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      Biden Says ‘I’m Not Sure I’d Be Running’ if Not for Trump

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      President Biden has portrayed a second term for Donald Trump as an existential threat to American democracy.President Biden suggested on Tuesday that he might have been content to serve only a single term if his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, were not attempting to recapture the White House.At a campaign fund-raiser in the Boston area, Mr. Biden presented his decision to run for re-election as driven largely by his determination to defeat Mr. Trump a second time and prevent him from returning to power. Mr. Biden has at times portrayed a second term for Mr. Trump as an existential threat to American democracy.“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” he told donors at the Weston, Mass., home of Alan Solomont, a longtime Democratic financial backer who served as ambassador to Spain. “But we cannot let him win.”The president’s remark came at a time when polls show that most Democrats would prefer someone other than Mr. Biden, who turned 81 last month, to represent the party in next year’s election. A survey by CNN in August found that 67 percent of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic wanted another nominee, and 70 percent listed Mr. Biden’s age, health, mental competence or ability to handle the job as their main concern about him.Although he described himself as “a bridge” to the next generation during his 2020 campaign, a comment that some interpreted as a hint that he would serve only one term, Mr. Biden has concluded that he is best positioned to beat Mr. Trump again, justifying a re-election campaign. He faces only long-shot challengers in the Democratic primaries in the form of Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Marianne Williamson, the author.Mr. Trump, who is 77 and has demonstrated his own cognitive issues lately, has outpaced his rivals for the Republican nomination by double digits in the polls and appears poised to steamroller to his third general election. That is despite four criminal indictments on 91 felony counts of illegally trying to overthrow an election, endangering national security and other charges. Despite his political liabilities, surveys show he is either tied with Mr. Biden or leading slightly both nationally and in the battleground states that will decide the Electoral College.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?  More

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      Is Liz Cheney Really Thinking About Running for President in 2024?

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      The former congresswoman is working to ensure that Donald Trump never returns to the Oval Office. She is also keeping her own door wide open.Liz Cheney was widely seen as a Republican superstar in the making, perhaps even a future president, before she was elected to Congress in 2016. Ms. Cheney never discouraged the talk, but Donald J. Trump shattered her glittering future after she voted to impeach him in 2021 and became a pariah in the G.O.P.Now, while vowing to do “everything I can” to ensure that Mr. Trump never returns to the White House, Ms. Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, has suggested that she has not abandoned her own presidential ambitions. In interviews with The Washington Post and USA Today ahead of the publication on Tuesday of her new book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Ms. Cheney broached the possibility of a third-party challenge to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Ms. Cheney told Maeve Reston of The Post. But, she said, “democracy is at risk” in the United States as well as overseas. Ms. Cheney said she would make a final decision in the next few months.Her comments were in keeping with the answer she gave in October to Jake Tapper of CNN about whether she was ruling out a presidential run. “No, I’m not,” she said.Ms. Cheney declined to comment to The New York Times.Despite her remarks, there is no evidence that Ms. Cheney has taken any steps toward running beyond keeping her options open while maximizing her relevancy during a book-promotion tour.She has not hired any campaign staff members. Close associates of hers say they are unaware of any polling, signature-gathering or related efforts associated with mounting a third-party campaign. Her political action committee, the Great Task, has stalled in activity since the 2022 midterms, when Ms. Cheney backed efforts by some Democratic candidates against Republicans who had claimed the 2020 election was stolen.In the meantime, time is running short. Filing deadlines to appear on ballots as a third-party candidate in 2024 begin as early as March in some states. Though she expressed an openness to USA Today to “setting up a new party” that might supplant a Trump-centric G.O.P., such an effort would require the kind of money, personnel and legal maneuvering that would take months if not years to produce.A Cheney presidential run is also likely to undermine her mission of thwarting Mr. Trump’s 2024 ambitions, said one close friend, because her candidacy could siphon some votes away from President Biden. According to the friend, Ms. Cheney’s comment to The Post that she would not have contemplated a third-party run until recently seemed more about her long allegiance to the G.O.P. and less about a new appetite for running as an independent.Among Beltway conservatives, including lobbyists and military hawks, Ms. Cheney remains a popular figure and a woman of presidential timber. Lawmakers and staff members who served with Ms. Cheney on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol privately wondered whether the vice chairwoman was prioritizing her ambitions over a comprehensive investigation of the Capitol riot. To Mr. Trump’s allies, of course, the question answered itself.If the current moment suggests anything beyond the desire to sell books, it is a reminder that Liz Cheney, like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has long understood the importance of political leverage in furthering her core beliefs. For now, she holds no office and has no place in either major party. But she has her voice. More

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      Primaries Are Not the Most Democratic Way to Choose a Presidential Nominee

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      Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by renominating President Biden to face the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in 2024? A nontrivial number of voices in and outside the party seem to think so.But it’s already a mostly moot point. The system Americans use to nominate presidential candidates is not well equipped to make swift strategic adjustments. Voters choose candidates in a sequence of state-level primaries and caucuses. Those contests select delegates and instruct them on how to vote at a nominating convention. It’s an ungainly and convoluted process, and politicians begin positioning themselves a year in advance to succeed in it.It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Political parties in most democracies have the power to choose their leaders without going through a monthslong gantlet.The best way for a party to choose its leader is for that party to convene, confer and compromise on a candidate who serves its agenda and appeals to voters. The conventions of the mid-20th century, deeply flawed as they were, were designed for that purpose. If those flaws were fixed, they would be far better than what we use today.Should Mr. Biden run again or step aside? On the one hand, he has stubbornly low approval ratings, and a number of polls show him trailing Mr. Trump. On the other hand, polling a year out is often misleading, and so are job approval ratings in a polarized age. Mr. Biden is old, but so is Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden defeated him last time.Replacing an incumbent president with another nominee is very rare and probably should be. But a convention could do it if necessary. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson stepped down at the beginning of the year, and Democrats could realistically expect to find a nominee before Election Day.The system was different then. When Mr. Johnson decided not to run for re-election, he declared, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”The “and I will not accept” matters. Mr. Johnson was acknowledging that the party might nominate him even if he didn’t run. In 1968, when the decision was made at the national convention, the party could do that. That’s not something it can easily do today.Only a small fraction of states held primaries that year, and most of those didn’t commit delegates. Primaries were a tool to gauge public support, not make the final decision. Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, won no primaries or caucuses. Instead, he won with support of unpledged delegates selected through state conventions — delegates who represented an older, more establishment part of the party.The apparent injustice of Mr. Humphrey winning the nomination without winning primaries was a big part of how we got to our current system. Many members of the Democratic Party felt that their perspectives weren’t well represented by those establishment delegates; their voices were being heard in the primaries and caucuses.The party set out to create a national convention that was more representative of the party, but what evolved was something else, the system we use today — the one that has all but locked us into a candidate almost a year out from Election Day.Early states winnow the field. The next states largely determine who the nominee is. States that vote late in the process often have little effect. Success depends on the ability to stand up a campaign in state after state in the first few months of the year, which in turn depends on the ability to raise money and attract media attention. It’s a process, not a simple decision.This system could produce a candidate who is battle tested by the primaries and otherwise broadly popular. It might also select a candidate who appeals narrowly to a group of dedicated followers, especially in early states, where a close victory can be leveraged into later success. (Think of Mr. Trump in 2016.)In no way does it let party leaders take stock of an awkward situation, such as what Democrats face now (low approval ratings for an incumbent) or, for that matter, what Republicans face (a front-runner facing multiple indictments).Party leaders are not completely helpless. In “The Party Decides,” the political scientists Marty Cohen, David Karol and John Zaller and I argued that party activists and leaders could exert a lot of influence on their party’s choice — so much so that they typically get their way. When they can agree on a satisfactory candidate, they can help direct resources to that candidate and help that person stay in the race if he or she stumbles. (Think of Mr. Biden in 2020.)But that takes time. It is, at best, a blunt instrument (hence its failure among Republicans in 2016). The nomination is still won in the primaries, and an incumbent is especially hard to replace.Most democracies give far less power than that to a single political leader, even an incumbent or influential former leader. Healthy parties can limit their leaders.Empowering the Democrats to replace Mr. Biden or the Republicans to move on from Mr. Trump would come with costs. A party that could persuade a sitting president to stand down would also have the power to persuade outsiders, like Bernie Sanders and Mr. Trump, to not run at all.For some, giving party leaders this kind of influence is unsettling. It shouldn’t be. The job of choosing a nominee is complicated. It involves the strategic trade-off between what kind of candidate can win in November and what kind of candidate represents what the party wants in a leader.Letting the party make these decisions is not inherently undemocratic. Just as voters select members of Congress, who then gain expertise, forge compromises and bargain to make policy, so too could voters select party delegates, who would then choose nominees and shape their party’s platform.Polling and even primaries could continue to play a role. In many years, the voice of the party’s voters might speak loudly, and party leaders would simply heed it. In other years, such as for Democrats in 2008, voter preferences might be more mixed. It’s worth noting that in 2008, Democratic superdelegates (those not bound by the results of any primary) switched their support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama after seeing his appeal in the primaries. If all of the delegates had been free to switch, would the outcome have been the same? We don’t know, but in a representative democracy, elected representatives do often listen to voters.In other words, the development of a more active, empowered party convention would not have to be a return to the past. The nomination of Mr. Humphrey in 1968 was a problem, but it wasn’t because the decision was made at a convention. It was because the delegates at that convention didn’t represent the party’s voters.Moving the decision back to the convention would not be a trivial matter. Even if voters and politicians could adjust to the change — a big if — each party would need to select representative and competent delegates. Our experience with representative democracy should tell us that this is possible but far from inevitable.But such a convention would still be superior to the current system, in which a small number of voters in a handful of states choose from a pool of self-selected candidates who have been tested mostly by their ability to raise money and get attention in debates.Both of these systems have a claim to being democratic. But only the first would give the party the kind of agency implied by claims that it is making a mistake by renominating the incumbent.Hans Noel, an associate professor of government at Georgetown, is the author of “Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America” and a co-author of “Political Parties” and “The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform.”Source images by Drew Angerer, Rost-9D, and ajt/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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      R.F.K. Jr. Allies Say They’ll Spend Over $10 Million on Ballot Access

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      A super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential candidacy is leading the costly and legally complex effort, which the Democratic establishment is trying to fight.A super PAC backing the independent presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to spend $10 million to $15 million to get Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in 10 states, a substantial effort that, even if partly successful, could heighten Democratic concerns about his potential to play the role of spoiler in 2024.The hefty sum underscores the challenge facing Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories, as he pursues his long-shot White House bid. It also shows the substantial financial support he has generated so far.The super PAC, American Values 2024, has raised at least $28 million. (The group last disclosed its unofficial fund-raising haul in early October, but has not filed official records since mandatory midyear reports with the Federal Election Commission in July, when it had $9.8 million on hand.) The group was planning to announce the strategy on Monday, according to a draft announcement reviewed by The New York Times.The states, which include several battlegrounds, are among the country’s most populous and carry, between them, 210 Electoral College votes — Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas.Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, as well as efforts from No Labels, the Green Party and other independent candidates, have worried President Biden’s campaign and its Democratic allies. They fear that such campaigns could siphon votes away from Mr. Biden and tilt the election toward his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.States make their own rules governing ballot access. Independent candidates must navigate a labyrinthine network governing signature collections and financial reporting requirements. The effort is time-consuming and expensive.Tony Lyons, the super PAC’s co-founder, said that the goal was to get Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in every state, but that the group was focusing on the 10 states where it expected the most difficulty, particularly in terms of expensive legal challenges. “That’s where we believe we can have the most impact,” he said.He said the campaign was working on its own ballot access efforts — the campaign’s website includes a sign-up for people who would like to be contacted by volunteers.In an interview this year, Ralph Nader, who twice ran for the presidency as the Green Party’s candidate, estimated that it would cost at least $5 million simply to collect signatures to qualify for ballots. The inevitable legal fights to defend ballot access, he said, would require many more millions of dollars.Marc Elias, one of the Democratic Party’s leading election lawyers, has been retained by the super PAC American Bridge to vet third-party and independent candidates’ ballot access in battleground states where such candidates could damage Mr. Biden.Mr. Elias said in an interview last month that he would work to make sure that any candidate who might be a threat to Mr. Biden followed the precise letter of the law when it comes to qualifying for the ballot.“The law is the law. The law requires candidates to get on the ballot in a certain way,” Mr. Elias said. “Once you have the rules you have for ballot access, you have to meet them and there’s no exception to it.”Mr. Kennedy entered the presidential race in April as a Democratic challenger to Mr. Biden, but ended his bid for the party’s nomination in October, arguing that Democrats’ primary system was rigged against him.From the outset, Mr. Kennedy has drawn support from disaffected Democrats, Republicans and independents, some of whom have been drawn to his anti-establishment message. A poll from The New York Times and Siena College that was released last month found that unfavorable opinions of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump left an opening for independent candidates like Mr. Kennedy.Democrats are not alone in their concerns about Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. The Republican National Committee, on the day he announced his independent bid, sent out an email titled “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.,” listing ways in which he has been aligned with Democrats in the past. More

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      Talk About Abortion, Don’t Talk About Trump: Governors Give Biden Advice

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      At an annual gathering in Arizona, Democratic governors offered a series of explanations for the president’s political struggles and suggested ideas for selling voters on his re-election.America’s Democratic governors brag about booming local economies, preside over ribbon-cuttings of projects paid for with new federal legislation and have successfully framed themselves as defenders of abortion rights and democracy.Almost all of them are far more popular in their home states than the Democratic president they hope to re-elect next year.While President Biden is mired in the political doldrums of low approval ratings and a national economy that voters are sour on, Democratic governors are riding high, having won re-election in red-state Kentucky last month and holding office in five of the seven most important presidential battleground states.The governors, like nearly all prominent Democrats, are publicly projecting confidence: In interviews and conversations with eight governors at their annual winter gathering at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix over the weekend, they expressed on-the-record optimism that Mr. Biden would win re-election.But also like many Democrats, some privately acknowledged fears that former President Donald J. Trump could win a rematch with Mr. Biden. They also said that Mr. Biden, at 81 years old, might not compare well with a younger Republican like Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or even former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.The governors offered a series of explanations for Mr. Biden’s political struggles and supplied free advice. Here are six ways they believe he can raise his standing ahead of next year’s election.Talk more about abortion.Mr. Biden barely says the word abortion in his public statements, a fact that frustrates fellow governors hoping he can, as many of them have, use anger over the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade to improve his political fortunes.“We should talk about all the threats to women’s health care, including abortion, and use that word specifically,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. “We should be talking about it like that because Americans are awake. They are angry that this right could be stripped away and we are the only ones fighting for it.”On abortion politics, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey acknowledged that “it’s widely known that this is probably an uncomfortable reality for him,” given that Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, once voted in the Senate to let states overturn Roe v. Wade and his stance on abortion rights has evolved over the years.Mr. Murphy said Mr. Biden must be forthright about discussing the likelihood that Republicans would aim to enact new abortion restrictions if they win control of the federal government in 2024 and emphasizing the Democratic position that decisions about abortion should be left to women and their doctors.“That has to be laid out in a much more crystal-clear, explicit, affirmative way,” he said.Stop talking about Trump.The governors broadly agreed that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee. They don’t love Mr. Biden’s recent turn to focus more attention on his predecessor.“You’ve got to run for something and not against someone,” said Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. That is easy for Mr. Beshear to say — he is among the nation’s most popular governors and just won re-election in a deep-red state.Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas urged the president to stop talking about Mr. Trump altogether. Be positive, she said, and let others carry the fight to Mr. Trump.“If I were in Biden’s shoes, I would not talk about Trump,” she said. “I would let other people talk about Trump.”Appeal to moderate Republicans and independents.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota also said Mr. Biden needed to adopt some of Mr. Trump’s penchant for bragging.“He’s been modest for so long, to watch him do it now feels a little uncomfortable,” Mr. Walz said.Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said his constituents were hoping Republicans would nominate someone other than Mr. Trump.Mr. Murphy said hopefully that Republicans supporting someone else in their primary might stay home or wind up voting for Mr. Biden next year.“What if Trump is the nominee? What’s the behavior pattern among the Haley, DeSantis and Chris Christie supporters? Where do they go?” Mr. Murphy said. “I find it hard to believe that a majority of them are going to Trump.”Tell people what Biden’s done.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, fresh off a prime-time Fox News debate against Mr. DeSantis that seemed meant in part to elevate the ambitious Mr. Newsom to the role of Mr. Biden’s leading defender, lamented “the gap between performance and perception.”He was one of several governors who said their constituents felt good about their lives but were pessimistic about the state of the country.“People feel pretty good about their states, feel pretty good about their communities, even their own lived lives,” Mr. Newsom said. “You ask, ‘How are you doing?’ They say, ‘We’re doing great, but this country’s going to hell.’”Mr. Newsom said Mr. Biden’s biggest problem was that he had not been able to communicate to voters that he is responsible for improvements in their lives.“People just don’t know the record,” he said. “They don’t hear it. They never see it.”In North Carolina, which last week became the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Cooper said people who are newly eligible for health care were not likely to credit Mr. Biden or White House policies.“The people who are getting it don’t really associate it with anybody other than finally being able to get health care for themselves,” he said.Focus more attention on legislative achievements.The governors all seemed to agree that they would like to see Mr. Biden spend more time cutting ribbons and attending groundbreakings for new projects paid for by infrastructure, climate and semiconductor funding he signed into law.“I would be doing those morning, noon and night,” Mr. Murphy said.Ms. Kelly of Kansas, who won her red state twice, said Mr. Biden should announce the opening of new projects and factories because she said it would focus attention away from his age.“I would spend a lot of time doing those just because they’re relatively easy and they are energizing,” she said.And Mr. Walz, whom his fellow governors voted the new chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said Mr. Biden’s challenge would be explaining to people the future benefits of investments being made now.“The problem is going to be, it’s going to take us 20 years to build all this infrastructure out,” Mr. Walz said. “Whether they see it within the next 11 months or not, that’s what we need to tell the story.”Find some Democrats with enthusiasm.No governor at the Phoenix gathering expressed more desire to give Mr. Biden another term in the White House than Mr. Newsom, who used a 40-minute chat with reporters to take a victory lap from his debate with Mr. DeSantis, a ratings bonanza for the Fox News host Sean Hannity that doubled as the largest audience of the California governor’s political career.Mr. Newsom, who since the middle of last year has evolved from a friendly critic of Mr. Biden’s political messaging to one of his most enthusiastic supporters, said his fellow governors needed to perform like old-school politicians who could deliver a constituency for an ally through force of will by activating supporters to follow political commands.“We, the Democratic Party, need to get out there on behalf of the leader of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, and make the case and do it with pride,” Mr. Newsom said. “We’ve got to wind this thing up.”The task may be difficult. Mr. Cooper described “a general malaise and frustration” that has Americans blaming Mr. Biden for forces often beyond his control.But Mr. Newsom said that if others were wary of carrying the torch for Mr. Biden in the next year, he was not afraid to do so all by himself.“If no one’s showing up doing stuff, I’m going to show up,” he said. “I can’t take it. I can’t take the alternative. I can’t even conceive it.” More

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      Trump’s Defense to Charge That He’s Anti-Democratic? Accuse Biden of It

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      Indicted over a plot to overturn an election and campaigning on promises to shatter democratic norms in a second term, Donald Trump wants voters to see Joe Biden as the bigger threat.Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been indicted by federal prosecutors for conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with a plot to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly claimed to supporters in Iowa on Saturday that it was President Biden who posed a severe threat to American democracy.While Mr. Trump shattered democratic norms throughout his presidency and has faced voter concerns that he would do so again in a second term, the former president in his speech repeatedly accused Mr. Biden of corrupting politics and waging a repressive “all-out war” on America.”Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy,” he said. “Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”Mr. Trump has made similar attacks on Mr. Biden a staple of his speeches in Iowa and elsewhere. He frequently accuses the president broadly of corruption and of weaponizing the Justice Department to influence the 2024 election.But in his second of two Iowa speeches on Saturday, held at a community college gym in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Trump sharpened that line of attack, suggesting a more concerted effort by his campaign to defend against accusations that Mr. Trump has an anti-democratic bent — by going on offense.Polls have shown that significant percentages of voters in both parties are concerned about threats to democracy. During the midterm elections, candidates who embraced Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him were defeated, even in races in which voters did not rank “democracy” as a top concern.Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign has frequently attacked Mr. Trump along those lines. In recent weeks, Biden aides and allies have called attention to news reports about plans being made by Mr. Trump and his allies that would undermine central elements of American democracy, governing and the rule of law.Mr. Trump and his campaign have sought to dismiss such concerns as a concoction to scare voters. But on Saturday, they tried to turn the Biden campaign’s arguments back against the president.At the Cedar Rapids event, aides and volunteers left placards with bold black-and-white lettering reading “Biden attacks democracy” on the seats and bleachers. At the start of Mr. Trump’s speech, that message was broadcast on a screen above the stage.Mr. Trump has a history of accusing his opponents of behavior that he himself is guilty of, the political equivalent of a “No, you are” playground retort. In a 2016 debate, when Hillary Clinton accused Mr. Trump of being a Russian puppet, Mr. Trump fired back with “You’re the puppet,” a comment he never explained.Mr. Trump’s accusations against Mr. Biden, which he referenced repeatedly throughout his speech, veered toward the conspiratorial. He claimed the president and his allies were seeking to control Americans’ speech, their behavior on social media and their purchases of cars and dishwashers.Without evidence, he accused Mr. Biden of being behind a nationwide effort to get Mr. Trump removed from the ballot in several states. And, as he has before, he claimed, again without evidence, that Mr. Biden was the mastermind behind the four criminal cases against him.Here, too, Mr. Trump conjured a nefarious-sounding presidential conspiracy, one with dark ramifications for ordinary Americans, not just for the former president being prosecuted. Mr. Biden and his allies “think they can do whatever they want,” Mr. Trump said — “break any law, tell any lie, ruin any life, trash any norm, and get away with anything they want. Anything they want.”Democrats suggested that the former president was projecting again.“Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, said in a statement. “You don’t have to take our word for it — Trump has admitted it himself.”Even as he was insisting that Mr. Biden threatens democracy, Mr. Trump underscored his most antidemocratic campaign themes.Having said that he would use the Justice Department to “go after” the Biden family, on Saturday, he swore that he would “investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”Mr. Trump has frequently decried the cases brought him against by Black prosecutors in New York and Atlanta as racist. (He does not apply that charge to the white special counsel in his two federal criminal cases, who he instead calls “deranged.”)Yet Mr. Trump himself has a history of racist statements.At an earlier event on Saturday, where he sought to undermine confidence in election integrity well before the 2024 election, he urged supporters in Ankeny, a predominantly white suburb of Des Moines, to take a closer look at election results next year in Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta, three cities with large Black populations in swing states that he lost in 2020.“You should go into some of these places, and we’ve got to watch those votes when they come in,” Mr. Trump said. “When they’re being, you know, shoved around in wheelbarrows and dumped on the floor and everyone’s saying, ‘What’s going on?’“We’re like a third-world nation,” he added.Mr. Trump’s speeches on Saturday reflected how sharply he is focused on the general election rather than the Republican primary contest, in which he holds a commanding lead.With just over six weeks until the Iowa caucus, Mr. Trump dismissed his Republican rivals, mocking them for polling well behind him and denouncing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as disloyal for deciding to run against him.He also attacked Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, for endorsing Mr. DeSantis and suggested her popularity had tumbled after she had spurned Mr. Trump.“You know, with your governor we had an issue,” Mr. Trump said, prompting a chorus of boos.Ann Hinga Klein More

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      It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Fascism.

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      To spend more than a little time toggling between news sites of different bents is to notice a fierce debate over the American economy right now. Which matters more — the easing of inflation or the persistence of prices that many people can’t afford or accept? Low unemployment or high interest rates? Is the intensity of Americans’ bad feelings about the economy a sane response or a senseless funk estranged from their actual financial circumstances?On such questions may the 2024 election turn, so the litigation of them is no surprise. It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s the public relations war over it.But never in my adult lifetime has that battle seemed so agonizingly beside the point, such a distraction from the most important questions before us. In 2024, it’s not the economy. It’s the democracy. It’s the decency. It’s the truth.I’m not talking about what will influence voters most. I’m talking about what should. And I write that knowing that I’ll be branded an elitist whose good fortune puts him out of touch with the concerns of people living paycheck to paycheck or priced out of housing and medical care. I am lucky — privileged, to use and own the word of the moment — and I’m an imperfect messenger, as blinded by the peculiarities of his experience in the world as others are by theirs.But I don’t see any clear evidence that a change of presidents would equal an uptick in Americans’ living standards. And 2024, in any case, isn’t shaping up to be a normal election with normal stakes or anything close to that, at least not if Donald Trump winds up with the Republican presidential nomination — the likeliest outcome, to judge by current conditions. Not if he’s beaten by a Republican who had to buy into his fictions or emulate his ugliness to claim the prize. Not if the Republican Party remains hostage to the extremism on display in the House over these past few months.That assessment isn’t Trump derangement syndrome. It’s straightforward observation, consistent with Liz Cheney’s new memoir, “Oath and Honor,” at which my Times colleague Peter Baker got an advance peek. Cheney describes House Republicans’ enduring surrender to Trump as cowardly and cynical, and she’s cleareyed on what his nomination in 2024 would mean. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she writes. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”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?  More

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      There’s a Bomb Under the Table

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      Alfred Hitchcock explained the nature of cinematic terror with a story about the bomb under the table. People are sitting around a table having a mundane conversation about baseball when — boom! — a bomb goes off, instantly killing everyone. You’ve momentarily surprised the audience.But what if, Hitchcock asked, we are shown beforehand that the bomb is there?“In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the secret,” Hitchcock explained to his fellow director François Truffaut. While everyone is just sitting around chatting, the viewer wants to shout: “Don’t sit there talking about baseball! There’s a bomb!”“The conclusion,” Hitchcock said, “is that whenever possible the public must be informed.”I bring this up because we know there’s a bomb under the table — the threat of a second Donald Trump presidency. And we have a fairly good idea of the crippling destruction that will ensue. Yet here we are, still talking about baseball.“A shadow looms over the world,” The Economist noted in a recent editorial about the year ahead. “That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probably is beginning to sink in.”Trump’s increasingly authoritarian braying makes his intentions clear: nullifying parts of the Constitution, imprisoning political foes. The Trump who used to obsess about what the mainstream media — even Twitter/X — thought of him no longer does. He doesn’t need to. The Trump who tried to burnish his credibility by stocking his cabinet with establishment Republican stalwarts will no longer risk anything less than proven fealty. There will be no one on the inside leaking or secretly restraining Trump in a second term; Trump has kept track of the names.Trump’s first term will look benign compared with what we can expect from a second. “The gloves are off,” Trump has declared.Still, the Democrats act as if everything is normal. They talk about why to support Joe Biden’s campaign for re-election: He has done a pretty good job, they say. He led the country out of the pandemic and avoided a deep recession. He beat all other primary candidates last time. And he beat Trump before. We should go with a proven contender.But even if Biden has done a pretty good job as president, most Americans don’t see that. His approval ratings have just hit a new low. Biden may want another term, but the obvious if unchivalrous response is, “So what?” Not every person, whether young or elderly, wants what is in his own best interest, let alone in the interest of a nation. Democrats can’t afford to take a version of the “It’s Bob Dole’s turn” approach this time around.Whatever success Biden had in the primaries and general election last time, we are not in the same place we were in 2020. The pandemic has receded; the animating cause behind widespread domestic protests has changed. We are now entangled in two overseas wars. Several polls show a tossup between Biden and Trump.“Stop badmouthing Biden,” some Democrats will say, as if acknowledging reality were akin to arming the enemy. But desperate times call for bucking tradition. What we need are extraordinary measures.That means Biden voluntarily stepping aside — and not automatically backing his vice president either. What we need is a capable, energetic candidate who can lure the Democratic faithful to the ballot while offering a plausible alternative for independents and non-Trumpian Republicans.And we have options. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota has already taken the gutsy step of declaring his candidacy and shown that he’s serious about the effort. A full slate of potential contenders offer the same kind of moderation that propelled Biden to the presidency, but with the benefit of youth and energy: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Even mixed-bag Gov. Gavin Newsom of California or the relatively unproven Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland.It’s past time to start taking the Trump threat seriously. We can no longer pretend that Biden is the same candidate at 81 that he was four years ago, or that the extraordinary circumstances of 2020 mirror those of today. We can no longer entertain petty comparisons over which Republican primary candidate is less awful, as if any of it matters. There is no more illusion that Trump will slip away, that Republicans will move on from Trumpism or that a parade of indictments or even convictions will make a whit of difference to his most ardent supporters.When Trump won in 2016, Americans who sat on the sidelines could say in their defense that they were surprised. Nobody had warned them that Trump could actually triumph. Nobody had warned them about what he would do with that presidency — or they just hadn’t noticed the signs. We no longer have those excuses.We know there is a bomb under the table.Source photographs by Luis Diaz Devesa and Joe Sohm/Visions of America, via Getty Images.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More