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      Democrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 Response

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Biden’s Stimulus PlanBiden’s AddressWhat to Know About the BillAnalysis: Economic RescueBenefits for Middle ClassAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obama’s 2009 ResponseIn pitching President Biden’s relief package, Democrats have said their 2009 stimulus efforts under Barack Obama were insufficient. Those close to Mr. Obama have noticed.President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill during a ceremony in Denver in February 2009.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021Updated 11:00 a.m. ETAs Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.Party leaders from President Biden on down are citing Mr. Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat.The pointed assessments of Mr. Obama’s handling of the 2009 stimulus effort are the closest Democrats have come to grappling with a highly delicate matter in the party: the shortcomings in the legacy of Mr. Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party and a powerful voice for bipartisanship in a deeply divided country.The re-examination has irked some of the former president’s allies but thrilled the party’s progressive wing, which sees Mr. Biden’s more expansive plan as a down payment on his ambitious agenda. And it has sent an early signal that Mr. Biden’s administration does not intend to be a carbon copy of his Democratic predecessor’s. Times, all concede, have changed.“This time, the feeling was, ‘We’re not very willing to negotiate what we think is needed,’” said former Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who retired ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. “In 2009, I think the feeling was, ‘Oh we wanted more, but we didn’t get what we wanted.’”The careful dance around Mr. Obama and his accomplishments continues a dynamic from the Democratic presidential primary. While taking care not to disparage his administration, several candidates stressed the need for the party to embrace a more take-no-prisoners political approach with Republicans; others criticized Mr. Obama’s policies on immigration: though he used an executive order to aid the Dreamers, he also pushed deportations and border detentions.It also highlights the rapid change in Washington over a decade of partisan brawling. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden came into office on promises of unity and bipartisanship in the face of an economic crisis, but Mr. Biden is the beneficiary of a changed landscape in the party. Democrats are now more cognizant of Republican obstruction, less deferential to the deficit hawks and energized by a growing progressive wing that has pulled the party’s ideological midpoint to the left.A decade ago, Mr. Obama’s strategy reflected the Democratic Party’s mainstream, an insistence on negotiating with Republicans, keeping the Senate filibuster and trimming his own ambitions for a nation that he and others worried could handle only so much change after electing its first Black president. Now, the progressive criticism of that posture has become party canon.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading progressive voice, said the changes should be attributed partly to the growth of the left, but partly to an inadequate Democratic response to the Great Recession, which she said “created so much damage economically, for people, but it also created a lot of political damage for the party” by not being larger in scope.“I came of age watching Democratic governance fail me and fail my family,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel the country next week to promote the benefits of the American Rescue Plan.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Obama is himself a person who carefully takes stock of his presidential legacy and his place in Democratic Party politics. He has not publicly responded to the recent criticism of his stimulus strategy, and through a spokesman he declined a request to comment for this article.But for friends and allies who are close to him, the characterizations of Mr. Obama’s 2009 efforts sting.Some describe it as an attempt, in a different political era, to act as Monday-morning quarterback, and bristle that figures who were involved in the 2009 negotiations — like Senator Chuck Schumer or Mr. Biden — have now publicly expressed regret over them. Others describe it as the natural course of politics: past actions being used as a baseline for improvement.Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s former senior adviser, said the administration was acting on the evidence and the political possibilities of the time.“This was the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,” she said. “And therefore, there wasn’t a body of evidence about the size of the package and the impact it would have.” She also mentioned a political incentive: “It was important to show the country early in President Obama’s time in office, he was willing to work with Republicans.”Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff, said Democrats would do well to compare themselves with their Republican presidential counterparts, and not with other Democrats.“It’s really about Obama versus Bush, and Biden versus Trump, not the other way around,” Mr. Emanuel said. “We built long-lasting, robust economic growth. And I think comparing one to the other is, is historically not accurate. And also, more importantly, it’s strategically not advantageous.”David Axelrod, who served as a chief strategist to Mr. Obama, said he believed the current criticism was born of a desire to avoid a midterm shellacking similar to the one Democrats suffered in 2010.“It is irksome only in the sense that it was an entirely different situation,” Mr. Axelrod said. “If the Obama economic record were deficient, I’m pretty sure Joe Biden wouldn’t have run on it.”In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Mr. Obama’s close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Mr. Biden’s administration is seeking to chart its own path.In a recent address to House Democrats, Mr. Biden argued that it was Mr. Obama’s “humility” that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didn’t spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people.“Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’” Mr. Biden said. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time, I’m not going to take a victory lap,’ and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York linked her own ascension to Congress to the failings of the Democratic response the recession in 2009.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe White House recently announced that Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and some key administration figures would travel the country.In the former president’s recently released memoir, he often returns to a familiar argument: that the ambitions of his legislation were hamstrung by an obstructionist Republican Party and moderate Democrats who were unwilling to go it alone without any bipartisan support..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.Options like budget reconciliation, the parliamentary tactic Mr. Biden used to pass the coronavirus relief plan by a simple majority vote, were not even proposed by most progressives, former aides to Mr. Obama said. That meant that any legislation would need a filibuster-proof 60 votes.“Between Republican attacks and Democratic complaints I was reminded of the Yeats poem ‘Second Coming,’” Mr. Obama wrote in the book. “My supporters lacked all conviction, and my opponents were full of passionate intensity.”But Mr. Obama’s own public comments since his presidency hint at a changing worldview. At the funeral for Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, Mr. Obama seemed to endorse ending the Senate filibuster as a way to expand voting rights — a move he had long avoided. He said during the Democratic primary that while he was proud of his presidential campaigns, the landscape had changed and required more expansive policy proposals.“I want candidates now to propose beyond what we were able to get done then, because the politics have changed,” he said at a 2019 fund-raiser.That task is now left to Mr. Biden, who lacks the cult of personality that surrounded his former boss but is also less interested in cultivating one. In passing his first piece of signature legislation without a Republican vote, the president has subtly rejected the way Ms. Jarrett framed unity — he will pursue it not by endlessly wooing Republicans but by passing legislation that most Americans support.Mr. Obama at a news conference the day after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesSenator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who backed Mr. Obama’s stimulus measure after it was pared back, said the Democrats’ approach on the stimulus bill passed last week was a reversion on the president’s campaign promise to be a unifying figure.She recently told reporters that Mr. Schumer, the majority leader who led the negotiations on Mr. Biden’s bill, “showed that he had absolutely no interest in trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.”Progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez say the willingness to forgo Republican buy-in is proof the entire party now agrees on the need for structural reform, and the hardball tactics that may be required.“Schumer spoke to the very real pain of delaying decisive action, which is a self-inflicted wound, I would say, for the party,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “Where you delay and you water down, and you just kind of hand Susan Collins a pen, to have her diminish legislation for months, just for her to not even vote for it in the end.”But Mr. Emanuel advised Democrats to remember the lessons of the presidential primary. After one debate in Detroit, when candidates repeatedly remarked on the failures of Mr. Obama’s tenure and how they would do better, voters rushed to defend the nation’s first Black president, and the running mate who stood with him.“When the Democrats were criticizing President Obama, it was Biden that said: ‘What are you guys doing? He’s our president,’” Mr. Emanuel said. “So I’m with Joe Biden on that analysis.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Seven Republican Senators Voted to Convict Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesKey Takeaways From Day 5How Senators VotedTrump AcquittedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Seven Republican Senators Voted to Convict TrumpThe Republicans who broke with their party to find Donald J. Trump guilty were an eclectic group, bound by their shared lack of concern about retribution from the former president or his followers.Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is one of the seven Republicans who voted on Saturday to impeach former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…for The New York TimesFeb. 14, 2021, 6:57 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The seed for Senator Bill Cassidy’s decision to find Donald J. Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection was planted one day last fall, when he received an email from a friend that was full of the then-president’s false claims about a stolen election.Alarmed that Mr. Trump’s lies were gaining credence, Mr. Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, became part of a small minority in his party — and one of only a few officials in the South — to acknowledge President Biden’s victory. Months later, after Mr. Trump’s campaign to overturn the election culminated in the Capitol riot, Mr. Cassidy was one of only seven Republican senators who voted on Saturday to convict him.Taken at face value, Mr. Cassidy — a conservative, newly re-elected physician with a quirky streak — has little in common with the other six senators who broke with their party and found Mr. Trump guilty in the most bipartisan vote for a presidential impeachment conviction in United States history. Most were facing intense backlash on Sunday from Republicans in their states livid about the vote, as have the 10 House Republicans who supported the impeachment last month.But the senators were united by a common thread: Each of them, for their own reasons, was unafraid of political retribution from Mr. Trump or his supporters.“Two are retiring, and three are not up until 2026, and who knows what the world will look like five years from now,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “It looked pretty different five years ago than it did today. All seven of them have a measure of independence that those who have to run in 2022 in a closed Republican primary just don’t have.”For Mr. Cassidy, it was a sense of outrage at the former president’s actions, starting long before the assault on Jan. 6, that played the dominant role. In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Cassidy said Mr. Trump had “trumpeted that lie” about the election for months, then sat by for hours as lawmakers and his own vice president were under attack in the Capitol and did nothing — other than to call Republican senators to ask them to continue challenging the election results.“That anger simmers in the background,” Mr. Cassidy said. “My whole life, reading about great men and women who sacrifice for our country, who sacrifice so that we could have the freedoms that we have here today — and the idea that somebody would attempt to usurp those and destroy them?”“It still angers me,” he continued. “It just angers the heck out of me.”Many Republicans privately shared Mr. Cassidy’s rage, but the fact that only seven of them were ultimately willing to find Mr. Trump guilty underscored the extraordinary fealty the former president still commands in the party. Even with Mr. Trump out of the White House, Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to cross the former president for fear of invoking his wrath and infuriating the primary voters who still adore him. All but one of the Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump will not face voters at the ballot box for years — or ever again, in the case of two who are set to retire in 2022.Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the only one of the seven Republicans who faces re-election next year, making her vote to convict the most political risky of them all.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Cassidy won re-election in November, as did two others who voted to convict the former president — Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Ben Sasse of Nebraska — meaning they have five years before their names will appear on a ballot. Two others, Senators Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, are retiring. The other two, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, have long since established their willingness to break with their party, and particularly with Mr. Trump.Ms. Murkowski is the only one of the group facing re-election next year, making her vote the most politically risky of them all.She famously returned to Washington even after losing a Republican primary in 2010 by defeating both the Republican and Democratic nominees in an audacious write-in campaign, and she has appeared untroubled by the potential political consequences of her vote.That might be partly influenced by a change in Alaska’s voting system: Voters in November approved a measure to eliminate party primaries and institute a ranked-choice contest in which any candidate could prevail, blunting the influence of the hard-right voters who decide most Republican primaries.At the Capitol on Saturday, Ms. Murkowski said she owed it to her constituents to vote the way she did. “If I can’t say what I believe that our president should stand for, then why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?” she told reporters.And in a blistering statement on Sunday, Ms. Murkowski explained why she deemed Mr. Trump guilty.“If months of lies, organizing a rally of supporters in an effort to thwart the work of Congress, encouraging a crowd to march on the Capitol, and then taking no meaningful action to stop the violence once it began is not worthy of impeachment, conviction and disqualification,” she said, “I cannot imagine what is.”Republicans had regarded Ms. Murkowski as a senator who was likely to defect, along with Ms. Collins. The two have previously linked arms to break from their party on significant votes, including when they helped tank a Republican-led effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Collins was re-elected in November, triumphing in a brutal contest that few expected her to win, as voters reaffirmed their embrace of her long-held independent streak.“This impeachment trial is not about any single word uttered by President Trump on Jan. 6, 2021,” Ms. Collins said in a speech from the Senate floor on Saturday. “It is instead about President Trump’s failure to obey the oath he swore on Jan. 20, 2017. His actions to interfere with the peaceful transition of power — the hallmark of our Constitution and our American democracy — were an abuse of power and constitute grounds for conviction.”Republicans had regarded Senator Susan Collins of Maine as likely to defect.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesIn the weeks before the impeachment trial, Ms. Collins huddled in multiple Zoom meetings with a team of lawyers, including external advisers and members of her staff, to discuss the constitutionality of putting a former president on trial and whether Mr. Trump could mount a defense premised on his right to free speech, according to Richard H. Fallon Jr., a Harvard Law professor and adviser to Ms. Collins who participated in the discussions.“I don’t think there was any substantial disagreement at the end about the constitutional points,” he said.Mr. Cassidy’s vote to convict was less expected. A gastroenterologist who was re-elected easily in November to a second term, he is a reliable conservative. But he has shown an increasing willingness in recent weeks to buck his party in an attempt to work with Mr. Biden and his Democratic colleagues, and markedly less interest in humoring Mr. Trump.That approach has resulted in an intense fallout at home. The Louisiana Republican Party on Saturday moved to censure him for his vote, and Mr. Cassidy said people would be “aghast at how negative” the comments on his Facebook page had become.But he also said that he had received “a heck of a lot of support” in texts and calls from constituents — and that he expected that sentiment to grow.“The president spent two months building this up,” Mr. Cassidy said. “It’s going be hard; people just don’t flip on a deeply held belief from someone who they trust just like that. But the more the facts come out, the more that people will move to this position.”For his colleagues who are retiring, voters’ reactions were less of a concern. Neither Mr. Burr nor Mr. Toomey was a particularly vocal critic of Mr. Trump while he was in office, and both skewed fiercely conservative on policy matters, especially Mr. Toomey, a fiscal hawk and former president of the pro-business Club for Growth.But both have tangled with the former president in their own ways. As Mr. Trump continued to falsely claim that he had won the election, Mr. Toomey sharply pushed back and went so far as to blast his own colleagues for trying to overturn the results.Delegate Stacey Plaskett, Democrat of the Virgin Islands and one of the impeachment managers, reacted on Saturday as Mr. Cassidy voted to convict Mr. Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Burr, then the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, subpoenaed testimony from Donald Trump Jr. in 2019 as part of his work conducting the only bipartisan congressional investigation into Russian election interference. The former president’s son responded by starting a political war against the senator in an attempt to turn his party against him.Perhaps the most predictable votes came from two of Mr. Trump’s most biting critics in the Senate: Mr. Sasse and Mr. Romney, who was the only Republican to vote to convict Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial.While the two senators have employed similarly scathing language to excoriate the former president, they are at very different points in their careers. Mr. Romney, 73, having tried and failed to reach the White House, has positioned himself as an elder statesman trying to steer the party from Mr. Trump’s influence regardless of the political fallout. Mr. Sasse, 48, a younger and ambitious up-and-comer, has staked his hopes on leading a post-Trump Republican Party.Now, Mr. Sasse is facing censure threats from the Nebraska Republican Party. An effort last year by a Republican legislator in Utah to censure Mr. Romney for his first impeachment vote fell flat after the state’s Republican governor defended the senator, who faces re-election in 2024.It is unclear how much the seven senators discussed the verdict before the vote on Saturday. But Mr. Cassidy quietly shared his decision with Mr. Burr during the closing arguments of the trial, surreptitiously passing the North Carolina Republican a note on the Senate floor.“I am a yes,” it read.Mr. Burr nodded in silent agreement.Emily Cochrane More

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      If It’s Still Trump Party, Many Republicans Like Me Will Leave

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyIf It’s Still Trump Party, Many Republicans Like Me Will LeaveI need to believe that if I stick with the G.O.P., I will have a fighting chance at changing its direction.Ms. Mair is a Republican strategist.Jan. 12, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETJustin Amash of Michigan, who as a House member left the Republican Party in 2019 and declined to run for re-election. Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesThe remaining days in the presidency of Donald Trump now number in the single digits. That should also be the number of days until the Republican Party begins the post-Trump era, and Trump-disdaining Republicans like me can fully re-engage with it.But it isn’t. Instead, we face a situation in which Mr. Trump clearly lost the 2020 election — and yet the pressure for us to ditch the party is even more intense than it was before Nov. 3. He has behaved horribly since the election, which is no surprise, and hit an abject low point last week. Despite his role in the sacking of the Capitol, he has (also not surprisingly) refused to resign from office — but what is shocking is that so many Republicans in Congress have expressed downright hostility against forcing him out.So many of us — who would otherwise consider ourselves Republicans — increasingly feel that either Mr. Trump goes, or we go. If he remains, we will be left with no choice but to leave the party, even though right now might otherwise be the exact time to double down, not ditch, and reassert conservative principles. The costs of people like me leaving could be grave, not just for the party but for American politics.Many former Republicans who deeply dislike Mr. Trump have already done so. Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, announced last year that he was becoming a Democrat. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan left the Republican Party in 2019 and has urged others to ditch it for a third party (perhaps the Libertarian Party). Evan McMullin, who ran for president as an independent in 2016, has urged fellow NeverTrumpers to “further develop an intellectual and political home” that is “outside of any party,” and told them that “if the Republican Party continues on its current path, launch a party to challenge it directly.”And yet, there are real pragmatic and practical reasons for Trump-loathing Republicans not to take a walk and in fact to step up our involvement with the party.For starters, if Mr. Trump’s elevation to head of the Republican Party showed anything, it demonstrated that it is far easier to influence its direction when you are part of it. Before 2016, the party was for free trade, legal immigration and, above all, a strong national defense, hawkish on Russia and in favor of global defense alliances. In a relatively short amount of time, with Mr. Trump as leader, the party drastically changed its position on those issues.But people forget that as pronounced as the mutation of the party under Mr. Trump was, it was not without precedent. In my lifetime, since the mid-1970s, the party has endorsed presidential candidates who often emphasized different views of conservatism. Each of them — from Gerald Ford to Donald Trump — changed the character of the Republican Party, some more, like Ronald Reagan, and some less, like George H.W. Bush.Sure, they were all generally less tax-happy than their Democratic rivals and favored more conservative judges. But they — and their respective power bases — also didn’t agree on everything, and sometimes disagreed on a lot. Frequently, they were battling one another to attain dominance within the party. But they all achieved a period of power and control because they stayed and engaged in those battles.This is what Republicans like Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah understand — and they were all on the ballot during the Trump years and won handily.If you leave, the people you abhor stay and get to run the whole show. If you stay, you can at least ask questions, offer criticisms, block some objectionable actions and fly the flag for people like you. And things will change — perhaps not immediately for the better, but inevitably.Still, right now, a lot of us are feeling more like Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who seems to be exploring the view that if Mr. Trump does not resign and Republicans don’t help to eject him, she cannot exist as a Republican anymore. As the conservative blogger and my friend Ed Morrissey, who after the Capitol incursion chose to “disaffiliate” from the party, wrote, “It’s impossible to act as though Republicans are republican, especially while its leadership makes clear that it doesn’t care one whit about the party’s own foundational principles.”That may be where many of us — those of us who were explicitly NeverTrump, and even those who were willing to cut the president a lot more slack — wind up.One problem is that, eventually, voters will want change. And when Democrats have been in charge of too many things for too long, even a Republican Party that has moved in a direction that many would describe as, well, deplorable will prove electable.This is what we saw some of in California and Florida last year. California is dominated by Democrats and has been seen to be moving in an ever increasingly liberal direction. But in November, voters there reinstalled Republicans in a bunch of swing congressional districts.In Florida, some Hispanic voters decided that if it was a choice between an authoritarian-inclined Republican Party or a Democratic Party with several high-profile, media-attention-grabbing members willing to proclaim themselves as socialists, they’d take the authoritarians.I don’t want to leave the Republican Party. But I need to believe that if people like me stay, we will have a fighting chance at changing the direction of the party.So elected Republicans need to force Mr. Trump out of office, one way or another, to avoid further attrition in the ranks and the risk that the party devolves into something even worse than what we have seen over the last week.Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies, which consulted for Georgia United Victory before the runoff elections. She also served as the Republican National Committee’s online communications director in 2008.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Coronavirus Stimulus Bolsters Biden, Shows Potential Path for Agenda

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNEWS AnalysisPandemic Aid Bolsters Biden and Shows Potential Path for His Agenda in CongressWorking together with the president-elect, bipartisan groups in the Senate and House helped push feuding leaders to compromise. It could be a template for the future.Rather than face an immediate and dire need to act on a pandemic package, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his team can take time to try to fashion a more far-reaching recovery program next month.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesDec. 21, 2020Updated 7:10 p.m. ETProducing it was a torturous, time-consuming affair that did nothing to improve Congress’s reputation for dysfunction. But the agreement on a new pandemic aid package showed the ascendance of moderates as a new force in a divided Senate and validated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s belief that it is still possible to make deals on Capitol Hill.Along with struggling Americans and businesses, the new president was a major beneficiary of the $900 billion pandemic stimulus measure that Congress haltingly but finally produced on Sunday and was on track to approve late Monday, which will give him some breathing room when he enters the White House next month. Rather than face an immediate and dire need to act on an emergency economic aid package, Mr. Biden and his team can instead take a moment to try to fashion a more far-reaching recovery program and begin to tackle other issues.“President-elect Biden is going to have an economy that is healthier,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and one of the chief players in a breakaway effort by centrists in the Senate and House that led to the compromise. “This is a significant financial injection into the economy at a time that is critical.”The group of moderates was essential to the outcome, pushing Senate and House leaders of both parties into direct personal negotiations that they had avoided for months, and demonstrating how crucial they are likely to be to Mr. Biden. “I’m glad we forced the issue,” said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who, along with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, were leaders of a monthslong effort to break the impasse over pandemic aid even as the virus exacted a growing economic and health toll on the country.Given the slender partisan divides that will exist in both the Senate and House next year, the approach could provide a road map for the Biden administration if it hopes to break through congressional paralysis, especially in the Senate, and pass additional legislation. Mr. Biden has said another economic relief plan will be an early priority.“I believe it is going to be the only way we are going to accomplish the president-elect’s agenda in the next two years,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of the 50-member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that took part in forging the compromise. “In the long run, this is the way to govern.”But the extraordinarily difficult time Congress had in coming to agreement over pandemic legislation again showed the difficulty of the task Mr. Biden faces. Almost every influential member of the House and Senate acknowledged that the relief was sorely needed, but it was impeded in part by last-minute Republican attempts to undercut Mr. Biden’s future authority. Some Republicans are already suggesting that the latest package should tide over the nation for an extended period, with no additional relief necessary for some time.Senators Mark Warner of Virginia, left, Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia were part of a moderate bipartisan group that helped negotiate the legislation.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Biden on Sunday applauded the willingness of lawmakers to “reach across the aisle” and called the effort a “model for the challenging work ahead for our nation.” He was also not an idle bystander in the negotiations.With Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate far apart on how much they were willing to accept in new pandemic spending, Mr. Biden on Dec. 2 threw his support behind the $900 billion plan being pushed by the centrist group. The total was less than half of the $2 trillion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been insisting on.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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