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      In Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, Democratic Turnout Was High

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      Democratic turnout was high in the Tuesday primary for the State Supreme Court, ahead of a costly general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.MILWAUKEE — Eight months after the nation’s highest court made abortion illegal in Wisconsin, a liberal State Supreme Court candidate who made reproductive rights the centerpiece of her campaign won more votes than her two conservative opponents combined.The Wisconsin Supreme Court primary election on Tuesday was a triumph for the state’s liberals. In addition to capturing 54 percent of the vote in the four-way, officially nonpartisan primary, they will face a conservative opponent in the general election who was last seen losing a 2020 court election by double digits. It proved to be a best-case scenario for Wisconsin Democrats, who for years have framed the April 4 general election for the State Supreme Court as their last chance to stop Republicans from solidifying their grip on the state. Republicans took control of the state government in 2011 and drew themselves legislative maps to ensure perpetual power over the state’s Legislature, despite the 50-50 nature of Wisconsin politics.“If Republicans keep their hammerlock on the State Supreme Court majority, Wisconsin remains stuck in an undemocratic doom loop,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.Now, with an opportunity to retake a majority on the State Supreme Court that could undo Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions and throw out the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps, Democrats have the general election matchup they wanted. Janet Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz), a liberal circuit court judge in Milwaukee County, will face off against Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who lost a 2020 election for his seat by nearly 11 percentage points — a colossal spread in such an evenly divided state. Abortion rights demonstrators gathered in Madison, Wis., in January 2022. Judge Protasiewicz has sought to put abortion, which is now illegal in most cases in Wisconsin, at the center of the campaign. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTuesday’s results suggested that the state’s Democratic voters are more energized than Republicans. While the number of ballots cast statewide represented 29 percent of the 2020 presidential electorate, the turnout in Dane County was 40 percent of the 2020 total, a striking figure for a judicial election. In Dane County, which includes the liberal state capital of Madison, Joseph R. Biden Jr. took three out of every four votes.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Black Mayors: The Black mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.Wisconsin Supreme Court: Democratic turnout was high in the primary for the swing seat on the court, ahead of a general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.Mississippi Court Plan: Republican lawmakers want to create a separate court system served by a state-run police force for mainly Black parts of the capital, Jackson, reviving old racial divisions.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Republicans will also face the financial might of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which on Wednesday transferred $2.5 million to the Protasiewicz campaign. Justice Kelly did not spend a dollar on television advertising during the primary, but he was aided by $2.8 million in spending from a super PAC funded by the conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Democrats also helped Justice Kelly by spending $2.2 million to attack his conservative opponent, Jennifer Dorow, a circuit court judge in Waukesha County. Justice Kelly has said he expects Mr. Uihlein’s PAC, Fair Courts America, to spend another $20 million on his behalf for the general election. That money will not go as far as the cash transferred directly to the Protasiewicz campaign because candidates can buy television advertising at far lower rates than PACs. Wisconsin’s conservatives, who have controlled the court since 2008, fear a rollback not just of their favorable maps but also of a host of Republican-friendly policies that were ushered in while Scott Walker was governor, including changes to the state’s labor and voting laws. “She’s going to impart her values upon Wisconsin regardless of what the law is — does that seem like democracy to you?” said Eric Toney, the district attorney for Fond du Lac County, who was the Republican nominee for attorney general last year. “This isn’t Republicans and Democrats. It’s democracy and the rule of law that is on the line.”There is also the question of how Wisconsin Republicans coalesce after their second bruising primary contest in six months. Throughout the campaign, Justice Kelly declined to say that he would back Judge Dorow in the general election, while her supporters flatly said that he would lose the general election.It was a bit of a replay of the governor’s race last year, when bitter intraparty feelings remained after Tim Michels, with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in the primary. Ms. Kleefisch then did little to encourage her supporters to back Mr. Michels, who later lost the general election to Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.“With Michels and Kleefisch, there wasn’t that come-together-to-Jesus moment,” said Stephen L. Nass, a Republican state senator from Whitewater. “I think people realize now that was a mistake. It should have happened. And now we’ve got to do it.”Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was one vote away from overturning Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, deciding in a series of 4-to-3 decisions to reject Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate 200,000 votes from the state’s two largest Democratic counties.Judge Protasiewicz speaking at her primary night party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. She has openly declared her views in support of abortion rights and against Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps.Caleb Alvarado for The New York Times“What our Supreme Court did with the 2020 presidential election kind of turned people’s stomachs,” Judge Protasiewicz said in an interview on Tuesday over coffee and paczki, a Polish pastry served on Fat Tuesday. “We were one vote away from overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Judge Protasiewicz has pioneered what may be a new style of judicial campaigning. She has openly proclaimed her views on abortion rights (she’s for them) and the state’s legislative maps (she’s against them). That has appeared to offend Justice Kelly, who devoted chunks of his Tuesday victory speech to condemning the idea that Judge Protasiewicz had predetermined opinions about subjects likely to come before the court.“If we do not resist this assault on our Constitution and our liberties, we will lose the rule of law and find ourselves saddled with the rule of Janet,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Waukesha County. But Judge Protasiewicz has considerable incentives to put her views on hot-button topics front and center for voters. (She calls them “my values” to remain within a law that prohibits judicial candidates from plainly stating how they would rule on specific cases.) Democrats learned in last year’s midterm contests just how potent and motivating abortion is for their voters. Judge Protasiewicz, in the interview, recounted how voters had come to her campaign stops wearing sweatshirts bearing the words “Fair maps now.” “The voters are demanding more,” said Rebecca Dallet, a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, at the Protasiewicz victory party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. “People want to know more about their candidates. And I think there’s a way to communicate that without saying anything that shouldn’t be said about future cases.”Justice Kelly’s views are hardly opaque, either.Appointed to the court by Mr. Walker in 2016 before losing his re-election bid in 2020, Justice Kelly went on to work for the Republican National Committee as an “election integrity” consultant. He has the endorsement of the state’s three major anti-abortion groups.Justice Kelly speaking at a party on Tuesday night in Okauchee Lake, Wis. He said in an interview that only state legislators, not the State Supreme Court, could overturn Wisconsin’s abortion ban.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDuring an interview on Monday night in Sheboygan, Justice Kelly said only legislators could overturn the state’s 1849 abortion ban, enacted decades before women were allowed to vote. He said that complaints about the maps amounted to a “political problem” and that they were legally sound.Yet in the same interview, conducted in the back of a bar during a meeting of the Sheboygan County Republican Party, Justice Kelly declined to say whether he supported the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling in December 2020 that rejected Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the state’s presidential election results.“If I were to say it was decided correctly, then the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly doesn’t care about election integrity,’” he said. “If I say it was decided incorrectly, the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly favors overthrowing in presidential elections.’ And so I don’t think there’s any way to answer that question in a way that would not get overcome by extraneous noise.”Still, he said he had “no reason to believe” Wisconsin’s 2020 election was not decided properly.Since Justice Kelly lost in 2020, he and other Republicans have taken it as an article of faith that the wide margin of his defeat could be attributed to the Democratic presidential primary, which fell on the same day. Several Republicans asserted that Wisconsin’s Democratic Party leadership had colluded with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose presidential campaign was by then a lost cause, to remain in the race to lift the chances of the liberal candidate, Jill Karofsky.“It still pains me to admit that, as it turns out, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders combined can turn out more votes than little old me,” Justice Kelly said Monday.Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for the Sanders campaign, said in an interview that Mr. Sanders had indeed decided to suspend his campaign and concede to Mr. Biden days before Wisconsin’s April 2020 primary, but encouraged his supporters to vote in the primary anyway to influence the court election.One thing that is clear is that the next six weeks in Wisconsin politics will be dominated by the Protasiewicz campaign’s effort to place abortion rights at the center of the race. The issue will feature heavily in her television advertising, while Republicans will try to change the subject to crime — or anything else. “Everybody is very emotional about abortion, so that’s the tail that’s going to wag the dog,” said Aaron R. Guenther, a conservative Christian minister from Sheboygan. “It’s not what all of life is about, but it’s what the election is going to be about.”Dan Simmons contributed reporting from Okauchee Lake, Wis. More

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      The Forces Tearing Us Apart Aren’t Quite What They Seem

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      A toxic combination of racial resentment and the sharp regional disparity in economic growth between urban and rural America is driving the class upheaval in American partisanship, with the Republican Party dominant in working class House districts and the Democratic Party winning a decisive majority of upscale House seats.Studies from across the left-right spectrum reveal these and other patterns: a nation politically divided by levels of diversity; the emergence of an ideologically consistent liberal Democratic Party matching the consistent conservatism of the Republican Party, for the first time in recent history; and a striking discrepancy in the median household income of white majority House districts held by Democrats and Republicans.Four scholars and political analysts have produced these studies: Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, in “The Congressional Class Reversal,” “Socioeconomic Polarization” and “Education Polarization”; Oscar Pocasangre and Lee Drutman, of New America, in “Understanding the Partisan Divide: How Demographics and Policy Views Shape Party Coalitions”; and Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, in “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats are Moving Left.”Podhorzer’s analyses produce provocative conclusions.“Throughout the first half of the 20th century,” he writes in his class reversal essay, “Democrats were solidly the party of the bottom of the income distribution and Republicans were solidly the party of the top half of the income distribution.” In 1958, Podhorzer points out, “more than half of the members of the Democratic caucus represented the two least affluent quintiles of districts. Today, that is nearly the case for members of the Republican caucus.”The result? “In terms of income,” Podhorzer writes. “the respective caucuses have become mirror images of each other and of who they were from Reconstruction into the 1960s.”The shift is especially glaring when looking at majority-white congressional districts:From 1994 through 2008, Democrats did about equally well with each income group. But, beginning with the 2010 election, Democrats began doing much better with the top two quintiles and much worse with the bottom two quintiles. In 2020, the gap between the top two and the bottom two quintiles was 50 points. Since 2016, Democrats have been doing worse than average with the middle quintile as well.The income shift coincided with a deepening of the urban-rural partisan schism.“As recently as 2008,” Podhorzer writes, “40 percent of the Democratic caucus represented either rural or sparse suburban districts, and about a fifth of the Republican caucus represented majority-minority, urban or dense suburban districts. Now, the caucuses are sorted nearly perfectly.”As if that were not enough, divergent economic trends are compounding the urban-rural split.In his socioeconomic polarization essay, Podhorzer shows how median household income in white majority districts has changed.From 1996 to 2008, in majority white districts, there was virtually no difference in household income between districts represented by Republicans and Democrats. Since then, the two have diverged sharply, with median household income rising to $80,725 in 2020 in majority white districts represented by Democrats, well above the $62,163 in districts represented by Republicans.Podhorzer ranks congressional districts on five measures:1) Districts in the lowest or second lowest quintile (the bottom 40 percent) of both income and education; 2) districts in the lowest or second lowest quintile of income but in the middle quintile or better for education; 3) districts that are not in the other four measures; 4) districts that are either in the fourth quintile on both dimensions or are in the fourth for one and the fifth for the other; and 5) districts that are in the fifth quintile for both dimensions.Using this classification system, how have majority white districts changed over the past three decades?“For the entire period from 1996 through 2008,” Podhorzer writes,none of the white socioeconomic groups was more than 10 points more or less than average, although we can see the highest socioeconomic group trending more Democratic through that period. But everything changed dramatically after 2008, as the two highest socioeconomic groups rapidly became more Democratic while the lowest socioeconomic group became much less Democratic.In 1996, Democrats represented 30 percent of the majority white districts in the most educated and most affluent category; by 2020, they represented 86 percent. At the other end, in 1996, Democrats represented 38 and 42 percent of the districts in the bottom two categories; by 2020, those percentages fell to 12 and 18 percent.In examining these trends, political analysts have cited a growing educational divide, with better educated — and thus more affluent — white voters moving in a liberal Democratic direction, while whites without college have moved toward the right.Podhorzer does not dispute the existence of this trend, but argues strenuously that limiting the analysis to education levels masks the true driving force: racial tolerance and racial resentment. “This factor, racial resentment,” Podhorzer writes in the education polarization essay, “does a much, much better job of explaining our current political divisions than education polarization.”In support of his argument, Podhorzer provides data showing that from 2000 to 2020, the Democratic margin among whites with and without college degrees who score high on racial resentment scales has fallen from minus 26 percent to minus 62 percent for racially resentful non-college whites and from minus 14 percent to minus 53 percent among racially resentful college- educated whites.At the same time, the Democratic margin rose from plus 12 to 70 percent over those twenty years among non-college whites low in racial resentment; and from 50 to 82 percent among college-educated whites low in racial resentment.In other words, in contradiction to the education divide thesis, non-college whites who are not racially resentful have become more Democratic, while college-educated whites who are racially resentful have become more Republican, in contradiction to the education divide thesis.Podhorzer makes the case that “the unequal distribution of recovery after the economy crashed in 2008 has been profoundly overlooked,” interacting with and compounding divisions based on racial attitudes:Educational attainment was among the important characteristics associated with those increasingly prosperous places. Add to that mix, first, the election of a Black president, which sparked a backlash movement of grievance in those places left behind in the recovery, and, second, the election of a racist president, Donald Trump — who stoked those grievances. We are suffering from a polarization which provides an even more comprehensive explanation than the urban-rural divide.Changing racial attitudes are also a crucial element in Abramowitz’s analysis, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats are Moving Left,” in which he argues that “Democrats are now as ideologically cohesive as Republicans, which is a big change from a decade ago, when Republicans were significantly more cohesive than Democrats.”Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn 1972, on a 1 to 7 scale used by American National Election Studies, Abramowitz writes,Supporters of the two parties were separated by an average of one unit. The mean score for Democratic voters was 3.7, just slightly to the left of center, while the mean score for Republican voters was 4.7, to the right. By 2020, the distance between supporters of the two parties had increased to an average of 2.6 units. The mean score for Democratic voters was 2.8 while the mean score for Republican voters was 5.5.The ideological gulf between Democrats and Republicans reached its highest point in 2020, Abramowitz observes, “since the ANES started asking the ideological identification question.”While the movement to the right among Republican voters has been relatively constant over this period, the Democratic shift in an increasingly liberal direction has been more recent and more rapid.“The divide between supporters of the two parties has increased considerably since 2012 and most of this increase was due to a sharp leftward shift among Democratic voters,” Abramowitz writes. “Between 2012 and 2020, the mean score for Democratic voters went from 3.3 to 2.9 while the mean score for Republican voters went from 5.4 to 5.5.”By far the most important shift to the left among Democrats, according to Abramowitz, was on the question “Should federal spending on aid to Blacks be increased, decreased or kept about the same?” From 2012 to 2020, the percentage of Democrats saying “increased” more than doubled, from 31.3 to 72.2 percent. The surge was higher among white Democrats, at 47.5 points, (from 24.6 to 72.1 percent), than among nonwhite Democrats, at 31.2 points, from 41.1 to 72.3 percent.The growing ideological congruence among Democrats has significant consequences for the strength of the party on Election Day. Abramowitz notes that “For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.”The increase in loyalty among white Democratic identifiers, he continues, “is due largely to their increased liberalism because defections” to the right “among white Democrats”have been heavily concentrated among those with relatively conservative ideological orientations. This increased loyalty has also been apparent in other types of elections, including those for U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In 2022, according to data from the American National Election Studies Pilot Survey, 96 percent of Democratic identifiers, including leaning independents, voted for Democratic candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate.In their paper, “Understanding the Partisan Divide,” Pocasangre and Drutman of New America focus on race and ethnicity from the vantage point of an analysis of voting patterns based on the level of diversity in a district or community.“Republican districts,” they write,are some of the least ethnically diverse districts. But voters within these districts have diverse policy views, particularly on economic issues. Democratic districts are some of the most ethnically diverse districts. But voters within these districts are mostly in agreement over their views of both social and economic issues.Pocasangre and Drutman’s study reinforces the widespread finding “That Republican districts are predominantly white and, for the most part, less affluent than the national average. In contrast, Democratic districts are less white than the average but tend to be more affluent than average.”Pocasangre and Drutman find that the household income differences between Democratic and Republican-held seats continues to widen. From 2020 to 2022, the income in Democratic districts rose from $95,000 to $100,000 while in Republican districts it grew from $77,000 to $80,000, so that the Democratic advantage rose from $18,000 to $20,000 in just two years.Republican districts, the two authors continue, are “conservative on both social and economic issues, with very few districts below the national average on either dimension.” Democratic districts, in contrast, areprogressive on both policy domains, but have quite a few districts that fall above the average on either the social or economic dimension. In particular, of the 229 Democratic districts in 2020, 14 percent were more conservative than the national average on social issues and 19 percent were more conservative than the national average on economic issues.On average, competitive districts tilt Republican, according to the authors:Very few competitive districts in 2020 were found on the progressive quadrants of social and economic issues. Instead, of the 27 competitive districts in 2020, 70 percent were more conservative than the national average on economic issues and 59 percent were more conservative than the national average on social issues.These battleground districtslean toward the progressive side when it comes to gun control, but they lean toward the conservative side on all the other social issues. Their views on structural discrimination — an index that captures responses to questions of whether Black people just need to try harder to get ahead and whether discrimination keeps them back — are the most conservative, followed by views toward abortion.In addition, a majority of competitive districts, 57 percent, are in Republican-leaning rural-suburban communities, along with another 13 percent in purely rural areas. Democratic districts, in contrast, are 17 percent in purely urban areas and 52 percent in urban-suburban communities, with 31 percent in rural-suburban or purely rural areas.I asked Pocasangre about this tilt, and he emailed back:For now, most swing districts go for Republicans. The challenge for Democrats right now is that most of these swing districts are in suburbs which demographically and ideologically look more like rural areas where Republicans have their strongholds. So, Democrats do face an uphill battle when trying to make inroads in these districts.But, Pocasangre continued, “majorities in Congress are so slim that control of the House could switch based on idiosyncratic factors, like exceptionally bad candidates on the other side, scandals, changes in turnout, etc. Democrats need to get lucky in the suburbs, but for Republicans, they are theirs to lose.”Pocasangre and Drutman classified districts as Democratic, Republican, or competitive, based on the ratings of the Cook Political Report in the 2020 and 2022 elections: “Competitive districts are those classified as toss ups for each cycle while the partisan districts are those rated as solid, likely, or lean Democratic or Republican.”The Cook Report analysis of 2024 House races lists 20 tossup seats, 11 held by Democrats, 9 by Republicans, one of which is held by the serial fabulist George Santos, whose threatened New York seat is classified as “lean Democratic.” Eight of the 11 Democratic toss-ups are in three states, four in North Carolina and two each in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Four of the nine Republican tossups are in New York, along with two in Arizona.The changing composition of both Democratic and Republican electorates and the demographics of the districts they represent is one of the reasons that governing has become so difficult. One result of the changing composition of the parties has been a shift in focus to social and cultural issues. These are issues that government is often not well equipped to address, but that propel political competition and escalate partisan hostility.Perhaps most important, however, is that there now is no economic cohesion holding either party together. Instead, both have conflicting wings. For the Republicans it’s a pro-business elite combined with a working class, largely white, often racially resentful base; for the Democrats, it’s a party dependent on the support of disproportionately low-income minorities, combined with a largely white, college-educated elite.One might question why all these cultural and social issues have come so much to the fore and what it might take for the dam to give.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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      Jennifer McClellan Wins in Virginia and Will Be State’s First Black Woman in Congress

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      Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, will fill the seat held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died in November.Jennifer McClellan, a veteran Democratic state senator, won a special election for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making her the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.Ms. McClellan, 50, will fill the seat formerly held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 of colorectal cancer. She has cited Mr. McEachin as a mentor and was highly favored to win in the safely Democratic district, which stretches from Richmond, where she is based, to the rural counties along Virginia’s border with North Carolina.She defeated Leon Benjamin, a Republican Navy veteran and local pastor. Mr. Benjamin lost to Mr. McEachin by nearly 30 points in November.Virginia Democrats, including the party’s entire congressional delegation and many local and statewide officials, were quick to coalesce around Ms. McClellan’s candidacy during the primary in late December. Even though the accelerated election calendar set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin left her campaign with less than two weeks to turn out primary voters, she still won with nearly 85 percent of the vote, according to the state party.Ms. McClellan centered her campaign on legislation she spearheaded as a state senator — issues she championed, like voting rights, environmental protection and abortion access, often dovetailed with the national Democratic platform.“I passed legislation to protect our right to vote and our right to a clean environment. I led the fight for our reproductive freedom,” Ms. McClellan said in a television ad. “I’ll take that same fight with me to Congress.”In a January opinion essay for Essence magazine, Ms. McClellan also said that her identity as a Black female lawmaker would help shape her policy positions.“This election isn’t just about my lived experiences, it’s about elevating the experiences of so many whose voices have not been heard in our government,” she wrote.Ms. McClellan, a lawyer who is also the vice chair of the Virginia legislature’s influential Black caucus, has been frequently promoted as a rising star among state Democrats. This is her second run for statewide office: In 2021, she fell short in a crowded primary for governor.Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a statement on Tuesday night: “Jennifer McClellan’s history-making victory as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia will have ripple effects across the Commonwealth.”“Her leadership will expand upon the outstanding progress and advocacy for which we remember Congressman A. Donald McEachin — I cannot think of a better way to honor his life and legacy than with the new generation of leadership that Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan will bring to Washington.” More

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      Barbara Lee Running for Senate in California

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      Ms. Lee, the sole member of Congress to oppose a broad war authorization after the Sept. 11 attacks, is joining the race for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat.WASHINGTON — Representative Barbara Lee, who stood alone against authorizing military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and remains a leading antiwar voice in Congress, entered the 2024 Senate race in California on Tuesday, becoming the third prominent Democrat to run for the seat being vacated by Dianne Feinstein.Ms. Lee, 76, the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to Democratic leadership in the House, unveiled her Senate bid in a video that highlighted the racism she fought against in her youth and the struggles she faced as a single mother and a survivor of domestic violence.“No one is rolling out the welcome mat, especially for someone like me,” Ms. Lee said in the video. “I was the girl they didn’t allow in.”The announcement, which had been anticipated for weeks, has further set the stage for one of the most competitive and expensive Senate races in California in decades. Ms. Feinstein, 89, who was first elected in 1992, plans to retire at the end of her term. The race to replace her now includes Ms. Lee, who represents a district that includes Oakland; Representative Katie Porter from Orange County; and Representative Adam Schiff from Los Angeles.In an interview, Ms. Lee said she wanted her campaign to give a platform to missing voices, including on the burden of inflation on families, the high costs of child care and other issues.Senator Dianne Feinstein to RetireThe Democrat of California, who was first elected to the Senate in 1992, plans to serve out her term but will not run for re-election in 2024.Her Announcement: Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, made official a retirement that was long assumed by her colleagues, who had grown concerned about her memory issues.Key Moments: For generations, Ms. Feinstein has been an iconic American political figure. Here are nine key moments from her decades-long political career.The Race to Succeed Her: Ms. Feinstein’s retirement clears the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive contest for the seat she has held for three decades.The Candidates: Representatives Katie Porter and Adam B. Schiff did not wait for Ms. Feinstein to retire to start campaigning for her seat. Others could join soon.“There are so many issues that I have experience with that I don’t believe are being raised in the Senate as they should be,” she said. “Lived experience and representation in government not only matter for women or for people of color — they help strengthen the country.”Ms. Lee, who plans to hold a rally on Sunday in the San Francisco Bay Area, faces an uphill battle. She has not faced a competitive challenger in her 25 years in Congress. Her two Democratic opponents, Ms. Porter and Mr. Schiff, have more robust fund-raising networks and have made national names for themselves as antagonists of former President Donald J. Trump and his administration.Ms. Lee has long been known as the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing military action after the Sept. 11 attacks. She spent the last two decades trying to repeal that expansive war authorization, which presidents have used to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to carrying out military strikes elsewhere in the world.That antiwar stance has helped make Ms. Lee popular in her district and throughout the party, but she has not used it to build a fund-raising colossus. In the last three campaigns, she has raised a total of $5.83 million — less than a quarter of the $25.5 million Ms. Porter raised during just the 2022 campaign cycle.At the end of December, Ms. Lee had only $52,353 in her campaign account, according to the latest report filed with the Federal Election Commission. By comparison, Ms. Porter had $7.4 million, and Mr. Schiff — who became a prodigious fund-raiser after his turn as the lead Democrat and then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee during the Trump years — reported having $20.9 million.Still, high-dollar fund-raising has not always translated into success in California. And Ms. Lee has the advantage of having her base in the Bay Area’s Alameda County. When it comes to turnout, Alameda County is home to some of the most reliable Democratic primary voters in the state.Ms. Lee’s campaign could attract support from national Black leaders and women’s groups focused on increasing the number of Black women in office. There are no Black women currently serving in the Senate. Only two Black women have ever served in the chamber in its 233-year history: Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served one term in the 1990s, and Vice President Kamala Harris.A super PAC supporting Ms. Lee, called She Speaks for Me, has already been registered with the F.E.C.Ms. Lee said she was building a campaign similar to the one led by Karen Bass, who won election last year as the first female mayor of Los Angeles and the city’s second Black mayor. Ms. Bass’s operation, which relied not only on extensive advertising but also a strong network of volunteers and canvassers, helped her defeat a billionaire real estate developer.“Money is always big,” Ms. Lee said. But it wasn’t everything, she added. “We have to have a ground game. We have to inspire people to vote and to believe that I can deliver for them.”Her announcement video touches on the racial segregation she endured as a child and her hardships as a young woman, including having “an abortion in a back alley when they all were illegal” and escaping a violent marriage. It also seeks to remind voters of her legacy beyond the war-authorization vote, highlighting her work on L.G.B.T.Q. legislation and her push to make global AIDS funding a priority.Ms. Lee has written about her family’s experience in segregated El Paso, Texas, where she was born. Her mother almost died giving birth to her — she was denied admission into a hospital because she was Black and had to deliver Ms. Lee on a gurney in a hallway. As a child, Ms. Lee had to drink from separate water fountains and could not step inside one of El Paso’s most historic theaters. After moving to California’s San Fernando Valley, Ms. Lee became her high school’s first Black cheerleader after she successfully fought a discriminatory selection process that kept Black women out of its squads.“To do nothing has never been an option for me,” Ms. Lee said in the video.Ms. Lee went on to become one of the first students to integrate the University of Texas at El Paso. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, inspired Ms. Lee to go into politics. By then, Ms. Lee was a Black Panther volunteer and a single mother with two young boys pursuing a degree in social work at Mills College in Oakland. She went to work for Representative Ronald Dellums of Oakland and eventually became his chief of staff before serving in the California Legislature. She was elected to the House in 1998.The Senate race has already divided top Democrats.Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, has endorsed Mr. Schiff and called donors and supporters on his behalf. Ms. Porter has the support of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who was her professor at Harvard Law School. A crucial endorsement in the race could come from Senator Bernie Sanders, one of Ms. Lee’s allies and the winner of the state’s Democratic presidential primary in 2020.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Democrats Reckon With Biden 2024

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      Madeline Cass for The New York TimesDebora Wisneski, 51, of Omaha, Neb., gave Biden credit for “just making things work for people.” Good government, she said, “generally isn’t sensational.”But she added, “We’ve had a lot of the same people of a certain age group in power for a long time, and it is time to turn it over.” More

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      Here’s What the Other Republican Candidates Should Say to Trump

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know you’re keen to handicap — figuratively, but maybe also literally — the emerging field of Republican presidential hopefuls. First Donald Trump, now Nikki Haley, and soon, possibly, her fellow Palmetto State Republican, Senator Tim Scott. That’s on top of probable runs by Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, and possibly Brian Kemp of Georgia, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Chris Christie of … New Jersey.Who worries you the most — or repels you the least?Gail Collins: Well gee, Bret. Have to admit I have a tad of sympathy for Mike Pence, and maybe Brian Kemp, since they at least had the backbone to stand up for the idea that, um, this is a democracy where the winners of elections … win.Bret: With you on Kemp, who successfully fended off two election deniers: Trump and Stacey Abrams. Can’t say I feel much sympathy for Pence. You don’t get bonus points for doing the most basic part of your job, much less for standing up for democracy and the rule of law at the last possible minute.Gail: All of them are more or less opposed to abortion and sensible gun regulation, and many of them are in favor of tax cuts for the rich that would cut back on resources for the needy. And given Haley’s first campaign week, I’d predict that as we go along, all of them will be veering off to Crazy Town in order to compete with Trump.Hey, why are we worried about what I think? You’re in charge of Republicans. Tell me — which of these folks would you vote for against Joe Biden?Bret: A lot will depend on who is, or isn’t, willing to bend the knee to Trump. I’m waiting for one of them to say something along the following lines:“Donald, Republicans placed their faith in you when it seemed as if, for all of your flaws, you could still be a gust of fresh air for our party and the country. You turned out to be a Category 5 hurricane, leaving a wake of political destruction everywhere you went ….”Gail: Loving this scenario …Bret: “You destroyed our majority in the House of Representatives in 2018. You destroyed our hold on the White House in 2020. Your reckless, stupid, un-American and transparently false claims about the election helped cost us Georgia’s two Senate seats in 2021. Your garbage taste in primary candidates, based pretty much entirely on their willingness to suck up to you and regurgitate your lies, cost us the Senate again in the midterms along with the governorship of Arizona. You shame us with your dinner invitations to antisemites like Kanye West. And your petulant attacks on fellow Republicans — usually the ones who stand a chance of winning a general election — keep playing into the hands of Democrats.”Gail: Keep going!Bret: “Other than your usual lackeys, not to mention Lindsey Graham, there’s not a single Republican who has worked closely with you who has a good word to say about you in private, though some of them still flatter you in public. If, heaven forbid, you’re the Republican nominee next year, you’ll only be guaranteeing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a second term. You’re a loser, Donald: a sore loser, a serial loser, a selfish loser. You’re the biggest loser — except, of course, when it comes to your waistline. As was once said to Neville Chamberlain after he had put Britain in mortal danger, so I say to you: ‘In the name of God, go.’”I’ll struggle to vote for a candidate who can’t say something along these lines. If they can’t stand up to a bully in their own house, how can we expect them to stand up to Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?Gail: I believe I am hearing that you’re going to vote for Joe Biden.Bret: Hmm. Hopefully not. Most of my policy instincts are pretty much in line with people like Haley, Youngkin, Christie and even DeSantis, at least on his good days. I probably just won’t vote if no Republican can pass the decency test.Gail: Also trying to imagine the things that might happen on the Biden front that might reduce your openness to the Democratic option. Privately thinking: presidential health problems and Kamala Harris. But too early to talk about that now.Bret: Is it? OK, go on ….Gail: If we’re going to talk health, let’s go back to Senator John Fetterman, now hospitalized with depression. It seems at this point as if breaking in as a new senator and recovering from a stroke is too much of a to-do list. I remember recently, when we were on this topic, you were way more worried than I was about his condition. Did you have some advance knowledge he was in trouble or just a well-educated guess?Bret: Maybe a little bit of advance knowledge, plus personal experience. My father had a cerebral hemorrhage when he was 53, the same age Fetterman is now. He recovered physically but, like many survivors of brain injuries, suffered a crushing depression that was out of character with his sunny temperament. The book that helped him get through it was William Styron’s memoir of his own depression, “Darkness Visible.” The good news for my dad, who lived for 21 years after the hemorrhage, was that the darkness eventually lifted and he went on to better years, as I sincerely hope will be the case for the senator.Gail: Of course. Also hoping this will publicize the importance of getting professional treatment when depression strikes.Bret: Gail, returning to the Biden presidency again, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just reported that the federal government will take on nearly $19 trillion in new debt over the next decade. Doesn’t that, er, alarm you?Gail: Sure, and I hear it as a clarion call for tax reform — raising rates on the people who can afford to pay more. Don’t see any reason, for instance, that someone making a million dollars a year is only paying Social Security tax on the first $160,200.I suspect you’re hearing a somewhat different trumpet.Bret: Just a tad different!First thing, we need to turbocharge economic growth so that the debt will be a smaller fraction of the overall economy. Top of my list would be immigration reform to ease labor shortages and regulatory reform to make life easier for small businesses, like doing away with needless permitting requirements. Second, spending restraint, particularly when it comes to dumb subsidies like the ones for ethanol or tax credits for buying Teslas. Third, entitlement reform by way of gradually pushing up the retirement age for today’s younger workers.What am I missing — I mean, other than one or two screws?Gail: Bret, I have never accused you of a screw shortage, although there are some issues on which I’ve suggested some tightening might be nice.Bret: My mother says the same.Gail: We’re in agreement on opening the door to more immigration, so let’s move on to the rest, one by one.Reducing permit requirements for new businesses — you’d certainly be able to come up with some examples of overregulation there, but I’ll bet if somebody decides your neighborhood would be a good place to open a distillery in an old warehouse, you’d want to make sure there were some serious controls in place.Bret: Only for quality ingredients, flavor, complexity, age and smoothness.Gail: Tax credits for electric vehicles help move the country away from carbon-emitting gas guzzlers, and that’s great for the environment. Yeah, I wish it didn’t mean more money for Elon Musk, but if we want to eliminate all laws that benefit irritating rich guys, there’d be a lot of better places to start.Bret: On your earlier point, Gail, do you know you are supposed to complete a 250-hour training program to become a licensed manicurist in New York? That’s the kind of enterprise-defeating regulation I had in mind. As for electric vehicles, I can’t wait for someone to start fully tallying the environmental impact of, say, the lithium mines needed to produce their batteries. There’s just no such thing as “clean” energy.Gail: Of course you’re right that nothing is easy and we’re going to have to come back to energy issues a lot. But in the meantime, your suggestion for entitlement reform: It’s basically about raising the age for Social Security eligibility, right? Currently 67 for most workers, although you can qualify for a more modest package at 62. There’s nothing magic about 67, but I can think of a lot of jobs that’d be tough for people that age to keep doing.Bret: True.Gail: Looking out my window right now I see a bunch of guys climbing around the 12th story outside wall of an apartment building, refurbishing the stones and concrete so nothing falls down and bops a pedestrian. I’m sure some people in their late-60s would be great at the job, but I wouldn’t want them forced to take it on.Bret: Agree, and there’s no reason we can’t put together a reform of Social Security that allows people who make their living in physically demanding jobs to retire on the earlier side. It’s those of us who sit at desks most of the day whom I mainly have in mind.By the way, Gail, before we go, I can’t fail to mention the exceptional reporting by our news-side colleagues Jeremy Peters and Katie Robertson. It concerns the lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, and what it has uncovered — namely, that people like Tucker Carlson and other talking heads at the network knew perfectly well that Trump’s claims of a stolen election were bunk, but tried their damnedest to sow doubts about the election anyway. There’s a word for that: vile. There ought to be a circle in hell for it, too.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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      Biden Drawing Up a 2024 Playbook That Looks a Lot Like 2020’s

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      President Biden’s strategy is to frame the race as a contest between a seasoned leader and a conspiracy-minded opposition, while batting away concerns about his age.WASHINGTON — Forget the Wilmington basement. This time he will have a Rose Garden. And Air Force One and a big white mansion and all the other advantages of incumbency in a year when he is not forced by a pandemic to stick to streaming from downstairs.But as President Biden prepares to run for a second term, his team is mapping out a strategy for 2024 that in many other ways resembles that of 2020. Whether he ultimately faces Donald J. Trump again or another Republican trying to be like Mr. Trump, the president plans a campaign message that still boils down to three words: Competent beats crazy.Whether he can sell that theme again represents a singular challenge given surveys showing that the public has not exactly rallied behind him and harbors deep doubts about his age. When Mr. Biden kicks off his re-election campaign this spring, as is widely expected, he will be the oldest president in history but one of the lowest-rated in the modern period, presiding over an economy that is improving but unsettled and leading a party publicly behind him but privately angst-ridden. And rather than Mr. Trump, he may yet face a Republican challenger closer to the age of his son.The goal, according to interviews with White House officials, outside advisers, key allies and party strategists, is to frame the race as a contest, not a referendum on Mr. Biden. On one side, in this narrative, will be a mature, seasoned leader with a raft of legislation on his record aimed at winning back working-class Democrats. On the other will be an ideologically driven, conspiracy-minded opposition consumed by its own internal power struggles and tethered to a leader facing multiple investigations for trying to overturn a democratic election.“It’s incumbent on the president and his team to make sure the election is a choice,” said Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Democratic primary campaign. “It’s not going to be Joe Biden versus some mythical Democratic candidate. It’s going to be between Joe Biden and whoever the Republican nominee is.”Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster, said a rematch between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump would be the best scenario for the president. “At this point, President Biden just needs to seem like he is still very much with it and able to do the job and at that point his fate is largely out of his hands,” Mr. Ayres said. “He’s got to pray the Republicans blow themselves up again.”Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, in Keene, N.H., in 2019.Elizabeth Frantz for The New York TimesMr. Biden previewed his approach in his State of the Union address this month when he baited Republicans into a debate over Social Security and Medicare, then pressed his argument during appearances in Wisconsin and Florida. He used the nationally televised speech before Congress to highlight his legislative successes while focusing on pocketbook issues to reach out to voters upset at him over inflation.The trips that followed illustrated one important difference from 2020. No longer tied to the basement of his home in Delaware, the way he was by Covid-19 in 2020, Mr. Biden will travel frequently this year to deliver his message, aides said. As projects from the 2021 infrastructure package break ground, the president intends to cut a lot of ribbons around the country to take credit.Republican strategists are gambling that the physical toll of a full-scale, nonpandemic campaign effort will wear on an 80-year-old president. They plan to portray him as an aging, failed leader and a big-spending captive of the political left who drove up inflation and did little to defend the border against a record wave of illegal immigration.Which Republicans Are Eyeing the 2024 Presidential Election?Card 1 of 6The G.O.P. primary begins. More

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      We’re Not Asking the Right Question About Biden

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      There is no end of commentary gently — and not so gently — urging President Biden to act his age and step aside. And all else being equal, I share that sentiment. I don’t think we want a president ending his second term closer to 90 than he is to 80. But all else is never equal. And the commentaries that focus solely on Biden’s central weakness — his age — are missing his mounting strengths.One reason for my hesitance to declare Biden too old to run in 2024 is that I thought his age was a problem in 2020, too. Everything people say about his age now was true then. He was halting on the stump. He fumbled words and phrases. But I’d argue the problem was worse then.The linguistic stumbles were paired with an aging outlook. Biden reminisced fondly about his relationships with segregationist senators and seemed to think the bipartisanship of yesteryear was recoverable in the present. He wielded his connection to Barack Obama as both spear and shield — it was the case for his candidacy and his all-purpose defense against attacks. But Biden wasn’t Obama and the Senate of the 1970s is long gone. Biden’s problem in 2020, in other words, wasn’t just his age. It was that he seemed stuck in the past.But Biden proved — and keeps proving — doubters like me wrong. He won the Democratic primary, even though voters had no shortage of fresher faces to choose from. He won the general election handily, despite Donald Trump’s vaunted talents as an insult comic and a social media force. Voters seemed perfectly happy with Biden as a communicator.Campaigns are a (lengthy) sprint. But governing is a marathon. Last year, as Biden’s agenda languished, I found myself worried about his vigor again. Perhaps a younger, more energetic Biden would’ve proved better at managing relationships in the Senate. But then he passed a flurry of major bills — the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act — that amounted to a remarkable legislative record given the narrowness of Democrats’ congressional majorities. His party defied expectations in the midterm elections, gaining a bit more power in the Senate and holding losses down in the House. His State of the Union address was widely regarded as a success. At some point, those of us who keep declaring Biden too old to do the job need to reckon with what they’ve missed until now and might still be missing.So let me give it a try: Members of my profession have built our lives around our mastery of words, and so we overestimate the importance of eloquence. We like politicians who speak as if Aaron Sorkin is cranking out their dialogue. But voters don’t see malapropisms and run-on sentences and unfinished thoughts and occasional fabulism as the disqualifiers that we do. Ronald Reagan proved that, and George W. Bush proved it again; then Trump tried to teach us the same lesson, and now Biden is taking his turn.And Biden’s age has carried some quiet benefits. One is that he has deftly bridged Democrats’ generational and demographic gaps. The Democratic Party has in recent years become younger, more liberal, more educated and more online. Biden’s politics were formed in a past era, when blue-collar workers were still a core constituency and liberal was often an epithet.When Biden was younger and more combative, he might have sought to vanquish the left wing of his own party. Instead, he’s welcomed them in and run an administration that has achieved something of a synthesis. Much of Biden’s staff comes from the party’s younger, more liberal wing. His core group of senior advisers is made up of longtime loyalists, forged in the same era he was.The result has been a policy agenda that reflects today’s Democratic Party married to a political style that is more of a throwback. It would be best if Democrats had the kind of political talent that could transcend their party’s current divisions, but in the absence of that figure, a leader who can bridge them is no small thing. Biden is perhaps alone, at this moment, in being that leader.Age has also brought Biden, perhaps out of necessity, a sense of restraint. He does not delight in the sound of his own voice as he once did. He leaves space for others — in particular Republicans — to reveal themselves to voters. We are used to politicians who always want to be the center of attention. But that carries costs. Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, has shown that when presidents take strong positions on issues, they generate enormous backlash to the positions they take. Biden’s relative quiet is perhaps why his policy agenda has remained more popular than he is, and why there was so much room for voters to focus on the dangers of Republicans in the midterms.Then there is what Biden will have in 2024 that he did not have in 2020: a record of his own. He has passed the largest infrastructure, climate, science and technology investments in a generation. Unemployment is 3.4 percent — its lowest level since 1969. Inflation is coming down. (I think Biden’s 2024 chances will revolve around whether the labor market remains tight as inflation ebbs more than they will revolve around his age.) He has rallied a steady coalition against Russia and helped Ukraine keep its resistance alive. He has turned Trump’s inchoate anger toward China into a suite of policies to make America and its allies less dependent on Chinese manufacturing and to actively slow China’s technological progress. Biden hasn’t gotten any younger, but he has a purchase on the present and an argument about the future that he didn’t have in 2020, and one which no other Democrat (or Republican) has now.Typically, columns end on a point of certainty. Let me instead end on a point of uncertainty. Age or accident could fell Biden tomorrow. I could say that this is true for any of us, and it is, but the actuarial tables darken in one’s mid-80s, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. I too worry about how Biden will match up against a younger, more vigorous Republican than Trump. But there is a strength and purpose and substance to the re-election campaign he could run in 2024 that was absent in 2020. And I have underestimated Biden before. Age matters, but so, as Biden keeps showing, does much else.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