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      New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on How Donald Trump Loses the Primary

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      We saw a crowded Republican debate stage of seven candidates last Wednesday night — the kind of big field that worries New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, who has argued that candidates need to drop out if one or two strong rivals emerge to stop former President Donald Trump from winning the G.O.P. nomination.But can any of that happen? How? And do Republican voters even want Mr. Trump stopped? I spoke with the Mr. Sununu the day after the debate, and he described his vision for what an alternative could look like on a policy front, what it means to be a governor and whether Mr. Trump has fundamentally changed America. “Jerks may come and go, bad leaders may come and go,” he said, “but our institutions have stood through the test of times.” Mr. Sununu has served as governor of New Hampshire since 2017, and has maintained high levels of support from the battleground state that has otherwise voted for statewide Democrats in recent cycles.This interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics and how and why it differs (and doesn’t) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.Jane Coaston: It is the day after the second G.O.P. debate. Did anyone impress you last night?Gov. Chris Sununu: I think they were all very chippy. Tim Scott and Doug Burgum really knew that they had to push their way into the conversation, knowing that they had kind of gotten boxed out a little bit the first time. DeSantis did what he had to do, similar with the first one.Nikki Haley did a couple things. She showed she wasn’t a flash in the pan. I think she effectively won the first debate in that she showed them fire, she showed a good knowledge base. In the second debate, she didn’t disappoint either. I think she showed some grit and some fortitude.Elections are about choices. A real differentiation is saying, “I know where my opponent stands on these issues. I know exactly what their record is, and I can contrast that here.” She just seems very astute about everybody else’s record. And I think that does her very, very well in those debates.The other thing is that they finally started pulling at Donald Trump a little bit, in terms of his record. Again, Trump had some good ideas and good policies, but he couldn’t really execute on them. And again, showing that differentiation between someone who can actually execute on the policy, as opposed to someone who disagrees with the policy is a very important thing.Coaston: In The Times, you wrote, “In Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states that will vote in the 2024 Republican contests, Mr. Trump is struggling. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is consistently polling in the low 40 percent range. The floor of his support may be high, but his ceiling is low.” In New Hampshire and Iowa, Trump is leading by double digits. So if his ceiling is low, why is his floor so high? Why has his momentum stayed so consistent?Sununu: He does have this extremely strong base of populist Republican support. Folks that just will stand behind him no matter what, no matter all his faults. And we’ve seen that since 2016, right?In a recent poll, he was pulling in about 39 percent in New Hampshire. Which is actually really bad, by the way. I mean, he’s the former president, the voice of the G.O.P. for six years. Even with his base voters, he can’t get above 40 percent? And then the second part of that same poll is very interesting. About a third of his supporters would consider somebody else. So they’re not even that rock solid.Coaston: Gov. Chris Christie is polling well in New Hampshire, but not as well anywhere else. How can he grow his vote if he can? And do you think he could plausibly beat Trump for the nomination?Sununu: I think that’s a really good question. I like Chris a lot, I have the same concerns, but I think you’re expressing that he doesn’t seem to have created a strong ground game in any other state other than New Hampshire. So, New Hampshire can’t be your one and only, right? His poll numbers are decent, because he’s really willing to take on Trump, and that shows you that there’s a decent amount of people within the party that would just want to back the strongest anti-Trumper, which obviously he is.But where it goes from there, I’m not sure. I don’t know his campaign; I don’t know his ground game other than it doesn’t seem to be anywhere else but New Hampshire. That would make it really challenging, as opposed to just being a disrupter. If he actually wants to close the deal and win the primary with just New Hampshire in his back pocket, knowing that South Carolina and Florida come after that, you can’t be no-shows in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.Coaston: There’s a type of current Republican governor who’s been critical of Donald Trump, or come under fire from him, or just managed to be a different kind of Republican than him. I’m thinking of you, I’m thinking of Brian Kemp in Georgia. I’m thinking of Spencer Cox in Utah. And you’re all fairly popular in your own states. What do you attribute the popularity to?Sununu: Being popular isn’t just galvanizing your base, and ignoring the independents and the Democrats, right? Being popular is about governing for all of your constituents. Being conservative in your values and your principles, and being able to stand behind them, that’s great. But the job isn’t just to support your party; it’s to support, especially as a governor, your entire population, regardless of what services they need, where they go to school, what their business might be, it really has to be that way.Coaston: Do you see similarities between yourself and Governor Cox and Governor Kemp, ideologically? Is there a policy through line that connects you?Sununu: One thing that definitely link us all together is fiscal responsibility. A governor has to manage the finances of the state, balance the budgets, make sure the programs are properly funded. We don’t have printing presses like they do in Washington, which is a good thing.Governors have to understand the aspects of management, managing people, accountability, metrics of success.Coaston: So that actually goes with my theory. Normal people don’t think about politics as an end goal, but politics is the means by which they get the things that they want or don’t want. I think that’s to me, why there are so many popular Republican governors of blue states, and so many just popular governors writ large. Being governor isn’t a messaging vehicle, it’s an actual job.Sununu: I think governors started getting the credit they deserve during the pandemic, right? Congress passed a couple bills early on, and then they disappeared for political reasons. And the governor shouldered all the responsibility of managing each of the states uniquely. That’s really what started defining the red states and the blue states more than ever, right? Where the governors stood. Because how the governors managed tended to really differentiate along those lines. Blue states were very closed; red states tended to be more open. We all did it a little differently.You had to handle some pretty tough decisions that probably a good portion of the people were going to get upset with you on almost anything you did. So you had to be affable and approachable with a sense of transparency to re-instill public trust.Having good ideas is one thing, being able to manage and be accountable to it is another. And being able to do that in a public sphere with Congress. Congress doesn’t work for the president. I mean, Trump literally didn’t understand that for a while. Congress is their own entity, and you have to work with them, and manage a lot of what you want to do with their process, in order to achieve a goal and be able to move something forward.Coaston: You recently said, of Donald Trump and our institutions: “Trump’s too dumb to be a danger to democracy. Let’s not give him that much credit.” Now, recently, he suggested that General Milley should have been put to death. That there should be investigations into NBC for “treason.” How do you think about how voters see that and those kinds of comments? Do they not take him seriously, or are they into what he’s saying, or are they just not seeing it? Because there’s an argument to be made that many stupid people have done terrible things.Sununu: Trump speaks in hyperbole. He’s outrageous. And sometimes his hyperbole, he believes it. When Trump says these outrageous things, they don’t go, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he said that.” Nobody says that about Donald Trump anymore, right? They just take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt because he’s looking for the headline. He knows how to work the media and work the headlines. And that’s always been his M.O.Now, the way I try to define is this: A single individual is rarely, if ever, a threat to democracy in this country. Because we have a system of foundational institutions that really, for lack of a better term, are unwavering in a very good way. And the example I gave in that discussion was, we had a Civil War for goodness sakes. As tough and as horrific as that was, at the end of the Civil War, we didn’t have to change Congress or change the presidency.1968. I wasn’t here for it, but my goodness, when you had great American voices being assassinated, not shouted down. Literally assassinated while the Vietnam War was going on, while you had the Nixon [campaign] going on. People said it’s over. Democracy’s ending, this country’s doomed. It was a tough time, but we got through it. You had 9/11, right? And it’s a massive external threat. Our foundations, our institutions stood strong. Nothing fundamentally varied after that.You had the pandemic. You had Jan. 6. The fact that Congress met and certified the election and there was a peaceful transfer of power. Trump walked out the door. As much of a stink as he made that the election fraud in Jan. 6 and all this stuff, he still walked out the door.Jerks may come and go, bad leaders may come and go, but our institutions have stood through the test of times. I might disagree with policy, I might disagree that things are too liberal or too socialist, and other folks might think they’re too conservative or whatever it is. But that’s just policy and politics.Democracy at its core is solid. Our institutions at their core are solid. They really are. We’re not falling apart just because you have a couple idiots on top of the ticket on both sides, saying ridiculous things. It can be very disheartening, but it is also temporary. And it’s nature.[The U.S. government has continued to operate for a long time, and there is a real argument to be made that Jan. 6 ultimately reflected institutional resilience. It’s also true that through various crises in American life, there have often been changes to the shape and scope of government — from the 14th Amendment to the authorization for use of military force following Sept. 11. This is a longer conversation and debate.]Coaston: There’s a case that Trump really achieved a lot of the things conservative Republicans have long wanted. He built a strong conservative majority on the Supreme Court. His justices helped repeal Roe v. Wade. He cut taxes. Do you think that’s how your average Republican voter sees him as part of the continuum, or do you think that what people think of as “conservative” has changed?Sununu: Trump did get some good things done. I think he had some good ideas. But his failure was twofold. Number one, he said there were some really important things that he said he was going to do, and he just didn’t even try. Fiscal responsibility, completely out the door. The least fiscally responsible Republican president in history.He said he was going to secure the border. He didn’t secure the border. He barely touched it. He tried. Don’t get me wrong. I think he tried that, but he didn’t know how to work with Congress to negotiate and get something done. Now where he was able to get wins, this is the second part where he really fell down. He would get a win, and then almost immediately step all over it. And say something completely unrelated and outrageous or outlandish, or do something that the media jumped all over.And at the end of the day, he’s so divisive. I think what people are most frustrated with, what I’m most frustrated with, is he costs us seats. In a state like mine, as a Republican, you end up having to almost answer for the guy, and give excuses for the guy, as opposed to just talking about issues, and standing on your own two feet about what you are going to bring to the table as a candidate or offer to your community.I think Chris Christie actually, if you see his closing statement at last week’s debate, I think Chris really summed this up very, very well. We’re tired of the drama, we’re tired of making excuses. We might agree with him on policy. He didn’t get enough stuff done.Coaston: Forget the names of the candidates for a second. If you could see the field narrowed down, where it would just be Trump and another person or two, in your ideal world, what issues would that candidate be emphasizing, in terms of policy?Sununu: Local control, limited government, decentralizing Washington, D.C., balancing budgets and fiscal responsibility. If you have that core mind-set, everything else gets easier, everything else becomes possible. And America gets better because that empowers the citizens with more control back in their states, their hometowns, their cities, whatever it might be. We’ve just gotten to a place where Washington, even the Republicans in Washington, think that they’re the most important thing, and they’re not. The states are. We created Washington.Coaston: Now, governor, I love federalism. I truly do. But do you think that candidate would appeal to voters? I think that a lot of voters now, you see people who are like, “But this terrible thing is happening in this state I don’t live in. Make them stop.”Sununu: So, the mind-set I’m talking about definitely appeals in a general election. There’s no doubt. You need to work extra hard to get that message to carry through. But at its core, it’s the best form of government.I want to hand you the control, you the power, you the say, as an individual, what’s happening in your community. If you can articulate that, and get people there — it’s not easy. I think we do pretty well in New Hampshire. I think that’s one of the reasons that I stay popular. I’m not trying to control every town. I’m not trying to control every school board.Coaston: Why didn’t you run for president?Sununu: First, I have a 24/7 job. I would have had to really ignore a lot of very important aspects of what’s happening, and New Hampshire’s crushing it right now. I love the state; I didn’t want to basically live in Iowa for six months. That would have been the strategy, right?Plant yourself in Iowa, surprise everybody with a solid win or second place there, crush it here in New Hampshire, and then it’s me and Trump. And after that, I’d beat him. So there was a path. The second piece was, my family really wasn’t into it. And it’s such an endeavor.Coaston: Do you think Donald Trump will win the New Hampshire primary this winter?Sununu: Well, I hope not. He could. He very well could. Most voters that actually vote in the primary won’t make up their minds till after Thanksgiving. Trump has more to lose than the other candidates, if he were to lose New Hampshire and Iowa. The other candidates don’t necessarily have to win New Hampshire and Iowa. One of them or two of them just have to stand out as the clear second and third choice to Trump.So the field massively narrows down after New Hampshire, and then we go from there. And those candidates or candidate, if it’s just one especially, would have a ton of political momentum, a ton of money flowing into their campaign, a ton of opportunity to really turn on the jets, if you will, and fire forward to take Trump on one-on-one within the Republican primary process. And I believe very strongly, leave him behind.If six of those individuals on that stage have the discipline to get out when they need to get out, it’s Trump and one other person, and Trump loses. Think of it that way. Just those six individuals. They all have the same fundamental goal, for Trump not to be the nominee. But if they can just put a little bit of the ego and self-interest aside, and as soon as there’s no longer a very clear path to victory, they got to get out. If they have the discipline to do that early, it’ll all work.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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      Why Non-Trump Republicans Must Join Or Die. (They’ll Probably Still Die.)

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      I’m not sure that an assembly of presidential candidates has ever given off stronger loser vibes, if I may use a word favored by the 45th president of the United States, than the Republicans who debated at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this week.A snap 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll and a CNN focus group showed Ron DeSantis as the night’s winner, and that seems right: After months of campaigning and two debates, DeSantis is still the only candidate not named Donald Trump who has a clear argument for why he should be president and a record that fits his party’s trajectory and mood.On the stage with his putative rivals, that makes him the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. Against Trump, that’s probably going to be good for an extremely distant second place.The path that I (and others) once saw for the Florida governor, where he would run on his political success and voters would drift his way out of weariness with Trump’s destructive impact on Republican fortunes, has been closed off — by DeSantis’s own struggles, the rallying effect of Trump’s indictments and now Trump’s solid general-election poll numbers against Joe Biden. The path other pundits claimed to see for non-Trump candidates, where they were supposed to run directly against Trump and call him out as a threat to the Republic, was never a realistic one for anything but a protest candidate, as Chris Christie is demonstrating.So what remains for Trump’s rivals besides loserdom? Only this: They can refuse to simply replay 2016, refuse the pathetic distinction of claiming momentum from finishing third in early primaries and figure out a way to join their powers against Trump.This is not a path to likely victory. Trump is much stronger than eight years ago, when the crowded battle for second and third place in New Hampshire and South Carolina helped him build unstoppable momentum and the idea of a Ted Cruz-Marco Rubio unity ticket was pondered but never achieved. He’s also much stronger than Bernie Sanders four years ago, when Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar traded the ego-inflating satisfactions of delegate accumulations for a place on Joe Biden’s bandwagon.But unity has been the road not taken for anti-Trump Republicans thus far, and it feels like the only scenario in which this race stays remotely interesting after the Iowa results.One problem, of course, is that unity still requires a standard-bearer — it would have been Cruz first and Rubio second in 2016, for instance, which is probably one reason Rubio didn’t make the deal — and DeSantis’s edge over his rivals isn’t wide enough for them to feel they need to defer to him.Another problem, central to Trump’s resilience, is that the different non-Trump voters want very different things. Some want DeSantis’s attempts to execute populist ambitions more effectively or the novel spin on Trumpism contained in Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance art. Others want the promise of a George W. Bush restoration offered by Nikki Haley and Tim Scott; others still want the Never Trump absolutism of Christie. Would Ramaswamy’s voters go for Scott and Haley? Doubtful. Would Scott’s or Christie’s voters accept DeSantis? Probably, but he hasn’t made the sale.Meanwhile, despite Trump’s claim that he won’t pick as his vice president anyone who has run against him, he’s been known to change his mind — and that reality influences the ambitions of Ramaswamy (who at least hopes for a Buttigieg-style cabinet spot), Scott (who seems he’s been running to be V.P. from the start) and even Haley. So, too, does the possibility that a conviction before the Republican convention somehow prevents his coronation, creating theoretical incentives for delegate accumulation, however remote the odds.All of these incentives are probably enough to prevent real consolidation. But if the non-Trump Republicans were serious enough about their larger cause, they would be planning now for the morning after Iowa. If Haley or (less plausibly) Scott comes in second and DeSantis falls to third, the Florida governor should drop out and endorse the winner. If DeSantis wins but Haley is leading in New Hampshire, then he should offer a place on his ticket, and she should accept. Christie should then obviously drop out pre-New Hampshire and endorse the Iowa winner as well. (Ramaswamy, I assume, would eventually endorse Trump.)Since this maneuvering could still just lead to Trump winning primaries by “only” 60-40 instead of 52-21-14-7-6, a final impediment to consolidation is just the fear of looking a little bit ridiculous — like Cruz and Carly Fiorina campaigning as supposed running mates in the waning moments of the 2016 primaries.And that, too, is also part of how Trump has always steamrollered his Republican opponents. They tend to hesitate, Prufrock-like, on the brink of boldness, while he rolls the dice without a single qualm or doubt.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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      Republicans’ Promises to Combat Fentanyl Fall Flat With Some Voters

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      The official toxicology report states that Andrea Cahill’s son died at 19 years old from an accidental fentanyl overdose. But more than three years after Tyler Cahill’s death in his childhood bedroom, she doesn’t believe that. It was a poisoning, she says, and there is no question about whom to blame: “the cartels.”Ms. Cahill believes the governments of Mexico and China should be punished for the drug’s flow into the United States. A political independent who nearly always votes for Republicans, she wants a president with relentless focus on the issue.“It does feel like maybe nobody cares,” she said.These days, Republican presidential candidates are working to convince people like Ms. Cahill that they share her urgency.Ron DeSantis talks about fentanyl in every stump speech, vowing to send the military into Mexico to target cartels. Nikki Haley has promised to send special operations forces across the border. Chris Christie has called for better access to treatment. Former President Donald J. Trump has offered few specific solutions but has tapped into victims’ families’ hunger to be seen: He likens deaths from the drug to wartime casualties.At Wednesday night’s debate, the candidates linked the crisis to immigration and foreign policy, and hammered home the toll.“We have had more fentanyl that have killed Americans than the Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars combined,” Ms. Haley noted.The promises are required of any politician wanting to appear in touch with New Hampshire, a state that can make or break presidential campaigns. As fentanyl has become one of the most urgent health crises in the country — it is now a leading cause of death for people under 45 — it has ravaged the small state. Last year, opioid overdose deaths hit a four-year high, though down slightly from their peak in 2017, according to state data. Most were from fentanyl.But truly connecting with voters — persuading them that help could be on the way — is proving difficult. In dozens of interviews with people on the front lines of the fight against fentanyl, a sense of abandonment is pervasive. Many said they believed the federal government did too little to stop the epidemic from happening and that it continues to do too little to try to bring it under control.The candidates’ talk of blockades and military intervention is met with cynicism and a deep distrust that their government can find solutions.“I don’t see it getting better if it’s Trump or Biden or whoever is going to step in,” said Shayne Bernier, 30, who fought opioid addiction years ago and is now helping to open a sober-living home in downtown Manchester, N.H. For more than a year, Mr. Bernier has patrolled parks and streets routinely, giving information about a city-funded detox program.Shayne Bernier fought opioid addiction years ago and now patrols the streets and parks of Manchester, N.H. He thinks politicians’ attention to the issue will be fleeting: “They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again.”Mr. Bernier grew up in the city and has “Live Free or Die,” the official state motto, tattooed on his left bicep. He considers himself a conservative. He neither loves nor loathes Mr. Trump, though he understands how the former president appeals to the anger and frustration that courses through his friends.“They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again,” he said of politicians’ promises to address the crisis.Five years ago, Mr. Trump traveled to New Hampshire and remarked how “unbelievable” it was that the state had a death rate from drugs double the national average. When he promised to secure the border “to keep the damn drugs out” the audience responded by chanting: “Build that wall!”The drugs never stopped coming in. The supply only increased, with heroin entirely eclipsed by fentanyl, its cheaper and deadlier synthetic cousin. The state is less of an outlier than it once was: In one recent public opinion poll, more than a quarter of American adults ranked opioids and fentanyl as the greatest threat to public health.To some extent, Mr. DeSantis has picked up where Mr. Trump left off. He promises to shoot drug traffickers “stone cold dead,” a vow consistently met with applause. He largely casts the problem as a symptom of a porous border, giving conservatives another reason to rail against illegal immigration.Tough talk about the Southern border brings some comfort to parents like Ms. Cahill. It’s unclear how her son got the drug that killed him. A video Tyler recorded and shared with a friend that night suggests he took what he believed to be Percocet to relieve pain from a recent tattoo, she says. His father found him dead the next morning.“I had no idea how deadly it could be, how immediate — you can’t call for help,” she said. She keeps fliers in her car that warn “there is no safe experience” using street drugs.But placing the blame on illegal border crossings is misleading. A vast majority of fentanyl in the United States enters through legal ports of entry, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Typically, U.S. citizens driving across the border smuggle in the drugs, stuffing them into trailers, trunks or vehicle linings. Keith Howard, who runs Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, a peer-support community group in Manchester, grimaces when he hears candidates talk about a border crackdown as a viable solution. Mental health support, well-paying jobs and long-term treatment programs are even more important, he said.“There is a need to escape from life for a lot of people right now,” Mr. Howard said. “The sense of alienation people have is much, much deeper than it was 10 or even five years ago.”Nikki Haley has promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl.Chris Christie says politicians haven’t been honest with voters about solutions.When Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, visited Hope for New Hampshire Recovery earlier this year, he notably did not mention the border. He served as the chair for Mr. Trump’s special commission to combat the opioid crisis, but many of the recommendations in the 138-page report that the commission issued in 2017 went nowhere. Mr. Christie blamed the pandemic, but he also said the Trump administration did not focus enough on crafting specific policies and programs.Since then, he said, the crisis has worsened, and politicians haven’t been straight with voters about solutions.“It’s dishonest to lead people to believe that you can enforce your way out of this problem,” he said in an interview, adding that he would support sending National Guard troops to legal ports of entry to help Border Patrol agents intercept drugs. At the same time, he added: “I don’t want to fool the American people into thinking that if I send National Guard to the Southern border, that will solve the problem.” President Biden has focused on both expanding enforcement and improving treatment. In March, the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses. Mr. Biden has called for closer inspection of cargo and stronger penalties for those caught trafficking drugs. Recently, he criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for risking a federal shutdown, which would prevent billions allocated to the D.E.A., Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol to address the crisis.Victoria Sullivan considers Mr. Biden’s approach a failure. A former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, Ms. Sullivan this year helped open a sober-living home for men in recovery.Ms. Sullivan calls her role “government cleanup,” as she tries to fill gaps left by local agencies. She is convinced the city’s drug policies are too permissive and drawing people from around the region to Manchester’s streets. (Roughly a quarter of people who are homeless in Manchester report that they are from the city.)Some advocates argue that Manchester’s permissive policies have drawn people from around the region to the city’s streets.Ms. Sullivan says the problem requires more aggressive interventions, accessible medical treatment, strong families and religious institutions. Her solutions hit at a contradiction in many Republicans’ views about the drug crisis: She is unabashed about her conservative, small government views, but she argues that agencies need to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.“The government has just failed at every level,” Ms. Sullivan said. “They encourage dependence but don’t do anything near enough to get anyone on their feet on their own.”Ms. Sullivan has voted for Mr. Trump in the past and still supports him. But she also been impressed by Ms. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, who earlier this year hosted a discussion at Freedom House, the sober-living home Ms. Sullivan helped create. There, Ms. Haley promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl brought into the United States.Victoria Sullivan, a former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, said she wanted the government to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.Patrick Burns, 35, grew up in rural Maine, where he began pilfering his mother prescription opioids as a teenager. At 17, he enlisted in the Army and served for several years in Afghanistan.When he returned in 2013, nearly everyone he grew up with was battling an addiction of some kind. He moved to Manchester partly to be closer to a larger Veterans Affairs Medical Center, thinking he could get more help there. Instead, he ran into one bureaucratic hurdle after another and said he found fentanyl all around him.“We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded,” said Patrick Burns, an Army veteran who struggled to get help with his addiction.Mr. Burns voted for Mr. Trump once before and could imagine doing so again. What he finds harder to imagine, he said, is that the government that sent him to war can find a way out of the morass he sees in Manchester.“People just don’t have a clue — it’s become such a problem,” Mr. Burns said. “Now rather than address it, they just kind of ignore it. They try to mitigate the effects, but there are not pre-emptive strikes at all. We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded.”Ms. Cahill has tried to ensure that Tyler is remembered. She allowed his photograph to be displayed in the Washington headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and attended a rally at the state capitol earlier this year to raise awareness.That day, she stood with another mother in Concord, N.H., to pass out Narcan to anyone who walked by. When she offered it to two teenage boys, their father stepped in to intervene. “No thanks; they’re good kids,” she remembered him telling her, before shuffling them away.Ms. Cahill was taken aback.“That’s not the point,” she said, recalling the incident. “Tyler was a good kid. This stuff is out there whether we want to acknowledge it or not.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Latino Republicans Call Debate a Missed Opportunity to Reach Voters

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      Republicans have sought to make inroads with the fast-growing slice of the electorate. But voters saw a swing and a miss on debate night.The Republican Party has been on a quest to make inroads with Hispanic voters, and the second presidential debate was tailored to delivering that message: The setting was California, where Latinos now make up the largest racial or ethnic demographic. The Spanish-language network Univision broadcast the event in Spanish, and Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a weekday prime-time newscast on a major network in the United States, was a moderator.But questions directly on Latino and immigrant communities tended to be overtaken by bickering and candidates taking swipes at one another on unrelated subjects. Only three candidates — former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — referred directly to Latinos or Hispanics at all. And only Mr. Pence pitched his economic message specifically toward Hispanic voters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state has the third-largest Latino population, appeared to suggest there was no need for specific overtures to Hispanics or independents when he had won by such large margins in his home state, including in Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”In interviews, Latino voters and strategists called the debate a missed opportunity for Republicans: Few of the candidates spoke directly to or about Latinos or claimed any cultural affiliation or familiarity with them. The Republican field offered little in the way of economic plans to help workers or solutions to improve legal channels to immigration. The candidates doubled down on depictions of the nation’s southern border as chaotic and lawless.Mike Madrid, a longtime Latino Republican consultant in California, said the tough talk could draw in the support of blue-collar Latino Republicans who did not hold a college degree and in recent years have tended to vote more in line with white voters. But the debate was only further evidence that the party had abandoned attempts to broaden its reach beyond Latino Republicans already in its fold. Republicans are “getting more Latino voters not because of their best efforts, but in spite of them,” he said.Latinos are now projected to number about 34.5 million eligible voters, or an estimated 14.3 percent of the American electorate, according to a 2022 analysis by the Pew Research Center.Although Latino voters still overall lean Democratic, former President Donald J. Trump improved his performance with the demographic in 2020 nationwide, and in some areas like South Florida and South Texas even made sizable gains. Debate over what exactly drove his appeal continues.Some post-mortem analyses have found his opposition to city-led Covid pandemic restrictions that shut down workplaces and his administration’s promotion of low Latino unemployment rates and support for Latino businesses helped persuade Latino voters to his side, even when they disagreed with his violent and divisive approach to immigration.Historically, about a third of Latino voters have tended to vote for Republican presidential candidates. But Latino Republicans differ from non-Hispanic Republicans on guns and immigration: Fewer Hispanic Republicans believe protecting the right to own guns is more important than regulating who can own guns, and Hispanic Republicans are less likely to clamor for more border security measures, according to the Pew Research Center.At the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Calderón, who is Colombian and has gained prominence in Latin America for her incisive reporting on race and immigration, and the other moderators often turned to issues central to Latinos in the United States, including income inequality, gun violence and Black and Latino students’ low scores in math and reading.But on the stage, the candidates’ attention quickly turned elsewhere. Mr. DeSantis — the only candidate to provide a Spanish translation of his website — accused Washington of “shutting down the American dream,” an idea popular with Latino workers, but mostly pitched himself as a culture warrior.Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a major national news desk in the United States, was a moderator.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIn response to a question on whether he would support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Mr. Christie talked of the need for immigrant workers to fill vacant jobs. But in his central point, he pledged to increase the presence of troops and agents at the border with Mexico, calling for the issue to be treated as “the law enforcement problem it is.”Mr. Pence dodged Ms. Calderón when she pressed him on whether he would work with Congress to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The initiative, which remains in limbo in the courts, is temporarily protecting from deportation roughly 580,000 undocumented immigrants who have been able to show they were brought into the country as children, have no serious criminal history and work or go to school, among other criteria. About 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 54 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a law that would provide DACA recipients permanent legal status. Although Mr. Pence described himself as the only candidate onstage who had tackled congressional reform before, he did not directly answer the question on DACA. Mostly, he used his responses to attack Vivek Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis before launching into a lengthy accounting of his track record on hard-line Trump policies.“The truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I will do that as well,” Mr. Pence said. “But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation.”When asked how he would reach out to Latino voters, Mr. Scott highlighted his chief of staff, who he said was the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate and someone he had hired “because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.” But he, too, quickly turned to attacking his home-state rival, former Gov. Nikki Haley.The exchanges were a marked difference from the 2016 presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, defended speaking Spanish and personalized their experiences with immigration and the Latino community.Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign last election cycle, said they also were different — and less effective — from those of Mr. Trump. Missing were the pledges “to bring jobs back to America, buy American and drain the swamp,” he added, messages that he said tended to resonate with Latinos and Latino men in particular.“Their campaigns have become such grievance politics that there is not a positive message that is radiating from anyone,” Mr. Rocha said. The shift could also hurt Republicans with a Latino community that skews young and tends to be aspirational, he argued.In South Texas, Sergio Sanchez, the former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said he listened to the debate with dismay. He wanted to hear the candidates talk about pocketbook issues and energy policies. And he wanted them to stay on message and connect the dots for voters on why their economic policies were better than those under the Biden administration. Instead, he said, they spent more time swinging at one another.That was not good for Latinos or anyone else, he said. “They swung and missed,” he added. More

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      The Messy G.O.P. Debate Didn’t Turn Off These Voters

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      Ron DeSantis won praise for his education policies and Nikki Haley got points for passion at a debate watch party in New Hampshire.The voters gathered at a brewery in Goffstown, N.H., to watch the second Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night were excited about many of the options on the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They were also looking forward to having fewer of them.“I’m hoping they’re going to narrow down the candidates,” said Jennifer Vallee, 45, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Goffstown. “I want to hear more from the candidates that actually have a fighting chance to make it towards the end.”Ms. Vallee, a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, was among 28 local Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who gathered at Mountain Base Brewery in this suburb of Manchester for an informal watch party and potluck organized by Lisa Mazur, a local state representative. Over barbecue and smoked Gouda dip, they considered the contenders, seeing more to like than dislike among the seven candidates vying for their votes.“Who do we think did better than expected?” Jared Talbot, 46, a defense contractor employee and local school board member, asked as the debate wound down.“DeSantis!” several people called out.Although many in the group favored Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, they had been underwhelmed by his performance in the first Republican debate, on Aug. 23, and were hoping for a stronger showing on Wednesday. Many in the room were self-identified “parents rights” advocates, and cheered Mr. DeSantis’s criticism of college gender studies programs and his boast that “I ended up getting through Yale and Harvard Law School and somehow came out more conservative than when I went in.”Several of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the nomination are banking on New Hampshire’s early primary, with its storied history of scrambling, or at least spicing up, presidential races, as their best hope for breaking the former president’s stride toward the nomination.The debate watchers in Goffstown had seen many of the candidates in person during their dozens of appearances in the state in recent months. Although the crowd tilted toward Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, most candidates on the stage had their partisans — even Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who narrowly qualified for the stage hours before the debate. (“I’m always the person who likes the outlier,” John Lombo, 45, a hazardous materials auditor for UPS and the lone Burgum supporter in the room, explained.)Many of them were using the debate as an opportunity to shop for vice-presidential favorites. “She’s passionate!” Mr. Talbot, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said admiringly as Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, clashed with Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, late in the evening.Ms. Mazur, who also supports Mr. DeSantis, was less impressed by the exchange. “I liked her in the first debate,” she said. “This time, it was a little much.”Still, most of the crowd seemed impressed by the former governor’s feisty back-and-forth with Mr. Scott, whom she appointed to the U.S. Senate, which seemed to establish her mettle even as it made them question his.“I’m looking to see who can hold their ground, because that is someone who can hold their ground in the long term,” Heather Pfeifer, 48, a home-schooling mother who lives in Goffstown, said. “I love Tim Scott, I’m just not sure he’s a strong enough candidate to get to the place he needs to be.”She added, “I really think Haley might be my favorite.”Nikki Haley is among the candidates who have made dozens of appearances in New Hampshire in recent months.John Tully for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy, a first-time candidate, won a number of fans with his Aug. 23 debate performance. “I went into that debate really watching Ron DeSantis,” said Henry Giasson, a 44-year-old leather store owner and Army veteran, “and I came out watching Vivek Ramaswamy.”Some attendees remarked appreciatively on Mr. Ramaswamy’s toned-down demeanor Wednesday night after his attention-grabbing turn in August. “He’s a brilliant speaker,” Mr. Giasson said.When former Vice President Mike Pence took a jab at Mr. Ramaswamy’s patchy voting record — he has said he did not vote in the 2008, 2012 or 2016 elections — on Wednesday night, Mr. Giasson leaped to his defense: “Where’d that come from?” he said, adding sarcastically, “That was classy.”In the Granite State, Republican candidates face an electorate uncommonly marbled with libertarians, moderates and independents — unaffiliated voters are allowed to vote in primaries. The state’s voters delight in unmaking inevitabilities and legitimizing long shots — among them Mr. Trump, whose landslide victory in New Hampshire in 2016 jolted the Republican Party into taking his candidacy seriously.Mr. Trump remains the Republican primary favorite in New Hampshire by a large margin in the early polling in this election, too. But a recent CNN poll found him performing well below his national average in the state, with fewer than half of Republican voters naming him as their first or second choice. The same survey found Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s closest rival in early polling, in free-fall in New Hampshire, suggesting an open contest for second place at the very least.Perhaps none of the candidates has invested as heavily in the state as Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and the only overtly anti-Trump candidate in the field, who launched his campaign in Goffstown and has made more than two-thirds of his campaign appearances in the state. But Mr. Christie’s moments in the debate were mostly met with silence from the Goffstown crowd.“He’s the only one I’d take off the stage,” said Karen Monasky, 73, a retired occupational therapist and a Republican-voting independent who met Christie during one of his many swings through the area.Still, reviewing the performances as the debate came to a close, several of the attendees conceded that Mr. Christie had a decent night.“The goal is to beat Biden,” Mr. Lombo said. “Even Chris Christie, who I can’t stand, is better than Joe Biden.” More

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      2nd Republican Debate: What to Watch for Tonight

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      The first matchup last month fueled momentum for Nikki Haley and a slide in standing for Ron DeSantis. What it didn’t do is diminish Donald Trump’s lead.Seven Republican presidential hopefuls not named Donald J. Trump will gather on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., with the pressing task of securing second place in the Republican Party’s nominating race — and the ultimate mission of actually challenging the front-runner, Mr. Trump.The first debate last month in Milwaukee was a breakout moment for Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and political newcomer, but it also elevated Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations. What it didn’t do is diminish Mr. Trump’s lead.Here’s what to watch for in the second debate.Can DeSantis reset (again)?For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was widely seen as the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump. But after a first debate where Mr. DeSantis was largely relegated to the sidelines, his standing in the race has sunk. Recent surveys of Iowa and New Hampshire show that Mr. DeSantis has lost as much as half of his support, falling to third place — or lower. Some of his biggest longtime donors have of late grown reluctant to put more money into a campaign that seems to be headed in the wrong direction.To rebuild his momentum, Mr. DeSantis will need to do more on the debate stage than simply avoid a major misstep. Some strong exchanges, particularly with Mr. Ramaswamy, who is competing for some of the same hard-right voters, could help Mr. DeSantis stem his losses.Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, looks at why former President Donald J. Trump’s lead in the Republican primary has grown despite skipping the first debate and on what Republican donors will look for in the second debate.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Trump factorMr. Trump, who is under four criminal indictments, skipped the first debate and emerged much as he entered: the overwhelmingly dominant figure in the primary race. His opponents mostly jostled for position among themselves, declining to take significant swings at the front-runner in absentia. In the post-debate polling, Mr. Trump gained more support than any of the candidates who did appear on the stage.Since then, as his legal cases play out in the courts, Mr. Trump has grown more extreme, and violent, in his rhetoric. He has suggested Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for treason, accused “liberal Jews” of voting to “destroy” America and Israel, and seemed to threaten the judges and prosecutors in the felony cases against him.So far, his rivals have not used those attacks to go after the front-runner as extreme, but with the first ballots to be cast in Iowa in January, time is running out. The Wednesday debate could be among the lower-polling candidates’ last chances to take aim before a large audience, as the Republican National Committee’s criteria to make the next debate stage is expected to become even more strict. It remains to be seen whether the second debate will persuade top donors still on the sidelines to consolidate behind an alternative to Mr. Trump.Rather than attending the debate, Mr. Trump will appear with union workers in Detroit.How Scott and Haley performMr. Ramaswamy might have grabbed headlines with a pugnacious performance last go-round, but Ms. Haley had arguably the best night. She distinguished herself with her answers on abortion and foreign policy while seizing the opportunity to position herself as the “adult in the room” as her male rivals bickered. She raised more than $1 million over the 72 hours that followed the event, winning over Republican donors who have been looking for a plausible alternative to Mr. Trump. And she elevated herself over Senator Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian, as the next-generation conservative who could potentially appeal to independents and some disaffected Democrats.Mr. Scott faded on the stage in Milwaukee. But while it’s critical for him to make a splash at the Reagan Library in order to eat into Ms. Haley’s gains, any spotlight-grabbing moments cannot tarnish his persona as the “happy warrior” with the winning smile and the hopeful message. A bad night, or just an invisible night, for Mr. Scott would dim hopes of a resurgence.Can the more vocal Trump critics make a case?Former Vice President Mike Pence and Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, have tried to position themselves as the “anti-Trumps.” Mr. Christie is the loudest castigator of the former president as a threat to the nation, while Mr. Pence has denounced his former running mate as a false conservative, soft on abortion and too populist on trade and foreign policy. Neither argument has gained traction with voters so far.For both men, the debate will be a chance to find an anti-Trump message that actually appeals to Republican voters. Mr. Christie tried to use his trademark slashing style in Milwaukee, only to be booed down by an audience that registered its loyalty to Mr. Trump. The audience Wednesday night could prove to me be more sympathetic, or at least more polite, allowing more of the former governor’s blows to land.Shutdown politicsThe federal government appears to be barreling toward a shutdown this Sunday, with Congress paralyzed into inaction by a fractured Republican majority in the House that is unable to pass the spending bills needed to keep federal agencies operating past Sept. 30. Complicating House Republican calculations is Mr. Trump, who has demanded that his followers vote against any spending measure that keeps funding the Justice Department’s prosecution of him over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and hide highly classified documents that he took from the White House. It is an impossible request.The seven candidates on the stage will almost certainly be asked their views. Their answers could prove to be a useful counterweight to Mr. Trump’s “SHUT IT DOWN!” instruction — or more fuel to drive Republicans toward an economically damaging and politically risky crisis that would dominate headlines for weeks.What the candidates say about UkraineAt the heart of the looming shutdown is a key foreign policy question: Should the United States continue its military aid to Ukrainian forces battling Russia’s invading army? The issue has divided Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, elevating candidates like Mr. Ramaswamy and, to some extent, Mr. DeSantis, whose tepid support at best for more aid may appeal to isolationist voters who embrace Mr. Trump’s America First mantra.Support for Ukraine has become a mark of traditional foreign policy conservatism, embraced most strongly by Mr. Pence and Ms. Haley. Will they stand by their pro-Ukraine positions or bend in the face of Republicans ready to shut down the government to stop any more taxpayer dollars from flowing to Kyiv? More

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      ‘Trump Is Scaring the Hell Out of Me’: Three Writers Preview the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Josh Barro, who writes the newsletter Very Serious, and Sarah Isgur, a senior editor at The Dispatch, to discuss their expectations for the second Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dig into and try to sort out a barrage of politics around President Biden’s sagging approval numbers, an impeachment inquiry, a potential government shutdown and shocking political rhetoric from former President Trump.Frank Bruni: For starters, Josh and Sarah, Donald Trump is scaring the hell out of me. It’s not just his mooning over a Glock. It’s his musing that in what he clearly sees as better days, Gen. Mark Milley could have been executed for treason. Is this a whole new altitude of unhinged — and a louder, shriller warning of what a second term of Trump would be like (including the suspension of the Constitution)?Josh Barro: I don’t think people find Trump’s provocations very interesting these days. I personally struggle to find them interesting, even though they are important. I’m not sure this constitutes an escalation relative to the end of Trump’s service — the last thing he did as president was try to steal the election. So I’m not sure this reads as new — Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in.Bruni: Sarah, what do you make of how little has been made of it? Is Trump indemnified against his own indecency, or can we dream that he may finally estrange a consequential percentage of voters?Sarah Isgur: Here’s what’s wild. In one poll, the G.O.P. is now more or less tied with Democrats for “which party cares about people like me,” closing in on Democrats’ 13-point advantage in 2016 … and in another poll, the G.O.P. is leading Democrats by over 20 points on “dealing with the economy.” So how is Joe Biden even still in this race? And the answer, as you allude to, is Trump.Barro: Trump’s behavior has already estranged a consequential percentage of voters. If Republicans found a candidate who was both normal and law-abiding and a popularist, they’d win big, instead of trying to patch together a narrow Electoral College victory, like Trump managed in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020.Bruni: Sarah, you’re suggesting that Trump is a huge general election gift to Biden. To pivot to tonight’s debate, is there any chance Biden doesn’t get that gift — that he winds up facing Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else?Isgur: Possible? Sure. Every year for Christmas, I thought it was possible there was a puppy in one of the boxes under the tree. There never was. I still think Ron DeSantis is probably the only viable alternative to Trump. But he’s looking far less viable than he was in June. And the more voters and donors flirt with Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, it becomes a race for No. 2 (see this debate) — and the better it is for Trump. That helps Trump in two ways: First, it burns time on the clock and he’s the front-runner. Second, the strongest argument for these other candidates was that Trump couldn’t beat Biden. But that’s becoming a harder and harder case to make — more because of Biden than Trump. And as that slides off the table, Republican primary voters don’t see much need to shop for an alternative.Barro: These other G.O.P. candidates wouldn’t have Trump’s legal baggage and off-putting lawlessness, but most of them have been running to Trump’s right on abortion and entitlements. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, he’ll quite possibly be acting to undermine whoever is the G.O.P. nominee. So it’s possible that Republicans are actually more likely to win the election if they nominate him than if they don’t.Isgur: You talk to these campaigns, and they will readily admit that if Trump wins Iowa, this thing is over. And right now he’s consistently up more than 30 points in Iowa. Most of the movement in the polls is between the other candidates. That ain’t gonna work.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the primary is approaching being over. DeSantis has sunk in the polls and he’s not making a clear argument about why Trump shouldn’t be nominated.Bruni: Do any of tonight’s debaters increase their criticism of him? Sharpen their attacks? Go beyond Haley’s “Gee, you spent a lot of money” and Mike Pence’s “You were not nice to me on Jan. 6”? And if you could script those attacks, what would they be? Give the candidates a push and some advice.Barro: DeSantis has been making some comments lately about how Trump kept getting beat in negotiations by Democrats when he was in office. He’s also been criticizing Trump for throwing pro-lifers under the bus. The unsaid thing here that could tie together these issues and Trump’s legal issues is that he is selfish — that this project is about benefiting him, not about benefiting Republican voters. It’s about doing what’s good for him.That said, this is a very tough pitch for a party full of people who love Trump and who think he constantly faces unfair attacks. But it’s true, and you can say it without ever actually attacking Trump from the left.Isgur: Here’s the problem for most of them: It’s not their last rodeo. Sure, they’d like to win this time around. And for some there’s a thought of the vice presidency or a cabinet pick. But more than that, they want to be viable in 2028 or beyond. Trump has already been an electoral loser for the G.O.P. in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and it hasn’t mattered. They aren’t going to bet their futures on Trump’s power over G.O.P. primary voters diminishing if he loses in 2024, and if he wins, he’ll be limited to one term, so all the more reason to tread lightly with Trump’s core voters. Chris Christie is a great example of the alternative strategy because it is probably his last race — and so he’s going straight at Trump. But it hasn’t fundamentally altered the dynamics of the race.Barro: I think DeSantis’s star certainly looks dimmer than it did when he got into the race.Isgur: DeSantis is worse off. But this was always going to happen. Better to happen in 2024 than 2028. But Josh is right. Political operatives will often pitch their candidate on there being “no real downside” to running because you grow your national donor lists and expand your name recognition with voters outside your state. But a lot of these guys are learning what Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Tim Pawlenty have learned: There is a downside to running when expectations are high — you don’t meet them.Bruni: Give me a rough estimate — how much time have Haley and her advisers spent forging and honing put-downs of Vivek Ramaswamy? And would you like to suggest any for their arsenal? Josh, I’m betting you do, as you have written acidly about your college days with Ramaswamy.Barro: So I said in a column (“Section Guy Runs for President”) that I didn’t know Ramaswamy in college, but I have subsequently learned that, when I was a senior, I participated in a debate about Social Security privatization that he moderated. That I was able to forget him, I think, is a reflection of how common the overbearing type was at Harvard.Bruni: Ramaswamy as a carbon copy of countless others? Now you’ve really put me off my avocado toast, Josh. Is he in this race deep into the primaries, or is he the Herman Cain of this cycle (he asked wishfully)?Barro: I think the Ramaswamy bubble has already popped.Bruni: Popped? You make him sound like a pimple.Isgur: Your words, Frank.Barro: He makes himself sound like a pimple. He’s down to 5.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, below where he was just before the August debate. One poll showed his unfavorables going up more than his favorables after the debate — he is very annoying, and that was obvious to a lot of people, whether or not they share my politics.Isgur: Agree. He’s not Trump. Trump can weather the “take me seriously, not literally” nonsense. Ramaswamy doesn’t have it.Bruni: Let’s talk about some broader dynamics. We’re on the precipice of a federal shutdown. If it comes, will that hurt Republicans and boost Biden, or will it seem to voters like so much usual insider garbage that it’s essentially white noise, to mix my metaphors wildly?Barro: I’m not convinced that government shutdowns have durable political effects.Isgur: It seems to keep happening every couple years, and the sky doesn’t fall. It is important, though, when it comes to what the G.O.P. is and what it will be moving forward. Kevin McCarthy battling for his job may not be anything new. But Chip Roy is the fiscal heart and soul of this wing of the party, and even he is saying they are going to pay a political penalty.Barro: I find it interesting that Kevin McCarthy seems extremely motivated to avoid one, or at least contain its duration. He thinks the politics are important.Isgur: I’d argue the reason it’s important is because it shows you what happens when voters elect people based on small donor popularity and social media memes. Nobody is rewarded for accomplishments, which require compromise — legislative or otherwise. These guys do better politically when they are in the minority. They actually win by losing — at least when their colleagues lose, that is. That’s not a sustainable model for a political party: Elect us and we’ll complain about the other guys the best!Bruni: What about the impeachment inquiry? The first hearing is on Thursday. Is it and should it be an enormous concern for Biden?Isgur: I’m confused why everyone else is shrugging this thing off. I keep hearing that this doesn’t give the G.O.P. any additional subpoena powers. Yes, it does. We just did this when House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump’s financial records. The Supreme Court was very clear that the House has broad legislative subpoena power when what they are seeking is related to potential legislation, but that it is subject to a balancing test between the two branches. But even the dissenters in that case said that Congress could have sought those records pursuant to their impeachment subpoena power. So, yes, the tool — a congressional subpoena — is the same. But the impeachment inquiry broadens their reach here. So they’ve opened the inquiry, they can get his financial records. Now it matters what they find.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the risk to Biden here depends on the underlying facts.Isgur: And I’m not sure why Democrats are so confident there won’t be anything there. The president has gotten so many of the facts wrong around Hunter Biden’s business dealings, I have no idea what his financial records will show. I am no closer to knowing whether Joe Biden was involved or not. But I’m not betting against it, either.Barro: I think the Hunter saga is extremely sad, and as I’ve written, it looks to me like the president is one of Hunter’s victims rather than a co-conspirator. I also think while there are aspects of this that are not relatable (it’s not relatable to have your son trading on your famous name to do a lot of shady business), there are other aspects that are very relatable — it is relatable to have a no-good family member with substance abuse and psychological issues who causes you a lot of trouble.Obviously, if they find some big financial scheme to transfer money to Joe Biden, the politics of this will be very different. But I don’t think they’re going to find it.Bruni: But let’s look beyond Hunter, beyond any shutdown, beyond impeachment. Sarah, Josh, if you were broadly to advise Joe Biden about how to win what is surely going to be a very, very, very close race, what would be your top three recommendations?Barro: The president’s No. 1 political liability is inflation, and food and fuel prices are the most salient aspect of inflation. He should be doing everything he can to bring price levels down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a ton of direct control over this — if presidents did, they wouldn’t get tripped up by this issue. But he should be approving more domestic energy production and transmission, and he should be bragging more about doing so.U.S. oil production is nearing record levels, but Biden is reluctant to talk about that because it makes climate activists mad. If he gets attacked from the left for making gasoline too cheap and plentiful, great.Isgur: Make it a referendum on Trump. It’s what Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. When it’s about Trump, voters get squeamish. When it’s about Biden, they think of all of his flaws instead.Bruni: Squeamish doesn’t begin to capture how Trump makes this voter feel. Additional recommendations?Barro: Biden generally needs to be willing to pick more fights with the left. Trump has shown how this kind of politics works — by picking a fight with pro-life activists, he’s moderating his own image and increasing his odds of winning the general election. There’s a new poll out this week that says that voters see the Democratic Party as more extreme than the Republican Party by a margin of nine points. Biden needs to address that gap by finding his own opportunities to break with the extremes of his party — energy and fossil fuels provide one big opportunity, as I discussed earlier, but he can also break with his party in other areas where its agenda has unpopular elements, like crime and immigration.Isgur: The Republican National Committee handed Biden’s team a gift when they pulled out of the bipartisan debate commission. Biden doesn’t have to debate now. And he shouldn’t. The Trump team should want a zillion debates with Biden. I have no idea why they gave him this out.Bruni: I hear you, Sarah, on how Biden might bear up for two hours under bright lights, but let’s be realistic: Debates don’t exactly flatter Trump, who comes across as one part feral, two parts deranged. But let’s address the Kamala Harris factor. Josh, you’ve recommended replacing Harris, though it won’t happen. Maybe that’s your third? But you have to tell me whom you’d replace her with.Barro: Harris isn’t just a 2024 problem but also a 2028 problem. She is materially less popular than Biden is, and because of Biden’s age, he even more than most presidents needs a vice president who Americans feel comfortable seeing take the presidency, and the polls show that’s not her. I’ve written about why he should put Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket instead. What Biden needs to hold 270 electoral votes is to keep the Upper Midwest swing states where his poll numbers are actually holding up pretty well — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The popular governor of Michigan can do a lot more for him there than Harris can.Isgur: It is a big problem that voters don’t think Biden will make it through another term, so that the V.P. question isn’t will she make a good vice president but will she make a good president. Democrats are quick to point out that V.P. attacks haven’t worked in the past. True! But nobody was really thinking about Dan Quayle sitting behind the Resolute Desk, either. But I don’t think they can replace Harris. The cost would be too high with the base. I also don’t think Harris can get better. So my advice here is to hide her. Don’t remind voters that they don’t like her. Quit setting her up for failure and word salads.Bruni: I want to end with a lightning round and maybe find some fugitive levity — God knows we need it. In honor of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, I wonder: How many gold bars does each of you have in your basement or closet? Mine are in my pantry, behind the cashews, and I haven’t counted them lately.Barro: I understand Bob Menendez keeps tons of cash in his house because his family had to flee a Communist revolution. This is completely understandable. The only reason I don’t keep all that gold on hand is that I do not have a similar familial history.Isgur: Mine are made of chocolate, and they are delicious. (Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is for wusses, and white chocolate is a lie.)Bruni: Are we measuring Kevin McCarthy’s remaining time as House speaker in hours, weeks or months, and what’s your best guess for when he subsequently appears in — and how he fares on — “Dancing With the Stars”?Isgur: Why do people keep going on that show?! The money can’t possibly be that good. I’ll take the over on McCarthy, though. The Matt Gaetz caucus doesn’t have a viable replacement or McCarthy wouldn’t have won in the first place … or 15th place.Barro: I also take the over on McCarthy — most of his caucus likes him, and unlike the John Boehner era, he hasn’t had to resort to moving spending bills that lack majority support in the conference. Gaetz and his ilk are a huge headache, but he won’t be going anywhere.Bruni: Does the confirmed November debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom — moderated by Sean Hannity! — represent reason to live or reason to emigrate?Barro: Ugh. I find Newsom so grating and slimy. All you really need to know about him is he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife. He’s also been putting his interests ahead of the party’s, with this cockamamie proposal for a constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights. It will never happen, will raise the salience of gun issues in a way that hurts Democratic candidates in a general election and will help Newsom build a grass roots email fund-raising list.Isgur: Oh, I actually think this is pretty important. Newsom and DeSantis more than anyone else in their parties actually represent the policy zeitgeist of their teams right now. This is the debate we should be having in 2024. As governors, they’ve been mirror images of each other. The problem for a Burkean like me is that both of them want to use and expand state power to “win” for their team. There’s no party making the argument for limited government or fiscal restraint anymore. And there’s no concern about what happens when you empower government and the other side wins an election and uses that power the way they want to.Bruni: You’ve no choice: You must dine, one-on-one, with either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whom do you choose, and how do you dull the pain?Barro: Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we’d spend the whole time talking about Lauren Boebert.Isgur: Damn. That was a good answer. Can I pick George Santos? At least he’s got great stories.Bruni: Last question — we’ve been plenty gloomy. Name something or a few things that have happened over recent weeks that should give us hope about the country’s future.Barro: The Ibram Kendi bubble popped! So, that was good.More seriously, while inflation remains a major problem (and a totally valid voter complaint), the economy has continued to show resiliency on output and job growth. People still want to spend and invest, despite 7 percent mortgage rates. It points to underlying health in the economy and a reason to feel good about American business and living standards in the medium and long term.Isgur: I had a baby this month — and in fact, September is one of the most popular birth month in the United States — so for all of us who are newly unburdened, we’re enjoying that second (third?) glass of wine, deli meat, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and guilt-free Coke Zero. And the only trade-off is that a little potato screams at me for about two hours each night!But you look at these new studies showing that the overall birthrate in the United States is staying low as teen pregnancies drop and birth control becomes more available but that highly educated woman are having more kids than they did 40 years ago … clearly some people are feeling quite hopeful. Or randy. Or both!Bruni: Sarah, that’s wonderful about your little potato — and your sushi!Barro: Congratulations!Bruni: Pop not only goes the weasel but also the Ramaswamy and the Kendi — and the Barro, ever popping off! Thank you both. Happy Republican debate! If that’s not the oxymoron of the century.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and is the host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.”Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and the host of the podcast “Advisory Opinions.”Source photograph by ZargonDesign, via Getty Images.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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      Can the Next GOP Debate Amount to More Than a Race for Second Place?

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      The most important audience might be Republican donors who are waiting to put their money behind a candidate who can take on Donald Trump.The second Republican presidential debate without Donald J. Trump is missing the front-runner’s star power, but the performances of his rivals on Wednesday are still expected to be deeply consequential — forecasting whether the 2024 field of Republicans will consolidate around a single Trump alternative.For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been the chief challenger to Mr. Trump. But the governor’s downward slope in the polls — some surveys in the early states of New Hampshire and South Carolina have shown him dipping to third place, or worse — have provided a potential opening to wrest that title from him for the rest of the field at Wednesday night’s debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.Among those watching at home will be some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors who have so far held out from backing any of the candidates. Major contributors are planning to watch the second debate carefully, according to people in contact with several of them, in order to see who, if anyone, they might rally behind in the coming months.All seven candidates at the debate are facing the dual-track challenge of trying to emerge as a singular rival of Mr. Trump without letting the former president entirely run away with the contest before that happens. His criminal indictments — now at 91 counts across four jurisdictions — have not slowed his momentum, with each week bringing new surveys showing Mr. Trump above 50 percent nationally among Republicans, and no rival registering even half that level of support.Those who have qualified for Wednesday’s debate are: Mr. DeSantis; former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; former Vice President Mike Pence; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. Mr. Trump is skipping the debate to travel to Michigan for an event with union workers.The most immediate stakes of the debate are likely financial. The last, major public fund-raising deadline before voting in the primary begins is at the end of September. Few events can generate waves of small donations — or help fence-sitting multimillionaires pick a candidate — quite like a powerful showing on the debate stage.After landing some lines at the first debate, Ms. Haley boasted of raising more than $1 million in the next 72 hours. Mr. DeSantis raised $1 million in 24 hours, his campaign said. And Mr. Scott, who struggled for airtime, was among those not to say anything about his post-debate haul.Gov. Ron DeSantis has slipped in recent polling.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesFor Mr. DeSantis, a superlative showing could quiet the chorus of critics who worry he doesn’t have what it takes to stop Mr. Trump, despite a $130 million super PAC and his standing as the next-most-popular Republican candidate. For others, like Ms. Haley, whom some of the party’s most influential donors are said to be taking a fresh look at after the first debate, it is a chance to try to supplant Mr. DeSantis’s persistent second-place standing.“You need the field to narrow, so this debate and every debate is important because people are getting to see the options they have,” said Jay Zeidman, a DeSantis donor and fund-raiser in Texas who hosted a recent event for the governor.Mr. Zeidman’s father, Fred, a veteran fund-raiser in several presidential races, has been an early backer of Ms. Haley, underscoring the divide among donors who would like to see an alternative to Mr. Trump as the nominee.“Nobody really paid attention to her or knew who she was until the first debate,” said the elder Mr. Zeidman, a fixture in G.O.P. fund-raising circles who was appointed by President George W. Bush as chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.“I was with her in New York at a fund-raiser last week and it was a room packed with major New York donors who were really hearing her for the first time,” he added. “This is a pivotal week.”Still, there are questions about how much money will even matter in a race that Mr. Trump leads by so large a margin that many G.O.P. donors have grown fatalistic about the final result.Campaigning in South Carolina on Monday, Mr. Trump said his opponents “ought to stop wasting their time.” He added: “They’re wasting a lot of time with these ridiculous debates that nobody’s watching.”Donald Trump campaigning on Monday in South Carolina.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother key factor in shaping the size of the field will be the Republican National Committee’s debate criteria. Candidates must hit a 3 percent polling threshold to be on the stage in California and have amassed 50,000 donors. One candidate at the last debate, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, failed to qualify on Wednesday.The debate thresholds will rise to 4 percent in polling and 70,000 donors for a Nov. 8 debate in Miami.Ms. Haley has ticked up in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire in recent weeks but that rise could be as much about a television advertising blitz from her super PAC as her showing in the first debate. In the last two months, her super PAC was the biggest advertiser in both states, spending $6.5 million in Iowa and close to $5 million in New Hampshire — more than her closest competitors, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.She capitalized on the perception of a rising candidate as she went on a fund-raising spree through New York, Florida and Texas, where she has made inroads with some of the same donors who backed Mr. Bush and his father, according to people who have attended her events and are familiar with her fund-raising. She has support from the state’s prosperous Indian American community and from major figures in the energy sector. Texans supporting her include members of the oil-rich Hunt family, the textiles magnate Arun Agarwal and the real estate developer Harlan Crow, who was revealed recently as a longtime benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas.Such busy fund-raising trips, however, illustrate an unseen advantage that Mr. Trump holds: He raises all his money online — which requires virtually nothing from the candidate himself — while the rest of the field is making mad dashes across the nation to attend fund-raisers.Mr. Pence, according to an adviser, spent 15 days in September raising money — more than half the month. And Mr. DeSantis, who had multiple events across Texas last week, is following up the debate with a trip to Northern California to raise more money ahead of the crucial Sept. 30 deadline.Nikki Haley is looking to build on her momentum from the first debate.Travis Dove for The New York TimesStill, even if Ms. Haley delivers another donor-approved performance on Wednesday night, there’s little chance the field will narrow as much as Republican donors and leaders are hoping. And this is good news for Mr. Trump, who benefits from a large field dividing up the non-Trump vote.Campaigns have been lobbying aggressively for favorable rules in future debates both publicly and behind the scenes. Mr. Scott, for instance, has argued that stage placement should be determined by a candidate’s standing in early state polling, not national surveys. The DeSantis team has pressed for even higher polling thresholds — even 8 percent — to further narrow the stage as the primaries near.Debate rules can make a big impact in how television audiences perceive the candidates. In Milwaukee at the first debate, Mr. Christie faced audible boos in the audience after he was critical of Mr. Trump. But the crowd will be much different, and much smaller, in California. A person familiar with the event planning said around 700 people would attend on Wednesday.Mr. Christie has signaled to several people that he plans to make Mr. Trump more central to his argument at this debate. At the last one, he spent more time trading barbs with Mr. Ramaswamy when the moderators generally avoided mentioning Mr. Trump’s name, calling him “the elephant not in the room.”Tim Scott campaigning in New Hampshire in early September. His team said he intended to take a more aggressive approach at the next debate.Mel Musto for The New York TimesMr. Scott, who had an underwhelming first debate and is polling in the single digits in both national and early state polls, is still raising plenty of campaign cash, including from a New York fund-raising event last week hosted by the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. Mr. Scott will be saturating the airwaves over the fall — his super PAC has already reserved $40 million in advertising, the most of any candidate in the primary.Mr. Scott’s team has signaled he will take a more aggressive approach in the second debate. In the first debate, Mr. Scott declined to take shots at his competitors. Since then, he has called out Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis over their positions on abortion and has said that Mr. Ramaswamy has taken the “wrong” positions on U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Taiwan.But a more confrontational posture would be out of character for Mr. Scott, who told the radio host Hugh Hewitt to expect the “same optimistic, positive approach to debating” in an interview last week. “If we’re going to have a food fight, someone has to bring us back to the issues that are germane to the American people,” Mr. Scott said.Anjali Huynh More