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      Even Most Biden Voters Don’t See a Thriving Economy

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      A majority of those who backed President Biden in 2020 say today’s economy is fair or poor, ordinarily a bad omen for incumbents seeking re-election.Presidents seeking a second term have often found the public’s perception of the economy a pivotal issue. It was a boon to Ronald Reagan; it helped usher Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush out of the White House.Now, as President Biden looks toward a re-election campaign, there are warning signals on that front: With overall consumer sentiment at a low ebb despite solid economic data, even Democrats who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 say they’re not impressed with the economy.In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six battleground states, 62 percent of those voters think the economy is only “fair” or “poor” (compared with 97 percent for those who voted for Donald J. Trump).What the Economy Looks Like to Biden Voters in Swing StatesPercent of President Biden’s 2020 supporters who …

      Notes: Respondents of other races were omitted because of low sample sizes. The figures may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding.Source: New York Times/Siena College polls of 3,662 registered voters conducted Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and WisconsinBy The New York TimesThe demographics of Mr. Biden’s 2020 supporters may explain part of his challenge now: They were on balance younger, had lower incomes and were more racially diverse than Mr. Trump’s. Those groups tend to be hit hardest by inflation, which has yet to return to 2020 levels, and high interest rates, which have frustrated first-time home buyers and drained the finances of those dependent on credit.But if the election were held today, and the options were Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, it’s not clear whether voter perceptions of the economy would tip the balance.“The last midterm was an abortion election,” said Joshua Doss, an analyst at the public opinion research firm HIT Strategies, referring to the 2022 voting that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling. “Most of the time, elections are about ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ Republicans lost that because of Roe. So we’re definitely in uncharted territory.”There are things working in Mr. Biden’s favor. First, Mr. Doss said, the economic programs enacted under the Biden administration remain broadly popular, providing a political foundation for Mr. Biden to build on. And second, social issues — which lifted the Democrats in the midterms — remain a prominent concern.Take Oscar Nuñez, 27, a server at a restaurant in Las Vegas. Foot traffic has been much slower than usual for this time of year, eating into his tips. He’d like to start his own business, but with the rising cost of living, he and his wife — who works at home answering questions from independent contractors for her employer — haven’t managed to save much money. It’s also a tough jump to make when the economy feels shaky.Mr. Nuñez expected better from Mr. Biden when he voted blue in 2020, he said, but he wasn’t sure what specifically the president should have done better. And he is pretty sure another Trump term would be a disaster.“I’d prefer another option, but it seems like it will once again be my only option again,” Mr. Nuñez said of Mr. Biden. For him, immigrants’ rights and foreign policy concerns are more important. “That’s why I was picking him over Trump in the first place — because this guy’s going to do something that’s real dangerous at some point.”Mr. Nuñez isn’t alone in feeling dissatisfied with the economy but still bound to Mr. Biden by other priorities. Of those surveyed in the six battleground states who plan to vote for Mr. Biden in 2024, 47 percent say social issues are more important to them, while 42 percent say the economy is more important — but that’s a closer split than in the 2022 midterms, in which social issues decisively outweighed economic concerns among Democratic voters in several swing states. (Among likely Trump voters, 71 percent say they are most focused on the economy, while 15 percent favor social issues.)Kendra McDowell thinks President Biden is doing the best he can given the continuing challenges of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” she said.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDour sentiment about the economy also isn’t limited to people who’ve been frustrated in their financial ambitions.Mackenzie Kiser, 20, and Lawson Millwood, 21, students at the University of North Georgia, managed to buy a house this year. Mr. Millwood’s income as an information-technology systems administrator at the university was enough to qualify, and they worried that affordability would only worsen if they waited because of rising interest rates and prices. Still, the experience left a bitter taste.“The housing market is absolutely insane,” said Ms. Kiser, who wasn’t old enough to vote in 2020 but leans progressive. “We paid the same for our one-story, one-bedroom cinder-block 1950s house as my mom paid for her three-story, four-bedroom house less than a decade ago.”Ms. Kiser doesn’t think Mr. Biden has done much to help the economy, and she worries he’s too old to be effective. But Mr. Trump isn’t more appealing on that front.“It’s not that I think that anybody of a different party could do better, but more that someone with their mental faculties who’s not retirement age could do a better job,” Ms. Kiser said. “Our choices are retirement age or retirement age, so it’s rock and a hard place right now.”Generally, voters don’t think Republicans are fixing the economy, either. In a poll conducted this month by the progressive-leaning Navigator Research, 70 percent of voters in battleground House districts, including a majority of Republicans, said they thought Republicans were more focused on issues other than the economy.The health of the economy is still a major variable leading up to the election. A downturn could fray what the president cites as a signal accomplishment of Bidenomics: low unemployment. A study of the 2016 election found that higher localized unemployment made Black voters, an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency, less likely to vote at all.“I think the likelihood that they would choose Trump is not the threat,” Mr. Doss said. “The threat is that they would choose the couch and stay home, and enough of them would stay home for an electoral college win for Trump.”But in the absence of a competitive Democratic primary, the campaigning — and television spots — have yet to commence in earnest. When they do, Mr. Doss has some ideas.So far, Mr. Biden’s messaging has focused on macroeconomic indicators like the unemployment rate and tackling inflation. “The truth is, that’s not the economy to most people,” Mr. Doss said. “The economy to most people is gas prices and food and whether or not they can afford to throw a birthday party for their kid.”Mr. Millwood supports a higher federal minimum wage, and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.Audra Melton for The New York TimesIt’s difficult for presidents to directly control inflation in the short term. But the White House has addressed a few specific costs that matter for families, by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain surging oil prices in late 2022, for example. The Inflation Reduction Act reduced prescription drug prices under Medicare and capped the cost of insulin for people with diabetes. The administration is also going after what it calls “junk fees,” which inflate the prices of things like concert tickets, airline tickets and even birthday parties.The more the administration talks about its concrete efforts to lower prices, the more Mr. Biden will benefit, Mr. Doss said. At the same time, Mr. Biden can lessen the blowback from persistent inflation by deflecting blame — an out-of-control pandemic was the original cause, he could plausibly argue, and most other wealthy countries are worse off.That’s how it seems to Kendra McDowell, 44, an accountant and single mother of four in Harrisburg, Pa. She feels the sting of inflation every time she goes to the grocery store — she spent $1,000 on groceries this past month and didn’t even fill her deep freezer — and in the health of her clients’ balance sheets. Despite her judgment that the economy is poor, however, she still has enough confidence to start a business in home-based care, a field in greater demand since Covid-19 ripped through nursing homes.“When I talk about the economy, it’s just inflation, and to me inflation is systemic and coming from the Trump administration,” Ms. McDowell said. If the pandemic had been contained quickly, she reasoned, supply chains and labor disruptions wouldn’t have sent prices soaring in the first place.Moreover, she sees the situation healing itself, and thinks Mr. Biden is doing the best he can given the challenges of the wars in Ukraine and now Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” Ms. McDowell said. “God forbid, today or tomorrow, if I had to go find a job, it’s easier than it was before.”Ms. McDowell is what’s known in public opinion research as a high-information voter. Polls have shown that those less apt to stay up on the news tend to change their views when provided with more background on what the Biden administration has both accomplished and attempted.Ms. McDowell, a mother of four, said that she felt the sting of inflation every time she went to the grocery store, but that she didn’t blame Mr. Biden.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesThe 15-month-old Inflation Reduction Act is still little known, for example. But this past March, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 68 percent of respondents supported it when filled in on its main components.A frequent theme of conversations with Democratic voters who see the economy as poor is that large corporations have too much power and that the middle class is being squeezed.Mr. Millwood, Ms. Kiser’s partner, said that he was concerned that society had grown more unequal in recent years, and that he didn’t see Mr. Biden doing much about it.“From what I see, it really doesn’t look like the working class is benefiting from many things recently,” said Mr. Millwood, who supports a higher federal minimum wage and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.After the phone conversation ended, Mr. Millwood texted to say that upon reflection, he would also like to see Mr. Biden push to lower taxes for low-income families and make it more difficult for the wealthiest to dodge them. After being sent news articles about Mr. Biden’s support for the extension of the now-expired Child Tax Credit and the appropriation of $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, in part to pursue tax evaders, he seemed surprised.“That is absolutely what I had in mind,” Mr. Millwood texted. “It’s been so noisy in the media lately I haven’t seen much that is covering things like that,” adding, “Biden doesn’t seem so bad after all haha.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      Biden Campaign Aims to Weaponize Trump’s Threat to Obamacare

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      The president’s aides quickly jumped on a statement by Donald Trump that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the health law.Very few events bring aides on President Biden’s re-election campaign more joy than when former President Donald J. Trump threatens to repeal popular Democratic policies.So when Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, wrote on social media over the holiday weekend that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the 13-year-old Affordable Care Act, and that his fellow Republicans should “never give up” seeking its repeal, Mr. Biden’s campaign was happy to cede its programming decisions to Mr. Trump.The president’s campaign altered its previous plans and instead will spend much of this week amplifying Mr. Trump’s threat, which was less a substantive policy proposal he had considered thoughtfully than it was a reaction to an editorial he had read in The Wall Street Journal.Still, Mr. Biden’s aides intend to once again push to make Mr. Trump and his proposals the news. That strategy has become a key cog for the campaign, as Mr. Biden struggles with low approval ratings and increasingly focuses on foreign policy rather than his re-election bid. The campaign will air TV ads this week in Las Vegas and on national cable that contrast legislation passed by Mr. Biden that lowered prices on some prescription drugs with Mr. Trump’s proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director.The president himself weighed in on Monday.“My predecessor once again called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans,” Mr. Biden said. “They just don’t give up.”Mr. Biden’s campaign is in the process of arranging surrogates for the 2024 race — particularly in North Carolina, a presidential battleground that on Friday will become the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat, is expected to be a key Biden surrogate promoting the health care law, which is widely known as Obamacare. Mr. Cooper signed his state’s Medicaid expansion bill in March after it was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature. Mr. Cooper and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker, are scheduled to hold a press call for the Biden campaign on Tuesday.“Donald Trump and G.O.P. extremists continue to try and rip away health care from millions of Americans without any serious alternative,” Mr. Cooper said on Monday. “If this country lets Donald Trump anywhere near decision making on health care, it would be a disaster for millions of people.”Mr. Trump’s social media post surprised even his own aides, who have not developed a plan to alter the country’s health care law, according to a person close to him.A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.Republicans successfully ran against the health law in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, and Mr. Trump used his call for “a full repeal” as an applause line at campaign rallies in 2016, even though he also said “everybody’s got to be covered” by health insurance. But Republicans have not made a serious effort at rescinding the health care law since Senator John McCain of Arizona cast the deciding vote against G.O.P. legislation to repeal the law in July 2017.In his social media post, Mr. Trump called that moment “a low point for the Republican Party.”Mr. Tyler said, “We’ve got Donald Trump every single day providing the American people a window into how harmful he would be if he were able to regain power.” He added, “He is making this easy for us.”The Biden campaign referred reporters to surveys illustrating the popularity of key elements of the health care law. Polling from KFF, the health care policy organization, found that as of May, 59 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Obamacare, up from 43 percent at the end of President Barack Obama’s term in office. Democrats in 2018 won sweeping victories by campaigning against Republican efforts to upend the health care law.Republicans remain broadly opposed to the law. KFF’s polling found that 73 percent held an unfavorable view of it in May.The Biden administration said in January that 16.3 million Americans had enrolled in health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces during the open enrollment period, more than had ever signed up before.Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services said that 4.6 million people had selected an Affordable Care Act plan in the first three weeks of the new open enrollment period, which began Nov. 1 and runs through January.Ruth Igielnik More

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      Here Are the Members of Congress Giving Up Their Seats, Setting Up a 2024 Fight

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      The fight for control of Congress could be heavily influenced by the already large number of members retiring or seeking higher office.More than three dozen members of Congress have already said they are planning to leave their seats, setting the stage for major turnover in the 2024 election.Few of the departures that have been announced are expected to alter the balance of power in the closely divided House, where the vast majority of seats are gerrymandered to be safe for one of the two political parties, or in the Senate. But a handful are already putting crucial seats up for grabs.Many of those who are leaving are expressing frustration about the polarization and paralysis that has gripped the institution particularly this year, as House Republicans, dominated by their far-right flank, have struggled to do the basic business of governing and feuded over who should lead them.Here’s a look at the retirements that have been announced so far. A bolded name indicates a departure that could alter the balance of power in Congress, or lead to a competitive or potentially competitive race.Members of Congress retiring from officeSenateSenator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of DelawareSenator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of MarylandSenator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of MichiganSenator Mitt Romney, Republican of UtahSenator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West VirginiaHouseRepresentative Debbie Lesko, Republican of ArizonaRepresentative Tony Cardenas, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Grace F. Napolitano, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Ken Buck, Republican of ColoradoRepresentative Victoria Spartz, Republican of IndianaRepresentative John Sarbanes, Democrat of MarylandRepresentative Dan Kildee, Democrat of MichiganRepresentative Brian Higgins, Democrat of New YorkRepresentative George Santos, Republican of New YorkRepresentative Bill Johnson, Republican of OhioRepresentative Brad Wenstrup, Republican of OhioRepresentative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of OregonRepresentative Kay Granger, Republican of TexasRepresentative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of TexasRepresentative Chris Stewart, Republican of UtahRepresentative Jennifer Wexton, Democrat of VirginiaRepresentative Derek Kilmer, Democrat of WashingtonLawmakers seeking other officePresidentRepresentative Dean Phillips, Democrat of MinnesotaSenateRepresentative Ruben Gallego, Democrat of ArizonaRepresentative Katie Porter, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Barbara Lee, Democrat of CaliforniaRepresentative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of DelawareRepresentative Jim Banks, Republican of IndianaRepresentative David Trone, Democrat of MarylandRepresentative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of MichiganRepresentative Andy Kim, Democrat of New JerseyRepresentative Colin Allred, Democrat of TexasRepresentative Alex X. Mooney, Republican of West VirginiaGovernorSenator Mike Braun, Republican of IndianaRepresentative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of VirginiaState Attorney GeneralRepresentative Dan Bishop, Republican of North CarolinaRepresentative Jeff Jackson, Democrat of North CarolinaMayorRepresentative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas More

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      More Members of Congress Are Retiring, Many Citing Dysfunction

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      More than three dozen incumbents have announced they will not seek re-election next year. Some are running for other offices, while others intend to leave Congress altogether.Eleven are running for the Senate. Five for state or local office. One for president of the United States. Another is resigning to become a university president. And more and more say they are hanging up their hats in public office altogether.More than three dozen members of Congress have announced they will not seek re-election next year, some to pursue other offices and many others simply to get out of Washington. Twelve have announced their plans just this month.The wave of lawmakers across chambers and parties announcing they intend to leave Congress comes at a time of breathtaking dysfunction on Capitol Hill, primarily instigated by House Republicans. The House G.O.P. majority spent the past few months deposing its leader, waging a weekslong internal war to select a new speaker and struggling to keep federal funding flowing. Right-wing members have rejected any spending legislation that could become law and railed against their new leader for turning to Democrats, as his predecessor did, to avert a government shutdown.The chaos has Republicans increasingly worried that they could lose their slim House majority next year, a concern that typically prompts a rash of retirements from the party in control. But it is not only G.O.P. lawmakers who are opting to leave; Democrats, too, are rushing for the exits, with retirements across parties this year outpacing those of the past three election cycles.And while most of the departures announced so far do not involve competitive seats, given the slim margins of control in both chambers, the handful that provide pickup opportunities for Republicans or Democrats could help determine who controls Congress come 2025.“I like the work, but the politics just no longer made it worth it,” Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, said in an interview. He announced his retirement last month after more than a quarter-century in the House.“I think I can have more impact on a number of things I care about if I’m not going to be bogged down for re-election,” Mr. Blumenauer said.Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, is retiring after more than 25 years in the House. “I like the work, but the politics just no longer made it worth it,” he said.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAs lawmakers consider their futures in Congress, they are weighing the personal sacrifice required to be away from loved ones for much of the year against the potential to legislate and advance their political and policy agendas. In this chaotic and bitter environment, many are deciding the trade-off is unappealing.This session, said Representative Dan Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, has been the “most unsatisfying period in my time in Congress because of the absolute chaos and the lack of any serious commitment to effective governance.”Mr. Kildee, who has served in Congress for a decade, said he decided not to seek re-election after recovering from a cancerous tumor he had removed earlier this year. It made him re-evaluate the time he was willing to spend in Washington, away from his family in Michigan.The dysfunction in the House majority only made the calculation easier.“That has contributed to the sense of frustration,” he said, “and this feeling that the sacrifice we’re all making in order to be in Washington, to be witness to this chaos, is pretty difficult to make.”Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, also announced she would end her three-decade career in Congress at the close of her current term. One of her closest friends in Congress, Representative Zoe Lofgren, another California Democrat, told her hometown news site, San Jose Spotlight, that there was speculation that Ms. Eshoo was leaving “because the majority we have now is nuts — and they are.” But Ms. Lofgren added that “that’s not the reason; she felt it was her time to do this.”Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, also announced she would end a three-decade career in Congress.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesSome House Republicans have reached the limits of their frustration with their own party.Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, announced he would not seek re-election after his dissatisfaction and sense of disconnect with the G.O.P. had grown too great. Mr. Buck, who voted to oust Representative Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, has denounced his party’s election denialism and many members’ refusal to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.“We lost our way,” Mr. Buck told The New York Times this month. “We have an identity crisis in the Republican Party. If we can’t address the election denier issue and we continue down that path, we won’t have credibility with the American people that we are going to solve problems.”Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona, said in a statement during the speaker fight last month that she would not run again.“Right now, Washington, D.C., is broken; it is hard to get anything done,” she said.The trend extends even to the most influential members of Congress; Representative Kay Granger, the 80-year-old Texas Republican who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, announced she would retire at the end of her 14th term. Even if her party manages to keep control of the House, Ms. Granger, the longest-serving G.O.P. congresswoman, faced term limits that would have forced her from the helm of the spending panel.Few of the retirements thus far appear likely to alter the balance of power in Congress, where the vast majority of House seats are gerrymandered to be safe for one party or the other. Prime exceptions include Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, whose retirement will almost certainly mean that Republicans can claim the state’s Senate seat and get a leg up to win control of that chamber.The decision of Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, to leave her seat in a competitive Virginia district to seek the governorship also gives Republicans a prime pickup opportunity.Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat leaving her Virginia seat to seek the governorship, gives Republicans a prime pickup opportunity. But most retiring lawmakers are in safe seats.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAnd Representative George Santos, Republican of New York, announced he would not seek re-election after a House Ethics Committee report found “substantial evidence” that he had violated federal law. His exit will give Democrats a chance to reclaim the suburban Long Island seat he flipped to the G.O.P. last year.Many others are likely to be succeeded by members of their own party.Representative Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota, who last month announced a long-shot bid to challenge President Biden for his party’s nomination, said this week that he would step aside to focus on that race. Mr. Biden won his district by 21 percentage points in 2020, according to data compiled by Daily Kos, making it all but certain that Democrats will hold the seat.Representative Bill Johnson, Republican of Ohio, said he would accept a job as president of Youngstown State University. His seat, too, is all but sure to be held by the G.O.P.; former President Donald J. Trump won the district by more than 28 percentage points in 2020.Some members not seeking re-election have determined they can affect more change from outside Congress, where they do not have to contend with the same infighting, gridlock and attention-seeking that now frequently drive the place.“I think I will have as much or more impact as a civilian as I would as a member of Congress, especially having to be involved in a pretty toxic political environment,” Mr. Blumenauer said.Lawmakers typically do not choose to leave office when their party looks poised to regain power in the next election cycle, and Democrats see an opening to regain the House majority next year. But Mr. Blumenauer, who would be a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee should his party win the House, said he would rather not sacrifice time with his family.“It’s tempting,” said Mr. Blumenauer. “I’m going to continue working on the things I care about, but with a renewed commitment to family, friends and fun.”Robert Jimison More

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      Georgia’s Liberal Organizers Warn of a Cash Crunch and Apathy

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      Cost-conscious shifts in strategy and a changed political landscape have stoked fears about the groups’ ability to keep delivering victories for Democrats.Since 2020, Democratic strategists and activists have fixated on how to expand their gains in Georgia, once a Republican stronghold and now a true battleground.But some of the state’s most prominent grass-roots organizers — those responsible for engineering President Biden’s victory in 2020 and that of two Democratic U.S. senators in 2021 — are growing concerned that efforts and attention are waning four years later.The national money that once flowed freely from Democratic groups to help win pivotal Senate contests in Georgia has been slow in coming. Leading organizers, just over a month from the anticipated start of their initiatives to mobilize voters for the presidential election, say they are confronting a deep sense of apathy among key constituencies that will take even more resources to contend with.And small but potentially pivotal shifts in strategy — cost-conscious measures like delaying large-scale voter engagement programs to later in the cycle or relying more on volunteers than paid canvassers — have privately stoked fears among some organizers about their ability to replicate their successes. More, it has led them to question how seriously Democratic donors and party leaders will take the state in 2024, even as Mr. Biden’s campaign has indicated that a repeat victory in Georgia is part of his strategy.“What we’re hearing is, it’s not, like, first tier,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which has been one of the leading organizations on the ground in Georgia since 2020. “So that’s a little disappointing but we don’t know exactly yet what that means. But some early indications are that it’s not going to get top-level prioritization.”Unlike 2020 or 2022, Georgia will not have a major statewide race in 2024, elevating the urgency for progressives in building both a robust digital operation and on-the-ground organizing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Senate Candidate in Michigan Says He Was Offered $20 Million to Challenge Tlaib

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      Rashida Tlaib, a member of the progressive “squad” in the House, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the Palestinian cause, particularly after Israel’s invasion of Gaza.A Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan said he was offered $20 million by a Michigan businessman to drop out of the race and instead take on a primary challenge against Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American representative who was censured this month for her statements about the Israel-Gaza war.Linden Nelson, a Michigan businessman and past donor to Democratic and some Republican candidates, made the campaign funding offer to the Senate candidate, Hill Harper, last month, according to Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for Mr. Harper’s campaign. Mr. Nelson also donated $13,000 to Concerned Citizens of Michigan, a group that supported a primary challenge against Ms. Tlaib in 2020.Mr. Ganapathy added that the conversation between Mr. Harper and Mr. Nelson was “respectful on both sides.” Calls to Mr. Nelson’s phone number on Wednesday were not answered. Ms. Tlaib declined to comment on the record.“I’m not going to run against the only Palestinian-American in Congress just because some special interests don’t like her,” Mr. Harper said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. He also criticized “the Israel lobby” and “a broken political and campaign finance system that’s tilted towards the wealthy and powerful.”The funding offer would have in effect eliminated a progressive candidate from the crowded Democratic primary for an open Senate seat in Michigan and pitted him against Ms. Tlaib, a member of the progressive “squad” in the House. She has drawn criticism after breaking with Democrats who support Israel’s invasion of Gaza following a deadly terrorist attack carried out by Hamas.The offer also reflects a growing effort to target Democratic candidates who have either been critical of Israel or sympathetic to Palestinian causes. A Democratic pro-Israel group began running television ads this month that criticize Ms. Tlaib for her positions on the war in Gaza — such as calling for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict. Other primary challenges are brewing against progressive representatives like Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Jamaal Bowman of New York.Mr. Harper, an author and actor known for his roles on “CSI: NY” and “The Good Doctor,” said on X that he was approached by “one of AIPAC’s biggest donors,” referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, soon after Politico published an article first reporting Mr. Nelson’s offer. He said he declined the offer, adding, “I won’t be bossed, bullied, or bought.”Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for AIPAC, said the group “was absolutely not involved in any way in this matter,” adding that “our records indicate that this individual has not contributed to AIPAC in over a decade.”AIPAC, among other pro-Israel groups, spent tens of millions of dollars supporting candidates in Democratic primaries in the 2022 midterms. Progressive organizations are concerned that these groups will sway primaries against progressive Democratic elected officials next year.Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that helped elect many of the targeted House members, criticized Mr. Nelson’s reported offer, saying “if that’s not showing that our democracy and our elections are for sale to the highest millionaire donor, then I’m not sure what is.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Why Trump Represents a ‘Trifecta of Danger’

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      Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London, captures the remarkable nature of the 2024 presidential election in an Oct. 1 essay, “The Case for Amplifying Trump’s Insanity.”Klaas argues that the presidential contest now pitsA 77-year-old racist, misogynist bigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly, violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who has committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him, and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to poweragainst “an 80-year-old with mainstream Democratic Party views who sometimes misspeaks or trips.”“One of those two candidates,” Klaas notes, “faces relentless newspaper columns and TV pundit ‘takes’ arguing that he should drop out of the race. (Spoiler alert: it’s somehow *not* the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges).”Klaas asks:What is going on? How is it possible that the leading candidate to become president of the United States can float the prospect of executing a general and the media response is … crickets?How is it possible that it’s not front page news when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes? And why do so few people question Trump’s mental acuity rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management and warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II (which would require a time machine), or wrongly claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016?The media, Klaas argues, has adopted a policy in covering Trump of: “Don’t amplify him! You’re just spreading his message.”In Klaas’s view, newspapers and television have succumbed to what he calls the “banality of crazy,” ignoring “even the most dangerous policy proposals by an authoritarian who is on the cusp of once again becoming the most powerful man in the world — precisely because it happens, like clockwork, almost every day.”This approach, according to Klaas,has backfired. It’s bad for democracy. The “Don’t Amplify Him” argument is disastrous. We need to amplify Trump’s vile rhetoric more, because it will turn persuadable voters off to his cruel message.Looking over the eight-and-a-half years during which Trump has been directly engaged in presidential politics, it’s not as if there were no warning signs.Three months after Trump took office, in April 2017, a conference called “A Duty to Warn” was held at the Yale School of Medicine.The conference resulted in a best-selling book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” A sampling of the chapter titles gives the flavor:“Our Witness to Malignant Normality,” by Robert Jay Lifton.“Unbridled and Extreme Hedonism: How the Leader of the Free World Has Proven Time and Again That He Is Unfit for Duty,” by Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword.“Pathological Narcissism and Politics: a Lethal Combination,” by Craig Malkin.In a review of that book, “Twilight of American Sanity: a Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump” and “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History,” Carlos Lozada, now a Times Opinion columnist, wrote in The Washington Post that the political elite in Washington was increasingly concerned about Trump’s mindset:“I think he’s crazy,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) confided to his colleague Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in a July exchange inadvertently caught on a microphone. “I’m worried,” she replied …. Even some Republicans have grown more blunt, with Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) recently suggesting that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” to succeed as president.The warnings that Donald Trump is dangerous and unstable began well before his 2016 election and have become increasingly urgent.These warnings came during the 2016 primary and general campaigns, continued throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, and remain relentless as he gets older and more delusional about the outcome of the 2020 election.I asked some of those who first warned about the dangers Trump poses what their views are now.Leonard L. Glass, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, emailed me:He acts like he’s impervious, “a very stable genius,” but we know he is rageful, grandiose, vengeful, impulsive, devoid of empathy, boastful, inciting of violence, and thin-skinned. At times it seems as if he cannot control himself or his hateful speech. We need to wonder if these are the precursors of a major deterioration in his character defenses.Glass continued:If Trump — in adopting language that he cannot help knowing replicates that of Hitler (especially the references to opponents as “vermin” and “poisoning the blood of our country”), we have to wonder if he has crossed into “new terrain.” That terrain, driven by grandiosity and dread of exposure (e.g., at the trials) could signal the emergence of an even less constrained, more overtly vicious and remorseless Trump who, should he regain the presidency, would, indeed act like the authoritarians he praises. Absent conscientious aides who could contain him (as they barely did last time), this could lead to the literal shedding of American blood on American soil by a man who believes he is “the only one” and the one, some believe, is a purifying agent of God and in whom they see no evil nor do they doubt.In recent months, Trump has continued to add to the portrait Glass paints of him.In March, he told loyalists in Waco, Texas:I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.“With you at my side,” Trump went on to say,we will totally obliterate the deep state, we will banish the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, and we will cast out the communists and Marxists, we will throw off the corrupt political class, we will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will stand up to the RINOs, and we will defeat Joe Biden and every single Democrat.At the California Republican Convention on Sept. 29, Trump told the gathering that under his administration shoplifters will be subject to extrajudicial execution: “We will immediately stop all the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.”Trump has continued to forge ahead, pledging to a crowd of supporters in Claremont N.H. on Nov. 11: “We will root out the communists, Marxist fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible, they’ll do anything whether legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”Nothing captures Trump’s megalomania and narcissism more vividly than his openly declared agenda, should he win back the White House next year.On Nov. 6, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett reported in The Washington Post that Trump “wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley.”Trump, the Post noted, dismissed federal criminal indictments as “third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’ ” and then claimed that the indictments gave him license, if re-elected, to do the same thing: “I can do that, too.”A week later, my Times colleagues Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, quoted Trump in “How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025”: “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” adding, “I will totally obliterate the deep state.”In an earlier story, Haberman, Savage and Swan reported that Trump allies are preparing to reissue an executive order known as Schedule F, which Trump promulgated at the end of his presidency, but that never went into effect.Schedule F, the reporters wrote,would have empowered his administration to strip job protections from many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired. While the order said agencies should not hire or fire Schedule F employees based on political affiliation, it effectively would have made these employees more like political appointees who can be fired at will.Schedule F would politicize posts in the senior civil service authorized to oversee the implementation of policy, replacing job security with the empowerment of the administration to hire and fire as it chose, a topic I wrote about in an earlier column.I asked Joshua D. Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, whether he thought Trump’s “vermin” comment represented a tipping point, an escalation in his willingness to attack opponents. Miller replied by email: “My bet is we’re seeing the same basic traits, but their manifestation has been ratcheted up by the stress of his legal problems and also by some sense of invulnerability in that he has yet to face any dire consequences for his previous behavior.”Miller wrote that he haslong thought that Trump’s narcissism was actually distracting us from his psychopathic traits. I view the two as largely the same but with psychopathy bringing problems with disinhibition (impulsivity; failure to delay gratification, irresponsibility, etc.) to the table and Trump seems rather high on those traits along with those related to narcissism (e.g., entitlement, exploitativeness), pathological lying, grandiosity, etc.).I asked Donald R. Lynam, a professor of psychology at Purdue, the same question, and he emailed his reply: “The escalation is quite consistent with grandiose narcissism. Trump is reacting more and more angrily to what he perceives as his unfair treatment and failure to be admired, appreciated and adored in the way that he believes is his due.”Grandiose narcissists, Lynam continued, “feel they are special and that normal rules don’t apply to them. They require attention and admiration,” adding “this behavior is also consistent with psychopathy which is pretty much grandiose narcissism plus poor impulse control.”Most of the specialists I contacted see Trump’s recent behavior and public comments as part of an evolving process.“Trump is an aging malignant narcissist,” Aaron L. Pincus, a professor of psychology at Penn State, wrote in an email. “As he ages, he appears to be losing impulse control and is slipping cognitively. So we are seeing a more unfiltered version of his pathology. Quite dangerous.”In addition, Pincus continued, “Trump seems increasingly paranoid, which can also be a reflection of his aging brain and mental decline.”The result? “Greater hostility and less ability to reflect on the implications and consequences of his behavior.”Edwin B. Fisher, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, made the case in an email that Trump’s insistence on the validity of his own distorted claims has created a vicious circle, pressuring him to limit his close relations to those willing to confirm his beliefs:His isolation is much of his own making. The enormous pressures he puts on others for confirmation and unquestioning loyalty and his harsh, often vicious responses to perceived disloyalty lead to a strong, accelerating dynamic of more and more pressure for loyalty, harsher and harsher judgment of the disloyal, and greater and greater shrinking of pool of supporters.At the same time, Fisher continued, Trump is showing signs of cognitive deterioration,the confusion of Sioux Falls and Sioux City, several times referring to having beaten and/or now running against Obama, or the odd garbling of words on a number of occasions for it seems like about a year now. Add to these the tremendous pressure and threat he is under and you have, if you will, a trifecta of danger — lifelong habit, threat and possible cognitive decline. They each exacerbate the other two.Fisher noted that he anticipated the movement toward increased isolation in his 2017 contribution to the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which I mentioned earlier:Reflecting the interplay of personal and social, narcissistic concerns for self and a preoccupation with power may initially shape and limit those invited to the narcissistic leader’s social network, with sensitivity to slights and angry reactions to them further eroding that network.This process of exclusion, Fisher wrote, becomes self-reinforcing:A disturbing feature of this kind of dynamic is that it tends to feed on itself. The more the individual selects for those who flatter him and avoid confrontation, and the more those who have affronted and been castigated fall away, the narrower and more homogenous his network becomes, further flattering the individual but eventually becoming a thin precipice. President Nixon, drunk and reportedly conversing with the pictures on the White House walls, and praying with Henry Kissinger during his last nights in office, comes to mind.Craig Malkin, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, raised a separate concern in an email responding to my inquiry:If the evidence emerging proves true — that Trump knew he lost and continued to push the big lie anyway — his character problems go well beyond simple narcissism and reach troubling levels of psychopathy. And psychopaths are far more concerned with their own power than preserving truth, democracy or even lives.In 2019, leaked memos written by Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, warned British leaders that the Trump presidency could “crash and burn” and “end in disgrace,” adding: “We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”In 2020, Pew Research reported that “Trump Ratings Remain Low Around Globe.” Pew found:Trump receives largely negative reviews from publics around the world. Across 32 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center, a median of 64 percent say they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, while just 29 percent express confidence in the American leader. Anti-Trump sentiments are especially common in Western Europe: Roughly three-in-four or more lack confidence in Trump in Germany, Sweden, France, Spain and the Netherlands.A recent editorial in The Economist, carried the headline: “Donald Trump Poses the Biggest Danger to the World in 2024.” “A second Trump term,” the editorial concludes:would be a watershed in a way the first was not. Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power. His plans would encounter less resistance. And because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline. The election will be decided by tens of thousands of voters in just a handful of states. In 2024 the fate of the world will depend on their ballots.Klaas, who opened this column, concludes that a crucial factor in Trump’s political survival is the failure of the media in this country to recognize that the single most important story in the presidential election, a story that dominates over all others, is the enormous threat Trump poses:The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.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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      Ignore Trump? Democrats Now Want Him Plastered All Over the News.

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      The former president has been relatively quiet, out of the headlines and off mainstream social media. Democrats are hoping that more attention on him can help turn around President Biden’s fortunes.When Donald J. Trump left the White House, Democrats didn’t want to hear another word from him. President Biden dismissed him as “the former guy.” A party-wide consensus held that he was best left ignored.Three years later, Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign and Democratic officials across the party’s spectrum have landed on a new solution to his political slump:More Trump.Criticizing the news media for giving Mr. Trump a platform is out. Quietly pining for major networks to again broadcast live coverage of Trump campaign rallies is in.Behind the improbable longing for the former president to gobble up political oxygen again is Democrats’ yearslong dependence on the Trump outrage machine. Since his ascent, Mr. Trump has been a one-man Democratic turnout operation, uniting an otherwise fractured opposition and fueling victories in three straight election cycles.Now, Democrats worry that the fever of Trump fatigue has passed, and that some voters are softening toward a man they once loathed. Many others may simply be paying little attention, as Mr. Trump’s share of the daily national conversation has diminished, despite the occasional interruption of campaign-trail pronouncements like his recent vow to “root out” political opponents like “vermin.”Mr. Trump, who has never been called a shrinking violet, has nevertheless skipped the three Republican presidential debates and stayed away from the major social media platforms. He is expected to spend large parts of next year in criminal trials that, except for one in Georgia, will not be televised.Cynthia Wallace, a co-founder of the New Rural Project, a progressive group in North Carolina, said she didn’t hear much about Mr. Trump these days from the rural Black and Hispanic voters her organization focuses on.“I think it’s like a relationship,” she said. “There were a lot of bad things that happened, but the longer distance you get away from the bad things, you’re like, maybe the bad things weren’t that bad.”Cynthia Wallace, a co-founder of the New Rural Project, a progressive group in North Carolina that focuses on rural Black and Hispanic voters, said that these days, she didn’t hear as much from them about Mr. Trump. Travis Dove for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s campaign, which has been slow to ramp up its operations, is betting that once voters view the election as a choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, who remains highly polarizing, they will set aside their reservations about the president and fall in line behind him.But while Mr. Trump is likely to rise in the public consciousness as November 2024 approaches, it is far from certain that he will sabotage himself politically. And it remains unclear whether his criminal trials will make him more toxic among moderate and swing voters, or whether weeks of courtroom appearances will keep his presence more muted than normal.Other Biden efforts are meeting limited success. His campaign has little to show for a $40 million advertising push promoting his economic record. And approval of the president, according to polls released this month by The New York Times and Siena College, has fallen sharply among Black and Hispanic voters — demographics that strategists say are more likely to disregard Mr. Trump when he is not front and center in the news.“Not having the day-to-day chaos of Donald Trump in people’s faces certainly has an impact on how people are measuring the urgency of the danger of another Trump administration,” said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an African American political organizing group. “It is important to remind people of what a total and absolute disaster Trump was.”Mr. Biden and Democrats, of course, cannot control decisions that news organizations make or the topics that absorb voters in person and on social media. But the Biden campaign, which is aiming to make the 2024 election a referendum on whether Mr. Trump should return to the White House, can try to push the national discussion in his direction with its messaging.One big challenge, however, is that many Americans who tuned out the former president when he left office show little interest in hearing more about him.Several voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and are now leaning toward Mr. Trump said they had not followed the ins and outs of the former president’s post-White House activities and tended to discount and brush aside his past scandals.“I know a lot of people get mad about what he said years ago about ‘grab them by whatever,’” said Treena Fortney, 51, a wholesaler from Covington, Ga., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but now regrets it and is supporting Mr. Trump. “That was kind of aggravating. But, you know, that was years ago. And that’s how guys talk in a locker room. I don’t think he really would do that. I think he was just saying that.”Treena Fortney, 51, a wholesaler from Covington, Ga., voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but now regrets it and is supporting Mr. Trump. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesArthur Taylor, a business owner from Mesa, Ariz., described himself as a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden and now says he will back Mr. Trump in 2024. He said that the business climate was better when Mr. Trump was president and that the 91 criminal charges against him might not be so bad.“There’s so many things that President Trump does that’s just not ethical,” Mr. Taylor said. But he added that with the former president, “there’s a level of honesty and almost transparency, even in a way that we might cringe at it.”Those sorts of sentiments have left the Biden campaign this past week to engage in its own media criticism, publicly urging news shows on network television to follow New York Times articles about Mr. Trump’s plans for immigration and deportation policies if he wins the election.“The more the American people are confronted with who Donald Trump is — a dangerous, extreme and erratic man who only cares about using the power of the government to help himself and his friends — the more they reject him,” said Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman. “We will continue to highlight for voters what’s at stake if Trump and his cronies are allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.”Mr. Biden and most of his Democratic allies have adopted a collective vow of silence on what portends to be the biggest Trump-related story line over the next year — the four criminal trials he faces in Florida, Georgia, New York and Washington, D.C.In August, 38 House Democrats wrote to the federal courts administrator asking that Mr. Trump’s federal trials be broadcast live on television. Mr. Trump himself last week asked that cameras be allowed in the courtroom for his trial in Washington — a request that federal prosecutors swiftly opposed.“You see one of the court-artist sketches, and you look at that and you’re like, I’m not really sure which trial he’s on,” Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said in an interview. “Is anyone paying attention to them?”Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist, said Mr. Biden’s decision to stay quiet had allowed Mr. Trump to frame the cases against him as “a one-sided conversation.”“We have not engaged on perhaps Donald Trump’s No. 1 Achilles’ heel, which is the 91 indictments,” she said. “We’ll see what happens when we do.”Aside from the trials, Democrats are longing for the days when cable networks carried Mr. Trump’s rallies live. To watch a Trump rally live now, viewers need to find an online stream or a fringy far-right cable station like Newsmax.On this, Mr. Trump and Democrats tend to be in agreement.“The more people see and hear from Donald Trump and what he has planned for the country if he regains power, the better off Democrats will be up and down the ballot,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “Trump’s voracious need for attention works to Democrats’ advantage.”Google search interest in Mr. Trump remains well below the level it was at when he was in office and running for re-election four years ago. The television ratings for Mr. Trump’s CNN town-hall event in May were strong, but well below what similar events in 2016 and 2020 drew.Jessica Floyd, the executive director of the Hub Project, a progressive group, urged mainstream cable TV networks to “remind people exactly how bad these rallies are and how corrosive they are for our democracy.”She added, “They should also show President Biden selling an absolutely historic level of investment in our economy.”Jon Soltz, a co-founder and chairman of VoteVets, a liberal veterans group, cautioned Democrats to be patient.“There’s a huge amount of the population right now that doesn’t realize that Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president,” he said. “When that happens, you will see a different response.”Camille Baker More