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      ‘Republicans Own These Issues, and They Can Hurt Democrats’

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      To advance his relentless political ambition, Donald Trump has ridden a promise, a commitment and a pledge.A promise to end the illegal flow of migrants, drugs, cash and guns “across our border.”A commitment to stop other countries seeking “to suck more blood out of the United States.”A pledge to impose law-and-order solutions on cities “where there is a true breakdown in the rule of law,” describing a majority-Black city like Baltimore as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and warning gangs of shoplifters just last week that if he is elected again, “We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.”How relevant are those themes going to be heading into the 2024 election? Will they work to attract enough voters for him to win? Do they address the sources of voter anxiety?Here are some sources of voter angst that have Trump relishing his rematch with President Biden. Crime — urban and rural — has become more unsettling and threatening. Carjacking, for example, is on the rise of (growing in Washington, D.C., from 152 in 2019 to 485 in 2022). Murder in major cities is up 33.7 percent from 2019 to 2022; gun assaults are up 43.2 percent. Shoplifting in Trump’s telling creates an image of urban lawlessness reinforced by liberal prosecutors’ adoption of policies like no cash bail and the non-prosecution of misdemeanors. The southern border has become increasingly porous, with the number of migrants crossing into the United States in August breaking all records as the U.S. Border Patrol arrested over 91,000 migrants. Southern Republicans, in turn, have shipped migrants by bus to New York, Washington, Chicago and other municipalities.The incumbent president, Joe Biden — fairly or unfairly — does not convey the image of a leader in control of events.The damage inflicted on students in public schools by the Covid lockdown, by school shootings and by conflicts over race, gender and sexual identity — particularly over what can and cannot be discussed or taught — is broadly undermining confidence in American education.And then there is the problem of inflation, which for many Americans is eating away at their sense of security and their standard of living.The reality is that Trump has plenty to capitalize on, but the question remains: With his venomous and often incoherent rants, with 91 felony charges against him, with his White House record of chaos and mismanagement, has Trump worn out his welcome with all but his hard-core MAGA loyalists?I posed these questions to a cross-section of scholars and political operatives. Their responses suggest that Trump might well be a competitive nominee in 2024, with the potential to win a second term in the White House.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, captured in an email the conflicting forces at work as the next election approaches: “Americans see the collapse of safety in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco and blame the entire Democratic Party for the policies of a fringe extreme.”Westwood cited data in a Pew Research study showing that “a majority of Republicans and Independents and a near majority of Democrats (49 percent) reported that violent crime was important to their 2022 vote (including 81 percent of Blacks).”While “Trump is successfully branding Democrats as weak on crime and immigration,” Westwood continued, it remains uncertain whether he can persuade voters that he is the better choice: “It is hard for Trump to convince Americans that he is the tough-on-crime candidate while simultaneously demanding the destruction of the Department of Justice and railing against the integrity of the judicial system.”In the case of immigration, Westwood argued, “Democrats don’t seem to have a coherent policy they can sell to Americans.”“As with crime and immigration, the state of the economy should be wind behind a Republican’s sails,” he added.Trump, however, in Westwood’s view, remains an albatross strangling Republican ambitions:By sticking with Trump the party is potentially sacrificing huge advantages to support an elderly man who could spend the rest of his life in prison. This is a Republican election to lose, but Trump might just help the Democrats survive their own policy failures.In an April Brookings essay, “The Geography of Crime in Four U.S. Cities: Perceptions and Reality,” Hanna Love and Tracy Hadden Loh argue:While stoking fears of crime is an age-old election tactic, something feels different about its salience in the pandemic-era landscape. Faced with slow-recovering urban cores and predictions of an “urban doom loop,” many pundits and urban observers are returning to a playbook not fully deployed since the 1990s — pointing to public safety as the primary cause of a host of complex and interconnected issues, from office closures to public transit budget shortfalls to the broader decline of cities.Love and Loh interviewed nearly 100 business leaders, public officials and residents of New York, Seattle, Philadelphia and Chicago. Their primary finding:Respondents overwhelmingly pointed to crime — not the desire for flexible work arrangements — as the top barrier to preventing workers’ return to office. Across all four cities, the vast majority of resident, major employers, property owners, small business owners and other stakeholders reporting rising rates of violent crime and property crime downtown and indicators of “disorder” (such as public drug use) as the top barriers to stopping workers from coming back to the office — and thus impeding downtown recovery.Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at Duke, wrote by email that both immigration and crime pose difficult political choices for Democrats, especially those with progressive ideals: “First for the migrant question, any large uptick in marginalized populations that is visible to native populations have the potential both to create unease among those populations and to be blamed for any increases in the risk of victimization that folks feel.”How much does this hurt the Democrats?“I would say a whole heck of a lot potentially unless they are willing to adopt the sort of stance to crime and punishment that President Bill Clinton took in his 1992 campaign and presidency.”The result?This rise in visible criminal activity and social unrest leaves Democrats where they essentially either give up their values in terms of crime and punishment and keep voters in the middle or hold the line in terms of crime and punishment (continuing to argue for more progressive policies) and risk losing some votes. It’s not a great spot.Wildeman is not alone in his belief that these issues are quite likely to work to the detriment of Biden and the Democratic Party generally.Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, emailed his view thatthe themes that are to the Democrats’ disadvantage are more relevant than they were in 2016. The burden posed by migrants is a greater issue, and the increase in the crime rate and murder rate, along with the inability of law enforcement to control rampant shoplifting in some cities, can even make the Democrats’ base among minority voters and college educated voters uneasy, and also women — varying geographically.“Republicans own these issues,” Shapiro pointed out, “and they can hurt Democrats. These issues along with education, race and gender identity will help Republicans running for Congress and state offices, even if they benefit Trump less due to his other serious baggage.”Roland Neil, a social scientist at the RAND Corporation, also pointed to the dangers facing Biden and his fellow Democrats:Two things we can be certain of: first, violent crime increased dramatically in many cities, especially when the pandemic hit; and second, this coincided with various progressive criminal justice reform efforts, such as bail reform, more lenient prosecution in some jurisdictions and calls to defund the police.While the incidence of violent crime has subsided in recent months, Neil noted:Focusing on that misses the point, since the issues drawing attention are all real problems facing cities and the public has taken notice. They should not be dismissed as trivial, as they genuinely impact safety and quality of life.There is no consistent and reliable data, Neil wrote, “for crimes and disorder that have been drawing much attention, like carjacking, retail theft by flash mobs, open air drug markets and the changing nature of encounters with homeless people.”That said, he added, “there is evidence that carjackings are up in several cities since the pandemic. Also, drug overdose deaths are at historical highs, and motor vehicle theft is up sharply in many cities.”Philadelphia, according to Neil, “presents an interesting case: shootings and murder are down by about a quarter this year (from a very high level), but flash mob retail thefts likely create the sense of a city that is losing control.”Phillip Atiba Solomon, a professor of African American studies and psychology at Yale, stressed the racial implications of Trump’s strategy in his emailed reply to my inquiry, arguing that these have the strong potential to sway white voters:Broadly, I think the themes you outline can be simplified to, “We’re the victims, and the victimizers are getting away with murder.” And, yes, I think they’ll apply this year as well as in any year when the “we” includes a coalition of elites and paycheck-to-paycheck working folks, each of whom reasonably see themselves as losing ground they once felt confident belonged to them (however ill-gotten that ground was in the first place).According to Solomon:This is a country that generally makes life hard for working people and is busily shifting symbols around that are meaningful to people who identify as white. Under those circumstances, it’s easy to manipulate feelings that life is not fair into feelings that “we” are being persecuted by “those people” who are stealing what “rightfully belongs to us” — literally, figuratively and with all appropriate scare quotes.The current political environment entails both conflict between the parties and disputes within each of the parties. Neil Malhotra, a political scientist at Stanford, described this ambiguity in an email:The conventional wisdom is that any Republican candidate for president, not just Trump, should focus on three issues: inflation, immigration and crime. Trump may be uniquely positioned to take advantage of these three issues, particularly since he has a more moderate image than his competitors on issues where Republicans are disadvantaged: abortion and entitlements — Social Security and Medicare.The flip side, Malhotra wrote, “is that the Democratic candidate for president should be focusing the campaign around abortion rights, climate change, health care and economic inequality.”Malhotra cited a Pew Research survey from June, “Inflation, Health Costs, Partisan Cooperation Among the Nation’s Top Problems,” that broke down the issues on which voters agree more with Republicans than Democrats and vice versa.Republicans had the edge on economic policy (42-30), immigration (41-31) and crime (40-30). Democrats led on climate change policy (41-27), abortion (43-31) and health care (39-27). The smallest gaps were on foreign policy, favoring Republicans (37-33), gun policy (statistically even) and education, favoring Democrats (37-33).Crime, in Malhotra’s view,is a particularly interesting topic because it’s always been more about perception than reality. Violent crime statistics have been declining during the Biden administration from the Covid peak, but there is a general image of lawlessness mainly around property crime, which I believe is a real and persistent problem in many areas.In the case of crime, Malhotra wrote, “You don’t actually need to be a victim or even in danger for it to affect your political worldview. I suspect a lot of Americans’ reaction to property crime is a sense of helplessness and a world they are not used to.”Malhotra made the case that Trump loyalists are a more complicated constituency than they are often described as being:There is a lot of talk of MAGA voters as wanting to go back to a 1950s America characterized by racism and sexism. I’m sure people like that exist, but there is another type of MAGA voter that I’ll call “end-of-history MAGA.”Many of these people are members of Gen X (born between 1961 and 1981), which is a generation that slightly leans Republican. “End-of-history-MAGA” people look back to the 1990s as a peak period of American greatness characterized by economic strength, declining crime, etc. I don’t think these people can be easily dismissed as racist or sexist. But they may believe that America has been in decline on many dimensions.The entry of growing numbers of younger voters into the electorate, Malhotra noted, will work to Biden’s advantage, as they “generally see immigration and crime as less important issues than older voters.”But, Malhotra cautioned, “a potential threat for Biden is that younger voters are being crushed by high rent, high interest rates and low housing supply, and they see little optimism for experiencing the American dream of homeownership.”Matthew Levendusky, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, makes the point that in 2024 Trump will have been the nominee, if all goes as expected, three times in a row, and Biden twice. When combined with the increasing immovability of polarized Democrats and Republicans determined to support their own parties, “2024 will likely look much like 2020 and 2016.”“There simply won’t be much movement in the aggregate,” he added. “This means that even small things on the margin could end up mattering a lot.”Levendusky, in contrast to some others I have quoted here, suggests that despite a difficult set of issues, Biden may be stronger than expected:In a normal year, Biden would be in real trouble. But Trump brings his own unique issues as well, especially this year. He’s a uniquely mobilizing factor for Democrats — they view him as an existential threat, and his indictments may well drag down support among key groups he needs to win back in order to secure the White House.In the case of Trump’s indictments, Levendusky argues that “the core of Trump’s base is unlikely to be moved, but more marginal voters are a different story.” If these “wavering Republicans or independent voters are in key states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, etc., that will be extremely damaging to Trump.”Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton who has written extensively about crime, argued in an email that Biden can make the case that he has a better record on fighting gun violence and crime than is widely recognized:Candidate Trump will undoubtedly paint a portrait of urban America as lawless, dangerous, and disorderly, just as he did in 2016. That said, President Biden has a strong case to make that he has done more than any recent president to address gun violence.Gun violence, Sharkey wrote,began to skyrocket in the summer of 2020, when former President Trump was in office. Since that point, the level of violence has plateaued, and so far in 2023 the vast majority of U.S. cities have seen sharp declines in homicides and shootings.While the Republican Party, Sharkey continued,has railed against the Department of Justice and largely ignored the Jan. 6 assault on U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers, the Biden administration has invested additional federal funding in law enforcement while also using federal funds to support Community Violence Intervention programs, which, even if the funding was nowhere near sufficient, represents a historic expansion of the federal government’s approach to addressing violent crime. The passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is the first major federal legislation to address guns in decades.A potential problem with Sharkey’s analysis is that in contemporary campaigns, especially those involving Donald Trump, it’s not at all clear that substance matters.Few, if any, have put it better than retired Marine General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, who on Oct. 2 expressed to CNN his frustration over seeing his ex-boss far ahead in the competition for the nomination:What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them.” A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.’”A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are “losers” and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.Kelly continued:A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. … A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”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

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      Americans Deserve Better From the House of Representatives

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      This article has been updated to include new information about Mr. McCarthy’s decision not to run for speaker again.The U.S. Capitol may be perched on a hill, but it is understandable why so many Americans look down on it.One of the main reasons is that their Congress, which ought to be a global beacon of liberal values, continues to succumb to self-inflicted paralysis. How else can it be that fewer than a dozen lawmakers from the outer fringes of the Republican Party are holding one of the world’s oldest democracies hostage to their wildest whims?On Tuesday a small group of Republicans effectively shut down all business in the House when they voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Though 210 of 218 House Republicans supported him, he lost his job when just eight members of the caucus voted against him, joining all Democrats who voted.Without a speaker, the House can get nothing done. There will be no votes or even debate about paying for the government’s operations, though the money runs out in six weeks. There will be no discussion of how to help Ukraine or how to deal with the nation’s immigration crisis or any of the other crises facing Washington.Even before he lost his job, Mr. McCarthy and his caucus lurched the nation from debt limit crisis to shutdown crisis to win debating points that might help them in the next elections rather than pass meaningful legislation that addresses the nation’s challenges. We’re now in the middle of yet another pointless fight, this time over the funding of the federal government and the leadership of the House.Republicans in the House showed briefly, on Saturday, that they were willing to do the right thing and compromise to avoid a shutdown. In the upcoming votes to choose a new speaker, they can and should do that again, by showing their commitment to responsible governance. If Democrats can help achieve that, they should. The next candidates for speaker could win Democratic votes by promising a different course, one that brings both parties together for the common good. Any other candidate for the job will also face the same choice.Voters have given Republicans a majority of seats in the House and thus control over selecting the speaker, who sets the agenda in the House. Those voters, in turn, should expect the body to serve the people who elected them.It’s possible that the Republican Party is finally ready to again choose pragmatism over partisanship. Last weekend Mr. McCarthy sought and received the support of hundreds of Democrats to pass a continuing resolution to fund the federal government, a measure that pushed a potential government shutdown 45 days down the road.It’s hard to get excited about a victory in a fight that never needed to happen, especially at the last possible moment. But the saga reflects the reality of D.C. today: Bipartisan compromise has become the sole path to governing in the United States in 2023.Democrats have the White House and a one-seat majority in the Senate, while Republicans control the House of Representatives and appointed a supermajority of conservatives on the Supreme Court. President Biden’s executive authority extends only as far as the courts have allowed, while the only path through the Senate is with enough bipartisan support to skirt the shoals of a filibuster. The government, like the nation, is divided.But political polarization is not the excuse for inaction that so many grandstanding politicos too often take it to be. With a divided Congress, the only way to get any legislation passed is with some support from the center of both parties. A Congress that operated in a more bipartisan manner could move the country beyond its impasses over issues like immigration or the sustainability of the social safety net. A more confident center-right party that doesn’t genuflect to Donald Trump would have an easier time achieving those ambitious acts of self-governance.While that’s a tall order, it is not impossible: Just look at the past few days.Mr. McCarthy did the right thing on Saturday, outmaneuvering the radicals in his own party, led by Representative Matt Gaetz, to keep the federal government open. The next speaker needs to deprive Mr. Gaetz and his ilk of the weapon they’ve been using to force the House leadership into compliance with their demands. Congress represents more than 330 million Americans; Mr. Gaetz and his allies should not be given a heckler’s veto over the business of government.It was a conscious choice by the ousted speaker of the House to give them one. In the face of intransigence from his right flank, the next speaker should drop the anachronistic practice that demands Republicans bring up only legislation backed by a majority of their members. The so-called Hastert rule, named for Dennis Hastert, the disgraced former speaker, appears nowhere in the Constitution and can be used to prevent the House from moving forward with bipartisan legislation.A new speaker should also commit to plain dealing with Democratic colleagues and may need them to prevent another putsch. Mr. McCarthy lost faith among Democrats by failing to keep his word and honor a deal over spending caps that he negotiated with the White House in May. The next speaker might consider that a good starting point for negotiations.Once a new speaker is chosen, the House will have less than 45 days to avert yet another standoff over a shutdown, and members of good will in both parties will again need to show that they are willing and able to compromise; the Democrats could permit more spending on border security, and Republicans should continue the vital flow of aid to Ukraine, among other issues.The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said Tuesday that his caucus would “remain willing to find common ground on an enlightened path forward,” one that did not leave the public’s business at the mercy of a few extremists. Whichever leader Republicans now choose should agree to a similar path.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

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      House Democrat Leaves Leadership Position After Teasing Run Against Biden

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      Representative Dean Phillips would be a long-shot candidate, given that party leadership and major donors have coalesced around President Biden.Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota said Sunday that he would step down from his Democratic leadership position in the House as he flirts with a challenge to President Biden.Mr. Phillips, who served as co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has for months called for other Democrats to run against Mr. Biden in the presidential primary, citing his age — Mr. Biden is 80 — as a hindrance.“My convictions relative to the 2024 presidential race are incongruent with the majority of my caucus, and I felt it appropriate to step aside from elected leadership to avoid unnecessary distractions during a critical time for our country,” he said in a statement to The Times.Mr. Phillips, 54, said in July that he was considering a run against Mr. Biden — though he would have an uphill climb, given that party leadership and major donors have coalesced around the incumbent president. Two long-shot Democratic candidates — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson — are already in the race, but have struggled to gain support from Democratic voters or donors. Mr. Kennedy has strongly hinted that he would launch a third-party bid. No other challengers to Mr. Biden have emerged, despite Mr. Phillips’ urging and warning signs for Mr. Biden in the polls. Several Democrats who were seen as potential candidates have thrown their support to the president.The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Phillips’ resignation.Mr. Phillips said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that he was “not pressured or forced to resign” and he complimented Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, the committee chairman, on their “authentic & principled leadership.”Mr. Phillips will continue to represent the suburban Minneapolis district that he flipped in 2018, when he became the first Democrat to win that seat since 1958. More

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      Kevin McCarthy Surprised Us All

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      Gail Collins: I didn’t think I’d be saying this, Bret, but we’ve dodged a shutdown. It’s a stupendous moment for Kevin McCarthy. Now if he gets tossed out as House speaker by the right wing, he’ll go down in history as the guy who sacrificed his career for the common good. As opposed to the best-possible previous scenario: the boring career pol who was too scared to keep the government running.What’s your reaction?Bret Stephens: Cutting billions in funding for Ukraine was a shame, but I’m guessing the aid will be restored to Kyiv pretty soon. Otherwise, it’s a vast relief that the government will stay open. And, of course, watching someone like Matt Gaetz get politically humiliated is always pleasing.Gail: And there was Gaetz, on cue, announcing Sunday that he would try to remove McCarthy from the speakership. Lord knows it’s been a long trek, listening to the Republicans’ constant yelping about deficit spending. Is it fair to point out that the national debt rose $7.8 trillion during the Trump administration?Bret Stephens: Not fair at all, Gail. Everything that happened when Trump was president was so perfect, so beautiful.OK, I’m kidding. One of my many laments about Trump is that he spent like a sailor on land and governed like a drunk at sea. I wish this would count against him with G.O.P. primary voters, but the truth is that the average Republican isn’t all that eager to really slash government spending, even if they say they don’t like the government. I think Trump intuitively understood this, which is why attacks from Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley aren’t making a dent in Trump’s poll numbers.Which reminds me: Your thoughts on last week’s Republican presidential debate? Whom did you dislike the least?Gail: I suspect this is a setup to get me to praise your fave, Nikki Haley.Bret: Not a setup. An … invitation.Gail: And hey, I can’t argue that she wasn’t the sanest of the group. Along with Chris Christie, the Republican Republicans love to hate.Haley lightly criticized Trump’s performance as president, and after the debate was over, he called her a “birdbrain.”You know, I have this tiny hope that the New Hampshire Republican voters will exercise a little independence and give her the top primary vote and an early lift. But kinda worried Christie will be in there too, dividing the sanity caucus.Bret: A great point. Christie should get out now and throw his support behind Haley. The only reason he got in the race in the first place was to chuck spears at Trump. It hit the wrong Donald — Duck, not Trump — and now all Christie is doing is dividing the anti-Trump field. I also wish Mike Pence would recognize reality and tuck back into bed with his wife of 38 years. That would give Haley a fighting chance to further destroy Vivek Ramaswamy and replace DeSantis as the most plausible Republican alternative to Trump. But I have to admit, my hopes of Trump not being the nominee are dwindling fast.Gail: OK, New Hampshire Republicans, are you listening? Counting on you for a primary miracle.Bret: Speaking of Trump crushing his opponents, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw that Washington Post-ABC News poll last week, giving Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup. I realize it might be an outlier, but I don’t understand why no serious Democrat is willing to challenge Biden for the nomination. Help me out here.Gail: The poll, if accurate, is a cry of crankiness from middle-of-the-roaders who wanted a more exciting candidate. Still, the only reason for a loyal Democrat to oppose Biden’s nomination is that he’s too old. I think he’s been a darned good president. And while I do wish he had stepped aside, I’m certainly not going to have any trouble whatsoever arguing he’s the better option.This is when I get to point out that Trump is 77 and in worse physical condition than Biden. And has been saying some very weird things lately — even for him.Bret: Biden’s main problem isn’t that he’s too old. There are plenty of sharp, fit and healthy 80-year-olds. His problem is that he looks and sounds feeble. Trump may be awful and insane and nearly as old as Biden, but one thing he isn’t is low energy. And even if you think Biden is the best president since F.D.R., or Abe Lincoln for that matter, he’s got a 41.5 percent approval rating, a vice president who’s even more unpopular than he is and major political liabilities on immigration, crime and inflation. Also now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hinting that he’ll run as a third-party candidate in the general election, which would be on top of Biden’s Cornel West problem.Gail: Thank you for giving me a chance to howl about third-party candidates, who have no possibility of winning but every possibility of screwing up the majority’s right to choose.Bret: I suppose that, in theory, Kennedy could subtract a lot of votes from Trump, since both of them draw from the same well of looney-tune conspiracy theories. But my guess is that, as a Democrat, Biden would be the bigger loser from an independent Kennedy campaign. And if West persists in running, drawing progressive and Black voters away from Biden, then the chances of a Trump victory grow even larger.Gail: But we were talking about President Joe …Bret: If you see Biden jumping out of the political hole he’s in, please tell me how.Gail: Just being sane, not under multitudinous indictments or facing a stupendous financial collapse is … going to help. This is not going to be one of those sunny remember-when election victories like Barack Obama’s or I guess for Republicans, Ronald Reagan’s. But given the Donald’s multiple upcoming trials, I think it’ll be a wow-what-a-crazy-year episode that ends with the majority rationally rejecting the worst possible option.Bret: If a second Trump administration is the national nightmare you and I think it will be, then Democrats need a better political strategy than getting angry at third-party candidates while hoping that Trump goes to jail before he returns to the White House. The passing of California’s Dianne Feinstein is a sad event, and there’s a lot to celebrate in her long and distinguished career, but it was hubris on her part to run for re-election in 2018, just like it was hubris for Ruth Bader Ginsburg not to step down while Obama was still president. Although, in Feinstein’s defense, at least she could be reasonably sure that a Democratic governor would choose her successor.Gail: Yeah, when you’ve got a great job in the spotlight, it’s hard to just let it go.Bret: Which maybe explains the guy in the White House. Sorry, go on.Gail: I thought Feinstein should have resigned when she became incapacitated. And Ginsburg diminished a great legacy by hanging onto her job when she was sick and close to death, thereby paving the way for Trump to complete his takeover of the Supreme Court.We have to celebrate the people who surrender the spotlight voluntarily, like Nancy Pelosi, who is still serving the country as a member of Congress, but gave up her party’s House leadership to let the next generation be in the center of attention.Hey — a positive thought! Any good news you want to share?Bret: I don’t know if this is good news per se, but I was delighted to hear Mark Milley, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dismiss Trump as a “wannabe dictator” after his former boss suggested the general’s actions with regard to China would have once been punishable by death. Milley emphasized the military’s fidelity to the Constitution, which is yet another reminder that Democrats should put aside their 50 years of misgivings about the Defense Department and embrace its vital role in defending democracy at home and abroad.Hoping for agreement …Gail: Total agreement about the Defense Department having a vital role. Not so much about the Defense Department having an efficient operation. Way too much waste, which mostly comes from members of Congress lobbying to keep job-creating military facilities in their districts, and pressure to pick up wasteful contracts because they’re supported by, um, members of Congress.Bret: I’ll make a modest bet that, in another few years, Democrats will be the strong-on-defense party, just as they were in the days of Jack Kennedy. It’s part of the great ideological switcheroo taking place right now between the parties: Republicans sound a lot like Democrats of yesteryear — working-class values, quasi-isolationist in their foreign policy, indifferent to the moral character of their leaders — while Democrats have become the party of college-educated managerial types who want to stand up to Russia and uphold moral integrity in political leadership.Gail: Well, we’ll see. At least we’re ending on a consensus of sorts: that Trump is going to be doing something awful soon. Granted, that’s not the toughest prediction to make. So before we go, give me one of your great quotes to celebrate the arrival of October.Bret: Not really a celebration, but a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem I love:Márgarét, áre you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! ás the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It ís the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.I memorized it many years ago, thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. Peter Bach. He, better than anyone, knows its meaning.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

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      Power of Older Women? Extinct G.O.P. Moderates? It’s Time for the Mailbag.

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      We’re answering reader questions on polling and elections, including the underexplored area of longevity.Women live longer than men on average, meaning they can vote more often on average. Arin Yoon for The New York TimesWatch out: Women outlive menI’m 79, and women my age remember when abortion was illegal. Many of us either had a back-alley abortion, or had friends who had one. We are determined that neither our daughters nor our granddaughters have to experience this. Many of the elderly men I know still vote for Republicans. But watch out: We outlive you! — Mary LeonhardtYou may be partly joking, Mary, but this is probably a minor reason Democrats do a bit better among older voters than people might guess!Why? American women, who tend to support Democrats, live almost six years longer on average than men. Women make up 55 percent of registered voters over age 65 — including 58 percent of those over age 80 — according to data from L2, a political data firm. In comparison, women are 52 percent of registered voters under 65.I know all of this is a little morbid, but longevity strikes me as an underexplored dimension of electoral trends nowadays. We know higher life expectancy is correlated with socioeconomic status and tends to be higher in Democratic-leaning areas. Could this be a factor in why Democrats are performing better among older voters than usually thought? I think so.Are you sure these people exist?“You refer to ‘relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.’ You could have listed all of them … it wouldn’t have been a long list. — Jeff DavisIt would be a longer list than you might think. More than 20 million people with a college degree voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020. In our last New York Times/Siena College poll, 13 percent of likely Republican primary voters were self-identified moderates or liberals with a college degree.There’s a bigger lesson here: A small percentage of a huge group can still yield a large number of people. To take another example: There are more Republicans in California than in any other state. There are more Republicans in Brooklyn than in Wyoming, the state where Mr. Trump fared best.If not Biden, who?Pundits keep saying people don’t want Biden. Who do they want? — R. GribbonWell, they’re not sure. In an open-ended survey question, no alternative candidate earns any meaningful amount of support from Democratic voters. And I don’t think that’s entirely unreasonable, given there aren’t any mainstream Democrats running against President Biden.To me, the interesting question is whether many of these voters would wind up preferring Mr. Biden if alternatives like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Gov. Gavin Newsom of California actually ran. It seems quite possible.Just forget about national polling?I find national polling to be particularly misleading. Please focus on state-by-state polling. I’ll be watching PA, WI, MN, GA, AZ, VA, and NV. — Tim OliverI’m sympathetic to the general sentiment here, Tim. Over the years, we’ve done many more Times/Siena polls in the battleground states than nationwide.But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that national polling is misleading. The difference between the national vote and the battleground states isn’t that large — and might even be shrinking.There are advantages to national polling as well. There are more historical questions for comparison. It’s much less expensive than battleground polling: It might take six state polls to get a decent picture. And there are plenty of cases — say, a Republican presidential primary or a battle for control of the House — where the national picture is much more relevant than the core battlegrounds.Polling and nonbinary peopleI was wondering about the inclusivity of the demographic charts. I noticed that the gender category was very binary, with someone only being able to select male or female. Were there any nonbinary people interviewed in this poll, or did someone have to select male or female? As a nonbinary person, I would love to advocate for queer folx to be able to fully participate in these polls. Thank you so much. — Melissa DaileyIt’s worth adding some historical context. First, most pollsters typically asked whether someone was male or female — which is to say someone’s “sex,” not gender. That’s what the Census Bureau does as well, and pollsters generally find it advantageous to have their questions align with the census for comparison or even statistical adjustment. And as someone who loves historical data, I’m also always loath to lose a consistent measurement of something over time.Second, you might be surprised to learn that many telephone pollsters haven’t actually been asking about the sex or gender of respondents. Instead, many have relied on the interviewer to record the respondent’s sex or gender based on voice. That might seem strange, but many respondents find it strange or even offensive to be asked if they’re a man or a woman.Nonetheless, this is an area where survey research is evolving. In the last decade or so, many pollsters have started asking about gender. A smaller number of pollsters have offered respondents options beyond “male” or “female” or “man” or “woman,” though this is complicated in its own right. Respondents could identify in any number of ways, whether as transgender, non-cisgender, nonbinary, gender fluid, queer or something else. They could identify as a “man” or a “woman” to reflect a gender that does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.There’s another issue with adding small categories: measurement error. If one in every 300 respondents is trolling, or if one in 300 interviewers mistakenly clicks the wrong gender button, this mismeasured 0.3 percent of the sample will have no discernible effect on our results among men and women. But it could make up a huge share of the tiny number of transgender respondents.In our most recent Times/Siena poll, “male” and “female” were the only explicitly listed options when we asked about gender. But if respondents said they identified in some other way, the interviewer would record it. In the end, we had three respondents who said they were transgender or nonbinary. This sample was too small for us to report. I’m not sure whether we — or anyone else — is handling this exactly right; I expect the industry to continue to experiment and evolve.Woe WisconsinI am a Wisconsin voter who is a Democrat. However, we do not have to declare a party. How did you fit that into your analysis? — Nancy EschenburgIf you’re looking for a niche explanation for recent polling errors in Wisconsin, this is an interesting place to start.Unlike with most states, pollsters have very little data on the partisanship of Wisconsin respondents, making it much harder to ensure an unbiased sample.The absence of party registration is the best example, but the issue runs deeper. We don’t have data on whether our respondents participated in a partisan primary (like voting in a Republican presidential race). In most of the states without party registration, this primary participation data is a decent alternative.The results by precinct aren’t very helpful, either. Outside of Madison and Milwaukee, very few voters live in overwhelmingly blue or red precincts. Even the most Republican counties in Wisconsin aren’t so Republican that we can be especially confident that an individual respondent will be a Trump supporter.One of our major goals in recently collecting more data in Wisconsin was to improve our ability to estimate whether someone was a Democrat or a Republican, based on the relatively limited data at our disposal. I wouldn’t say we’ve found anything revolutionary: There’s just no substitute for knowing whether someone is registered as a Democrat or a Republican.Don’t forget ArizonaHere in very hot Arizona we will have some very “hot” political races. Of course we are a critical presidential swing state. Biden vs. Trump (or another Republican) will be very close again.And our U.S. Senate race (with Senator Sinema now an independent) will be fascinating. Ruben Gallego & Kari Lake & perhaps Sinema — that will be very entertaining. And the race will be critical regarding Senate control.So I plead with you to increase your polling in Arizona. We are just as important as other swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. — Chris HerstamChris, I think we deserve a little bit of credit! In 2020, Arizona was one of our core six battleground states in Times/Siena polling. We surveyed it five times during the cycle, tied for the most of any state. We surveyed it in 2018 and 2022 as well, something that can be said only of Arizona and Nevada.Heading into 2024, Arizona remains in the top tier. We’ll poll it just as much as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.Six kinds of Democrats?Loved your “Six Kinds of Republicans.” Please do the same with Dems. — Walter B. ShurdenI’d like to see the same article written about Democrats … We all know there is a big difference between a conservative Democrat and someone like A.O.C. — Craig WilsonYou’ll most likely have to wait until 2028! In the meantime, consider reading our breakdown of Democratic voters from 2019. There were five types of Democrats in that analysis, based on data from the Hidden Tribes project: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, moderates and the politically disengaged.Another option to get you through until the next Democratic primary: Pew Research’s 2021 typology, which identified four Democratic-leaning groups: progressive left, establishment liberals, Democratic mainstays and the outsider left. More

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      Trump and DeSantis Push for Mass Deportations, Escalating Hard-Right Immigration Proposals

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      In dueling speeches in California, the two Republican candidates pushed for mass deportations, a position that is as extreme as it may be unfeasible.As a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has said he would authorize the use of deadly force against people crossing the border, seek to end the practice of birthright citizenship and send the military to strike against drug cartels inside Mexico, a key ally of the United States, even without the permission of its government.Those positions put him on the hard right among the Republicans running for president, many of whom are tapping into deep anger among G.O.P. primary voters over immigration.Now, Mr. DeSantis, who often tries to stoke outrage with his border policies, has unveiled another extreme position: deporting all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration.“Everyone that has come illegally under Biden” should be sent back, Mr. DeSantis said on Friday in response to a reporter’s question at a campaign event in Long Beach, Calif. “That’s probably six or seven million people right there. It’s going to require a lot of effort. It’s going to require us to lean in.”Though Mr. DeSantis greatly overestimated the number of people who have entered the country illegally since Mr. Biden took office, such mass deportations would require enormous investments in the nation’s immigration enforcement system and could do severe economic harm to key American industries.Conducting so many deportations would require Mr. DeSantis to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, authorize widespread raids into immigrant communities, significantly expand immigration detention space to meet national standards and substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations. Billions more dollars would need to be spent on bolstering immigration courts to adjudicate cases within months instead of years. Currently, some migrants who have recently arrived in the United States have been given court dates a decade from now because the immigration court backlog is so large.Still, Mr. DeSantis is not alone in his promises to upend the nation’s immigration system.Speaking to a crowd in Anaheim, Calif., former President Donald J. Trump pledged to enact the largest deportation in the country’s history.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesOn Friday, former President Donald J. Trump, who is leading the Florida governor by roughly 40 points in national polls, pledged to enact “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if re-elected. Mr. Trump was speaking at the same time as Mr. DeSantis, roughly 20 miles away at a convention of Republican activists in Anaheim, Calif.The dueling speeches highlighted how crucial an issue border security has become in the Republican presidential primary. At his campaign event, Mr. DeSantis took the opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump, saying that his rival had failed to “get the job done” on the border during his first term. Though the two men are largely aligned on immigration policy, Mr. DeSantis is making the argument that he would be more effective in carrying out a hard-line vision.“I would note that the former president is campaigning on the same promise he made in ’16 that he didn’t deliver on,” Mr. DeSantis said.With his “six or seven” million figure, Mr. DeSantis was probably referring to the roughly six million people who have been caught crossing the border since 2021. That is about double the number of unauthorized immigrants who actually entered the country under Mr. Biden and are still here.Of those six million, at least 1.6 million have been allowed to stay in the country temporarily and face charges in immigration court. Officials estimate about 1.5 million others have entered the country illegally without being detained.The government estimates about 11 million undocumented people live in the country overall.Mass deportations are not as simple as the Republican contenders make them sound.Many of the people they call illegal immigrants are eligible for legal status in the United States or are already here on a legal status. An example of a legal status is Temporary Protected Status, the humanitarian benefit Mr. Biden just extended to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who have come to the country since the spring of 2021. People who are in the country and eligible for legal status are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, said Greg Chen, the senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.The time it would take to remove millions of people is substantial. In the past, the greatest number of deportations has been around 400,000 a year. The year with the highest number in recent history is 2013, during the Obama administration, when there were more than 432,000. During the Trump administration, the year that saw the most deportations was 2019, with more than 359,000.Deporting such a large amount of people poses “logistical, practical and legal challenges,” said Ron Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration.Justin Hamel for The New York Times“DeSantis’s statement demonstrates his utter lack of any understanding of immigration enforcement operations,” Mr. Chen said. “At a practical level, deporting that many people would be impossible in even a single term.”Mr. Chen also pointed out the serious economic costs of deporting many of the workers who take on the United States’ most dangerous and low-paying jobs, particularly in agriculture.Immigration laws signed by Mr. DeSantis in Florida this year have already led to worker shortages in the agricultural sector, as well as in construction and hospitality, some employers have said. In addition, undocumented workers play a key role in hurricane cleanup in the state, but many have said they would no longer risk traveling to Florida because of the threat of deportation.There is also a significant diplomatic component to deportations — countries must be willing to take back their citizens, and the United States must have relations with those countries to coordinate those return trips. This stipulation would pose a huge challenge in returning the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to the United States in the past few years. A DeSantis or Trump administration would most likely need to reestablish diplomatic relations with Venezuela and recognize the government of Nicolás Maduro — something Mr. Trump did not do as president — to carry out their plans.“Mass deportations are really, really, really hard to do,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant organization. “The political backlash would be enormous.”Ron Vitiello, a former acting director of ICE during the Trump administration, acknowledged that there were “logistical, practical and legal challenges” to deporting so many people. But he said that immigrants would continue to cross the border illegally if they believed that they would be able to stay long-term.“If the rest of the world believes they’ll never be deported, that is an incentive for lots of people,” Mr. Vitiello said. “You have to end the incentives to change the traffic patterns at the border.”When Republicans tried to enact comprehensive immigration reform under President George W. Bush, the idea of deporting large numbers of undocumented people was not considered realistic or desirable, reflecting how deeply the political mood in the G.O.P. has shifted in the years since.“Mass deportation is not a workable solution,” the Bush administration argued in a 2007 fact sheet, at a time when the population of unauthorized immigrants was even higher than it is today. “Deporting the millions of illegal immigrants who are already in the country would be impractical, harmful to our economy, and potentially devastating to families with deep roots in their communities.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Why Non-Trump Republicans Must Join Or Die. (They’ll Probably Still Die.)

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      I’m not sure that an assembly of presidential candidates has ever given off stronger loser vibes, if I may use a word favored by the 45th president of the United States, than the Republicans who debated at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this week.A snap 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll and a CNN focus group showed Ron DeSantis as the night’s winner, and that seems right: After months of campaigning and two debates, DeSantis is still the only candidate not named Donald Trump who has a clear argument for why he should be president and a record that fits his party’s trajectory and mood.On the stage with his putative rivals, that makes him the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Against Trump, that’s probably going to be good for an extremely distant second place.The path that I (and others) once saw for the Florida governor, where he would run on his political success and voters would drift his way out of weariness with Trump’s destructive impact on Republican fortunes, has been closed off — by DeSantis’s own struggles, the rallying effect of Trump’s indictments and now Trump’s solid general-election poll numbers against Joe Biden. The path other pundits claimed to see for non-Trump candidates, where they were supposed to run directly against Trump and call him out as a threat to the Republic, was never a realistic one for anything but a protest candidate, as Chris Christie is demonstrating.So what remains for Trump’s rivals besides loserdom? Only this: They can refuse to simply replay 2016, refuse the pathetic distinction of claiming momentum from finishing third in early primaries and figure out a way to join their powers against Trump.This is not a path to likely victory. Trump is much stronger than eight years ago, when the crowded battle for second and third place in New Hampshire and South Carolina helped him build unstoppable momentum and the idea of a Ted Cruz-Marco Rubio unity ticket was pondered but never achieved. He’s also much stronger than Bernie Sanders four years ago, when Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar traded the ego-inflating satisfactions of delegate accumulations for a place on Joe Biden’s bandwagon.But unity has been the road not taken for anti-Trump Republicans thus far, and it feels like the only scenario in which this race stays remotely interesting after the Iowa results.One problem, of course, is that unity still requires a standard-bearer — it would have been Cruz first and Rubio second in 2016, for instance, which is probably one reason Rubio didn’t make the deal — and DeSantis’s edge over his rivals isn’t wide enough for them to feel they need to defer to him.Another problem, central to Trump’s resilience, is that the different non-Trump voters want very different things. Some want DeSantis’s attempts to execute populist ambitions more effectively or the novel spin on Trumpism contained in Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance art. Others want the promise of a George W. Bush restoration offered by Nikki Haley and Tim Scott; others still want the Never Trump absolutism of Christie. Would Ramaswamy’s voters go for Scott and Haley? Doubtful. Would Scott’s or Christie’s voters accept DeSantis? Probably, but he hasn’t made the sale.Meanwhile, despite Trump’s claim that he won’t pick as his vice president anyone who has run against him, he’s been known to change his mind — and that reality influences the ambitions of Ramaswamy (who at least hopes for a Buttigieg-style cabinet spot), Scott (who seems he’s been running to be V.P. from the start) and even Haley. So, too, does the possibility that a conviction before the Republican convention somehow prevents his coronation, creating theoretical incentives for delegate accumulation, however remote the odds.All of these incentives are probably enough to prevent real consolidation. But if the non-Trump Republicans were serious enough about their larger cause, they would be planning now for the morning after Iowa. If Haley or (less plausibly) Scott comes in second and DeSantis falls to third, the Florida governor should drop out and endorse the winner. If DeSantis wins but Haley is leading in New Hampshire, then he should offer a place on his ticket, and she should accept. Christie should then obviously drop out pre-New Hampshire and endorse the Iowa winner as well. (Ramaswamy, I assume, would eventually endorse Trump.)Since this maneuvering could still just lead to Trump winning primaries by “only” 60-40 instead of 52-21-14-7-6, a final impediment to consolidation is just the fear of looking a little bit ridiculous — like Cruz and Carly Fiorina campaigning as supposed running mates in the waning moments of the 2016 primaries.And that, too, is also part of how Trump has always steamrollered his Republican opponents. They tend to hesitate, Prufrock-like, on the brink of boldness, while he rolls the dice without a single qualm or doubt.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

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      Robert Kennedy Jr. Hints Strongly at Third-Party Presidential Bid

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      The political scion, whose long-shot Democratic primary challenge has faltered, released a video teasing a third-party candidacy that would put Democrats on high alert.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hinted strongly on Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Biden, a move that would set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.Mr. Kennedy, in a video released by his campaign, teased a “major announcement” in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, promising to speak about “a sea change in American politics” and dropping clues that he would be continuing his presidential campaign outside the Democratic Party.“How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?” Mr. Kennedy says in the video. “It’s not through playing the game by the corrupt rules that the corrupt powers and the vested interests have rigged to keep us all in their thrall. Instead, we’re going to have to rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”“What I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory,” he declares at another point, saying that the more he sees the inherent goodness of the American people, “the more the path to victory becomes visible.”Mr. Kennedy’s top aides declined to elaborate about his intentions. But his supporters have expressed frustration with the Democratic National Committee’s primary process, which has been geared toward backing Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.“It’s kind of obvious,” said Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, who is backing Mr. Kennedy. “The primaries are so rigged, there’s no debates.”Mr. Kennedy, he added, “has to look at his options.”Democrats have watched Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy nervously since it began in April. They fear that any third-party candidacy could siphon off crucial votes from Mr. Biden, ultimately helping former President Donald J. Trump, the current favorite to be the Republican nominee.Mr. Kennedy, 69, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories whose family has symbolized Democratic politics for decades, has built a following among Silicon Valley tech executives, disaffected voters in both parties and skeptics of the medical and scientific establishments.After some polls in the late spring showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support, Mr. Kennedy’s fortunes fell as more attention was paid to his panoply of views on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration and vaccines that are well outside the party’s mainstream.By late summer, surveys showed Mr. Kennedy polling in the low single digits. With his campaign roiled by news coverage of recordings of bigoted remarks he made at a New York dinner, he no longer appeared to be a threat to Mr. Biden.In recent months, Mr. Kennedy has dropped hints about continuing his campaign as a third-party candidate. He met in July with the Libertarian Party chairwoman and suggested on a podcast that he could leave the Democratic Party.As the reality set in for Mr. Kennedy that Mr. Biden would not debate him, he began using his platform to become more critical of the party and its presidential election process.This month, he published an open letter to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chairman, and party members pleading for accommodations.“The D.N.C. is not supposed to favor one candidate over another,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.The Biden campaign and its allies at the D.N.C. have summarily dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. .The fact that some Republicans believe it would be advantageous to Mr. Trump if Mr. Kennedy embarks on a third-party run has raised questions about whether anyone in the former president’s world has encouraged it.But Mr. Kennedy has in recent months become far more popular with Republicans than he is with Democrats. His campaign in the Democratic primary has been supported by Republicans: David Sacks, a donor for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, hosted a fund-raiser for him in June.While Democrats are nervous that any third-party options would hurt Mr. Biden, it’s not clear from whom Mr. Kennedy would draw more votes if he qualified for the ballot in key battleground states.Over the years, third-party candidacies have been a focus of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.“I predict #RFK abandons the rigged Democrat nominating process and runs as an Independent,” Mr. Stone wrote on Sept. 24 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Stone said he had no involvement in Mr. Kennedy’s effort. “I’m supporting Donald Trump,” he said.Corey Lewandowski, an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his campaign manager during the 2016 election, wrote on X in response to an article about Mr. Kennedy’s possible move, “If true the race is over for @JoeBiden⁩!”Despite Mr. Kennedy’s earlier flirtation with the Libertarian Party, Brian McWilliams, a spokesman for the party, said there had been no recent conversations between Mr. Kennedy and its leadership.Placing himself on the ballot as a candidate of a newly established third party would be an onerous and expensive proposition for Mr. Kennedy, who would have to navigate ballot access laws in enough states to be a serious presidential candidate.Maggie Haberman More