Biden, Joseph R Jr

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      The ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics

      by

      The legal imbroglios of Donald Trump have lately dominated conversation about the 2024 election. As primary season grinds on, campaign activity will ebb and wane, and issues of the moment — like the first Trump indictment and potentially others to come — will blaze into focus and then disappear.Yet certain fundamentals will shape the races as candidates strategize about how to win the White House. To do this, they will have to account for at least one major political realignment: educational attainment is the new fault line in American politics.Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.It’s both economics and cultureThe impact of education on voting has an economic as well as a cultural component. The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows.According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, since 1989, families headed by college graduates have increased their wealth by 83 percent. For households headed by someone without a college degree, there was relatively little or no increase in wealth.Culturally, a person’s educational attainment increasingly correlates with their views on a wide range of issues like abortion, attitudes about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the relationship between government and organized religion. It also extends to cultural consumption (movies, TV, books), social media choices and the sources of information that shape voters’ understanding of facts.This is not unique to the United States; the pattern has developed across nearly all Western democracies. Going back to the 2016 Brexit vote and the most recent national elections in Britain and France, education level was the best predictor of how people voted.This new class-based politics oriented around the education divide could turn out to be just as toxic as race-based politics. It has facilitated a sorting of America into enclaves of like-minded people who look at members of the other enclave with increasing contempt.The road to political realignmentThe diploma divide really started to emerge in voting in the early 1990s, and Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 solidified this political realignment. Since then, the trends have deepened.In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump by assembling a coalition different from the one that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. Of the 206 counties that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 that were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Biden won back only 25 of these areas, which generally had a higher percentage of non-college-educated voters. But overall Mr. Biden carried college-educated voters by 15 points.In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats carried white voters with a college degree by three points, while Republicans won white non-college voters by 34 points (a 10-point improvement from 2018).This has helped establish a new political geography. There are now 42 states firmly controlled by one party or the other. And with 45 out of 50 states voting for the same party in the last two presidential elections, the only states that voted for the winning presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on educational levels — Pennsylvania (23rd in education attainment), Georgia (24th), Wisconsin (26th), Arizona (30th) and Michigan (32nd).In 2020, Mr. Biden received 306 electoral votes, Mr. Trump, 232. In the reapportionment process — which readjusts the Electoral College counts based on the most current census data — the new presidential electoral map is more favorable to Republicans by a net six points.In 2024, Democrats are likely to enter the general election with 222 electoral votes, compared with 219 for Republicans. That leaves only eight states, with 97 electoral votes — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — up for grabs. And for these states, education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.The 2024 mapA presidential candidate will need a three-track strategy to carry these states in 2024. The first goal is to further exploit the trend of education levels driving how people vote. Democrats have been making significant inroads with disaffected Republicans, given much of the party base’s continued embrace of Mr. Trump and his backward-looking grievances, as well as a shift to the hard right on social issues — foremost on abortion. This is particularly true with college-educated Republican women.In this era of straight-party voting, it is notable that Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania governors’ races. They also made significant inroads with these voters in the Senate races in Arizona (13 percent), Pennsylvania (8 percent), Nevada (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).This represents a large and growing pool of voters. In a recent NBC poll, over 30 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they were not supporters of MAGA.At the same time, Republicans have continued to increase their support with non-college-educated voters of color. Between 2012 and 2020, support for Democrats from nonwhite-working-class voters dropped 18 points. The 2022 Associated Press VoteCast exit polls indicated that support for Democrats dropped an additional 14 points compared with the 2020 results.However, since these battleground states largely fall in the middle of education levels in our country, they haven’t followed the same trends as the other 42 states. So there are limits to relying on the education profile of voters to carry these states.This is where the second group of voters comes in: political independents, who were carried by the winning party in the last four election cycles. Following Mr. Trump’s narrow victory with independent voters in 2016, Mr. Biden carried them by nine points in 2020. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they carried them by 15 points, and their narrow two-point margin in 2022 enabled them to hold the Senate.The importance of the independent voting bloc continues to rise. This is particularly significant since the margin of victory in these battleground states has been very narrow in recent elections. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980. In Arizona, 40 percent of voters in 2022 considered themselves political independents.These independent voters tend to live disproportionately in suburbs, which are now the most diverse socioeconomic areas in our country. These suburban voters are the third component of a winning strategy. With cities increasingly controlled by Democrats — because of the high level of educated voters there — and Republicans maintaining their dominance in rural areas with large numbers of non-college voters, the suburbs are the last battleground in American politics.Voting in the suburbs has been decisive in determining the outcome of the last two presidential elections: Voters in the suburbs of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Phoenix determined the winner in the last two presidential elections and are likely to play the same pivotal role in 2024.These voters moved to the suburbs for a higher quality of life: affordable housing, safe streets and good schools. These are the issues that animate these voters, who have a negative view of both parties. They do not embrace a MAGA-driven Republican Party, but they also do not trust Mr. Biden and Democrats, and consider them to be culturally extreme big spenders who aren’t focused enough on issues like immigration and crime.So in addition to education levels, these other factors will have a big impact on the election. The party that can capture the pivotal group of voters in the suburbs of battleground states is likely to prevail. Democrats’ success in the suburbs in recent elections suggests an advantage, but it is not necessarily enduring. Based on post-midterm exit polls from these areas, voters have often voted against a party or candidate — especially Mr. Trump — rather than for one.But in part because of the emergence of the diploma divide, there is an opening for both political parties in 2024 if they are willing to gear their agenda and policies beyond their political base. The party that does that is likely to win the White House.Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a senior adviser to the Brunswick Group.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

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Why Joe Biden Has Slow-Walked His Way to a 2024 Run

      by

      Closed-door planning meetings involving White House officials, the Democratic National Committee and outside advisers are intensifying as President Biden nears a final decision about how and when to kick off his 2024 campaign.Mr. Biden’s seemingly off-the-cuff remark at an airport in Ireland on Friday that he would announce his campaign “relatively soon” was the kind of tantalizingly vague comment that could be — and was — read by his aides and others as either a reaffirmation that he was in no particular hurry to announce or a sign of gathering momentum.Behind the scenes, advisers and allies are weighing how soon the president should set in motion a re-election operation — an announcement that will surprise no one but will signal the start of a challenging new phase of his presidency.Before Mr. Biden’s remarks on Friday, conflicting signals abounded about the imminence of an announcement. Preparations have accelerated, according to people involved in and briefed on the planning sessions, even as those involved discuss the pros and cons of delaying a formal announcement into early summer, seeing little advantage in interrupting Republican infighting. At the same time, there has been increasing discussion among the broader Biden team about the notion of a low-key video announcement on April 25, the fourth anniversary of his entrance to the 2020 race — the kind of symmetry that Mr. Biden is said to appreciate.What is clear is that any external pressure that Mr. Biden and his team once felt to formally enter the 2024 race has mostly evaporated. No serious primary challenge to the president has emerged, and potential opponents have rallied behind him. The leading Republican candidate, former President Donald J. Trump, faces felony charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. And Republicans are generally more focused on thrashing one another and dragging the party to the right than on attacking Mr. Biden, who is content to draw a sharp contrast to the G.O.P. chaos from the Oval Office.“There is no immediate urgency,” said Kate Bedingfield, who recently departed the White House as communications director. “The president has the luxury of being able to decide when he wants to announce.”The waiting game began last year, with the suggestion that Mr. Biden would enter the race after the winter holidays. Then came hints that a campaign would begin after the State of the Union address and the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. Then the likely timing was April, to take advantage of the beginning of a fund-raising quarter. (Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said, “There has never been a time frame for any announcement.”)Inside the West Wing, Mr. Biden has kept most direct discussions about 2024 limited to a pin-size inner circle, where two senior aides, Anita Dunn and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, are taking the lead. He has yet to designate a campaign chief, and only last week Democrats announced that Chicago would host the party’s 2024 convention.Mr. Biden traveled to Kyiv in February and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Daniel Berehulak/The New York TimesAt 80, Mr. Biden is already the oldest president in American history, and he is likely to face questions about his plans no matter how many times he teases his re-election intentions without formalizing them. “I’m planning on running, Al,” he told Al Roker of NBC News at the White House Easter Egg Roll last week. “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”Mr. Biden’s timeline is well behind where President Barack Obama’s was at this point in 2011. Mr. Obama released a video that year in the first week of April announcing his bid, but top aides including David Axelrod and Jim Messina had begun forming the campaign months earlier. And Mr. Obama had chosen Charlotte, N.C., to host the convention in early February 2011.A top Democratic donor allied with Mr. Biden was quietly asked early this year to begin planning for a New York fund-raising trip in late April or early May to coincide with a potential kickoff to a 2024 re-election campaign. Then the donor received new guidance recently that such an event was on hold — and no new timeline was provided.“The longer he waits, the less scrutiny he is under,” Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, said. “You have to measure that against creating momentum in these states that will matter. You’ve got to build infrastructure.”The desire to rebuild key relationships and renew political outreach in a way that only a campaign makes possible is one of the few internal pressures to get started. Mr. Biden won the Electoral College by a comfortable 306 to 232, but seven states in 2020 were decided by less than three percentage points.Money is at the center of the timing conversation. Delaying will postpone building a war chest for the general election.Those preparing to raise money for the campaign express few doubts that the party’s big donors will pony up to back Mr. Biden, and some officials fear an earlier entry might prove to be a wheel-spinning exercise, demanding that the aging president traverse the grueling fund-raising circuit sooner than necessary.And given that a majority of Democrats consistently say in polls that they prefer someone other than Mr. Biden as the nominee, a reliable infusion of grass-roots dollars is not guaranteed — at least until voters see the stakes of the election. Mr. Biden struggled to raise money online in 2019, breaking records only once he emerged as the nominee.Mr. Biden’s advisers argue that he and the Democrats bucked political history — and similar low ratings — to outperform in the 2022 midterm elections, in part by relentlessly painting Republicans as extremists.That is the basic blueprint for 2024. The Biden campaign-in-waiting is expected to be built around one of the president’s favorite political sayings: Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.On four consecutive days last week, Mr. Biden posted tweets attacking “MAGA Republicans,” part of a drumbeat of warnings about the policies that Republicans want to roll back, including abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade turbocharged Democratic voters in 2022 and is expected to be a motivator into 2024, even if abortion has been an uneasy topic for Mr. Biden.If Mr. Obama had soaring oratory and Mr. Trump had concertlike rallies, Mr. Biden’s advisers feel his strength is his governing ability and projection of competence. Spending time on the campaign trail, with its unscripted moments, introduces the risk of age-related mishaps.The president’s slipping on stairs while boarding Air Force One or falling off a bicycle were minor episodes during his first two years in office that nonetheless circulated heavily in the conservative news media. A similar incident during the heat of a presidential campaign could be far more significant.Mr. Biden’s advisers believe his strength is his governing ability and projection of competence. Spending time on the campaign trail, with its unscripted moments, introduces the risk of age-related mishaps. Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, said Mr. Biden was maintaining an aggressive schedule. “Whether it was in Kyiv, barnstorming the country highlighting the manufacturing jobs he’s bringing back, averting international crises in the wee hours of the morning like he did in Bali or putting Republicans on defense over Social Security in the State of the Union, the American people and the world see his qualified leadership,” she said, “and younger aides have to push themselves to keep up with that pace.”Republicans have steadily hammered Mr. Biden’s mental and physical state, and are already trying to transform any Rose Garden-based approach into a liability. “He’s going to be Biden in the basement again,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, predicted on Fox News last week.The Biden operation has taken steps to signal a coming bid, like announcing a “national advisory board” of influential Democratic leaders last month in The Washington Post. But some of the elected officials who were named as top Biden surrogates on the board found out about their involvement in such a council only when reading about it, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. There have been no communications to the full advisory board since its creation.In Washington, speculation has raged about who will serve as campaign manager, with an approved short list of Democratic operatives circulating for potential senior roles. Yet not all of the people on that list have had substantive contact with top Biden officials this year.Michael LaRosa, a former adviser to Jill Biden, the first lady, said power would inevitably be centralized at the White House regardless of the location of the campaign’s headquarters — Wilmington, Del., is favored but Philadelphia has also been under consideration — or the person named as campaign manager.“The person who is going to be running the campaign is going to be taking orders from the West Wing,” Mr. LaRosa said. He described Mike Donilon, Ms. Dunn, Ms. O’Malley Dillon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed as “the five people who inform his decision making when it comes to anything on policy or politics.”“And I don’t mean that in a disparaging way,” he added. “This president, like every president before him, has a small circle of trust who he seeks advice from.”A top Biden adviser disagreed with the suggestion that the West Wing would dominant the campaign, saying the eventual campaign manager would be “empowered.”Whenever he does enter the race, Mr. Biden is expected to reveal a slate of top campaign advisers — not just a single campaign manager — to put forward a diverse team.“They should have as much diversity as they can at the highest echelons of the campaign,” said Mr. Rocha, who has focused on mobilizing Latino voters. “Their biggest challenge is going to be motivating Latinos to vote for him.”Mr. Biden has been doing some extra contributor outreach. Donors are often among the attendees to the White House Easter Egg Roll, and some were among those invited to an additional breakfast with Mr. Biden and the first lady in the state dining room before the event, according to two people with knowledge of the breakfast, which did not appear on the president’s public schedule.Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, who is close with Mr. Biden, downplayed the timing of his 2024 entry. “The American people are going to judge him on the job that he’s done for four years as president,” she said, “not on the one day that he announces.” More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Why DeSantis Needs to Run This Year

      by

      The resurgence of Donald Trump in the 2024 primary polls, the unsurprising evidence that his supporters will stand by him through a prosecution, and the tentativeness of Ron DeSantis’s pre-campaign have combined to create a buzz that maybe DeSantis shouldn’t run at all. It’s been whispered by nervous donors, shouted by Trump’s supporters and lately raised by pundits of the left and right.Thus the liberal Bill Scher, writing in The Washington Monthly, argues that Trump looks too strong, that there isn’t a clear-enough constituency for DeSantis’s promise of Trumpism without the florid drama, and that if DeSantis runs and fails, he’s more likely to end up “viciously humiliated,” like Trump’s 2016 rivals, than to set himself up as the next in line for 2028.Then from the right, writing for The Spectator, Daniel McCarthy channels Niccolò Machiavelli to argue that while DeSantis probably will run, he would be wiser to choose a more dogged, long-term path instead — emphasizing “virtu” rather than chasing Fortune, to use Machiavelli’s language. In 2024 Trump might poison the prospects of any G.O.P. candidate who beats him, while Joe Biden could be a relatively potent incumbent. But if the Florida governor continues to build a record of conservative accomplishment in his home state, “2028 would offer a well-prepared DeSantis a clear shot.”I think they’re both wrong, and that if DeSantis has presidential ambitions he simply has to run right now, notwithstanding all of the obstacles that they identify. My reasoning depends both on the “Fortune” that McCarthy invokes and on an argument that Scher’s piece nods to while rejecting: the idea that presidential candidates are more likely to miss their moment — as Chris Christie did when he passed on running in 2012, as Mario Cuomo did for his entire career — than they are to run too early and suffer a career-ending rebuke.It’s true that fortune doesn’t always favor the bold. (As McCarthy notes, that phrase originates in Virgil’s “Aeneid,” where it’s uttered by an Italian warlord just before he gets killed.) But the key to the don’t-miss-your-moment argument is that when it comes to something as difficult as gaining the presidency, mostly fortune doesn’t favor anybody. Every would-be president, no matter their virtues as a politician, is inevitably a hostage to events, depending on unusual synchronicities to open a path to the White House.A great many successful political careers never have that path open at all. A minority have it open in the narrowest way, where you can imagine threading needles and rolling lucky sixes all the way to the White House. Only a tiny number are confronted with a situation where they seem to have a strong chance, not just a long-shot possibility, before they even announce their candidacy.That’s where DeSantis sits right now. The political betting site PredictIt places his odds of being president in 2024, expressed as a share price, at 23 cents, slightly below Trump and well below Biden, but far above everybody else. Those odds, representing a roughly 20 percent chance at the White House, sound about right to me. If you look at national polls since Trump’s indictment, DeSantis’s support has dipped only slightly; if you look at polls of early primary states he’s clearly within striking distance, Trump has a floor of support but also a lot of voters who aren’t eager to rally to him (his indictment may have solidified support, but it didn’t make his numbers soar) and DeSantis has not yet even begun to campaign. He’s in a much better position than any of Trump’s rivals ever were in 2016, and you could argue that he starts out closer to the nomination than any Republican candidate did in 2008 or 2012.Not to run now is to throw this proximity away, in the hopes of starting out even closer four years hence. But DeSantis’s current position is itself a creation of unusual political good fortune. Yes, he’s been skillful, but that skill wouldn’t have gotten him here without events beyond anyone’s control — the Covid-19 pandemic, the woke revolution in liberal institutions, the split between Mike Pence and Trump after Jan. 6, the strength of the Florida economy, and more.It’s obviously possible to imagine a future where fortune continues to favor DeSantis and he goes into 2028 as the prohibitive favorite. But time and chance are cruel, and there are many more paths where events conspire against him, and he wakes up in 2027 staring at PredictIt odds of 5 percent instead.If he were at 5 percent odds right now — if Trump were leading him 75-20 in New Hampshire and Iowa rather than roughly 40-30, or if Biden’s approval ratings stood at 70 percent instead of 43 percent — I would buy the argument for waiting.But DeSantis today is a man already graced by Fortune. And even if the goddess doesn’t always favor boldness, she takes a stern view of those to whom favor is extended who then refuse the gift.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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Says He Will Announce 2024 Campaign ‘Soon’

      by

      The president, who is widely expected to run again but faces little pressure to imminently announce a formal bid, tiptoed beyond his previous public comments on the subject.President Biden inched closer on Friday to formally announcing his re-election campaign, telling reporters that he would do so “relatively soon.”“No, no, no, no,” he said during a trip to Ireland, when asked whether his “calculus” had changed in recent days on when to make his announcement. “I’ve already made that calculus. We’ll announce it relatively soon. But the trip here just reinforced my sense of optimism about what can be done.”Asked if that meant he had made a decision, he responded, with a hint of impatience, “I told you, my plan is to run again.”He had: Four days earlier, speaking to Al Roker of NBC News at an Easter event at the White House, Mr. Biden said, “I plan on running,” adding, “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”Mr. Biden made his latest remarks on Friday at an airport in Ireland, where he has spent part of his week. On Wednesday, he gave a speech in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Then he traveled to the Republic of Ireland, where he visited his ancestors’ hometown.Mr. Biden’s 2024 campaign has been a subject of will-he-or-won’t-he debate since the moment he was elected as the oldest president in United States history. He is now 80, and would be 86 by the end of a second term, which has made even some of his fellow Democrats uncomfortable.But Mr. Biden suggested from the start that he would probably run again.He has not faced much pressure to imminently announce a formal campaign, though, because there is no sign of a competitive Democratic primary. The self-help author Marianne Williamson is running against Mr. Biden, and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated that he will also run, but neither has a large base of support.And across the aisle, the early weeks of the Republican primary have been consumed by news of former President Donald J. Trump’s mounting legal problems, including his arraignment in New York last week on 34 felony charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star who said they had sex. That has left little incentive for Mr. Biden to draw attention to himself and away from Republicans’ troubles. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Where the Likely 2024 Presidential Contenders Stand on Abortion

      by

      Not quite a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion continues to be one of the main issues shaping American politics.Abortion is not fading as a driving issue in America, coming up again and again everywhere policy is decided: in legislatures, courts, the Oval Office and voting booths.An 11-point liberal victory in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race last week was fueled by the issue. Days later, a Texas judge invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone (late Wednesday, an appeals court partly stayed the ruling but imposed some restrictions). And Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely Republican presidential candidate, is poised to ban abortion after six weeks’ gestation.The fallout from the Supreme Court’s revocation of a constitutional right to abortion last year looks poised to be a major issue in the upcoming presidential race. So where do the likely candidates stand?Here is what some of the most prominent contenders, declared and likely, have said and done:Anti-abortion protesters rallying in Indiana last July while lawmakers there debated an abortion ban during a special session.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesPresident BidenPresident Biden condemned the ruling invalidating the approval of mifepristone, which his administration is appealing, and called it “another unprecedented step in taking away basic freedoms from women and putting their health at risk.”Mr. Biden has a complicated history with abortion; before his 2020 presidential campaign, he supported restrictions, including the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for most abortions. But he has since spoken more forcefully in defense of unfettered access, including endorsing congressional codification of the rights Roe v. Wade used to protect.White House officials have said he is not willing to disregard the mifepristone ruling, as some abortion-rights activists have urged.Mr. Biden has said he is planning to run in 2024, but has not formally declared his candidacy.Donald J. TrumpMore than perhaps any other Republican, former President Donald J. Trump is responsible for the current state of abortion access: He appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and the district judge who invalidated the approval of mifepristone. But lately, he has been loath to talk about it.Last year, Mr. Trump privately expressed concern that the ruling overturning Roe would hurt Republicans — and it did, both in the midterms and in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.If elected again, he would be under tremendous pressure from the social conservatives who have fueled the Republican Party for decades — and who helped elect him in 2016 — to support a national ban. He has not said whether he would do so.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom polls show as the top potential Republican competitor to Mr. Trump, is pushing forward with the Florida Legislature to ban most abortions after six weeks. The bill passed on Thursday and was sent to Mr. DeSantis’s desk. Polls show that most Americans, including Floridians, oppose six-week bans.It is a more aggressive posture than he took last year, when Florida enacted a ban after 15 weeks and Mr. DeSantis — facing re-election in November — did not commit to going further. He made his move after winning re-election by a sweeping margin.Nikki HaleyAt a campaign event in Iowa this week, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, gestured away from anti-abortion absolutism — saying that she did not “want unelected judges deciding something this personal.”But her comments were muddled: She said she wanted to leave the issue to the states, but at the same time suggested that she would be open to a federal ban if she thought there was momentum for one.“This is about saving as many babies as we can,” she said, while adding that she did not want to play the “game” of specifying when in pregnancy she believed abortion should be allowed.Asa HutchinsonSince starting his presidential campaign this month, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has said only that he is “proud to stand squarely on my pro-life position” when it comes to abortion.He has not detailed what, if any, federal legislation he would support.Last year, Mr. Hutchinson criticized the lack of an exception for rape and incest in an Arkansas abortion ban he had signed. When he signed it, he said that he wanted the exception but legislators didn’t, and that he accepted their judgment as the will of voters — though a poll last year found that more than 70 percent of Arkansans supported such an exception.Mike PenceA staunch social conservative, former Vice President Mike Pence has been more open than most Republicans about continuing to advertise his opposition to abortion.“Life won again today,” he said in a statement on the mifepristone ruling. “When it approved chemical abortions on demand, the F.D.A. acted carelessly and with blatant disregard for human life.” Last year, Mr. Pence said anti-abortion activists “must not rest” until abortion was outlawed nationwide. Mr. Pence is considering a 2024 run, but has not formally joined the race.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina repeatedly dodged questions about whether he supported federal restrictions on abortion in the days after announcing a presidential exploratory committee this week.Asked in an interview with CBS News whether he supported a 15-week ban, he called himself “100 percent pro-life.” When the interviewer suggested that his stance indicated he would support a 15-week ban, he replied, “That’s not what I said.”On Thursday, he told WMUR, a New Hampshire news station, that he would support a 20-week ban, but still did not say whether he would back something stricter. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      The Quiet Coronation of Joe Biden

      by

      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicA few weeks after the midterms, something happened that largely flew under the radar. Democrats were celebrating a successful election, and giving all the credit to President Biden. And against that backdrop, the party made an announcement: It would be changing the order in which states voted in the primary election, moving South Carolina first. The party was talking about it in terms of representation and acknowledging the role of Black voters.But given that South Carolina essentially saved Mr. Biden’s 2020 candidacy, Astead wondered: Was something else going on? We headed to the party’s winter meeting as it prepared to make the change official.Photo Illustration: The New York Times; Photo: Al Drago for The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.

      by

      On Monday, when the “Today” show’s Al Roker asked President Biden about seeking a second term, Biden replied, “I plan on running, Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”That answer strikes me as another in a series of soft launches and quasi-commitments meant to manage expectations, but the president and those around him have been signaling that he intends to seek re-election. When it comes, an official declaration will be just a formality, a campaign mechanism to concentrate attention and coverage.Biden is running now.And in anticipation of the inevitable, in recent weeks I talked to several political advisers who’ve run campaigns for Democratic presidents to get their assessments of Biden’s advantages and challenges.The list includes Timothy Kraft, who ran Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980 until just before the election, and Les Francis, who stepped in to run day-to-day operations in Kraft’s wake. It also includes James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and David Plouffe, who ran Barack Obama’s in 2008.I wasn’t interested in predictions, which are mostly worthless this far from Election Day. I wasn’t asking how the race would look at the end, but how it looked at the beginning.To start, there was general agreement that Biden’s policy record was strong: The economy, a mixed bag with low unemployment and high inflation, may be a net positive for Biden right now, but some said that how voters feel about it nearer the election is what will matter most. As Plouffe said, “People have one life, and they are living it right now.” It’s about how people feel about that life at the moment they vote, regardless of what the data say or the future holds.Most of these political pros agreed that Biden’s age will be a significant issue to overcome — one reason they’d prefer a rematch with Donald Trump rather than a contest against a younger, first-time Republican presidential candidate who’d be able to draw a more stark generational contrast. It’s unclear how the age issue will play out, but as Kraft put it, the Republicans “are going to do this ‘Sleepy Joe’ thing to the fare-thee-well.”The other reason Trump is the preferred opponent is that, as Francis observed, “he is damaged goods, and he’s going to be more damaged.” The consensus was that Trump’s legal problems will help him in the primaries but weaken him in the general. The consideration is simple: Among those who voted against Trump-created chaos in 2020, who would vote for Trump in 2024 after he’s sown even more chaos?Several of the consultants were conscious of, and concerned about, the country’s growing partisan divide and the dwindling pool of swing voters and swing districts — the shrinking number of minds to change and hearts to woo. An untold number of people in the United States “have probably never met anyone from the other party,” Carville said.He raised perhaps the most interesting concern, one I wasn’t expecting: “The biggest story in my mind out of 2022 is abysmally low Black turnout.” Specifically, he said, “it’s a problem with younger Black voters.”In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it.I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said.Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.”Now, people can chafe at Woodbury’s characterization and criticize voters for not staying abreast of political news‌, but it’s not a winning strategy to place blam‌e on the voters you’re trying to court‌.Kraft echoed the concern, and said it went beyond outreach to Black voters: “The D.N.C. chairman should be on those Sunday talk shows or should have more guest columns, op-ed pieces, anything.”Carville is also worried about Republican weaponization of the term, and idea of, “wokeness.” If being woke “means that people, particularly Black people, should be aware of interactions they have with white power, it’s a totally legitimate word,” he said. “But if it means the triumph of identity over ideology, you lose me, and I think you lose a lot of people.”He went further in his attempt to insulate Biden from the concept, saying, “The most non-woke person is Joe Biden,” even as he’s “become the greatest president for Black America maybe we ever had.”I think that’s a stretch, and his framing could do more harm than good in trying to attract young Black voters, but it could work in attracting another demographic that Democrats are worried about: the non-college-educated. In fact, one of Carville’s central complaints about wokeness is his belief that it was appropriated by white intellectuals.This all bleeds into an issue Plouffe calls “the biggest question in American politics today”: whether Republicans continue to make gains with non-college-educated voters of color in an era in which the “education fault lines are much more severe than they were in 2008 or 2012,” with Democrats attracting more college graduates and Republicans strengthening their position among those who didn’t graduate.My takeaway from these conversations was that, at least at the beginning of his campaign, Biden has obvious advantages but also faces significant obstacles. Often, late in campaigns, Democratic candidates to try to use fear of the opponent as voter motivation. But that can backfire.As Woodbury told me, his firm saw a significant erosion in turnout and Democratic support in 2022 among Black men because they “do not respond to messages of fear and loss.” Instead, he said, “they need a message of what they have gained, not what they will gain.” They respond to a message of being empowered rather than being endangered.This messaging, which should already have been a more central part of Democrats’ overall pitch, has to start now.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Cómo hacer que Trump desaparezca

      by

      Después de llevar más de tres décadas dentro y alrededor de la política, ahora dedico la mayor parte de mi tiempo a lidiar con preguntas políticas en las aulas y en grupos de enfoque. Hay un enigma que me fascina más que los demás: ¿por qué Donald Trump sigue suscitando tanta lealtad y devoción? Y, a diferencia de 2016, ¿puede ganar la candidatura en 2024 un republicano distinto que comparta en gran medida la agenda de Trump, pero no su personalidad?Para responder a estas preguntas, he organizado más de 12 grupos de enfoque con votantes de Trump de todo Estados Unidos; el más reciente fue para Straight Arrow News, el miércoles de la semana pasada por la noche, para entender su mentalidad tras la histórica imputación del expresidente en Manhattan. Muchos se sentían ignorados y olvidados por la clase política profesional antes de Trump, y ahora victimizados y ridiculizados por simpatizar con él. Al igual que los votantes en las primarias republicanas en todo el país, los participantes en los grupos de enfoque siguen respetándolo, la mayoría sigue creyendo en él, casi todos piensan que les robaron las elecciones de 2020 y la mitad sigue queriendo que vuelva a presentarse en 2024.Sin embargo, hay una posible vía para otros aspirantes republicanos a la presidencia.Empieza con una reflexión más detenida sobre sobre las reglas que incumplió y los paradigmas que destruyó Trump en su campaña de 2016, y sobre todos sus errores voluntarios desde entonces. Es un fiel reflejo de los cambios de actitud y económicos que se han producido en Estados Unidos en los últimos 8 años. Y requiere aceptar que vapulearlo e intentar diezmar su base no va a funcionar. Los votantes de Trump están prestando la máxima atención a todos los candidatos. Si creen que la misión de un candidato es derrotar al que consideran su héroe, ese candidato fracasará. Sin embargo, si alguien que aspira a ser candidato o candidata en 2024 los convence de que quiere escucharlos y aprender de ellos, le darán una oportunidad. Marco Rubio y Ted Cruz no entendieron esta dinámica cuando atacaron a Trump en 2016, y por eso fracasaron.De modo que podemos considerar esto un manual de estrategia para los posibles candidatos republicanos, para los votantes de su partido y para los conservadores independientes que quieren a alguien distinto de Trump en 2024; una hoja de ruta estratégica basada en la experiencia con los partidarios de Trump durante los últimos 8 años. Esto es lo que he aprendido de estos grupos de enfoque e investigación.En primer lugar, para vencer a Trump hace falta humildad. Y empieza con reconocer que no puedes ganarte a todos los votantes. No puedes ganarte ni siquiera a la mitad: el apoyo a Trump dentro del Partido Republicano no solo es amplio, sino también profundo. Pero he descubierto, basándome en mis grupos de enfoque desde 2015, que alrededor de un tercio de los votantes de Trump dan prioridad al carácter del país y a las personas que lo dirigen, y eso basta para cambiar el resultado en 2024. No se trata de vencer a Trump compitiendo ideológicamente con él. Se trata de ofrecer a los republicanos el contraste que buscan: un candidato que defienda su agenda, pero con decencia, civismo y un compromiso con la responsabilidad personal y la rendición de cuentas.En segundo lugar, Trump se ha convertido en su propia versión del tan odiado establishment político. Mar-a-Lago se ha convertido en la Grand Central Terminal de los políticos, militantes acérrimos, lobistas y élites desfasadas que han ignorado, olvidado y traicionado al pueblo que representan. Peor aún, con la incesante recaudación de fondos, dirigida a menudo a las personas que menos pueden permitirse donar, Trump se ha convertido en un político profesional que refleja el sistema político para cuya destrucción fue elegido. Durante más de siete años, ha utilizado las mismas consignas, las mismas arengas, las mismas bromas y los mismos lemas. A algunos votantes de Trump les parece bien así. Pero hay una clara forma de atraer a otros votantes republicanos firmemente centrados en el futuro, en vez de volver a litigar por el pasado. Comienza con un simple discurso de campaña en esta línea, más o menos: “Podemos hacerlo mejor. Debemos hacerlo mejor”.En tercer lugar, sé consciente de que el agricultor medio, el pequeño empresario o el veterano de guerra tendrán más peso para el votante de Trump que los famosos y los poderosos. Los avales o los anuncios de campaña de los miembros del Congreso generarán menos apoyos que los testimonios emocionales de personas que, como a muchos partidarios de Trump, les hicieron caer, se levantaron y ahora están ayudando a otras a hacer lo mismo. Solo tienen que ser auténticos —y poder decir que votaron a Trump en 2016 y en 2020— para que no se les pueda pegar la etiqueta del movimiento “Nunca Trump”. Su mejor mensaje: el Trump de hoy no es el Trump de 2015. Con otras palabras: “Donald Trump me respaldó en 2016. Ahora, todo gira en torno a él. Yo no abandoné a Donald Trump. Él me abandonó a mí”.En cuarto lugar, elogia la presidencia de Trump, pero al mismo tiempo critica a la persona. Los grupos de enfoque sobre Trump son increíblemente instructivos para ayudar a diferenciar entre el apasionado apoyo que sus iniciativas y sus logros inspiran a la mayoría de sus votantes y la vergüenza y la frustración que les provocan sus comentarios y su conducta. Por ejemplo, a la mayoría de los republicanos les gusta su discurso duro sobre China, pero les desagrada su actitud intimidatoria en el ámbito nacional. Así que aplaude a su gobierno antes de criticar al hombre: “Donald Trump fue un gran presidente, pero no siempre fue un gran modelo a seguir. Hoy, más que nunca, necesitamos carácter, no solo valor. No tenemos que insultar a la gente para plantear un argumento o marcar la diferencia”.En quinto lugar, enfócate más en los nietos. Millones de votantes de Trump son personas mayores, muy mayores. Adoran a sus nietos, así que habla concretamente de ellos, y sus abuelos también te escucharán: “Confundimos la altisonancia con el liderazgo, la condena con el compromiso. Los valores que enseñamos a nuestros hijos deberían ser los que veamos en nuestro presidente”.La inminente votación sobre el techo de deuda es el gancho perfecto. El aumento del déficit anual con Trump es el tercero mayor, en relación con el tamaño de la economía, de cualquier gestión presidencial estadounidense. Mucho antes de la COVID-19, la Casa Blanca de Trump les dijo a los congresistas republicanos que gastaran más, y ese gasto contribuyó a la actual crisis de deuda. Trump dirá que actuó con responsabilidad fiscal, pero los números no mienten. “No podemos permitirnos estos déficits. No podemos permitirnos esta deuda. No podemos permitirnos a Donald Trump”.En sexto lugar, hay un rasgo de la personalidad sobre el que coinciden casi todos: la aversión a la imagen pía que se da en público mientras en privado se hace gala de la falta de honradez. En una palabra: la hipocresía. Hasta ahora, eso no les ha funcionado a los adversarios de Trump, pero eso es porque los ejemplos no tenían ninguna relevancia personal para sus votantes. Durante su campaña de 2016, Trump criticó a Barack Obama varias veces por sus ocasionales rondas de golf, y prometió no viajar a costa de los contribuyentes. ¿Cuál fue el historial de Trump? Cerca de 300 rondas de golf en sus propios campos en solo cuatro años, que costaron a los esforzados contribuyentes unos 150 millones de dólares en seguridad adicional. Esto quizá parezca una nimiedad, pero si se lleva al escenario del debate, puede ser letal. “Mientras más de la mitad de Estados Unidos gana lo justo para vivir al día, él estaba practicando su juego corto. Y ustedes lo pagaron”.En séptimo lugar, no saldrás elegido solo con los votos de los republicanos. El candidato exitoso deberá atraer también a los independientes. En 2016, Trump prometió a sus votantes que se cansarían de ganar. Pero alejó a los independientes hasta el punto de que abandonaron a los republicanos y se unieron a los demócratas, dándole a Estados Unidos a Nancy Pelosi como presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes en 2018, a Biden como presidente en 2020 y a Charles Schumer como líder de la mayoría en el Senado también en 2020. Un solo escaño en el Senado en 2020 habría paralizado por completo la agenda demócrata. La mayoría de los candidatos avalados por Trump en las reñidas elecciones de mitad de mandato de 2022 perdieron, algo que pocas personas (incluido yo) se esperaban. Si Trump es el candidato en 2024, ¿están seguros los republicanos de que se ganará esta vez a los independientes? Seguramente el expresidente perderá si los republicanos creen que un voto por Trump en las primarias significa que Biden ganará en las generales.Y, en octavo lugar, tienes que penetrar en la caja de resonancia conservadora. Necesitas al menos a una de estas personas de tu parte: Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Newt Gingrich y, por supuesto, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity y Laura Ingraham. Gracias a la demanda de Dominion, todos sabemos qué dicen los presentadores de Fox News en privado. El reto es conseguir que sean igual de sinceros en público. Eso requiere un candidato tan duro como Trump, pero más comprometido públicamente con la ideología conservadora tradicional, como acabar con el despilfarro de Washington y la capacidad de sacar el trabajo adelante. “Algunas personas quieren hacer una declaración. Yo quiero hacer un cambio”.Entre los probables rivales republicanos de Trump que aspiran a la candidatura, nadie está cerca aún de hacer todas estas cosas, o alguna de ellas. Ron DeSantis solo ha criticado suavemente a Trump, y ha preferido lanzar un ataque total contra Disney. No pasa nada. Tiene tiempo de sobra para poner orden en sus mensajes. Pero cuando él y sus compañeros se suban al escenario del primer debate republicano, en agosto, tendrán una sola oportunidad para mostrar que merecen el puesto al demostrar que entienden al votante de Trump.Para ser claros, si Trump se presenta con una campaña exclusivamente basada en su hoja de servicios en el gobierno, probablemente gane la candidatura. Hasta ahora, ha demostrado ser incapaz de hacerlo. La mayoría de los republicanos aplauden sus éxitos en materia de economía y política exterior, y su impacto en la burocracia y el poder judicial, sobre todo en comparación con su predecesor y ahora su sucesor.Pero ese no es el Donald Trump de 2023. Muchos dejan de celebrarlo cuando se les pide que evalúen las declaraciones públicas de Trump y su conducta, que sigue manteniendo. En 2016, la campaña consistía en lo que Trump podía hacer por ti. Hoy, consiste en lo que se le está haciendo a él. Si se desquicia cada vez más, o si sus oponentes se centran en sus tuits, sus arrebatos y su personalidad destructiva, un considerable número de republicanos podría elegir a otra persona, siempre y cuando den prioridad a asuntos básicos y de eficacia probada, como unos impuestos más bajos, una menor regulación y menos Washington.Los republicanos quieren casi todo lo que hizo Trump, sin todo lo que Trump es y dice.Frank Luntz es moderador de grupos de enfoque, profesor y estratega de comunicación que trabajó para candidatos republicanos en elecciones anteriores. More