Elections

In a memoir and a novel, the characters deal with grief by singing in front of strangers.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesDear readers,Let’s get one thing out of the way: I have zero interest in making you do karaoke. Like most enthusiasts (or so I assume), I don’t want to force anyone into sacramental public humiliation, nor do I want to watch from the stage while you silently ponder what kind of repressed loser is driven to sing White Town to a room full of drunk people who wandered in from an advertising convention at the Javits Center. On a Monday night.I don’t know when my entire personality became Someone Who Does Karaoke, and by extension Someone Oddly Defensive. But as exhibitionism goes, it’s pretty harmless — and as therapy goes, pretty cheap. More than this, something magical can happen when a roomful of strangers comes together to (voluntarily) do something that has nothing to do with their real life, for no reason other than the joy of singing.—Sadie“Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke,” by Rob SheffieldNonfiction, 2013Candice Watson via PangoBooks“To enter into that karaoke mind-set, you have to leave behind all your notions of good or bad, right or wrong, in tune or out of tune,” Sheffield writes in this, the “Walden” of karaoke memoirs. “The kara in the word karaoke is the same as the one in karate, which means ‘empty hand.’ They’re both ‘empty’ arts because you have no weapons and no musical instruments to hide behind — only your courage, your heart, and your will to inflict pain.”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

Did Thursday’s debate change voters’ minds about who should be president? Did it sway the undecided? Times Opinion asked our columnists and contributors to weigh in on who won and lost Thursday night, and we’ve asked our readers to do the same.“If the purpose was to talk policy and answer the moderators’ questions, Biden won. If the goal was to show vigor, energy and the ability to finish the term, then Trump won,” wrote Travis Brodbeck, a reader in Scotia, N.Y. “But America lost in this debate.”While many conceded that Donald Trump came out on top and thought it was time for President Biden to bow out, some said there was no real winner and questioned how we wound up with the choices before us in this election.“Is this seriously the best we have? A convicted felon and an old guy who has a bad cold and looks exhausted?” asked Danielle Aiko Werts of Socorro, N.M. “Who let this go forward? They should have postponed this mess.”More analysis from our readers follows. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.Who won and whyMike Fietz, Charlottesville, Va.: Trump won the debate. Not on the merits, since everything he says is a nonsensical lie, but by TKO while his opponent was tangled in the ropes. There is a very small chance that America won this debate if Democrats band together in its wake and get Joe Biden off the ticket. I’m not sure how likely that is to happen, but it’s the only way that anything good comes out of this depressing night.Leland Burke, Tiverton, R.I.: Trump won. Mostly because Biden lost. This is a sad and frightening day for our future. There is no do over, Joe. Walk away with dignity, while you still can. Do the right thing.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

As a former Republican who spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, I watch the current Democratic panic over President Biden’s debate performance with a mix of bafflement and nostalgia.It’s baffling that so many Democrats are failing to rally around a wildly successful president after one bad night. But it does remind me of why Republicans defeated Democrats in so many races Republicans should have lost.Donald Trump has won one presidential election. He did so with about 46 percent of the popular vote. (Mitt Romney lost with about 47 percent.) The Republican Party lost its mind and decided that this one victory negated everything we know about politics. But it didn’t.One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position.Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by a margin of seven million and needs new customers. He could have laid out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure. Instead, he celebrated his tax cuts for billionaires.He could have reassured voters who are horrified, in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, by the stories of young girls who become pregnant by rape and then must endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations. But Mr. Trump bizarrely asserted that a majority pro-abortion-rights country hated Roe v. Wade and celebrated his role in replacing individual choice with the heavy hand of government.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

He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself.I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.In Washington, people often become what they start out scorning. This has happened to Joe Biden. In his misguided quest for a second term that would end when he’s 86, he has succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump. And he is jeopardizing the democracy he says he wants to save.I got to know Biden in 1987 when he was running for president. He was hailed then as a leading orator of the Democratic Party, even though he could be windy. I knocked him out of that race when I wrote about how he cloaked himself in the life of Neil Kinnock, the British Labour leader who was a soaring speaker, and how he gave speeches that borrowed, probably unwittingly, from Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.I ran into Biden in a Senate stairwell on his way to make a speech dropping out. He was alone, studying his script. We looked at each other in silence — struck by the weight of the moment — then went our separate ways to the same news conference.Biden was a buoyant soul who had been told he should be president since he was elected to the Senate at 29. And he wasn’t going to let the plagiarism scandal, or his pursuant health problems, stop him. He had two aneurysms in 1988 and later said his doctors told him he wouldn’t be alive if his campaign had continued, and he kidded me that I’d saved his life. He also did not let the other tragedies that scarred his life drag him down.I marveled at the fact that Biden forgave me. He told me that it was better that we stay on good terms. He did not get mad, even when I joked that his new hair plugs looked like a field of okra during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. He called to chastise me, with good humor, but I hid under my desk, afraid to take the call.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

What Kamala Harris, Jaime Harrison, Ron Klain and other party leaders have said about the liabilities of their candidate’s age.Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeListen: How Democrats Got Here With BidenProminent party members on concerns about age.As you may have heard, Thursday night was the first debate between President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump. In short, it was not a great night for Mr. Biden.The president’s debate performance triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months have been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.So, how is this happening? Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how has the Democratic Party arrived at this moment?That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up has been putting to senior Democratic leaders for the past 18 months. And we wanted to revisit some of those conversations now in a special episode.They include our interviews with Vice President Harris, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison and Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

On This Week’s Episode:Boen Wang goes back to a day before he was born, a day that changed the course of his family’s story.Courtesy Boen WangNew York Times Audio is home to “This American Life.” New episodes debut in our app a day early. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

Beryl was a tropical storm in the North Atlantic Ocean late Friday Eastern time, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 40 miles per hour. Follow our coverage here.  All times on the map are Eastern. Beryl is the second named storm to form in […] More

President Biden’s stumbling performance in the debate against former President Donald J. Trump has some Democrats raising the possibility of nominating an alternative candidate and mulling over a roster of names. High on the list is, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose status as Mr. Biden’s running mate might make her an easy candidate for delegates to turn to during a difficult moment. But a crop of Democratic governors and other figures are often mentioned, too.A candidate switch would most likely require Mr. Biden to step out of the race, something his campaign says he has no intention of doing. And the risks are real. Some of the highest-profile potential stand-ins listed below have never endured the vetting and road test of a presidential race. There is a long list of candidates who looked great on paper and withered on the campaign trail.“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said Barbara Boxer, the former senator from California. “Being vetted for president is like no other vetting. We don’t know how these people would do.”Here are a few of the contenders being discussed:Doug Mills/The New York TimesKamala HarrisVice President Harris, a former prosecutor and senator of California, has at times struggled to define her role at Mr. Biden’s side. Initially charged with addressing polarizing and intractable issues like illegal migration and voting rights, she has been viewed by Democratic donors and supporters of Mr. Biden as a potential political liability. Though those concerns have eased, she has been weighed down by low approval ratings that are barely higher than the president’s.Still, Ms. Harris has for months stumped for the president as one of his main campaign surrogates. She has recently become the White House’s lead voice as a defender of abortion rights. In March, she met with abortion providers at a clinic in St. Paul, Minn., in what is believed to be the first visit by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic. And Ms. Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, has worked to shore up Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities with Black and young voters.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