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      Black Voters’ Shift to Trump Is a Warning Sign for Biden, Strategists Say

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      New York Times/Siena College polling painted a worrisome picture of the president’s standing with a crucial constituency. Democratic strategists warned that the erosion could threaten his re-election.Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been in decades, frustrated with what many see as inaction on their political priorities and unhappy with President Biden, a candidate they helped lift to the White House just three years ago.New polls by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states said they would support former President Donald J. Trump in next year’s election, and 71 percent would back Mr. Biden.The drift in support is striking, given that Mr. Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12 percent of the Black vote in nearly half a century.Mr. Biden has a year to shore up his standing, but if numbers like these held up across the country in November 2024, they would amount to a historic shift: No Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights era has earned less than 80 percent of the Black vote.The new polling offers an early warning sign about the erosion of Mr. Biden’s coalition, Democratic strategists said, cautioning that the president will probably lose his re-election bid if he cannot increase his support from this pivotal voting bloc.A number of Democratic strategists acknowledged that the downbeat numbers in battleground states extended beyond Black voters to the party’s core constituencies, warning that the Biden campaign had to take steps to improve its standing, particularly with Black, Latino and younger voters. The Times/Siena polls surveyed registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster for Mr. Biden’s campaign in 2020, said the president’s political operation had not been “present enough” for Black Americans and younger voters.“I don’t think we’ve been voicing what we delivered to the African American community and particularly among younger African American men,” she said. “We have to get the numbers up and we have to get African American voters out to vote, and we have to get the numbers up with young people and we have to get them out to vote.”Mr. Biden’s numbers in the polling were particularly low among Black men. Twenty-seven percent of Black men supported Mr. Trump, compared with 17 percent of Black women.Still, there are signs that Democrats’ hurdles with Black voters, however alarming for the party, leave room for improvement. About a quarter of Black voters who said they planned to support Mr. Trump said there was some chance they would end up backing Mr. Biden.Cornell Belcher, who worked as a pollster for former President Barack Obama, said he doubted that many Black voters would switch their support to Mr. Trump. His bigger fear, he said, is that they might not vote at all.“I’m not worried about Trump doubling his support with Black and brown voters,” said Mr. Belcher, who focuses particularly on surveying voters of color. “What I am worried about is turnout.”He added: “But that’s what campaigns are for. We build a campaign to solve for that problem.”Karen Wright, a business consultant in McDonough, Ga., who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in 1982, said she had always voted for Democrats, seeing them as the best option for younger immigrants, particularly those from predominantly Black countries like hers.Now, though, she believes Mr. Biden has not followed through on his campaign promises on immigration, worries that Democrats have gone too far in their embrace of L.G.B.T.Q. issues and faults them for books used in public education that she believes are too sexually explicit.Next year, Ms. Wright, 53, said that she planned to support Republicans up and down the ballot — and that she was not alone.“My clients are mostly Black,” she said. “They voted Democrat last year and they all said next election they’re going to vote Republican.”Angela Lang, the executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, a group that aims to mobilize Black voters in Milwaukee, said canvassers who worked with her organization had encountered an overwhelming number of Black voters who did not want to vote or did not see the value in turning out again.“People are like: ‘Why should I vote? I don’t feel like voting. Voting doesn’t do anything. My life hasn’t changed,’” she said, adding that the group had found that high prices and housing instability had fed people’s pessimism. “If your basic needs aren’t being met, it’s difficult to pay attention to politics and it’s difficult to have faith in that system when you voted before but you’re still struggling day to day.”Still, Cliff Albright, a veteran progressive organizer and a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said Democrats had time to get back on track. Black voters, he said, are responding to the same fears about economic and global uncertainty that many Americans are confronting.“We’re a year out from the election,” Mr. Albright said. “If you ask the very same people the same question a year from now, when the choice is very clear, the same 22 percent might have a very different answer.”He added: “Is there work to be done? Yes. But is the sky falling? No.”Black voters have long powered Democratic presidential victories. Their support in South Carolina in 2020 set Mr. Biden on the path to becoming the nominee. During the general election, Black voters were again crucial to his victory.Officials with Mr. Biden’s campaign acknowledge that they have work to do to shore up the president’s standing with Black voters. Erin Schaff for The New York TimesBiden campaign officials now say they recognize they have work to do with Black voters, and they and their allies have begun multimillion-dollar engagement campaigns targeting them.Last month, the Biden campaign started an organizing program in Black neighborhoods in Milwaukee. The campaign has dispatched top surrogates to hold events aimed at Black voters and has bought advertising on Black radio programs that promotes the “real difference for Black America” his policies have made. “President Biden is getting it done,” a narrator says. “For us. And that’s the facts.”Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said, “We know we have to get to work and we have to communicate with these voters and we have to do it earlier than ever before.”In interviews, Black voters said they had seen little progress from the Biden administration on some of their top priorities, including student loan debt relief, affordable housing and accountability for the police.Some worried that Mr. Biden was more focused on foreign policy than on domestic issues like inflation. In the Times/Siena poll, 80 percent of Black voters rated the economy as “only fair” or “poor.”A few said that their openness to supporting Mr. Trump, despite his offensive comments about Black communities and the 91 felony charges he faces in several criminal cases, reflected their disaffection with Mr. Biden and his party more than any real affinity for the former president.Keyon Reynolds-Martin, a father of one in Milwaukee, praised what he saw as Mr. Trump’s prioritizing of the economy and domestic policy, recalling the stimulus checks he received during the pandemic. Mr. Trump initially did not support the relief checks, which were spearheaded by Democrats. He later affixed his signature to them, representing the first time a president’s name had appeared on an Internal Revenue Service disbursement.Mr. Reynolds-Martin, 25, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump next fall, when he casts his first ballot ever.Of Mr. Biden, he said, “He’s not giving money to help the United States, but he’s giving money to other countries,” adding, “At least Donald Trump was trying to help the United States.”Talitha McLaren, 45, a home health aide in Philadelphia, said she was undecided about whether to vote in 2024.She worries about a total erosion of democracy under a second Trump administration, but she is also frustrated with Mr. Biden and his party for failing to tackle rising costs that have not kept pace with her income and for not providing help with her student loan debt. On Tuesday, she plans to vote for the Democrat running for mayor of her hometown.“Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to support the Democrats,” she said. “But they haven’t won me over yet on what they’re trying to do for the country. Because what they’re doing now ain’t working.”Alyce McFadden More

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      Could a Prominent Democrat Really Challenge Biden? It’s Unlikely.

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      Forty-four years ago tomorrow, the last serious primary opponent to a sitting Democratic president announced his campaign before 5,000 supporters in Boston.But that challenge by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who ran against President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 nomination, offers little precedent for the legion of Democrats fretting about President Biden’s standing ahead of a likely 2024 rematch with former President Donald J. Trump.On panicked text threads and during late-night bar sessions, Democrats in the political world have thrown out the names of ambitious rising stars in the party as possible primary challengers: Gretchen Whitmer. Gavin Newsom. J.B. Pritzker. Raphael Warnock.But it’s highly unlikely, given how much time, planning and money a presidential campaign requires, that any of them would run against Mr. Biden at this point. Challenging an incumbent president is widely seen as a career killer in politics, and virtually all of the Democrats talked about as possible Biden alternatives have thrown their support behind him.Modern Democratic politics have also de-emphasized the traditional early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where Senator Kennedy traveled after announcing his campaign, in favor of a diverse group of states where Mr. Biden was strong in the 2020 primary season. Mr. Biden, and before him Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, won the nomination largely because of their strength with Black voters in Democratic primaries.There’s also the matter of qualifying for primary ballots. Deadlines have already passed in Nevada and New Hampshire. Others are approaching on Friday in Alabama, Michigan and South Carolina. Deadlines in delegate-rich California and Florida will come by the end of the month.A theoretical primary challenger would also have to raise tens of millions of dollars to compete with the $90.5 million Mr. Biden’s campaign committees and the allied Democratic National Committee reported having at the end of September. The party’s major donors are effectively in lock step behind Mr. Biden; a primary challenger would need to either peel off a significant proportion of them in short order or be rich enough to finance a large portion of any campaign.Mr. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, is helping to plan and fund next year’s Democratic National Convention. Mr. Newsom, the governor of California, has offered himself up to debate second-tier Republican candidates on Mr. Biden’s behalf. Figures like Ms. Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and Raphael Warnock, the senator from Georgia, have shown little indication they’re at cross purposes with the White House.And yet Mr. Biden will turn 81 this month. If anything is durable about his polling numbers, it is how weak his standing is among the party’s core constituencies. But as the old saying goes in politics, you can’t beat something with nothing. More

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      Trump May Not Need a Coup This Time

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I know you’re busy writing about your reporting trip to Israel, and I am looking forward to reading all your thoughts. But, gee, can we talk about the Times-Siena poll on the presidential race that came out on Sunday? Donald Trump is ahead in almost all the critical states.Yow. Pardon me while I pour myself a drink.Bret Stephens: Nice to be home. Please pour me one while you’re at it.For readers who don’t know the gory details of the poll, here they are: Across six battleground states, Trump leads President Biden 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters. In the crucial swing states that Biden won last time, Trump is ahead in five — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — while Biden leads only in Wisconsin. Biden is losing support from young voters, Hispanic voters, Black voters — constituencies Democrats have depended on for decades to overcome the longstanding Republican advantage among whites.Women voters favor Biden by eight percentage points, 50 percent to 42 percent, but men favor Trump by a far wider 18-point spread: 55 percent to 37 percent. (I guess that’s another definition for the term “manspreading.”) On the economy, voters prefer Trump over Biden by a 22-point margin. And a whopping 71 percent think Biden is too old to be president, as opposed to just 39 percent for Trump.Gail: Whimper, whimper.Bret: Basically, this poll is to Biden’s second-term ambitions what sunlight is to morning fog. Isn’t it time for him to bow out gracefully and focus his remaining energies on the crises of the moment, particularly Ukraine and the Middle East, instead of gearing up for a punishing campaign while setting the country up for Trump’s catastrophic comeback?Gail: Well, you and I both hoped he wouldn’t run for re-election. But he did, and he is — and as I’ve said nine million times, he’s only three years older than Donald Trump and appears to be in much better physical condition.Bret: For all we know, Biden may be physically fitter than Alex Honnold and mentally sharper than Garry Kasparov, even if he’s hiding it well. But this poll is pretty much voters yelling, “We don’t think so.” Ignore it at your peril.How about putting in a good word for Dean Phillips, the Minnesota representative challenging Biden? Or at least urging the Biden team to lose Kamala Harris in favor of a veep pick more Americans would feel confident about as a potential president, like Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary?Gail: I’m not gonna argue about perfect-world scenarios. Harris might not be your ideal potential president — or mine — but dumping her from the ticket would suggest some historic degree of bad performance. And she really hasn’t done anything wrong.Bret: Harris could well be the best vice president ever, though she’s also hiding it well. But the point here is that voters are underwhelmed, and her presence on the ticket compounds Biden’s already abysmal numbers.Gail: I’m tormented by this whole national vision of Biden as an aging dolt while Trump plays the energetic orator. As our colleagues Michael Bender and Michael Gold pointed out recently, Trump’s had “a string of unforced gaffes, garble and general disjointedness” in his speeches lately.Bret: Trump has always been the Tsar Bomba of idiocy. But too many people seem more impressed by his rhetorical force than appalled by his moral and ideological destructiveness.Gail: Why does Biden have this terrible image while Trump’s his old, fun-under-multiple-indictments self?Bret: That’s a great question. As a matter of law, I think Trump belongs in jail. The political problem is that the indictments help him, because they play to his outlaw appeal. He wants to cast himself as the Josey Wales of American politics. His entire argument is that “the system” — particularly the Justice Department — is broken, biased and corrupt, so anything the system does against him is proof of its corruption rather than of his. And tens of millions of people agree with him.Gail: This is the world that grew up around us when The Riddler was more fun than Batman.Bret: Perfectly said. The good news in the Times-Siena poll is that Trump’s negatives are also very high. They’re just not as high as Biden’s. Which means Democrats could easily hold the White House with another candidate. But you seem reluctant to push the idea.Gail: Yeah, since Biden is very, very definitely running, I don’t see any point in whining about the fact that I wish he wasn’t. He’d still be 10 times a better president than Trump.Bret: I just refuse to believe Biden’s candidacy is inevitable. Democrats seem to have talked themselves into thinking that any primary challenge to Biden just guarantees an eventual Republican victory, since that’s what tends to happen to incumbent presidents, like George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. But the alternative is to watch Biden risk his single greatest accomplishment — defeating an incumbent Trump in the first place — by heedlessly running in the face of overwhelming public skepticism.Gail: What’s so frustrating is — Biden has a really fine record. The economy has picked up. He’s gotten a huge program passed for infrastructure projects like better roads and bridges. He’s always got the fight against global warming on his agenda. He stands up firmly for social issues most Americans support, like abortion rights.Bret: All the more reason for him to rest on his laurels and pass the baton to a younger generation. I can think of a half-dozen Democrats, particularly governors, who would trounce Trump in a general election just by showing up to the debate with a pulse and a brain. Let me just start with four: Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Jared Polis, Wes Moore ….Gail: I know Trump appears more energetic, but he’s really only a whole lot louder. Either way his multitudinous defects in character and policy really should make the difference.Bret: Hope you’re right. Fear you’re not.Gail: Sigh. Let’s change the subject. You’re in charge of Republicans — what’s your party going to do about the dreaded Senator Tommy Tuberville?Bret: For the record, I quit the G.O.P. more than five years ago.As for Tuberville, who is holding some 370 senior military promotions hostage because he objects to Pentagon policies on abortion, I suggest he should have a look at what just happened in Israel. The country just paid a dreadful price in lives in part because far-right politicians ignored the degradation of the country’s military readiness while they pursued their ideological fixations. I hope defense hawks like Lindsey Graham join forces with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to change Senate rules and move the nominations to a vote.Speaking of Congress, your thoughts on the effort to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib over some of her rhetoric?Gail: Well, Representative Tlaib accused Israel of committing genocide. She’s also said that President Biden “supported” genocide of the Palestinians, a comment that was offensive to Biden while also, I think, hurting the Palestinian cause. But I wouldn’t want to see members of Congress distracted from the deeply serious issues at hand with a squabble about censorship, particularly one championed by folks like the dreaded Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.Bret: Readers won’t be surprised to know that I find Tlaib’s views wrong and repellent. Like Taylor Greene, she’s an embarrassment to her party and the House. But that’s exactly the reason I oppose efforts to censure her. One of the things that distinguishes free societies like America and Israel from dictatorships like Hamas’s in Gaza is that we stand for freedom of speech as a matter of course, while they suppress it. The right censure for Tlaib would be to get voted out of office, not muzzled by her colleagues.Gail: But let’s get back to that poll for a minute. I was fascinated by the fact that only 6 percent of the respondents identified themselves as union members. I think the unions have done great things for the working class and middle class in this country and I’m very much saddened by their dwindling influence.Bret: I’ve always been pro-union. They’re a powerful force for greater automation and an argument for free trade.Gail: Hissss …Bret: OK, that was my inner Alex P. Keaton speaking. But union leaders should at least stop to ask themselves why, if they’re so terrific, so many American workers are reluctant to join them. I feel that way about certain other self-regarding institutions, including much of the news media, that are so full of their own wonderfulness that they can’t figure out why people keep fleeing in droves.Gail: Bret, we’ve entered the November holiday season — really did enjoy the trick-or-treaters last week and was pleased to notice that the popular costumes in our neighborhood seemed to go more toward skeletons and ghosts than celebrities and pop culture heroes. On to Thanksgiving and then I’m gonna challenge you to come up with a list of things in the public world you’re thankful for.Bret: Pumpkin-spice lattes. Just kidding.Gail: Meanwhile, this is Republican debate week, featuring several people nobody’s really heard of and an absent Donald Trump. I guess your fave Nikki Haley is near the head of the pack, such as it is. Think she still has a whisper of a chance?Bret: Not sure. But you’ve somehow reminded me of a lovely poem by Adrienne Rich, which seems to capture both Haley’s candidacy and my daily struggles with coherent prose.You see a mantrying to think.You want to sayto everything:Keep off! Give him room!But you only watch,terrifiedthe old consolationswill get him at lastlike a fishhalf-dead from floppingand almost crawlingacross the shingle,almost breathingthe raw, agonizingairtill a wavepulls it back blind into the triumphantsea.It’s called “Ghost of a Chance.” Here’s me hoping Haley’s got 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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      A Democratic Governor in Mississippi? He Thinks It’s Possible.

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      With a promise to expand Medicaid and a focus on turning out Black voters, Brandon Presley is confident he can do what no Democrat has done in 20 years. After stopping by a meet-and-greet in Ridgeland, a porch festival in Vicksburg, the Great Delta Bear Affair in Rolling Fork and an event on a baseball diamond in Yazoo City, Brandon Presley entered a packed room in McComb, launching into the message he believes can get a Democrat — namely, himself — elected governor of Mississippi. He would immediately move to expand Medicaid, which would help resuscitate rural hospitals and provide largely free government health insurance to most low-income adults. He would slash a hated tax on groceries. Above all, he assured the crowd, he would be a very different governor than Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent, whom he denounced as ensconced in privilege and dented by scandal.“The fight in politics in Mississippi is not right versus left,” Mr. Presley, an elected public utilities commissioner and a former mayor of Nettleton, his tiny hometown in northern Mississippi, said in McComb. “And sometimes, it’s not even Democrat versus Republican. It’s those of us on the outside versus those of them on the inside.” Mr. Presley’s campaign has been a built on a bet that his human touch and populist platform can forge a coalition of Black and liberal-to-centrist white voters, some disaffected Republicans among them, that is robust enough for him to win. It is a test of a blueprint that Democrats have long relied on, but to diminishing effect in recent decades, as Republicans have tightened their grip on power in Mississippi and most of the South.Mr. Presley, left, and Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent, during a debate on Wednesday.Brett Kenyon/WAPT, via Associated PressYet Mr. Presley has gained decent momentum — and with it, the attention of Democrats outside Mississippi. He has raised more than $11 million since January, far outpacing Mr. Reeves, and has used the money to flood television and radio stations with campaign advertisements. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently found that the election had “morphed into a competitive fight.” But it also classified the race as “likely to lean Republican” — a splash of cold water underscoring that, no matter how much ground Mr. Presley gains or optimism he has inspired in Southern Democrats, he still faces difficult odds in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor in 24 years.In the race for governor four years ago, Jim Hood, then the state attorney general and the last Democrat elected to statewide office, was seen as the most viable candidate the party had fielded in Mississippi in more than a decade. Yet he lost to Mr. Reeves by about five percentage points.Still, Mr. Presley sensed an opening. He believed that Mr. Reeves’s shaky popularity ratings, fury over a sprawling scandal involving welfare funds being directed to the pet projects of wealthy and connected Republicans, and dissatisfaction over the state’s eternal struggle for prosperity could allow him to accomplish what previous Democratic candidates could not. If neither candidate wins a majority of the popular vote on Tuesday, the race will go to a runoff on Nov. 28. Mr. Presley has invested enormous effort in mobilizing Black voters, a crucial bloc in a state where nearly 40 percent of the population is Black. But turning out the rest of the coalition that Mr. Presley needs — for example, white working-class voters who might have voted for Mr. Reeves last time — will be instrumental.“You can’t win if you don’t win white crossover votes,” said Byron D’Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University. For months, Mr. Presley has had marathon days ping-ponging across Mississippi, stopping in all 82 counties. He has become a frequent presence at football games on historically Black college campuses, as well as at festivals and small gatherings in community centers. In each place, he has made the same case: He is not a liberal — he opposes abortion rights — and he is certainly no elite. True, Elvis Presley was his second cousin, but a distant relative’s fame did nothing to boost his family’s fortunes. His mother was left to raise him and his siblings on her own after his father was killed when he was 8. Mr. Presley has become a frequent presence at football games on historically Black college campuses, as well as at festivals and small gatherings in community centers.Emily Kask for The New York Times“I’m white, and I’m country — it ain’t nothing I can do about it,” Mr. Presley told a mostly Black audience at one campaign stop. “But I get up every day and go to bed every night trying to pull Mississippi together.”The state fractures along racial and regional lines, creating a landscape that is anything but homogeneous, even as it tilts heavily in the Republican Party’s favor. The western flank, including the flat expanse of farmland in the Delta, votes for Democrats. Mr. Presley has wagered that one of his goals in particular can unify Democrats and Republicans, Black and many white voters: joining the 40 other states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Researchers have forecast that doing so would make the coverage available to roughly 230,000 lower-income adults over six years. Polls in Mississippi — where death rates are among the nation’s highest for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer — have indicated overwhelming support.Mr. Reeves has been adamant in his opposition to expanding Medicaid, pointing to the cost (most of which would be a federal responsibility) and dismissing it as “welfare.” In September, he proposed an alternative that, if approved by federal officials, would increase funding for some hospitals but would not provide coverage for the uninsured. Mr. Presley with a supporter in Fulton, Miss.Houston Cofield for The New York TimesGrant Dowdy, a dentist in Greenville who came to the festival in Rolling Fork, said he was prepared to break a consistent streak of voting for Republicans precisely because of Mr. Presley’s support for Medicaid expansion. Mississippi, he said, “needs to be like every other sensible state in the nation.”But in such a polarized political climate, where party allegiance often outweighs all else, recruiting enough Republicans to tip the scale toward Mr. Presley may prove impossible. In 2001, he became the youngest mayor in Mississippi when was elected to lead Nettleton, a city of some 1,900 people in the state’s northeast. Since then, Mr. Presley, 46, has been elected four times to represent a vast swath of northern Mississippi on the state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates telecommunications, electric, gas, water and sewer utilities. Colleagues and supporters said the position — in a district filled with heavily conservative areas — helped him hone the solicitous approach he is bringing to the governor’s race. Mr. Reeves has cast Mr. Presley as a liberal aligned with President Biden, and his campaign as orchestrated by the national Democratic Party. He has pointed out that most of Mr. Presley’s fund-raising haul has come from outside Mississippi. “Ask yourself: Why are they dropping historic money on Mississippi to flip it blue?” Mr. Reeves said on social media in October. “It’s because they know Brandon Presley will govern like a liberal Democrat.”Mr. Reeves is also emphasizing his conservative bona fides, including tax cuts he has signed and a promise to keep pursuing his ambition of eliminating the state income tax. Mr. Presley has been elected four times to represent a swath of northern Mississippi on the state’s Public Services Commission.Houston Cofield for The New York TimesHe has touted the state’s unemployment rate, which has fallen to just over 3 percent — the lowest it has been in decades. He has also campaigned on raises he approved last year for public schoolteachers that were among the largest in state history, amounting to average increase of about $5,100 a year. Mr. Reeves has also said that his administration is trying to claw back money misspent in the welfare scandal, in which more than $77 million was siphoned from the state’s poorest residents to fund projects like one championed by Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. player, to build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi. Mr. Reeves was the state’s lieutenant governor at the time. Mr. Presley knows how to rouse a crowd, evoking a pastor in one moment and insult comic the next. He skewered Mr. Reeves at the candidate forum in McComb to cheers of approval and howling laughter, offering an almost cartoonish depiction of the governor as unfamiliar with and unsympathetic to the hardships facing the working poor.“Like the pharaoh of old, his heart has turned to stone,” Mr. Presley said. He also took particular delight in roasting upgrades reportedly made to the governor’s mansion, like a special shelter for lemon trees and a pricey ice maker (“It better make that good Sonic ice!”).At various stops, he has told crowds about a promise to his wife, Katelyn, whom he married just three months ago: If he wins, they will feed the homeless out of the governor’s mansion. His concern for the needy, he says, grew out his own experience enduring the turmoil and indignities of poverty. Some who came out to hear him speak recently said they were drawn to Mr. Presley because his early struggles sounded familiar — and simply because he was there, reaching out to them.“Look where he is,” said Joseph M. Daughtry Sr., the police chief in Columbus, where Mr. Presley had navigated a maze of country highways to speak to a few dozen people at a community center in a poor, largely Black neighborhood. “We have somebody who understands us,” Chief Daughtry said. “Somebody who cares about us. And somebody who is not ashamed of us.”Mr. Presley walked over to shake his hand. More

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      Democrats Express Deep Anxiety as Polls Show Biden Trailing Trump

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      President Biden’s team emphasized that polls have failed to predict the results of elections when taken a year ahead of time.White House officials on Sunday shrugged off weekend polling that showed President Biden trailing former President Donald J. Trump, even as Democrats said they were increasingly worried about Mr. Biden’s chances in 2024.The new polling from The New York Times and Siena College found Mr. Biden losing in one-on-one matchups with former President Donald J. Trump in five critical swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead by two percentage points in Wisconsin.Although the polling is worrisome for the president, Mr. Biden still has a year to campaign, which his team emphasized on Sunday. They noted that polls have historically failed to predict the results of elections when taken a year ahead of time.“Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handily a year later,” said Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign. “We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll.”Still, the results of the poll, and other recent surveys showing similar results, are prompting public declarations of doubts by Democrats.David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist who has expressed concerns about Mr. Biden before, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the new polling “will send tremors of doubt” through the party.“Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” Axelrod wrote, referring to whether the president would drop out of the race. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”In a follow-up interview, Mr. Axelrod said he believed Mr. Biden, 80, had achieved a lot during the past three years but was rapidly losing support largely because of concern about how his age affects his performance.“Give me his record and chop 10 to 15 years off, I’d be really confident,” Mr. Axelrod said. “People judge him on his public performance. That’s what people see. That’s where the erosion has been. It lends itself to Republican messaging.”Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday that he was concerned “before these polls.”“And I’m concerned now,” he said.“These presidential races over the last couple of terms have been very tight,” he said. “No one is going to have a runaway election here. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, concentration, resources.”Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee and a supporter of Mr. Biden, said, “don’t count out Joe Biden” on ABC’s “This Week” program. But she added that Democrats should be mindful of the polling from The Times.“I would say a wake-up call once again for Democrats to be reminded that they have to go back out there, pull the coalition that allowed Joe Biden to break new ground in 2020, especially in Arizona and Georgia, but more importantly to bring back that coalition,” she said. “Without that coalition, it’s going to be a very, very difficult race.”Mr. Munoz declined to comment on the specifics of the Times/Siena poll.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said in a memo released on Friday — before the Times poll was public — that it would be “crucial” for Mr. Biden to show strength among key parts of his coalition in order to win.The weekend poll results, including a 10-point deficit behind Mr. Trump in Nevada, strike at the heart of the argument the president’s campaign advisers have been making for a year: that voters will back Mr. Biden once they are presented with a clear choice between him and his predecessor.In her memo, Ms. Rodríguez said “voters will choose between the extremism, divisiveness and incompetence that extreme MAGA Republicans are demonstrating — and President Biden’s historic record of accomplishment.“The American people are on our side when it comes to that choice,” she wrote.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, left, said in a memo released on Friday that it would be “crucial” for Mr. Biden to show strength among key parts of his coalition in order to win.Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesThe Times polls presented voters with that choice, and many of them, including Democrats, said they would pick Mr. Trump if the election were held today.Already, there were signs that the campaign is scrambling to address the vulnerabilities on display in the poll among young, Black and Hispanic voters.Last month, the campaign quietly started two pilot programs aimed at bolstering support among Democrats in two key states, Arizona and Wisconsin. In each state, the campaign has hired 12 full-time staff members to test their assumptions about how Mr. Biden is viewed by particular groups and what he needs to do to earn their votes.In Arizona, the new staff members in two offices in Maricopa County will focus on Latino and female voters in that state. In Wisconsin, staff members will work out of an office in Milwaukee to evaluate the president’s message for Black and young voters in the state.Campaign officials say the idea is to use the next several months to test new ways of communicating to those voters. Those include the use of “microinfluencers” who are popular on social media platforms, and “relational” campaigning, in which the campaign reaches out to voters through their network of friends rather than impersonal ads.One of the central arguments of the Biden campaign is a belief that polls taken now, by definition, do not take into account the robust campaign that will unfold during the course of the next year.Mr. Biden has already generated a significant campaign war chest. The president and Vice President Kamala Harris have $91 million in cash on hand and are expected to raise hundreds of millions more for use during the general election campaign that will begin in earnest next summer.The president’s campaign aides say they are confident the polls will shift in Mr. Biden’s direction once that money is put to use attacking Mr. Trump (or another Republican, if Mr. Trump loses the nomination) and reaching out to voters.That is similar to the argument that Mr. Axelrod made in September 2011, when Mr. Obama was trailing badly in the polls.“The president remains ahead or in a dead heat with the Republican candidates in the battleground states that will decide the election in 2012,” Mr. Axelrod said at the time. “And ultimately it is in those battleground states where voters will choose, 14 months from now, between two candidates, their records, and their visions for the country.”But Mr. Axelrod said he believed Mr. Biden is further behind now than his candidate was in 2011.He said he believed Mr. Biden would continue to run for re-election, and would likely end up facing Mr. Trump again next year. He urged Mr. Biden and those around him to begin attacking Mr. Trump politically to make it clearer what a Trump victory in 2024 would mean for the country.That kind of “competitive frame” is more important now, Mr. Axelrod said, than trying to tell people about the accomplishments that Mr. Biden has made.“I think he’ll run,” Mr. Axelrod said. “I think he will be the nominee. If so, they need to throw the entire campaign into a very, very tough competitive frame very quickly.” More

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      Abortion Is on the Ballot in Tuesday’s Elections, Giving a Preview for 2024

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      Elections in Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia will give an early preview of how abortion will shape the political landscape in 2024, and the effectiveness of both parties’ approaches.Abortion has emerged as a defining fault line of this year’s elections, with consequential contests in several states on Tuesday offering fresh tests of the issue’s political potency nearly 18 months after the Supreme Court ended a federal right to an abortion.The decision overturning Roe v. Wade scrambled American politics in 2022, transforming a longstanding social conflict into an electoral battering ram that helped drive Democrats to critical victories in the midterm races. Now, as abortion restrictions and bans in red states have become reality, the issue is again on the ballot, both explicitly and implicitly, in races across the country.In Kentucky, Democrats are testing whether abortion can provide a political advantage even in a red state, as Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has used the state’s near-total ban on abortions — which was triggered by the fall of Roe — to bludgeon his Republican opponent as an extremist. In Ohio, a socially conservative state, a ballot question that would enshrine abortion rights in the State Constitution will measure the extent of the country’s political pivot toward abortion rights.And in Virginia, the only Southern state without an abortion ban, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, is trying to flip the script in the state’s legislative elections, casting Democrats as “extreme” and saying his party supports a “common-sense position” — a 15-week ban.The contests give an early preview of how abortion will shape the political landscape in next year’s presidential and congressional elections — and the effectiveness of both parties’ approaches.Strategists across the political spectrum agree that abortion remains highly energizing for the Democratic coalition, particularly in states where Republicans could pass further restrictions. In Pennsylvania, where the parties are battling over a State Supreme Court seat, even a gun control advocacy group began ads backing the Democratic candidate by raising alarms about the future of abortion rights — a tacit nod to the issue’s resonance.“It’s still a very, very powerful issue to folks, both in terms of motivating Democrats to vote and as a very fruitful persuasion issue for swing voters,” said Angela Kuefler, a longtime Democratic pollster working on the proposed Ohio amendment.What remains less clear is how far into conservative areas Democrats’ arguments will be effective and whether Republicans can deflect some of the attacks.That’s what Republicans are trying to do in Virginia, where G.O.P. candidates like State Senator Siobhan Dunnavant, an OB-GYN running in one of the state’s most hotly contested races for a newly redrawn seat, have aired numerous ads on the issue.In one ad, she says, “I don’t support an abortion ban,” even though she supports a 15-week ban on the procedure with exceptions for rape, incest, the woman’s health and cases of several fetal anomalies. She argues that a 15-week restriction is not a ban but rather “legislation that reflects compassionate common sense.”“Every Republican in a swing district knows the Democrat playbook that’s going to be run against them,” said Liesl Hickey, a Republican strategist and ad maker working on the race. “The abortion issue can either define you, or you can define it in your campaign.”In Ohio, a red state with a history of opposition to abortion rights, Democrats are pushing a referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the State Constitution.Julie Carr Smyth/Associated PressSince Roe was overturned, Democrats have prevailed in six out of six ballot measures that put the question of abortion straight to voters. This year, national groups backing both sides have poured tens of millions of dollars into the Ohio contest, transforming an off-year ballot measure into one of the most important races this fall.A victory in Ohio would provide further fuel for abortion rights efforts next year. That will be especially true in pivotal battleground states where campaigns are already underway, including Arizona, Florida and Missouri, said Amy Natoce, a spokeswoman for Protect Women Ohio, a group founded by national anti-abortion groups to oppose the amendment.“We know that all eyes are on Ohio right now,” she said. “States that are considering similar constitutional amendments are looking to us.”In Kentucky, Mr. Beshear is further testing the limits of where abortion can mobilize a Democratic coalition. Since Roe ended, the state has become engulfed in a political battle over how abortion should be regulated. A trigger law that took effect immediately after the decision banned abortion in nearly all circumstances, except to save the life of the woman or prevent severe injury. Efforts by abortion providers to block the ban in court were denied.Last fall, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have amended the state’s Constitution to ensure that no right to an abortion was in the document.In his campaign ads, Mr. Beshear has focused on how his Republican opponent, Daniel Cameron, supports a near-total ban.The Beshear campaign has aired some of the cycle’s most searing spots, including a straight-to-camera testimonial from a woman who was raped as a child by her stepfather. She says in the ad that Mr. Cameron would force child victims to carry the babies of their rapists.“We have the most extreme law in the country, where victims of rape and incest, some as young as 9 years old, have no options,” Mr. Beshear said this past week in Richmond, Ky. “The people of Kentucky have enough empathy to believe that those little girls ought to have options.”After the ad aired, Mr. Cameron, the state attorney general, flipped his position and said that he would support carving an exception in state law in instances of rape or incest. Even if Mr. Beshear wins re-election, he would most likely struggle to change the state’s abortion law because Republicans control the Legislature.Courtney Norris, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cameron, said in a statement, “Andy mischaracterizes and flat-out lies about Daniel’s position on a number of issues in an attempt to deflect attention away from his failures as governor and his extreme record on this issue.”Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, a Democrat, has used the state’s near-total ban on abortions to paint his Republican opponent as an extremist.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesStill, not every Democrat running in a red state has embraced Mr. Beshear’s approach. Just as in the midterms, when abortion benefited Democrats most in states like Arizona and Michigan, where the right to the procedure was directly at risk, Democrats are leveraging the issue race by race.In Mississippi, Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate for governor, has promoted his “pro-life” stance in television ads and has focused on issues like Medicaid expansion. And Shawn Wilson, a Democratic who lost the race for governor in Louisiana last month, said he was personally “pro-life.” Both are deeply conservative states where abortion is banned in almost all circumstances.In Virginia, where abortion remains legal through the second trimester, Republicans are the ones mitigating their approach. Mr. Youngkin has tried to be proactive in his messaging on abortion, promising to sign a 15-week ban if he and his Republican allies take over both chambers of the Legislature.Such a policy would have significant implications for the entire region, because Virginia has become a destination for patients across the South seeking the procedure. Currently, abortion remains legal in the state until nearly 27 weeks, and afterward if needed to save the life of the woman.Most doctors say there is no medical basis for an abortion cutoff at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Nor would it stop the vast majority of abortions, given that more than 93 percent happen before that stage in pregnancy, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But 15 weeks is the point at which many polls indicate that a majority of Americans would support restrictions.That’s one of the reasons Mr. Youngkin’s political committee has spent $1.4 million on ads pushing what the spots call a “reasonable” 15-week limit and accusing Democrats of disinformation as a heartbeat can be heard in the background. “Here’s the truth: There is no ban,” the narrator says.National Republican strategists have been pushing that message as well, urging their candidates to embrace a 15-week ban and exceptions in cases of rape, incest and risks to the physical health of the woman — all relatively popular positions with the general public.Zack Roday, a top political adviser to Mr. Youngkin, said Republicans were trying to reclaim and redirect the extremist label. He said Republicans needed to proactively neutralize that attack and create a “permission structure” for voters who are wary of G.O.P. candidates’ stances on abortion but like their approach to other issues.“They understand 40 weeks, no limits is extreme,” Mr. Roday said. “We’re trying to reclaim and bat that down. Because when you do, the voters will look at you more broadly.”Democrats say there are significant complications to Mr. Youngkin’s strategy. Polls show that a plurality of voters dislike the Republican approach to abortion rights. In private meetings and research memos, even some Republican strategists have urged their candidates to move away from the “pro-life” label, saying that many Americans now equate the term with support for a total ban.Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked for Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign in 2020, said that voters tended to see the issue of abortion as a fight over personal autonomy, and were less interested in litigating a number of weeks or specific exceptions.“Before Dobbs, people were very willing to entertain exceptions and restrictions,” she said. “Now they are much less open to that conversation because they just think there’s a bigger fundamental point here.”She added, “The fundamental freedom to an abortion has been taken away, and we want to guarantee that right.”State Senator Scott Surovell, the campaign chairman of the Virginia Senate’s Democratic caucus, said abortion remained the No. 1 issue driving people to vote.When Mr. Surovell first heard that Mr. Youngkin’s operation was planning to spend more than $1 million on abortion ads, he said he felt like what “the Union troops thought at Gettysburg,” when the Confederate army made a famously ill-fated charge.“You’re going to try to charge us here?” he said. “They’re going to try to attack us while we’re on the high ground here?”Reid J. Epstein More

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      How the Louisiana Democrats Lost the House Legislature

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      Even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to confront its internal divisions and paltry fund-raising.Before a single ballot was cast, Louisiana Democrats knew they couldn’t win control of the State Legislature this year. It was mathematically impossible, because a lack of candidates meant they were not even contesting the majority of districts.Their best hope for political success rested with Shawn Wilson, a former state transportation secretary, and the expectation he would force a runoff against Jeff Landry, the state’s hard-line Republican attorney general, in an open primary for governor.At least, Democrats reasoned, Mr. Wilson would make it a little harder for the overwhelmingly favored Republican to flip control of the governor’s mansion in a region increasingly dominated by conservatives.But when Mr. Landry won a majority of the primary vote in October, eliminating the need for a runoff, the results instead laid bare the bleak conditions of a state Democratic Party decimated by internal divisions, paltry fund-raising totals and a disenchanted voter base.“If my defeat brings about change and organization, so be it because it’s worthy of that — it deserves that kind of change,” Mr. Wilson said in an interview. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting.”Now just a handful of political offices and legislative seats are undecided as early voting for runoff elections begins Friday. Republicans are barreling toward uniting a conservative government for the first time in eight years, led by Mr. Landry, who has defended the state’s strict abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Shawn Wilson, the Democratic candidate for governor, was critical of the support he received from the state party. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting,” he said.Emily Kask for The New York TimesIt is not the first time in recent years that Democrats have confronted the party’s dwindling influence in the South: Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s defeat in 2014 marked the end of a 138-year streak of at least one Democrat representing the state in the U.S. Senate. But even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to consider deeper systemic changes ahead of high-stakes presidential and congressional elections.Just over 36 percent of the electorate voted, and one analysis estimated that 17 percent of Black voters chose a Republican candidate in the governor primary, underscoring the extent of apathy and discontent among the voters who had rallied twice behind Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat limited to two terms.John Couvillon, a longtime Republican pollster who analyzed precincts with at least 70 percent of registered Black voters, said the combination of some Black voters turning away from the Democratic candidate, the low turnout and a decline in registered Democrats made for “a whole new ballgame.”Many Democrats acknowledged they had faced long odds in the governor’s race, given that Louisiana has become increasingly conservative and is historically prone to flip-flopping control of its highest post between parties. A combination of gerrymandering and increased polarization has also led to several centrists to either lose their political posts or leave the Democratic Party altogether.Mr. Wilson, who scrambled to introduce himself to voters, also faced different challenges than Mr. Edwards: He would have been the first Black candidate elected statewide in 150 years, in a state that nearly elected a former Ku Klux Klan leader as governor in the 1990s.Mr. Edwards, who opposes allowing access to abortion, also ran long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion rights became an issue that galvanized the Democratic base.But some also wondered if the air of inevitability surrounding Mr. Landry’s campaign led some Democratic allies to preemptively move to make inroads with the next governor. Others questioned why top Democrats had not done more to shore up support for obvious successors to Mr. Edwards, knowing that he was unable to seek a third term.“Democrats just really aren’t competing,” said Trey Mustian, who works with the Jefferson Parish Democratic Executive Committee. “The state party has a great responsibility going out and recruiting candidates, and they just don’t do a good job of that.”He added, “We’ve just got to really rehabilitate and rebuild.”Several Democrats have focused much of their ire on the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, calling on her to resign.As attorney general, Mr. Landry defended the state’s harsh abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Emily Kask for The New York TimesMs. Bernhardt inherited an already downtrodden party, taking over after Governor Edwards initially endorsed another candidate and replacing a previous chair who pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud after siphoning funds away from the party.But anger began to fester after she released an ad that appeared to tease a run for governor, a move that some Democrats felt stymied Mr. Wilson’s introduction to the race and prioritized her personal political brand over that of the party.“It’s pretty daunting for us, and it’s already hard enough,” said Dustin Granger, a candidate for state treasurer who had the best Democratic performance by garnering just a third of the vote. He called on Ms. Bernhardt to resign in a statement, saying the party could not “let self interests at the top continue to drag us down.”The internal drama, some said, further spooked donors from committing to the party.Mr. Wilson described his interactions with the state party as “We need you to raise money, Shawn.” His campaign raised “right at $300,000,” he said.“And,” he added, “to this day, I’m still waiting on a mailer — a ballot from the state Democratic Party — in spite of the fact that we played by the rules, we followed the law, we made investments.”Mr. Wilson’s defeat has led several Democrats to call for the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, to resign or for an overhaul of the party infrastructure and approach.Emily Kask for The New York TimesAnother division emerged when Mr. Edwards and other top Democrats backed a challenger to Mandie Landry, a liberal state representative who had tussled with party leaders, in a safe New Orleans seat. (Ms. Landry has taken great pains to emphasize that she and the governor-elect are not related.)“There’s a big battle still — do they go more moderate to get more rural white moderates back, or do they go full city progressive to energize people?” said Ms. Landry, who won her race. “And it seems like what they’ve been doing for a while is trying to get the white moderates or white conservatives back, and I think that’s stupid.”Ms. Bernhardt and her allies have largely avoided directly responding to the calls for her resignation, choosing to focus on the remaining races. Those include Mr. Granger’s bid for treasurer and two Democratic women running for attorney general and secretary of state.“Division leads to defeat,” Ms. Bernhardt, who did not respond to requests for an interview, wrote in an opinion piece published after the primaries. “Unfortunately, some are looking to stoke divisions to advance their political agenda. This divisive rhetoric is untimely and counterproductive.”But without Mr. Edwards in place to wield his veto pen, there appears little Democrats can do to advance their own agenda in the Legislature or push back against Republican policies.“When resources are not garnered, are not gathered and invested, you cannot be surprised if you don’t have that sort of backbone to be able to lean on,” said Stephen Handwerk, a former executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party.And in recent days, as most Americans learned about Representative Mike Johnson, the hard-line Louisiana Republican newly elected as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, several local Democrats grimly noted one biographical detail: Mr. Johnson ran unopposed in 2022. More

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      The Presidential Fantasy Draft America Needs

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe polls are clear: Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has the full confidence of American voters. But is Biden’s latest competition, Democratic Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, the answer to voters’ malaise? Or perhaps an independent candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?On this week’s episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts imagine their own alternative candidates for 2024 and debate what good — if any — could come from long-shot contenders.(A transcript of this episode can be found in the center of the audio player above.)Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by Ken Wiedemann/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“Dean Phillips Has a Warning for Democrats,” by Tim Alberta in The AtlanticThoughts about the show? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Katherine Miller. More