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    After Kamala Harris’s Loss to Donald Trump, Democrats Seek Answers

    The Democratic Party agrees it needs to figure out what went wrong. The question is how.After suffering what could shape up to be their biggest electoral defeat in more than 40 years, Democrats agree on one thing: They need to figure out what went wrong.The question is how.After Republicans failed to oust President Barack Obama and lost ground in the Democratic-held Senate in 2012, G.O.P. leaders produced a 100-page report on what had gone wrong, which has been known ever since as the “autopsy.”Democrats didn’t do that after Hillary Clinton’s narrow defeat by Donald Trump in 2016. But as my colleague Adam Nagourney and I dialed up Democrats all over the country today, we got the sense that a push for a similar exercise had begun in some quarters.It’s coming from party stalwarts like Donna Brazile, a former interim chair and current at-large member of the Democratic National Committee.“It’s vital that we learn why turnout disappeared from 2020 to 2024 and much more,” Brazile wrote in an email.It’s coming from left-leaning lawmakers like Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump, Vance y sus aliados insultan a las mujeres al final de la contienda electoral

    Trump ha utilizado un lenguaje misógino para referirse a Harris, fomentando un ambiente entre sus aliados y en sus mítines que se regodea en los insultos sexistas.De pie en su mitin final de la campaña de 2024, el expresidente Donald Trump, en los primeros minutos después de la medianoche del día de las elecciones, utilizó un rudo comentario sexista para atacar a la representante Nancy Pelosi, la expresidenta de la Cámara de Representantes quien es una de sus rivales políticas de larga data.“Es una mala persona”, dijo Trump en el Van Andel Arena de Grand Rapids, Míchigan. “Malvada. Es una malvada, enferma, loca”. Hizo una mueca exagerada, con la boca abierta para llamar la atención sobre la siguiente sílaba: “Pe…”.Luego levantó un dedo dramáticamente, fingiendo que se había dado cuenta. “Oh, no”, dijo. Mientras miles de personas se echaban a reír, Trump pronunció la palabra por el micrófono. “Empieza por P, pero no la diré”, añadió Trump. “Quiero decirla”.Mientras la multitud rugía aún más fuerte, algunos de los asistentes empezaron a suministrar la palabra que él apenas había omitido, gritando: “¡Perra!”.En los últimos días de la contienda, Trump ha hecho llamamientos directos a las mujeres mientras hace frente a una brecha de género en las encuestas que les ha preocupado a él y a su equipo. Ha evitado mencionar su papel en el nombramiento de los jueces de la Corte Suprema que anularon el derecho constitucional al aborto, una cuestión que, según las encuestas, es una de las principales preocupaciones de las votantes femeninas.Pero, al mismo tiempo, Trump ha utilizado un lenguaje misógino para referirse a la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y ha fomentado un ambiente en sus mítines en el que oradores y asistentes se sienten cómodos profiriendo el tipo de insultos de género que, en otra época política, habría sido impensable decir en público.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump and His Allies Link Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Comment to 2016 ‘Deplorables’ Remark

    Donald J. Trump and his allies are trying to recreate a moment that resonated deeply with his supporters in the 2016 campaign: when Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”On Tuesday, it was President Biden who provided the ammunition, appearing to call Trump supporters “garbage” while talking to Latino allies by video.“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Mr. Biden said, adding, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” The White House insisted that what Mr. Biden had said was “his supporter’s demonization,” referring only to the comic who initially insulted Puerto Ricans with an offensive joke at Mr. Trump’s New York rally on Sunday.Mr. Trump’s allies insisted the meaning was clear.Within minutes of the clip of Mr. Biden’s remarks going viral on social media on Tuesday night, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida addressed Mr. Trump’s rally in Allentown, Pa., and informed the crowd of Mr. Biden’s statement.“I have breaking news for you, Mr. President — you may not have heard this,” Mr. Rubio told the audience after Mr. Trump had called him up to the stage and stood next to him. “Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage — are garbage.”Mr. Rubio added, as the crowd booed and Mr. Trump shook his head: “He’s talking about the Border Patrol. He’s talking about nurses. He’s talking about teachers. He’s talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Cowed Establishment Toasts Trump at a Manhattan Charity Dinner

    There were grudge matches and sycophancy in equal measure at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. “Isn’t it just exciting, what’s going on,” Donald Trump said.Donald J. Trump and the assorted fat cats to whom he was speaking seemed to be processing many complicated emotions all at once.“You think this is easy?” the former and perhaps future president asked. “Standing up here in front of half a room that hates my guts, and the other half loves me?”There he stood, the godhead of a populist revenge movement, tucked into his satiny cummerbund, a black bow tie around his neck. It was the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Midtown Manhattan.This charity event, held Thursday evening in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, has been a stop for presidential candidates ever since 1960. That’s when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon showed up, at the dawn of the television age, to make self-deprecating jokes while courting the Roman Catholic vote. In 1970s New York, the era in which Mr. Trump came up, the dinner was one of the glitziest events on the social calendar, attended by governors and mayors and media machers and real estate titans.In 2016, he came as a presidential candidate himself. But when Mr. Trump’s remarks about his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, veered into nasty territory, he was booed. He and his wife, Melania Trump, slunk out of the room the second it was over.Eight years later, the dinner he returned to was not the same. Like so much else in the Trump era, the Catholic charity event had become savage, warped by blunt force politics. There were all sorts of open wounds and grudges on display among the tuxedoed and the begowned. There were sycophants and there were outcasts. You could see the ones who had submitted to Mr. Trump, sitting beside members of a gorgonized establishment still unsure how to treat him, much less stop him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Suffs,’ the Tony-Winning Broadway Musical, Will Close Jan. 5

    The musical, created by Shaina Taub, announced that it will play its final performance on Jan. 5 and start a national tour next fall.“Suffs,” a new musical about the American women’s suffrage movement, has a lot going for it: Its producers include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Malala Yousafzai, it won Tony Awards for its score and its book, and its audiences seemed energized by how the show’s themes resonated with the candidacy of Kamala Harris.But the show has struggled to sell enough tickets to defray its running costs, and on Friday night the producers announced that it would close on Jan. 5. At the time of its closing, it will have had 24 previews and 301 regular performances. The show announced plans for a national tour, which will begin in Seattle in September 2025.The musical, which takes place in the early 20th century, depicts two generations of women eager to win the right to vote, but divided over how best to do that. Shaina Taub, a singer-songwriter, wrote the book and score and stars as Alice Paul, an influential suffragist. It was directed by Leigh Silverman.The show began previews on March 26 and opened on April 18 at the Music Box Theater. A pre-Broadway production at the Public Theater received reviews that were mixed; the reviews of the Broadway production were somewhat better. Writing in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green called it “a good show and good for the world” but said “to be great, a musical (like a great movement) must grab you by the throat. ‘Suffs’ too often settles for holding up signs.”The show’s grosses have been middling — during the week that ended Oct. 6, it grossed $679,589, which is generally not sufficient to sustain a large-cast musical.“Suffs” is the sixth musical to announce closing dates since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Notebook” and “Water for Elephants.” Broadway is always a difficult industry, and most shows fail, but the odds of success are particularly long now because production costs have risen, audience size has fallen, and a high volume of shows are competing for attention.“Suffs,” with Jill Furman and Rachel Sussman as lead producers, was capitalized for $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money has not been recouped. More

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    Trump Steps Up Threats to Imprison Those He Sees as Foes

    The former president is vowing to prosecute those he sees as working to deny him a victory, while laying the groundwork to claim large-scale voter fraud if he loses.Donald J. Trump has long used strongman-style threats to prosecute people he vilifies as a campaign tactic, dating back to encouraging his 2016 rallygoers to chant “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. And during his term as president, he repeatedly pressed the Justice Department to open investigations into his political adversaries.But as November nears, the former president has escalated his vows to use the raw power of the state to impose and maintain control and to intimidate and punish anyone he perceives as working against him.After Democrats replaced President Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as their 2024 nominee — and Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls eroded — Mr. Trump’s targets expanded.He has been laying the groundwork to claim that there was large-scale voter fraud if he loses, a familiar tactic from his 2016 and 2020 playbooks, but this time coupled with threats of prosecution. Those who may face criminal scrutiny for purported efforts at election fraud, Mr. Trump has declared, will include election workers, a tech giant, political operatives, lawyers and donors working for his opponent.Over the past month, he has shared a post calling for former President Barack Obama to be subject to “military tribunals” and reposted fake images of well-known Democrats clad in prison garb. He has threatened the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with a life sentence for helping state and local governments fund elections in 2020. He stoked fears of voter intimidation by urging police officers to “watch for the voter fraud” at polling places because some voters may be “afraid of that badge,” and warned that people deemed to have “cheated” in this election “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Mr. Trump wrote on his website Truth Social on Saturday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hillary Clinton Debated Trump. Here’s Her Advice for Kamala Harris.

    The 2016 Democratic nominee fell short to Donald Trump, but she had strong debate moments against him. In an interview, she offered some thoughts for Kamala Harris.Hillary Clinton has as much experience as any Democrat in debating Donald J. Trump.The 2016 presidential campaign, when she was her party’s nominee, included three of the six general-election debates Mr. Trump has participated in. Those faceoffs went a long way toward shaping the country’s vision of his candidacy and what he would be like as president.Mr. Trump, of course, went on to win the 2016 election — an outcome that still haunts Democrats.When Mrs. Clinton called this week to discuss her old debate coach, Karen Dunn, who is helping out Vice President Kamala Harris this time around, I took the opportunity to ask about her experience on the debate stage with Mr. Trump.“The consensus was that I won all three debates and that I was well prepared,” Mrs. Clinton said.Here are excerpts from our conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed.What do you remember about your own preparations to debate Donald Trump?It was the first debate when Trump literally ridiculed me for preparing. This was not something we had thought about beforehand, because who thought we could be ridiculed for preparing for a presidential debate in front of 85 or 90 million people?So basically I said, yeah, I did prepare. And I’ll tell you something else I prepared for: I prepared to be president. Because I had the confidence. I knew the material. I felt comfortable. I also knew I had to brush Trump back and not let him be the center of attention all the time.What advice do you have for Kamala Harris as she prepares to debate Trump?She’s proven to be a good debater, both in her races in California and in her debate with Mike Pence. So I think she needs to be prepared enough that she feels really comfortable going on both offense and defense against Trump, because there’s a lot to cover with him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris’s Debate Tutor: a Lawyer Unafraid of Telling Politicians Hard Truths

    Karen Dunn, who is preparing the vice president for next week’s clash, has trained Democrats for debates in every election since 2008. Her approach, as Hillary Clinton put it, is “tough love.”Vice President Kamala Harris has never met or spoken with former President Donald J. Trump, but the woman running her debate preparations has spent a lot of time thinking about how to respond to what Republican nominees say during an onstage clash.That outside Harris adviser, Karen L. Dunn, a high-powered Washington lawyer, has trained Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates for debates in every election since 2008.She is described by candidates she has coached and other people who have worked with her as a skilled handler of high-ego politicians. By all accounts, she possesses the rare ability to tell them what they are doing wrong and how to fix it — and how to inject humor and humanity to sell themselves to voters watching the debate.“It’s a combination of tough love,” Hillary Clinton, whom Ms. Dunn helped prepare for presidential debates in 2008 and 2016, said in an interview on Thursday. “She’s unafraid to say, ‘That’s not going to work’ or ‘That doesn’t make sense’ or ‘You can do better.’ But she also offers encouragement, like, ‘Look, I think you’re on the right track here’ and ‘You just need to do more of that.’”The emergence of Ms. Dunn as the leader of Ms. Harris’s debate team comes at a critical moment in both the presidential race and Ms. Dunn’s professional life.When she is not preparing top Democrats for debates — in addition to her four previous cycles of involvement at the presidential and vice-presidential level, she has worked with Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey — Ms. Dunn is a top lawyer for some of America’s leading technology firms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More