a U.S. senator before she became vice president. She likes “the way she handles herself.” She likes that “her skin color is like my skin color.”In the poll and at the beginning of the interview, Ms. Miro said she would vote for Mr. Trump this election. She’s a Republican who said “I don’t have any feeling at all” about the job Mr. Biden has done as president. But by the end, she had switched her support to Mr. Biden, after recalling her negative views about Mr. Trump, who she said was racist and didn’t do enough to prevent police violence against Black people.“All of my frustration comes from the killing of Black individuals,” she said. “If we can have just someone in office who can control the police force just a little bit, that gives us a little bit of hope.”And then there was Ms. Harris: “If she’s on the ticket, I’m going to vote for her. It’s Kamala versus everybody.”‘She’s a Black woman’“I just think she has a lot more to offer than the standard straight old white dude,” said a 40-year-old artist in Georgia, who declined to share her name because she feared blowback given the country’s polarization. “I like the idea of a female lawyer.”A lifelong Democrat, she said in the poll that she would vote for Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden, whom she called “too old and a bit out of touch” and “a bit of a doofus.” Yet she believes the problems in the country had more to do with gerrymandered congressional districts than with Mr. Biden. By the end of the interview, she said she “will likely vote for him again — I’m just not happy about it.”Antonio Maxon, 25, a garbage collector and Ms. Harris supporter in Farrell, Pa., considers himself a Democrat. But he plans to vote for Mr. Trump because “he’s helped out countless Black people.”Justin Merriman for The New York TimesAntonio Maxon, 25, a garbage collector in Farrell, Pa., still plans to vote for Mr. Trump. But he likes Ms. Harris for a simple reason: “She’s a Black woman.” He said he lost faith in the political system after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. It’s important to him, he said, “just to see a female, a woman in power, being that I was raised mostly by females.” He added, “My father was not there, my mother raised me, my grandmother raised me.”Crime and police violenceFor some Black voters, Ms. Harris’s racial identity matters not only for representation, but because they say it gives her an understanding of the issues they face. It highlights a factor that may be driving some Black people from the Democratic Party. For years, it was seen as advancing the interests of Black voters, but these voters said Mr. Biden hadn’t done enough, while a Black president may have.“I feel like she would probably do more for us, because I feel like there’s not enough being done for Black people,” said Sonji Dunbar, 32, a program specialist for the Boys and Girls Club in Columbus, Ga. “I stay in a very urban area, there’s crime, so I feel like she could influence more programs to at least get that crime rate down, address police brutality.”Not Joe Biden“Honestly, it was more of a choice of it just not being Joe Biden,” said Clara Carrillo-Hinojosa, a 21-year-old financial analyst in Las Vegas, of her support for Ms. Harris. She said she would probably vote for Mr. Trump: “Personally, I think we were doing a lot better when he was in the presidency, price-wise, money-wise, income-wise.”Yet in some ways, Ms. Carrillo-Hinojosa is the kind of voter Mr. Biden hopes he can win once people start focusing on the race. Mr. Trump has offended her as a woman, she said, and she likes some of what Mr. Biden has done, including his support for Israel.Most of all, she said, she strongly supports abortion rights — and did not realize that Mr. Biden does, too. She said that because states’ abortion bans had gone into effect during his presidency, she assumed it was because of him. Ultimately, despite her misgivings about the economy, support for abortion rights would probably be what decided her vote, she said.Mr. Maxon, the 25-year-old garbage collector in Pennsylvania, considers himself a Democrat, though this election would be his first time voting. The Israel-Hamas war has made him doubt Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign affairs, and he recalls policies under Mr. Trump that helped him.“My biggest thing is not seeing America fall in shambles,” he said. “With this war I think Biden is way too lenient — with Hamas, Iran, Iraq, the whole nine yards. What I like about Trump is he was keeping everybody at bay and not wanting to mess with America.”Mr. Maxon, who is Black, said Mr. Trump had made racist remarks, yet he plans to vote for him. “He’s helped out countless Black people, more than Biden did by a landslide,” he said. Specifically, he said, it was through pandemic unemployment assistance and other relief funding at the start of the pandemic (the Biden administration also distributed relief funding).No good optionMs. Dunbar, the 32-year-old from Georgia, is a Democrat, but did not have positive things to say about either candidate, and is unsure whom to vote for.“I don’t know too much or hear too much about what he’s doing,” she said of Mr. Biden’s presidency. She leaned toward Mr. Trump in the poll, but in the interview she said he seemed to carry too much baggage — comments he’s made about women, generalizations about racial or ethnic groups, the indictments against him.She says it’s important to vote, even when on the fence. Democrats have one thing going for them, she said: support for the issue most important to her, women’s rights.“Abortion comes into play with that,” she said. “I still like women to have their own choice with what to do with their bodies. And the way things have gone, it’s an agenda on women, period. Not just Black women, but women in general.” More

Through her production company, Higher Ground, Mrs. Obama, along with her brother, Craig Robinson, will interview celebrities and offer advice on various topics.Ask any prominent podcast host for a list of dream interview guests, and it is quite likely that Michelle Obama’s name would be on it.That is why the former first lady shouldn’t have much trouble booking whomever she likes on her new show, “IMO,” short for “in my opinion,” which she will host with her older brother, the basketball executive Craig Robinson.The podcast was announced on Monday by Higher Ground, the media company founded in 2018 by former President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama.Higher Ground’s podcasts lean toward prestige cultural programming. Previous releases include a limited series about Stevie Wonder, hosted by the New York Times arts critic Wesley Morris; a celebrity interview show about meaningful family recipes, hosted by the journalist Michele Norris; and a series of conversations about American life by Mr. Obama and Bruce Springsteen.“IMO” falls more in line with current industrywide trends in podcasting: It is a chat show being released as a video, a first for Higher Ground. (One third of podcast consumers now prefer shows with video components, according to a report in December from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights.)The Times was provided with the first two episodes of “IMO,” which were both about an hour long. The hosts mainly offered advice based on their life experiences, and refrained from addressing current events or politics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Once the mainstream of the Democratic Party’s electorate settled on a candidate to support in this year’s campaign, however flawed Joe Biden may be, Bernie Sanders’s call for a revolution overturning the current American variant of capitalism no longer had a chance. The fact is that a decisive majority — 60 percent — of the […] More