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    Democrats Look to End the Electability Question

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    The party is battling a squishy, often self-reinforcing concept about the perceived ability to win.This year, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County, Md., and a Democrat, sought support for her U.S. Senate bid from an elected official she had known for years.“She said to me, ‘I’m so sorry. I want to be really blunt with you, Angela,’” Alsobrooks, who is Black, said, recalling that the official, a fellow Democrat whom she did not name, said she thought Alsobrooks could not win. “We are not ready to elect a Black woman in the state of Maryland,” Alsobrooks recounted the official as saying.It turned out that Maryland Democrats were ready to do just that.Alsobrooks beat a white man in her Senate primary by more than 10 percentage points. Public polling has shown her leading another, former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, whom she will face in November.But the exchange, which Alsobrooks described in an interview last week during the Democratic National Convention, underscores the way a party that is trying to elect the first Black female president is still battling anxieties about the idea of electability — and preparing to confront them.Electability — a squishy and often self-reinforcing concept about who is perceived as being able to win elections — was a through line of the Democratic primary in 2020, when voters stung by the 2016 election wrung their hands over whether preferred presidential candidates who were female, nonwhite or both could garner enough support in key battleground states. The party ultimately coalesced around Joe Biden.Democrats did not have a chance to air those concerns in a drawn-out primary in 2024, and many suggested last week that identity-based questions about electability should remain firmly in the past. They view the issue of electability as providing cover for racist and sexist notions about white voters being apprehensive about backing Black candidates and male voters being reluctant to vote for female candidates.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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      Supreme Court Sides With Republicans Over South Carolina Voting Map

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      The case concerned a constitutional puzzle: how to distinguish the roles of race and partisanship in drawing voting maps when Black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats.The Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that a lower court had deemed an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that resulted in the “bleaching of African American voters” from a district.The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.A unanimous three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Columbia, S.C., ruled in early 2023 that the state’s First Congressional District, drawn after the 2020 census, violated the Constitution by making race the predominant factor.The panel put its decision on hold while Republican lawmakers appealed to the Supreme Court, and the parties asked the justices to render a decision by Jan. 1. After that deadline passed, the panel said in March that the 2024 election would have to take place under the map it had rejected as unconstitutional.“With the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending and no remedial plan in place,” the panel wrote, “the ideal must bend to the practical.”In effect, the Supreme Court’s inaction had decided the case for the current election cycle.The contested district, anchored in Charleston, had elected a Republican every year since 1980, with the exception of 2018. But the 2020 race was close, with less than one percentage point separating the candidates, and Republican lawmakers “sought to create a stronger Republican tilt” in the district after the 2020 census, the panel wrote.The lawmakers achieved that goal, the panel found, in part by the “bleaching of African American voters out of the Charleston County portion of Congressional District No. 1.”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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      In South Carolina, Biden and Harris Test Policy-Heavy Pitch to Black Voters

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      The president’s re-election campaign is looking to rekindle support among a group that was pivotal to his 2020 victory, in a state that revived his candidacy.As Democrats amplify their concerns about President Biden’s status with Black voters, South Carolina has emerged as a proving ground for his campaign: one where he can test his message to a predominantly Black electorate and use it as a largely ceremonial launchpad for his re-election.At events over the last few days, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris offered reverential, policy-heavy re-election pitches to largely Black audiences and celebrated the Black organizers and community leaders who helped deliver the White House to Democrats, starting with those in the Palmetto State.They also drew a contrast with former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders, whose election denialism and efforts to “whitewash” history, they said, threaten the progress that Black Americans have spent generations fighting for.Black voters have expressed frustration with the Biden administration for falling short on key campaign promises, and have shown less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden’s re-election in polls and interviews. But in South Carolina, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris aimed to highlight the lesser-known victories their administration has notched over the last three years, and they argued that a second term would allow them to achieve even more. Black voters’ disaffection with Democrats, campaign aides and allies argue, is rooted in their lack of awareness of the White House’s accomplishments rather than in fundamental flaws with the Biden-Harris ticket.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?  More

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      As Biden Struggles With Black Men, Allies Gather at White House

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      Aides of the president met with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to shore up his standing with a crucial group of voters before 2024.As President Biden’s allies grow more worried that his standing is slipping among Black men, his aides met on Tuesday at the White House with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to increase his popularity with a crucial group of voters before the 2024 election.Several attendees said there was general agreement that Mr. Biden, during both his 2020 campaign and his first three years in office, had paid more attention to Black female voters than to Black male ones. These people said they had suggested to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to make a specific argument about how his administration had improved the lives of Black men.“It’s clear that there’s been a focus on Black women and the question becomes, has there been an equal focus on Black men?” said Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden administration official who is now a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee and who was at the meeting.He added: “There’s been a mantra that Black women are the base of the party and, I think, it’s Black families that are the base of the party. That has the potential to separate the family unit by gender, which I think is just unfortunate.”The afternoon meeting included, among others, Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania, who has warned publicly that Mr. Biden’s standing with Black voters has fallen; and Antjuan Seawright and Clay Middleton, political operatives from South Carolina who are closely associated with Representative James E. Clyburn, a key Biden ally in the state.The group agreed that Mr. Biden had many accomplishments that had helped Black men. Democrats, he said, are falling short in telling this story.“We left the room acknowledging that we collectively have to do a better job communicating,” said Kwame Raoul, the attorney general of Illinois. “Sometimes being awakened to a challenge is a good thing.”The White House session followed months of nail-biting among Democrats about rising skepticism of Mr. Biden among Black voters, especially Black men. Republicans have aimed to drive a wedge between Black voters and the Democratic Party in recent cycles, arguing that former President Donald J. Trump’s record on the economy and his passage of a criminal justice law were more beneficial for Black communities — arguments that Democrats have dismissed as disinformation.Polling released by The New York Times and Siena College last month found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important presidential battleground states said they would support Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden next year, an alarming figure for Democrats given Black voters’ decades-long loyalty to the party.At the meeting on Tuesday — led by Steve Benjamin, the director of the White House’s public engagement office — the Black male allies of Mr. Biden were encouraged to recount what people in their communities and home districts had been saying about his administration and whether they would support him for a second term.“There have been communication gaps,” said Harold Love, a Tennessee state representative who is the incoming president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. He said the administration needed to tell people what Mr. Biden had done “in plain language so they can understand.”The White House declined to comment about the meeting.In interviews and focus groups, Black men who express openness to supporting Mr. Trump have pointed to the former president’s record on the economy and said their businesses and families fared better during his administration. Black Democrats have rebutted this idea, in some cases arguing that Black men have been targeted by disinformation that, if crystallized in enough voters’ minds, could endanger the president’s already shaky standing with them.Mr. Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, said that part of Mr. Biden’s problem was that he had articulated a complex message that often ended up competing with easier-to-digest misinformation.“Sometimes when you do a lot, it’s difficult to convey it to folks who are used to consuming things in sound bites and who have been at times recipients of intentionally targeted misinformation,” Mr. Raoul said on Tuesday.Democrats have emphasized earlier and more frequent outreach to Black communities as important to winning their voters.Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently met with small groups of Black men as she has traveled the country and, last month, hosted a group of 10 Black men in the news media and politics for dinner at her home in Washington. The party has also bought advertisements on Black radio stations and placed digital ads geared toward young Black voters.Mr. Benjamin’s office in the White House has held frequent meetings with a variety of constituency groups.But the meeting on Tuesday followed a particularly bad stretch of polling for Mr. Biden. CNN polls released Monday found Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by 10 percentage points in Michigan and five points in Georgia — both battleground states with large numbers of Black voters.Even though Mr. Biden has no serious Democratic presidential challengers, the party’s primary election in South Carolina on Feb. 3 will be an early test of Black voters’ enthusiasm. Black voters made up nearly 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state in 2020, when Mr. Biden’s victory there set him on the path to the White House.No other Democrats have made a significant investment in the state’s primary this year, but the South Carolina Democratic Party on Monday nevertheless began a statewide voter outreach program, complete with a 50-person staff and a six-figure investment.Mr. Middleton, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden’s South Carolina campaign, said the meeting was ultimately meant to help determine how best to relay the president’s accomplishments and his plans for a second term to Black men across the country, with a focus on battleground states.“If we ignore what Black men are saying, then we would have some problems,” Mr. Middleton said. “This is to say, ‘We will not ignore.’” More

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      Kamala Harris Is Set to Visit South Carolina for Campaign Kickoff

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      The vice president is said to be planning a surprise Friday trip to file paperwork for the state’s primary, which will be the first party-approved voting of 2024.Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Columbia, S.C., on Friday to formally file President Biden’s paperwork to appear on the Democratic primary ballot in the state, according to two people familiar with her plans.Ms. Harris’s trip will punctuate the end of a tumultuous week for her and Mr. Biden. Democrats began the week in a panic over polls that showed Mr. Biden trailing his likely Republican challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, in five of six expected battleground states. Then they found their spirits lifted when Democrats performed well in Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, where a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution passed.The Biden campaign had said its South Carolina paperwork would be filed by Representative James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat who helped resuscitate Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign by endorsing him three days before his state’s primary. Mr. Biden repaid the favor by pushing the Democratic National Committee to put South Carolina at the front of the party’s presidential nominating calendar.Ms. Harris and Mr. Clyburn will meet to file the primary paperwork at the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters, said the people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the trip was supposed to be a surprise.After The New York Times asked about the trip on Thursday evening, Ms. Harris made a sly suggestion on social media that she may appear with Mr. Clyburn.The White House had intended to keep Ms. Harris’s trip secret until she arrived in South Carolina. Her official White House schedule for Friday reads: “The vice president is in Washington, D.C., and has no public events scheduled.”A Biden campaign spokesman and Ms. Harris’s White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the trip.Mr. Biden, at a fund-raising event Thursday night in Chicago, dismissed polls from The Times and CNN released this week that each showed him trailing Mr. Trump.“The press has been talking about two polls,” Mr. Biden said. “There are 10 other polls we’re winning.” Mr. Biden then told the assembled donors that their money was not wasted on him but joked that he could “screw up” during his re-election bid.Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, have already filed paperwork to appear on South Carolina’s Democratic primary ballot.Nevada, the second state on the party’s calendar, had its deadline to file for the primary last month. Mr. Biden, Ms. Williamson and 11 other candidates filed to run in Nevada’s Democratic primary.Mr. Biden did not file for the primary in New Hampshire after officials there refused the D.N.C.’s request to move its primary after South Carolina’s. More

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      South Carolina Democrats Elect First Black Woman to Run State Party

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      The NewsSouth Carolina Democrats elected Christale Spain, the former executive director of the state Democratic Party, as state party chair at their convention on Saturday. She ran with the backing of the party’s top brass, including Representative James E. Clyburn, and will be the first Black woman to lead the state party.Christale Spain, who was elected Saturday as chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, was backed by the party establishment.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesWhy It Matters: Clyburn and Old Guard Still RuleA longtime organizer in Palmetto State politics, Ms. Spain was widely considered the front-runner in the race, a usually sleepy contest that saw more candidates run than it has in more than 25 years. Her biggest competitor, Brandon Upson, the state Black caucus chair, painted her as an establishment candidate whose connections to the old guard would stymie the party’s progress in an all-important election year.Democrats who supported Mr. Upson were seeking to overhaul a state party they felt had long been dominated by Mr. Clyburn — who helped President Biden win the state primary in 2020 — ahead of South Carolina’s debut as the party’s first presidential primary state in 2024 and in the wake of a down cycle in the 2022 midterm elections.Still, it was Ms. Spain’s connections, paired with her campaign strategy — characterized by social media blasts and regular visits to county party meetings and cattle calls — that ultimately delivered her the victory. She won with the support of nearly 700 of the party’s roughly 1,000 state delegates in a standing vote. Before delegates for Mr. Upson could stand up to vote for him, he conceded to Ms. Spain in a short speech calling for party unity.What’s Next: Primary Prep and Party RepairAs the next chair, Ms. Spain will be responsible for preparing the state party for its moment in prime time: voting first in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary election. She will also have to rebuild a party in turmoil. Democrats lost several safe State House and Senate seats and had low voter turnout during the 2022 midterms, a year that was otherwise considered positive for the party nationally. Ms. Spain’s leadership will offer Palmetto State Democrats a chance to make up those losses and get ready for the national stage.In a news conference after her victory, Ms. Spain offered a message to the South Carolina voters waiting for more meaningful change from the Democratic Party.“Wait no longer,” she said, vowing to focus on year-round voter engagement efforts. “We know who our voters are. We’re going back after them and we’re going to turn them out, plus more.” More

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      South Carolina Democrats, Stung by String of Losses, Clash Over Next Leader

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      A usually low-key race has taken on unusually high stakes as the party prepares to host the first primary of the 2024 campaign and seeks to reverse its recent misfortunes.COLUMBIA, S.C. — Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a longtime kingmaker in Democratic politics who helped resurrect President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, exercised his influence on Wednesday over a much smaller race far closer to home: the campaign to determine who will lead his state’s Democratic Party.Mr. Clyburn endorsed Christale Spain, a former party executive director who once worked in his South Carolina office and would be the first Black woman to lead the party if elected. His involvement underlines the larger-than-usual stakes of the three-candidate race, a contest that has often been a low-key, noncompetitive affair for a behind-the-scenes post.As Democrats in South Carolina recover from several damaging election cycles and stare down their debut as the party’s first presidential primary state, a once-in-a-generation campaign for state party chair has been brought to life, complete with the kind of glad-handing, fund-raising and mudslinging more often encountered in a congressional primary. At stake is who will prepare the party for the next election while staving off further down-ballot losses.The three candidates — the most in over 25 years — represent factions of the state’s Democratic base, from its grass-roots activists to high-powered operatives. Ms. Spain is widely viewed as the front-runner. But the same résumé that brought Mr. Clyburn to her camp has been fodder for some of her biggest critics, who say the party needs a major overhaul, not a return to the status quo they believe she would represent.More than 1,600 county delegates will vote for the chair at the end of the month at the annual state Democratic convention in Columbia. The winner, who will serve a two-year term, will be tasked with rebuilding an understaffed and underfunded state party while re-engaging key Democratic constituencies.The central question, however, is just what strategy the party will employ as it prepares for prime time.“We have an opportunity to stop the bleeding,” Ms. Spain said. “We could have this funding stream that comes in because of our new status. But if we muck it up, then what happens? Every cycle is a 2022 cycle? That’s our new normal forever? That’s the worst that can happen.”For many South Carolina Democrats, the 2022 midterm elections are burned in their memory, as party veterans lost a host of previously safe races from school boards to the State House, where Democrats ceded eight seats to Republicans — five of which had been held by Black women. The G.O.P. secured a supermajority for the first time since the Civil War era.“We have an opportunity to stop the bleeding,” Ms. Spain said.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesThe state party was too short on cash to support most of its candidates and did little to coordinate strategy with its nominee for governor, Joe Cunningham, who lost to the incumbent, Henry McMaster, by nearly 20 points. Paltry engagement with Black voters sank their turnout to the lowest in decades. Democratic officials largely faulted the party’s state leadership for the poor showing.“It was almost as if we just have lost our way, lost our direction,” said State Senator Vernon Jones, whose district covers five counties. “We don’t have the right message.”Against the backdrop of preparations for the 2024 primary, the newly prominent chair race has underscored Democrats’ competing messages for how to improve their standing in the state — via incremental steps to raise money and take back seats or through untested strategies the party has been reluctant to employ.Ms. Spain’s most formidable competitor is Brandon Upson, the chair of the state Democratic Party’s Black caucus, who is running as part of a four-person slate of candidates for party leadership posts. Catherine Fleming Bruce, an activist who fell short in the 2022 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, is also running.The candidates have spent months crisscrossing the state, stumping at county party meetings and recruiting surrogates. Some Democratic groups are exploring the possibility of hosting a debate. Ms. Spain distributes mailers with her campaign message at every stop she makes. Mr. Upson’s slate has established an account on the political donation website ActBlue for its fund-raising. His message to delegates is simple: I’m tired of losing.“The same people have been running our party and handpicking our party chair for 25 years,” Mr. Upson said. “And if you look at the trend line for this party over the 25 years, we’ve been losing more and more every cycle.”Brandon Upson, who is challenging Ms. Spain for the Democratic Party leadership role, at a labor protest outside a Ryder trucking warehouse in Columbia, S.C.Maya King/The New York TimesThe state’s more enthusiastic Democrats have been clamoring for a way to win back seats and put South Carolina in play in the same way that Georgia, its neighbor to the west, has been. Ms. Spain has cautioned fellow Democrats against overplaying their hand, even in the face of the money and attention that voting first in 2024 might bring. Those kinds of inroads are made over several cycles, she said, and will require newer, bolder — and realistic — thinking.“We have to be strategic and responsible about what we’re doing,” Ms. Spain said at a recent meeting of Orangeburg County Democrats. “We have to establish our battlefield.”That battlefield makes up all 46 of South Carolina’s counties and the voters whom Democrats have failed to mobilize. Her main focus, she said, will be on winning back the State House seats the party lost in previous cycles and protecting the remaining safe seats. Then they can talk about unseating Republicans.Much of Ms. Spain’s stump speech focuses on her experience. She started at the state party as a volunteer and worked for the last three state chairs. In 2016, she joined Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign team. After directing Cory Booker’s South Carolina operation in 2020, she coordinated Jaime Harrison’s U.S. Senate campaign with the state party. In 2022, she directed Black engagement for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The departing state party chair, Trav Robertson, is also supporting her bid.On the other hand, Mr. Upson is aiming to harness grass-roots groups, young voters and political newcomers — a constituency that has grown in the state in recent years. Under his leadership, the state party’s Black caucus has expanded its membership, putting a healthy number of delegates in his corner.“That’s where my base of support is,” he said. “You’re not going to see it in James Clyburn’s office.”On Tuesday morning, Mr. Upson joined more than three dozen labor activists protesting working conditions at a factory outside Columbia. After sweating and chanting in the sun outside a Ryder trucking warehouse, he encouraged the crowd to think of the Democratic Party as a partner in their activism, not a bystander.“We have to remind ourselves that we are the people — and we have the power in our hands,” he told the group.Mr. Upson, an Army veteran, has focused much of his organizing work on engaging Black male voters in low-income communities — a part of his biography that he has also promoted in his campaign. In 2020, he was national organizing director for Tom Steyer, whose presidential bid injected millions into South Carolina and frustrated the leaders backing Mr. Biden, who claimed the billionaire was buying Black support. Mr. Upson vehemently denies those claims.But it was Mr. Upson’s work with a candidate for Charleston County Council that agitated even more Democrats. In 2022, he worked with a Republican, Joe Boykin, who unseated a Democratic county councilwoman, Anna Johnson. Both Mr. Boykin and Mr. Upson maintain that Mr. Upson’s involvement was limited to building Mr. Boykin’s campaign website. Still, his victory handed the balance of power on the council to Republicans and cemented a line of attack for Ms. Spain’s supporters.Catherine Fleming Bruce, who fell short in the 2022 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, is running for the leadership post, as well.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressIn describing the state of the race, Mr. Clyburn paraphrased from the Bible: “They are not known by their words but their deeds.”“If somebody tells you they are a Democrat, and you look at what they’re doing and it’s all been to help Republicans, what am I supposed to believe about you?” he said.And for Ms. Spain, the messaging from her opponents echoes a familiar pattern she has observed in politics, of suspicions about qualified Black women in power. Or, worse, being brushed aside for opportunities with little reason.“Being a Black woman with a strong résumé for the role, people can turn that into a negative,” she said. “I’ve been doing the jobs that have been put in front of me. I’ve built the relationships that I’ve had an opportunity to build, not for any hidden agenda, but because I’m working with them.”Gilda Cobb-Hunter, an influential state lawmaker, is supporting Mr. Upson. She is encouraging delegates to pledge their allegiance to the candidate who, she said, is “not in the clique.”“This party has been run for too many years by cliques,” she said. “I want somebody who is interested in expanding the circle.”Ms. Cobb-Hunter, who is Black, recognized the historic implications of having a party led by a Black woman for the first time. However, she said, the determining factor in her decision came down to who she most believed could help Democrats in the state win elections again.“Politics, to me, is a business. It’s not personal. It’s about getting the job done,” she said. She later added, “Simply basing something on gender in and of itself is shortsighted, in my view.”Mr. Stephens, the state senator, announced at the Orangeburg County party meeting that after weeks of deliberation and conversations with all three candidates, he would support Ms. Spain. Fresh off a visit with Black Democrats in rural South Carolina, he said the next chair should be mindful of a shift he has observed in the electorate.“The citizens are taking things in their own hands,” he said. “They’re going to vet candidates. They’re no longer going to be told that ‘this is the individual you should be voting for.’ They are going to vote their conviction. South Carolina is changing.” More

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      Want to Know Why Democrats Lose Rural America?

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      STORM LAKE, Iowa — Democrats are getting their derrières handed to them by the kickers and the Busch Light drinkers from out here on the edge of the Great Plains all the way to Appalachia, where the Republicans roam.So what do the Democrats do?Dump the Iowa caucuses into the ditch. At the hand of President Biden, no less. He decreed that South Carolina’s primary should go first on the presidential nominating calendar, displacing Iowa. The Democratic National Committee seems happy to oblige.We get it. Let someone else take a turn up front. But discarding Iowa is not a great way to mend fences in rural America — where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable. The Democratic big shots hated Iowa’s pride of place since the caucuses rose to prominence a half-century ago because money couldn’t control the outcome. Jimmy Carter broke through from Plains, Ga., with nothing but a toothy smile and an honest streak. Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously — you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects.Candidates weren’t crazy about it. The media hated Storm Lake ice in January. We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer.Iowa has its problems. We are too white. The caucuses are complicated, confusing and clunky. The evening gatherings in homes, school gyms and libraries are not fully accessible and not as convenient as a primary for people with jobs and kids at home.But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House. Iowa actively encouraged Black candidates to challenge the white establishment. Mr. Obama beat Hillary Clinton here. Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle. Black, white or Latino, it’s organization that matters in Iowa. You have to herd your people to the caucus and keep them in your pen for an hour while other campaigns try to poach them. It’s town hall democracy. Mr. Obama won with it. Candidates who ran feeble campaigns have to blame something. Latinos in Storm Lake overwhelmingly caucused for Mr. Sanders. Julián Castro can complain all he wants.The talking heads say Iowa messed up by not reporting the results quickly. The problem was that a cellphone app suggested to the Iowa Democratic Party by the Democratic National Committee crashed. The democratic process worked — the app didn’t.Anyone looking for an excuse to excise Iowa and further alienate rural voters could find one. The time was ripe.Mr. Biden doesn’t owe Iowa a thing. He finished fourth in the caucuses. He did owe Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, big time for an endorsement just ahead of the Palmetto State primary, where Black voters put Mr. Biden over the top. It was sweet payback. We get that, too.Actually, the caucuses haven’t been the best thing for Iowa. The TV ads never stop. It puts you in a bad mood to think everything is going wrong all the time. We asked good questions, and the candidates gave good answers, then forgot about it all. Despite all the attention, nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared, and the undocumented dwell in the shadows. Republican or Democrat, the outcome was pretty much the same. At least the Republicans will cut your taxes.So it’s OK that South Carolina goes first. Iowa can do without the bother. The Republicans are sticking with Iowa, the Democrats consider it a lost cause. No Democratic state senator lives in a sizable part of western Iowa. Republicans control the governor’s office, the Legislature and soon the entire congressional delegation. Nobody organized the thousands of registered Latino voters in meatpacking towns like Storm Lake. Democrats are barely trying. The results show it.The old brick factory haunts along the mighty Mississippi River are dark, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and everyone else who sold us out for “free trade.” Keokuk, the gate city to the river, was once a bustling industrial and shipping hub but recently lost its hospital. Your best hope in rural Jefferson was to land a casino to save the town. You essentially can’t haul a load of hogs to the packinghouse in a pickup anymore — you need a contract and a semi. The sale barn and open markets are quaint memories. John Deere tractor cabs will be made in Mexico, not Waterloo. Our rivers are rank with manure. It tends to frustrate those left behind, and the resentment builds to the point of insurrection when it is apparent that the government is not here to help you.It’s hard to feel from 30,000 feet. So Donald Trump landed in Sioux City on the eve of the midterm election to claim his stake before a large crowd buffeted by the gales out of Nebraska. “The Iowa way of life is under siege,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”They loved him. The Democrats view the crowd as deplorable, and told Iowa to get lost.Art Cullen is the editor of The Storm Lake Times and author of “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.”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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      DNC Panel Supports Biden’s Plan to Make South Carolina First Primary in 2024

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      A key panel supported President Biden’s plan, which would remove Iowa as the first presidential nominating state. States with more diverse, working-class and in some cases more moderate constituencies are being elevated.WASHINGTON — Over objections from some Democratic state leaders, the Democratic National Committee on Friday moved one step closer to enacting President Biden’s vision for drastically overhauling the party’s 2024 presidential primary process, as a key committee voted to recommend sweeping changes to the calendar.At a daylong gathering of the D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee in a Washington hotel ballroom, members voted to recommend supporting a 2024 Democratic presidential primary calendar that would begin in South Carolina on Feb. 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and then Michigan on Feb. 27. That plan reflected a framework Mr. Biden delivered to the committee on Thursday that emphasized racial and geographic diversity. Representatives from Iowa and New Hampshire voted against the proposal, and officials emphasized that the move by the Rules Committee was one step in what might still be a prolonged and contentious process. The proposed early states have until Jan. 5 to confirm that they can hold a primary on their assigned date.The recommendation, which upends the traditional Democratic order of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, must be affirmed by the full D.N.C. at a meeting in early February, but Mr. Biden’s preferences carry enormous weight with the party committee. The proposed new order rewards some of the states that powered his political rise in 2020, elevating diverse, working-class and in some cases more moderate constituencies that were vital to Mr. Biden’s primary victory. At the same time, smaller states that have long emphasized retail politics — Iowa and New Hampshire — would be diminished. “Given the president’s strong interest in the design of the 2024 primaries, and the dates for them, I think it’s clear that he’s running,” said James Roosevelt Jr., a co-chairman of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, who said he had spoken with Mr. Biden this week about the early-state order.Mr. Biden has said that he intends to run again but plans to discuss the race with his family. If he does not run, the schedule, if adopted, would help other candidates with strong support from the voters of color who make up the backbone of the Democratic Party.Black voters accounted for more than half of the Democrats who voted in the South Carolina primary in 2020, according to exit polling. And they make up a significant share of the primary electorates in Georgia and Michigan. Latino voters play an especially central role in Nevada.But the shift could also hurt candidates without the campaign cash to compete quickly in early states with expensive media markets — like Nevada, Georgia and even New Hampshire, where Boston television stations drive up rates. The fast pacing of the proposed calendar could force contenders with smaller bank accounts to choose to compete in just one or two of the first three states. Scott Brennan and other Iowa Democrats criticized the proposed changes and suggested that the state party would challenge them.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesJoanne Dowdell, a D.N.C. member from New Hampshire, opposed the proposal.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“One of the things that New Hampshire is known for is our retail politics, and candidates having the opportunity to engage the electorate face to face,” said Joanne Dowdell, a D.N.C. member from New Hampshire who opposed the proposal. “By having three states, one on top of the other, I think causes a little bit of conflict for candidates trying to vie for the attention, get name recognition and also raise money.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Jeff Link, a longtime Des Moines operative, said cutting Iowa’s caucuses out of the Democratic presidential nominating process would diminish the importance of organizing, which is central to the state’s political culture.That could prove detrimental to the party nationally, he said, by eliminating a critical proving ground for Democratic field operatives.“Rather than having a big field operation, they’re going to have a big social media operation,” Mr. Link said. “There’s going to be less people talking to other people in the campaign. One of the benefits of having a caucus early is that for three decades, we’ve trained campaign staff on how to organize person to person.”Other objections have been far louder, especially from the two states accustomed to being at the front of the line. New Hampshire has long held the nation’s first primary as a matter of state law, and state officials have said they intend to follow that law rather than any party decision. And the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party noted in a statement that the country’s longtime leadoff caucus state has a law that “requires us to hold a caucus before the last Tuesday in February, and before any other contest.” The decision on timing would be up to the state central committee and elected officials, said Scott Brennan, a member of the Rules Committee from Iowa.More than political clout and bragging rights is at stake: Studies of the economic impact of past caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire primaries have found that spending was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of that on TV ads, though the figures were a drop in the bucket of each state’s annual economic activity.The party has powerful tools with which to compel states to fall in line.D.N.C. rules agreed upon earlier this year stipulated notable consequences for any state that jumps ahead to operate outside the party’s agreed-upon early window, including cuts to the number of pledged delegates and alternates for the state in question. Significantly, candidates who campaign in such states would face repercussions as well. “If a candidate chose to campaign in a state that operated outside the window, they would lose the delegates from that state,” Mr. Roosevelt said. “They could have other penalties, because the chair is empowered to go beyond that.”Some officials have suggested they are willing to take those risks.The D.N.C.’s Rules and Bylaws Committee gathered in Washington on Friday.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“For decades we have said we will bear any sanctions,” said Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.Republican willingness, or lack thereof, to change dates may also be relevant in several states, including in Republican-controlled Georgia. A spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp did not respond to a question on Friday afternoon about his reaction to the Democratic proposal. The primary date is set by Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who declined to comment on the Democrats’ process on Friday. “Our focus is on the security and integrity of the election that’s currently underway, and we will be looking at the entire process for possible improvements once this one is successfully complete,” said Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, as Georgia hosts a Senate runoff. But, she noted in a statement, “Our legal team has continuously stated that both parties’ primaries must be on the same day and must not cost anyone any delegates.”Republicans have already agreed to their own early-state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.The Rules and Bylaws committee’s vote came a day after Mr. Biden sent a letter to members laying out his criteria for the early-voting window. In it, he rejected caucuses — effectively dealing a mortal blow to the troubled Iowa caucuses, which struggled for days to deliver results in 2020.After Mr. Biden came in fourth place in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, two states with high percentages of white voters, he showed new signs of political life in Nevada. And it was South Carolina’s primary, with large numbers of Black voters, that revived his candidacy and propelled him through Super Tuesday and to the nomination.“Defense, education, agriculture, manufacturing — South Carolina is a perfect laboratory,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat whose endorsement of Mr. Biden in 2020 played a vital role in the president’s victory in the state. “That’s why the people who do well in South Carolina end up doing pretty good in the general.”Mr. Clyburn said that he had urged Mr. Biden to keep South Carolina in the early-state window — “first, second, third or fourth, didn’t matter to me” — but that he had learned of the state’s possible elevation to the kickoff primary on Thursday from the president.Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the D.N.C., who is also from South Carolina, said he had found out at Thursday night’s state dinner.Mr. Biden has urged the Rules and Bylaws Committee to review the calendar every four years, and the committee embraced an amendment to get that process underway.“Nevada still has the strongest argument for being the first-in-the-nation primary,” Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, the state’s senators, said in a joint statement. “We will keep making our case for 2028.”Reid J. 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