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      Could a Democrat Really Challenge Biden at This Point? Here’s What to Know.

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      It’s really hard to run against a sitting president. And beginning at this point, just two months before primary voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.The Democratic anxiety that has swirled around President Biden for over a year has kicked into overdrive in recent weeks, as his approval ratings have stayed stubbornly low and polls have shown the possibility of his losing to former President Donald J. Trump.That anxiety has crystallized into one question, repeated like a drumbeat: Can’t some big-name Democrat challenge him? Someone more prominent than Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips?The answer: In theory, sure. In practice, the prospects are remote.There are several reasons for that, most of which boil down to it being really hard to run a successful primary campaign against a sitting president. And doing so at this point, just two months before voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.Making things still more difficult for a would-be challenger is that Mr. Biden remains relatively popular among Democratic voters. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 79 percent of party voters in six battleground states somewhat or strongly approve of his performance, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for another Democrat.“Logistically, it’s impossible,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Hillary Clinton and Amy Klobuchar. “Politically, it’s a suicide mission.”Ballot deadlines are approaching, or pastTo appear on each state’s primary ballot, candidates must submit paperwork along with, in many cases, a hefty filing fee and hundreds or even thousands of voter signatures.The deadlines for those submissions have already passed in South Carolina and Nevada, the first two states on the Democratic calendar; in New Hampshire, which is holding an unsanctioned primary in January; and in Alabama and Arkansas.Michigan, another early-voting state, released its list of candidates this month. By mid-December, the window to get added to the ballot there will have closed. The deadline is similar for California, which will account for more delegates than any other state; and for Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.So even if a candidate entered the race tomorrow, they would be unable to get on the ballot in the first two primaries, and probably in a lot of others. It would be a tall order, for instance, to secure 26,000 signatures in California by its Dec. 15 deadline.Pretty soon, defeating Mr. Biden goes from difficult to mathematically impossible.Biden has an enormous financial advantageMr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee said they raised a combined $71.3 million in the third quarter of this year. They reported having $90.5 million in cash on hand as of the end of September.That would put any new candidate at a staggering disadvantage. Consider that on the Republican side, Mr. Trump alone announced a $45.5 million haul in the third quarter, and his leading rivals, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, reported raising $15 million and $11 million.Big-name politicians are thinking long termMany voters looking for a savior candidate are, naturally, looking to people seen as rising stars in the Democratic Party — like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.But rising stars generally want to maximize their chances at the right time.“Ambitious candidates are risk-averse,” said Casey Dominguez, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego who studies primaries. “They don’t want to ruin their chances at a successful run for president by having an unsuccessful run for president, particularly one where you’re running against a sitting president, potentially dividing the party.”Crucially, there is no precedent in the last 50 years for candidates to look to for a path.Pat Buchanan, challenging an unpopular President George Bush in 1992, gave Mr. Bush an unexpectedly close call in New Hampshire but did not end up winning a single primary. Edward M. Kennedy, challenging an unpopular President Jimmy Carter in 1980, won 12 states and contested the nomination all the way to the Democratic convention, but did not come close to a majority.“History tells a story,” said Barbara Norrander, an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy who studies presidential primaries. “Ted Kennedy versus Jimmy Carter 1980 is what you would look back at, and Kennedy had a lot of pluses going for him, but he wasn’t able to unseat Carter. So it’s highly unlikely that someone today could unseat an incumbent president.”Democrats are worried about weakening BidenThe driving force behind many Democrats’ desire to jettison Mr. Biden is fear of another Trump presidency. But the same driving force is behind other Democrats’ desire to stick with him.Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities, including his age and low approval ratings, are very real. But the electoral advantages of incumbency, universal name recognition and an established campaign organization are real, too.At this point, for a new candidate, “there’s just no way to build momentum and get the resources necessary,” Mr. Hogan said.Potential challengers also have to weigh the possibility that a primary battle could weaken Mr. Biden in the general election, even if he overcame it. Though there is no consensus, some historians believe primary challenges hurt Mr. Bush and Mr. Carter in 1992 and 1980.“Nobody wants to be the person that divided the party and helped to elect Donald Trump,” Professor Dominguez said.There is no ‘generic Democrat’Any challenger would come with their own weak points that would turn off one Democratic faction or another and be exploited by Republicans over the long months of a general-election campaign — a reality not necessarily captured by polls that show an unnamed Democratic candidate performing better than Mr. Biden.“You can’t run a generic Democrat,” Mr. Hogan said. “You have to run a person.”Take Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who entered the race in October. After debuting around 7.5 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, he quickly fell to about 4 percent.That reality played out in 1968, the only time in modern history that an incumbent president was successfully challenged in his party’s primary.Two challengers with substantial name recognition and support — Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy — helped drive President Lyndon B. Johnson not to seek re-election. He announced his decision in March 1968, as the primaries were underway. That August, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the nomination of an agonizingly divided Democratic Party.Humphrey lost the general election with 191 electoral votes to Richard Nixon’s 301.What happens if Biden can’t run?To state the obvious, all of the considerations are what they are because Mr. Biden is running. If something were to change that — if he had a health crisis, for example — the party would be in a difficult situation.If he withdrew just before or early in the primary season, voters would be limited to the other options already in the race. It is highly unlikely that ballot access deadlines, which are set by individual states and not by national party officials, would be reopened.If he withdrew later in the primary season — after he had won enough delegates in early primaries that no candidate could surpass him — the nomination would be decided on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in August, where delegates have the final say in choosing a nominee. That would also be the case if he withdrew between the primaries and the convention. More

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      The New Hampshire Primary Will Be Jan. 23

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      The date, announced by state officials, defies the Democratic National Committee’s decision to have South Carolina vote first.New Hampshire’s presidential primary will be held Jan. 23, state officials announced on Wednesday.The date had been in contention since the Democratic National Committee decided earlier this year to change its nominating calendar, which had long given New Hampshire the first primary slot after the Iowa caucuses. The new Democratic calendar puts South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada together on one day, then Georgia, then Michigan.But New Hampshire officials have made clear that they will refuse to abide by the D.N.C.’s decision. The state has a law requiring it to hold the first-in-the-nation primary, and additionally, the Republican Party still has the state in its traditional position in the early lineup of Iowa first, New Hampshire second, and then South Carolina and Nevada.“We will be holding our primary first,” Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said last year after initial reports that the D.N.C. intended to change the schedule.In a statement after the date was announced, Mr. Buckley said, “For more than 100 years, presidential candidates of both parties have come to the Granite State time and again because, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money they have, they know they will get a fair shot from Granite Staters.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state has the authority to set its primary date, and the state law says its presidential primary must be held on either the second Tuesday in March or “seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier.” The secretary of state, David Scanlan, is a Republican and had previously indicated that he intended to follow that law.Because New Hampshire is violating the D.N.C.’s edict, President Biden did not put his name on the ballot there. Some of his supporters are running a write-in campaign on his behalf, but it is not officially sanctioned. Party leaders could also penalize the state by refusing to count its delegates at the Democratic convention. More

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      Dean Phillips Will Run Against Biden

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      The Minnesota lawmaker is undertaking a long-shot bid against an incumbent president who has significant financial advantages.Representative Dean Phillips, a moderate Minnesota Democrat who has for months publicly argued that President Biden should not run for re-election, announced his candidacy for president on Thursday, setting up an underdog challenge for the Democratic nomination.In an interview with CBS News, Mr. Phillips — who plans to officially launch his campaign on Friday in New Hampshire — argued that finding an alternative to Mr. Biden was essential because of polling showing the president at risk of losing to former President Donald J. Trump.“I will not sit still and not be quiet in the face of numbers that are so clearly saying that we’re going to be facing an emergency next November,” he said. Late Thursday evening, he posted his campaign announcement on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, saying, “It’s time to put our country back together again.”Mr. Phillips, a third-term congressman who represents a district that includes suburban Minneapolis, enters the race with long-shot odds.The Democratic establishment and major donors have already lined up behind Mr. Biden, who raised $71.3 million with the Democratic National Committee and his joint fund-raising committee during the three-month reporting period that ended Sept. 30.Mr. Phillips will also need to work fast to get his name on the ballot in several early-voting states. Already, he has missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Nevada, the second nominating state on a new presidential primary calendar approved by the national committee this year.Mr. Phillips, 54, has for months stressed his belief that Mr. Biden, 80, should face a serious primary challenge, citing the president’s age and low approval ratings as evidence that Democrats are eager for a new generation of candidates. (Several Republican candidates have made similar arguments in their bids against former President Donald J. Trump, who is 77.)An heir to a Minnesota liquor company who also ran the gelato company Talenti, Mr. Phillips was first elected in 2018, as part of a wave of Democrats who flipped Republican-held suburban districts in a backlash to Mr. Trump. He stepped down from a position in Democratic leadership in the House this month as he weighed joining the presidential race.Mr. Phillips will join two other primary challengers to the president: Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who unsuccessfully ran against Mr. Biden in 2020, and Cenk Uygur, the co-creator and co-host of the progressive talk show “The Young Turks.”Another candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had initially planned to compete for the Democratic nomination but announced this month that he would instead run for president as an independent candidate. More

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      Biden Campaign Raises $71.3 Million in Third Quarter Alongside D.N.C.

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      The president’s re-election campaign announced a substantial quarterly fund-raising haul, but it’s far short of what Donald J. Trump raised in the same quarter of his 2020 re-election campaign.President Biden’s re-election campaign announced on Sunday it had raised a combined $71.3 million alongside the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee during the three-month period that ended in September, a haul that eclipses what his Republican rivals have amassed but falls short of where President Donald J. Trump was at this point four years ago.The campaign said the three fund-raising vehicles had a combined $90.5 million in cash on hand. It did not disclose how the cash was divided between the three fund-raising vehicles.“It was a spectacular quarter,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign, said in an interview Saturday. “It certainly exceeded our own expectations around it significantly. The fact that we’re sitting with $91 million in the bank today is really an extraordinary advantage.”But Mr. Biden’s fund-raising haul is well short of the $125 million Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee raised during the same period of his 2020 re-election campaign. And it is just a touch more than the $70.1 million President Obama and the D.N.C. raised at this point in his 2012 campaign — at a time when individual contribution limits were far lower than they are today.Mr. Katzenberg, in the interview, dismissed comparisons to such campaigns as “comparing apples to submarines.”Comparisons with Mr. Obama’s fund-raising efforts for the 2012 campaign are indeed imprecise, because a 2014 Supreme Court decision and other legal changes now allow candidates and parties to form joint fund-raising committees that can accept single donations of nearly $1 million. In 2012, Mr. Obama and the D.N.C. could collect only $30,500 per person.More revealing details about the Biden campaign’s financial status will emerge when the committees file quarterly reports required by the Federal Election Commission. Those are due by the end of Sunday; a campaign official said the reports would become public late Sunday evening.Among the most significant details in the campaign’s fund-raising report will be the amount of cash it has accumulated from donors who gave less than $200.These so-called small donors are vital to presidential efforts because they can be recruited to give again and again over the course of a long campaign. During the three-month fund-raising period that ended in June, $10.2 million of contributions to the Biden effort, or about 21 percent, came from small donors, an amount smaller in percentage and in real dollars than the Trump and Obama campaigns in the comparable time periods.While the Biden campaign has not disclosed how much of its haul came from small donors, an official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the campaign, did reveal that 49 percent of its $71.3 million came from donors who gave through the internet or mail programs. The campaign had expected that about 36 to 37 percent of third-quarter fund-raising would come online or through the mail.Mr. Biden’s fund-raising total far outpaces what his Republican rivals have reported for the third quarter.Mr. Trump’s campaign reported it raised $45.5 million, with $37.5 million in cash on hand. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raised $15 million. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, raised $11 million. Aides to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina revealed to Republican donors this week that his campaign began October with $11.6 million in cash on hand, more than either Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley.The Biden campaign trumpeted an array of fund-raising figures that officials said proved that there was indeed enthusiasm for their candidate, even as polls show that Mr. Biden is unpopular and suggest that he has not engendered enthusiasm within his own party.The campaign said that it attracted 240,000 donors who had contributed to the campaign in 2020 and that 97 percent of contributions were less than $200. A contest for a chance to meet both Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama raised “nearly $2.5 million,” according to the campaign, while the sales of mugs with a picture of Mr. Biden’s face with the “Dark Brandon” meme brought in “close to $2 million” in August and September. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Run for President as Independent, Leaving Democratic Primary

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      The political scion told supporters he would end his campaign as a Democratic candidate and run as an independent, potentially upsetting the dynamics of the 2024 election.In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president.Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Mr. Kennedy, a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, said he represented “a populist movement that defies left-right division.”“The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”Since announcing his candidacy in April, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has been a sharp critic of Democratic leadership, which he has accused of “hijacking the party machinery” to stifle his challenge to Mr. Biden. He has also said, in interviews and in public appearances, that the party has abandoned its principles and become corrupted.Running as an independent will entail an expensive, uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Last week, Cornel West, a liberal academic and presidential candidate, said he would run as an independent, abandoning his efforts to secure the Green Party’s nomination.In a 45-minute speech on Monday, Mr. Kennedy described encounters across America with people he called the “ranks of the dispossessed,” interspersed with angry barbs about “the surveillance state” and the “tyranny of corruption.” He quoted the Old Testament, John Adams, Martin Luther King Jr., Tennyson and his own father.But Mr. Kennedy, the scion of a liberal political dynasty, has alienated his own family members and many Democrats with his promotion of conspiracy theories, his rejection of scientific orthodoxies and his embrace of far-right political figures.“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” four of Mr. Kennedy’s siblings — Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — said in a statement on Monday. “We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has been lionized by a movement that has expanded beyond anti-vaccine sentiments, including opposition to the mandatory vaccination of children, to push back more broadly against state public health measures. In recent years, his open suspicions about the government’s handling of the coronavirus and his criticism of lockdowns and vaccine policies gave him a new platform and earned him popularity among many Americans who had wearied of the pandemic.“Our campaign has ignited a movement that has been smoldering for years,” Mr. Kennedy said.To roars of applause, Mr. Kennedy told his supporters they were “declaring independence” from a lengthy list of perceived adversaries: “Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma”; the “military industrial complex”; “the mercenary media”; “the cynical elites”; both of the major political parties and “the entire rigged system.”He has built a base of support made up of disaffected voters across the political spectrum, but some Democrats have worried that he poses the biggest threat to their party, fearing that any independent or third-party candidacy could peel off voters from Mr. Biden.Shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the race, some polls showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support — which was in large part a measure of the desire among some for an alternative to Mr. Biden. Mr. Kennedy’s numbers have sagged in recent months, though his campaign, which dwells as much on nostalgia for his political lineage as it does on skepticism about the scientific and political establishment — continues to appeal to a particular cross-section of skeptical Democrats, political conservatives and independents.The Republican National Committee, in a reflection of its own concerns about Mr. Kennedy, sent out an email on Monday titled “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.,” listing ways in which he has been aligned with Democrats in the past, including his record of opposing fossil fuel extraction.Monday’s event drew supporters from across the political spectrum.Sean Gleason, a retired state police officer from New Jersey, said he was a registered Republican and a two-time Trump voter who planned to leave the party and vote for Mr. Kennedy. “I’m done with the duopoly,” Mr. Gleason said. He is supporting Mr. Kennedy, he said, because “I think he’s telling the truth, even the truth people don’t really want to hear.”Michael Schroth, a 69-year-old former teacher from Haverhill, Mass., said he was an undeclared voter who had previously voted for Ralph Nader, Barack Obama and Jill Stein. He has been a fan of Mr. Kennedy’s since he heard him speak two years ago. “He is intelligent,” he said. “He thinks through problems.”Rebecca Briggs, 60, a health coach and nutritionist from Rhode Island, said she was a registered Democrat and had voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, “because I didn’t want Trump — but I actually didn’t want either of them.” She said she was ready to leave the party with Mr. Kennedy.“I was afraid to tell people — afraid of the reaction,” she said of supporting him. “I have to move forward with courage.”Mr. Kennedy has raised two main complaints about the Democratic National Committee, which is supporting Mr. Biden’s re-election effort. First, he said, Mr. Biden and the party pushed to change the first primary state from New Hampshire — where Mr. Kennedy, who has New England roots, enjoys a base of support — to South Carolina, the state that rescued Mr. Biden’s primary campaign in 2020.Second, the party has refused to arrange for debates between Mr. Biden and Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Biden’s campaign and the D.N.C. have also essentially refused to acknowledge Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy and have avoided saying his name.Mr. Kennedy had teased Monday’s announcement in a video last week, though his campaign held off on confirming that he was changing parties. But in the hours before he went onstage in Philadelphia, there was a subtle change on Mr. Kennedy’s campaign website. Where it had once read “I am a Kennedy Democrat,” with the family name in italics, it was changed to: “I am a Kennedy American.” More

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      On the Economy, Biden Struggles to Convince Voters of His Success

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      Wages are up, inflation has slowed and the White House has a new slogan. Still, President Biden’s poor marks on the economy are making Democrats worried.When a chant slamming President Biden spread from a NASCAR race to T-shirts and bumper stickers across red America two years ago, the White House pulled off perhaps its savviest messaging feat to date. Biden aides and allies repackaged the “Let’s Go Brandon” insult and morphed it into “Dark Brandon,” a celebratory meme casting Mr. Biden as some sort of omnipotent mastermind.Now, the White House and the Biden campaign is several weeks into another appropriation play — but it isn’t going nearly as well. Aides in July announced that the president would run for re-election on the virtues of “Bidenomics,” proudly reclaiming the right’s derisive term for Mr. Biden’s economic policies.The gambit does not appear to be working yet. Even as Mr. Biden presides over what is by all indicators a strong economy — one on track to dodge the recession many had feared — he is still struggling to convince most of the country of the strength of his economic stewardship. Wages are up, inflation has slowed, but credit to the president remains in short supply.Polling last month from the Democratic organization Navigator found that 25 percent of Americans support Mr. Biden’s major actions, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, but still think the president is doing a poor job handling the economy. It’s a group that tends to be disproportionately younger than 40 and is more likely to be Black or Latino — voters critical to Democratic victories.“This is the thing that’s vexing all Democrats,” said Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress.Democratic economists, pollsters and officials have a variety of explanations for why voters don’t credit Mr. Biden for the economy. Inflation remains elevated, and interest rates have made home buying difficult. There is also evidence that voters’ views on the economy are shaped as much by their political views as by personal experiences.And then there is the regular refrain that people don’t know about Mr. Biden’s successes. Even Mr. Biden’s supporters say that he and his administration have been too reluctant to promote their record and ineffective when they do.“I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.Mr. Biden on Friday attempted another victory lap in a White House speech celebrating the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work. He credited the heart of his economic plan, including investment in infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and climate-related industries along with caps on the price of insulin medication.Bidenomics, Mr. Biden said, “is about investing in America and investing in Americans.”Mr. Biden said his economic plan was to credit for the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesThe term Bidenomics emerged as a pejorative in conservative media and has been widely adopted by Mr. Biden’s rivals. “One of the most important issues of the campaign will be who can rescue our country from the burning wreckage of Bidenomics,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a recent video, “which shall henceforth be defined as inflation, taxation submission and failure.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida offered his definition at a recent campaign stop in Rock Rapids, Iowa. “Bidenomics is basically: You have a lower standard of living so he can pursue the left’s ideological agenda,” he said.Behind the rhetoric, there is some debate over whether the economy will be the driving force it has been in past presidential elections. Some Democrats argue that their party’s resilience in last year’s midterm elections showed that the fight over abortion rights and Mr. Trump’s influence over Republicans can trounce more kitchen-table concerns.The White House argues that Democrats’ strong showing last year is a sign the Mr. Biden’s electoral performance isn’t strictly tied to the economy.“By all metrics, his economic record has improved since then,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.Still, nearly all of Mr. Biden’s campaign advertising this year sells his economic record. The ads — which don’t use the term Bidenomics — cast the president’s policies as a work in progress. “All of the things that Biden fought to get passed helped the middle class,” a cement mason from Milwaukee says in an ad the campaign released last week.“It’s no secret that a lot of Americans are struggling with the cost of living, and that’s a reality that shapes their views about the economy more broadly,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who conducts surveys for the Democratic National Committee.Explaining why Mr. Biden’s policies will help, Mr. Garin said, “is what campaigns are for.”This summer Mr. Biden has promoted “Bidenomics” at events around the country, often speaking in factories or with labor groups. Even some in friendly audiences of local Democratic leaders and supporters questioned whether his emphasis would resonate with the coalition that elected him in 2020.“Is Bidenomics the right thing to sell?” Mayor Katie Rosenberg of Wausau, Wis., said after seeing Mr. Biden speak in Milwaukee last month. “I just keep thinking, why aren’t they just doing Build Back Better still? That was a really good slogan. Bidenomics is just an effort to capitalize on the negativity around him.”Build Back Better, the mix of economic, climate and social policy that Mr. Biden ran on in 2020, was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s ambitions as president. Significant elements became law, but the branding exercise failed, doomed in part by rising inflation.Mr. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of his ambitions as president.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDemocrats rebranded their climate legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act, even though the bill had little to do with inflation. Even Mr. Biden recently said that he regretted the name, suggesting that it promised something the bill was not devised to deliver.Though the rate of inflation has slowed, it remains the chief drag on Mr. Biden’s economic approval ratings, said Joanne Hsu, the director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan.“We track people who have heard negative news about inflation,” Dr. Hsu said. “Over the past year, that number has been much higher than in the 1970s and ’80s, when inflation was so much worse.”One theme of Mr. Biden’s aides, advisers and allies is to plead for time. The economy will get better, more people will hear and understand what Bidenomics means and credit will accrue to the president, they say.“The public more and more is going to be seeing low unemployment and will continue to get more bullish on the economy,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “But I also understand it’s very hard for people now. We just can’t expect overnight for people to feel better about the economy.”For most Americans, their views on the economy are directly tied to their partisan leanings — a phenomenon that is particularly acute for Republicans. In 2016, before Mr. Trump took office, just 18 percent of Republicans rated the economy excellent or good, according to a Pew Research survey. By February 2020, just before the pandemic shut down public life in America, 81 percent of Republicans said the economy was excellent or good.An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found just 8 percent of Republicans, along with 65 percent of Democrats, approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy.Mr. Biden’s sympathizers say part of his problem on the economy is an unwillingness to promote its bright spots out of fear of seeming insensitive to Americans struggling with higher prices. Mr. Trump had no such restraint, describing the economy as the best in history and the envy of the world. Using “Bidenomics” as a framework lets the president take ownership of the economy, but it doesn’t exactly tell voters that the economy is great.“Trump chose people who were probably less experienced in terms of making policy, but some of them are quite good about talking up the president,” said Ben Harris, a former top Treasury official in the Biden administration who played a leading role in outlining the Build Back Better agenda during the 2020 campaign. “Biden’s taken a more modest and humble approach, and there’s a chance that’s come back to haunt him.”Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said there was a regular debate in that White House about how much to sell the public on the idea that the economy was improving even if people didn’t feel in their own lives.Now he said it was difficult for the Biden administration to take victory laps over slowing inflation because wages haven’t kept pace, leaving a typical worker about $2,000 behind compared with before the pandemic.“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Mr. Furman said. “The fact that you protected people in the bad times means the good times don’t feel as good.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Biden’s Campaign Fund-Raising Filing Shows Sluggish Small Donations

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      Wealthy Democrats have thrown their money behind the president’s re-election bid, but for many reasons, the party’s small donors have yet to step up their contributions.When President Biden traveled to San Francisco last month, he raised more than $10 million in 36 hours from wealthy Democrats. Trips to Chicago and New York netted millions more, as did fund-raising events around Washington, proving that the party’s big-donor class is fully committed to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.But the small-dollar online money spigot that helped Mr. Biden smash fund-raising records during his 2020 presidential campaign has not yet turned on, and there are ample signs that it may be months before it does.The Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, its joint fund-raising vehicle, collected $10.2 million from small donors — defined as those who gave $200 or less — during the three-month fund-raising period that ended June 30, according to a Federal Election Commission report filed Saturday. That figure is about half of the $21 million President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during the same period of his 2012 re-election effort.Democrats involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign and the world of online fund-raising detailed a host of reasons for Mr. Biden’s relatively low small-dollar haul.Google and Apple have made it harder for email senders to see data about who has opened solicitations. Inflation slowed political donations across the board. Donors are exhausted by the unending flow of emails asking for money, and recipients are responding to far fewer of them.At the moment, Democrats aren’t quite as fired up as they were in 2018 and 2020, when Donald J. Trump’s presidency opened floodgates of liberal money, or ahead of the 2022 midterms, when the Capitol riot, the rise of the election-denial movement and the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade all motivated donors.And Mr. Biden is not an insurgent candidate who is motivating students to put up posters of him on dorm-room walls, as Mr. Obama or Senator Bernie Sanders did in their campaigns. His low-key White House and bare-bones campaign haven’t yet motivated supporters to rage-donate to his campaign.“Right now there’s there is no day-to-day competition combat going on,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign. “So these are the most loyal, most dedicated believers and supporters. It’ll build over time.”Mr. Biden’s campaign highlighted an array of statistics to promote its grass-roots donor operation. Nearly a third of its 394,000 donors did not contribute to Mr. Biden in 2020, the campaign said.Yet the president’s finance reports show that he is far more dependent on the wealthiest donors than Mr. Trump was in his re-election bid or Mr. Biden’s opponents were in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.Ten donors, including Mr. Katzenberg, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the Maryland hotel magnate, gave $500,000 or more to the Biden Victory Fund. Another 82 donors contributed $100,000 or more.Four years ago, 35 percent of the money raised by Mr. Trump and the two joint committees his campaign formed with the national committee — Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again Committee — came from donors who gave $200 or less. For Mr. Biden, 21 percent of funds to his campaign and the joint finance committee came from small donors.Small-dollar contributions are down across the political spectrum. An analysis conducted by Middle Seat, a digital fund-raising firm with an array of Democratic clients, found that small donors had given less money during the first fund-raising period of 2023 than they had in nearly four years — since early 2019.“If I were on the Biden team right now, I’d be really happy with the numbers,” said Kenneth Pennington, a partner at Middle Seat. “It’s a terrible fund-raising environment, and he’s not launching a new campaign.”While Mr. Biden’s total fund-raising was roughly on par with the Republican candidates, he outpaced them with small donors. Combined, the G.O.P. candidates raised $7.5 million from small donors to his $10.2 million.The percentage of contributions of less than $200 is typically at its high point at the beginning of a campaign and drops as campaigns proceed, because when the amount an individual donor has given exceeds $200, it triggers a federal disclosure requirement.When Mr. Biden began his 2020 campaign for president, 38 percent of the money his campaign raised during the comparable reporting period came from small donors. Democratic online fund-raising experts said they expected the pace of online giving to the Biden campaign to pick up early next year, once voters begin to pay more attention to the Republican primary race and the nominee to oppose Mr. Biden emerges.“Once Democratic donors become focused on the Republican primary and what’s at stake in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign will have no problem raising record amounts of money online,” said Lauren Miller, who served as digital director to Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaigns.Mr. Trump’s small-dollar percentage cannot be discerned until his joint fund-raising committees, into which most of his online solicitations direct money, report finances. They are not required to do so until July 31.Finance reports for the other Republican candidates reveal a party that, even more than Mr. Biden, is heavily reliant on large donors.Among the other Republican candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida reported $2.9 million from small donors, but that figure accounts for a mere 14 percent of what his campaign raised. The small-dollar percentages among other candidates ranged from 34 percent for former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to 2 percent for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is largely self-financing his campaign.Unlike the Obama and Trump campaigns, the Biden campaign didn’t begin with a digital fund-raising team in place. Instead, it has relied on the Democratic National Committee for its online solicitations. The campaign advertised last week that it was seeking a “director of email and SMS” to lead a division that typically would have more than a dozen people. The campaign recently hired a grass-roots fund-raising director, an official said Saturday.Mr. Biden’s campaign has plowed at least $3.3 million into advertising on Facebook and Google, according to data compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a marketing and communications agency. That figure is far more than any Republican candidate has spent on the platforms and suggests that the campaign is investing in its search for small donors.Two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who are overseeing his re-election campaign from the White House, this week formally blessed a super PAC, Future Forward, as the chief outlet for large sums of cash from supportive billionaires and multimillionaires. More

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      Biden and D.N.C. Announce $72 Million in Fund-Raising, a Substantial Haul

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      The figure far surpasses what Donald Trump raised, though it is well short of what Mr. Trump and his allies collected during the same period in the 2020 election cycle.President Biden’s campaign announced on Friday a combined fund-raising haul of more than $72 million from April through June alongside the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee, a figure that far surpasses what former President Donald J. Trump and other leading Republican presidential candidates have announced.The campaign said that along with the D.N.C. and the committee, it had a combined $77 million in cash on hand at the end of the reporting period. It did not disclose how that money was divided between the campaign and the committees.“While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager.While the fund-raising total is well short of the $105 million Mr. Trump and his allies collected during the same period in his 2020 re-election campaign, it is likely to serve as a salve for Democrats who have been privately gloomy about Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings. The finance numbers prove that whatever private misgivings Democrats have about Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the party’s donor class is fully on board.“This is proof positive that this party and its people and the country believe in Joe Biden and the accomplishments of this administration,” said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance chairman. “This reaffirms Joe Biden’s appeal to the working people and everyday heroes of this country.”At the dawn of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, he and the D.N.C. raised a combined $86 million between April and June 2011.Comparisons to Mr. Obama’s fund-raising efforts for the 2012 campaign are imprecise, however, because a 2014 Supreme Court decision and other legal changes allowed candidates and parties to form joint fund-raising committees that can accept single donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars.And in Mr. Trump’s re-election bid, he had a significant head start over Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump formally announced and began fund-raising for the 2020 race on the day he was inaugurated in 2017, while Mr. Biden, who at the end of March had $1.36 million left over in his campaign account, did not actively solicit money for his campaign until he made his run official in April.Mr. Biden began his 2024 campaign on April 25 — nearly a month after the fund-raising quarter began. His first major fund-raising event was in mid-May in New York, and he did not do any significant fund-raising himself during the heat of negotiations over extending the federal debt ceiling in late May.In June, Mr. Biden traveled to San Francisco and Chicago to meet with major donors before the close of the fund-raising period.Though the Biden campaign did not reveal many relevant details about its finances on Friday, it highlighted more than 394,000 donors and pointed to the success of online advertising programs during notable moments in the Republican primary campaign, like Mr. Trump’s televised town-hall event in May and the campaign announcement of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Half of the merchandise sold at the Biden campaign’s online store, the campaign said, features the “Dark Brandon” theme.Mr. Biden was never a prolific fund-raiser before he became the party’s de facto presidential nominee in the spring of 2020. Three other Democratic candidates raised more money than he did during the third quarter of 2019, well before his resurgence as the primary season unfolded.But once Democrats unified around Mr. Biden and against Mr. Trump while the pandemic gripped the country, Mr. Biden emerged as a magnet for donors large and small.“Just like 2020 was a record year, I imagine 2024 is going to be a record year,” said Alex Lasry, a former Senate candidate and D.N.C. member from Wisconsin who is the co-treasurer for the Democratic Governors Association.The Republicans vying to replace Mr. Biden will not have the benefit of raising money through their national committee until one emerges as the party’s nominee. Mr. Biden and supportive Democrats also have the advantage of not having to spend much money to get through what for the Republicans is expected to be a rough-and-tumble primary campaign.Mr. Trump said his campaign and his joint fund-raising committee had raised $35 million in the second quarter. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced he had raised about $20 million. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, raised $4.3 million for her campaign and an additional $3 million for her affiliated committees. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said his campaign had raised $6.1 million.Other Republican presidential candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman, have not released their fund-raising totals for the second quarter.Full reports on all federal candidates’ campaign finances, which will include spending and an indication of how much of their money has come from small donors, are due on Saturday to the Federal Election Commission.Rebecca Davis O’Brien More