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For Biden, a Race Against Time
When my mom got into her 80s, we had to deal with periodic medical issues. Fainting. Falls. Broken bones.Luckily, she was in good stead with the local rescue squad because she faithfully attended their crab feast fund-raisers.Each time, my siblings and I would move heaven and earth to get her home from whatever hospital she had landed in.In 2003, I tried to talk one emergency room doctor into releasing her after 11 hours.“I’ll let her out if she can tell me who the president is,” the doctor said.We both looked at my mom, expectantly.“George,” she said.I was thrilled; W., it was.“George Washington,” she finished.After each episode, I’d proudly tell her internist, Dr. Simon, how we had nursed her back to health.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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A Female President? Big Deal.
In her concession speech to President-elect Donald Trump in November 2016, Hillary Clinton declared, “We have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will — and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”There was lots of talk about gender in politics then. Many of us thought that Clinton lost in part because of both hard-core misogyny and a softer unconscious bias that led just enough voters to think of presidents only as guys in suits.I’ve been thinking lately of that glass ceiling because of a conversation we’re not having — one about the gender of the Democratic nominee if Joe Biden takes advice from so many of us to drop out of the presidential race.If Biden withdraws, his most likely successor is a Black woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, who polls a bit better than Biden against Trump. Some of us have urged instead that Democrats nominate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, believing that she would be the nominee most likely to defeat Trump. And a few of us have mentioned the talented Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a former governor and a star of the Biden cabinet.Our argument isn’t a feminist one about the significance of elevating women. It’s not even an argument that these politicians would perform better than Biden as president. Astonishingly given our history, it’s that they would also be more electable.Perhaps even more intriguing, gender has largely gone unmentioned. I’ve had people push back at my recommendation of Whitmer on the basis that she’s untested nationally, that choosing her over Harris would antagonize Black voters, that her name recognition is weak. All fair objections. But I haven’t heard anyone scoff: But Whitmer is a woman. We tried that in 2016, and it got us Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Republicans Will Regret a Second Trump Term
Now is the summer of Republican content.The G.O.P. is confident and unified. Donald Trump has held a consistent and widening lead over President Biden in all the battleground states. Never Trumpers have been exiled, purged or converted. The Supreme Court has eased many of Trump’s legal travails while his felony convictions in New York seem to have inflicted only minimal political damage — if they didn’t actually help him.Best of all for Republicans, a diminished Joe Biden seems determined to stay in the race, leading a dispirited and divided party that thinks of its presumptive nominee as one might think of a colonoscopy: an unpleasant reminder of age. Even if Biden can be cajoled into quitting, his likeliest replacement is Vice President Kamala Harris, whose 37 percent approval rating is just around that of her boss. Do Democrats really think they can run on her non-handling of the border crisis, her reputation for managerial incompetence or her verbal gaffes?In short, Republicans have good reason to think they’ll be back in the White House next January. Only then will the regrets set in.Three in particular: First, Trump won’t slay the left; instead, he will re-energize and radicalize it. Second, Trump will be a down-ballot loser, leading to divided and paralyzed government. Third, Trump’s second-term personnel won’t be like the ones in his first. Instead, he will appoint his Trumpiest people and pursue his Trumpiest instincts. The results won’t be ones old-school Republicans want or expect.Begin with the left.Talk to most conservatives and even a few liberals, and they’ll tell you that Peak Woke — that is, the worst excesses of far-left activism and cancel culture — happened around 2020. In fact, Peak Woke, from the campus witch hunts to “abolish the police” and the “mostly peaceful” protests in cities like Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis that followed George Floyd’s murder, really coincided with the entirety of Trump’s presidency, then abated after Biden’s election.That’s no accident. What used to be called political correctness has been with us for a long time. But it grew to a fever pitch under Trump, most of all because he was precisely the kind of bigoted vulgarian and aspiring strongman that liberals always feared might come to power, and which they felt duty bound to “resist.” With his every tweet, Trump’s presidency felt like a diesel engine blowing black soot in the face of the country. That’s also surely how Trump wanted it, since it delighted his base, goaded his critics and left everyone else in a kind of blind stupor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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A Fiery Biden, Ignoring Critics, Attacks Trump to Chants of ‘Lock Him Up’
Facing rising frustration in his party, the president brushed it off in an energetic speech in Michigan. Inside the room, at least, the Democratic mood was defiant, with cheers of “Don’t go, Joe.”President Biden on Friday strove to turn the nation’s attention back to former President Donald J. Trump, delivering a fiery and energetic speech in battleground Michigan that painted his Republican rival as a convict, a rapist and a cheater while simultaneously attacking the news media for an insufficient focus on such misdeeds.Even as Mr. Biden faces mounting pressure from congressional Democrats and major donors, he largely ignored the brewing Democratic revolt over his refusal to drop out of the race, beyond an emphatic statement that “I am running, and we’re going to win.”The president’s defiance, and the crowd’s enthusiastic response, helped give the Biden event at a Detroit high school gym the flavor of a Trump rally at times. When Mr. Biden referred to his political opponent, there were chants of “Lock him up” — which the president did not discourage. When he criticized news media coverage, big cheers followed, with his supporters turning to boo and point fingers at reporters.Mr. Biden thundered that his rival was a “convicted criminal” and a “business fraud,” and said that he had “raped” the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom Mr. Trump was found liable of sexually abusing by a civil court.In all, the 35-minute speech was a version of Mr. Biden that has been absent since he began his re-election campaign — and maybe one not seen since he was on a presidential ticket with Barack Obama. After two weeks of Democratic panic since his distressing debate performance, plummeting donations and polls that show him falling further behind Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden acted as if he was in the presidential race to stay.“I’m the nominee of the Democratic Party, the only Democrat or Republican who has beaten Donald Trump ever,” said Mr. Biden, whose remarks were greeted by loud chants of “Don’t go, Joe” and “Don’t you quit.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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What Republicans Have Been Up to While Biden’s Drama Has Unfolded
While Biden has been in the spotlight, Republicans rewrote their platform and used dark rhetoric.The self-generated political crisis that has convulsed the Democratic Party over the past two weeks has felt, to Republicans, like a lovely day on the fairway.“Republicans are standing on the sidelines with polite golf claps,” said David Urban, a political strategist and past campaign aide to former President Donald Trump, “going, ‘Wow, incredible, well done.’”They watched President Biden melt down on the debate stage. They watched his party agonize over his unsteady recovery. And, crucially, they managed to stay largely out of it (even when Trump was surreptitiously filmed weighing in from an actual golf course).“I can’t remember a time when there’s been a week that’s gone by, two weeks, when the former president hasn’t been dominating the news cycle,” Urban said.It has not, however, been an uneventful period for the G.O.P. Since the debate, two Trump allies — Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani, have been imprisoned and disbarred, respectively. House Republicans failed to pass what should have been an easy spending bill (though they did manage to pass two bills blocking efficiency standards for kitchen appliances). The party approved a platform that has angered some conservatives and found itself on defense over Trump allies’ sweeping agenda.So, with just days to go before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee, on Monday, let’s take a look at a few story lines you might have missed if you’ve been glued to the Biden saga. I’ll be back next week — from Milwaukee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Elections
More Than 23 Million Watched Biden’s News Conference, Beating the Oscars
The swirling questions about President Biden’s age and mental fitness for office have captured Americans’ attention.More than 23 million people — a bigger audience than this year’s Academy Awards — tuned in on Thursday evening to see how Mr. Biden handled his first live news conference since a poor performance at last month’s debate with former President Donald J. Trump.The television audience amounted to roughly 45 percent of the 51.3 million who watched the debate, according to Nielsen.The president’s nearly hourlong appearance, at the NATO summit in Washington, was one of the most-watched telecasts of the year, outside of sporting events. It aired across several major TV networks, with ABC, CBS and NBC all pre-empting regular entertainment programming.Millions more may have watched on digital news sites and social media platforms, which are, for the most part, not captured by Nielsen’s data.Compared to his predecessors, Mr. Biden rarely grants solo news conferences, which added to the novelty of Thursday’s event.Fox News attracted the largest audience of any network, 5.7 million, representing nearly a quarter of the overall television viewership. ABC was the highest-rated broadcaster, with five million viewers, possibly benefiting from a lead-in from “Jeopardy!,” the game show that aired immediately before Mr. Biden’s news conference.Roughly four of five viewers were 55 or older, Nielsen said. ABC drew the largest audience among adults 25 to 54, the key demographic for advertisers in cable news.Mr. Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, which aired last Friday on ABC, was seen by 8.5 million viewers. More
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‘Touch Me, Poke Me, Ask Me Questions,’ Biden Says of Voters Who Doubt Him
President Biden’s remarks were in response to a Democratic lawmaker who told him on a Zoom call that he should withdraw from the 2024 presidential campaign.President Biden on Friday told a Democratic lawmaker who called for him to step aside that voters should “touch me, poke me, ask me questions” if they have doubts about his ability to serve in the Oval Office or defeat former President Donald J. Trump in November.Mr. Biden made the remarks during a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, according to a partial transcript of the exchange obtained by The New York Times. He was responding to Representative Mike Levin of California, who told Mr. Biden during the meeting that he believed the president should not continue his bid for another term, according to two people familiar with the call. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.Mr. Levin is the 19th member of Congress to call for him to step aside in the two weeks since Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, but he is the first one known to have done so directly to the president — even virtually.“That’s why I’m going out and letting people touch me, poke me, ask me questions,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Levin. “I think I know what I’m doing, because the truth of the matter is — I’m going to say something outrageous — no president in three years has done what we have in three years other than Franklin Roosevelt.”In a statement after the meeting ended, Mr. Levin said he appreciated Mr. Biden’s “five-plus decades” of service, “but I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch.”Mr. Levin said Friday that he had no comment beyond his statement, but it was clear from the fact that he didn’t back away from his comments that nothing in Mr. Biden’s response had changed his mind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
