Elections

Mr. Sununu, the state’s governor, expressed concern that Mr. Christie would pull support from his preferred candidate, Nikki Haley.Just weeks before New Hampshire holds its Republican presidential primary, the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, said on Sunday that Chris Christie’s presidential bid was “at an absolute dead end” and suggested that he drop out to pave way for Mr. Sununu’s preferred candidate, Nikki Haley.Mr. Sununu, who this month endorsed Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, told CNN that “the only person that wants Chris Christie to stay in the race is Donald Trump.”He framed the race as a “two-person contest” between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, whom she now trails in New Hampshire by an average of 20 percentage points.“There’s no doubt that if Christie stays in the race, the risk is that he takes her margin of the win,” Mr. Sununu said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” In a campaign ad last week, Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, explicitly addressed calls from some in the party for him to drop out to consolidate support around a non-Trump candidate. “Some people say I should drop out of this race,” he said. “Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar.”In response to Mr. Sununu’s remarks, a spokesman for Mr. Christie’s campaign doubled down on that message: “The events of the last few days fully solidifies the point that Christie has been making for six months: that the truth matters, and if you can’t answer the easy questions, you can’t fix the big problems.”Mr. Sununu’s comments were in response to questions from Dana Bash, the CNN anchor, about Ms. Haley’s recent gaffe involving the Civil War, for which she has faced significant criticism from Mr. Christie and others.Mr. Sununu endorsed Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, in December.Sophie Park/Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, when she received a question at a New Hampshire town hall about the cause of the Civil War, Ms. Haley’s answer did not mention slavery. The next day, she walked back her remarks, telling a New Hampshire interviewer, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.” She suggested that the question came from a “Democrat plant.”Mr. Sununu acknowledged that Ms. Haley had made a mistake in her remarks, but dismissed them as a “nonissue,” saying she had “cleared it right up and everyone’s moving on.”Mr. Christie and Ms. Haley have maintained a complicated relationship throughout the primary cycle. Mr. Christie defended Ms. Haley during the fourth Republican debate after she was attacked by Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur running for office. Yet earlier this month, in the first ad released by his campaign, Mr. Christie blasted Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for attacking each other more than they do Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley has made headway in New Hampshire in recent weeks, climbing to a solid second place. (Mr. Christie is polling third in the state). But securing the nomination remains a daunting task: She continued to battle Mr. DeSantis for second place in Iowa, and remains behind Mr. Trump, her former boss, in national polls by around 50 points.While Ms. Haley was campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, an attendee at a town hall in Cedar Falls asked her why she was behind in polls in South Carolina, her home state. Ms. Haley said that her support there would grow, should she perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states on the nomination schedule. “South Carolinians are the type that they want to see you earn it,” she explained.Her response did not directly address specifics — that Mr. Trump is immensely popular in the state and has received endorsements from many top officials, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham.On Sunday, Mr. Sununu also told CNN of his disapproval of the Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, removing Mr. Trump from the state’s primary ballot last week. He called the decision “very politically motivated,” saying of Ms. Bellows, “This is a politician who I think has political aspirations down the road and is trying to make a little bit of a name for herself.”Mr. Sununu said that Mr. Trump’s removal would “only boost his opportunity to play that victim card down the road.” More

The Central African nation’s vote drew accusations of fraud, but the elections commissioner declared that the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, had won.The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, was declared the winner on Sunday of the December presidential vote in an election marred by severe logistical problems, protests and calls for its annulment from several opposition candidates.Mr. Tshisekedi won more than 13 million votes, or 73 percent of the total ballots cast, said Denis Kadima, the head of the country’s electoral commission. Just over 18 million people, out of the 44 million registered to vote, cast ballots, Mr. Kadima said. The provisional results will now be sent to the nation’s Constitutional Court for confirmation.The announcement was a critical moment in an election dogged by acute problems, some because of Congo’s vast size, and many fear the outcome could plunge the Central African nation into a new round of political turmoil and even violent unrest that has followed other electoral contests in recent years.The results of the election matter not only to Congo’s 100 million people, who are suffering after decades of conflict and poor governance, but also to Western countries that consider Congo a critical part of their efforts to stem climate change and make a transition to green energy.Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a key element in the electric vehicle industry, and has the second-largest rainforest, which absorbs vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide. But for many in Congo, a decades-old, corruption-ridden system of political patronage is seen as the best way to distribute the spoils of that natural wealth — which may explain why the presidential race was so hotly contested.Electoral commission officials and polling agents gathered to count ballots at a Congolese polling center on Dec. 20 in North Kivu Province.Arlette Bashizi/ReutersOn Dec. 23, five opposition leaders accused the country’s electoral commission of “massive fraud,” called on the head of the commission to resign and said the entire vote should be annulled. Four days later, opposition leaders held a demonstration in the capital, Kinshasa, to protest what they called a “sham” election. Security forces surrounded the offices of Martin Fayulu, one of the opposition candidates, and lobbed tear gas at protesters there, according to his spokesman and videos shared on social media.Opposition leaders, including Moïse Katumbi, a business tycoon who is President Tshisekedi’s closest rival, condemned the actions of security forces and promised more marches nationwide.Mr. Katumbi got three million votes, or about 18 percent of the ballots counted, the election commission said. Mr. Fayulu garnered just over 960,000 votes. Most of the other two dozen presidential candidates, including the Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, got less than 1 percent of the vote.“The unfortunate competitors must accept the democratic game,” Mr. Kadima, the election chief, said on Sunday. “As a people, we must keep in mind the existence and stability of the Democratic Republic of Congo matters much more than an elected position,” he said, adding, “Let’s not weaken our country.”But his comments are unlikely to assuage opposition leaders, who on Sunday called on their supporters to protest the results. They also said a new election commission should be formed and a fresh vote held.“We categorically reject the sham elections” and their results, nine of the opposition presidential candidates said in a joint statement.President Felix Tshisekedi, who on Sunday was declared the winner, after voting in Kinshasa last week.Guerchom Ndebo for The New York TimesMr. Tshisekedi, the incumbent and longstanding favorite to win, has repeatedly insisted that the election, which cost more than $1.25 billion to run, was fair and good enough given the challenges.Logistical chaos marred the election long before the first votes were cast on Dec. 20. For weeks, election officials had rushed to get materials to 75,000 polling stations across a country the size of Western Europe and with few paved roads in the middle of the rainy season.Yet just 70 percent of polling stations were open on Election Day, the election commission said, prompting it to extend the voting into a second day. Opposition leaders denounced the extension, claiming that it would facilitate fraud. It also drew criticism from the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, which enjoy broad public support across Congolese society and which run a network of electoral observers; the churches said the move violated the country’s electoral laws and was unconstitutional.Voting even continued until Dec. 22 in remote areas, including parts of Kwango and Kasai Provinces, the Rev. Rigobert Minani, a prominent Catholic campaigner, said in a text message.The election commission acknowledged the delays but insisted that extending the vote did not undermine its legitimacy.Checking names on the electoral roll at a polling station in Kinshasa on the first day of voting.Guerchom Ndebo for The New York TimesMr. Tshisekedi, who came to power in 2019 in hotly disputed circumstances, had hoped this election would be an easy victory.Unofficial tallies in the previous contest compiled by Catholic and other observers found that Mr. Fayulu, a former oil executive, had probably won three times as many votes as Mr. Tshisekedi. But after several weeks of political turmoil, Mr. Tshisekedi struck a power-sharing deal with the departing president, Joseph Kabila, who had led for 18 years.That deal crumbled within a year, and since then Mr. Tshisekedi has effectively consolidated his power, gaining popular support by providing free primary education to millions of Congolese children. But he has not delivered on two key promises: to bring peace to eastern Congo, where conflict has raged since 1996, and to tackle the country’s notorious reputation for corruption.Instead, political opponents charge, Mr. Tshisekedi and his extended family have acquired considerable wealth during his time in power.Supporters of Mr. Tshisekedi celebrating on Sunday in Kinshasa.Chris Milosi/EPA, via ShutterstockThe United States played a crucial role after Congo’s last election, in December 2018, when it blessed the controversial power-sharing deal between Mr. Tshisekedi and Mr. Kabila. This time, American officials have been at pains to stress that they are not taking sides.In a statement on Dec. 22, the United States Embassy in Kinshasa noted the logistical problems with the voting and called on Congolese leaders to “exercise restraint” and to peacefully resolve any electoral disputes that may follow.Without naming any candidate, Mr. Kadima, the election chief, on Sunday criticized candidates he said had used vandalism, intimidation, corruption and violence to cheat and win. The final results are now slated for early January, and once confirmed by the court, a presidential swearing-in is expected by the month’s end.“We were tenacious,” Mr. Kadima said of the election process.Emma Bubola More

More from our inbox:Being Jewish in AmericaBlack Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Liz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Students Know We Need Free SpeechHolly StapletonTo the Editor:Re “What Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me,” by Ed Yong (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 22):As a Covid long-hauler (going on three years now!), I found it validating and even supportive to read Mr. Yong’s essay. It was particularly validating to have the acknowledgment of post-exertional malaise (PEM). This so aptly describes much of my life.For example, I apologize to my dog before going on a shorter-than-usual walk. I have to plan for seemingly mundane tasks of self-care and home care: taking a shower, changing clothes, doing the dishes, sweeping my apartment, doing laundry, etc. I put these tasks in my calendar, and even then the expectation of the aftermath makes me feel incapable, desperate and overwhelmed.I appreciated Mr. Yong’s astute acknowledgment that symptoms are often dismissed because of sexism (I’m transgender). And I was denied disability because it was determined that I was functional enough to wrap silverware in napkins. Yes indeed, treatment is not only a medical issue, but also a social one.Mr. Yong made it clear that his journalism has been transformed by doing research in a more integrative manner, especially actually being with current long-haulers. I’m immensely grateful to him for his journalism and to The Times for publishing it.(I earned my Ph.D. in 2012, and it’s taken me two days to write this.)River Jackson-PatonDallasTo the Editor:Ed Yong’s guest essay is right on point. Long Covid is real, and the public needs to be educated about it.My experience with Covid is that of a former registered nurse in the thick of it. I watched so many patients and co-workers get sick, some dying, some getting better, and some who are still struggling with long Covid.It is very hard for me to hear someone, usually an anti-vaxxer, say, “They should just let everyone get Covid and get it over with.”I hear this quite often and my response is always, “Are you familiar with long Covid?” I always get one of two responses: “No” or “That’s made up.” Then I try to educate.Donna HuntAtascadero, Calif.To the Editor:I appreciate Ed Yong’s extraordinary reporting on long Covid and his opinion piece about the health care system’s failure to take chronic illness patients seriously. What many do not realize is that years and even decades before the pandemic caused long Covid, many patients, including me, struggled to find doctors and treatments for many of the same health problems that long Covid patients face.I cannot give you a single name for our illness because it does not yet exist. I and countless other patients have a slew of diagnoses, including autoimmune diseases, mast cell disorders, connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia. Many of us are disabled and homebound or bedbound.Doctors for these disorders were already hard to find, and the surge of long Covid patients has made accessing knowledgeable care more difficult. I hope the increased demand will inspire more doctors to study and treat these conditions. Now that even more patients are suffering, we need to stop dismissing this constellation of illnesses.Rachel GravesTacoma, Wash.Being Jewish in AmericaPhotographs of some of the hostages captured by Hamas on display by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Why I Can’t Stop Writing About Oct. 7,” by Bret Stephens (column, Dec. 20):American democracy has promised a land, as Mr. Stephens says, “in which you didn’t have to hide.” Mr. Stephens writes despairingly about the loss of this promise, and there’s no doubt that, today, America’s promise feels remote to many. For Jews, an eroding democracy brings with it a profound sense of trauma and fear.Yet the most appropriate Jewish response to this challenge is not despair, but determination. If our institutions are buckling, let’s reinforce them with forums for civic learning. If our civic culture is fraying, let’s repair it with opportunities for dynamic and respectful conversation. If our democracy is under threat, let’s take actions that strengthen it — right now, and in communities across the country.For nearly two and a half centuries, even amid painful setbacks, the United States has offered one of the last, best places to be Jewish — not because it catered to Jews, but because its democratic pluralism, albeit aspirational and imperfect from the beginning, allowed minorities like ours an opportunity to live freely.When that democratic pluralism struggles, we shouldn’t prematurely mourn its loss. We should repair it instead. This is not naïveté; it’s the agency our parents and grandparents came here looking for.Aaron DorfmanNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, a network of synagogues and Jewish groups.Black Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Kshaun Williams says he has seen his life become harder because of rising inflation under President Biden.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Black Voters in Georgia Say Biden Has Forgotten Them,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 24):Ms. Gay cautions that Black voters in Georgia feel ignored and abandoned and may desert the Democratic Party in the coming presidential election. While her conclusions are highly debatable, there is no such doubt regarding the alternative.The Republican Party of Donald Trump has rolled back voting rights, gerrymandered predominantly Black districts, eliminated or scaled back social programs that aid the poor and sent federal troops to crack down on anti-racism protests.Should Georgia’s Black voters leave the Democrats for the Republicans, they will quickly learn the real meaning of abandonment.Tom GoodmanPhiladelphiaLiz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:It’s with some relief that I read Carlos Lozada’s Dec. 21 column, “Liz Cheney’s Checkered History of the Trump Era.”Ms. Cheney worries about the prospect of another Donald Trump tenure in the White House, but I worry just as much about Ms. Cheney’s rush to sainthood as she plugs her new book and her ostensibly revised views.As Mr. Lozada reminds us, Ms. Cheney, right along with other Trump molls and henchmen in the G.O.P., long pledged obeisance to Mr. Trump. She — no less than the people she now criticizes — got us to this awful, scary time and place, and she shouldn’t get a pass now for what is at best a clear case of “too little, too late.”Beth Z. PalubinskyPhiladelphiaStudents Know We Need Free SpeechTim EnthovenTo the Editor:Re “Students Can Show Us the Way to Free Speech,” by Sophia Rosenfeld (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 18):Ms. Rosenfeld’s essay thoughtfully reminds us that we, as the parenting, teaching and older generations, don’t always have better answers to questions about free speech than our children and students. Indeed, as Ms. Rosenfeld writes, “The sky really isn’t falling.” Our youth are more capable of finding reasonable solutions than we think.I recently attended my son’s college graduation. For weeks before going, I loathed what I thought would surely be a depressing carnival of elite righteousness. Instead, I experienced something far more reassuring about our future.I conversed with my son’s classmates to hear their views about free speech, wokeness and education. Not surprisingly, they are intelligent, insightful, compassionate, but most of all, keenly aware of what is broken. They are respectful and friendly to each other, even when they disagree.Now is the time for the preachy older generations to step aside and trust the younger generations. They can and are navigating the treacherous waters of our time just fine.Nao MatsukataBethesda, Md. More

Men serving life sentences in American prisons argued why, decades later, they pose no threat to society. Children whose fathers were killed in the war in Ukraine showed us the surprising costs of war. Bank robbers in Beirut flipped our understanding of right and wrong. And a British scholar with a fondness for the rumpled television detective Columbo taught us that “the answer to everything” might be right in front of us.In 2023, the Times’s Opinion Video team took viewers around the world and into the thick of some of society’s most critical debates. We produced dozens of short films and videos — powerful, emotional works that persuade and capture the human experience in unique ways.Below are 10 videos that will stick with us far past 2023.It’s time to completely rethink how we measure our economic success.Every day, Ukrainian children lose their fathers in Putin’s war. A grief camp is fighting to protect their youth.These men have spent their entire adult lives in prison. How much punishment is enough?They’re among the most effective ways to reduce destructive drinking. What are politicians so afraid of?For Jerod Draper, horrifying video footage wasn’t enough to force police accountability.Two siblings learn to balance love and self-preservation.Chasing credit card points is a game in which everyone loses.Social media demands that you’re with us or against us.The N.H.S. is one of Britain’s proudest achievements, and it’s unraveling.Times readers, ages 16 to 93, open up about loneliness.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: [email protected] the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

Peter Coy: Paul, I think the economy is going to be a huge problem for President Biden in 2024. Voters are unhappy about the state of the economy, even though by most measures it’s doing great. Imagine how much unhappier they’ll be if things get worse heading into the election — which I, for one, think is quite likely to be the case.Paul Krugman: I’m not sure about the politics. We can get into that later. But first, can we acknowledge just how good the current state of the economy is?Peter: Absolutely. Unemployment is close to its lowest point since the 1960s and inflation has come way down. That’s the big story of 2023. But 2024 is a whole ’nother thing. I think there will be two big stories in 2024. One, whether the good news continues, and two, how voters will react to whatever the economy looks like around election time.Paul: Right now many analysts, including some who were very pessimistic about inflation last year, are declaring that the soft landing has arrived. Over the past six months the core personal consumption expenditures deflator — a mouthful, but that’s what the Federal Reserve targets — rose at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, slightly below the Fed’s 2 percent target. Unemployment is 3.7 percent. The eagle has landed.Peter: I question whether we’ve stuck the soft landing. I do agree that right at this moment things look really good. While everyone talks about the cost of living going up, pay is up lately, too. Lael Brainard, Biden’s national economic adviser, points out that inflation-adjusted wages for production and nonsupervisory workers are higher now than they were before the Covid pandemic.So let’s talk about why voters aren’t feeling it. Is it just because Biden is a bad salesman?Paul: Lots of us have been worrying about the disconnect between good numbers and bad vibes. I may have been one of the first people to more or less sound the alarm that something strange was happening — in January 2022! But we’re all more or less making this up as we go along.The most informative stuff I’ve seen recently is from Briefing Book, a blog run by former White House staffers. They’ve tried to put numbers to two effects that may be dragging consumer sentiment down.One effect is partisanship. People in both parties tend to be more negative when the other party controls the presidency, but the Briefing Book folks find that the effect is much stronger for Republicans. So part of the reason consumer sentiment is poor is that Republicans talk as if we’re in a depression when a Democrat is president, never mind reality.Peter: That is so true. And I think the effect is even stronger now than it used to be because we’re more polarized.Paul: The other effect affecting consumer sentiment is that while economists tend to focus on relatively recent inflation, people tend to compare prices with what they were some time in the past. The Briefing Book estimates suggest that it takes something like two years or more for lower inflation to show up in improved consumer sentiment.This is one reason the economy may be better for Democrats than many think. If inflation really has been defeated, many people haven’t noticed it yet — but they may think differently a little over 10 months from now, even if the fundamentals are no better than they are currently.I might add that the latest numbers on consumer sentiment from several surveys have shown surprising improvement. Not enough to eliminate the gap between the sentiment and what you might have expected from the macroeconomic numbers, but some movement in a positive direction.Peter: That makes sense. Ten months from now, people may finally be getting over the trauma of high inflation. On the other hand, and I admit I’m not an economist, I’m still worried we could have a recession in 2024. Manufacturing is soft. The big interest rate increases by the Fed since March 2022 are hitting the economy with a lag. The extra savings from the pandemic have been depleted. The day after Christmas, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said the share of Americans in financial distress over credit cards and auto loans is back to where it was in the depths of the recession of 2007-9.Plus, I’d say the labor market is weaker than it looked from the November jobs report. (For example, temp-agency employment shrank, which is an early warning of weak demand for labor.)Also, small business confidence remains weak.Paul: Glad you brought up small business confidence — I wrote about that the other week. “Hard” indicators like hiring plans are pretty strong. “Soft” indicators like what businesses say about future conditions are terrible. So small businesses are in effect saying, “I’m doing OK, and expanding, but the economy is terrible” — just like consumers!I’m not at all sure when the Fed will start cutting, although it’s almost certain that it eventually will, but markets are already effectively pricing in substantial cuts — and that’s what matters for the real economy. As I write this, the 10-year real interest rate is 1.69 percent, down from 2.46 percent around six weeks prior. Still high compared with prepandemic levels, but financial conditions have loosened a lot.Could there be a recession already baked in? Sure. But I’m less convinced than I was even a month ago.Peter: The big drop in interest rates can be read two ways. The positive spin is that it’ll be good for economic growth, eventually. That’s how the stock market is interpreting it. The negative spin is that the bond market is expecting a slowdown next year that will pull rates down. Also, what if the economy slows down a lot but the Fed doesn’t want to cut rates sharply because Fed officials are afraid of being accused by Donald Trump of trying to help Biden?Paul: I guess I think better of the Fed than that. And always worth remembering that the interest rates that matter for the economy tend to be driven by expectations of future Fed policy: The Fed hasn’t cut yet, but mortgage rates are already down substantially.Peter: Yes.Paul: OK, about the election. The big mystery is why people are so down on the economy despite what look like very good numbers. At least part of that is that people don’t look at short-term inflation, but at prices compared with what they used to be some time ago — but people’s memories don’t stretch back indefinitely. As I said, the guys at Briefing Book estimate that the most recent year’s inflation rate is only about half of what consumers look at, with a lot of weight on earlier inflation. But here’s the thing: Inflation has come way down, and this will gradually filter into long-term averages. Right now the average inflation rate over the past 2 years was 5 percent, still very high; but if future inflation runs at the 2.4 percent the Fed is now projecting, which I think is a bit high, by next November the two-year average will be down to 2.7 percent. So if the economy stays where it is now, consumers will probably start to feel better about inflation.Peter: Except that perceptions of inflation are filtered through politics. Food and gasoline are more expensive for Trump supporters than Biden supporters, if you believe what people tell pollsters. That’s not going to change between now and November.The Obama-Biden ticket beat the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 because voters blamed Republicans for the 2007-9 recession. Obama-Biden had a narrower win in 2012 against Romney-Ryan, and I think one factor was the so-called jobless recovery from that same recession. That’s why Biden is supersensitive about who gets credit and blame for turns in the economy.For the record, Trump might be president right now if it hadn’t been for the Covid pandemic, which sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in April 2020. The economy was doing quite well before that happened. A lot of Republicans are nostalgic for Trumponomics, although I think the economy prospered more in spite of him than because of him. Thoughts?Paul: Most of the time, presidents have far less effect on the economy than people imagine. Big stimulus packages like Barack Obama’s in 2009 and Biden’s in 2021 can matter. But aside from pandemic relief, which was bipartisan, nothing Trump did had more than marginal effects. His 2017 tax cut didn’t have much visible effect on investment; his tariffs probably on net cost a few hundred thousand jobs, but in an economy as big as America’s, nobody noticed.Peter: Just speculating, but I wonder if when people say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy, they’re feeling vibes more than parsing statistics. You know, “We need a tough guy in the White House!”Paul: People definitely aren’t parsing statistics. Only pathetic nerds like us do that. And while Trump wasn’t actually a tough economic leader, he literally did play one on TV.But we don’t really know if that matters, or whether people are still reacting to the shock of inflation and high interest rates, which they hadn’t seen in a long time. Again, the best case for Biden pulling this out is that voters get over that shock, with both inflation and interest rates rapidly declining.Oh, and falling interest rates mean higher bond prices, and often translate into higher stock prices, too — which has also been happening lately.Peter: True, Paul. But cold comfort for people who don’t own stocks and bonds. Or who do own stocks and bonds in their retirement plans but don’t think of themselves as part of the capitalist class. To win in November, Biden and his team are going to need to be perceived as doing something for the working class and the middle class. That’s why you see the White House talking about eliminating junk fees and capping insulin prices.Paul: For what it’s worth, I think a lot of people judge the economy in part by the stock market, even if they don’t have a personal stake. That’s why Trump boasted about it so much, and has lately been trying to say that Biden’s strong stock market is somehow a bad thing.Finally, there are some indications that Democrats in particular are feeling better about the Biden economy. The Michigan survey tracks sentiment by partisanship. The numbers are noisy, but over the past few months Democratic sentiment has been slightly more positive than it was in the months just before the pandemic struck.Peter: Paul, how important do you think the economy will be to voters compared to other issues, such as Trump’s fitness for office, Biden’s age, abortion access, et cetera? I mean, if it’s not important, why are we even having this conversation?Paul: The economy surely matters less than it did when Republicans and Democrats lived in more or less the same intellectual universe — everyone agreed that the economy was bad in 1980 or 2008; now, Dems are fairly positive while Republicans claim to believe that we’re in a severe downturn. But there are still voters on the margin, and weak Democratic supporters who will turn out if they have a sense that things are improving.Peter: Democratic strategists think the election might come down to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, assuming that Biden holds Michigan and New Hampshire and loses Arizona and Georgia. Any thoughts about the economic outlook for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?Paul: No strong sense about either state. But one little-noticed fact about the current economy is how uniform conditions are. In 2008, so-called sand states that had big housing bubbles were doing much worse than states that didn’t; now unemployment is low almost everywhere.Of course, all political bets are off if we have a recession. But there’s a reasonable case that the economy will be much less of a drag on Democrats by November, as the reality of a soft landing sinks in.Oh, and my subjective sense is that for whatever reason, media coverage of the economy has turned much more positive lately. I have to think this matters, otherwise, what are we even doing? And until recently, media reports tended to emphasize the downsides — “Great jobs numbers, and here’s why that’s bad for Biden” has become a sort of running joke among people I follow. These days, however, we’re starting to see reports acknowledging that we’ve had an almost miraculous combination of strong employment and falling inflation.Peter: Paul, what economic indicators will you be paying the most attention to in the next few months with regard to the election? I’ll nominate inflation and unemployment, although those are kind of obvious.Paul: Unemployment, for sure. On inflation, I’ll be watching longer-term measures: Will inflation be low enough to bring down two- or three-year averages? And especially highly visible stuff, like groceries. Thanksgiving dinner was actually cheaper in 2023 than in 2022. Will grocery prices be subdued enough to reduce the amount of complaining?Oh, and I’ll be looking at consumer sentiment, which as we’ve seen can be pretty disconnected from the economy but will matter for the election.Peter: Happy New Year!Source photographs by Caroline Purser and Anagramm/Getty ImagesThe 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: [email protected] the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

Want to ruin a Democratic strategist’s New Year? Bring up President Biden’s popularity problem with younger voters.The strategist may start furiously tap-dancing about this outreach plan or that policy achievement. But she has seen the polling trend line. She has heard the focus groups. She knows that millennials and Gen Z-ers are not feeling the Biden love. Many are threatening to sit out next year’s election. Some are flirting with supporting Donald Trump — or a third-party rando.And even if only a few of them follow through, the president and his party could be in big trouble. Americans younger than 45 have saved the Democrats from disaster in multiple recent elections. Their creeping alienation has the blue team rattled and raging: For the love of God, what will it take to lock in these voters?!This is not a new question. The political world, especially the Democratic Party, has long been in search of the secret formula for wooing younger voters to the polls. Strategists noodle over which issues members of this cohort care about, which candidates they connect with, how best to reach them. In 1994, Bill Clinton ventured onto MTV and overshared about his underwear in an effort to impress the young ’uns. Now that is desperation.Spoiler: There is no secret formula. Or rather, there is a whole host of formulas with scores of constantly shifting variables. Millennials and Gen Z-ers don’t just expect different things from candidates than do older voters; they approach the entire concept of voting differently, generally in ways that make them harder to persuade and mobilize.The people who obsess about this issue for a living can overwhelm you with data and analysis, competing priorities and suggestions. Even the bits they think they have figured out can abruptly shift. (Just when some thought they had a solid grip on this election, along came the war in Gaza.) All that, of course, is on top of the concrete systemic challenges of getting younger people registered for, informed about and comfortable with voting in general.As a close friend who spent years neck deep in the political weeds of cultivating younger voters observed, “The big theme is that there is no theme.”And yet there are a few recurring subthemes that bubble up when you talk with the professionals and with the younger voters themselves. These insights won’t crack the turnout code. Or necessarily save Mr. Biden’s presidency. But they do shed light on some of the more amorphous reasons younger Americans are so hard to turn out — and can maybe even point a way forward.“The No. 1 rule when you’re talking about young people: They may be progressive, but they are not Democrats,” warned Joshua Ulibarri, a partner with the Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners. “They don’t turn out for parties.”Younger Americans may vote more Democratic than their elders, but that does not mean they want to join the team. And while their politics are generally to the left of the party’s center of gravity, this isn’t merely a matter of ideology.“Parties are institutions, and Gen Z-ers aren’t really into institutions,” said Morley Winograd, a senior fellow at the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at the University of Southern California. The research on Gen Z-ers indicates they have little trust in most major U.S. institutions, and it’s hard to get more establishment or institutional than a political party. Certainly among the Gen Z-ers I know (I have kids, and they have friends), maintaining their independence from and skepticism of a compromised political establishment they feel is not working for them is a point of pride.Today’s hyperpartisan system, with its Manichaean mentality, can make parties even more unappealing for younger voters, said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, whose specialty is younger voters. “They are not willing to take that responsibility to have to defend one party and create an enemy of the other.”And definitely don’t expect them to be moved by appeals to help a party take control of Congress or even the White House, Mr. Ulibarri said.Younger voters also are less inclined to turn out simply because they like a candidate’s personality. Now and then, one comes along who inspires them (think Barack Obama) or, alternatively, outrages them enough to make them turn out in protest (think Donald Trump). But more often they are driven by issues that speak to their lives, their core values or, ideally, both.The most outstanding current example of this is the issue of abortion rights, which has emerged as a red-hot electoral force since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Younger voters express anxiety about the practical repercussions of this decision and fury at the government intrusion into people’s personal lives. The issue has a clarity, immediacy and tangibility that appeal to younger voters. This is especially true when it appears as a stand-alone ballot initiative.Younger voters’ focus on issues and values rather than candidates and parties raises the question of whether ballot initiatives could be a way to engage them and propel them to the polls. Supporting such measures is more straightforward than embracing candidates. Plus, they have the advantage of not being (or at least not seeming) as entangled with a particular party. They have more of a direct-democracy vibe. (Please refer to: Institutions suck.) How much more satisfying is it to vote for an issue you are passionate about than for some flawed politician with a fake smile making promises you’re pretty sure he won’t keep?Supporting a candidate, any candidate, means accepting that person’s foibles and flaws along with the good parts. It requires balancing multiple concerns and priorities. And the longer the candidate’s record in public office, the more variables there are to consider. Just take the example currently giving the Biden campaign the worst nightmares: For progressives, at what point does Mr. Biden’s handling of Gaza outweigh his embrace of, say, combating climate change or protecting abortion access or supporting labor unions? What if the only alternative is another Trump term?For younger voters who reject the team mentality of party voting, these equations get complicated and frustrating — often frustrating enough to just skip voting altogether. When researchers ask younger people why they don’t vote, one of the top responses, if not the top one, is: I didn’t feel I knew enough about the candidates.Part of younger voters’ disenchantment may be wrapped up in the nature of progressivism. Younger voters tend to be more progressive than older ones, and progressives, by definition, want government to do more, change more, make more progress. You often hear variations on: Sure, the president did ABC, but what we really need is DEFGHIJXYZ. Or: This climate initiative/health care plan/caregiving investment/pick your policy achievement doesn’t go nearly far enough.This is not to suggest that Mr. Biden hasn’t racked up some notable missteps (Afghanistan!) and failed promises (the student debt mess). But expectations are an inextricable factor. Harvard’s Theda Skocpol refers to “the presidential illusion” among those on the political left, the longstanding idea that the president is a sort of political Svengali and that federal leadership can counter conservatism in states and localities. When reality sets in, these supporters are not shy about expressing their disappointment.Of course, most voting in America calls for choosing between candidates, in all their messy imperfection. Younger voters are less likely than older ones to have resigned themselves to this, to have curbed their expectations and idealism. So where does all this leave campaigns and, trickier still, parties desperate to win over younger voters?Younger voters need to be reminded of the concrete changes their votes can effect. Because of the 2020 election, the Biden administration has pushed through a major investment in fighting climate change; billions of dollars for infrastructure are flowing into communities, including rural, economically strapped areas; the first African American woman was appointed to the Supreme Court; many judges from notably diverse professional backgrounds have been placed on the lower courts, and so on.The dark corollary to this is detailing the explicit damage that can be done if young people opt out, an especially pressing threat with Mr. Trump on the vengeance trail. Separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border, stacking the Supreme Court with abortion-hostile justices, effectively declaring war on science — these were the fruits of the Trump administration. And that’s before you get to his persistent assault on democracy. Think of it all as his practice run, then imagine where another four years could take us.The key is figuring out and effectively communicating the right balance of positive and negative partisanship for the moment, said Mr. Della Volpe, stressing, “The recipe for 2020 will not be the same as 2024.”Another basic step: Candidates need to make clear that they understand and share younger voters’ values, even if they have different plans for working toward realizing their goals. Strategists point to the shrewd decision by Team Biden, after Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 primary contest, to form working groups with Mr. Sanders’s team, stressing their shared values. Connecting elections to something that resonates with younger voters — that is meaningful to their lives — is vital, said Abby Kiesa, the deputy director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a research group at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life that focuses on youth civic engagement. Issue groups can play a useful role in this, she said.Most broadly, everyone from interest groups to parties to candidates needs to push the message that a democratically elected government can still achieve big things. This goes beyond any specific bill or appointee. Younger Americans aren’t convinced that government can make meaningful progress. Some days it is hard to blame them. But this cynicism has terrible implications for democracy, and all of us would do well to fight it.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: [email protected] the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

The president is enjoying a working vacation, a White House official said. Residents hope to bring attention to the Virgin Islands’ economic troubles.As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, migrants stream illegally into the United States in record numbers and an intense 2024 campaign season looms, President Biden is lying low.Here on tropical St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Mr. Biden; the first lady, Jill Biden; and their granddaughter Natalie are spending New Year’s week in a secluded oceanfront villa overlooking the turquoise Caribbean, the president is staying mostly out of the spotlight.On Saturday, Mr. Biden made his first public appearance, venturing out to attend mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Christiansted, the largest town in St. Croix. He and Dr. Biden later taped an interview with Ryan Seacrest, due to air on New Year’s Eve as part of ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” In the evening, the president and first lady dined at Too Chez, one of the island’s top restaurants, and he afterward revealed his New Year’s resolution.“To come back next year,” Mr. Biden said.Republicans have roundly criticized Mr. Biden’s island getaway, which began just a day after he returned to the White House from spending Christmas with family at Camp David.Several lawmakers accused the president of failing to address the migrant surge along the southern U.S. border by taking time away. And on Thursday, when the White House announced in the morning that there would be no public events for Mr. Biden that day as temperatures hovered in the 80s on St. Croix, an arm of the Republican National Committee pounced.“Illegal immigrants are pouring across the open southern border by the tens of thousands every day,” the group RNC Research wrote on the social media site X, adding that Mr. Biden, “on his second vacation in a week — called it a day before noon.”President Biden attended mass on Saturday at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Christiansted, the largest town in St. Croix.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesJulian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said that presidential vacations are virtually always denounced by the opposing party.But even a commander in chief needs to unwind sometimes, Mr. Zelizer noted, and, in this day and age, no president is ever truly unplugged.“It’s not as if the president takes a vacation like many of us and just sits around on the beach or something,” he said. “They go with their full presidential apparatus and they’re surrounded by their advisers.”A White House official described Mr. Biden’s trip as a working vacation. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, accompanied the president to St. Croix and has briefed him multiple times since arriving, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s schedule.On Friday, Mr. Biden condemned Russia for launching what he called the largest aerial assault on Ukraine since the start of the war, and he issued a statement warning that President Vladimir V. Putin “must be stopped.” Asked Saturday if he planned to speak with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after Russia’s latest attacks, Mr. Biden replied, “I speak to him regularly.”He also called on Congress on Friday to approve national security funding for Ukraine and Israel, which has been tied to negotiations over border and immigration policies, and White House officials said the president was closely monitoring those talks, too.Many St. Croix residents said that, even though Mr. Biden was staying largely out of the public eye this year, they appreciated that his visits have helped highlight the history of the island, which was once home to the founding father Alexander Hamilton. They described it as a quirky, warmhearted island where stray cats are well fed at five-star resorts. In Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical “Hamilton,” St. Croix features only as the “forgotten spot in the Caribbean,” from which a young Hamilton pulled himself out of poverty.Mr. Biden’s visit is his second to St. Croix as president, but the Bidens have traveled there more than a dozen times over the years.“He loves St. Croix, and we really love having him here,” said Leonore Gillette, a retired schoolteacher who has lived on the island for 45 years.“We certainly appreciate the infusion of activity,” said Nadia Bougouneau, another longtime resident who works at the Buccaneer, a resort that was filled to capacity with Secret Service agents and members of the media traveling with Mr. Biden. The president played on the 18-hole golf course at the resort last year with his grandson Hunter.Several people, including the governor of the Virgin Islands, fondly recalled Mr. Biden’s visits before he was president — and the Secret Service was not blocking miles of roads for security. Back then, locals and tourists said they would run into him biking, jogging or picking up coffee at Ziggy’s, an island market and gas station on the east end.“We feel like he’s a Virgin Islander,” Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said.“Before he was president, I would be downtown at night and see him in a restaurant, and I’d be sitting with people and say, ‘That’s Joe Biden.’ And people would say, ‘No way,’” he recalled.These days, the governor said, Mr. Biden’s visit gave him a chance to highlight some of the issues facing the U.S. Virgin Islands, which is heavily dependent on tourism and still working to recover from the hurricanes Irma and Maria.Mr. Bryan called the islands’ most serious challenge a requirement to match 10 percent of $15 billion in federal hurricane reconstruction aid. He said the money, and the ability of the Virgin Islands to repair its water systems and other major projects, could be jeopardized because the government cannot afford the approximately $1.5 billion match. The Virgin Islands, home to about 87,000 people, has an annual budget of $1.2 billion.Still, Mr. Bryan said, he does not view Mr. Biden’s New Year’s visit as the best time to make his case to the president.President Biden’s motorcade driving through Christiansted. The U.S. Virgin Islands are still working to recover from the hurricanes Irma and Maria.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times“To be honest, I preferred it when he wasn’t president because he spent more time with me,” he joked, adding that this year, “I really try to stay away from him so he can get a chance to rest, because he’s going to need it to go into this election.”Mr. Biden is entering 2024 with a persistently low job approval rating of 39 percent, according to December polling from Gallup, the worst of any modern-day president seeking re-election. Mr. Zelizer said that makes the policy challenges Mr. Biden faces in the Middle East and Ukraine — and with Congress — all the more difficult.“All of this is going to be waiting for him when he comes back to Washington, and he knows it,” Mr. Zelizer said. He added, “It’s going to be a tough year.” More

Some critics say the battles over the former president’s ballot status are turning him into a martyr and eroding faith in American elections.As the top elections official in Washington State, Steve Hobbs says he is troubled by the threat former President Donald J. Trump poses to democracy and fears the prospect of his return to power. But he also worries that recent decisions in Maine and Colorado to bar Mr. Trump from presidential primary ballots there could backfire, further eroding Americans’ fraying faith in U.S. elections.“Removing him from the ballot would, on its face value, seem very anti-democratic,” said Mr. Hobbs, a Democrat who is in his first term as secretary of state. Then he added a critical caveat: “But so is trying to overthrow your country.”Mr. Hobbs’s misgivings reflect deep divisions and unease among elected officials, democracy experts and voters over how to handle Mr. Trump’s campaign to reclaim the presidency four years after he went to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. While some, like Mr. Hobbs, think it best that voters settle the matter, others say that Mr. Trump’s efforts require accountability and should be legally disqualifying.Challenges to Mr. Trump’s candidacy have been filed in at least 32 states, though many of those challenges have gained little or no traction, and some have languished on court dockets for months.The decisions happening right now come amid a collapse of faith in the American electoral system, said Nate Persily, a Stanford Law School professor who specializes in election law and democracy.“We are walking in new constitutional snow here to try and figure out how to deal with these unprecedented developments,” he said.Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs at a debate in 2022.Ted S. Warren/Associated PressProfessor Persily and other legal experts said they expected the United States Supreme Court would ultimately overturn the decisions in Colorado and Maine to keep Mr. Trump on the ballot, perhaps sidestepping the question of whether Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection. Mr. Persily is hopeful that whatever ruling the court issues will bring clarity — and soon.“This is not a political and electoral system that can deal with ambiguity right now,” he said.Mr. Trump and his supporters have called the disqualifications in Maine and Colorado partisan ploys that robbed voters of their right to choose candidates. They accused Democrats of hypocrisy for trying to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot after campaigning in the past two elections as champions of democracy.After the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s primary ballot, Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement: “Apparently democracy is when judges tell people they’re not allowed to vote for the candidate leading in the polls? This is disgraceful. The Supreme Court must take the case and end this assault on American voters.”Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and Mr. Trump’s most ardent critic in the Republican primary, warned that Maine’s decision would turn Mr. Trump into a “martyr.”But other prominent critics of Mr. Trump — many of them anti-Trump Republicans — said the threat he posed to democracy and his actions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol now required an extraordinary intervention, whatever the electoral consequences.The challenges are based on a Reconstruction Era provision of the 14th Amendment that prohibits anyone who has engaged in rebellion or insurrection from holding federal or state office.Former President Donald Trump spoke at an event in Reno, Nevada, this month.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesJ. Michael Luttig, a retired conservative federal appeals court judge, hailed Colorado and Maine’s decisions as “unassailable” interpretations of the Constitution. Officials in Maine and Colorado who disqualified Mr. Trump from the ballot have written that their decisions stemmed from following the language of the Constitution.But on a recent sunny Friday afternoon in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, Deena Drewis, 37, a copy writer, and Aaron Baggaley, 43, a contractor, both of whom have consistently voted for Democrats, expressed a queasy ambivalence over such an extraordinary step.“I’m really just conflicted,” Mr. Baggaley said. “It’s hard to imagine he didn’t fully engage in insurrection. Everything points to it. But the other half of the country is in a position where they feel like it should be up to the electorate.”Officials in Democratic-controlled California have shown little appetite for following Colorado and Maine. California’s Democratic secretary of state, Shirley Weber, announced on Thursday that Mr. Trump would remain on the ballot, and Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed calls by other Democrats to remove him. “We defeat candidates at the polls,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “Everything else is a political distraction.”In interviews, some voters and experts said it was premature to disqualify Mr. Trump because he had not been criminally convicted of insurrection. They worried that red-state officials could use the tactic to knock Democratic candidates off future ballots, or that the disqualifications could further poison the country’s political divisions while giving Mr. Trump a new grievance to rail against.“Attempts to disqualify demagogues with deep popular support often backfire,” said Yascha Mounk, a professor and political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who has written about threats to democracies. “The only way to neutralize the danger posed by authoritarian populists like Donald Trump is to beat them at the ballot box, as decisively as possible and as often as it takes.”Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, in January. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated PressThe decisions by Colorado’s highest court and Maine’s secretary of state barring Mr. Trump from state primary ballots are on hold for now and are likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.While most of the challenges to Mr. Trump’s candidacy have been proceeding in federal or state courts, Maine’s constitution required the voters seeking to disqualify Mr. Trump to file a petition with the secretary of state, putting the politically volatile and hugely consequential decision into the hands of Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat.Her counterparts in other states said that they had spent months discussing whether they could face a similar decision, and that they had been talking with other elections officials and their legal teams about the thickets of state laws governing each state’s elections.In Washington State, Mr. Hobbs said he did not believe he had the power as secretary of state to unilaterally remove Mr. Trump from the ballot. He was relieved, he said, because he did not think one person should have the power to decide who qualifies to run for president.The stakes for the nation were enormous, Mr. Hobbs said, because of the damage Mr. Trump had already done to faith in the nation’s elections.“It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle,” he said. “This is going to be a long-term effort to try to regain trust among those who have lost it.”Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview this week that she supported decisions by Ms. Bellows and the Colorado Supreme Court to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot.Election workers and secretaries of state have increasingly become the targets of conspiracy theorists and violent threats since Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 defeat; Ms. Griswold said she had received 64 death threats since the lawsuit seeking to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot was filed by six Republican and unaffiliated voters in Colorado.“All of us swear to uphold our state constitution and the U.S. Constitution,” Ms. Griswold said. “Making these decisions takes bravery and courage.”Her office announced this week that, because Mr. Trump’s case had been appealed, his name would be included on Colorado’s primary ballots unless the U.S. Supreme Court said otherwise or declined to take up his case.In Arizona, placing Mr. Trump on the ballot was a more cut-and-dry decision, said Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state. He said that state law required him to list any candidate who had been certified in two other states.He called the blizzard of legal rulings, dissents and contradictory opinions swirling around Mr. Trump’s place on the ballot a “slow rolling civics lesson” that demonstrated the country’s democratic resilience.“I kind of celebrate the notion it’s complicated,” he said. “We’re having this conversation because that’s what democracy is about.”Mitch Smith More