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      Campaign, Interrupted: Pence May Run, but He Can’t Hide From Trump’s Legal Woes

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      The former vice president faces many challenges in his potential presidential run, perhaps none bigger than his complicated relationship with his old boss.Former Vice President Mike Pence, seemingly in his element as he addressed a gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa this month, was speaking of “the greatest honor of my life,” serving in “an administration that turned this country around” by rebuilding the military, securing the southern border, and unleashing “American energy.”“But most importantly, most of all,” he said, building to a crescendo — but at the moment he was about to claim some credit for his administration’s success in overturning the right to an abortion, a booming voice came over the loudspeaker from the sound booth: “Check, check, testing, 1-2-3.”It was a small interruption, but one that exemplified the diversions Mr. Pence continues to face as he considers a run for the Republican presidential nomination against the man who was once his greatest benefactor, but also his cruelest tormentor: Donald J. Trump.On Thursday, however, Mr. Pence faced a much more onerous and grueling intrusion into his potential campaign, and one that he had hoped to avoid, when he was forced to testify for more than five hours before a grand jury in Washington about Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those efforts put Mr. Pence’s life at risk on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”Mr. Pence, the would-be candidate with unassailable religious convictions who spent four years a heartbeat away from the presidency, cannot seem to find the space to present those credentials to sympathetic Republican primary voters without interruption — and, in this case, on the biggest stage before a campaign has even begun.After Thursday’s testimony, a highly unusual event involving two of the most prominent U.S. public officials during a nascent presidential campaign in which both are likely to run, he is in the odd and uncomfortable position of being both a potential challenger to his former boss and possibly a key witness for his prosecution.Mr. Pence knows that core voters in the Republican base are in no mood to give such legal proceedings against Mr. Trump, including the current civil suit accusing him of rape and defamation, much credence. Paula Livingston, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, waved off the cases pending against Mr. Trump as “all the same, they’re out to stop him.”Nor is Mr. Trump showing any signs of contrition. On Thursday, while campaigning in New Hampshire, the former president embraced a supporter who had served prison time for her actions during the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, and called her “terrific,” even though she said she wants Mr. Pence executed for treason.But after the former vice president’s efforts to quash the Justice Department’s subpoena for his testimony failed, Mr. Pence had little choice but to lend his voice to the federal prosecution.Former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H., on April 27. Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe Pence camp is now working to put that testimony within the broader rubric of his potential presidential run: Conservative truth teller. Pence loyalists would like Mr. Pence to be getting more credit for the Trump administration’s successes, especially for helping to choose the nominees that tilted the Supreme Court to the right.But Mr. Pence has to play the hand that he has been dealt, and right now that includes testifying against Mr. Trump.“I don’t know if he has to dislodge” Mr. Trump, Marc Short, a former chief of staff to the vice president, said. “He has to remind voters who he is.”Over his 12 years in Congress, as governor of Indiana and in the Trump White House, Mr. Pence was “the consistent conservative,” Mr. Short said, working for a man who was anything but consistent: “That’s an important contrast for him to draw,” Mr. Short said.A Republican close to the former vice president, who requested anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, explained on Friday that Mr. Pence has long stuck with conservative constitutional principles, even when that has meant standing up to his party.As a House member, he chastised the administration of President George W. Bush for its failure to adhere to fiscal discipline as federal budget surpluses turned to large deficits. He has embraced changes to Social Security and Medicare that would trim benefits in the name of balancing the budget, changes that Mr. Trump has loudly rejected.He continues to publicly make the case for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, even as some Republican lawmakers and many Republican voters turn against it. He has said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s fight with the Walt Disney Company over social policy has strayed, and become a violation of the Republican Party’s bedrock belief in free enterprise.And he leaned on constitutional arguments, first to avoid the subpoena of federal prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and now to comply with it. Earlier this year Mr. Pence argued that the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, intended to protect the separation of powers between the three branches of government, shielded him from having to speak of Mr. Trump’s campaign to pressure him not to certify the election results in his ceremonial role as vice president.When that failed, he complied with the subpoena rather than search for another rationale for delay, such as the “executive privilege” claims that have been repeatedly rejected.Mr. Pence, in his recent book “So Help Me God,” described in detail Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure him into blocking congressional certification of President Biden’s victory. Mr. Trump became preoccupied with the idea that Mr. Pence could do something, though Mr. Pence’s chief lawyer had concluded that there was no legal authority for him to act on Mr. Trump’s behalf.But people close to Mr. Pence said that just as he argued that he had to fulfill his constitutional duty on Jan. 6, 2021, he invoked that same Constitution the following day to reject overtures from Democratic leaders to use the Constitution’s 25th amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office.Aides to Mr. Pence showed little worry this week as the former vice president continues his deliberations about a run. Mr. Pence’s attitude, they said, is simple: Let the chips fall where they may.“He feels remarkably blessed to have been able to serve the American people in the roles he has had,” Mr. Short said, “and he hopes to continue that service.” More

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      Will the Economy Make or Break Biden in 2024?

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      Now that President Biden has announced his intention to run for a second term, economists and politicos are assessing whether his candidacy will be helped or hurt by the performance of the economy. If there’s a recession, will it be over and mostly forgotten by Election Day?Oxford Economics did an initial run of its election forecasting model, which takes economic factors into account, and found that Biden is in line to get around 55 percent of the popular vote, without any assumption about his opponent, according to a research briefing on Wednesday. Paul Krugman, my Opinion colleague, wrote Thursday that “the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.”The truth is, though, that we really don’t know who will win the 2024 election, or even what role the economy will play in it. As somebody who writes about economics, I’d love to say that the state of the economy leading up to Nov. 5, 2024, will matter a lot. But that does not seem to be the case, according to people I spoke with this week. One possible reason is that voters have become more polarized and set in their preferences, and thus less swayed by the ups and downs of the economy.For example, let’s say former President Donald Trump captures the Republican nomination. Most Biden supporters wouldn’t vote for him no matter how bad the economy got in 2024 — just as most Trump supporters won’t vote for Biden no matter how good the economy gets under the incumbent. James Carville’s admonition in 1992 that it’s “the economy, stupid” doesn’t hold up in this era of hyperpartisanship.In 1978 a pioneering article by the Yale economist Ray Fair, “The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President,” made the case that “economic events as measured by the change in real economic activity in the year of the election do appear to have an important effect on votes for president.” In January, the model predicted, using his economic projections as inputs, that Biden, if renominated, would get 50.07 percent of the two-party presidential vote next year, with no assumption about the Republican opponent.Fair’s model, which he has tweaked over the years, correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every election from 1980 through 2008 except for 1992, when it incorrectly predicted Bill Clinton would get only 43 percent of the two-party popular vote against George H.W. Bush. It hasn’t done well lately, though: It predicted the Democrat would get less than half the popular vote in the two-candidate matchup in 2012, when President Barack Obama won a second term; in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost to Trump in the Electoral College; and in 2020, when Biden beat Trump.I asked Fair if it was fair to say that polarization of voters has weakened the predictive value of economic indicators. He acknowledged that Trump, an especially polarizing figure, had underperformed in both 2016 and 2020 given economic conditions that the Fair model considered favorable to him. (And he said it could happen again if Trump is the G.O.P. candidate next year.) But he said he’s not convinced that his economic model has lost its predictive power. “Personally, I think there’s still a pretty big middle group” of voters who are influenced by economic factors, he said.A good example of why it’s dangerous to over-rely on economic models is what happened in the spring of 2020, when Covid hit. Based on historical patterns, several of the best-known models (though not Fair’s) put a heavy weight on how the economy performs in the second quarter of an election year, namely April through June. Because of the Covid shutdown, the gross domestic product fell at an annual rate of 29.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Going by that one data point, the election should have been a disaster for the incumbent, Trump. But voters understood that Trump couldn’t be blamed for Covid. What’s more, the economy grew at an annual rate of 35.3 percent in the following quarter as it rebounded from the shutdown. In the end, Trump did worse than Fair’s model had predicted, but way better than predicted by models that heavily weighted second-quarter economic growth.Another problem with some economics-based forecasting models such as Fair’s is that they predict the popular vote, rather than the one that really matters, the Electoral College vote, which depends on state-by-state results. Fair is sticking to forecasting the popular vote because he thinks it’s of academic interest. Some other forecasters have switched to predicting the Electoral College result, but it’s much trickier. The outcome of the election comes down to a handful of swing states, and within those few states, to the behavior of a small minority of voters whose minds aren’t made up. “The Electoral College throws a monkey wrench into the business,” Alan Abramowitz, an emeritus professor of political science at Emory University, told me.One thing that puzzles me is why it’s even worthwhile to plug economic factors into an election forecast. If the relevance of the economy is that it affects voters’ feelings about the candidates, why not just cut to the chase and focus on the voters’ feelings? (Nate Cohn, my colleague on the news side, pointed out this week in another subscriber-only newsletter that the polls are showing a tight contest, with Biden slightly ahead of Trump and slightly behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in hypothetical matchups.)I asked Charles Tien, a political science professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Hunter College, why he and others put economic indicators into their models. “When you add in the economy, it improves the results,” he said. But he acknowledged that it’s not obvious why that’s the case. When I asked Fair the same question by email, he wrote, “My empirical results are quite strong that the economy has mattered over time.” I wonder if it’s because economic indicators signal something about voters’ situations that they don’t fully express in surveys, which in any case have become less reliable as response rates have declined.Peter Enns, a political scientist at Cornell who ran the Cornell-based Roper Center for Public Opinion Research until last year, told me he thinks it’s too soon for predictions about the 2024 race. First, because there are too many unknowns, such as the field of candidates and the business cycle. Second, because at this stage voters should be focusing on who should win, not who will win. OK, that’s fair. No more horse-race prognosticating from me. For now.The Readers WriteWhat your newsletter about innovation misses is the input by experimentation. Our five senses are permanently providing us with personal experience that facilitates new creative thoughts. Only when chatbots are equipped with sensors can they become independent thinkers.Heinrich MullerRancho Palos Verdes, Calif.As for fertility, maybe all you men should think a little. Maybe women do not want to be saddled all through their adult years with raising your kids! Or maybe if men did a little more of the work, women wouldn’t mind so much.Marilynn MillerChicago areaTo test peer effects on fertility, why not hire actors to wheel baby carriages around one area and not around a demographically matched area nearby? Joking, of course.David AuerbachDurham, N.C.With the large run-up in housing prices that you mentioned, selling a home and buying a new one may involve a huge increase in property tax payments. This may be a significant disincentive to selling in addition to higher mortgage rates.Randy K. VogelLaguna Hills, Calif.Quote of the Day“I used to say to our audiences: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’”— Upton Sinclair, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked” (1935) More

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      What Should Kamala Harris’s Role Be Now?

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      More from our inbox:Conflict in Montana Over a Transgender LawmakerWomen at Peace TalksMedical Assistance in DyingVice President Kamala Harris with President Biden at the White House in February.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Kamala Harris Really Matters in 2024,” by Thomas L. Friedman (column, April 26):Mr. Friedman identifies the heightened peril of this moment and states that President Biden “absolutely has to win.” Having declared his candidacy for a second term, Mr. Biden needs to address age-related questions head on. Consequently, his running mate faces greater scrutiny.Thus far, Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t forged her own identity. By the very nature of the job, she is confined to a supporting role, but she needs breakout moments of not being a tightly programmed V.P. She must trust her own best instincts. Go off script. (Her handlers will be aghast.) Make mistakes and learn from them.After many years of being the consummate pragmatic politician, Mr. Biden seems to be more fully at ease in his own skin and seems to revel in the daunting challenges his presidency faces — head on with admirable grace and courage. He can free her to dare to do the same.Barbara Allen KenneyPaso Robles, Calif.To the Editor:Thomas L. Friedman is way off base in suggesting that Kamala Harris may be saved by giving her a variety of portfolios. She simply lacks the foreign policy and defense chops to justify putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency, especially when the president, if re-elected, would be well into his 80s as his second term progresses.The challenges posed by Russia, China, North Korea and others are simply too great to put a rookie in charge.Rubin GuttmanClevelandTo the Editor:Thomas L. Friedman’s column about a Biden-Harris ticket as a must win in 2024 is spot on. I disagree, however, with his suggestions for how best to elevate Kamala Harris on a national and international stage. Working on rural U.S. initiatives?! Ensuring our pre-eminence in artificial intelligence?!Come on! She needs to be in charge of those things she does best: passionate defense of social justice issues, including international diplomacy and equity for nations that are struggling with ruthless civil wars.We need Kamala Harris to develop and demonstrate her ability to both challenge autocracies and support struggling democracies à la Madeleine Albright.Judy WagenerMadison, Wis.To the Editor:Here’s an idea for the Democratic Party to consider: Get Kamala Harris back to California by having her take Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat. Ms. Harris was very productive in California as attorney general and later as a senator. Unfortunately the 89-year-old Ms. Feinstein is no longer capable of doing the job.Ms. Harris might relish the opportunity to once again represent the Golden State. Furthermore this would free President Biden to select a running mate without its looking as though he were abandoning his loyal vice president.A relatively progressive running mate such as Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona would likely garner more votes and the electorate wouldn’t have to ponder whether it is Ms. Harris they’d want in the Oval Office should Mr. Biden’s health become an issue.Steven BrozinskyLa Jolla, Calif.To the Editor:While I agree completely with everything that Thomas L. Friedman says in his insightful column, there is one aspect about it that mystifies me. I agree that President Biden’s age is a concern for voters. But why isn’t Donald Trump’s age an even greater concern for voters? He is only four years younger than President Biden, is seriously overweight, and apparently never encountered a hamburger he couldn’t resist.Please stop focusing so obsessively on President Biden’s age without also raising the issue of Mr. Trump’s age and physical condition.Stephen CreagerSan FranciscoConflict in Montana Over a Transgender LawmakerRepresentative Zooey Zephyr, right, with Representative SJ Howell in the hallway outside the main chamber of the Montana House. Ms. Zephyr was monitoring debate on a laptop and casting votes from the hallway.Brittany Peterson/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Montana House Bars Transgender Lawmaker From Chamber Floor” (news article, April 27):Our legislature’s problem is that this is the 21st century. Young people and marginalized communities want to express themselves and to have a voice, but many older Montanans remain set in their ways. From Native American rights to climate change to transgender rights, the old guard appears oblivious.Historically, the state has suffered from a lack of diversity, and the influx of recent transplants in communities such as Bozeman and Missoula exacerbates a reactionary mind-set.The state is struggling to find a new equilibrium. Until it does, unfortunately, we may see more pictures in the news of stodgy old people making fools of themselves at the Montana statehouse.In the meantime, all Montanans and all Americans should stand behind Representative Zooey Zephyr, who was barred from participating in deliberations because of her impassioned comments on transgender issues, and the other courageous young people working to bend the arc of history toward justice.Peter CaposselaWhitefish, Mont.Women at Peace TalksA destroyed military vehicle in Khartoum, Sudan.Marwan Ali/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “The Violence in Sudan Is Partly Our Fault,” by Jacqueline Burns (Opinion guest essay, April 24):The admission that U.S. and international peace negotiators got it wrong by engaging with leaders of Sudanese armed groups must spark a new kind of action to ensure that peace negotiations include women and the concerns that they bring to the table.Women’s exclusion from peace processes is all too common, such as in Syria and Afghanistan, and the consequences are dire. Women must be at the table, not only because that’s what fairness demands.Research has shown that when women are meaningfully included in negotiations, a peace agreement is 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years. That’s because women’s leadership represents the needs of wider communities, resulting in greater legitimacy and democratic participation.We must also ask: Why? Why was it so much easier to patiently engage armed leaders with no demonstrated interest in peace, while women and other civil society leaders were told to wait their turn? If we can name the answer — patriarchal attitudes that permeate policymaking the world over — we will be in a better position to confront them and get peacemaking right.Yifat SusskindNew YorkThe writer is executive director of MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization and feminist fund.Medical Assistance in Dying Kyutae LeeTo the Editor:Re “Medical Assistance in Dying Should Not Exclude Mental Illness,” by Clancy Martin (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, April 21):As a psychiatrist, I have always had concerns about physicians assisting dying in those with terminal medical illnesses. Patients can change their minds about that wish with better pain control. If depression is present, its treatment can help lift spirits and facilitate discovery of reasons for wanting to live longer.Medical assistance in dying (MAID) for mental illness, scheduled to start less than a year from now in Canada, is more problematic, as the wish to die is a symptom of depression. Significant improvement has been made with psychiatric treatments. But the movement for MAID is a clear message that greater progress and access to care are essential.Jeffrey B. FreedmanNew York More

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      ¿Cuánto les importa a los votantes la edad de Joe Biden?

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      Más allá de una crisis de salud o una equivocación grave, hay buenas razones para pensar que la edad de Biden puede importar menos de lo que sugieren algunas encuestas.Muchos estadounidenses dicen que no quieren que el presidente Joe Biden vuelva a postularse a la reelección y su edad es una razón de peso. En una encuesta de NBC News publicada el pasado fin de semana, el 70 por ciento de los adultos opinó que Biden, de 80 años, no debería volver a postularse. A la pregunta de si la edad era un factor, el 69 por ciento respondió que sí. Otros sondeos recientes detectan una falta de entusiasmo similar y hay muchos votantes (incluida alrededor de la mitad de los demócratas) que consideran que Biden es demasiado mayor para volver a aspirar a la Casa Blanca.Visto así, es fácil imaginar que su edad pudiera perjudicar la campaña de reelección que anunció de manera formal el martes. Biden, quien ya es el presidente de mayor edad en la historia de Estados Unidos, tendría 86 años al terminar su segundo mandato. Los republicanos han difundido videos de sus lapsus verbales, así como de ocasiones en las que tartamudea, y han sugerido que reflejan un declive cognitivo. La edad de Biden es un chiste frecuente en los programas de la televisión nocturna.Sin embargo, un análisis de las encuestas y las investigaciones académicas muestra un panorama sorprendentemente más ambiguo. Con la advertencia obvia de que una equivocación grave relacionada con la edad o una crisis de salud podrían cambiar las cosas, hay buenas razones para pensar que la edad de Biden puede importar menos de lo que sugieren algunas encuestas.1. Teoría contra prácticaCon frecuencia los estadounidenses suelen expresar su preocupación por los gobernantes de mayor edad, pero eso no ha evitado que voten por candidatos más viejos.En una encuesta reciente de USA Today y la Universidad de Suffolk, la mitad de los estadounidenses dijeron que la edad ideal de un presidente era de entre 51 y 65 años. Una cuarta parte dijo que prefería que los candidatos tuvieran menos de 50 años. Pero cinco de los últimos ocho candidatos presidenciales, incluidos Biden en 2020 y Donald Trump (dos veces), han superado los 65 años. En varios casos, los votantes los eligieron frente a oponentes mucho más jóvenes en las elecciones primarias. Y, en el último siglo, se ha elegido a decenas de senadores o representantes cuya edad supera los 80 años.La preocupación por la edad también tiene más matices de lo que parece a primera vista. Aunque la mayoría de los electores se muestran a favor de limitar la edad de los políticos, no se ponen de acuerdo sobre cuál debería ser ese límite. Muchos también afirman que los legisladores de más edad aportan una valiosa experiencia y no se les debería prohibir servir al país si siguen gozando de buena salud.Eso no significa que los estadounidenses que dicen estar preocupados por la edad estén mintiendo. Sus decisiones al momento de votar pueden reflejar las opciones disponibles. “No hay nada incoherente en que la gente diga que una persona de 80 años no debería ser presidente y luego vote por un candidato de 80 años si esa es la única opción que se les da”, manifestó Whit Ayres, encuestador republicano.Tampoco está claro que la edad sea una desventaja para los candidatos más viejos. Los gobernantes mayores suelen tener índices de aprobación más bajos que los más jóvenes, según un estudio de 2022 del que es coautor Damon Roberts, doctorando en Ciencias Políticas por la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder. Pero en su investigación, los votantes mostraron una apertura más o menos similar al momento de apoyar a candidatos hipotéticos de 23, 50 o 77 años.También sucede que, por estos días, hay muchos políticos de mayor edad en diferentes cargos. “No creo que Biden en particular se vea muy fuera de lugar en la escena política de este momento”, afirmó Roberts.Sin embargo, nadie de la edad de Biden se ha postulado a la reelección presidencial, y otros expertos dudan que se integre facilmente. “La presidencia es fundamentalmente diferente”, dijo Ayres. “La visibilidad es mucho mayor”.2. El partido ante todoLos sondeos sugieren que los votantes perciben temas más importantes para Biden que para candidatos de mayor edad anteriores (aunque los encuestadores parecen haber preguntado con menos frecuencia sobre la edad de los candidatos pasados). Pero, en estos tiempos de polarización, es mucho más probable que la lealtad al partido determine la elección de los ciudadanos.“A fin de cuentas, vamos a votar por el partido ‘D’ o por el ‘R’”, afirma Karlyn Bowman, investigadora emérita del American Enterprise Institute que estudia las encuestas de opinión pública. “En este momento, la lealtad partidista es tan fuerte que eso prevalecerá sobre las demás preocupaciones”.La percepción de las capacidades de Biden también depende de la afiliación partidista. Los republicanos —quienes probablemente no apoyarían a ningún candidato demócrata, por muy en forma que esté— son los más propensos a decir que Biden es demasiado viejo para continuar en la presidencia. Su edad tampoco ha impedido que la gran mayoría de los demócratas consideren su mandato como un éxito (aunque los demócratas más jóvenes muestran menos entusiasmo ante la postulación de Biden a la reelección).“La gente piensa en otras cosas a la hora de votar”, dijo Margie Omero, directora de GBAO, una encuestadora demócrata. “El historial de Biden, el historial de Trump, lo que ven como el futuro del país, los logros legislativos, la lucha por el derecho al aborto”.En última instancia, la edad de Biden podría ser más importante para los votantes indecisos que están abiertos a respaldar a cualquiera de los partidos, lo que les da una gran influencia para elegir al ganador. “Es una porción muy pequeña de la población en la actualidad, pero aún así, es muy importante”, afirmó Bowman.3. Solo un númeroEsto nos lleva al tema de si Biden podrá influir en las opiniones de los electores sobre su idoneidad para el cargo. En febrero, Omero y sus colegas de Navigator Research, una encuestadora demócrata, reclutaron a un pequeño grupo de votantes indecisos para que vieran el discurso de Biden sobre el Estado de la Unión. Antes del discurso, solo un 35 por ciento de ellos lo describía como “apto para la presidencia”. Tras el discurso —en el que se produjo un intercambio de opiniones inesperado entre Biden y los congresistas republicanos sobre la Seguridad Social y Medicare— el 55 por ciento consideró que Biden tiene las capacidades necesarias para ejercer el cargo.Biden también podría tratar de evadir este tema si continúa limitando sus apariciones públicas. En 1996, Ayres trabajó en la campaña de reelección al Senado de Carolina del Sur de Strom Thurmond, quien en ese entonces tenía 93 años, en un momento en el que, al parecer, sufría un deterioro cognitivo. “Intentamos mantenerlo lo más invisible posible”, dijo Ayres.Presidentes anteriores, como Dwight Eisenhower y Ronald Reagan, lograron superar las dudas sobre sus edades y ganaron la reelección con un buen margen.Pero Biden es mayor de lo que ellos eran cuando trataron de reelegirse. “La cuestión no es tanto cómo es hoy”, dijo Ayres. “La cuestión es cómo será en 2028”. Es posible que el mandatario tenga que confiar en que los votantes pasen por alto cualquier preocupación a largo plazo sobre su edad.4. El factor TrumpTrump, quien tendrá 78 años el día de las elecciones, parece ser el aspirante mejor posicionado para ganar las primarias republicanas de 2024. Supera a su competidor potencial más cercano —el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, de 44 años— en las encuestas nacionales y en los respaldos de otros republicanos.Aunque las edades similares de Biden y Trump podrían hacer que el tema pierda importancia; por ahora, los electores dicen estar más preocupados por la edad de Biden. Y si Trump ataca con agresividad el estado físico de Biden, podría generar más escrutinio sobre ese tema que un aspirante más joven pero más comedido.Pero también es un mensaje que Trump ya ha usado antes —como cuando, en 2020, le puso el sobrenombre de “Sleepy Joe” (“Joe, el dormilón”)— en una contienda que no ganó. En algún momento, todo ese discurso sobre la edad de Biden puede comenzar a parecerle anticuada a los votantes.Ian Prasad Philbrick es redactor del boletín The Morning. @IanPrasad More

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      Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul

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      Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I thought it was a marvelous slogan because it captured the idea that we’re in the middle of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation. In the video he released this week launching his re-election bid, he doubled down on that idea: We’re still, he said, “in a battle for the soul of America.”I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because I think it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about.What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden is not using the word in a religious sense, but in a secular one. He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul.Whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God is not my department. But I do ask you to believe that every person you meet has this moral essence, this quality of soul.Because humans have souls, each one is of infinite value and dignity. Because humans have souls, each one is equal to all the others. We are not equal in physical strength or I.Q. or net worth, but we are radically equal at the level of who we essentially are.The soul is the name we can give to that part of our consciousness where moral life takes place. The soul is the place our moral sentiments flow from, the emotions that make us feel admiration at the sight of generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.It is the place where our moral yearnings come from, too. Most people yearn to lead good lives. When they act with a spirit of cooperation, their souls sing and they are happy. On the other hand, when they feel their lives have no moral purpose, they experience a sickness of the soul — a sense of lostness, pain and self-contempt.Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do. Hawks and cobras are not morally responsible for their actions; but humans, possessors of souls, are caught in a moral drama, either doing good or doing ill.Political campaigns are not usually contests over the status of the soul. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally, is the embodiment of an ethos that covers up the soul. Or to be more precise, each is an ethos that deadens the soul under the reign of the ego.Trump, and Trumpism generally, represents a kind of nihilism that you might call amoral realism. This ethos is built around the idea that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Might makes right. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can because if I don’t, the other guy will. People are selfish; deal with it.This ethos — which is central to not only Trump’s approach to life, but also Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s — gives people a permission slip to be selfish. In an amoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory and arrogance are valorized as survival skills.People who live according to the code of amoral realism tear through codes and customs that have built over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation. Putin is not restrained by notions of human rights. Trump is not restrained by the normal codes of honesty.In the mind of an amoral realist, life is not a moral drama; it’s a competition for power and gain, red in tooth and claw. Other people are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and worth; they are objects to be utilized.Biden talks a lot about the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At its deepest level, that struggle is between systems that put the dignity of individual souls at the center and systems that operate by the logic of dominance and submission.You may disagree with Biden on many issues. You may think he is too old. But that’s not the primary issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of living through the Trump presidency was that we had to endure a steady downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing behavior. We were all corroded by it. That era was a reminder that the soul of a person and the soul of a nation are always in flux, every day moving a bit in the direction of elevation or a bit in the direction of degradation.A return to that ethos would bring about a social and moral disintegration that is hard to contemplate. Say what you will about Biden, but he has generally put human dignity at the center of his political vision. He treats people with charity and respect.The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite.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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      Joe Biden and the Not-So-Bad Economy

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      Joe Biden has, to nobody’s surprise, formally announced that he is seeking re-election. And I, for one, am dreading the year and a half of political crystal ball gazing that lies ahead of us — a discussion to which I will have little if anything to add.One thing I may be able to contribute to, however, is the way we talk about the Biden economy. Much political discussion, it seems to me, is informed by a sense that the economy will be a major liability for Democrats — a sense that is strongly affected by out-of-date or questionable data.Of course, a lot can change between now and November 2024. We could have a recession, maybe as the delayed effect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. We might all too easily face a financial crisis this summer when, as seems likely, Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling — and nobody knows how that will play out politically.Right now, however, the economy is in better shape than I suspect most pundits or even generally well-informed readers may realize.The basic story of the Biden economy is that America has experienced a remarkably fast and essentially complete job market recovery. This recovery was initially accompanied by distressingly high inflation; but inflation, while still high by the standards of the past few decades, has subsided substantially. The overall situation is, well, not so bad.About jobs: Unless you’ve been getting your news from Tucker Carlson or Truth Social, you’re probably aware that the unemployment rate is hovering near historic lows. However, I keep hearing assertions that this number is misleading, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the labor force — which was true a year ago.But it’s not true anymore. There are multiple ways to make this point, but one way is to compare where we are now with projections made just before Covid struck. In January 2020 the Congressional Budget Office projected that by the first quarter of 2023 nonfarm employment would be 154.8 million; the actual number for March was 155.6 million. As a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers points out, labor force participation — the percentage of adults either working or actively looking for work — is also right back in line with pre-Covid projections.In short, we really are back at full employment.Inflation isn’t as happy a picture. If we measure inflation by the annual rate of change in consumer prices over the past six months — my current preference for trying to extract the signal from the noise — inflation was almost 10 percent in June 2022. But it’s now down to just 3.5 percent.That’s still above the Fed’s target of 2 percent, and there’s intense debate among economists about how hard it will be to get inflation all the way down (intense because nobody really knows the answer). But maybe some perspective is in order. The current inflation rate is lower than it was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.Or consider the “misery index,” the sum of unemployment and inflation — a crude measure that nonetheless seems to do a pretty good job of predicting consumer sentiment. Using six-month inflation, that index is currently about 7, roughly the same as it was in 2017, when few people considered the economy a disaster.But never mind these fancy statistics — don’t people perceive the economy as terrible? After all, news coverage tends to emphasize the negative: You hear a lot about soaring prices of gasoline or eggs, much less when they come back down. Even amid a vast jobs boom, consumers report having heard much more negative than positive news about employment.Even so, do people consider the economy awful? It depends on whom you ask. The venerable Michigan Survey still shows consumer sentiment at levels heretofore associated with severe economic crises. But the also well-established Conference Board survey — which, as it happens, has a much larger sample size — tells a different story: Its “present situation” index is fairly high, roughly comparable to what it was in 2017. That is, it’s more or less in line with the misery index.And for what it’s worth, both the strength of consumer spending, even in the relatively soft latest report on G.D.P., and the failure of the much-predicted red wave to materialize in the midterm elections look a lot more Conference Board than Michigan.Again, a lot can happen between now and the election. But what strikes me is that consumers already expect a lot of bad news. The Conference Board expectations index is far below its “present situation” index; consumers expect 4 to 5 percent inflation over the next year, while financial markets expect a number more like 2. If we either don’t have a recession or any recession is brief and mild, if inflation actually does come down, voters seem set to view those outcomes as a positive surprise.Now, I’m not predicting a “morning in America”-type election; such things probably aren’t even possible in an era of intense partisanship. But the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.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 Tiny, Tight-Lipped Circle of Aides Guiding Biden 2024

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      They rarely give on-the-record interviews. Only two are on Twitter. But they will be the main force behind the president’s political strategy.When President Biden announced his re-election campaign and its top two staff members this week, the names of his closest and longest-serving advisers were not included.A small circle of senior officials, some who have known Mr. Biden for longer than many of the soon-to-be-hired campaign staff members have been alive, will guide the president’s political strategy both in the White House and on the campaign trail.None of them have significant public personas. Of the six, only Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, have active Twitter accounts. But it was members of this group who began making phone calls last weekend to offer positions on Mr. Biden’s campaign, only some of which have been announced.Officials in the White House and on his nascent campaign insist the campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, will be empowered to run Mr. Biden’s re-election bid. But an array of Democratic officials who have been involved in ramping up his 2024 effort have made clear that many major decisions will continue to be made by the president’s cadre of top advisers.According to two Biden advisers, the White House staff members who have been involved in rolling out the campaign are Ms. O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Zients, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed.Here is a look at the people at the center of the president’s political universe who will help guide his re-election bid.Jeff ZientsMr. Biden named Mr. Zients as his second chief of staff in January after Mr. Zients oversaw the administration’s Covid vaccination program. He has ensured regular bagel deliveries to the West Wing from Call Your Mother, a Washington chain in which he is a part owner. (Four days into his presidency, Mr. Biden directed his motorcade to stop at one of the shops so his son Hunter could pick up an order.)Jeff Zients during his tenure overseeing the Biden administration’s Covid vaccination program.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Zients has sat in on interviews with and deliberations about potential campaign staff members, and he has a regular political meeting with Mr. Biden.When he become Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Mr. Zients had a reputation as one of Washington’s top Democratic problem-solvers. He was called in to the Obama administration to fix the health care website after widespread technical problems in 2013. In 2021, Mr. Biden tapped him to run the coronavirus response.Anita DunnIn 2020, when Mr. Biden limped to a fourth-place finish in Iowa — and was days away from coming in fifth in New Hampshire — he handed effective control of his campaign to Ms. Dunn, a veteran Washington operator who began her career interning in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and rose to become Mr. Biden’s most senior communications adviser.Anita Dunn, a longtime Washington operator, helped found SKDK, a major public affairs and political consulting firm.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Dunn also had senior roles with Democrats including President Barack Obama. And she helped found SKDK, a major public affairs and political consulting firm that employs a stable of Democratic operatives. (She has faced questions over the years about the intersection of her government work and the firm’s business dealings.)She is married to the prominent lawyer Bob Bauer — a partnership that in 2009 led Newsweek to call them Washington’s new power couple. Mr. Bauer is also a close Biden adviser who has served as a lawyer for Mr. Biden.“Anita’s default is action,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as White House communications director for Mr. Obama. “In a party of hand-wringers that Democrats can be, she has a unique leadership style that helps propel movement forward.”Steve RicchettiMr. Ricchetti, who served as Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential chief of staff, is a longtime Biden confidant.He has often acted as a conduit among Mr. Biden, donors and members of Congress. (Soon after Mr. Biden took office, Mr. Ricchetti’s brother drew scrutiny for his work as a lobbyist; Mr. Ricchetti has also worked as a lobbyist.)“Steve is the best I’ve seen at managing relationships and being an open ear to a lot of people,” said former Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Biden at the White House and as a national co-chair of his 2020 campaign. “Stevie knows the interactions of the Congress and the White House.”Asked whether he could compare any top Biden aides to characters on the TV series “The West Wing,” Mr. Richmond noted that Josh Lyman, the show’s fast-talking, hard-charging deputy White House chief of staff, “kept scores.”“Maybe Stevie to Josh,” he said. “He has a long memory.”Mike DonilonOther than Mr. Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and Jill Biden, the first lady, Mr. Donilon has worked with Mr. Biden the longest of anyone in his inner circle.An adviser to Mr. Biden since the early 1980s, the low-key Mr. Donilon is a regular presence at Georgetown University’s basketball games — even during the team’s recent stretch of down years. (A Rhode Island native, Mr. Donilon has two degrees from the Washington university.)He comes from a family accomplished in politics. One brother, Tom Donilon, worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Another, Terrence Donilon, is the chief spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston. Mike Donilon’s sister-in-law, Catherine Russell, was Dr. Biden’s chief of staff when Mr. Biden was vice president.Mr. Donilon, who served as Mr. Biden’s chief strategist during the 2020 campaign, is a senior adviser now and travels frequently with the president.“These are folks who are very close to the president and are the reason why he is president,” Cristóbal Alex, a veteran of Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign and White House, said of Mr. Donilon and other top Biden advisers. “That sort of core leadership will play an incredibly important role in his election.”Jennifer O’Malley DillonA relatively late addition to the Biden inner circle, Ms. O’Malley Dillon had senior roles on both of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns and was the campaign manager on Beto O’Rourke’s 2020 bid for the White House before Ms. Dunn recruited her to take over what was then a shoestring Biden presidential campaign.Ms. O’Malley Dillon became campaign manager just as the pandemic hit. She was responsible for transforming a thin operation into a serious general-election apparatus, and doing so as the world shut down, managing the bid of a then-septuagenarian candidate who would spend much of the rest of the campaign off the trail.“Jen has great political instincts, and I’ve never seen anybody get the buses and trains to move on time like she does,” Mr. Richmond said.Known for her skills as a political organizer and for her late-night habit during the campaign of returning phone calls while riding her Peloton stationary bicycle, Ms. O’Malley Dillon became the first woman to manage a winning Democratic presidential campaign and is now a White House deputy chief of staff.Bruce ReedLike Mr. Biden, Mr. Reed has spent his career as a centrist Democrat in Washington. He worked for years for the Democratic Leadership Council, which aimed to focus the party on the political middle and had significant influence during the Clinton administration.The co-author of a book with Rahm Emanuel and the onetime author of a daily column for Slate — in 2009, he called for the Baseball Hall of Fame to “put every player found to have used steroids onto the permanently ineligible list” — Mr. Reed worked for Al Gore and Bill Clinton before becoming Mr. Biden’s chief of staff during the Obama administration.An Idaho native whose affection for his home state extended to his personal email handle, Mr. Reed is Mr. Biden’s top policy adviser and travels with him on domestic trips. More

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      Biden’s Highest Hurdle Isn’t Age, It’s Passion

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      Joe Biden is officially running for re-election, and his candidacy will put some Democratic voters — those not only skittish about his age but also about his passion for policy — in a vise: They recognize the threat from the leading Republican candidates, but they’ve been underwhelmed by Biden, who’d be 82 at the start of a second term.The age question is a major concern for Biden, according to political advisers I’ve spoken to recently — and according to the chatter on cable news and online. And the sense that he has underwhelmed is particularly problematic for Biden when it comes to young voters. According to an Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School poll of 18-to 29-year-olds released Monday, just 36 percent of young Americans approve of Biden’s job performance. That number has steadily dropped over the course of his presidency.Though young voters were only 17 percent of the 2020 electorate, they’ll probably be a key to another Biden win, since he won about 60 percent of the 18-to-29 vote last time around. Younger voters can also be barometers of how much a candidate’s passion factors into his appeal.I reached out to several voting rights advocates and political organizers to discuss Biden’s bid, and the overall impression settles somewhere between cautious optimism and dampened enthusiasm, not so much about Biden’s age, but how voters, including younger voters, look at his policy priorities. As Clifford Albright, the co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told me, although younger voters would generally like to see younger candidates, “the age thing can be overcome if you’re talking about the right issues.”Albright mentioned the presidential candidacies of Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s about a year older than Biden. As a contender for the Democratic nomination, he said, Sanders was held aloft by young voters because he vociferously championed issues that they cared about. They felt that he was fighting for them.It’s on those issues where some activists seemed to think Biden had left an opening for voter disappointment. They weren’t naïve about the structural obstacles in the way Congress operates that made legislative progress difficult, if not impossible, but they simply didn’t believe that Biden went down fighting on some of the initiatives that younger Democratic voters cared about most.One that sticks in their craws, undoubtedly because they deal with voting rights, was a sense that Biden didn’t fight hard enough for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.Nse Ufot, the founder of the New South Super PAC, chastised Biden for speaking about the voting rights bill at the Atlanta University Center — home to four historically Black colleges and universities, in a state where both senators were already committed to voting for the law — ahead of a push to the pass the bill, knowing there weren’t enough votes to pass it. Biden “should have been in West Virginia,” said Ufot, he “should have been in Phoenix, Ariz., because those are the people who need to hear it.”She said it seemed almost like a coach coming to the sideline to console a team in defeat even though there was still time left on the clock and the game was still being played. It just didn’t feel like an all-out effort to go down swinging.Ufot, channeling the rapper Ice Cube, said of Biden: “I need you to put your back into it!”But both Ufot and Albright considered the hesitation about Biden’s age a bit of a red herring. For them, policy and voter engagement — and the time and resources put into both — will be more determinative.On the policy front, Albright believes that the polling for Democrats, particularly in the fall of 2022, ticked up not only because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but also because Biden finally took action on student loan forgiveness, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with the most significant climate provisions in American history and the passage of relatively narrow, but still significant, federal gun legislation. A half year later, these Democratic wins can feel like old news, but they were agenda items that Democratic voters, including young voters, cared deeply about.So if Biden made gains on some of the issues that young voters care about, why are the activists still concerned?Biden’s challenge when it comes to younger voters isn’t so much his age, but his posture, they say. He was elected in part as an antidote to the chaos of the Donald Trump years. But, as Albright sees it now, “some of that stability that he offers, some of that comfort or whatever that he offers some folks, that has actually been, from our perspective, part of the problem.”“When you’re in a moment like what we’re in,” Albright said, “you have to recognize that this is not a time for the normal, the traditional, the nostalgia or whatever, and that you need something different.”Ufot buttressed that sentiment more bluntly, saying, “People are trying to appear to be elder statesmen when the country is,” in effect, on “fire.”In a certain sense, Biden’s age becomes a proxy for other dissatisfactions voters may have with him. Trump is just four years younger than Biden, but he has convinced his followers that his venom is a marker of virility.Biden has to demonstrate more fight for more progressive policies. Even if he loses the battles, he has to show the scars. Positioning himself as the last line of defense against the return of Trump or the rise of an equally dangerous Republican isn’t sufficient.He has to show that he is more bulldog than bulwark.As Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of the New Virginia Majority, put it, in the next year and a half leading to the election, “I think you’re going to see more — at least I hope we’re going to see more — of that fight, because I think at the end of the day, voters want to vote for someone who they believe will fight for what is needed.”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