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      Biden esquiva el rótulo de progresista a ultranza

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      A pesar de su alianza con los partidarios del derecho al aborto y los defensores LGBTQ, el presidente ha evitado hábilmente verse envuelto en batallas sobre temas sociales muy controvertidos.Hace más de una década, el presidente Joe Biden se adelantó de manera memorable a Barack Obama en cuanto al apoyo al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, pero en un evento para recaudar fondos en junio, cerca de San Francisco, no pudo recordar las letras LGBTQ.Aunque el Partido Demócrata ha hecho que la lucha por el derecho al aborto sea central en su mensaje político, Biden se declaró como “no muy partidario del aborto” la semana pasada.En un momento en el que los partidos políticos estadounidenses intercambian disparos feroces desde las trincheras de una guerra por las políticas sociales y culturales, el mandatario se mantiene al margen.Biden, un hombre blanco de 80 años que no está muy actualizado con el lenguaje de la izquierda, ha evitado en gran medida involucrarse en las batallas contemporáneas sobre el género, el aborto y otros temas sociales muy controvertidos, incluso cuando hace cosas como albergar lo que llamó “la celebración más grande del Mes del Orgullo jamás organizada en la Casa Blanca”.Los republicanos han tratado de empujarlo hacia esa batalla, pero parecen reconocer la dificultad: cuando los candidatos presidenciales del Partido Republicano prometen ponerle fin a lo que califican burlonamente como la cultura “woke”, a menudo apuntan sus dardos no directamente a Biden sino a las grandes corporaciones como Disney y BlackRock o al enorme “Estado administrativo” del gobierno federal. Los estrategas republicanos afirman que la mayor parte del mensaje de su partido sobre el aborto y las personas transgénero está dirigido a los votantes de las primarias, mientras que en las elecciones presidenciales se considera que Biden es mucho más vulnerable en temas relacionados con la economía, el crimen y la inmigración.La protección de Biden contra los ataques culturales podría parecer improbable para un presidente que ha defendido firmemente los derechos de la comunidad LGBTQ, y que es el líder de un partido que saca ventaja de la ola de políticas sobre el aborto y un hombre que le debe su presidencia al apoyo inquebrantable de los votantes negros de las primarias demócratas.A pesar de que a lo largo de los años ha adoptado posiciones que impulsaron a los demócratas —y luego al país— a adoptar actitudes más liberales en temas sociales, Biden se ha mantenido algo distante de los elementos de su partido que podrían plantearle problemas políticos. En junio, la Casa Blanca declaró que le había prohibido la entrada a una activista transgénero que había mostrado su pecho desnudo en su evento del Mes del Orgullo.Y aunque la edad de Biden se ha convertido en una de sus principales debilidades políticas, tanto sus aliados como sus adversarios dicen que también lo protege de los ataques culturales de los republicanos.Biden celebró el Mes del Orgullo en el jardín sur de la Casa Blanca el mes pasado.Pete Marovich para The New York Times“Todo el mundo quiere hablar de la edad que tiene Joe Biden, pero la verdad es que es su edad y su experiencia lo que le permite ser quien es y le permite decir las cosas y ayudar a las personas de una manera que nadie más puede”, afirmó Henry R. Muñoz III, exdirector de finanzas del Comité Nacional Demócrata. En 2017, en la boda de Muñoz, que es gay, Biden fue el oficiante de la ceremonia.Gran parte de la lealtad hacia Biden por parte de los demócratas de la comunidad LGBTQ proviene de su respaldo en 2012 a los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo, cuando Obama todavía se oponía oficialmente a eso. La posición de Biden se consideró políticamente arriesgada en ese momento, antes de que la Corte Suprema reconociera en 2015 el derecho de las parejas del mismo sexo a casarse, pero se ha convertido en algo de lo que se jactó durante su campaña de 2020.Biden también ha estado a la vanguardia en el reconocimiento de los derechos de las personas transgénero. En su primera semana en el cargo puso fin a la medida de la era de Donald Trump de prohibir la presencia de soldados transgénero en el Ejército. En diciembre, promulgó protecciones federales para los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo.Al mismo tiempo, Biden no ha adoptado la terminología de los activistas progresistas ni se ha dejado involucrar en debates públicos que podrían dejarlo fuera de la corriente política tradicional. El jueves, después del importante fallo de la Corte Suprema que puso fin a la acción afirmativa en las admisiones universitarias, una periodista le preguntó: “¿Esta es una corte rebelde?”Tras una breve pausa para pensar, Biden respondió: “Esta no es una corte normal”.Biden tampoco recuerda las palabras que la mayoría de los políticos estadounidenses utilizan para describir a la comunidad LGBTQ. En el evento de recaudación de fondos cerca de San Francisco el mes pasado, Biden lamentó la decisión de la Corte Suprema que el año pasado puso fin al derecho nacional al aborto y sugirió que ahora el objetivo de la corte serían los derechos de la comunidad gay.Manifestantes pro-LGBTQ protestaban ante una reunión del grupo conservador Moms for Liberty el viernes en Filadelfia.Haiyun Jiang para The New York TimesParafraseando a dos de los jueces conservadores, Biden afirmó: “No hay ningún derecho constitucional en las leyes para H, B… disculpen, para los gays, lesbianas, ya saben, para todo, todo el grupo. No hay protección constitucional”.Durante una parada en la Feria Estatal de Iowa durante su campaña de 2020, un agitador conservador que seguía a los candidatos presidenciales demócratas le preguntó a Biden: “¿Cuántos géneros existen?”.Biden respondió: “Hay al menos tres. No intentes jugar conmigo, chico”.Luego, tal vez sin darse cuenta de que su inquisidor era un activista de derecha, Biden agregó: “Por cierto, el primero en declararse a favor del matrimonio fui yo”.Sarah McBride, una senadora del estado de Delaware que recientemente comenzó una campaña para convertirse en el primer miembro transgénero del Congreso, afirmó que el lenguaje de Biden le había permitido solidificar a los demócratas en una agenda social progresista y “llegar a comunidades y grupos demográficos que aún no están completamente en la coalición”.“No se deja atrapar por una retórica que no sea comprensible para un votante intermedio”, afirmó McBride.McBride también señaló que la edad de Biden es útil para defender los argumentos de los demócratas sobre temas sociales sin alienar a los votantes escépticos.“Su experiencia le permite decir cosas que creo que se escucharían como más radicales si las dijera un político más joven”, afirmó McBride.Como la mayoría de los estadounidenses han aceptado el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, los conservadores sociales han hecho de la oposición a los derechos de las personas transgénero un pilar de su política. Además, los republicanos que se postulan para remplazar a Biden tienden a centrarse en animar a los votantes de las primarias republicanas en vez de intentar convertir al presidente en un villano.“Es difícil retratar a un hombre blanco de 80 años como un férreo guerrero concienciado”, dijo Whit Ayres, encuestador de los candidatos republicanos desde hace mucho tiempo.El gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, es quizás el principal proveedor del mensaje antiprogresista de los republicanos, lanzando improperios tanto en internet como en discursos. El último viernes de julio, su campaña incluso tachó a Trump de ser demasiado liberal en temas LGBTQ en un video controversial publicado en Twitter.En un mitin celebrado en junio en Tulsa, Oklahoma, DeSantis describió cómo se le acercaban veteranos militares que no querían que sus hijos y nietos se alistaran en las fuerzas armadas debido a los cambios políticos liberales instituidos por los demócratas, aunque el gobernador culpó a Obama tanto como a Biden.“Un ejército progre no será un ejército fuerte”, dijo DeSantis. “Hay que eliminar la politización. Y, en el primer día, arrancaremos todas las políticas de Obama-Biden para volver progre a las fuerzas armadas”.Biden nunca se ha presentado como un guerrero cultural de izquierda. Católico, hace mucho tiempo ha sido cauteloso con lanzarse de cabeza a las disputas por el derecho al aborto. Incluso cuando su campaña y su partido se preparan para hacer de su apuesta a la reelección un referendo sobre los esfuerzos republicanos para restringir aún más el aborto, Biden proclamó ante una multitud de donantes en los suburbios de Washington que él mismo no estaba muy ansioso por hacerlo.“¿Saben?, soy católico practicante”, dijo Biden la semana pasada. “No soy muy partidario del aborto. Pero ¿saben qué? Roe contra Wade estaba en lo correcto”.Durante mucho tiempo esa postura ha causado cierta consternación entre los demócratas. Hubo que esperar hasta junio de 2019, semanas después de comenzar su campaña de 2020 y bajo la inmensa presión de los aliados de su partido, para que Biden renunciara a su apoyo de larga data a la prohibición de la financiación federal de los abortos.Renee Bracey Sherman, fundadora de We Testify, un grupo que comparte historias de mujeres que han abortado, dijo que Biden tendría que adoptar una posición más enérgica a favor del derecho al aborto para animar a los votantes liberales en 2024. Sugirió que, de la misma manera que Biden recibe a equipos deportivos de campeonato en la Casa Blanca, debería invitar a mujeres que han abortado para vayan y cuenten sus historias.“Las elecciones de mitad de mandato muestran que los estadounidenses están con el aborto”, dijo Bracey Sherman. “El aborto tiene un índice de aprobación más alto que él. Debería subirse a la ola del aborto”.Kristi Eaton More

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      Kennedy, Christie and the Supreme Court: Are They Changing the Race?

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      A painful ruling from the court can sometimes free a party from an unpopular stance.A recent Supreme Court decision won’t necessarily hurt Democrats politically. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressWhen I returned from a trip to China almost exactly eight years ago, I found my inbox full of requests from editors to write about two huge stories that unfolded while I was gone: the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage and the emergence of a surprising candidate who entered the race after my departure, Donald J. Trump.Needless to say, my inbox this week after a couple of weeks off in the Pacific Northwest does not have nearly as many requests as it did in the wake of the Obergefell decision and Mr. Trump’s trip down the escalator. But the requests I do have nonetheless center on a similar set of topics: a major Supreme Court decision, this time to end affirmative action programs, and two upstart candidates who weren’t receiving a lot of attention before I left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chris Christie.Court gives Democrats some coverAs I wrote at the time, the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a fundamental right was probably politically advantageous for Republicans. Yes, the court decision was popular and the Republican position on same-sex marriage was increasingly unpopular, but that’s precisely why that decision did them a favor: It all but removed the issue from political discourse, freeing Republicans from an issue that might have otherwise hobbled them.In theory, something similar can be said for the court’s affirmative action ruling, but this time with the decision helping Democrats. Here again, the court is taking a popular position that potentially frees a political party — this time the Democrats — from an issue that could hurt it, including with the fast-growing group of Asian American voters.It’s worth noting that this would be nothing like how the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade helped Democrats. Then, the court ruling sparked a backlash that energized liberals and gave Democrats a new campaign issue with appeal to the base and moderates alike. If the most recent case were to help Democrats, it would do so in nearly the opposite manner: To take advantage of the ruling politically, Democrats might need to stop talking about it.It was fairly easy for Republican elites to stop talking about same-sex marriage in 2015, as many were already keen to move on from a losing political fight. It is not as obvious that Democratic elites are keen to move away from the fight over affirmative action or whether they even can, given their base’s passion for racial equality.About those other candidatesObviously, any analogy between the first few weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the slow emergence of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie will be much more strained. For one, Mr. Christie and Mr. Kennedy were already making ripples in the race when I left, and I did think I might need to write about them at some point. In contrast, Mr. Trump couldn’t have been further from my mind in mid-June 2015. Upon hearing about his bid on my return, I thought he might fade so quickly that I would never even have to write about him. Whatever you think about Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie, there’s not much reason to think they simply might go “pop.”Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie don’t have much in common — other than their unequivocally low chance of actually winning — but they have, in their own ways, become factors in the race simply by being the best or even only vessel for expressing explicit opposition to their party’s front-runners, Joe Biden and Mr. Trump.Chris Christie has been direct in his criticism of Donald Trump.John Tully for The New York TimesUsually, willingness to oppose a front-runner isn’t enough to distinguish an aspiring candidate. This year, it is. No current or former elected official has challenged the incumbent president thus far in the Democratic primary. And while many prominent Republicans appear willing to enter the race against Mr. Trump, few appear willing to directly, forcefully and consistently attack him. When they do attack him — as Ron DeSantis recently did for supporting L.G.B.T.Q. people a decade ago — it’s often from the right, and not on the issues that animate the base of any hypothetical not-Trump coalition: relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.Of the two, Mr. Christie is probably the one who is most effectively fulfilling this demand for direct opposition to the front-runner. There may not be a large constituency for anti-Trump campaigning, but it exists and Mr. Christie is feeding it what it wants. Just as important, directly attacking Mr. Trump ensures a steady diet of media coverage.All of this makes Mr. Christie a classic factional candidate, the kind that doesn’t usually win presidential nominations but can nonetheless play an important role in the outcome of the campaign. If he gains the allegiance of those outright opposed to Mr. Trump, he’ll deny an essential not-Trump voting bloc to another Republican who might have broader appeal throughout the party — say, Mr. DeSantis. This is most likely to play out in New Hampshire, where fragmentary survey data (often from Republican-aligned firms) shows Mr. Christie creeping up into the mid-to-high single digits.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of vaccination.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy is a more complicated case. With the help of a famous family name, he’s nudged ahead of Marianne Williamson for the minor distinction of being Mr. Biden’s top rival in Democratic primary polls. On average, Mr. Kennedy polls in the mid-teens, with some surveys still showing him in the single digits and one poll showing him above 20 percent. That’s more than Mr. Christie can say.But unlike Mr. Christie, Mr. Kennedy is not exactly feeding Biden skeptics what they want. Instead, he’s advancing conspiracy theories, appearing on right-wing media and earning praise from conservative figures. And unlike Mr. Trump, whose most ardent opposition is probably toward the center, Mr. Biden is probably most vulnerable to a challenge from the ideological left. This is not what Mr. Kennedy is offering, and it’s reflected in the polls. While Times/Siena polling last summer showed Mr. Biden most vulnerable among “very liberal” voters and on progressive issues, Mr. Kennedy actually fares much better among self-described moderates than liberals. He doesn’t clearly fare better among younger Democrats than older ones, despite Mr. Biden’s longstanding weakness among the younger group.It’s too early to say whether Mr. Kennedy’s modest foothold among moderate and conservative Democrats reflects a constituency for anti-modernist, anti-establishment liberalism, or whether Mr. Kennedy’s family name is simply getting him farther among less engaged Democrats, who are likelier to identify as moderate. Either way, his ability to play an important role in the race is limited by embracing conservatives and conspiratorial positions, even if he may continue to earn modest support in the race because of the absence of another prominent not-Biden option. More

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      The Biden-Trump Rematch Is Already Here

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      One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won whites with college degrees in 2020, 51-48, but Trump won by a landslide, 67-32, among whites without degrees, according to network exit polls.Even so, there is new data that reflects Trump’s ongoing and disruptive quest for power.In a paper published last year, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, political scientists at Sciences Po-Paris and Princeton, analyzed 40 days of polling conducted intermittently over the crucial period from Oct. 27, 2020, through Jan. 29, 2021.The authors found that Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him has had continuing ramifications:The lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem.In reaction to the lie, Arceneaux and Truex write, “there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed.”Endorsement of the lie pays off for Republicans, Arceneaux and Truex argue: “Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle.”These trends are among the most striking developments setting the stage for the 2024 elections.Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency; the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings; an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority; and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers.These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.Republican advantages include high rates of crime (although modestly declining in 2023 so far), homelessness and dysfunction in cities run by Democrats; a parents’ rights movement opposed to teaching of so-called critical race theory and gender-fluid concepts; and declining public support for gay rights and especially trans rights.There are, needless to say, a host of uncertainties.One key factor will be the salience on Election Day of issues closely linked to race in many voters’ minds, including school integration, affordable housing, the end of affirmative action, crime, urban disorder and government spending on social programs. As a general rule, the higher these issues rank in voters’ priorities, the better Republicans do. In that respect, the success of conservatives in barring the use of race in college admissions has taken a Republican issue off the table.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, noted in an email that in the “sour environment” of today’s politics, “many voters may be tempted toward a protest vote, and it is likely that there will be some options available for such voters.” It is not clear, Lee added, “what No Labels will do, but the potential there introduces considerable additional uncertainty.”Asked what factors he would cite as crucial to determining the outcome of the 2024 election, Ray La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, pointed out by email:The economy is the source of the most uncertainty — it is doing well, although inflation is not fully tamed. Will things continue to improve and will Biden start to get credit? This is especially important for white working-class voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate.”As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race.From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the Transformation paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”Most important, Abramowitz wrote, therise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day.Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources.This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-choice voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, gays and African Americans, all Democratic constituencies.My Times colleague Jonathan Weisman argued in a July 1 article, “Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening,” that the rulings giveDemocrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.In addition, Weisman wrote, “Republicans’ remarkable successes before the new court may have actually deprived them of combative issues to galvanize voters going into 2024.”The education trends favoring Democrats are reinforced by Americans’ changing religious beliefs. From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical Protestant share of the population fell from 23 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16 to 26.8 percent.Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, found that the nonreligious can be broken down into three groups: atheists, who are the most Democratic, voting 85-11 for Biden over Trump; followed by agnostics, 78-18 for Biden; and those Burge calls “nothing in particular,” 63-35 for Biden.The last of the pro-Democratic developments is an initial advantage in Electoral College votes, according to an analysis at this early stage in the contest.Kyle D. Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week.“We are starting 260 electoral votes worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik writes, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need to win 20 more Electoral College votes while the Republican nominee would need to win 35.The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”In the case of Arizona, Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, argued in an email that domestic migration from California to Arizona is substantial enough to help shift the state from red to purple.“In some recent work we have done comparing California, Arizona and Texas,” Cain added, “we find that the movement of Californians is greater in absolute numbers to Texas, but proportionately more impactful to Arizona.”People who move, Cain continued,make Arizona a bit more polarized and close to the Arizona purple profile. They contribute to polarized purpleness. Enough move over a four-year period to have a measurable impact in a close race. Unlike immigrants, domestic migrants can become voters instantly.How about the other side of the aisle?Daniel Kreiss, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina, writing by email, cited the Republican advantage gained from diminished content regulation on social media platforms: “This platform rollback stems broadly from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which gave other platforms a green light to drop electoral and public health protections.”The beneficiaries of this deregulation, Kreiss continued, are “Trump and Republicans more broadly who use disinformation as a strategic political tool.”These content regulation policies are a sharp policy shift on the part of the owners and managers of social media websites, Bridget Barrett, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, and Kreiss write in a June 29 paper, “Platforms Are Abandoning U.S. Democracy.”They argue that in the aftermath of the 2020 electionplatforms took serious steps to protect elections and the peaceful transfer of power, including creating policies against electoral disinformation and enforcing violations — including by Trump and other candidates and elected officials. And deplatforming the former president after an illegitimate attempt to seize power was a necessary step to quell the violence.More recently, Barrett and Kreiss note, “social media platforms have walked away from their commitments to protect democracy. So much so that the current state of platform content moderation is more like 2016 than 2020.”Frances Lee pointed out that Cornel West’s entry into the presidential election as a candidate of the Green Party will siphon some liberal voters away from Biden: “West has announced a presidential bid and has now moved from the People’s Party to the Green Party, which will have ballot access in most states,” she wrote.Insofar as West gains support, it will in all likelihood be at Democrats’ expense. West is a prominent figure in progressive circles and his agenda is explicitly an appeal to the left.In a June 28 appearance on C-SPAN, West declared:We need jobs with a living wage. We need decent housing, quality education, the basic social needs. You can imagine disproportionately Black and brown are wrestling with poverty. The abolition of poverty and homelessness. I want jobs with a living wage across the board. I want a U.S. foreign policy that is not tied to big money and corporate interests.While West will draw support from very liberal Democrats, there is another factor that may well weaken Democratic support among some moderate voters: the seeming insolubility of homeless encampments, shoplifting, carjacking and crime generally in major cities. This has the potential to tilt the playing field in favor of Republican law-and-order candidates, as it did in the 2023 Wisconsin Senate race and in suburban New York House contests.In 2022, crime ranked high among voter concerns, but Republicans who campaigned on themes attacking Democrats as weak on crime met with mixed results.A recent trend raising Republican prospects is the Gallup Poll finding that the percentage of people “who say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable” fell by 7 percentage points, from a record high of 71 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year.There was a six-point drop among Democrats on this question, from 85 to 79 percent approval, and a precipitous 15-point falloff among Republicans, 56 to 41 percent. Independents, in contrast, went from 71 percent approval to 72 percent. The overall decline reversed 20 years of steadily rising approval, which has grown from 39 percent in 2002 to 71 percent in 2022. Gallup also found that the public is holding increasingly conservative views on key issues related to gender transition.Asked “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity or should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” the public favored birth gender by 28 points, 62-34, in May 2021. In May 2023, the margin grew to 41 points, 69-28.Similarly, Gallup asked “Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong to change one’s gender.” In May 2021, 51 percent said morally wrong, 46 percent said acceptable. In May 2023, 55 percent said morally wrong, 43 percent said acceptable.President Biden is a strong supporter of transgender rights. On March 31, the White House released “Statement From President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Visibility,” in which Biden vowed:My administration will never quit fighting to end discrimination, to stand against unjust state laws, and to guarantee everyone the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are. We’ll never stop working to create a world where everyone can live without fear; where parents, teachers and whole communities come together to support kids, no matter how they identify; and every child is surrounded by compassion and love.Republican candidates are moving in the opposite direction. At the Faith and Freedom conference last month in Washington, Mike Pence promised to “end the gender ideology that is running rampant in our schools, and we will ban chemical and surgical gender transition treatment for kids under the age of 18.”Ron DeSantis told the gathering:The left is lighting the fire of a cultural revolution all across this land. The fire smolders in our schools. It smolders in corporate board rooms. It smolders in the homes of government. We’re told that we must accept that men can get pregnant. We are told to celebrate a swimmer who swam for three years on the men’s team, then switches to the women’s team and somehow is named the women’s champion.The 2020 election raised a new concern for Democrats: Trump’s success in increasing his support from 2016 among Latino voters.Kyle Kondik’s analysis shows that Nevada (17 percent of the vote was Hispanic in 2020) and Arizona (19 percent was Hispanic) are two of the four tossup states in 2024. This suggests that the Latino vote will be crucial.While acknowledging the gains Trump and fellow Republicans have made among Latino voters, a June 2023 analysis of the 2022 election, “Latino Voters & The Case of the Missing Red Wave,” by Equis, a network of three allied, nonpartisan research groups, found that with the exception of Florida, “at the end of the day, there turned out to be basic stability in support levels among Latinos in highly contested races.” In short, the report’s authors continued, “the G.O.P. held gains they had made since 2016/2018 but weren’t able to build on them.”In Florida, the report documented a six-year collapse in Democratic voting among Hispanics: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the Latino vote; in 2020, Biden won 51 percent and in 2022 Democratic congressional candidates won 44 percent.The Equis study also pointed to some significant Democratic liabilities among Latino voters: Substantial percentages of a key bloc of pro-Democratic Hispanics — those who say they believe Democrats “are better for Hispanics” — harbor significant doubts about the party. For example, 44 percent agreed that “Democrats don’t keep their promises” and 44 percent agreed that “Democrats take Latinos for granted.”In addition, the percentage of Latino voters describing immigration as the top issue — a stance favoring Democrats — has nose-dived, according to the Equis analysis, from 39 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2022.Where, then, does all this contradictory information leave us as to the probable outcome of the 2024 election? The reasonable answer is: in the dark.The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent Trump vs. Biden polls has Trump up by a statistically insignificant 0.6 percent. From August 2021 to the present, RealClear has tracked a total of 101 polls pitting these two against each other. Trump led in 56, Biden 38, and the remainder were ties.While this polling suggests Trump has an even chance, surveys do not fully capture the weight of Trump’s indictments and falsehoods on his own candidacy and, as evidenced in competitive races in 2022, on Republicans who are closely tied to the former president.Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.Even before the votes are counted on Nov. 5, 2024, the most important question may well turn out to be: If Trump is the Republican candidate for a third straight time and loses the election for a second, will he once again attempt to claim victory was stolen from him? And if he does, what will his followers — and for that matter, everyone else — do?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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      The D.N.C. Has a Primary Problem

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      Last December, the 30-odd members of the Democratic Party’s rules and bylaws committee filed in to the Omni Shoreham, the glittering resort hotel that once hosted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural ball. All of the Democrats, many of them gray-haired habitués of the rubber-chicken circuit, knew they had come to Washington to hash out, after months of debate, what the presidential-primary calendar would look like come 2024. Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      Biden Sidesteps Any Notion That He’s a ‘Flaming Woke Warrior’

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      Despite his alliance with abortion-rights supporters and L.G.B.T.Q. advocates, the president has deftly avoided becoming enmeshed in battles over hotly contested social issues.President Biden memorably jumped the gun on Barack Obama in endorsing same-sex marriage more than a decade ago, but at a June fund-raiser near San Francisco, he couldn’t recall the letters L.G.B.T.Q.And even as the Democratic Party makes the fight for abortion rights central to its political message, Mr. Biden last week declared himself “not big on abortion.”At a moment when the American political parties are trading fierce fire from the trenches of a war over social and cultural policy, the president is staying out of the fray.White, male, 80 years old and not particularly up-to-date on the language of the left, Mr. Biden has largely avoided becoming enmeshed in contemporary battles over gender, abortion and other hotly contested social issues — even as he does things like hosting what he called “the largest Pride Month celebration ever held at the White House.”Republicans have tried to pull him in, but appear to recognize the difficulty: When G.O.P. presidential candidates vow to end what they derisively call “woke” culture, they often aim their barbs not directly at Mr. Biden but at big corporations like Disney and BlackRock or the vast “administrative state” of the federal government. Republican strategists say most of their party’s message on abortion and transgender issues is aimed at primary voters, while Mr. Biden is seen as far more vulnerable in a general election on the economy, crime and immigration.Mr. Biden’s armor against cultural attacks might seem unlikely for a president who has strongly advocated for L.G.B.T.Q. people, the leader of a party whose fortunes ride on the wave of abortion politics, and a man who owes his presidency to unbending support from Black Democratic primary voters.Yet despite adopting positions over the years that pushed Democrats — and then the country — to embrace more liberal attitudes on social issues, Mr. Biden has kept himself at arms’ length from elements of his party that could pose him political problems. In June, the White House said it had barred a transgender activist who went topless at its Pride event.And while Mr. Biden’s age has become one of his chief political weaknesses, both his allies and adversaries say it also helps insulate him from cultural attacks by Republicans.Mr. Biden held a celebration of Pride Month on the South Lawn of the White House last month.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“Everybody wants to talk about how old Joe Biden is, but the truth of the matter is it’s his age and his experience allow him to be who he is and allow him to say the things and to help people in a way that nobody else can,” said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance director. Mr. Muñoz, who is gay, had Mr. Biden serve as his wedding officiant in 2017.Much of Mr. Biden’s loyalty from L.G.B.T.Q. Democrats stems from his 2012 endorsement of same-sex marriages when Mr. Obama was still officially opposed to them. Mr. Biden’s position was seen as politically risky at the time, before the Supreme Court in 2015 recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry, but has evolved into something he bragged about during his 2020 campaign.He has also been on the forefront of recognizing transgender rights. In his first week in office, Mr. Biden ended the Trump-era ban on transgender troops in the military. In December, he signed into law federal protections for same-sex marriages.At the same time, Mr. Biden has not adopted the terminology of progressive activists or allowed himself to be drawn into public debates that might leave him outside the political mainstream. On Thursday, after the Supreme Court’s major ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions, a reporter asked him, “Is this a rogue court?”Pausing to think for a moment, Mr. Biden responded, “This is not a normal court.”He also does not always remember the words most American politicians use to describe same-sex people. At the fund-raiser near San Francisco last month, Mr. Biden lamented the Supreme Court’s decision last year that ended the national right to an abortion and suggested the court was coming for gay rights next.Pro-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrators protesting outside a gathering of the conservative group Moms for Liberty on Friday in Philadelphia. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesParaphrasing two of the conservative justices, he said: “There’s no constitutional right in the law for H-B, excuse me, for gay, lesbian, you know, the whole, the whole group. There’s no constitutional protection.”During a stop at the Iowa State Fair during his 2020 campaign, a conservative provocateur trailing the Democratic presidential candidates asked Mr. Biden, “How many genders are there?”Mr. Biden replied: “There are at least three. Don’t play games with me, kid.”Then, perhaps not realizing that his inquisitor was a right-wing activist, Mr. Biden added: “By the way, first one to come out for marriage was me.”Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator who recently began a campaign to become the first transgender member of Congress, said Mr. Biden’s language gave him the ability to solidify Democrats behind a progressive social agenda and “reach communities and demographics that are not yet fully in the coalition.”“He’s not getting caught up on rhetoric that isn’t understandable for your middle-of-the-road voter,” Ms. McBride said.She also pointed to Mr. Biden’s age as helpful for making Democrats’ case on social issues without alienating skeptical voters.“His background allows him to say things that I think would be heard as more radical if they were said by a younger politician,” she said.As majorities of Americans have accepted gay marriage, social conservatives have made opposition to transgender rights a mainstay of their politics. And Republicans running to displace Mr. Biden have tended to focus on energizing G.O.P. primary voters rather than making a villain out of the president.“It’s hard to paint an 80-year-old white man as a flaming woke warrior,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime pollster for Republican candidates.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is perhaps the leading purveyor of Republicans’ anti-“woke” message, throwing barbs both online and in speeches. On Friday, his campaign cast even Mr. Trump as too liberal on L.G.B.T.Q. issues in a provocative video posted on Twitter.At a June rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. DeSantis described being approached by military veterans who don’t want their children and grandchildren joining the armed forces because of liberal policy changes instituted by Democrats — though the governor blamed Mr. Obama as much as he did Mr. Biden.“A woke military is not going to be a strong military,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You got to get the politicization out of it. And on Day 1, we’re ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies to woke-ify the military.”Mr. Biden has never presented as a left-wing culture warrior. A Catholic, he has long been wary about jumping headlong into fights over abortion rights. Even as his campaign and party are preparing to make his re-election bid a referendum on Republican efforts to further restrict abortion, Mr. Biden proclaimed to a crowd of donors in suburban Washington that he himself was not eager to do so.“You know, I happen to be a practicing Catholic,” Mr. Biden said last week. “I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”That stance has long caused some consternation among Democrats. It took until June 2019, weeks after beginning his 2020 campaign and under immense pressure from allies in his party, for Mr. Biden to renounce his long-held support for banning federal funding for abortions.Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder of We Testify, a group that shares women’s stories of having abortions, said Mr. Biden would need to adopt a more forceful position in favor of abortion rights to energize liberal voters in 2024. She suggested that in the same way Mr. Biden hosts championship sports teams at the White House, he should invite women who have had abortions to come and tell their stories.“The midterms show that Americans love abortion,” Ms. Bracey Sherman said. “Abortion has a higher approval rating than he does. He should be riding the abortion wave.”Kristi Eaton More

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      La hija de Hunter Biden y una historia de dos familias

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      El relato que rodea a la nieta del presidente en Arkansas, que aún no ha conocido a su padre ni a su abuelo, trata de dinero, política corrosiva y lo que significa tener el derecho de nacimiento de los Biden.Hay una niña de 4 años en una zona rural de Arkansas que está aprendiendo a andar en una cuatrimoto con estampado de camuflaje junto a sus primos. Algunos días lleva un lazo en el cabello y otros pasa su larga cola de caballo rubia por detrás de una gorra de béisbol. Cuando tenga edad suficiente, aprenderá a cazar, como su madre cuando era joven.La niña sabe que su padre es Hunter Biden y que su abuelo paterno es el presidente de Estados Unidos. Habla a menudo de ambos, pero no los conoce. Su abuelo materno, Rob Roberts, la describe como muy inteligente y divertida.“Puede que no sea el presidente de Estados Unidos”, señaló Roberts en un mensaje de texto, pero afirmó que haría cualquier cosa por su nieta. Dijo que ella “no necesita nada y nunca lo necesitará”.La historia que rodea a la nieta del presidente en Arkansas, cuyo nombre no figura en los documentos judiciales, es la historia de dos familias: una de ellas es poderosa; la otra, no. Pero, en el fondo, es una historia de dinero, política corrosiva y lo que significa tener el derecho de nacimiento de los Biden.El jueves, sus padres pusieron fin a una larga batalla judicial por la manutención de la niña al acordar que Hunter Biden, quien ha iniciado una segunda carrera como pintor y cuyas obras se han ofrecido hasta por 500.000 dólares cada una, cederá varios de sus cuadros a su hija, además de darle una pensión mensual. La niña seleccionará los cuadros de Biden, según los documentos judiciales.“Lo resolvimos entre nosotros”, dijo Lunden Roberts, la madre de la niña, en una entrevista con The New York Times. “Se resolvió” en una conversación con Biden, dijo.Hunter Biden no respondió a una solicitud de comentarios para este artículo.Hunter Biden se mantiene cercano a su padre y aparece a menudo en actos de la Casa Blanca.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesRoberts aseguró que retiró la petición de que se cambiara el apellido de la niña de Roberts a Biden (Biden se había opuesto a que su hija llevara su apellido). Roberts se limitó a decir que la decisión de retirar la petición fue mutua. “Ambos queremos lo mejor para nuestra hija, y ese es nuestro único objetivo”, declaró.Aunque se ha evitado el juicio previsto para mediados de julio, personas de ambas partes temen que se mantenga la toxicidad política que rodea al caso. Los medios de comunicación conservadores, desde Breitbart hasta Fox News, ya han hecho eco del caso, y los comentaristas conservadores atacaron a la familia Biden tras darse a conocer el acuerdo.Tanto Hunter Biden, el hijo privilegiado y problemático de un presidente, como Roberts, la hija de un armero rural, tienen aliados cuyas acciones han politizado más la situación. No hay pruebas de que la Casa Blanca esté implicada en esas acciones.Clint Lancaster, abogado de Roberts, ha representado a la campaña de Donald Trump. También llamó a Garrett Ziegler, un activista y exasesor de Trump en la Casa Blanca que ha catalogado y publicado mensajes de una memoria caché de archivos de Hunter Biden que parecen proceder de una computadora portátil que dejó en un sitio de reparaciones, para que actúe como testigo experto en el caso de la pensión alimenticia. En la otra esquina, aliados de grupos demócratas dedicados a ayudar a la familia Biden han difundido información sobre Ziegler y la familia Roberts para destacar sus vínculos con Trump.Y luego está el presidente.Su imagen pública gira en torno a su devoción por su familia, incluyendo a Hunter Biden, su único hijo varón sobreviviente. En las reuniones de estrategia de los últimos años, se ha dicho a los asesores que los Biden tienen seis nietos, no siete, según dos personas familiarizadas con las conversaciones.La Casa Blanca no respondió preguntas sobre el caso, en consonancia con la forma en que los funcionarios han respondido a las preguntas sobre la familia Biden anteriormente.Varios aliados del presidente temen que el caso pueda dañar sus posibilidades de reelección al atraer más atención sobre un hijo al que algunos demócratas ven como un lastre. Otros dicen que la extrema derecha se ha centrado en Hunter Biden, un ciudadano que no es servidor público, pero ha ignorado las fallas morales y éticas del expresidente Trump.“Tiene más acusaciones que todos los jugadores de dos equipos del Super Bowl”, dijo de Trump el escritor y estratega político Stuart Stevens, quien abandonó el Partido Republicano en 2016. “Pero eso no importa: ahí está Hunter Biden. Es solo ira en busca de un argumento”.‘La gente se hace una imagen de mí’Lunden Roberts, de 32 años, procede de un clan tan unido como el de los Biden. Su padre es un fabricante de armas de un estado republicano, entre cuyos compañeros de caza se encuentra Donald Trump Jr., y le enseñó a cazar pavos y caimanes desde muy pequeña. Trabaja en la empresa familiar, situada en una sinuosa carretera rural salpicada de pastizales a las afueras de Batesville, Arkansas.Roberts, de 1,73 metros de estatura y el orgullo de su familia, se graduó con honores en la secundaria Southside de Batesville, y jugó baloncesto en la Universidad Estatal de Arkansas, donde, según una biografía del equipo, disfrutaba la caza y el tiro al plato. Tras graduarse, se trasladó a Washington para estudiar investigación forense en la Universidad George Washington. Nunca terminó el programa. Fotos de esa época la muestran asistiendo a partidos de béisbol en el Nationals Park y a conciertos de Drake y Kanye West.Lunden Roberts llegando para una audiencia en el caso de paternidad en Batesville, Arkansas, en mayo. Roberts y Hunter Biden llegaron a un acuerdo el jueves.Karen Pulfer Focht/ReutersEn el camino, conoció al hijo de un futuro presidente que estaba cayendo en la adicción y visitaba los clubes de bailarinas desnudas de Washington.A mediados de 2018, Roberts trabajaba como asistente personal de Hunter Biden, de acuerdo con una persona cercana a ella y a los mensajes de una memoria caché con archivos de Biden. Su hija nació a finales de ese año, pero, para entonces, Biden había dejado de responder a los mensajes de Roberts, incluido uno en el que le informaba la fecha de nacimiento de la niña. Poco después de que nació su hija, en noviembre de 2018, quitó a Roberts y a la niña de su seguro médico, lo que llevó a Roberts a ponerse en contacto con Lancaster.Ella interpuso una demanda en mayo de 2019, y las pruebas de ADN de ese año establecieron que Hunter Biden era el padre de la niña. En la presentación de una solicitud de custodia en diciembre de 2019, Roberts dijo que Hunter Biden no conocía a su hija y “no podría identificar a la niña en una serie de fotos”.Roberts aseguró en una entrevista que se había acostumbrado a la avalancha de escrutinio en torno al caso: “Leo cosas sobre mí de las que no tengo ni idea”, afirmó. Pero una cosa que no soporta es que la llamen mala madre. “La gente puede llamarme como quiera, pero no pueden decirme eso”, dijo.Su cuenta pública de Instagram narra su propia historia: “Espero que algún día, cuando mires atrás, te enorgullezcas de quién eres, de dónde vienes y, lo más importante, de quién te crio”, escribió al pie de una foto de las dos en la playa a principios de este año. En otra fotografía, compartida en su cuenta en abril de 2022, su hija llevaba una gorra de béisbol del Air Force One y estaba delante del Jefferson Memorial.“La gente se hace una imagen de mí, pero pocos aciertan”, escribió Roberts en otra foto de julio de 2022.Roberts publicó una foto de ella y su hija en Washington el año pasado.Visto desde un ángulo, las fotos son un poderoso testamento público de amor de una madre a su hija. Desde otro punto de vista, son explotadoras, desde luego desde la perspectiva de los aliados de Biden, que temen que las imágenes —y la niña— estén siendo utilizadas como arma contra la familia Biden.Por su parte, Roberts dijo que no llevó a su hija a Washington para castigar a los Biden. Dijo que la llevó a Washington porque no muchas niñas pueden decir que su abuelo es el presidente.“Está muy orgullosa de quién es su abuelo y quién es su padre”, dijo Roberts. “Eso es algo que nunca le permitiría pensar de otra manera”.Un hijo problemáticoHunter Biden, de 53 años, se está recuperando de su adicción al crack y es el último hijo varón sobreviviente del presidente, ya que perdió al mayor, Beau, por un cáncer cerebral en 2015. El menor de los Biden tiene cinco hijos y ha dicho que fue padre de la cuarta en un momento bajo de su vida.“No recordaba nada de nuestro encuentro”, escribió Biden en su libro de memorias de 2021. “Así de poca conexión tenía con toda la gente. Era un desastre, pero un desastre del que me he hecho responsable”.Antes del acuerdo del jueves, Biden le había pagado a Roberts más de 750.000 dólares, según sus abogados, y había intentado reducir el pago de 20.000 dólares al mes por la manutención de su hija alegando que no tenía el dinero. La nueva cantidad es inferior a la ordenada originalmente por el tribunal, según una persona familiarizada con el caso.“Estoy muy orgulloso de mi hijo”, declaró recientemente el presidente Biden a la prensa.Al Drago para The New York TimesCon juicio o sin él, Hunter Biden seguirá siendo uno de los puntos débiles políticos de su padre. Desde que su adicción se descontroló y sus tratos con gobiernos extranjeros llamaron la atención de los conservadores, las decisiones de Hunter Biden se han convertido en combustible para los memes, los paneles de noticias por cable conservadores y la recaudación de fondos de los republicanos. La ronda más reciente se inició después de que llegó a un acuerdo con el Departamento de Justicia para declararse culpable de dos delitos fiscales menores y aceptar condiciones que le permitieran evitar ser procesado por otro cargo de posesión de armas.Además, ha sido objeto de múltiples investigaciones en el Congreso, y el contenido de la computadora portátil que dejó en un local de reparaciones ha sido estudiado y difundido por activistas que afirman que sus comunicaciones privadas demuestran la comisión de delitos.En la Casa Blanca, los asuntos relacionados con Hunter Biden son tan delicados que solo los asesores de más alto rango del presidente hablan con él sobre su hijo, de acuerdo con personas familiarizadas con la situación.A pesar de todo, el presidente lo ha apoyado de manera incondicional. En lugar de distanciarse de su hijo, ha incluido a Hunter Biden en los viajes oficiales, ha viajado con él a bordo del Marine One y se ha asegurado de que esté en la lista de invitados a las cenas de Estado.“Estoy muy orgulloso de mi hijo”, declaró hace poco el presidente a la prensa.‘La bendición más grande de la vida’El presidente ha trabajado durante el último medio siglo para que su apellido sea sinónimo de valores familiares y lealtad. La fuerza de su personaje político, que hace hincapié en la decencia, la familia y el deber, fue suficiente para derrotar a Trump la primera vez, y tendría que mantenerla intacta si Trump es el candidato republicano en 2024.En una proclama emitida con motivo del Día del Padre, Biden aclaró que su padre le había “enseñado que, por encima de todo, la familia es el principio, el medio y el fin, una lección que he transmitido a mis hijos y nietos”. Añadió que “la familia es la mayor bendición y responsabilidad de la vida”.El presidente Biden; Jill Biden, la primera dama; y sus hijos y nietos observan los fuegos artificiales desde la Casa Blanca tras la toma de posesión de Biden en 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDesde que llegaron a la Casa Blanca, el presidente y Jill Biden, la primera dama, han centrado su vida familiar en torno a sus nietos y les han brindado los beneficios que conlleva vivir en estrecho contacto con la Casa Blanca.Naomi Biden, de 29 años, es la hija mayor de Hunter, fruto de su primer matrimonio, con Kathleen Buhle, que terminó en 2017. Naomi Biden se casó en el Jardín Sur de la Casa Blanca el año pasado con un vestido de Ralph Lauren que ella definió como el producto de sus “sueños americanos”. Ella y sus hermanas han hecho viajes por todo el mundo con el presidente y la primera dama. Hunter Biden se casó con Melissa Cohen en 2019. Su hijo menor, que lleva el nombre de Beau y nació en 2020, es fotografiado con frecuencia con sus abuelos.En abril, el presidente relató a un grupo de niños que tenía “seis nietos. Y estoy loco por ellos. Y hablo con ellos todos los días. No es broma”.El hijo menor de Hunter Biden, Beau, es visto frecuentemente viajando y asistiendo a eventos con sus abuelos.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesPero el presidente aún no ha conocido ni mencionado públicamente a su otra nieta. La Casa Blanca no ha respondido a las preguntas sobre si la reconocerá públicamente ahora que se ha resuelto el caso de la pensión alimenticia.Sin embargo, Stevens, el estratega político, dijo que el apoyo de Biden a su hijo, incluso contra una avalancha de críticas republicanas y escándalos desagradables, solo ha enfatizado su amor incondicional por su familia.“El neto positivo de todo esto ha sido para Biden, por cierto”, dijo Stevens refiriéndose al presidente. “Ha estado a su lado”.Preocupaciones políticasPocos de los implicados creen que las particularidades de este caso, aunque se haya resuelto, se apacigüen, especialmente dada su omnipresencia en los medios de comunicación de derecha.“En otro acuerdo ventajoso, Hunter Biden se ha librado de la manutención de su hija”, escribió el consejo editorial de The New York Post, que ha seguido de cerca el caso.Aparte de la cobertura informativa y los comentarios, los aliados de la familia Biden temen en privado que la implicación de agentes de la derecha en el asunto haya dificultado cualquier compromiso de la familia.Ziegler, quien fue nombrado testigo experto en el caso, tuvo un papel destacado en los esfuerzos de Trump por impugnar los resultados de las elecciones de 2020: en diciembre de 2020, Ziegler escoltó al exasesor de seguridad nacional de Trump, Michael Flynn, y a la abogada Sidney Powell a la Oficina Oval, donde un grupo discutió con Trump un plan para tomar el control de las máquinas de votación en estados clave. Los privilegios de invitado a la Casa Blanca de Ziegler fueron revocados más tarde.Ziegler se negó a confirmar su participación en el caso de manutención de la niña.El abogado de Roberts, Lancaster, también tiene antecedentes en el activismo conservador. Él es elocuente en las redes sociales sobre su apoyo a Trump, a menudo retuiteando críticas de los medios conservadores y Elon Musk, el dueño de Twitter. También trabajó como abogado para la campaña de Trump durante un recuento de votos electorales en Wisconsin después de las elecciones de 2020.Simpatizantes del expresidente Donald Trump en un mitin en 2020. Aliados de la familia Biden temen que el caso de paternidad se utilice contra el presidente Biden en la campaña de 2024.Al Drago para The New York TimesPor otro lado, personas afiliadas a organizaciones de izquierda, como Facts First USA, un grupo de defensa dirigido por David Brock, desconfían de lo que pueda hacer el equipo que rodea a Roberts en la antesala de la campaña de 2024.Los miembros del grupo, que opera independientemente de la Casa Blanca y ha adoptado una actitud más antagónica con los críticos que el gobierno de Biden, han distribuido una foto del padre de Roberts posando con Donald Trump Jr.Roberts padre dijo en un mensaje de texto que había ido de caza con Trump, pero que no recordaba cuándo se habían conocido.El encuestador republicano Frank Luntz dijo que era “una pérdida de tiempo” que los activistas se enfocaran en atacar a la familia del presidente porque a los votantes no les importa Hunter Biden tanto como otros temas, como Ucrania y la inflación.“Tienen la responsabilidad de pedir cuentas a la gente, pero quiero ser claro: no cambiará ni un solo voto”, dijo sobre los problemas legales y personales de Hunter Biden.Si la familia Roberts está siguiendo consejos políticos —aparte de los que pueda dar el abogado de la familia—, no lo dicen. En Batesville, la abuela materna de la niña, Kimberly Roberts, dijo en una breve entrevista telefónica que no haría comentarios sobre el caso.Pero sí tenía algo que decir.“Mi nieta es feliz, sana y muy querida”, dijo Roberts, antes de colgar.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      Can Biden Change the Economic Narrative?

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      Back in the 1970s, Arthur Okun, an economist who had been a policy adviser to Lyndon Johnson, suggested a quick-and-dirty way to assess the nation’s economic condition: the “misery index,” the sum of inflation and unemployment. It was and is a crude, easily criticized measure. The measurable economic harm from unemployment, for instance, is much higher than that from inflation. Yet the index has historically done a quite good job of predicting overall economic sentiment.So it seems worth noting that the misery index — which soared along with inflation during 2021 and the first half of 2022 — has plunged over the past year. It is now all the way back to its level when President Biden took office.This remarkable turnaround raises several questions. First, is it real? (Yes.) Second, will ordinary Americans notice? (They already have.) Third, will they give Biden credit? (That’s a lot less clear.)The plunge in the misery index reflects both what didn’t happen and what did. What didn’t happen, despite a drumbeat of dire warnings in the news media, was a recession. The U.S. economy added four million jobs over the past year, and the unemployment rate has remained near a 50-year low.What did happen was a rapid decline in inflation. But is this decline sustainable? You may have seen news reports pointing out that “core” inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, has been “sticky,” suggesting that improvement on the inflation front will be only a temporary phenomenon.But just about every economist paying attention to the data knows that the traditional measure of core inflation has gone rotten, because it’s being driven largely by the delayed effects of a surge in rents that ended in mid-2022. This surge, by the way, was probably caused by the rise in remote work triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic rather than by any Biden administration policy.Alternative measures of core inflation that exclude shelter by and large show a clear pattern of disinflation; inflation is still running higher than it was before the pandemic, but it has come down a lot. If you really work at it, it’s still possible to be pessimistic about the inflation outlook, but it’s getting harder and harder. The good news about inflation, and about the economy as a whole, does look real.But are people noticing this improvement? Traditional measures of economic sentiment have become problematic in recent years: Ask people how the economy is doing, and their response is strongly affected both by partisanship and, I believe, by the narratives conveyed by the news media. That is, what people say about the economy is, all too often, what they think they’re supposed to say.But if you ask Americans more specific questions, such as whether now is a good time to find a quality job, they typically say yes. At the same time, their expectations about future inflation have declined substantially.And if you look at a novel indicator — what information people are searching for on the internet — you’ll find that searches for both “inflation” and “recession” soared in 2021-22 along with the misery index but have plunged over the past year.Finally, as always, it’s important to look at what people do as well as what they say. Strong consumer spending, record levels of air travel and many other indicators suggest that Americans are feeling pretty good about their economic circumstances.But will Biden get credit? Polls suggest that voters are still giving him very poor marks for his handling of the economy, despite the decline in the misery index.Some analysts have argued that this jaundiced view reflects a failure of wages to keep up with inflation. But this was true for most of the Reagan years too, and in any case real wages have been rising lately.So will voters’ views of the Biden economy eventually reflect the good news? Or did the inflation shock of 2021-22 establish a narrative of Biden as a poor economic manager that has become too deeply entrenched — both in the public consciousness and in the news media — to be dislodged even as the economy rapidly improves?Biden himself is trying hard to change that narrative, by pointing both to the improving data and to an impressive surge in manufacturing investment. But I have no idea whether he’ll succeed. One encouraging precedent for Biden: Ronald Reagan still had fairly low approval in mid-1983, then went on to win a landslide in 1984 on the strength of the economy’s recovery. Biden might yet turn the narrative on his economic policy around.And even if he can’t, it might not matter. High inflation was supposed to guarantee a huge red wave in the midterm elections. Instead, Democrats did surprisingly well, probably because abortion and other social issues played a bigger role than economics. Those social issues aren’t going away, while high inflation is. Arguably, Biden doesn’t need to convince Americans that his economic policies have been highly successful; he just needs to make the case that the economy isn’t doing too badly.And it isn’t. In fact, by most measures the economy is doing quite well.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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      in Elections

      Biden Is Trying to Co-opt Trump’s Biggest Strength

      by

      Joe Biden just offered a window into what a Biden-Trump rematch might look like. Well, part of it, at least.The wildness of Donald Trump’s political style often obscures — at least to his critics — the more banal dimensions of his appeal. The strongest of Trump’s arguments, and the one Biden has the most to fear from in 2024, is economic. In 2016, Trump ran as a businessman savant who would wield his mastery of the deal in service of the American people. “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” Trump said. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”Trump said that elites had sold you out. They traded your job to China. They let your bridges and roads and buildings crumble. They respected the work they did — work that happens behind a computer screen, work that needs fancy degrees, work that happens in offices rather than factories and cities rather than towns — and dismissed the work you did. They got rich and you got nothing. Exit polls found that Trump won large majorities among those who thought the economy was “fair” or “poor.”Trump did not, during his presidency, turn that critique into an agenda. There were islands of action — trade policy foremost among them — but the order of the day was incoherence. Infrastructure weeks came and went. Tax cuts were tilted toward the rich. There was no strategy to restore America’s manufacturing prowess or rebuild bargaining power for workers without college degrees.But Trump had the good fortune to take office during an economic boom. And he kept that boom going. He worked with congressional Republicans to tax less and spend more, budget deficits be damned. He appointed Jay Powell to the Federal Reserve, and Powell kept money cheap and the labor market hot. Unemployment, in February 2020, was 3.5 percent. Wages were rising and inflation was low.Then Covid hit, and Trump worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to flood the economy with trillions of dollars in support payments. Joblessness spiked, but workers overall didn’t suffer. This is Trump’s deepest well of strength in a 2024 rematch. Only about a third of voters approve of the job Biden has done on the economy. Polls show Trump is the more trusted economic manager, by far.On Wednesday, in Chicago, Biden previewed the counterargument he’ll make in a much-hyped speech defining “Bidenomics.” Biden’s case is this: What Trump only promised, I delivered.Biden set his economic policies in contrast to “40 years of trickle-down.” Trickle-down economics usually describes the theory that tax cuts at the top will lead to prosperity at the bottom. Biden is using it to describe a more expansive economic order — what sometimes gets called “neoliberalism.” Trickle-down, in his telling, was the philosophy that “it didn’t matter where you made things.” It “meant slashing public investment” and looking the other way as “three-quarters of U.S. industries grew more concentrated.” Forty years, as alert readers will note, encompasses not just the administrations of Donald Trump and George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton and, yes, Barack Obama.This is a point worth dwelling on. The Biden administration is thickly populated with veterans of the Obama and Clinton White Houses. But it doesn’t see itself in comfortable continuity with those legacies. It sees itself, in key ways, as a break with them.Back in May, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser (and a key aide, before that, to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), made this explicit during a speech to the Brookings Institution. Sullivan slammed the belief that “the type of growth did not matter.” That had led, he said, to administrations that let Wall Street thrive while “essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied.” He dismissed the “assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently.”And he tendered a modest mea culpa for his own party. “Frankly, our domestic economic policies also failed to fully account for the consequences of our international economic policies,” he said. In letting globalization and automation hollow out domestic manufacturing, Democrats had been part of a Washington consensus that “had frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests.”Biden’s speech in Chicago tried to show he was a Democrat who had learned these lessons. First, there was his emphasis on place. “I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up and stay where they grew up,” he said. “That’s Bidenomics.” Later, he said it again. “I believe that every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job no matter where they are — in the heartland, in small towns, in every part of this country — to raise their kids on a good paycheck and keep their roots where they grew up.”I talked to Jared Bernstein, the chairman of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, about the thinking here. “One of the pretty bereft assumptions of traditional economics is that you don’t need to worry about place because, as long as there are good jobs somewhere, people will go there and get them,” Bernstein told me. “It doesn’t really work that way.” One reason it doesn’t work that way is housing costs. “The idea that you can relocate from rural America, where housing is cheap, to expensive-housing America, even with the pay differentials, is a bit of a fantasy,” he said.Biden’s answer is built around the investments being made by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. You don’t install wind and solar farms in Manhattan and San Francisco. You don’t even necessarily do it in blue states, much to the chagrin of Democratic governors. Biden pointed to Weirton, W.Va., “where a steel mill closed in the beginning of the century” and, because of him, an iron-air battery plant is “being built on the same exact site, bringing back 750 good-paying jobs, bringing back a sense of pride and hope for the future.” The Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research firm, estimates that Biden’s red states will get $623 billion in clean energy investments by 2030, compared with $354 billion for blue states.All these factories and battery plants and electric-vehicle charging stations and auto manufacturing facilities give Biden his strongest line against Trump. After comparing the infrastructure weeks Trump never delivered and “the infrastructure decade” he did, Biden noted: “Construction of manufacturing facilities here on U.S. soil grew only 2 percent on my predecessor’s watch in four years. Two percent. On my watch, it’s grown nearly 100 percent in two years.”Biden made a point of saying that in the economy he’s building, “we don’t need everyone to have a four-year degree. It’s great if you can get one; we’re trying to make it easier for you to get one. But you don’t need it to get a good-paying job anymore.”Bernstein didn’t pull his punch on this one. “I’ve been part of Democratic administrations where, basically, the solution to labor market woes was to go to college. The president has seen through that.” Biden, he continued, “realizes something everybody should know. About two-thirds of the work force isn’t college-educated. And there’s no version of Bidenomics that leaves two-thirds of the labor force out.”But here, Biden’s policy argument was a little thinner. He talked up his support for unions and apprenticeship programs, but he named more proposals to help people go to college than to help them get good jobs without a degree.The best thing Biden has done for less-educated workers is preside over a tight labor market. Unemployment has been below 4 percent since February 2022, and workers who are often on the margin are making gains. The Black-white employment gap has nearly closed, and wage gains have been particularly strong for workers without a college education. But the Biden administration’s pride in those numbers only underscores the real problem it faces: Americans felt good about the economy under Trump. They don’t feel good about it under Biden.The reason is simple: Real wages have been falling because inflation has been rising. Biden’s long-term investments, his efforts to rebuild American manufacturing and create millions of news jobs decarbonizing the American economy, will take time to pay off. People have to live in the economy now, not a decade from now.The good news — for both Biden and America — is that real wages have risen over the past few months. Inflation is down by more than half since its peak. Forecasters who were confidently predicting a recession in 2023 are now hedging. Mark Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics, thinks we’ll escape the downturn altogether. Whether the good economic news continues may well decide the 2024 election. Biden has co-opted the best of Trump’s ideas and pursued them with a diligence and focus that Trump never did. But that won’t mean much if voters still find themselves yearning for Trump’s economy.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