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      ‘Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President’: Our Columnists Weigh In

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      With candidates entering the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists and Opinion writers are starting a scorecard assessing their strengths and weaknesses. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any actual caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of accepting the party’s nomination next summer. We begin with Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, who announced her bid for the Republican nomination on Tuesday.How seriously should we take Nikki Haley’s candidacy?David Brooks In a normal party, she would have to be taken seriously. She’s politically skilled, has never lost an election, has domestic and foreign policy experience, has been a popular governor, is about as conservative as the median G.O.P. voter and is running on an implicit platform: Let’s end the chaos and be populist but sensible. The question is, is the G.O.P. becoming once again a normal party?Jane Coaston To borrow a phrase, we should take it extremely literally but not seriously. She is indeed running for president. But Nikki Haley will not be the next president of the United States of America.Ross Douthat Much less seriously than the likely front-running candidacies of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, and somewhat less seriously than the likely also-ran candidacy of Mike Pence. Which means that barring a scenario where at least two of those three men don’t catch fire, not particularly seriously at all.David French The Republican race is best summed up as two individuals (Trump and DeSantis) and a field. Maybe a third candidate can emerge from the field, and maybe that person can be Haley — a decent reason to take her seriously — but we need to see evidence of independent traction.Michelle Goldberg Not very. I can’t imagine who she thinks her constituency is. A video teasing her candidacy starts with a spiel by the neocon Reagan official Jeane Kirkpatrick. Talk about nailing the zeitgeist!Rosie Gray Haley handled the Trump years more deftly than most. She never allowed herself to be dragged into anything too embarrassing or scandalous and didn’t fall victim to vicious Trump world back-stabbing. But she probably isn’t the kind of candidate who can get through a Republican presidential primary. Shrewd as she has been, she can’t plausibly reinvent herself as a 2023 outrage merchant.Liz Mair She could be the next vice president. That’s the reason to take her seriously.Mike Madrid I don’t see Haley as a serious candidate for the presidency or the vice presidency. She brings nothing demographically or ideologically to the G.O.P. that it doesn’t already have. But it is a serious attempt to maintain her relevance in the Republican hierarchy as a nonwhite woman willing to take a cabinet position or appointment to reassure primary voters that they aren’t actually a bunch of monolithic white people.Daniel McCarthy The interventionist foreign policy that Ambassador Haley has made her signature theme in recent years is unlikely to resonate in an America First party.Bret Stephens Seriously. Last month, Haley gave a speech to an association of auto dealers — the kind of audience any G.O.P. candidate needs to win over. Someone who was in attendance told me she got three thunderous standing ovations. It’s said of Ron DeSantis that the closer you get to him, the less you like him. Haley is the opposite. She still has work to do to win over other core Republican constituencies (above all, evangelicals and Trump sympathizers), but nobody should underestimate her appeal. She looks like a winner to a party that’s desperate to win.What matters most about her as a presidential candidate?Brooks If Trump and DeSantis compete in the Trumpy lane, there will be room for a normie candidate to oppose them. She’s more charismatic than Pence or Mike Pompeo, more conservative than Larry Hogan or Chris Sununu. Her problem is South Carolina. She’ll get no credit for winning that early primary, and it will be devastating to her campaign if she loses.Coaston Haley ought to be an interesting candidate — daughter of immigrants, former governor of a state experiencing big population shifts, a U.N. ambassador — but she seems to have no real basis to run for office. She’s not a populist, and she’s not a culture warrior.Douthat Her possible ability to split off a (small) piece of the non-Trump vote in early primaries, helping him to the nomination if those primaries are extremely close.French She’s a conventional Republican. If no one like her can gain traction, it will be a decisive signal that the Republican base has fundamentally transformed and traditional ideological conservatives are at best an imperfect fit for the G.O.P.Goldberg It will be interesting to see if Trump tries to destroy her right away as a warning to others, or holds off since he’s likely to fare best in a fractured field, with Haley pulling enough votes away from DeSantis to give the nomination to Trump. The more candidates there are, the more likely Trump is to win with a plurality.Gray Not so long ago, the Republican National Committee was predicting continued electoral doom unless the party expanded beyond its mostly white base. So Marco Rubio threw himself into the failed Gang of Eight immigration bill; Paul Ryan went on a listening tour of poor urban communities; and Haley had the Confederate flag removed from the State Capitol grounds. For a time, Trump seemed to upend any hope that these savvy rising stars had of one day reaching the White House. Haley’s candidacy will test that assumption, and that’s why she matters. Did Trump stamp out the ambitions of her generation for good, putting an end to the dream of a friendlier, more moderate Republican Party? Or did he merely put those ambitions on hold?Madrid Over 70 percent of Republican primary voters are white, so her candidacy will test the viability of a nonwhite candidate.Mair She has foreign policy and national security experience, which DeSantis does not. Trump can claim to have that kind of experience, but for many people, all it amounts to is keeping classified documents he shouldn’t have had, coddling up to dictators and autocrats, being softer on China than a lot of Republicans would like and other national security failures. Less substantively, she’s a woman of color, and Republican primary voters would love a chance to show that there are indeed nonwhite people and women who think just like they do (this is something a lot of primary voters are a bit neurotic about, and Haley knows it).McCarthy She’s the running mate they wish John McCain had in 2008, the kind of Republican the party thought it needed to appeal to a less white, more educated and firmly feminist America. But Trump changed the dream of the G.O.P.’s destiny: appealing to the working class, rather than to a wider ethnic profile within the class of educated professionals, is what Republicans voters now expect. Haley is too representative of the party elite’s desires to be seen as a plausible tribune of the working class.Stephens If the subtext of a DeSantis candidacy is that he is Trump shorn of the former president’s personal flaws, the subtext of Haley’s is that she is the Republican Party shorn of the former president. A woman, a minority, an immigrant background, a self-made person: Without having to say a word, she embodies everything Trump’s vision of America isn’t. She also would be less vulnerable to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about her vision for America?Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.Coaston I would ask … what vision for America? What exactly is Haley offering that is distinctly different from the Generic Republican that Donald Trump (whom she reportedly asked first before deciding to announce her candidacy) became? She is selling the idea that she is somehow both distinct enough to separate herself from the former president she continues to support and similar enough to win the nomination with this Republican Party. I don’t buy it.Douthat She has generally offered herself as the candidate of Reaganite bromides and as a potential vehicle for members of the Republican gentry who wish the Trump era had never happened but don’t particularly want to have any unpleasant fights about it. That’s a vision that’s neither inspiring nor unsettling; it’s just dull and useless and unlikely to take her anywhere.French Haley is right about the most important issues facing the free world. The United States should aggressively support Ukraine, and it should aggressively compete with China and deter Chinese aggression. What’s unsettling about her is that, like many Republicans, she never seemed to figure out quite how to handle Trump and constantly flipped and flopped between confrontation and accommodation. Yet her vacillation may be the key to her potential viability. Her back-and-forth on Trump mirrors the back-and-forth of many rank-and-file Republicans. They could perhaps see themselves in her.Goldberg She’s such a hollow figure that it’s impossible to say what her vision is. “What I’ve heard again and again is that Haley’s raw skills obscure an absence of core beliefs and a lack of tactical thinking,” Tim Alberta wrote in a great profile of her in 2021. She’d most likely pursue a hawkish foreign policy, though, so she could be the candidate of those nostalgic for the George W. Bush administration.Gray Haley might be the last person in American politics still quoting Sheryl Sandberg. “We are leaning in,” Haley told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership.” But at 51, she’s part of a political generation that can hardly be considered “new.” Her candidacy feels trapped in the post-Tea Party, mid-Obama administration era when she rose to prominence.Madrid Haley will be the first of many candidates trying to connect with Trump’s populist base while also resurrecting the establishment infrastructure that capitulated to him. If she can explain that she was against him before she was for him and now is against him again in a way that wins over voters and reassures party leaders, it may be inspiring for the sliver of Republicans who still maintain the party can return to the Reagan-Bush days, and unsettling for everyone else.Mair It’s not clear to me what her vision is for America. She has alternated between praising and defending Trump and Trumpism and critiquing him and it.McCarthy What’s unsettling is that her vision is a prepackaged failure. She was a moderately conservative governor and something of a soft libertarian at a time when an aggressive neoconservatism was dominant in the G.O.P. But when she took to the national stage she proved unable to distinguish between the tough realism of Jeane Kirkpatrick and the tough-sounding but inept idealism of the George W. Bush administration. She imbibed Robert Kagan when she should have studied George Kennan.Stephens There are two dueling G.O.P. visions for America: the “Fortress America” vision, of a nation besieged by undesirable immigrants and undermined by undesirable globalists, and a “City on a Hill” vision, of a nation whose powers of attraction are its greatest strength. Haley strikes me as leaning much closer to the second vision, at least within the broader parameters of conservative thinking.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Haley candidacy?Brooks Every wing of the party would accept her, at least as its second choice, if the top choice falters. It’s not an inspiring strategy, but it has worked for others — not the least of which a certain A. Lincoln.Coaston Remember when Republicans seemed hinged? Nikki Haley remembers.Douthat A charismatic female candidate with a vague platform and banal record is all we need to take a time machine back to the politics of 1988.Goldberg She’s canny, poised and doesn’t come off as crazy, so could be formidable in the general election.French She can beat Joe Biden!Gray Haley has already been out there making her own elevator pitch for her candidacy: “We have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president,” she told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.”Madrid Nikki Haley has the establishment experience to beat the establishment.Mair No one should underestimate the appeal of a nonwhite, female conservative candidate to old, conservative, white, die-hard G.O.P. primary voters, and she’s not another white conservative dude.McCarthy Did you ever wish Hillary Clinton was a Republican? Now she is!Stephens If she can win the nomination, she will win the general election.On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank Nikki Haley’s potential as a presidential candidate? Share your ranking — and your reasoning for it — in the comments. (1 means she will drop out early; 10 means she has a strong chance of accepting the nomination.)David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) has covered the conservative movement for more than a decade as a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic.Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.Liz Mair (@LizMair) has served as a campaign strategist for Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry. She is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”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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      Democrats Meddle Again in a G.O.P. Primary, This Time Down-Ballot

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      In a race for a State Senate seat in Wisconsin, Democrats are replicating their midterm strategy of elevating far-right Republicans in hopes of beating them in the general election.Last year, Democrats spent millions of dollars elevating far-right candidates in Republican primary contests for governor and Congress — betting, it turned out correctly, that more extreme opponents would lose general elections.Now Wisconsin Democrats are trying to do it again, this time with mail and TV ads before a Republican primary in a special election for a State Senate seat that carries ramifications far beyond the district in suburban Milwaukee.The Democrats are helping a far-right election denier who has become a pariah within her party in her race against a less extreme, but still election-denying, conservative. They hope that with a more vulnerable opponent, Democrats can win a seat held for decades by Republicans and deny the G.O.P. a veto-proof majority in the gerrymandered chamber.“Janel Brandtjen is as conservative as they come,” reads a postcard sent to Republican voters from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which calls her “a conservative pro-Trump Republican.”The Feb. 21 primary, and the April 4 general election to follow, will serve as the latest test of how much appetite Republican voters have for the flavor of election denialism that fueled the party’s grass roots after former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss.The twist in the Wisconsin race is that both leading Republican candidates took significant public steps to try to overturn Mr. Trump’s defeat. One of them, however, Ms. Brandtjen, a state representative from Menomonee Falls, has so alienated members of her own party that she was kicked out of the State Assembly’s Republican caucus, leaving Democrats giddy about the prospect of facing her in a special election for a battleground district.“If Janel Brandtjen makes it through the primary, it’s going to allow people in Wisconsin to have a clear choice of what it is that they’re voting for in the election in April,” said Melissa Agard, the Democratic leader in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate, who said the race would be more winnable for Democrats if Ms. Brandtjen, pronounced Bran-chen, triumphed in the primary.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.A Chaotic Majority: The defining dynamic for House Republicans, who have a slim majority, may be the push and pull between the far right and the rest of the conference. Here is a closer look at the fractious caucus.A New Kind of Welfare: In a post-Roe world, some conservative thinkers are pushing Republicans to move on from Reagan-era family policy and send cash to families. A few lawmakers are listening.Flipping the Pennsylvania House: Democrats swept three special elections in solidly blue House districts, putting the party in the majority for the first time in a dozen years by a single seat.Some Republicans agree.The Republican State Leadership Committee, the leading national organization that backs G.O.P. state legislative candidates, is broadcasting digital ads promoting State Representative Dan Knodl before the primary. And Country First, a political action committee started by former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — who retired from Congress after voting to impeach Mr. Trump — has bought digital ads calling Ms. Brandtjen “an embarrassment.”Like Ms. Brandtjen, Mr. Knodl was among the 91 state legislators from several states who signed a letter urging Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. He shares Ms. Brandtjen’s vehement opposition to abortion rights.Ms. Brandtjen, who said in December 2020 that there was “no doubt” Mr. Trump had won that year’s election in Wisconsin, became a favorite of the former president’s in 2021 after being appointed to lead the Wisconsin Assembly’s elections committee.From that perch, she amplified a range of false claims about the 2020 election; invited conspiracy theorists to testify before the panel; sought to initiate an Arizona-style review of Wisconsin’s ballots; and appeared at rallies aiming to pressure her Republican colleagues to withdraw the state’s 2020 electoral votes — an impossible act under the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Trump praised her in his official statements and had her speak at a rally for midterm candidates he held in Wisconsin in August 2022.But Ms. Brandtjen, a longtime figure in local conservative politics dating to her time two decades ago as a gadfly at Menomonee Falls village board meetings, did not fully draw the ire of her fellow Republicans until she endorsed the Trump-backed primary opponent of Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, who has been the state’s most powerful Republican official since 2019, when Democrats took over the governor’s office.After Mr. Vos narrowly prevailed, he removed her as the elections committee chairwoman and organized his fellow Assembly Republicans to expel Ms. Brandtjen from the party’s caucus.Asked Monday about his preference in the State Senate special election, Mr. Vos replied in a text message: “Lol. Let me quote Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ‘normal vs crazy.’ I would vote normal.”A third Republican candidate in the race, Van Mobley, the president of the village of Thiensville, was among just a handful of Wisconsin elected officials who backed Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. He is far less known in the district than Ms. Brandtjen and Mr. Knodl, a bar owner from Germantown. None of the three Republican candidates responded to messages.The Democratic candidate, Jodi Habush Sinykin, a lawyer who is unopposed in her primary, is running television ads aimed at raising Ms. Brandtjen’s profile.A parade of women in Ms. Habush Sinykin’s ads call Ms. Brandtjen “too conservative” and cite her opposition to abortion rights and her citation as “pro-life legislator of the year” from a Wisconsin organization that opposes abortion rights.In all, Ms. Habush Sinykin has spent $166,000 on advertising, while neither Ms. Brandtjen nor Mr. Knodl has bought any television or digital ads, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Ms. Habush Sinykin declined a request to be interviewed about the campaign and her advertisements. Democratic polling of the race suggests that she could beat Ms. Brandtjen in a general election but would have a far tougher race against Mr. Knodl.“We’re continuing to highlight Janel Brandtjen and how she would be a disaster in the State Senate,” said Joe Oslund, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “We’re going to continue to put her extremism front and center for voters.”Wisconsin Republicans hold a 21-11 advantage in the State Senate after the state adopted new G.O.P.-drawn legislative maps ahead of the midterm elections. If a Republican wins the special election to the Senate, the party will hold a veto-proof majority and will have the votes to impeach Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, his appointees to state cabinet posts and state judges.Like many once solidly Republican suburban areas, the district, which covers parts of four counties in Milwaukee’s northern and northwestern suburbs, has trended toward Democrats in recent years. Mr. Trump won the district by 12 percentage points in 2016, but that advantage narrowed to five points in 2020. In 2018, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, won the district by 20.5 points, but last year the G.O.P. nominee for governor, Tim Michels, carried it by just four points.The seat opened up when Alberta Darling, a 78-year-old moderate Republican who was first elected in 1992, announced her retirement in November. Mr. Evers praised her as “a diligent leader who’s always carried herself with poise, class, and grace.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Will Trump and Biden Gang Up on DeSantis?

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      If President Biden sometimes sounded a lot like Donald Trump during his State of the Union address, boasting about a record of economic nationalism, the imitation may soon run the other way. Biden’s attacks on congressional Republicans for being allegedly eager to cut Medicare and Social Security were a clear preview of how he hopes to run against the G.O.P. in 2024. But they were also a possible preview of how Trump may try to reclaim his own party’s nomination — by reprising his 2016 campaign’s rejection of Tea Party austerity and attacking potential rivals (which means, primarily, Ron DeSantis) as libertarian dogmatists who don’t care about the middle class.That strategy was previewed a bit recently by Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Shelby Talcott in Semafor. Their subject was the so-called Fair Tax, a longstanding fascination for certain right-wing activists that proposes to replace the U.S. tax code with a sales tax. This would yield certain advantages in economic efficiency; it would also result in a dramatic tax increase on the middle class.In the heyday of the Tea Party, when implausible policy proposals were all the rage, the Fair Tax was endorsed by many of today’s 2024 hopefuls: by Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and, yes, by DeSantis himself. Which gives Trump a license to accuse all these potential rivals of supporting a middle-class tax hike — and the Semafor writers quote a Trumpworld source basically promising an attack along those lines, to force Trump’s rivals to “answer for what they supported and what they’ve advocated in the past.”That same quote could easily apply to the proposed entitlement changes that many Republicans (again, including DeSantis) embraced in the same era, under the influence of Paul Ryan’s budget blueprints. Those proposals were serious rather than crankish, if ill-timed for a moment when there was more fiscal space than deficit hawks believed. But they were also seriously unpopular, and Trump’s discarding of them was crucial to his success in 2016. And having discarded them then, he’s well positioned to go after DeSantis and others now — in imitation of not only his prior campaign but also, as National Review’s Philip Klein points out, the strategy pursued by Mitt Romney in the 2012 primaries, when he sank Rick Perry’s candidacy in part by blasting Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”This means that the non-Trump G.O.P. can expect to spend the looming presidential race facing similar attacks from the Biden White House and the Trump campaign. Making the similarity too obvious could backfire on Trump. But the peril for the G.O.P. is that even if Trump can’t beat DeSantis by harping on his past positions, he will still be reinforcing for swing voters the liberal narrative that (non-Trump) Republicans care only about the rich.In one sense that narrative shouldn’t be too hard for DeSantis to counteract, since his record as governor of Florida is more moderate than libertarian — with increases in teacher pay, support for environmental protection and so on — and it’s not clear that voters care that much about long-ago votes if they aren’t tied to specific policy proposals now.But the question is what exactly DeSantis’s more of-the-moment policy proposals would be, in a fiscal landscape constrained by inflation for the first time in decades. There’s certainly a scenario in which he abjures austerity and embraces pro-family and industrial-policy spending, maybe even finds a few modest tax increases that own the professional-class liberals, and thereby evades the Trump-Biden pincer.But it won’t be easy to pull off. Especially because part of Trump’s strength has always been that he doesn’t need the Republican Party’s donor class in the way that normal politicians do, while DeSantis will need to rally that class if he’s going to dethrone the former president. And the price of their support will be, most likely, something that isn’t particularly popular: not an idea from the fringes like Fair Tax or a big entitlement overhaul proposal, necessarily, but at the very least a budget-eating tax cut that probably won’t be populist in any way.Again, 2012 is an interesting precedent. Part of what killed Romney in that general election was that even though he championed Social Security against Perry and declined to embrace any crankish tax proposals, he still ended up saddled with a tax overhaul plan that donors and activists liked but that was easy for the Democrats to attack.It’s not hard to imagine a DeSantis candidacy that rallies the establishment and defeats Trump only to end up in a similar general‌-‌election position. Which suggests one way in which Trump’s populist attacks on other Republicans could actually be helpful to the party’s chances. They’ll leave no doubt, for DeSantis or any other figure, about the political weaknesses of traditional right-wing policymaking. And they might force an early adaptation that otherwise could come, like Romney’s attempted pivots in 2012, as too little and too late.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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      Joe Biden Is Ready to Go

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      WASHINGTON — Everyone is frantically hunting for clues about whether Joe Biden will run again.His State of the Union speech was dissected for intimations. When he kept using the phrase “finish the job,” was that a hint?Where is Daniel Craig’s “Knives Out” detective when we need him?Asked about his decision in a Telemundo interview on Thursday, the 80-year-old president replied, “I’m just not ready to make it.”When my colleagues Frank Bruni and Michelle Goldberg, and I write “Hey, Joe, Don’t Give It a Go” columns suggesting that he bow out on top, is the president listening and pondering what we say?Nah. Guess what, political sleuths? It’s not really a Scooby-Doo mystery. No need to consult a soothsayer and tremble on the edge of your seats.Joe Biden is running. And that’s no malarkey.He has no intention of following Lear’s lead, “to shake all cares and business from our age/Conferring them on younger strengths, while we/Unburdened crawl toward death.”In his vertiginous career, Biden has felt the sensation of power slipping away, and he didn’t like it. Let Lear howl at the moon; Joe wants to strut in the sun (with his shades).I’ve spent my career studying Biden and other pols who are grasping for power, clinging to power, brandishing power and squandering power. And I can tell you this: Nobody likes to give up power. Donald Trump is the grotesque example: trying to overturn the government to keep his grip on it.Congress and the Supreme Court are replete with candidates for early-bird dinners. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a huge mistake by staying on the court until the end, bequeathing us Amy Coney Barrett and a reversal of Roe. Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Grassley, both 89, are still in the Senate.Biden thought he could be president from the moment he hit town as a new senator in 1973. People debate now whether he’s too old to be president; but back then, he was too young to be a senator. He was 29 when he was elected, turning 30 and reaching eligibility shortly after the election.The handsome young senator told Washingtonian magazine in 1974 that he understood why he was “a hot commodity”: his youth and his “tragic fate” — his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash shortly after his election. The magazine compared him to “Robert Redford’s Great Gatsby in natty pinstriped suits.”“I know I can be a good president,” he said, adding, “My family still expects me to be there one of these days.”The neophyte was very self-confident, while blithely conceding his flaws. “I’m not the kind of guy everyone likes,” he said. “My personality either grabs you or it doesn’t.”His quest was a bumpy one. I wrote the stories about cribbing from Neil Kinnock and Robert Kennedy that helped knock Biden out of the 1988 race. I also wrote about his well-meaning but ham-handed performance during the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.But just when it seemed as though Biden’s best days were behind him, Barack Obama chose him for a running mate, seeking foreign policy experience. And in a well-meaning but clumsy move that actually turned out to be brilliant, Vice President Biden managed to bring President Obama and most of the country along to the idea of embracing gay marriage.Obama shoved Biden aside for Hillary, which turned out to be a huge mistake that resulted in the execrable Trump. After being treated dismissively by the Obama team, Biden, Rocky-like, finally won the presidency, nearly half a century after he first talked about it.After that slog, he’s not about to kiss it away because some polls and pundits fret about his age.He thinks he’s doing great. There’s a spring in his step because he feels that he has outwitted the dimwitted Republicans. On Tuesday night, he made them look rude — with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fur flying — and put them on the defensive. Republicans spent the whole week trying to get out from under his criticism that they always want to cut Social Security. But it’s a hard criticism to rebut because Republicans always want to cut Social Security.Biden has gone bigger than Obama, who was supposed to be the transformational one. The president has pushed big job-creating bills and gone after Big Pharma and big corporations. (He has also gone smaller with some crowd-pleasers, like promising to get rid of junk fees on hotel bills.) Unlike Obama, who had an aversion to selling his policies, this guy loves a good groundbreaking.In the State of the Union, the president began trying to reconnect his party to its blue-collar roots. Hillary thought she could win in 2016 with the new Democratic coalition of minorities, the elite and students. She refused to give a speech at Notre Dame and never bothered to go to Wisconsin.Wisconsin was Biden’s first stop Wednesday in his post-State of the Union blitz. He remains unapologetically Scranton Joe.So, we know, Joe. You’re in the race.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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      Is Biden Too Old to Run Again?

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      More from our inbox:What to Do About America’s Huge DeficitThe Purpose of TaxesTalking to the Police Pool photo by Saul LoebTo the Editor:Re “Biden’s a Great President Who Shouldn’t Run Again,” by Michelle Goldberg (column, Feb. 7):Ms. Goldberg regrettably parrots the age prejudice coming from the right and, more slyly, from the left. Our culture values a package’s wrappings over its contents, and this is at play here.If we had not begun to confuse Hollywood entertainment with Washington governance decades ago, we would prize the elusive attributes of “character” and “wisdom” and “experience” and vote accordingly, regardless of age.We have been fortunate to have Joe Biden at the helm at this time of multiple threats: war, climate, Covid, the economy, Donald Trump’s weakening of our governmental institutions. Mr. Biden’s political instincts have re-established our stature on the world stage, an enormous feat that insular Americans ought to credit and applaud.Who has both the domestic and international savvy of Mr. Biden at this critical juncture? I do not believe that we should elect someone to the presidency in 2024 who has to learn on the job.Americans tend to embrace change for change’s sake. We need to resist this tendency and instead choose substance and experience.Dorothy NelsonNew OrleansTo the Editor:I am 84 years old. I think President Biden is an excellent president, but I do not want him to run for re-election. If he does, I will vote for a younger candidate in the primary.There is a time, a season, for everything. There is a time when those of us who are old should step aside to allow our younger colleagues to step up. We can still give our opinions on public policy, but we should retire from active duty.Please, President Biden, do not run for re-election.Priscilla AlexanderNew YorkTo the Editor:Michelle Goldberg writes, “In some ways, the more sympathetic you are to Biden, the harder it can be to watch him stumble over his words, a tendency that can’t be entirely explained by his stutter.”As a lifelong stutterer I can say that stuttering is more than just struggling with awkward syllables. Those of us so afflicted can often find our mouths saying things that our brain is not totally connected with. Stumbling over words can be entirely explained by stuttering.Jerome FreedmanBurlington, Mass.To the Editor:I agree with Michelle Goldberg that President Biden has had a many great accomplishments as president but that his age should preclude him from running again, as supported by common sense and polling. The problem is finding an electable alternative.Ms. Goldberg says the Democrats have a “deep bench” but offers only Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has a limited national profile, and Senator Raphael Warnock, who has been a senator for only two years and only narrowly beat the very flawed candidate Herschel Walker.However, very experienced candidates can be found in the U.S. Senate. Such a list would include Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen and Sheldon Whitehouse. I don’t understand why they don’t get more mention as possible great successors to Mr. Biden.Richard GoetzDelray Beach, Fla.To the Editor:A president’s legacy is a precious commodity. President Biden could be the rare one-termer who is looked back upon with affection and admiration. However, his apparent inability to recognize, in Michelle Goldberg’s words, that “the time has come for a valediction” doesn’t mean that Democrats must sit on their hands.A primary challenge by one of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls could test the proposition that competing against the incumbent for the 2024 nomination would be a bad thing for the party or the country.Someone like Senator Amy Klobuchar, for example, could mount a positive challenge that extols the accomplishments of President Biden’s first term (successes for which she can share claim) without explicitly calling into question his competence or fitness for a second term. Her focus in the Senate on the enforcement and enhancement of antitrust law offers the potential to draw a distinction with Republicans’ deference to big business while building on Mr. Biden’s long commitment to organized labor.The numbers do not lie. Americans are dissatisfied with the political status quo and ready for a change. A challenge to President Biden could address this discontent without dismissing the accomplishments of the man who has led the country so ably during difficult times.After a career in public service that has spanned nearly 50 years, I say, let the Biden legacy begin.Rob AbbotCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.What to Do About America’s Huge Deficit Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photograph by TokenPhoto, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Answer to America’s Debt Problem,” by Binyamin Appelbaum (Opinion, Jan. 28):Tax increases as a strategy for deficit reduction would be dead on arrival.Mr. Applebaum rightly identifies the federal deficit as a serious problem facing our country. However, offering tax increases as the silver fiscal bullet is impractical.Politics is the art of the possible. With Republicans controlling one branch of government, any deficit strategy that relies on tax increases is D.O.A.What can be done instead? Start by strengthening the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules to make sure future tax cuts and/or increased spending are paid for. Simultaneously, require Congress to adopt a “real” budget, as state and local governments do — one that includes entitlements and multiyear appropriations, not mainly discretionary expenditures.Facilitating comparisons of budget estimates to actual fiscal performance would, at the very least, hold our federal officials accountable for unrealistic projections.Nothing can alter the course of a Congress intent on runaway spending. But prescribing measures that fly in the face of political reality without offering more practical alternatives only undermines the public’s understanding of the nation’s significant long-term fiscal challenges.Michael GranofMartin J. LubyAustin, TexasMr. Granof is emeritus professor of accounting at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Luby is the associate dean and an associate professor at the L.B.J. School of Public Affairs at the university.To the Editor:I count nobody as being serious about the deficit unless they are willing to look at both sides of the ledger: expenses and revenue. Yes, we spend too much and no doubt some of it unwisely and unnecessarily.But we are also not serious about the revenue issues — failing to collect taxes owed under current law, and countenancing a tax code that only the very wealthy can appreciate, beginning with the failure of Congress to repeal the egregious “carried interest” loophole.If average Americans could truly wrap their heads around this particular abuse, they would be furious.Peter D. NallePhiladelphiaThe Purpose of TaxesTo the Editor:Re “Biden Urges G.O.P. to Work With Him to Build Economy” (front page, Feb. 8):As a Democrat and a liberal, I strongly believe that the government has a role in improving people’s lives and that business entities have obligations to society as well as to their owners. Nevertheless, I regard President Biden’s proposal in his State of the Union address to raise the taxes on corporations’ purchases of their own stock as misguided.These taxes are intended to deter stock buybacks and instead promote investment in new ventures. But in a capitalist society the purpose of tax laws should be to raise revenue, and they should be judged by their fairness and efficacy in doing so. Taxes should not be used to encourage or discourage specific business decisions within the purview of corporate boards.Alma Suzin FleschNew YorkTalking to the Police Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican, via Associated PressTo the Editor:In “Alec Baldwin Didn’t Have to Talk to the Police. Neither Do You” (column, Jan. 26), Farhad Manjoo raises an issue faced by many caught up in an unexpected, often emotionally charged moment.As a criminal investigator over a 35-year career, I have seen how remaining silent cuts both ways. Your right to remain silent is uncontested, but the police may be and often are much more interested in you as a result.The innocent should never put themselves in this position. What’s the harm in waiting for an attorney? If it’s your real estate or tax attorney whose criminal law knowledge is drawn from “Law & Order” reruns, you’re in trouble. And as the column suggests, you might inadvertently admit some wrongdoing.Richard FriedmanPittsburgh More

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      What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis

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      Is there anything liberals can do about Ron DeSantis other than quietly seethe, loudly condemn him every time he makes headlines and hope that his political flaws — his distaste for glad-handing, his less-than-inspiring public-speaking style, his conspicuous unlikability — will take him down before he gets anywhere close to the presidency? It would be tempting to write off DeSantis, the bombastic Republican governor of Florida, as another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office.We’ve made that mistake before.It’s reliably depressing to revisit 2016 and the misbegotten liberal conviction that America couldn’t possibly elevate Donald Trump to the presidency. We’ve already cataloged the mistakes in media coverage and dissected what we missed that somehow made Trump a viable, let alone a desirable, candidate to occupy the Oval Office. But here we go again. As the Democratic political strategist Lis Smith has remarked, the left’s reaction to DeSantis looks just like its reaction to Trump: “He’s picking these fights. He’s saying and doing abhorrent things. And all the same characters — whether in the media, Democratic politics, the punditry class, whatever it is — have the same freakout.”Let’s pay closer attention this time.First, we shouldn’t underestimate DeSantis. He may resemble Trump in his politics — but not in his intellect or resolve. Compare their respective backgrounds: Whereas Trump’s acceptance into the University of Pennsylvania, after an academic record notable only for its mediocrity, was an egregious example of leveraging personal connections to get into a prestigious university, DeSantis, the son of a TV ratings box installer and a nurse, actually earned his way into the Ivy League. People bent over backward to ascribe some accidental form of grifter street smarts to Trump. But DeSantis is demonstrably intelligent and industrious. He worked his way through Yale while playing baseball and graduated magna cum laude.Whereas Trump skirted military service with a convenient discovery of bone spurs, DeSantis was a commissioned officer in the Navy. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He may share Trump’s taste for bluster, but this is not someone who bumbled his way into public office. As Dexter Filkins observed last year in a New Yorker profile, “DeSantis has an intense work ethic, a formidable intelligence and a granular understanding of policy.”Because we can assume DeSantis knows what he’s doing, we should make careful note of his record in Florida, where he has been governor since 2019. His approval rating in Florida is consistently over 50 percent and includes high ratings among Latinos and in former liberal strongholds like Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.The jury is still out on whether DeSantis’s unorthodox response to Covid-19 was a colossal error or an unexpected success or, more likely, something in between, but the fact that he took an aggressive approach to avoid the pains of lockdown on small businesses and families wasn’t lost on Florida voters. While other politicians prevaricated and dithered, DeSantis spoke with conviction and seemed to be doing something, and to many working families in Florida, that mattered.When I visited Miami from Covid-conscious New York in 2021, the vibe in bars and restaurants in the Wynwood art district — where nobody asked for proof of vaccination and I was the only person in a mask — was euphoric. In that young, overwhelmingly liberal corner of the city, people weren’t faulting DeSantis for his pandemic policies. He also acted decisively last year during Hurricane Ian, a response that won strong bipartisan approval.In a country where government often looks sclerotic, DeSantis’s knack for action bears notice. We can decry his stunt in shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but we should also be attending to the real concerns of people living in areas of heavy immigration. Lest we forget, Hispanic voters in Florida preferred DeSantis to his Democratic opponent in last year’s election for governor; they also supported his Martha’s Vineyard escapade, according to a Telemundo/LX News poll. “There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down,” one pollster explained at the time.Democrats need to grapple with this appeal. It would be easy to write DeSantis off as a cartoon culture warrior or as racist, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic. He may well be all those things, and so may some of his constituents. But he may not be, and either way, it would be foolish to characterize all his followers as such. Assuming a stance of moral superiority will do us no good. (See: Hillary Clinton, “deplorables.”)Finally, we shouldn’t let DeSantis co-opt positions on which Democrats have historical strength and a natural advantage: education, health care, jobs. There are reasons so many Americans are relocating to the Sunshine State beyond the balmy weather. This month, DeSantis released a budget plan that featured targeted tax cuts aimed at parents, salary increases for state employees, including teachers, and significant investments in schools, including programs in civic education.DeSantis’s maverick approach to primary, secondary and higher education has brought widespread condemnation from Democrats, particularly from their more progressive wing. But we should pay attention to why his policies land better with voters than with progressive critics. A law like the Stop WOKE Act of 2021 (later partly blocked by a federal court), which limited the discussion of certain racial issues during diversity training sessions offered by private employers and in the classroom, may come with an incendiary name and some egregious efforts to curtail free speech. But it’s important to recognize that aspects of it appeal to Floridians tired of racial and ethnic divisiveness and the overt politicization of what’s taught in the classroom.As many liberals will quietly acknowledge, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which DeSantis signed last year and which opponents nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, has reasonable and legitimate attractions for a broad range of parents who worry about the focus, efficacy and age appropriateness of what their kids are learning in primary and secondary school. Democratic leadership should worry, too. Keeping quiet or pretending those concerns aren’t real won’t make them go away.Then there’s college. The challenges of higher education have never been a strength for the Republican Party, which has long ignored the myriad needs of indebted students and the financial and existential pressures on academic institutions. If ideological conformity has taken root in American universities, long a bastion of liberal ideals, then Democrats are the ones with the knowledge, experience and record to attend to the problem. It’s on liberals to check the excesses of illiberal orthodoxies rampant among those on its far-left wing. It’s on us to ensure academic freedom and the kind of educational system parents can trust.It should be cause for alarm that recent polls show Republicans holding an advantage on educational issues. Rather than dismiss parents’ concerns as somehow unfounded or wrongheaded, we should be listening to them and finding better solutions to their grievances. Telling parents they’re bigots or are unenlightened for not embracing the latest faddish orthodoxy is not a winning message.Which brings us back to Trump. We know that he takes DeSantis seriously because Trump has shown signs that he’s scared of DeSantis as a competitor. If even Trump knows that much, Democrats are capable of knowing more. Trump may think the best way to defang DeSantis — whom he calls “DeSanctimonious” — is to mock and belittle him. Democrats should recognize it will take far more than that.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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      Abortion Rights Supporters See Biden Address as Missed Opportunity

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      While praising the administration’s actions so far, activists say the State of the Union speech could have done more to address what they view as a national health crisis.During the midterm campaigns, Democrats spent months focused on the demise of federal abortion rights and the danger they said it posed to all Americans.In his State of the Union speech, President Biden spent roughly 42 seconds.The White House says that it used the moment to call on Congress to reinstate the protections provided under Roe v. Wade, and that it has taken the most aggressive approach to abortion rights of any administration in history. But some abortion rights supporters said they saw the brief mention as a missed opportunity to leverage the power of the bully pulpit in what they often describe as a national health crisis. They were also mystified that the president passed up a chance to play up his own record, which nearly all praised.“President Biden’s remarks on the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade were disappointing and a lost opportunity,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which argued the case over Roe at the Supreme Court. “As demonstrated resoundingly in the midterms, abortion rights are a kitchen-table issue that Americans care deeply about, and highlighting that reality would have fit into the president’s theme of fundamental fairness.”The White House believes President Biden has most likely reached the legal limits of his powers through executive actions on abortion issues.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe criticism reflects Democrats’ limited options on the federal level, as the fight has shifted to state legislatures. The issue became a potent tool for the party in the midterms, energizing voters and staving off some expected defeats. But after Democrats lost control of the House, it became all but impossible for them to fulfill promises to reinstate a federal right to abortion.Since the court ruling in June, Mr. Biden has signed a series of executive orders protecting access to medication abortion and contraception, ensuring emergency medical care for pregnant women and protecting patient privacy. But at times his administration has fallen short in activists’ eyes, including in declining to declare a national emergency over the summer. The administration says such a measure wouldn’t offer any new tools to combat the restrictions.The White House believes Mr. Biden has most likely reached the legal limits of his powers through executive actions, leaving few options other than rallying voters and providing assistance to Democratic state legislators working to stop or undo restrictions.Biden’s State of the Union AddressChallenging the G.O.P.: In the first State of the Union address of a new era of divided government, President Biden delivered a plea to Republicans for unity but vowed not to back off his economic agenda.State of Uncertainty: Mr. Biden used his speech to portray the United States as a country in recovery. But what he did not emphasize was that America also faces a lot of uncertainty in 2023.Foreign Policy: Mr. Biden spends his days confronting Russia and China. So it was especially striking that in his address, he chose to spend relatively little time on America’s global role.A Tense Exchange: Before the speech, Senator Mitt Romney admonished Representative George Santos, a fellow Republican, telling him he “shouldn’t have been there.”Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, praised Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts and called Mr. Biden the “most pro-choice reproductive freedom president” in history, saying abortion rights got more attention than in any previous State of the Union.“The tension is that he represents a lot of progress, but it’s never going to feel like enough because we’re in a crisis,” she said. “Everybody in our community wishes we had more of the president’s time, more of the president’s attention, more presence in that State of the Union, but that being said, I keep going back to judging this administration on what they’re getting done.”On Tuesday night, Mr. Biden mentioned the battle over abortion rights an hour into his 80-minute speech, typically a moment for presidents to outline their priorities..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He did not propose any new policy initiatives on the issue. Nor did he describe the struggles of the guests invited by a number of Democratic lawmakers and the first lady, Jill Biden, who represented the issue. Dr. Biden brought a Texas woman who almost died from sepsis after the state’s abortion restrictions caused a delay in treatment for her pregnancy.“Congress must restore the right that was taken away in Roe v. Wade and protect Roe v. Wade,” he said. “The vice president and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient safety. But already, more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans.”He added, “Make no mistake about it: If Congress passes a national ban, I will veto it.”Any sweeping abortion action remains unlikely given the divided control of Congress. Democrats lack the votes in the Senate, and Mr. Biden is unable to grant Roe’s protections through executive action.His brief remarks cut a striking contrast with the deluge of words about the issue from Democrats during the midterm elections, when the candidates and their allies spent nearly half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion — more than twice what they spent on the next top issue, crime, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has spent years wrestling with his faith and Democratic politics over the issue, generally supporting abortion rights but personally opposed to the procedure. But since the ruling, he has been more vocal about his disagreement with the court and his support for Congress’s legislating a federal right to an abortion.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, at the Capitol last month. The end of Roe energized Democratic voters in last year’s midterms.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesSince the midterms, Mr. Biden has largely delegated the issue to Ms. Harris, who has hosted dozens of events with state leaders to discuss abortion access. Last month, on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe, she warned that “no one is immune” from efforts to curb access to reproductive health care.In a statement released after the speech, Planned Parenthood Action Fund highlighted the nine abortion patients, providers and advocates invited by Dr. Biden and Democratic lawmakers as guests to the speech. The group “is grateful to have a trusted partner in the Biden administration,” it wrote, and declined to offer additional remarks.While they’ve been pleased with this administration’s actions, some leaders of the abortion rights movement would like to see Mr. Biden talk more specifically about plans to expand access to the procedure.“We really wanted to hear what the administration is prepared to do for the current reality of abortion access and the continued threats that exist across the country,” said Morgan Hopkins, president of All* Above All, a reproductive justice coalition. “We didn’t hear that.”The moment is particularly fraught, as activists and the administration await a ruling as soon as this week in a Texas case brought by conservative groups seeking to revoke a more than two-decade-old federal approval of mifepristone, a common medication abortion pill. The decision will be made by a single judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee known for his conservative views on social issues.Given that medication accounts for more than half of abortions and that the pills have become a way for some women to circumvent state bans, a ruling against the drug could have sweeping impacts. Any appeal of the decision would go to the right-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, eventually, to the Supreme Court with its conservative majority.Last week, Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, met with abortion providers at a clinic in Alexandria, Va. And a number of agencies, coordinated by the White House, are planning for a variety of outcomes, though they are limited in terms of executive actions. More

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      7 Takeaways From Biden’s State of the Union Address

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      President Biden delivered a plea to Republicans on Tuesday for unity in his second State of the Union address, but vowed not to back off his economic agenda and offered no far-reaching, new ideas in a speech filled with a familiar litany of exhortations from more than four decades in political life.Reading rapidly through his prepared remarks and occasionally sparring with his congressional adversaries in real time, Mr. Biden — at 80 the oldest president in history — used the biggest platform of his office to frame his argument for an expected re-election bid by portraying Republican policy proposals as out of step with most Americans even as he offered to work across the aisle.For Mr. Biden, the speech was a moment to demonstrate to his supporters that he still has the political skills to lead them to victory in 2024 even as polls show a large majority of Democrats want someone from a new generation (he would be 86 at the end of a second term). After a few stumbles at the beginning, the president turned energetic and combative, and even showed flashes of humor and effective off-the-cuff retorts to Republican hecklers in a setting not known for improvisation.His performance could help address doubts about his vigor as a 2024 campaigner.At key moments, Republicans heckled Mr. Biden with shouts of “liar” and angry shakes of their head. But if the goal was to rattle the president or demonstrate his frailty, it had the opposite effect. Mr. Biden snapped back at the Republican shouters with sharp retorts and even a sense of humor in some moments. When Republicans accused him of misstating their desire to cut Medicare and Social Security, the president turned the heckling against them, saying quickly that he was glad to see their “conversion” on the issue.For Mr. Biden’s supporters — some of whom have expressed doubts about whether he is up to another six years in office — the moment was an opportunity to imagine how the president will perform on the 2024 campaign trail. For the president’s campaign advisers, his agility on his feet was most likely a source of relief.He defined his rationale for a second term.In an hourlong speech, Mr. Biden repeatedly pledged that America needed to “finish the job,” a barely veiled argument that voters should give him a second term to do just that. Nearly a dozen times, he bragged about his administration’s accomplishments — on keeping drug prices low, increasing taxes on the wealthy, making child care and housing affordable, and more — but said he had more to do.After two years in office, the president’s assessment of the country’s progress was intended as a hinge to his next campaign, a way to set up the terms of debate, whether he faces former President Donald J. Trump again or another Republican contender.Biden’s State of the Union AddressChallenging the G.O.P.: In the first State of the Union speech of a new era of divided government, President Biden called on Republicans to work with him to “finish the job” of repairing the unsettled economy.State of Uncertainty: Mr. Biden used his speech to portray the United States as a country in recovery. But what he did not emphasize was that America also faces a lot of uncertainty in 2023.Foreign Policy: Mr. Biden spends his days confronting Russia and China. So it was especially striking that in his address, he chose to spend relatively little time on America’s global role.A Tense Exchange: Before the speech, Senator Mitt Romney admonished Representative George Santos, a fellow Republican, telling him he “shouldn’t have been there.”He scaled back his agenda for an era of divided government.Mr. Biden returned again and again to a familiar set of assertions that have become part of his presidential routine: a pledge to “restore the soul of the nation”; a promise to “build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out”; efforts to create “an economy where no one is left behind”; criticism of “big tech” and “big oil”; and references to advice for “Joey” from his father.But there were no major new initiatives in Mr. Biden’s address, a nod to the reality of divided government, with Republicans now controlling the House. That was a striking departure from the president’s previous appearances before a Democratic-controlled Congress, when he called for trillions of dollars in new spending to significantly reshape government programs on health care, child care, climate change, taxes, infrastructure and more.He did not back off from those priorities, some of which he managed to achieve, at least in part, over the past two years, and he renewed his call for others. But on Tuesday night, his focus was on less ambitious proposals aimed at stepping up efforts to cure cancer, improve mental health care, fight opioid addiction and help veterans.He emphasized threats to democracy at home and abroad.At the end of the speech, Mr. Biden returned to one of the biggest themes of his presidency — that the United States and the world stand at an “inflection point” in history, with democracy at stake at home and abroad. As he has before, the president linked “the Big Lie” about the 2020 election to the war in Ukraine, which threatens the sovereignty of a European nation for the first time in a generation.But unlike former President George W. Bush, who used his 2002 State of the Union address to declare an “axis of evil” on the eve of the Iraq war, Mr. Biden urged Americans to remain optimistic and hopeful as a way of inspiring supporters of democracy elsewhere. Declaring that “we are not bystanders to history,” the president said the United States must confront hate and extremism, referring to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The president talked up the economy, with a big focus on blue-collar workers.Mr. Biden spent the first half of his speech describing what he said was the nation’s economic progress, including a record 12 million jobs created in the first two years of his presidency. He ran through the economic benefits — many of them just starting to come online — from bills he signed to invest in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and low-emission sources of energy, along with reducing the cost of prescription drugs.But the president lingered in particular on the parts of his agenda that he says would help blue-collar workers, often in parts of the country that have been left behind in the changing global economy. He stressed spending that will create high-paying jobs that do not require a college degree — clear outreach to the wide swath of swing voters in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan who did not graduate from college.Aides had said Mr. Biden would acknowledge in his speech the continued economic pain Americans feel, particularly from rising prices, and he did to a degree. But he spent most of his energy trying to sell workers on the gains the economy has made on his watch and casting himself as a fighter for their interests.He baited Republicans on Social Security and Medicare.Mr. Biden has regularly hammered Republicans over some members’ plans to reduce future spending on Social Security and Medicare. He did it again in the speech, and this time, he baited some Republican lawmakers into agreeing with him on the issue.Mr. Biden started by caricaturing a plan from Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, which would force Congress to reauthorize existing programs, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years. “Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” he said.Republicans in the chamber loudly objected to the characterization. Mr. Biden shot back: “Anybody who doubts it contact my office. I’ll give you a copy.”The Republican boos and objections grew louder. Mr. Biden parried back and forth with the critics in the crowd. Then he declared victory. “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is off the books now, right? All right. We’ve got unanimity.”Biden made a forceful call for police accountability.Mr. Biden has always opposed the “defund the police” calls from some on the left of his party, but on Tuesday night he used his speech to condemn the lethal police beating of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in Memphis and made an impassioned call for more police accountability.“Imagine if you lost that child at the hands of the law,” Mr. Biden said after pointing out that Mr. Nichols’s mother and stepfather, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, were sitting in the first lady’s box, prompting a standing ovation. “Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter will come home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving their car.”In an example of his instinct to reach for a middle ground, Mr. Biden, however, still struck a balance between pressing for change and expressing support for the police, whom he said were “good, decent, honorable people.” He called for supporting law enforcement with additional resources to increase training for officers.The president is limited in just how much he can reform state and local police departments. But he has faced increasing pressure from Democrats and supporters of overhauling the criminal justice system to push more forcefully for legislation advancing their goals.“Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyre’s mom true,” Mr. Biden said. “Something good must come from this.” More