Biden, Joseph R Jr

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Biden’s View on Presidential War Powers Has Shifted

      by

      The president says he can direct limited military operations without lawmakers’ approval. Most G.O.P. presidential candidates, including Donald J. Trump, did not answer a survey on executive power.If he is elected to a second term, President Biden pledged that he will go to Congress to start any major war but said he believed he was empowered “to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad” without such approval when such strikes served critical American interests.“As president, I have taken great care to ensure that military actions carried out under my command comply with this constitutional framework and that my administration consults with Congress to the greatest extent possible,” he wrote in response to a New York Times survey of presidential candidates about executive power.“I will continue to rigorously apply this framework to any potential actions in the future,” he added.The reply stood in contrast to his answer in 2007, when he was also running for president and, as a senator, adopted a narrower view: “The Constitution is clear: Except in response to an attack or the imminent threat of attack, only Congress may authorize war and the use of force.”In the survey, The New York Times asked major presidential candidates to lay out their understanding of issues that can be critical to the outcome of policy fights but about which they are rarely asked: the scope and limits of a president’s power to act unilaterally or in defiance of statutes, particularly in war, secrecy and law enforcement.Mr. Biden’s answers showed how his view of executive power evolved over years in the White House — eight as Barack Obama’s vice president and now nearly three as president.Only a handful of candidates for the Republican nomination engaged in the survey, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami before he suspended his campaign late last month.Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman and entrepreneur, answered only about half of the 14 questions, and former President Donald J. Trump declined to participate altogether, as did Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, among others.The Times has published in full the answers of participants, including Mr. Biden and two of his Democratic challengers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson.Notably, Mr. Biden declined to embrace the idea of curtailing emergency powers Congress enacted that presidents can activate if they declare that there are exigent circumstances, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration.Mr. Trump invoked emergency powers to spend more on a border wall than lawmakers were willing to appropriate, and the Biden administration invoked the authority for a plan to forgive more than $400 million in student debt. (The Supreme Court struck down the proposal over the summer.) There are bipartisan proposals in Congress to impose new curbs, such as by ensuring that national emergencies terminate after 30 days unless lawmakers affirm a presidential declaration.Asked whether he would sign such a bill, Mr. Biden instead made a vague remark about “working with Congress on devising sensible solutions to the challenges we face as a nation.” He added that he would use every tool at his disposal to respond to emergencies.“If Biden is not open to reform — and his answer was as noncommittal as he could be without saying he was not open to it — then it is likely dead on arrival,” Professor Goldsmith said.On the topic of pardons, every candidate who answered the survey said that a president cannot pardon himself. While in office, Mr. Trump claimed he had a legal right to do so, but that is an ambiguous and untested constitutional question. It could become important if he wins the 2024 election even as he faces criminal charges in two federal cases.Former President Donald J. Trump claimed he had the legal right to pardon himself.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIndeed, while Mr. Trump did not participate in the survey, many of its questions addressed disputed assertions of executive power he made as president, and he and his allies are openly planning to expand his authority over the machinery of government if he wins in 2024. Mr. DeSantis has also pushed an expansive view of executive powers as Florida governor.The refusal by the two men and most other G.O.P. contenders to answer questions on the powers they are seeking from voters reflects a party shift that emerged in the 2016 primary, which Mr. Trump upended by becoming the front-runner ahead of establishment candidates.Other Republican presidential hopefuls in the current primary campaign who declined to answer the questions included Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, and Will Hurd, a former representative of Texas.By contrast, most major Republican primary candidates in 2007 and 2011 were willing to answer the versions of the questions put to them those years, including the party’s eventual nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney.Four years ago, 17 Democrats vying for their party’s nomination to challenge Mr. Trump also participated in the project. Mr. Biden was among them, making his answers this cycle the third time he has participated. (His willingness to do so as an incumbent seeking re-election also stood in contrast to Mr. Obama, who declined to participate in 2011.)In 2019, Mr. Biden had already shifted to embracing the view, adopted by the executive branch under administrations of both parties, that presidents have broader constitutional authority to carry out limited attacks on other countries without congressional authorization, so long as it falls short of full-scale war.As president, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden used force unilaterally, citing their claimed constitutional authority to use military force without congressional permission. In April 2017 and again in April 2018, Mr. Trump directed airstrikes against Syrian government forces, and Mr. Biden in June 2021 and in August 2022 directed airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria.Mr. Pence, who was vice president at the time of Mr. Trump’s strikes, said: “As commander in chief, the president has a constitutional duty to use his executive authority to protect the country from imminent threats. Whether a threat is imminent is a matter of judgment, and it is essential the president be a person of character, experience, and competence whose judgment the American people can trust.”To be sure, just because candidates commit to respecting a limit while on the campaign trail does not mean they will follow through once in office. But their legal policy statements can offer a way to analyze and bring attention to any departure from what they told voters.In 2019, for example, Mr. Biden said that if elected, he would order the Justice Department to review and potentially replace a legal policy memo that says sitting presidents are temporarily immune from indictment. He strongly criticized the department’s interpretation of the Constitution, which limited the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and Mr. Trump’s attempts to impede that inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III.But Mr. Biden never followed through on that pledge. He is now protected himself by the Justice Department’s theory since a special counsel, Robert Hur, is investigating how several classified documents were in his possession when he left the vice presidency.In his survey answers this time, Mr. Biden sidestepped a question about that issue, instead offering a vague statement about Justice Department independence.“As president, I have fulfilled my campaign promise of restoring a strong and independent Department of Justice led by top-flight legal professionals dedicated to realizing the ideal that this nation was founded on of equal justice under the law,” he wrote. “This means no one is above the law — especially the president of the United States.” More

    • 63 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      The 2024 Executive Power Survey

      by

      The Candidates Biden Kennedy Jr. Williamson Hutchinson Pence Ramaswamy Suarez Did not respond to questions. Burgum Did not respond to questions. Christie Did not respond to questions. DeSantis Did not respond to questions. Haley Did not respond to questions. Hurd Did not respond to questions. Scott Did not respond to questions. Trump More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force

      by

      If Donald Trump wins a second term, he and his allies want to revive a plan to allow a president to fire civil service workers who are supposed to be hired on merit. The Biden administration is trying to thwart it.When President Biden took office, he swiftly canceled an executive order his predecessor Donald J. Trump had issued that could have enabled Mr. Trump to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. But Democrats never succeeded in enacting legislation to strengthen protections for the civil service system as a matter of law.Now, with Mr. Trump seemingly poised to win the G.O.P. nomination again, the Biden administration is instead trying to effectively Trump-proof the civil service with a new regulation.On Friday, the White House proposed a new rule that would make it more onerous to reinstate Mr. Trump’s old executive order if Mr. Trump or a like-minded Republican wins the 2024 election.But Trump allies who would most likely have senior roles in any second Trump administration shrugged off the proposed Biden rule, saying they could simply use the same rule-making process to roll back the new regulation and then proceed. Legal experts agreed.The proposed rule addresses the move Mr. Trump tried to make late in his presidency by issuing an executive order known in shorthand as Schedule F. It would have empowered his administration to effectively transform many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired — into political appointees who can be hired and fired at will.Career civil servants include professional staff across the government who stay on when the presidency changes hands. They vary widely, including law enforcement officers and technical experts at agencies that Congress created to make rules aimed at ensuring the air and water are clean and food, drugs and consumer products are safe.Mr. Trump and senior advisers on his team came to believe that career officials who raised objections to their policies on legal or practical grounds — including some of their disputed immigration plans — were deliberately sabotaging their agenda. Portraying federal employees as unaccountable bureaucrats, the Trump team has argued that removing job protections for those who have any influence over policymaking is justified because it is too difficult to fire them.Critics saw the move as a throwback to the corrupt 19th-century patronage system, when all federal jobs were partisan spoils rather than based on merit. Congress ended that system with a series of civil-service laws dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, described Schedule F as “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes.”The legality of Schedule F was never tested because Mr. Biden revoked the order before any federal workers were reclassified. But Mr. Trump has vowed to reinstate it if he returns to office in 2025 — and his motivations, now, are openly vengeful. He has boasted that he will purge a federal bureaucracy that he has disparaged as a “deep state” filled by “villains” like globalists, Marxists and a “sick political class that hates our country.”President Biden’s administration introduced a rule on Friday to strengthen protections for the civil service system.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe proposed new rule was unveiled by the White House’s Office of Personnel Management in a lengthy filing for the Federal Register on Friday. It would allow workers to keep their existing job protections, such as a right to appeal any firing or reassignment, even if their positions were reclassified. It would also tighten the definition of what types of positions can be exempted from civil service job protections, limiting it to non-career political appointees who are expected to turn over when a presidency ends.The regulatory proposal argued that maintaining protections for career civil servants enhances the functioning of American democracy because such federal workers have institutional memory, subject matter expertise and technical knowledge “that incoming political appointees may lack.” They should be free to disagree with their leaders — short of defying lawful orders — without fear of reprisal, the proposed rule states.The public will now have 60 days to comment on the proposed rule, but the Biden administration expects to complete it by early 2024.A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment on Mr. Biden’s effort.Biden officials and people supportive of their plan are projecting optimism about the significance of the new regulation to bolster protections for the civil service. Among them is Rob Shriver, the deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the government’s human resources department.“Our proposed regulation is strong and based in law and has a strong rationale,” Mr. Shriver said. “Anyone who wants to explore a change in policy would have work to do,” he added. “They’d have to go through the same administrative rule-making process and make sure that their policy is grounded in the law.”Mr. Trump’s allies have been aware of the proposed rule since the spring, when the Biden administration cited it on a government website as part of its 2023 regulatory agenda. Trump allies say they don’t expect it to do much more than delay by a number of months their renewal of Schedule F if Mr. Trump wins back the presidency.James Sherk, the former Trump administration official who came up with the idea for Schedule F, defended the order and said that reimposing it would not be difficult despite the new rule.“The Biden administration can, if they want, make removing intransigent or poorly performing senior bureaucrats harder on themselves,” said Mr. Sherk, who now works at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials. “The next administration can just as easily rescind those restrictions. With regards to reissuing Schedule F, this proposed rule would be a speed bump, but nothing more.”Another fervent supporter of Schedule F is Russell T. Vought, the president of the Center for Renewing America, a think tank with close ties to the former president. In the Trump administration, Mr. Vought had been the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He proposed reassigning nearly 90 percent of his agency’s staff as Schedule F employees, making them vulnerable to being summarily fired if he deemed them obstructive to the president’s agenda.That threat was never acted upon — Mr. Trump issued the Schedule F order in October 2020, shortly before losing re-election — but Biden administration officials say that career civil servants are still living with the hangover from what nearly happened and are anxious about the prospect of Schedule F returning.Russell T. Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a fervent supporter of Schedule F.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJason Miller, a senior official in Mr. Biden’s Office of Management and Budget who has worked on the new rule, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s Schedule F order “exposed the fragility of the existing system — the system that has been in place for 140 years to ensure we have a dedicated nonpartisan civil service.”Mr. Miller said the impact of Schedule F “is still felt to this day.” He added, “We have carried that with us. It is not just here in O.M.B. It is across federal agencies.”Mr. Vought, however, said Schedule F was about removing poor performers, and characterized the proposed regulation as little impediment to reviving the idea.“This expected move by the Biden administration to forestall accountability within the bureaucracy against poor performers merely reinforces what we already knew — Schedule F rests on a sound legal foundation, is going to succeed spectacularly and the only chance to stop it is to install procedural roadblocks,” he said.Even if Mr. Trump unexpectedly loses the Republican nomination, there’s a good chance that whomever defeats him will also plan to dismantle the administrative state. Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P., and two of Mr. Trump’s leading rivals are indicating they want to go even further than he does.“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep-state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day 1 and be ready to go,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at an event in New Hampshire in July.On Wednesday, the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy outlined an even more radical plan than Mr. Trump’s for dismantling much of the government. Mr. Ramaswamy said he would shut down multiple federal agencies and fire 75 percent of the federal work force, although both the legal and practical substance undergirding his attention-seeking proposal appeared thin.“I would not view the efforts to protect the integrity of the professional civil service as just antidotes to Trump,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has jurisdiction over the federal civil service. “I see them as authoritarianism repellents, generally.”Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P. and Vivek Ramaswamy intends to take it further.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesDemocrats had initially tried to change federal law to prevent any return of Schedule F, but opposition by Republicans — where Senate rules allow a minority of 40 lawmakers to block most legislation — thwarted the effort.When the House was still controlled by Democrats in the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency, it attached a measure strengthening protections for the merit-based civil service system as an amendment to a “must-pass” annual defense bill in 2022. But Republican opposition kept it off the Senate version and then forced Democrats to drop it when the two versions were reconciled.Democrats used their control of the House in Mr. Biden’s first two years to pass proposed reforms in response to the ways in which Mr. Trump’s presidency flouted norms. Other ideas Democrats proposed included making it harder for a president to offer or bestow pardons in situations that raise suspicion of corruption, to refuse to respond to oversight subpoenas and to take outside payments while in office.The House passed a bill that combined those and other ideas in December 2021. But Republicans almost uniformly opposed such measures, portraying them as partisan attacks on Mr. Trump, and the Senate’s filibuster rule meant they had the power to block them from becoming law. And Mr. Biden did not make enacting post-Trump reforms a bully-pulpit focus.Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that seeks to make government more effective, has been working with the Biden administration on this and other proposals to bolster the civil service. He said he understands the vulnerability of the new proposed rule to being overturned, but he said it would make reimposing Schedule F even more vulnerable to legal challenges than it was when Mr. Trump first issued the order.Other Democrats, who fear the return of Mr. Trump and Schedule F, view the Biden effort less enthusiastically.“While the Biden administration’s forthcoming regulation is a good first step to protect the federal civil service from politicization, I’ve consistently said this demands a legislative fix,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, who along with Senator Tim Kaine — both Democrats of Virginia — has led congressional efforts to prevent a return of Schedule F.“The Biden administration must make this a top legislative priority,” Mr. Connolly added. “That is the only thing that is going to stop Trump’s crusade to remake the civil service in his image.” More

    • 200 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Lo que hay que saber sobre la huelga contra tres fabricantes de automóviles en EE. UU.

      by

      El sindicato y General Motors, Ford Motor y Stellantis siguen teniendo grandes diferencias en materia de salarios.[Lee aquí, en inglés, el minuto a minuto de la huelga automotriz en EE. UU.]El sindicato United Auto Workers (UAW), que representa a alrededor de 150.000 trabajadores de plantas automotrices estadounidenses, decretó una huelga ‘limitada y dirigida’ contra tres de las mayores fabricantes de automóviles del país la madrugada del viernes cuando el sindicato y las empresas no llegaron a un acuerdo para suscribir nuevos contratos.Las tres fabricantes —General Motors, Ford Motor y Stellantis, propietaria de Chrysler, Jeep y Ram— habían dicho que podrían verse obligadas a suspender o ralentizar la producción si no era posible llegar a un acuerdo para la medianoche del jueves. El presidente del UAW, Shawn Fain, enfatizó que el jueves es la “fecha límite, no un punto de referencia”.El sindicato buscaba negociar un contrato independiente a cuatro años con cada fabricante de automóviles. El UAW nunca se ha ido a huelga en las tres empresas al mismo tiempo, sino que ha preferido hacerlo una por una. Pero Fain había dicho que, en esta ocasión, tanto él como sus colegas están dispuestos a irse a huelga en las tres empresas.¿Cuál es el punto de desacuerdo en el conflicto laboral?La remuneración es el tema principal de las negociaciones.El UAW exige un aumento salarial del 40 por ciento en un periodo de cuatro años, lo cual, según Fain, no dista del aumento en el sueldo de los directores ejecutivos de dichas empresas en los últimos cuatro años.Hasta el pasado 8 de septiembre, la postura de ambas partes era muy distinta: las empresas ofrecían un incremento en los sueldos de entre un 14 y un 16 por ciento en cuatro años. Fain calificó la oferta de “ofensiva” y señaló que el sindicato está firme en su objetivo de un aumento del 40 por ciento.¿Qué papel desempeña el cambio a los autos eléctricos en las negociaciones?La industria automotriz se encuentra en plena transición masiva a los vehículos operados con batería, por lo que GM, Ford y Stellantis están invirtiendo miles de millones de dólares en el desarrollo de nuevos modelos y la construcción de fábricas. Las empresas han dicho que esas inversiones les dificultan pagarles salarios más altos a los trabajadores. Afirman que ya de por sí se encuentran en gran desventaja competitiva con respecto a fabricantes de automóviles no sindicalizadas como Tesla, que domina el mercado de los vehículos eléctricos.Al UAW le preocupa que las empresas aprovechen la transición a los automóviles eléctricos para recortar empleos o contratar más trabajadores no sindicalizados. El sindicato busca que las fabricantes de automóviles cubran a los trabajadores de las fábricas de baterías en sus contratos nacionales con el UAW. En este momento, esos trabajadores no tienen representación sindical o bien se encuentran en negociaciones de contratos independientes. Pero las empresas argumentan que legalmente no pueden aceptar esa solicitud porque esas plantas son proyectos de coinversión.¿Qué ocurrió en la última huelga del UAW?La huelga más reciente del UAW ocurrió en 2019, y fue contra General Motors. Casi 50.000 empleados de General Motors dejaron de trabajar durante 40 días. La empresa informó que la huelga le había costado 3600 millones de dólares.La huelga concluyó después de que ambas partes llegaron a un acuerdo que le puso fin a una estructura salarial de dos niveles conforme a la cual a los empleados más nuevos se les pagaba mucho menos que a los veteranos. GM también convino en pagarles más a los trabajadores.¿Cómo afectaría a la economía una huelga contra las tres fabricantes de automóviles?Una pausa prolongada en la producción de automóviles podría producir una reacción en cadena en muchas partes de la economía estadounidense.Una huelga de 10 días podría costarle a la economía 5000 millones de dólares, según cálculos de Anderson Economic Group. Una huelga más prolongada podría comenzar a afectar los inventarios de automóviles en las distribuidoras, lo que elevaría el precio de los vehículos.La industria automotriz se encuentra en una situación más vulnerable que en 2019, la última vez que el UAW se fue a huelga. Al principio de la pandemia, la producción de automóviles se detuvo y produjo una reducción marcada en la oferta de vehículos. Los inventarios de autos nacionales se mantienen en aproximadamente una cuarta parte del nivel que tenían a finales de 2019.¿Una huelga tendrá ramificaciones políticas?Definitivamente podría tenerlas.El presidente Joe Biden se ha descrito como “el presidente más partidario de los sindicatos laborales” e intentó cimentar sus relaciones con los sindicatos laborales antes de arrancar su campaña de reelección. Pero el UAW, que por lo regular apoya a los candidatos demócratas, como lo hizo con Biden en su contienda en 2020, no ha declarado que vaya a apoyarlo en la campaña de 2024.El sindicato teme que la decisión de Biden de promover los vehículos eléctricos pueda erosionar más la cantidad de miembros de los sindicatos en la industria automotriz. Fain ha criticado al gobierno por otorgar grandes incentivos federales y préstamos para nuevas fábricas sin exigir que esas plantas empleen a trabajadores sindicalizados.El expresidente Donald Trump, que muy probablemente conseguirá la candidatura republicana, ha intentado ganarse a los miembros del UAW. Ha criticado las políticas de Biden para la industria automotriz y el clima por considerarlas negativas para los trabajadores y los consumidores.J. Edward Moreno es el becario David Carr 2023 en el Times. Más de J. Edward Moreno More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Why Are Democrats Losing Ground Among Nonwhite Voters? 5 Theories.

      by

      There’s no shortage of solid hypotheses, and the best explanation may be a combination of them.Why is President Biden losing ground among Black, Hispanic, Asian American and other nonwhite voters?There’s no easy answer for this relative weakness that shows up in polling, and there might never be one. After all, we still don’t have a definitive explanation for why Donald J. Trump made big gains among white working-class voters in 2016 or Hispanic voters in 2020, despite the benefit of years of poll questions, final election results and post-election studies.While the question may be hard, getting the best possible answer matters. Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, recently asked me on social media whether the Democratic challenge is the absence of a “compelling economic vision.”If Democrats believe that’s the answer, Mr. Khanna and his colleagues might approach the election differently than if they believe the answer is crime, the migrant crisis or perceptions of a “woke” left. The choice of approach might not only affect who wins, but also the policies and messages promoted on the campaign trail and perhaps ultimately enacted in government.A definitive answer to our question may be beyond reach, but there’s no shortage of solid hypotheses. The various theories are not mutually exclusive — the best explanation may synthesize all of them.Theory 1: It’s about the moment — Biden, his age, the economy and abortionWhy do surveys show President Biden struggling among all voters nowadays, regardless of race? The biggest reasons typically cited are inflation, the economy and his age.In each case, there’s an argument these issues ought to hurt Mr. Biden more among nonwhite voters, who tend to be younger and poorer than white voters.Of all the explanations, these would probably be the most promising for Democrats in the long term. In the short term, Mr. Biden could hope to gain ground if inflation continued to lose steam and the economy avoided recession.For now, he and the Democrats are counting on issues like abortion to compensate for their weaknesses. That might help Democrats among white voters, but it might not help much among nonwhite voters. In New York Times/Siena College polling over the last year, just 64 percent of nonwhite voters say they believe abortion should be mostly or always legal, a tally that falls beneath usual Democratic benchmarks.On the other hand, 63 percent of white voters say abortion should be at least mostly legal, a tally greatly exceeding the usual Democratic support among white voters.The economy and abortion are plainly important in making sense of recent shifts, but they’re not the whole story. Mr. Biden was relatively weak among nonwhite voters in 2020, as Hispanic voters swung to the right (by about seven points of major party vote share) and the rise in Black turnout didn’t match those of other groups. Democrats showed similar — if less acute — weaknesses with these voters in 2018 and during most Trump-era special elections.Mr. Biden’s weaknesses may exacerbate the problem, but this isn’t a new issue.Theory 2: Democrats are too far to the leftThis theory is brought to you by Democratic centrists, and it’s grounded in an important fact: There are many nonwhite Democrats who self-identify as moderate or even conservative. Many hold conservative views on issues, like opposition to same-sex marriage.These moderate or conservative nonwhite voters consider themselves Democrats because they see the party as representing them and their interests, not because they have party-line views on every issue. If so, Republican gains among nonwhite voters might naturally result from Democrats’ leftward shift over the last few years.This story is logical, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump’s gains in the last election. But is this really what has hurt President Biden since 2020? Democrats didn’t nominate Mr. Sanders, after all. Democratic socialism; calls to defund the police; and Black Lives Matter seem to be in the rearview mirror in 2023. The backlash against “woke” has faded so much that Republicans barely even brought it up in the first presidential debate.Even in 2020, the evidence that the progressive left was responsible for Democratic losses among Hispanic voters was more based on correlation than clear causal evidence. Today, the connection seems even less clear. Perhaps the best evidence is Democratic struggles among nonwhite voters in California and New York, where progressive excesses might weigh most heavily.Theory 3: Democrats aren’t delivering a progressive agendaThis theory is brought to you by the progressive left. You might be skeptical after walking through the centrist position, but there’s a credible story here.To understand it, it’s worth untangling two sentiments that we usually assume go together: a desire for big change and progressivism. They’ve gone hand-in-hand in recent Democratic primaries, with progressive candidates offering fundamental or revolutionary change, while liberal, establishment-backed candidates offer relative moderation, bipartisanship or a return to normalcy.But being a moderate on a left-right ideological scale is not the same thing as being content with the status quo. Many moderates are deeply dissatisfied and want politicians who promise big changes to American life. They may think politics, the economy and the “system” are all broken, even if they’re not animated by progressive slogans like Democratic socialism, a Green New Deal, Medicare for all, and so on.Many nonwhite voters fall into this category. In Times/Siena polling of the key battleground states in 2019, persuadable nonwhite voters said they wanted a relatively moderate Democrat over a liberal, 69 percent to 29 percent. But they also preferred a Democratic nominee who would bring systemic change to American society over one who would return politics back to normal in Washington, 52-32. This might seem contradictory, but it’s not.Mr. Biden is not exactly a great fit for these ideologically moderate “change” voters. He does not channel their dissatisfaction with the country, the establishment, politics or the economy. His accomplishments, like the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS Act, do not register on the “fundamental change” spectrum. Perhaps it’s not surprising that voters — including nonwhite voters — don’t seem to think Mr. Biden has accomplished very much.It seems doubtful that a more ambitious, progressive legislative agenda would have left Mr. Biden in a very different place. He didn’t seem to earn too much support for student debt forgiveness, for instance. But it’s still possible that the mainstream Democratic Party’s relatively conservative, even Whig-like, form of moderation leaves disaffected, nonwhite working-class voters feeling cold.Theory 4: It’s TrumpIt’s easy for Democrats to blame themselves for weakness among nonwhite voters. But what if it’s not really Democratic weakness, but Republican strength?It’s Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, who defines American politics nowadays. Voters say they’re voting based on their feelings toward the former president, not the current one. With numbers like these, perhaps the default assumption ought to be that Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, is the driving force behind recent electoral trends.If it’s Mr. Trump, it’s not hard to see how or why. He has a distinct brand with demonstrated appeal to white working-class voters who previously backed Barack Obama and other Democrats. Many elements of his message might have appeal to nonwhite working-class voters as well. As we’ve established, many persuadable nonwhite voters care about the economy; aren’t liberal; are dissatisfied with the country and mainstream politics; and desire fundamental change. Mr. Trump’s combination of populist economics and anti-establishment outsider politics is potentially a very good match.What about Mr. Trump’s penchant to alienate Black and Hispanic voters with remarks like “very fine people on both sides” or “they’re rapists.” Today, some of these fights may be distant memories. And while Mr. Trump’s remarks may have hurt him at the time, it is striking that they didn’t do more to provoke a more obvious backlash among nonwhite voters, whether in terms of stronger turnout or greater Democratic support.Perhaps other elements of his message might have broken through. His views on crime and immigration have considerable appeal to some Black and Hispanic voters, even though these issues are often seen by liberals as nothing more than a racist dog whistle. And Democrats may bristle at the thought of Mr. Trump as a criminal justice reformer, but he spent millions on a Super Bowl ad promoting exactly that. Mr. Trump’s economic appeal may also be newly salient with continuing perceptions that the economy hasn’t recovered.Mr. Trump’s unique brand of populist conservatism isn’t the full explanation. In the midterms, Republicans overperformed in places like New York City, Florida and Southern California, even though Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ticket.But while Mr. Trump isn’t the whole explanation, he’s probably an underrated one. A recent CNN/SSRS poll found him faring much better among nonwhite voters compared with all the other Republican candidates. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump, 58-34, among nonwhite voters in the poll, compared with a 64-28 result against Ron DeSantis.Theory 5: It’s about a new generationDemocratic strength among nonwhite voters was forged in an earlier era of politics, when the party vanquished Jim Crow and unequivocally represented the working class and the poor. Perhaps that’s still how many Black voters see it, given that they continue to back Mr. Biden and Democrats by wide margins in Times/Siena polling.Younger nonwhite voters might see it differently. At the very least, almost all of Mr. Biden’s losses come among nonwhite voters under 45 in Times/Siena polling.It’s not hard to see how younger nonwhite voters might have a different perspective. The basis for overwhelming Democratic support among nonwhite voters may have gotten weaker over the last 50 years.Second- and third-generation Asian American and Hispanic voters are more affluent and assimilated into American society than their parents.Young Black voters may not be second- or third-generation immigrants, but they are the second or third generation since Black Americans finally achieved equal citizenship. They can’t call up memories of the civil rights movement or Jim Crow. They’re less likely to attend church, which helped tie Black voters to the Democratic Party for decades. The bonds of community and sense of threat that connected voters to the Democrats might be weaker today.The Black Lives Matter movement mobilized a new generation of activists, but also put Democrats in a challenging position: There are few opportunities for Democrats to solve systemic racism. No bill will do it. The party’s claim to being the party of the working class is also quite a bit weaker than it was a half century ago, for good measure.Of all the theories, this one is hardest to tie to a short-term decline in Mr. Biden’s support. But more affluence and integration into mainstream American life might be a prerequisite for today’s Republican gains. And, if true, it would reflect largely positive changes in American society, much as Republican gains among Catholic voters in decades past required their acceptance in the mainstream.It would be hard for any party to hold 90-plus percent of a voting group forever. And if so, perhaps there’s not much Democrats can do about their decline today. It may be bad news for the Democrats in a certain sense, but if there’s any consolation it’s that perhaps Democrats don’t have to flagellate themselves over it. It’s not all their fault. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      He Faces Jan. 6 Trespassing Charges. He Might Become Mayor.

      by

      Gino DiGiovanni Jr., who was charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol, is the presumptive Republican nominee for mayor in a small Connecticut city that voted for President Biden.The final votes have not been tallied. The race has not been called.But initial results from the Republican mayoral primary in Derby, Conn., this week indicate that voters have rejected the city’s three-term incumbent in favor of a man who was charged with trespassing during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Gino DiGiovanni Jr., a member of the local board of aldermen, beat Mayor Richard Dziekan by just 10 votes — 202 to 192 — which triggered an automatic recount, set for noon on Friday.The rise of Mr. DiGiovanni, 42, has astonished leaders in Connecticut, where 59 percent of voters cast their ballots for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Only a handful of Connecticut residents have been charged in connection with the riot.His win is also notable for Derby, an old mill city of just over 12,000 people. The presidential race was close: Mr. Biden beat Donald J. Trump in Derby by four points. So was the 2021 race for mayor: Mr. Dziekan beat his Democratic opponent by just 48 votes.“It’s not like Derby is some town in the Deep South where there’s an overwhelming amount of support for Trump,” said Roy Occhiogrosso, a longtime Democratic operative in Connecticut, adding, “It’s not a hotbed of MAGA activity.”If Mr. DiGiovanni’s win in the Republican primary holds, Mayor Dziekan, 57, intends to appear on the November ballot anyway, as a candidate unaffiliated with a political party. He would also face Joe DiMartino, 57, the Democratic nominee; and Sharlene McEvoy, a 73-year-old retired law professor, another nonaffiliated candidate.Mr. DiGiovanni is among just a handful of elected officials across the country to be charged in connection with the Capitol riot. Bob Duff, the State Senate majority leader in Connecticut, said Mr. DiGiovanni’s rise shows the danger of voters not paying close attention to local elections. “Too many people focus entirely on the federal level,” he said.But the local level is where the fight for democracy matters most, he said. “The system of government gets infiltrated, and then people work their way up. That’s where it rots.”Mr. DiGiovanni, who said he recognizes Mr. Biden as president, said he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to hear Mr. Trump’s speech. Then, he said, he followed the crowd. He entered the Capitol through a door that a Capitol Police officer was holding open, took a look around, and left, he said. He saw no violence, he said, and engaged in no violence.“I didn’t go down there to overthrow the government,” he said, adding, “I didn’t know there was going to be a quote-unquote insurrection.”He faces federal misdemeanor trespassing charges but has not yet entered a plea.“I’m not an election denier,” he said, adding, “I’m not this crazy tinfoil-hat conspiracy wack job.”Statewide, Mr. DiGiovanni said, he is now known as a “domestic terrorist.” But locally, he is widely liked. He played and later coached football, and he helped build a local Sept. 11 memorial.“There are people who have given Gino a pass for his role in Jan. 6 because he is a nice guy,” said Jim Gildea, the chair of Derby’s board of education and a longtime figure in city politics.Even Mr. DiGiovanni’s political opponents speak mildly of him and his actions on Jan. 6.“Was his judgment a little off?” said Mayor Dziekan. “I think so. But he’s a great guy.”Mr. DiMartino, the Democrat, said, “I don’t think it was a great move on his part,” adding, “I’m not trying to really bash him.”In fact, Derby leaders said, the primary was less a referendum on Mr. DiGiovanni’s participation on Jan. 6 than on Mayor Dziekan’s record.Earlier this month, state officials put Derby’s finances under strict oversight after an audit found a $1.9 million deficit when the city was projected to have a $1 million surplus. The city does not have a finance director, a main criticism of Mr. Dziekan.“I’m a mayor, but my hands are tied,” he said. “I can only do so much, and sometimes, people are going to get mad at you.”Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, said that voters’ support of Mr. DiGiovanni reveals a worrying trend: Although only a few politicians were charged in connection with Jan. 6, many play down the violence.“The significance in some ways goes beyond both the size of this particular community in Connecticut,” he said, arguing that acceptance makes it harder for the country to learn from the riot.Connecticut lawmakers considered a bill that would have barred people who participated in an insurrection from holding office. But the legislation died, said Mr. Duff, who co-sponsored it.Mr. DiGiovanni, Mr. Duff said, “was Exhibit A as to why we needed this legislation.” He added, “He should not be anywhere near the levers of government.” More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Plans Democracy-Focused Speech After Next Republican Primary Debate

      by

      One location under consideration for the remarks is the democracy-focused McCain Institute in Arizona.President Biden is planning to deliver a major speech on the ongoing threats to democracy in Arizona later this month, with the address scheduled the day after the next Republican presidential primary debate. One location for the speech that has been under discussion is the McCain Institute, according to a person familiar with the planning. The institute, which is devoted to “fighting for democracy,” is named for Senator John McCain, a Republican who served for more than 20 years in the Senate with Mr. Biden and who sparred repeatedly with former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party’s front-runner in 2024.Mr. Biden has made the perils facing American democracy a central theme of his 2020 campaign and also his 2024 re-election bid. He also made the case ahead of the 2022 midterms that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a threat to the “soul of the nation.”Anita Dunn, a top White House adviser, told Democratic donors about the upcoming speech on Wednesday in Chicago, the site of the party’s 2024 convention, according to people familiar with her remarks.The White House and Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee invited major contributors to a preview of the party’s convention this week in Chicago. The Biden Victory Fund, which includes the Biden campaign, the national party and all state parties, can collect contributions as large as $929,600 from big donors.Mr. Biden was close to Mr. McCain, who died in 2018, and during his recent trip to Hanoi in Vietnam he visited a memorial there for the late senator, who was held captive as a prisoner of war. “I miss him, I miss him,” Mr. Biden said.The speech would underscore previous efforts by Mr. Biden to focus attention on the cause of democracy. He delivered speech in Philadelphia last September that attempted to frame the midterm elections as a “battle for the soul of this nation,” an echo of his 2020 campaign slogan and another speech in Washington days before the midterm elections.Mr. Biden also briefly pushed for a package of federal voting rights laws last January before dropping the issue after it became clear there was not support among Senate Democrats to change the chamber’s rules to advance the legislation. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      What to Know About the Potential Autoworkers Strike

      by

      The union and the carmakers remain far apart on wages.The United Auto Workers union, which represents about 150,000 workers at U.S. car plants, could strike against three of the country’s largest automakers on Friday if the union and the companies are unable to reach new contracts.The three automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — could be forced to stop or slow production if an agreement isn’t reached by midnight on Thursday. The president of the U.A.W., Shawn Fain, said that Thursday was the “deadline, not a reference point.”The union is negotiating a separate four-year contract with each automaker. The U.A.W. has never struck against all three companies at once, preferring to target one at a time. But Mr. Fain has said he and his members are willing to strike against all three this time.What’s at issue in the labor dispute?Compensation is at the forefront of negotiations.The U.A.W. is demanding 40 percent wage increases over four years, which Mr. Fain says is in line with how much the salaries of the companies’ chief executives have increased in the past four years.As of last Friday, the two parties remained far apart, with the companies offering to raise pay by 14 to 16 percent over four years. Mr. Fain called that offer “insulting” and has said that the union is still seeking a 40 percent pay increase.What role is the switch to electric cars playing in the negotiations?The auto industry is in the middle of a sweeping transition to battery-powered vehicles, and G.M., Ford and Stellantis are spending billions of dollars to develop new models and build factories. The companies have said those investments make it harder for them to pay workers substantially higher wages. Automakers say they are already at a big competitive disadvantage compared with nonunion automakers like Tesla, which dominates the sale of electric vehicles.The U.A.W. is worried that the companies will use the switch to electric cars to cut jobs or hire more nonunion workers. The union wants the automakers to cover workers at the battery factories in their national contracts with the U.A.W. Right now those workers are either not represented by unions or are negotiating separate contracts. But the automakers say they cannot legally agree to that request because those plants are set up as joint ventures.What happened in the last U.A.W. strike?The U.A.W. most recently went on strike in 2019 against General Motors. Nearly 50,000 General Motors workers walked out for 40 days. The carmaker said that strike cost it $3.6 billion.The strike ended after the two sides reached a contract that ended a two-tier wage structure under which newer employees were paid a lot less than veteran workers. G.M. also agreed to pay workers more.How would a strike against the three automakers affect the economy?A long pause in car production could have ripple effects across many parts of the U.S. economy.A 10-day strike could cost the economy $5 billion, according to an estimate from Anderson Economic Group. A longer strike could start affecting inventories of cars at dealerships, pushing up the price of vehicles.The auto industry is in a more vulnerable place than it was in 2019, the last time the U.A.W. staged a strike. In the earlier part of the pandemic, car production came to a halt, sharply reducing the supply of vehicles. Domestic car inventories remain at about a quarter of where they were at the end of 2019.Will a strike have political ramifications?It definitely could.President Biden has called himself “the most pro-labor union president” and sought to solidify his ties with labor unions ahead of his re-election campaign. But the U.A.W., which usually endorses Democratic candidates including Mr. Biden in his 2020 run, has held off endorsing him for the 2024 race.The union fears that Mr. Biden’s decision to promote electric vehicles could further erode union membership in the auto industry. Mr. Fain has criticized the administration for awarding large federal incentives and loans for new factories without requiring those plants to employ union workers.Former President Donald J. Trump, who is most likely to secure the Republican nomination, has been seeking to win over U.A.W. members. He has criticized Mr. Biden’s auto and climate policies as bad for workers and consumers. More