Subterms
A polling deficit against Trump across six key states is mainly about younger, nonwhite and less engaged voters. Kamala Harris performs slightly better.Four years ago, Joe Biden was the electability candidate — the broadly appealing, moderate Democrat from Scranton who promised to win the white working-class voters who elected Donald J. Trump.There are few signs of that electoral strength today. More
Since the heinous Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s declaration of war against the terrorist group, I have been going over and over a question I’ve not been able to answer fully: During this episode, why has the Palestinian cause sparked so much passion among veteran activists of the movement for Black lives?Last week, I wrote that this could be traced to the ideological lens and residual energy of a younger generation attuned to protest and the ideas of equality and justice. But after interviewing several prominent activists in recent days, I realize there’s more to explore in the critical dynamics fueling that passion, which is born, in part, out of longstanding personal connections and a common sense of purpose.There are two pivotal events that seem to have ignited the new era of solidarity between some young American activists and the people of Palestine. The first came in the form of Palestinian activists expressing support on social media for the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., which activists describe as an uprising, not just a series of protests. Palestinians provided not just moral support, but offered practical tips that, as activist Cherrell Brown told me, included advice for protesters about how to protect themselves from tear gas.Around that time, a small delegation of Palestinians even traveled to Ferguson and St. Louis to meet with American activists. This all created a moment of bonding around a shared sense of resistance.The second event was a 2015 pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories organized by Ahmad Abuznaid, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian American who co-founded the Dream Defenders, a group of activists who came together in response to the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin.The small delegation included some people who would also become central in the American movement, like the journalist and scholar Marc Lamont Hill.When we spoke, Abuznaid, who has been criticized for his support for B.D.S., a movement calling for boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel, said he has led or been a part of several delegations to the Palestinian territories focused on what he describes as the injustices caused by the Israeli occupation.These trips help not only to develop strong bonds between communities half a world away from each other, but also to connect the issues facing them. Hill, who lost his job as a CNN contributor after he gave a speech at the United Nations about Israel and Palestine that was condemned by groups including the Anti-Defamation League, would go on to be a co-author of a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics.”The events during this period reinforced a sense of internationalism among activists and connected a present solidarity with a historical one. It called back to a time when an American figure as notable as Malcolm X spoke out for the Palestinian cause.Even activists who didn’t make these journeys describe coming to this cause in part through personal connections with Palestinians and Palestinian Americans.And unlike some conflicts around the world, this one continues to play out in full view, in traditional media and social media. As the comedian, actress and activist Amanda Seales told me, this crisis has an urgency around it that others don’t because “we’re able to see it” in an unfiltered way.The other thing that I initially underestimated is the level of criticism of the Biden administration for its response to this conflict and what effect that might have in 2024.Shaun King, a former writer for The Daily News who has millions of followers on Facebook, Instagram and X, the site formerly known as Twitter, posted recently about how he would not vote for President Biden next year because of his embrace of Israel.King, who has never been a strong Biden supporter and is far from a mainline Democrat, told me, “I feel like a voter without a candidate.”While most activists I spoke to didn’t sound a note as strident as King’s about their voting intentions, several of them sounded an alarm about a possible wave of voter disappointment on the left over Biden’s stance in this conflict.As Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, told me, he couldn’t think of a more “demobilizing experience” for young, democracy-minded, multiracial coalition voters than an escalating war and escalating human suffering “with the understanding that our country and our government could have done more to prevent it.”Tiffany Loftin, who describes herself as a civil rights activist and labor union organizer, and is a former national director of the N.A.A.C.P. youth and college division, said she would have a difficult time casting her ballot for “somebody who supported genocide” of Palestinians, which is how she characterized Biden’s position in the Israel-Gaza war. “I don’t know if I can do that, Charles,” she said.The questions for the Democratic Party and the Biden administration are: How much of their support base does this discontent represent, and how much voter abstention can they absorb?A lot will happen next year, and public attention will inevitably turn to other issues and controversies, but in a tight presidential race, an increasingly disaffected activist base on the left could be disastrous for Biden, and in a rematch with Donald Trump, that could be disastrous for our democracy.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
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina gave his speech as his struggling presidential campaign said it would move most of its staff to Iowa.Senator Tim Scott, struggling to gain traction less than three months before the first Republican primary ballots are cast, came to the South Side of Chicago on Monday to rebuke the welfare state and the liberal politicians he dismissed as “drug dealers of despair.”The speech was at New Beginnings Church in the poor neighborhood of Woodlawn. It may have been delivered to Black Chicagoans, but the South Carolina senator’s broadsides — criticizing “the radical left,” the first Black female vice president, Kamala Harris, and “liberal elites” who want a “valueless, faithless, fatherless America where the government becomes God” — were aimed at an audience far away. That audience was Republican voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the donors who have peeled away from his campaign.His political persona as the “happy warrior” gave way to a chin-out antagonism toward the Black leaders who run the nation’s third-largest city, and the Democratic Party that “would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar on their own leadership.”Speaking to a largely receptive audience in a church run by a charismatic Republican pastor, Mr. Scott added: “They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise, but their actions take us in the opposite direction. The actions say they want us to sit down, shut up and don’t forget to vote as long as we’re voting blue.”The speech came just minutes before a Scott campaign staff call announcing that the senator’s once-flush campaign would move most of its resources and staff to Iowa, in a last-ditch effort to win the first caucus of the season and rescue the campaign.“Tim Scott is all in on Iowa,” his campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, said in a statement.Mr. Scott, the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century, launched his presidential bid in May, with a roster of prominent Republicans behind him, a $22 million war chest and a message of optimism that separated him from the crowded primary field. To many white Republicans, his message on race, delivered as a son of South Carolina, where slavery was deeply embedded and where the Civil War began, resonated, while many Black Democrats found it naïve and insulting.“If you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America, because the story of America is not defined by our original sin,” he said early this year as he considered a presidential run. “The story of America is defined by our redemption.”But from the beginning, even supporters wondered aloud whether optimism and uplift were what Republican voters wanted, after so many years of Donald J. Trump and the rising culture of vengeance in the G.O.P.This past weekend, Don Schmidt, 78, a retired banker from Hudson, Iowa, put it bluntly to Mr. Scott as the senator campaigned in Cedar Falls before the University of Northern Iowa beat the University of North Dakota in football. Mr. Schmidt told Mr. Scott he was thinking of supporting him or Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.“But,” he cautioned, “I don’t know whether you can beat Trump.”Race has lately been a particularly problematic subject for Mr. Scott. He has at once maintained there is no such thing as systemic racism in the United States, but has also spoken of having a grandfather forced from school in the third grade to pick cotton in the Jim Crow South, and of his own brushes with law enforcement simply because he was driving a new car.His audience on Monday on the South Side were the grandchildren of the Black workers who left the segregated South during the Great Migration to lean their shoulders into the industrialization of the Upper Midwest. And he seemed to invite the pushback he got after the speech as part of the political theater.Rodrick Wimberly, a 54-year-old congregant at the New Beginnings Church, was incredulous that Mr. Scott really did not believe that the failings of some Black people were brought on by systemic impediments. He brought up redlining that kept Black Chicagoans out of safer neighborhoods with better schools and lending discrimination that suppressed Black entrepreneurship and homeownership.“What we see in education, in housing, the wealth gap widening, there is statistical data to show or suggest at the very least there are some issues that are systemic,” Mr. Wimberly told the senator. “It’s not just individual.”But Mr. Scott held his ground, just as he has since June, when the senator tried to stir up interest in his campaign with a clash on the television show “The View” over an assertion that he didn’t “get” American racism.When Mr. Wimberly suggested that the failing educational system was an example of the systemic racism holding Black Chicagoans back, Mr. Scott responded: “But who’s running that system? Black people are running that system.”Such sparring has largely failed to lift his campaign, however. On Saturday, his hometown newspaper, The Post and Courier of Charleston, advised Mr. Scott and other Republican candidates to drop out and endorse Ms. Haley as the candidate best positioned to challenge Mr. Trump in the primaries, which begin in fewer than three months.Last week, Mr. Scott’s super PAC, Trust in the Mission PAC, or TIM PAC, told donors it would cancel “all of our fall media inventory.”“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo. As Bill Brune, 73, a Republican and Army veteran from La Motte, Iowa, put it this weekend: “There’s a lot of good people, but they get no attention. The good guys finish last.”Republican politicians, including Mr. Trump, who has a glittering high-rise hotel on the Chicago River, have for years used the city as a stand-in for urban decay and violence, though that portrait is at best incomplete. Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential candidate, came to a different South Side neighborhood three miles from New Beginnings in May to discuss tensions among Black residents over the city’s efforts to accommodate an influx of migrants, many of whom were bused there from the border by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — but also to show his willingness to speak with audiences usually ignored by Republican candidates.Monday’s appearance was, in effect, Mr. Scott’s take on adopting — and amplifying — Mr. Ramaswamy’s flair for the dramatic. Shabazz Muhammad, 51, was released from prison in 2020, after serving 31 years. Since then, he said, he has struggled to find work and housing because of his record and what he called “the social booby traps” in his way. Beyond the candidate’s critique of the welfare state, Mr. Muhammad wanted to know specifically what Mr. Scott wanted to do to help people like him.Mr. Scott, though sympathetic, was unwavering in his description of social welfare policies as “colossal, crippling, continual failures.”“Are we tough enough to get better and not bitter?” he asked his audience.Neil Vigdor More
The Louisiana dispute is one of several voting rights cases churning through the courts that challenge a state’s congressional map.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower-court ruling that delays an effort to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map, prolonging a bitter clash over the representation of Black voters in the state.The order temporarily leaves in place a Republican-drawn map that a federal judge had said diluted the power of Black voters while an appeal moves through the lower courts.Civil rights groups had sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing aimed at drafting a new map for Louisiana. That map was to include two districts in which Black voters represent a large enough share of the population to have the opportunity to select a candidate. The appeals court said that the state legislature should have more time to redraw its own map before a lower court stepped in.The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications, and there were no public dissents.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a brief concurring opinion, emphasized that Louisiana should resolve the dispute in time for the 2024 election.In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the plaintiffs had argued that delays in the case could complicate efforts to instate a new map by the next election, leaving the state with a version that lumps Black voters from different parts of the state into one voting district, diluting their power.By the time the Supreme Court issued its order on Thursday, a hearing date had passed. Another has been set for February.The consolidated cases, Galmon v. Ardoin and Robinson v. Ardoin, are part of a larger fight over redistricting. State lawmakers in the South have contested orders to refashion congressional maps and establish additional districts to bolster Black representation. The outcomes could help tilt control of the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Weeks earlier, the court refused a similar request by Alabama, which had asked the justices to reinstate a map with only one majority-Black district. A lower court had found that Republican lawmakers blatantly disregarded its order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”At issue in Louisiana is a voting map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the winter of 2022. The map carved the state into six districts, with only one majority-Black district, which joined Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the state’s two largest cities. About a third of the population in the state is Black.The case has reached the Supreme Court before.A coalition that included the N.A.A.C.P. Louisiana State Conference, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and Louisiana voters sued state officials and said the map unfairly weakened the power of Black voters.A district court, siding with the plaintiffs, temporarily blocked Louisiana from using its map in any upcoming elections. A new map, it said, should include an additional district where Black voters could choose a representative. The court gave the Legislature until June 20, 2022, to sign off on a redrawn map.Louisiana immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and a three-judge panel unanimously denied the request. The state then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.The Supreme Court paused the case until it ruled in the Alabama case, Allen v. Milligan, which concerned similar questions. That essentially allowed the Republican-drawn map in Louisiana to go into effect during the 2022 election.The court lifted the pause in June after a majority of the justices, in a surprise decision, found Alabama’s map had unfairly undercut the power of Black voters. The justices said the appeals court should review the case before the 2024 elections. More
The fall of a Jim Crow-era election law and a restoration of felons’ voting rights have given Black voters new sway in the state. Democrats’ underdog nominee for governor is looking to capitalize.Just three years ago, Mississippi had an election law on its books from an 1890 constitutional convention that was designed to uphold “white supremacy” in the state. The law created a system for electing statewide officials that was similar to the Electoral College — and that drastically reduced the political power of Black voters.Voters overturned the Jim Crow-era law in 2020. This summer, a federal court threw out another law, also from 1890, that had permanently stripped voting rights from people convicted of a range of felonies.Now Mississippi is holding its first election for governor since those laws fell, the contest is improbably competitive in this deep-red state, and Black voters are poised to play a critical role.Black leaders and civil rights groups in Mississippi see the Nov. 7 election as a chance for a more level playing field and an opportunity for Black voters to exercise their sway: Roughly 40 percent of voters are Black, a greater share than in any other state.“This election is going to be one that is historical,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’d be the first time we don’t have to deal with this Jim Crow-era Electoral College when it comes to the gubernatorial race. And also, we’re at a point in our state where people are fed up and frustrated with what’s currently happening.”Democrats are trying to harness that energy behind Brandon Presley, the party’s nominee for governor. Mr. Presley, who is white, is seeking to ride his brand of moderate politics and his pledges to expand Medicaid to an underdog victory over Gov. Tate Reeves, an unpopular Republican incumbent who has been trailed by a welfare scandal.Black Mississippians lean heavily Democratic: Ninety-four percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, according to exit polls. Any path to victory for a Democrat relies on increasing Black turnout and winning over some crossover white voters.“If you want to win in the South, it takes time,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P.Emily Kask for The New York TimesMr. Presley, a member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission and a second cousin of Elvis Presley, has made outreach to Black voters central to his campaign, seeking to win them over on Medicaid expansion, addressing a rural hospital shortage and providing funding for historically Black colleges.On a recent October weekend, Mr. Presley navigated the tents and barbecue smokers at the homecoming tailgate for Alcorn State University, one of six historically Black colleges in the state. As he darted from tent to tent, wearing a purple-and-gold polo to support the home team, Mr. Presley introduced himself to unwitting voters and took selfies with his backers, many who flagged him down amid the din of music and aroma of smoking ribs.“Let’s go Brandon!” came a tongue-in-cheek call from one purple-and-gold tent packed with chairs.LaTronda Gayten, a 48-year-old Alcorn State alumna, ran over to flag Mr. Presley down. The candidate eagerly obliged, high-fiving and hugging supporters, proclaiming, “Come Nov. 7, we’re going to beat Tate Reeves!”Ms. Gayten and her friends made sure to get a picture before Mr. Presley ran off to the next tent. “He’s looking out for the people of Mississippi,” she said. “I’m from a rural area and Wilkinson County, and I don’t want our local hospitals to close down.”Many of the state’s rural areas, however, are heavily white, and any Democrat seeking statewide office must cut into Republican margins there. Mr. Presley routinely notes in his stump speech that he is “building a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, independents, folks who might not ever agree on politics.”The race’s limited polling shows Mr. Presley within striking distance but running consistently behind Mr. Reeves. Mr. Presley outpaced the governor in the most recent fund-raising period by $7.9 million to $5.1 million, but Mr. Reeves enters the final stretch with $2.4 million more in cash on hand.Elliott Husbands, the governor’s campaign manager, said in a statement that Mr. Reeves “has been meeting with voters in every single community across the state, including many Black voters, to work to earn their support.” Mr. Reeves’s campaign shared a social media post with pictures of Mr. Reeves meeting with Black leaders, but declined to offer further details.As Mr. Presley tries to bridge Mississippi’s stark racial gap, he has not shied away from that history.“Black Mississippi and white Mississippi have been purposely, strategically and with intent, divided over racial lines,” Mr. Presley told a lunchtime crowd at a soul-food joint in Jackson. “Intentionally divided. For two things: money and power, money and power, money and power.”Mr. Presley has tried to bridge Mississippi’s stark racial gap but has not shied away from the state’s history.Emily Kask for The New York TimesHe added that Mr. Reeves and his allies were “hoping that Black voters do not come vote in November. That’s what they’re banking on.”Mr. Taylor and the local N.A.A.C.P. have begun a new program to reach out to Black voters.Every day, canvassers fan out across a predominantly Black neighborhood of low-propensity voters, seeking to have extended conversations about the issues that are important to them and what would make them more likely to vote.Calling themselves the Front Porch Focus Group, the canvassers — run by Working America, a labor organization, in collaboration with the national and local N.A.A.C.P. — have knocked on nearly 5,000 doors. Voters’ top priorities are clear: economic opportunities, affordable housing and health care.Yet the canvassers’ resulting study found that Black voters “did not identify voting as a mechanism to solve those issues.”“Among the people with whom we spoke, 60 percent shared a version of, ‘Voting does not make a difference,’” the study says. “One voter told us they ‘would rather work that hour and make 18 more dollars than spend an hour being miserable to vote.’ Jahcari, a 34-year-old man in Jackson, said, ‘In the state of Mississippi, I feel like Black people will never be on top, so we don’t really have that much we can do when it comes to voting.’”Mr. Taylor is hoping to change such attitudes, and the new voting landscape is the beginning. Under the old election law, candidates for statewide office had to win both the popular vote and a majority of State House districts, with maps that were often drawn to pack Black voters together and limit their voting power. The state’s law barring those convicted of certain felonies from voting also disproportionately affected Black voters, disenfranchising one in every six Black adults, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Black Mississippians, Mr. Taylor said, are some of the voters who have been least “invested in”; the state is so deeply red and so gerrymandered that national Democrats rarely spend money there.Three years ago, Mississippi ditched a Jim Crow-era law that had aimed to marginalize Black voters.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThat is why the local N.A.A.C.P. has increased its budget for this election cycle to nearly $1 million, compared with roughly $500,000 in 2019. Mr. Taylor is also overseeing a vast program of traditional door-knocking, direct mail, targeted digital advertising and ads on Black radio. He is focusing in particular on races connected to criminal justice, like those for district attorney.Mr. Presley’s viability, as well as recent victories in Georgia Senate races and friendly rulings by the Supreme Court, could be paving a path for Black voters to build a stronger voice in the South.“I’m so greatly appreciative to all of the folks that did incredible work in Georgia,” Mr. Taylor said in an interview in his local N.A.A.C.P. office. “If you want to win in the South, it takes time.” Next door, original windows from the civil rights era were still scarred by bullet holes. “We have to look at winning over the span of decades, not just one election.”Mr. Presley’s campaign believes that one election may be now. It has made what it calls a multimillion-dollar investment in outreach to Black voters, including an effort to deputize volunteers and supporters to reach out to their personal contacts.Still, he must win over skeptics.As Mr. Presley meandered through the Alcorn tailgate, a D.J. offered him his mic for a quick word.“We’ve got to beat Tate Reeves, and I need you with us, and I need you to go vote,” Mr. Presley thundered. “God bless you.”Mr. Presley’s campaign has made what it calls a multimillion-dollar investment in outreach to Black voters, including an effort to deputize volunteers and supporters to reach out to their personal contacts.Emily Kask for The New York TimesBut the D.J., who declined to give his name, wasn’t letting Mr. Presley off easy.“We need you to be here next year when you win, and that you will continue to come, and guess what, you’re going to support our H.B.C.U.s,” the D.J. said. “Let me hear you say it: You will support all H.B.C.U.s.”He handed the mic back to Mr. Presley, who borrowed a line from his stump speech.“All H.B.C.U.s, and we’re going to get the $250 million back to Alcorn State University that was taken from them,” Mr. Presley said, referring to a letter the Biden administration sent Mr. Reeves last month saying that Mississippi had underfunded the institution by that amount over 30 years.The D.J. gave him an overhand clap before playing the next song, and Mr. Presley walked to the next tent. More
In 1969, a young aide in the Nixon White House, 28-year-old Kevin Phillips, published “The Emerging Republican Majority.”Phillips had worked as a strategist on Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, the experience of which supplied much of the material for his book. His argument was straightforward: Nixon’s victory wasn’t just a momentary triumph, but the beginning of an epochal shift in American politics, fueled by a latent conservatism among many members of the white middle class. These voters were repulsed, Phillips wrote, by the Democratic Party’s “ambitious social programming and inability to handle the urban and Negro revolutions.”The latter point was key. “The principal force which broke up the Democratic (New Deal) coalition is the Negro socioeconomic revolution and liberal Democratic ideological inability to cope with it,” Phillips declared. “The Democratic Party fell victim to the ideological impetus of a liberalism which had carried it beyond programs taxing the few for the benefit of the many (the New Deal) to programs taxing the many on behalf of the few (the Great Society).”If one tallied Nixon’s share of the national popular vote, at 43.5 percent, and added it to the share won by the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, at 13.5 percent, then you had, in Phillips’s view, the makings of a conservative majority. “It was Phillips’s thesis,” the historian Geoffrey Kabaservice recounts in “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party,” “that the Republicans could build an enduring majority by corralling voters troubled by ‘the Negro Problem’ and drawing in elements that had not traditionally been part of the Republican Party: conservatives from the South and West, an area for which Phillips coined the term ‘the Sunbelt.’”To some extent, Phillips was remarking on a shift that was already in motion. Both Dwight Eisenhower, in the 1952 and 1956 elections, and Nixon in the 1960 election made gains with white Southerners.Phillips was also not the first person to notice the potential of racial strife to move this process along. Barry Goldwater, the party’s 1964 nominee for president against Lyndon Johnson, became the first Republican of the 20th century to win most of the states of the former Confederacy, doing so on the basis of his vociferous opposition to the Civil Rights Act passed that year.Wallace rested his campaigns, in 1964 and 1968, on the observation that when it came to civil rights, “the whole country was Southern.” And in his attempt to parry and marginalize Wallace, Nixon aimed directly at the white voters of the South. “Vote for … the only team that can provide the new leadership that America needs, the Nixon-Agnew team,” the Republican nominee said in a radio advertisement tailored to white Southern voters. “And I pledge to you we will restore law and order in this country.”But having written a popular book about the future Republican majority — a book that would prove quite prescient, as Republicans established a durable hold on partisan politics in the South — Phillips is the man who gets credit for both seeing the opportunity and developing the eventual strategy. As he told the journalist Garry Wills during the 1968 campaign, “The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”Kevin Phillips in 1970.Associated PressPhillips died this week of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 82. By the end of his life, he had become a sharp critic of the Republican Party, condemning the extremism, military adventurism and free market fundamentalism of the George W. Bush years in a 2006 book, “American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.”Phillips’s turn against the modern Republican Party he helped create gets at what made his work significant. He didn’t just identify a constellation of political, social and economic forces that could produce a durable Republican majority; he identified an actual social base for the right-wing conservatism that would, in short order, eclipse its ideological rivals within the Republican Party. The new Southern Republicans would be avowedly conservative, committed to the destruction of as much of the social insurance state as possible.You could draw a straight line, in other words, from “The Emerging Republican Majority” to the Gingrich revolution of the 1990s to the present, when Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana briefly emerged as the leading candidate for speaker of the House before withdrawing from the race on account of fierce opposition from many of the more radical members of the House Republican conference.First elected to Congress in 2008, Scalise is associated with the hard-right flank of the House Republican caucus. But more relevant to our story is the fact that he represents the state congressional district that once sent David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, to the Louisiana State Legislature. Duke’s election, in 1989, was the start of a political ascendence that culminated in a bitterly fought campaign for governor, which Duke lost — while winning more than 60 percent of the white voters who cast a ballot in that election.Duke was a toxic figure, condemned by most of the mainstream in the Republican Party, nationally and in Louisiana. But his campaign essentially foreshadowed the transformation of Louisiana politics in the 1990s and into the 2000s, when right-wing Republicans — adopting Duke’s anti-tax, anti-welfare and anti-government rhetoric — supplanted conservative Democrats.Together, Phillips’s death and Scalise’s near ascension to the speakership form an interesting synchronicity. On one hand, we have the intellectual father of the “Southern strategy,” who died estranged from the political party he helped shape. On the other, we have the rise, however brief, of a lawmaker who represents the total success of that strategy.A funny thing has happened as the national Republican Party has rooted itself ever more deeply into the South: The Southern style of conservative politics — hidebound, populist, staunchly anti-union and devoted to the interests of capital above all — has migrated well above the Mason-Dixon Line. We’ve seen it take hold in Wisconsin, Kansas, even Maine. It should be said that Scalise’s original rival for the speakership, the MAGA radical Jim Jordan, is from Ohio.The Republican Party did not just win the white South in the years and decades after Phillips wrote “The Emerging Republican Majority.” Nor did it just become the party of the white South — or at least its most conservative elements. No, what happened is that the Republican Party Southernized, with a politics and an ideology rooted in some of the most reactionary — and ultimately destructive — tendencies of that political tradition.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
The death of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, immediately turns the spotlight to an intense, ongoing three-way battle to replace her, fraught with racial, political and generational tensions over one of the most coveted positions in California and national politics.It also puts new pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will chose someone to fill her term through the end of 2024. Mr. Newsom, whose profile has risen in national Democratic politics in recent weeks as he has traveled the country on behalf of President Biden’s re-election campaign, had come under fire for announcing he would not pick any of the declared candidates in filling any vacancy, so as not to elevate them and give them an advantage in the Democratic primary race.Mr. Newsom had originally promised to pick a Black woman to fill the position if it opened up, and many Democrats thought he would turn to Representative Barbara Lee, a progressive. But Mr. Newsom said he would pick a caretaker senator instead. “I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Ms. Lee denounced Mr. Newsom for that decision, calling it insulting.The other leading Democratic candidates in the primary race for Ms. Feinstein’s seat are Representative Adam Schiff, a high-profile member of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Representative Katie Porter, a third-term California member of the House; and Ms. Lee.It remains to be seen if, after Ms. Feinstein’s death, any other candidates will jump into the race. However, Mr. Schiff, Ms. Lee and Ms. Porter are well-known figures in Democratic politics, and have for months been raising money and building support.It is unclear whom Mr. Newsom might pick to fill Ms. Feinstein’s seat for the remainder of her term. The names that have been discussed, since Ms. Feinstein said earlier this year that she would not run again, include Shirley Weber, the California secretary of state; Holly Mitchell, a Los Angeles county supervisor; and Angela Glover Blackwell, a civil rights lawyer in Oakland and the founder of PolicyLink, a research and advocacy nonprofit group.Mr. Newsom had originally made the pledge about a Black woman in response to the fact that there are no Black women serving in the Senate. The last one was Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who left the Senate to become Mr. Biden’s vice president.At that time, in January 2021, Mr. Newsom picked Alex Padilla, the California secretary of state, to replace her. Mr. Padilla became the first Latino from the state to serve in the Senate; he was elected last year to a full term. More
For the second time in recent months, the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama lawmakers and their proposed congressional district map.The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused Alabama’s request to reinstate a congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers that had only one majority-Black district, paving the way for a new map to be put in place before the 2024 election.Alabama’s request to keep its map was the second time in under a year that it had asked the Supreme Court to affirm a limited role of race in establishing voting districts for federal elections in what amounted to a defiant repudiation of lower-court rulings. In the latest twist in the case, the lower court had found that the state had brazenly flouted its directive to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”The court’s order gave no reasons, which is often the case when the justices decide on emergency applications. The ruling clears the way for a special master and court-appointed cartographer to create a new map.The outcome of the dispute could ultimately tip the balance of the House, where Republicans hold a thin majority. The trajectory of the case is also being closely watched by lawmakers in Washington and other states where similar battles are playing out.In a surprise decision in June, the Supreme Court found that Alabama had hurt Black voters in drawing its voting map, reaffirming part of a landmark civil rights law.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has long been skeptical of race-conscious decision making, wrote the majority opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined him, along with the courts three liberal justices — Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.At issue was Alabama’s congressional map. Its Republican-controlled legislature sliced up the state into seven districts, continuing to maintain only one majority Black district, although about a quarter of state’s population is Black.After the Supreme Court’s decision, state lawmakers scrambled to draw a new map. Over the objections of Democrats, the legislature pushed through a version that changed district boundaries but that did not include an additional majority-Black district. Instead, it increased the percentage of Black voters in one district to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.The federal three-judge panel overseeing the case found lawmakers had, yet again, likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the panel wrote. The judges added that the Legislature’s proposal “plainly fails to do so.”In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, acknowledged that the Legislature had not added a second majority-Black district to its map as dictated by the federal court, but said its new map still complied with the law.Unless the court acted, he wrote, “the state will have no meaningful opportunity to appeal before the 2023 plan is replaced by a court-drawn map that no state could constitutionally enact.”In their brief, the plaintiffs, including a group of Black voters and advocacy organizations, urged the justices to reject Alabama’s request for relief and said the state had “unabashedly” sought to defy the courts using “recycled arguments.”After the Supreme Court’s decision in June, the plaintiffs wrote, Alabama’s Legislature had drawn its plan in secret, with no opportunity for public comment, and had enacted it “over alternative plans that were supported by Black Alabamians.”“Disagreement with this court’s ruling is not a valid reason to defy it — and certainly not a basis for a grant of an emergency stay application,” they wrote. More
