Elections

Lisa Matthews voted for Barack Obama. But just the once. The daughter of an African American mother and Puerto Rican father, the 47-year-old grew up in one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Camden, New Jersey, a struggling former shipbuilding port on the Delaware river.“Camden was predominantly black, poor, a lot of welfare recipients, single parents, and crime. Big drug trade. My father was in the military, but he left the family when I was five. My mom was a single mom at the age of 23. We lived on food stamps,” Matthews says. “I had two of my cousins killed there in the city, and my stepbrother was murdered as well. My uncle was killed by an unknown shooter in 1987. It was a tough place to grow up.”Like her mother, Matthews became a single parent at 23 and worked several jobs to stay afloat. But her absent father’s time in the military had planted a seed. Her parents were posted around the US and to Britain, and her mother talked about other places with wonder. Matthews carried that with her. “My sister and I were very interested in the world, in other cultures,” she says. In her 20s, a friend encouraged her to move to Concord, North Carolina, where she got a job in a bank. Now she lives in a large house in a plush suburb where we chat over tea and Jammie Dodgers (she still loves all things British). She’s wearing her politics on her T-shirt: “President Trump 2020, Keep America Great”.In 2008, Matthews voted for Obama, helping to swing the former slave state to America’s first black president. “I wasn’t a really liberal Democrat back then. Even Barack Obama wasn’t that liberal in 2008. I was just excited that he was black, to be honest,” she says. But by the time the next election came round, she questioned the point of an African American president.“The black community rallied around him, but what message did he have for them? He could have said, this is how me and Michelle got out of the South Side of Chicago. We can help lift people up,” she says. “Instead he was telling people they’re oppressed: ‘Let me give you a handout.’”Matthews came to think that summed up the Democrats. As she saw it, the party kept the poor dependent on welfare instead of providing paths out of poverty. She drifted toward the Republicans, although she wasn’t ready to support Mitt Romney against Obama in 2012; that year, she didn’t vote.Four years later, Donald Trump made his attention-grabbing ride down the golden escalator of his New York tower to announce a run for president. By then Matthews had become a bank fraud investigator; she now owns her own home for the first time. She voted against Trump in the primaries, thinking he didn’t stand a chance. But when he won the Republican nomination, she embraced it.“I thought he was just a great American, New Yorker businessman. He was the epitome of what America is like. Brash, throwing money around,” she says. “But I didn’t know what kind of president he would be. I was never against him, but I wasn’t as enthusiastic as I am now. Now I tell people I love Trump.”***If Trump pulls off the unexpected once again, his victory will be built on the foundation of the four in 10 voters who have consistently said they will stick with him, despite one of the most tempestuous presidencies of modern times. Voters who have excused him, explained him, even despaired of him at times, but never spurned him.The most visible of those supporters can be found at Trump’s rallies, sporting Make America Great Again hats and cheering the president’s provocations; or forming armed vigilante groups, ostensibly to defend order and history. They push Trump’s myriad conspiracy theories, including about Covid-19, even after the president caught the virus. But most of those who remain loyal are not the ultras seen on television. Neither are they easily slotted into the demographics often assigned to Trump supporters – the embittered former factory workers turning their anger on minorities and voting against their own interests.When you see the coal trains and the trucks, and people going back to work, you see people’s attitudes changeThis autumn I drove for over a month across the US – from the south to Appalachian coal country in one of the poorest states, West Virginia; and from Detroit, Michigan, once the engine of America’s industrialisation, to the upper reaches of rural Minnesota on the border with Canada – the miles of Trump signs and flags are one demonstration of the enthusiasm some of his supporters retain. The voters were as varied as the landscape. The coalmine worker who was without a job for years. The former military officer whose father came to the US illegally. The estate agent and small city mayor angry about China. The former police officer despairing at Black Lives Matter. All told me why they are determinedly sticking with Trump.***Ronald Reagan, on his way to unseating President Jimmy Carter in 1980, famously asked American voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The division, uncertainty and fear of 2020 makes that seem an inadequate question ahead of this election. Bo Copley, however, doesn’t hesitate to say that he is. Copley lost his maintenance job on a West Virginia coalmine a year before the last election, and gained fleeting fame in 2016 after confronting Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail over her pledge to “put a lot of coalminers out of business”. More

White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the Department of Homeland Security this month.The report, published Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 “terrorist plots and attacks” in the first eight months of this year, or 67 percent.The finding comes about two weeks after an annual assessment by the Department of Homeland Security warned that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland” and that white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years.The think tank researchers found that the threats of violence were linked in part to this year’s mass protests and confrontations with protesters from a variety of factions. The report said that “far-left and far-right violence was deeply intertwined” and that far-left groups, including anarchists and antifascist organizations, were responsible for 12 attacks and plots so far this year, or 20 percent of the total number, up from 8 percent in 2019.The report by C.S.I.S., which describes itself as a nonpartisan center, found that far-left extremists most frequently targeted law enforcement, military and government facilities and personnel.The report highlighted several cases, including fatal shootings related to protests and the F.B.I.’s arrest of 13 men accused of plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, a Democrat. Those cases, along with President Trump’sdenunciations of left-wing activistsand his refusal at a presidential debate to condemn an extremist right-wing group, have repeatedly raised fears this year of politically motivated violence.“Part of the issue we’re seeing is with people congregating, whether it’s for protests or other issues, in cities, is it has basically brought together extremist individuals from all sides in close proximity,” said Seth Jones, the director of the Transnational Threats Project at the center. “We’ve seen people on all sides armed, and it does raise concerns about escalation of violence in U.S. cities.”The report also linked the threat of violence to the country’s charged politics, the coronavirus pandemic and its financial fallout. It warned that violence could rise after the presidential election because of increasing polarization, growing economic challenges, concerns about racial injustice and the persistence of coronavirus health risks.It said that if the Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., wins the election, white supremacists could mobilize, with targets likely to be Black people, Latinos, Jews and Muslims. A Republican presidential victory could involve violence emanating out of large-scale demonstrations, the report said.There were some encouraging signs. The number of fatalities from domestic terrorism has been relatively low so far this year, compared with some periods of U.S. history.Five fatalities were caused by domestic terrorism in the first eight months of this year, compared with the past five years, in which total fatalities ranged from 22 people to 66.Election 2020 More

More than 50 million Americans have cast ballots in the US presidential election with 11 days to go in the campaign, a pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in over a century, according to data from the US Elections Project on Friday.The eye-popping figure is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Republican Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger, as well as Americans’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000 people across the United States.Many states have expanded in-person early voting and mail-in ballots ahead of election day on 3 November, as a safer way to vote during the coronavirus pandemic.The high level of early voting has led Michael McDonald, the University of Florida professor who administers the US Elections Project, to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.In Texas, the level of voting has already surpassed 70% of the total turnout in 2016. In Georgia, some have waited in line for more than 10 hours to cast their ballots. And Wisconsin has seen a record number of early votes, with 1.1 million people having returned their ballots as of this week. Voters in Virginia, Ohio and Georgia have also seen long lines at early voting sites. More

In Thursday’s presidential debate, President Trump made several misleading claims about the business dealings of the family of his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Trump suggested, without evidence, that Mr. Biden had consulted for his son Hunter Biden to help with the younger Biden’s business. Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Biden had used his influence during his time as vice president to help his son land lucrative business deals. Both claims were misleading.But the comments nonetheless drew attention to Hunter Biden and his work, according to a New York Times analysis of Google searches and Facebook posts during and after the debate.Searches for “Hunter Biden” on Google more than tripled during the debate compared with before the event, according to Google Trends data. Facebook posts about Hunter Biden also spiked, according to data from CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Facebook.Nearly 70,000 new Facebook posts popped up after the debate mentioning “false, unproven or misleading claims” about Hunter Biden’s business interactions, said Avaaz, a progressive human rights organization that studies misinformation. The majority of the posts came from Facebook pages that had been repeatedly flagged for sharing false or misleading claims, Avaaz said.A Facebook spokeswoman said the company’s third-party fact checkers had assessed and debunked several claims related to Hunter Biden.Mr. Trump’s comments at last month’s presidential debate also led to spikes in internet traffic. After he said that the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, should “stand back and stand by,” searches for the group soared, as did posts about them on Twitter and Facebook. More

By most measures, President Trump’s poll ratings have long been loitering below the waterline, even more so since the pandemic swept through the United States, killing more than 220,000 and devastating the nation’s economy.That is, by most measures except one that has regularly been central to past elections: support for his handling of the economy. According to an average of recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, 50.5 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy, compared with 47.5 percent who disapprove.How can that be, in a nation with an unemployment rate — 7.9 percent — that remains deeply in recessionary territory?For one thing, before the pandemic arrived, Mr. Trump used his loose relationship to the truth to hammer into accepted dogma the notion that he was responsible for creating “the greatest economy in the history of the world.” The unemployment rate had fallen to a 51-year low, the economy was growing steadily (albeit slowly) and inflation remained subdued.For another, the recent economic turmoil has had vastly divergent effects on different groups of Americans. Many have not been damaged financially or have even found their economic well-being improved. Think, for example, of those employed in companies with significant online revenues, those who own stocks and those who work in largely unaffected industries like technology.To be sure, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings on the economy have declined since the pandemic began, although from lofty levels well above those that prevailed during most of his term.But the reality of Mr. Trump’s economy is far different from his portrayal of it. For the first three years of his presidency, his economy amounted to nothing more than a continuation of the recovery engineered by President Barack Obama.Job growth, for example, was faster during Mr. Obama’s last three years than during the first three years of Mr. Trump’s. More

Among the words or phrases that were never spoken in the two presidential debates were:Syria, human rights, drones, democracy, inequality, dictatorship, Israel, Palestine, Middle East, United Nations, World Health Organization, Guantánamo, European Union, Britain, Brexit, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Africa (or any single African state), South America, terrorism, multilateral, authoritarianism, alliance.That’s a pretty good measure of the shrinking of the American mind.President Trump never mentioned Afghanistan, where the United States lost more than 2,400 lives and spent some $2 trillion over the past two decades. Joe Biden did, once.One of the characteristics of a nightmare is that it is all-consuming. Everything beyond it fades into the murk. President Trump, in an extraordinary sustained broadcast of his self-obsession, has managed to corral the world into the shadow of an orange colossus.Yes, Trump was more civil in the second debate, and Biden, ahead in the polls, did himself no harm. Still, it was an affair of stunning mediocrity and myopia.Let’s just posit for a moment that the rise of China, the assertiveness of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the resurgence of dictatorships, the fragility of democracies, the challenges of population growth in Africa, the pandemic’s exposure of a global leadership vacuum, rising inequality in Western societies, the frozen inadequacy of the United Nations, social fracture, the spread of the surveillance state, and the hate-multiplying impact of social media platforms may be pivotal issues of the coming decade.What did we hear on these themes? Essentially nothing.TV commentators went through their thing, opining on the significance of Biden looking at his watch, the importance (or not) of gazing directly into the camera, the punch Trump landed (or not) on Hunter Biden. I did not hear any laments on all that Trump’s America, in its America-first inward turn, has relegated to oblivion.Oh, yes, Syria, where some 80 percent of the survivors of a civil war that left more than 400,000 people dead now live in poverty and 40 percent of people are unemployed. Oh, yes, Hong Kong, and Belarus, where brave protesters have been battling for democracy in struggles that would once have engaged the American imagination. Oh, yes, the Middle East, where so much American treasure and such sustained American diplomacy have been deployed in the pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, and so many American and Iraqi lives were lost not so long ago in Iraq.Gone, baby, gone.The shrinking of the American mind involves a kind of numbness. It has become difficult to think or see beyond the noise emanating from the White House. Indignation fatigue has set in. There he goes again. That plaintive whining voice. Without respect for truth, without respect for science, what debate can there be?In the end the debates amounted to a portrait of the growing irrelevance to the rest of the world of an insular United States. Two men in their 70s showed an almost complete disregard for the I-want-to-help-change-the-world idealism of Generation Z. This was close to insulting. The exchanges were, on the whole, petty, petulant and predictable.In them, I saw the reflection of an American society in which constructive debate is near impossible. Trump has governed through fomenting division and violence. He has almost never risen to themes of reconciliation or outreach. As a result, American debate is reduced to rival tribes shrieking contempt for each other. These tribes forget that nobody ever had their mind changed by being made to feel stupid.It’s worth examining some of the debates’ vanished words for a moment. The protection of human rights must always be a crucial American mission. Democracy is still the best defense of human dignity and freedom. Inequality continues to grow, eating away at the social fabric of societies, compounding injustice, a word mentioned once by Biden in the first debate. Guantánamo remains a stain on America’s conscience. Young men and women in the American military are out in dangerous far-flung places fighting terrorism.The United Nations, the World Health Organization and the European Union are examples of multilateral organizations Trump’s United States has flouted to its cost. Britain and France are nuclear powers that are critical partners in an alliance (NATO) that has brought peace and stability to Europe. Africa, famously home to “shithole” countries for Trump, is where roughly two-thirds of population growth will occur between 2020 and 2050; its fate is also humanity’s.Speaking of the future, America, as it approaches its 250th anniversary this decade, is still a young country. It is not yet preposterous to believe that its best days lie ahead. It is still a land of striving, space, churn and reinvention where what binds people is greater than what separates them, if only a leader would seek to heal rather than hate.The essence of America is openness. History, geography, immigration and fate have established that. The shrinking of the American mind under Trump therefore amounts, for Americans, to a dangerous denial of themselves. Prolonged for another four years, in a second Trump term, it would negate the American idea, without which, at least for this immigrant, the United States, as conceived, with all its flaws, ceases to be.Perhaps, in the end, the greatest usefulness of the debates was as a vivid illustration of just how far we have fallen.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Early voting has already generated long, long lines in many states, and with the November election just 11 days away, many states and cities have imposed safety measures to protect voters and poll workers from exposure to the coronavirus.But polling places still have the potential to become “mass gathering events,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in an advisory released on Friday, adding that measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 could be improved.The C.D.C. based its latest advice on a survey from the experiences of 522 poll workers in Delaware’s statewide primary in September.Guidelines issued by the agency in June recommended various ways to minimize crowds at polling locations, including absentee voting and extended voting hours.To cut down on disease transmission, the C.D.C. also recommended putting up physical barriers between voting machines; spacing the machines apart from one another; indicating 6-foot distances with signs or floor markings for those waiting in line to vote; designating separate entrances and exits; the use of protective gear — masks, face shields, gloves and gowns — for poll workers assisting sick voters; and allowing curbside voting for people who are ill.“Ensuring that ill voters can vote while maintaining poll worker and voter safety will be essential to minimizing transmission without restricting voting rights,” the report said.But in Alabama, where curbside voting had been allowed, the state’s attorney general ordered that it be stopped, and on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban.The new survey of Delaware poll workers did not provide information about whether any cases of Covid were linked to the voting centers. The questions involved only the workers’ observations about the conditions and practices at 99 of the state’s polling places.The Delaware survey found that most workers and voters wore masks, but did not always use them properly to cover both the mouth and nose. Voters were less careful than poll workers. About 73 percent of the respondents said they very rarely or never saw other poll workers wearing masks the wrong way. But only 54 percent of the workers surveyed said that they rarely or never saw sloppy mask use by voters.Noting that “a substantial proportion” of the poll workers saw incorrect mask use by voters, the report said, “further messaging on proper mask use, including at polling locations, might be needed to strengthen the effectiveness of masks during upcoming elections.”The C.D.C. suggested that providing masks for voters “might support adoption of personal prevention practices.”Poll workers were also more likely than voters to use hand sanitizer.Nineteen of the 522 workers in the survey had contact with a voter who was ill, with or without a known Covid diagnosis, the report said. Fifteen of the 19 said they wore masks during that contact, but none wore the other protective gear recommended by the C.D.C. for such encounters: face shield, gown, gloves. The survey suggested that the workers had “limited training” in use of the gear.Poll workers in general face multiple risks: Many are older, with health problems that make them especially vulnerable to severe illness if they contract Covid. And they come into close contact with many people on election days, often closer than the 6-foot “social distance” recommended to minimize transmission of the virus.Continuing efforts to recruit younger poll workers might reduce the proportion of workers at risk for severe cases of Covid, the report said.In the meantime, the C.D.C. offered up a list of ways to help minimize the risk for voters: go at off-peak times, like midmorning; monitor the voter line from your car and join when the line is short; fill out any needed registration forms ahead of time and review a sample ballot at home to cut down on time spent at the polling location; and take your own black ink pen, or stylus to use on touch-screen voting machines. More