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      ‘Trump Is Scaring the Hell Out of Me’: Three Writers Preview the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Josh Barro, who writes the newsletter Very Serious, and Sarah Isgur, a senior editor at The Dispatch, to discuss their expectations for the second Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dig into and try to sort out a barrage of politics around President Biden’s sagging approval numbers, an impeachment inquiry, a potential government shutdown and shocking political rhetoric from former President Trump.Frank Bruni: For starters, Josh and Sarah, Donald Trump is scaring the hell out of me. It’s not just his mooning over a Glock. It’s his musing that in what he clearly sees as better days, Gen. Mark Milley could have been executed for treason. Is this a whole new altitude of unhinged — and a louder, shriller warning of what a second term of Trump would be like (including the suspension of the Constitution)?Josh Barro: I don’t think people find Trump’s provocations very interesting these days. I personally struggle to find them interesting, even though they are important. I’m not sure this constitutes an escalation relative to the end of Trump’s service — the last thing he did as president was try to steal the election. So I’m not sure this reads as new — Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in.Bruni: Sarah, what do you make of how little has been made of it? Is Trump indemnified against his own indecency, or can we dream that he may finally estrange a consequential percentage of voters?Sarah Isgur: Here’s what’s wild. In one poll, the G.O.P. is now more or less tied with Democrats for “which party cares about people like me,” closing in on Democrats’ 13-point advantage in 2016 … and in another poll, the G.O.P. is leading Democrats by over 20 points on “dealing with the economy.” So how is Joe Biden even still in this race? And the answer, as you allude to, is Trump.Barro: Trump’s behavior has already estranged a consequential percentage of voters. If Republicans found a candidate who was both normal and law-abiding and a popularist, they’d win big, instead of trying to patch together a narrow Electoral College victory, like Trump managed in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020.Bruni: Sarah, you’re suggesting that Trump is a huge general election gift to Biden. To pivot to tonight’s debate, is there any chance Biden doesn’t get that gift — that he winds up facing Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else?Isgur: Possible? Sure. Every year for Christmas, I thought it was possible there was a puppy in one of the boxes under the tree. There never was. I still think Ron DeSantis is probably the only viable alternative to Trump. But he’s looking far less viable than he was in June. And the more voters and donors flirt with Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, it becomes a race for No. 2 (see this debate) — and the better it is for Trump. That helps Trump in two ways: First, it burns time on the clock and he’s the front-runner. Second, the strongest argument for these other candidates was that Trump couldn’t beat Biden. But that’s becoming a harder and harder case to make — more because of Biden than Trump. And as that slides off the table, Republican primary voters don’t see much need to shop for an alternative.Barro: These other G.O.P. candidates wouldn’t have Trump’s legal baggage and off-putting lawlessness, but most of them have been running to Trump’s right on abortion and entitlements. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, he’ll quite possibly be acting to undermine whoever is the G.O.P. nominee. So it’s possible that Republicans are actually more likely to win the election if they nominate him than if they don’t.Isgur: You talk to these campaigns, and they will readily admit that if Trump wins Iowa, this thing is over. And right now he’s consistently up more than 30 points in Iowa. Most of the movement in the polls is between the other candidates. That ain’t gonna work.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the primary is approaching being over. DeSantis has sunk in the polls and he’s not making a clear argument about why Trump shouldn’t be nominated.Bruni: Do any of tonight’s debaters increase their criticism of him? Sharpen their attacks? Go beyond Haley’s “Gee, you spent a lot of money” and Mike Pence’s “You were not nice to me on Jan. 6”? And if you could script those attacks, what would they be? Give the candidates a push and some advice.Barro: DeSantis has been making some comments lately about how Trump kept getting beat in negotiations by Democrats when he was in office. He’s also been criticizing Trump for throwing pro-lifers under the bus. The unsaid thing here that could tie together these issues and Trump’s legal issues is that he is selfish — that this project is about benefiting him, not about benefiting Republican voters. It’s about doing what’s good for him.That said, this is a very tough pitch for a party full of people who love Trump and who think he constantly faces unfair attacks. But it’s true, and you can say it without ever actually attacking Trump from the left.Isgur: Here’s the problem for most of them: It’s not their last rodeo. Sure, they’d like to win this time around. And for some there’s a thought of the vice presidency or a cabinet pick. But more than that, they want to be viable in 2028 or beyond. Trump has already been an electoral loser for the G.O.P. in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and it hasn’t mattered. They aren’t going to bet their futures on Trump’s power over G.O.P. primary voters diminishing if he loses in 2024, and if he wins, he’ll be limited to one term, so all the more reason to tread lightly with Trump’s core voters. Chris Christie is a great example of the alternative strategy because it is probably his last race — and so he’s going straight at Trump. But it hasn’t fundamentally altered the dynamics of the race.Barro: I think DeSantis’s star certainly looks dimmer than it did when he got into the race.Isgur: DeSantis is worse off. But this was always going to happen. Better to happen in 2024 than 2028. But Josh is right. Political operatives will often pitch their candidate on there being “no real downside” to running because you grow your national donor lists and expand your name recognition with voters outside your state. But a lot of these guys are learning what Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Tim Pawlenty have learned: There is a downside to running when expectations are high — you don’t meet them.Bruni: Give me a rough estimate — how much time have Haley and her advisers spent forging and honing put-downs of Vivek Ramaswamy? And would you like to suggest any for their arsenal? Josh, I’m betting you do, as you have written acidly about your college days with Ramaswamy.Barro: So I said in a column (“Section Guy Runs for President”) that I didn’t know Ramaswamy in college, but I have subsequently learned that, when I was a senior, I participated in a debate about Social Security privatization that he moderated. That I was able to forget him, I think, is a reflection of how common the overbearing type was at Harvard.Bruni: Ramaswamy as a carbon copy of countless others? Now you’ve really put me off my avocado toast, Josh. Is he in this race deep into the primaries, or is he the Herman Cain of this cycle (he asked wishfully)?Barro: I think the Ramaswamy bubble has already popped.Bruni: Popped? You make him sound like a pimple.Isgur: Your words, Frank.Barro: He makes himself sound like a pimple. He’s down to 5.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, below where he was just before the August debate. One poll showed his unfavorables going up more than his favorables after the debate — he is very annoying, and that was obvious to a lot of people, whether or not they share my politics.Isgur: Agree. He’s not Trump. Trump can weather the “take me seriously, not literally” nonsense. Ramaswamy doesn’t have it.Bruni: Let’s talk about some broader dynamics. We’re on the precipice of a federal shutdown. If it comes, will that hurt Republicans and boost Biden, or will it seem to voters like so much usual insider garbage that it’s essentially white noise, to mix my metaphors wildly?Barro: I’m not convinced that government shutdowns have durable political effects.Isgur: It seems to keep happening every couple years, and the sky doesn’t fall. It is important, though, when it comes to what the G.O.P. is and what it will be moving forward. Kevin McCarthy battling for his job may not be anything new. But Chip Roy is the fiscal heart and soul of this wing of the party, and even he is saying they are going to pay a political penalty.Barro: I find it interesting that Kevin McCarthy seems extremely motivated to avoid one, or at least contain its duration. He thinks the politics are important.Isgur: I’d argue the reason it’s important is because it shows you what happens when voters elect people based on small donor popularity and social media memes. Nobody is rewarded for accomplishments, which require compromise — legislative or otherwise. These guys do better politically when they are in the minority. They actually win by losing — at least when their colleagues lose, that is. That’s not a sustainable model for a political party: Elect us and we’ll complain about the other guys the best!Bruni: What about the impeachment inquiry? The first hearing is on Thursday. Is it and should it be an enormous concern for Biden?Isgur: I’m confused why everyone else is shrugging this thing off. I keep hearing that this doesn’t give the G.O.P. any additional subpoena powers. Yes, it does. We just did this when House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump’s financial records. The Supreme Court was very clear that the House has broad legislative subpoena power when what they are seeking is related to potential legislation, but that it is subject to a balancing test between the two branches. But even the dissenters in that case said that Congress could have sought those records pursuant to their impeachment subpoena power. So, yes, the tool — a congressional subpoena — is the same. But the impeachment inquiry broadens their reach here. So they’ve opened the inquiry, they can get his financial records. Now it matters what they find.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the risk to Biden here depends on the underlying facts.Isgur: And I’m not sure why Democrats are so confident there won’t be anything there. The president has gotten so many of the facts wrong around Hunter Biden’s business dealings, I have no idea what his financial records will show. I am no closer to knowing whether Joe Biden was involved or not. But I’m not betting against it, either.Barro: I think the Hunter saga is extremely sad, and as I’ve written, it looks to me like the president is one of Hunter’s victims rather than a co-conspirator. I also think while there are aspects of this that are not relatable (it’s not relatable to have your son trading on your famous name to do a lot of shady business), there are other aspects that are very relatable — it is relatable to have a no-good family member with substance abuse and psychological issues who causes you a lot of trouble.Obviously, if they find some big financial scheme to transfer money to Joe Biden, the politics of this will be very different. But I don’t think they’re going to find it.Bruni: But let’s look beyond Hunter, beyond any shutdown, beyond impeachment. Sarah, Josh, if you were broadly to advise Joe Biden about how to win what is surely going to be a very, very, very close race, what would be your top three recommendations?Barro: The president’s No. 1 political liability is inflation, and food and fuel prices are the most salient aspect of inflation. He should be doing everything he can to bring price levels down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a ton of direct control over this — if presidents did, they wouldn’t get tripped up by this issue. But he should be approving more domestic energy production and transmission, and he should be bragging more about doing so.U.S. oil production is nearing record levels, but Biden is reluctant to talk about that because it makes climate activists mad. If he gets attacked from the left for making gasoline too cheap and plentiful, great.Isgur: Make it a referendum on Trump. It’s what Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. When it’s about Trump, voters get squeamish. When it’s about Biden, they think of all of his flaws instead.Bruni: Squeamish doesn’t begin to capture how Trump makes this voter feel. Additional recommendations?Barro: Biden generally needs to be willing to pick more fights with the left. Trump has shown how this kind of politics works — by picking a fight with pro-life activists, he’s moderating his own image and increasing his odds of winning the general election. There’s a new poll out this week that says that voters see the Democratic Party as more extreme than the Republican Party by a margin of nine points. Biden needs to address that gap by finding his own opportunities to break with the extremes of his party — energy and fossil fuels provide one big opportunity, as I discussed earlier, but he can also break with his party in other areas where its agenda has unpopular elements, like crime and immigration.Isgur: The Republican National Committee handed Biden’s team a gift when they pulled out of the bipartisan debate commission. Biden doesn’t have to debate now. And he shouldn’t. The Trump team should want a zillion debates with Biden. I have no idea why they gave him this out.Bruni: I hear you, Sarah, on how Biden might bear up for two hours under bright lights, but let’s be realistic: Debates don’t exactly flatter Trump, who comes across as one part feral, two parts deranged. But let’s address the Kamala Harris factor. Josh, you’ve recommended replacing Harris, though it won’t happen. Maybe that’s your third? But you have to tell me whom you’d replace her with.Barro: Harris isn’t just a 2024 problem but also a 2028 problem. She is materially less popular than Biden is, and because of Biden’s age, he even more than most presidents needs a vice president who Americans feel comfortable seeing take the presidency, and the polls show that’s not her. I’ve written about why he should put Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket instead. What Biden needs to hold 270 electoral votes is to keep the Upper Midwest swing states where his poll numbers are actually holding up pretty well — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The popular governor of Michigan can do a lot more for him there than Harris can.Isgur: It is a big problem that voters don’t think Biden will make it through another term, so that the V.P. question isn’t will she make a good vice president but will she make a good president. Democrats are quick to point out that V.P. attacks haven’t worked in the past. True! But nobody was really thinking about Dan Quayle sitting behind the Resolute Desk, either. But I don’t think they can replace Harris. The cost would be too high with the base. I also don’t think Harris can get better. So my advice here is to hide her. Don’t remind voters that they don’t like her. Quit setting her up for failure and word salads.Bruni: I want to end with a lightning round and maybe find some fugitive levity — God knows we need it. In honor of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, I wonder: How many gold bars does each of you have in your basement or closet? Mine are in my pantry, behind the cashews, and I haven’t counted them lately.Barro: I understand Bob Menendez keeps tons of cash in his house because his family had to flee a Communist revolution. This is completely understandable. The only reason I don’t keep all that gold on hand is that I do not have a similar familial history.Isgur: Mine are made of chocolate, and they are delicious. (Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is for wusses, and white chocolate is a lie.)Bruni: Are we measuring Kevin McCarthy’s remaining time as House speaker in hours, weeks or months, and what’s your best guess for when he subsequently appears in — and how he fares on — “Dancing With the Stars”?Isgur: Why do people keep going on that show?! The money can’t possibly be that good. I’ll take the over on McCarthy, though. The Matt Gaetz caucus doesn’t have a viable replacement or McCarthy wouldn’t have won in the first place … or 15th place.Barro: I also take the over on McCarthy — most of his caucus likes him, and unlike the John Boehner era, he hasn’t had to resort to moving spending bills that lack majority support in the conference. Gaetz and his ilk are a huge headache, but he won’t be going anywhere.Bruni: Does the confirmed November debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom — moderated by Sean Hannity! — represent reason to live or reason to emigrate?Barro: Ugh. I find Newsom so grating and slimy. All you really need to know about him is he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife. He’s also been putting his interests ahead of the party’s, with this cockamamie proposal for a constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights. It will never happen, will raise the salience of gun issues in a way that hurts Democratic candidates in a general election and will help Newsom build a grass roots email fund-raising list.Isgur: Oh, I actually think this is pretty important. Newsom and DeSantis more than anyone else in their parties actually represent the policy zeitgeist of their teams right now. This is the debate we should be having in 2024. As governors, they’ve been mirror images of each other. The problem for a Burkean like me is that both of them want to use and expand state power to “win” for their team. There’s no party making the argument for limited government or fiscal restraint anymore. And there’s no concern about what happens when you empower government and the other side wins an election and uses that power the way they want to.Bruni: You’ve no choice: You must dine, one-on-one, with either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whom do you choose, and how do you dull the pain?Barro: Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we’d spend the whole time talking about Lauren Boebert.Isgur: Damn. That was a good answer. Can I pick George Santos? At least he’s got great stories.Bruni: Last question — we’ve been plenty gloomy. Name something or a few things that have happened over recent weeks that should give us hope about the country’s future.Barro: The Ibram Kendi bubble popped! So, that was good.More seriously, while inflation remains a major problem (and a totally valid voter complaint), the economy has continued to show resiliency on output and job growth. People still want to spend and invest, despite 7 percent mortgage rates. It points to underlying health in the economy and a reason to feel good about American business and living standards in the medium and long term.Isgur: I had a baby this month — and in fact, September is one of the most popular birth month in the United States — so for all of us who are newly unburdened, we’re enjoying that second (third?) glass of wine, deli meat, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and guilt-free Coke Zero. And the only trade-off is that a little potato screams at me for about two hours each night!But you look at these new studies showing that the overall birthrate in the United States is staying low as teen pregnancies drop and birth control becomes more available but that highly educated woman are having more kids than they did 40 years ago … clearly some people are feeling quite hopeful. Or randy. Or both!Bruni: Sarah, that’s wonderful about your little potato — and your sushi!Barro: Congratulations!Bruni: Pop not only goes the weasel but also the Ramaswamy and the Kendi — and the Barro, ever popping off! Thank you both. Happy Republican debate! If that’s not the oxymoron of the century.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and is the host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.”Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and the host of the podcast “Advisory Opinions.”Source photograph by ZargonDesign, via Getty Images.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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      in Elections

      ‘This Is Going to Be the Most Important Election Since 1860’

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      I recently sent out a list of questions about the 2024 elections to political operatives, pollsters and political scientists.How salient will abortion be?How damaging would a government shutdown be to Donald Trump and the Republican Party?Will the MAGA electorate turn out in high percentages?Will a Biden impeachment by the House, if it happens, help or hurt the G.O.P.?Will the cultural left wing of the Democratic Party undermine the party’s prospects?Will the key battleground states be Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin?How significant will Black and Hispanic shifts to the Republican Party be and where will these shifts have the potential to determine the outcome?Will Kamala Harris’s presence on the ticket cost Biden votes?Why hasn’t Biden gained politically from his legislative successes and from improvements in the economy? Will that change before the 2024 election?Why should Democrats be worrying?From 2016 to 2023, according to Morning Consult, the share of voters saying that the Democratic Party “cares about me” fell from 43 to 41 percent while rising for the Republican Party from 30 to 39 percent; the share saying the Democrats “care about the middle class” fell from 47 to 46 percent, while rising from 33 to 42 percent for the Republican Party.What’s more, the percentage of voters saying the Democratic Party is “too liberal” rose from 40 to 47 from 2020 to 2023, while the percentage saying the Republican Party was “too conservative” remained constant at 38 percent.Why should Republicans be worrying?Robert M. Stein, a political scientist at Rice, responded to my question about MAGA turnout by email: “Turnout among MAGA supporters may be less important than how many MAGA voters there are in the 2024 election and in which states they are.”One of the most distinctive demographic characteristics of self-identified MAGA voters, Stein pointed out, “is their age: over half (56 percent) were over the age of 65 as of 2020. By 2024, the proportion of MAGA voters over 70 will be greater than 50 percent and will put these voters in the likely category of voters leaving the electorate, dying, ill and unable to vote.”Because of these trends, Stein continued, “it may be the case that the absolute number and share of the electorate that are MAGA voters is diluted in 2024 by their own exit from the electorate and the entry of new and younger and non-MAGA voters.”Along similar lines, Martin Wattenberg, a political scientist at the University of California-Irvine, argued by email that generational change will be a key factor in the election.Between 2020 and 2024, “about 13 million adult citizens will have died” and “these lost voters favored Trump in 2020 by a substantial margin. My rough estimate is that removing these voters from the electorate will increase Biden’s national popular vote margin by about 1.2 million votes.”The aging of the electorate works to the advantage of Biden and his fellow Democrats. So too does what is happening with younger voters at the other end of the age distribution. Here, Democrats have an ace in the hole: the strong liberal and Democratic convictions of voters between the ages of 18 and 42, whose share of the electorate is steadily growing.Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant, was exuberant on the subject:Don’t forget Gen Z. They are on fire. Unlike you and me who dove under our school desks in nuclear attack drills but never experienced a nuclear attack, this generation spent their entire school lives doing mass shooting drills and witnessing a mass shooting at a school in the news regularly.Young voters, Trippi continued, “are not going to vote G.O.P. and they are going to vote. Dobbs, climate, homophobia, gun violence are all driving this generation away from the G.O.P. — in much the same way that Dems lost the younger generation during the Reagan years.”Wattenberg was more cautious. He estimated that 15 million young people will become eligible to vote between 2020 and 2024.“How many of them will vote and how they will vote is a key uncertainty that could determine the election,” he wrote. “Given recent patterns, there is little doubt that those that vote will favor the Democratic nominee. But by how much?”There are some developments going into the next election that defy attempts to determine whether Democrats or Republicans will come out ahead.Take the case of all the criminal charges that have been filed against Trump.In more normal — that is, pre-Trump — days, the fact that the probable Republican nominee faced 91 felony counts would have shifted the scales in favor of the Democrats. But these are not normal times.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, pointed out that the 2024 election has no precedent.“How will the Trump prosecutions unfold amidst the primaries and the presidential campaign?” Lee asked in an email. “How will developments in these cases be received by Republicans and the public at large? We have little relevant precedent for even considering how these cases are likely to affect the race.”Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, agreed, noting in an email: “How will Trump’s trials evolve and how will people react to them? What happens if he is convicted and sentenced? What happens if he is acquitted?”Lee and Jacobson were joined in this line of thinking by Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, who emailed his view thatThe greatest uncertainty on the G.O.P. side is the potential impact of the Trump trials. An acquittal, especially in the first case to go to trial, would almost certainly strengthen him. But what about a conviction, especially if it involves jail time? That may be the greatest uncertainty in American politics in my lifetime.Some of those I contacted observed that the prospect of one or more third-party bids posed a significant threat to Biden’s chances.Paul Begala, a Democratic political operative and CNN contributor, wrote by email:Please allow me to start with what to me is the most critical variable in the 2024 presidential election: Will Dr. Cornel West’s Green Party candidacy swing the election to Donald Trump? If I were working for the Biden-Harris ticket, that’s what would keep me up at night.In Begala’s opinion, “Dr. West has more charisma, better communications skills, and greater potential appeal than Dr. Jill Stein did in 2016. If, in fact, he is able to garner even two to five percent, that could doom Biden and the country.”And that, Begala continued, does not “even take into account a potential centrist candidacy under the No Labels banner. Biden won moderates by a 30-point margin (64-34), and 38 percent of all voters described themselves as moderate in 2020. If No Labels were to field a viable, centrist candidate, that, too, would doom Biden.”Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed, arguing that third-party candidates are a “huge issue”:The role of No Labels and, secondarily, of Cornel West: They could be genuine spoilers here. And that is their goal. Harlan Crow and other right-wing billionaires did not give big bucks to No Labels to create more moderate politics and outcomes.Among those I contacted for this column, there was near unanimous agreement that abortion will continue to be a major issue — as it was in 2022, when abortion rights voters turned out in large numbers, lifting Democrats in key races.“It is the single most significant factor helping Democrats,” Ornstein declared, adding, “The fact that red states move more and more to extremes — including banning abortions for rape and incest, watching women bleed with untreated miscarriages, seeing doctors flee, criminalizing going to another state — will fire up suburban and young voters.”Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, pointed out in an email thatDemocrats nationwide are taking a page out of the playbook of former President George W. Bush’s longtime adviser, Karl Rove. In those years, Republicans used state ballot measures and referendums on divisive culture war issues that split their way to mobilize conservative voters. In those days, the subject matter was often gay rights.Citing a June Ipsos poll that found “public opinion around the Dobbs decision and abortion remains mostly unchanged compared to six months ago,” Gest argued “that abortion remains salient more than a year after the revocation of abortion rights by the U.S. Supreme Court, but Democrats in many states will also use ballot measures to ensure it is top of mind.” Gest also noted that “supermajorities of the country favor preserving access to abortion to some extent.”Stein, however, wrote by email that while a majority of voters have remained in favor of abortion rights, they appear to be placing less importance on the issue than was the case immediately after the Dobbs decision.Stein pointed to a March Morning Consult survey that found “10 percent of voters in the most competitive congressional districts rank issues such as abortion as their top voting concern, down from 15 percent in November.”But, Stein added, Republican state legislators are not helping their own political fortunes by muting discussion of abortion; instead, they have been unrelenting in their efforts to elevate the prominence of abortion. “The recent sentencing of a mother in Nebraska who provided her daughter abortion pills,” he wrote, “puts a very real face on the consequences of Dobbs and restrictions on abortion rights,”There was some disagreement among those I contacted over the political consequences of a government shutdown, something that could well happen within days unless Speaker Kevin McCarthy can find a path to enactment of budget legislation.Frances Lee said that shewould probably discount the effects of a government shutdown. Their effects seem largely to be confined to the shutdown period itself. Once resolved, they quickly fade from memory. Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in history in 2018-19, and that fact played no role in the 2020 elections.Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, however, contended that it is “hard to imagine it won’t blow back on them — every previous shutdown has, and this one’s justifications seem nonexistent.”William Galston, a senior fellow at Bookings, agreed, writing by email:Evidence from past shutdowns suggests that it would be damaging, and this time Trump has chosen to get involved directly, which I think is a mistake. Republicans’ dysfunction in recent weeks has occurred in broad daylight, which increases the odds that they’ll get the lion’s share of the blame.Begala, in character, was the most outspoken:The G.O.P. is talking about shutting down the government, impeaching the president, removing the Speaker, and crippling the military by blocking vital promotions. Their brand is chaos. Like Clinton before him, Biden is well positioned to use a government shutdown to jujitsu the G.O.P. and win re-election.There was also some disagreement among those I queried over whether Kamala Harris would cost Biden votes.Begala dismissed the possibility:Nope. Democrats tried to make Spiro Agnew an issue; it failed. They tried to make Dan Quayle an issue; failed again. Harris has found her voice on abortion rights, which are a central issue.Ornstein was succinct: “Vice-presidential candidates do not cost votes.”Gest, however, argued against this idea:I think she will. Fairly or unfairly, she is viewed as more threatening to Republicans than Biden himself, which is why the DeSantis campaign has tried to bait her into conflict with his provocations. And because of President Biden’s advancing age, her profile holds more gravity than most running mates.There is one issue that has been increasingly troubling for Democrats: Will the modest but significant shifts among Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party continue and will they increase?Gest wrote that “if Republicans suddenly make significant inroads with Latinos in the Southwest, they could change the dynamics” in states like Arizona and Nevada.But in order to do so, Gest cautioned, shifts to the Republican Party among minorities “would need to outnumber the pandemic-era arrival of left-leaning transplants from coastal urban cities. To the extent that these transplants have settled in their new homes, they can solidify Democratic support.”In a December 2022 Politico article, “How Demographic Shifts Fueled by Covid Delivered Midterm Wins for Democrats,” Gest made the case thatData from the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau shows how the pandemic drove urban professionals who were able to work remotely — disproportionately Democrats — out of coastal, progressive cities to seek more space or recreational amenities in the nation’s suburbs and Sun Belt. This moved liberals out of electoral districts where Democrats reliably won by large margins into many purple regions that had the potential to swing.Gest cited large population growth coinciding with much stronger than expected Democratic gains in places like Arizona’s Maricopa County — which, between 2018 and 2022, “gained nearly 100,000 people, and Democrats’ margins rose by 17 points since that year: and Pima County, including Tucson, gained 16,000 people and its margins in the gubernatorial race swung 16 points for Democrats.”One source of uncertainty is the media, which can, and often does, play a key role in setting the campaign agenda. The contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is a prime example.In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard conducted a study, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” It that found that reporting on Hillary Clinton was dominated “by coverage of alleged improprieties associated with the Clinton Foundation and emails.”According to the study, the press, television and online media devoted more space and time to Clinton’s emails than it did to the combined coverage of Trump’s taxes, his comments about women, his failed “university,” his foundation and his campaign’s dealings with Russia.Going into 2024, it is unlikely the media could inflict much more damage on Trump, given that the extensive coverage of the 91 felony counts against him does not seem to affect his favorable or unfavorable rating.Biden, in contrast, has much more to gain or lose from media coverage. Will it focus on his age or his legislative and policy achievements? On inflation and consumer costs or economic growth and high employment rates? On questions about Biden’s ability to complete a second term or the threats to democracy posed by the ascendant right wing of the Republican Party?Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, argued that matters of immense concern are at stake: “This is going to be the most important election since 1860, because it is going to be about the future of this country as a democracy.”It will be an election, he continued,about whether this country will preserve the rule of law in an independent justice system; whether women will be respected as autonomous decision makers or subjected again, step-by-step, by a religion-encoded male supremacy; whether this country will continue to hold free and fair elections or generalize to the entire realm a new version of what prevailed in the South before the civil rights legislation.The 2024 election, in Kitschelt’s view, “is the last stand of the nationalist ‘Christian’ white right, as their support is eroding in absolute and relative terms, and of all those who believe that white supremacy across all U.S. institutions needs to be protected, even at the cost of giving up on democracy.”But, on an even larger scale, he argued, “The 2024 election will also be about whether this country will preserve a universalist sense of citizenship or devolve into a polity of splintered identity pressure groups, rent-seeking for shares of the pie.”Unfortunately, Kitschelt concluded, “if the Democrats let the Republicans succeed in priming the identity issues that divide the potential Democratic coalition, the white Christian nationalists will have a greater chance to win.”And that, of course, is a central goal of Trump’s — and of his campaign.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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      Groundswell of Democrats Builds Calling on Menendez to Resign

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      The New Jersey Democrat’s indictment last week initially prompted only a handful of calls from within his party for his exit. But on Tuesday, the dam broke, led by colleagues facing re-election next year.A stampede of Senate Democrats led by some of the party’s most endangered incumbents rushed forward on Tuesday calling for Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey to resign, a day after he defiantly vowed to fight federal corruption charges and predicted he would be exonerated.Even as Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, defended Mr. Menendez as a “dedicated public servant” and refused to publicly move to push him out, the drumbeat for Mr. Menendez to step down grew from within his ranks. That left Mr. Schumer in a difficult position, caught between his role as the leader and defender of all Senate Democrats and the political imperative of cutting loose a member of his caucus who had become a political liability in an already difficult slog to keep the party’s Senate majority.The most notable call for Mr. Menendez to go came from Senator Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey who has long been a close friend and fierce defender of Mr. Menendez. Mr. Booker, who testified as a character witness for Mr. Menendez during his first corruption trial, said the “shocking allegations of corruption” were “hard to reconcile with the person I know.”He added: “I believe stepping down is best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving.”His statement came amid a flood of calls by Democrats running for re-election next year in politically competitive states, who appeared eager to distance themselves from Mr. Menendez. The third-term senator was indicted last week on bribery charges in what prosecutors alleged was a sordid scheme that included abusing his power as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit Egypt.The most notable call from Mr. Menendez to go came from Senator Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey who has long been a close friend of Mr. Menendez.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesSenator Jon Tester of Montana, who is running in a state that former President Donald J. Trump won by more than 16 points in 2020, said Mr. Menendez needed to go “for the sake of the public’s faith in the U.S. Senate.” Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a onetime bellwether state that has shifted sharply to the right over the past two presidential election cycles, said Mr. Menendez had “broken the public trust and should resign from the U.S. Senate.”And Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who launched her re-election bid in a battleground state by predicting that her race would decide control of the Senate, said the corruption charges were a “distraction that undermines the bipartisan work we need to do in the Senate for the American people.”Democrats view the fact that they were able to get all of their vulnerable senators to run for re-election in 2024 as their biggest source of strength in their quest to hold onto their slim majority next year.By noon, those vulnerable Democrats had helped open the floodgates, with more than a dozen Democratic senators from across the country joining them and rushing to release statements calling for Mr. Menendez’s resignation ahead of their weekly lunch in the Capitol. By the end of the day, at least 24 Democratic senators — almost half the caucus — had reached the conclusion that their colleague needed to go.Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm who is leading the effort to keep the party’s hold on the majority, was among those calling on him to quit. And New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, said on Tuesday that she agreed with Mr. Booker that Mr. Menendez should step down.Those voices weighing in raised questions about what path Mr. Schumer might take down the line.Mr. Booker often described Mr. Menendez, the senior senator, as a friend, ally and mentor. But the nature of the charges, along with the political landscape of the state, appeared to have played a role in changing his mind.Even before the latest indictment was announced, opinion polls indicated that public support for Mr. Menendez was waning, said Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University in New Jersey.During Mr. Menendez’s first criminal indictment, “New Jersey voters, and particularly Democrats, were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Murray said. “This time, public opinion is different.”The floodgates may have opened on Tuesday, but it took Democrats in the Senate days to get around to condemning their colleague.On Friday, Mr. Menendez stepped down temporarily as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, under the rules put in place by his own party, but Mr. Schumer defended his right to remain in office. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said any decision about Mr. Menendez’s future in the Senate was “going to be up to him and the Senate leadership.”A lone Democratic voice over the weekend adding to calls for Mr. Menendez to go was Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who hails from another battleground state. He vowed to return campaign donations from Mr. Menendez’s leadership PAC in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills — an apparent reference to the indictment against Mr. Menendez, which said investigators found jackets and envelopes stuffed with cash at his home, allegedly containing the fruits of the senator’s corrupt dealings.Mr. Fetterman, who has come under criticism from his colleagues for pressing for a dress code change in the fusty Senate to accommodate his shorts-and-hoodie uniform, on Tuesday said he hoped his Democratic colleagues would “fully address the alleged systematic corruption of Senator Menendez with the same vigor and velocity they brought to concerns about our dress code.”Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker from California, on Monday night also weighed in on the Menendez scandal, helping wedge open the door for detractors, saying on MSNBC that it would “probably be a good idea” for him to resign.Some Republicans, on the other hand, jumped to Mr. Menendez’s defense, arguing that Democrats should have to weather the political consequences of his conduct.“He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, wrote on X, previously Twitter.Speaker Kevin McCarthy, however, said on Saturday that Mr. Menendez should go, arguing that the case laid out by prosecutors was “pretty black and white.” In contrast, Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, has defended one of his own indicted members, Representative George Santos of New York, saying that it was not up to him to decide whether he should represent his district.“You know why I’m standing by him? Because his constituents voted for him,” Mr. McCarthy said of Mr. Santos in January. Mr. Menendez won re-election in 2018 by a 12-point margin.On Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy appeared to change his position on Mr. Menendez, telling reporters that “it could be his choice with what he wants to do.”Christopher Maag More

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      The Job Is Managing State Finances, but His Issues Are Jan. 6 and Abortion

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      Ryan Bizzarro, a Democrat and member of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, announced a bid to challenge the Republican incumbent, Stacy Garrity, by invoking issues galvanizing to Democrats.A Pennsylvania Democrat announced a bid for state treasurer on Tuesday by seeking to tie his Republican opponent to two of the country’s most incendiary issues: abortion rights and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.In his announcement video, Ryan Bizzarro, a member of the state House of Representatives, accuses the Republican incumbent, Stacy Garrity, of being “Pennsylvania’s highest-ranking extremist office holder.” He highlights her past support for abortion restrictions and her appearance at a rally in Harrisburg the day before the Capitol riot in which she appeared to endorse former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged.Campaigns for a lower-profile office like state treasurer — where the duties include managing the government’s cash flow, not setting policy — have tended to fly under voters’ radars. But in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, where the presidency and a U.S. Senate seat will be fiercely contested in 2024, down-ballot races, too, can take on intense partisanship over issues with little connection to an official’s duties.“She’s one of those extreme folks we’ve got to get rid of,” Mr. Bizzarro said in an interview. His opening salvo takes a page from the playbook of Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who ran in 2022 against a hard-right opponent by promising to protect abortion and voting rights. Abortion rights in particular proved a galvanizing issue for Democrats in the midterm elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But while Pennsylvania’s governor has immense sway over those issues, its treasurer does not.A campaign adviser to Ms. Garrity, Dennis Roddy, said that bringing abortion and Jan. 6 into the race was an effort to dodge the fact that Ms. Garrity has been a successful steward of Pennsylvania’s money.“She’s done a hell of a job, she’s well liked and this is just the usual ‘let’s nationalize an election we can’t win on the merits,’” he said.Mr. Bizzarro’s announcement video begins with harrowing scenes of the violent attack on the Capitol, then cuts to Ms. Garrity at a Jan. 5, 2021, rally in Harrisburg that was organized to pressure Pennsylvania lawmakers to decertify the state’s vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. After courts in Pennsylvania had already rejected multiple claims of fraud by the Trump campaign and allies, Ms. Garrity insisted to the crowd, “The election from this November is tarnished forever.”Ms. Garrity, an Iraq war veteran who defeated a Democratic incumbent in 2020, has also shown an inclination to lean into national issues. Her campaign Facebook page recently criticized Mr. Biden’s “hasty and spineless retreat” from Afghanistan, equated “Bidenomics=Bideninflation” and joined a chorus of Republican critics of Senator John Fetterman’s shorts-and-sweatshirt wardrobe.In the past, Ms. Garrity, 59, has asked people to “please pray” for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade and called to defund Planned Parenthood. In 2020, she boasted of being endorsed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that says it exists “to end abortion.”Mr. Bizzarro, 37, the House Democratic Policy Chair, comes from a family of professional prizefighters in Erie County, Pa. It is unclear if he will have a primary competitor. He appears in his video inside a boxing ring. More

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      Why Democrats Keep Winning Elections Despite Biden’s Negative Polling

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      Despite a flood of negative polls for Democrats, the party has delivered a string of strong results in special elections, which can be a useful gauge of the national political environment.For nearly two years, poll after poll has found Americans in a sour mood about President Biden, uneasy about the economy and eager for younger leaders of the country.And yet when voters have actually cast ballots, Democrats have delivered strong results in special elections — the sort of contests that attract little attention but can serve as a useful gauge for voter enthusiasm.In special elections this year for state legislative offices, Democrats have exceeded Mr. Biden’s performance in the 2020 presidential election in 21 of 27 races, topping his showing by an average of seven percentage points, according to a study conducted by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s campaign arm for state legislative races.Those results, combined with an 11-point triumph for a liberal State Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin this spring and a 14-point defeat of an Ohio ballot referendum this summer in a contest widely viewed as a proxy battle over abortion rights, run counter to months of public opinion polling that has found Mr. Biden to be deeply unpopular heading into his re-election bid next year.Taken together, these results suggest that the favorable political environment for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has endured through much of 2023. Democratic officials have said since the summer of 2022, when the ruling came down, that abortion is both a powerful motivator for the party’s voters and the topic most likely to persuade moderate Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates.“Dobbs absolutely changed the way that people thought about and processed things that they had perceived as a given,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the D.L.C.C. “We continue to see voters recognizing what’s at stake in these elections.”Democrats are now using abortion rights to power races far down the ballot — an extension of how candidates in special elections at the congressional level have long used prominent national issues to fuel their campaigns.In January 2010, Scott Brown won a shocking upset in a Senate special election in deep-blue Massachusetts by running against President Barack Obama’s health care push. In March 2018, Conor Lamb won a special election to fill a House seat in a deep-red Pennsylvania district by campaigning as a centrist voice against Mr. Trump.Both the Brown and Lamb special elections served as indicators of the wave elections their parties won in subsequent midterm elections.Some of the special elections won by Democrats this year have involved relatively few voters: Under 2,800 ballots were cast in a New Hampshire State House contest last week.“The best evidence that a special election produces is whose side is more engaged on a grass-roots turnout level,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview on Monday. “That gives you some signal about who is bringing their turnout back next year.”Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings have illustrated a wide gap between how Democratic leaders view him and what voters think. But past presidents — including Barack Obama — have recovered from similarly sour numbers to win re-election, a point Mr. Biden’s aides repeat to seemingly anyone who will listen.Political operatives remain vexed about how much stock to put into the results of special elections. Such races tend to draw a fraction of the turnout in regular contests, and the voters skew older and more educated — a demographic that in the Trump era is more likely to favor Democrats.The party that wins special elections tends to trumpet their importance and predictive power, while the losing side writes them off as insignificant measures of voters’ mood.Last week, after Democrats won special elections to maintain control of the Pennsylvania House and flip a Republican-held seat in the New Hampshire House, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, emailed donors to say the results showed Mr. Biden’s political strength.“These aren’t just one-off election wins,” she wrote. “They prove that our message is resonating with voters — and that we can’t write off any corner of the country.”Officials with the Republican state legislative campaign arm did not respond to messages on Monday.The next chance for Democrats to prove their strength in down-ballot elections will come in Virginia. A slate of Democratic state legislative candidates are warning on the campaign trail that a Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Glenn Youngkin would roll back abortion rights. Republicans are pitching the same menu of tax cuts and parental influence over schools that swept Mr. Youngkin into office two years ago.The elections are likely to serve as a solid arbiter of the parties’ strength heading into 2024. Under the state’s new legislative district lines, Mr. Biden would have won a majority of House of Delegates seats in 2020. But Mr. Youngkin carried a majority of the districts when he was elected in 2021.“These are competitive maps,” Ms. Williams said. “When we get to the other side of this November election and you look at all of these things combined, you’re going to see a very strong story for Democrats.” More

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      If Politicians Are Either Stainless or Shameless, Guess Which One Senator Menendez Is

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, you know how much I hate stereotypes, but — New Jersey! What is it about the state that seems to produce ethically challenged pols? I’m thinking about Harrison Williams and Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevey and innumerable mayors and assemblymen and now Senator Robert Menendez, indicted — once again — for various corrupt practices, including taking bribes in the form of gold bars.Is it the mercury in the Hackensack River? The effects of Taylor Pork Roll? Lingering trauma over the Snooki pouf?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, the case has of course yet to be tried, but right now, whenever I see a picture of Bob Menendez, I imagine a little golden rectangle sticking out of his pocket.His career is over. However, let’s be fair. We can’t get all high and mighty about New Jersey when we live in a state where George Pataki, whose three terms ended in 2007, was the last elected governor to finish his political career without having to resign in disgrace.Bret: Maybe the eastbound sign on the George Washington Bridge should read, “Welcome to the Empire State, not quite as crooked as the state you’re leaving. But. …”Gail: I can think of some more states that could use similar signs, but I’ll be charitable today and refrain from making lists. Do you have a remedy? One thing that worries me is how uncool politics has become. You don’t see promising college students talking about their dream of going back home and running for City Council. Or even someday becoming president.I blame Donald Trump for that, of course. But I have to admit Joe Biden doesn’t exactly make politics look like an exciting career.Bret: My pet theory about modern American politics is that only two types of people go into it: the stainless and the shameless. Either you have lived a life of such unimpeachable virtue that you can survive endless investigations into your personal history, or you’re the type of person who lacks the shame gene, so you don’t care what kind of dirt the media digs up about you. In other words, you’re either Mitt Romney or Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer or Anthony Weiner.Gail: Wow, first time I’ve thought about Anthony Weiner in quite a while. But go on.Bret: Point being, most normal people fall somewhere in the middle, and they don’t want to spend their lives under a media microscope. That’s why so many otherwise well-qualified and otherwise public-spirited people steer clear of political careers. Which brings us without stopping to the complete breakdown in the Republican House caucus.Gail: So glad you brought that up. I was of course going to ask — how much of this is Kevin McCarthy’s fault, how much the fault of Republican conservatives in general?Bret: Can’t it be both? McCarthy got his speakership by putting himself at the mercy of the lunatic fringe on his right, and now that fringe is behaving like … lunatics. In theory, what the Republican caucus is arguing about is government spending and whether a government shutdown can send a message about excess spending. In reality, this is about power — about people like Matt Gaetz showing that, with a handful of votes, he can bring the entire Congress to heel. It’s the tyranny of a small minority leveraging its will over a bare majority to hold everyone else hostage.Including, I should add, the Defense Department. If you had told me 10 years ago that the G.O.P. would purposefully sow chaos at the Pentagon to score points about government spending or abortion, I would have thought you were tripping. But here we are.Gail: Non-fan of the House Republicans that I am, I did not expect anything good when they won the majority last year. But I did expect them to be semi-competent in their attempts to do bad.Bret: Hehe.Gail: Instead, we have government by Matt Gaetz, or Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama senator who’s been holding up military promotions as a protest against … abortion rights?All this is good for the Democrats, who would have had to block any House budget that decimated critical services like health care. As things stand now, if we go into October without a national budget in place, all the ensuing crises will be blamed on the Republicans.Not saying I want that to happen, but if it does, glad the shame will go in the right direction.Bret: House Republicans have become a circular firing squad and I really have to wonder whether McCarthy will last another month as speaker, let alone to the end of this Congress. Although, whenever I think the Republicans are harming themselves, I turn to the Democrats. Granting almost 500,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status is the right thing to do, but the administration’s failure to get control of the border means it’s only a matter of time before grants at this scale happen as a matter of course. I just don’t understand how this is good policy or wise politics. Please explain it to me.Gail: Don’t think anybody feels the current border policies are anything close to perfect, but it’s a question of what else to do. Eager to hear any suggestions that don’t involve a stupid, embarrassing wall.Bret: Which I continue to favor — along with wide and welcoming gates — but OK. There’s also something called a “smart fence” that has excellent sensors to detect border crossings, but is less ugly, less expensive and more environmentally sensitive than a wall. But it would have to be manned continuously by armed patrols. We can also immediately return people arriving here illegally rather than let them stay in the United States while awaiting a court hearing, unless they are from countries where they are at mortal risk from their own governments. President Obama did that pretty robustly, and I don’t remember any of my liberal friends claiming it was an assault on human rights. And we need to enormously expand consular facilities throughout Latin America so people’s immigration claims can be processed abroad, not once they’ve crossed the border.Gail: Voting with you on greatly expanded consular services.Bret: It would be a start. And I’m saying all this as someone who believes deeply in the overall benefits of immigration. But a de facto open border doesn’t advance the cause of a liberal immigration policy. It undermines it. And it could take down a lot of the Democratic Party in the process.Gail: Arguing about the fence is sort of comforting, in a way. Takes me back to the old days when we could fight about politics without having to wring our hands over the likes of Kevin McCarthy.Bret: So true. Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.Gail: Don’t know how depressed to feel about the deeply unenthusiastic, borderline terrifying polling numbers that Biden has been getting. On the one hand, it’s understandable that people are cranky about not having a younger, fresher, more exciting alternative to Trump. On the other hand — jeepers, the man has achieved a heck of a lot. And when you look at the inevitable alternative. …Bret: Liberals might see a lot of liberal policy achievements, but what conservatives and swing voters see is higher food and gas prices, higher mortgage rates, urban decay, an immigration crisis that only seems to get worse and a visibly feebler president. I really doubt we’d be having these anxieties over a potential second term for Trump if Biden simply stepped aside.Gail: But to get back to the House Republicans — an impeachment inquiry, starring Hunter Biden, yet again? This one, as you know well, is allegedly supposed to investigate whether the president did anything in 2015 to protect his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. Are you indifferent, bored or embarrassed?Bret: Angered. It’s outrageous to open an impeachment inquiry when there is absolutely no available evidence that the president committed impeachable offenses. By that preposterous standard, the police should open investigations into every parent in America whose children are louts.Gail: Speaking of louts — or at least uncouth dressers — how do you feel about Chuck Schumer’s decision to drop the Senate dress code? Clearly a bow to John Fetterman, who has been known to show up in a hoodie and shorts.Bret: Schumer is one of the nicest men I know in political life, a real mensch whether you agree with him or not. But this is a case of him being too nice. The Senate is held in low enough repute already; we don’t need it looking like an Arby’s. I hope he rethinks this. What’s your view?Gail: Agree about Schumer and kinda think you’re also right on the dress code. He lost me at the shorts.Hey, one last question — any predictions for the Republican debate this week?Bret: I expect Ramaswamy to irritate, DeSantis to infuriate, Christie to needle, Pence to remind me of a beetle, Scott to smile and Haley to win by a mile. But I doubt it will move the dial.Otherwise, I’d rather spend the time watching people ice fish.Gail: Come on, there’s always something weird or ridiculous to reward you for watching. And some suspense — will Ron DeSantis say something truly stupid that will make him drop out? Will Tim Scott have any good I-wanna-be-veep moments? And it’s always fun to listen to Chris Christie slam into Trump.Bret: True. And let’s see what conspiracy theory Ramaswamy will endorse next, like: Did Joe Biden get his Corvette at a discount from George Soros?Gail: We can talk it over next week. Along with God-knows-what new political crisis. Looking forward already.Bret: Same here. And before we go, I hope our readers didn’t miss Ian Johnson’s extraordinary essay about the Chinese journalists and historians fighting to preserve the knowledge of China’s tragedies and atrocities in the face of the regime’s attempts to suppress it. It made me think of how badly our own sense of history, including events like Jan. 6, has eroded, and reminded me of my favorite Milan Kundera lines: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”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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      The Democratic Party Has an Old Problem and Won’t Admit It

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      President Biden’s advanced age (80) gets rehashed endlessly, because the human condition makes it inescapable. A deft politician can wait out almost any other liability: Scandals and gaffes fade over time; the economy bounces back; governing errors can be corrected. But Mr. Biden will never be (or appear) younger than he is today. The problem of his age will never fade.In our fixation on Mr. Biden’s age, we often gloss over the role the Democratic Party has played in promoting and lionizing its older leaders, then muddling through when illness or death undermines their ability to govern. The party’s leaders seem to believe implicitly in the inalienable right of their aging icons to remain in positions of high power unquestioned, long after it becomes reasonable to ask whether they’re risking intolerable harm.The party has come to operate more like a machine, in which lengthy, loyal service must be rewarded with deference. It is why Mr. Biden has not drawn a credible primary challenger, when polling and reporting alike suggest that Democrats are deeply anxious about his ability to mount a vigorous campaign and serve another full term.And it is that deference, from those who seek to protect Democratic leaders from all but the mildest criticism, that ensures that we keep reliving the same bad dream, where each subsequent election comes with higher stakes than the last. It leaves grass-roots supporters to see all their hard work — and democracy itself — jeopardized by the same officials who tell them they must volunteer and organize and donate and vote as if their lives depend on it. And for millions of younger voters, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that any of it matters: If defeating Republicans is a matter of existential urgency for the country, why is the Democratic Party so blasé about elevating leaders who are oblivious to the views of the young people who stand to inherit it?I peg the beginning of this recurring nightmare to the year 2009, when Senator Ted Kennedy’s death nearly derailed President Obama’s signature health care reform and ultimately deprived Democrats of their Senate supermajority, which they might have used to pass more sweeping legislation than they did. Eleven years later, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also died in office. Her death was a hinge point where history turned and swept much of her substantive legacy into the dustbin; worse, it left living Americans to toil indefinitely under the legacy that replaced hers.There were gentle behind-the-scenes efforts and a robust public persuasion campaign meant to convince Justice Ginsburg to retire when Democrats still controlled the Senate and President Obama could have appointed her replacement, but there were plenty of liberals urging her to stick it out. Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, who was then the House minority leader, cheered Justice Ginsburg for ignoring the calls for her to step down. “You Go Ginsburg! Resist that sexist Ageism,” she wrote.Despite all of this terrible history, we face a similar challenge today: an aging party, and a Democratic establishment not just unwilling to take decisive action to stave off disaster but also reluctant to even acknowledge the problem.When Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (90) developed complications from shingles earlier this year and was unable to fulfill her duties, leaving Senate Democrats unable to swiftly advance judicial nominations, the elder Ms. Pelosi framed the calls for Ms. Feinstein to step aside as a form of injustice. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters.She herself has ignored years of (gentle, always gentle) hints that it was time to step aside in favor of younger leaders with less political baggage. She did finally relinquish her leadership role in 2022, after losing the House majority for the second time in 12 years, but earlier this month, she said she would run for her House seat again.The end of Ms. Pelosi’s speakership has reduced the overall risk level somewhat. If she or Ms. Feinstein were to die in office, it wouldn’t be terribly destabilizing, the way it was when Mr. Kennedy and Justice Ginsburg died, and the way it would if Mr. Biden did. But it does feed the deeper and perhaps more insidious problem: a widespread sense of alienation among the young voters Democrats desperately need to turn out in elections.This should not go on. Liberals are apparently doomed to white-knuckle it through 2024, but there are affirmative steps Democrats could take to better allow younger leaders to displace older ones.Paradoxically, the G.O.P. may provide a model the Democrats can use. Although the Republican base is older, it does a better job insulating itself from gerontocracy than Democrats do. Republicans are obviously far from perfect champions of their own self-interest. Their penchant for personality cults has wedded them to Donald Trump, who also happens to be old, but they are vulnerable to charlatans of all ages. That’s in part because they take steps to reduce the risk that they lose power by the attrition of elderly leaders. Justice Anthony Kennedy timed his retirement so a Republican president could replace him; the House G.O.P. has cycled through several leaders over the past decade and a half, none of them terribly old. When Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear defeated the Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, encouraged his allies in the Kentucky Legislature to circumscribe Mr. Beshear’s appointment power — to ensure partisan continuity in Washington, should a Senate seat become vacant. So although Mr. McConnell seems committed to serving out his term, he has a succession plan.Democrats could adopt a similarly hard-nosed attitude about retiring their leaders in dignified but timely ways. Republicans term-limit the chairs of their congressional committees, which guarantees senior lawmakers cycle out of their positions and make way for younger ones.Even just acknowledging this issue — and encouraging good-faith dissent — would boost Mr. Biden’s credibility with younger voters. While a political conversation that sidesteps this uncomfortable topic, along with any number of others, might soothe anxious partisans, it will leave them unprepared for hard realities.Democratic Party actors may be able to convince themselves that there’s something high-minded about muzzling this discourse entirely — that vigorous intraparty criticism is self-defeating, and that complaining about Mr. Biden’s age when nothing can be done about it is a form of indulgent venting that only inflames public misgivings about the president. But they’d be wrong. We can see without squinting that his advanced age has created meaningful drag on his polling, and that it is a gigantic problem for the Democratic Party if younger voters, who are overwhelmingly progressive, come to view it as a lifestyle organization for liberals who have grown out of step with the times. Airing out widely held frustrations with the party’s gerontocracy might persuade younger voters that their leaders get it, and that their time in power will come to an end sooner than later.Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) writes Off Message, a newsletter about politics, culture and media.Source images by Liudmila Chernetska, Adrienne Bresnahan and xu wu/Getty ImagesThe 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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      in Elections

      The Permanent Migration Crisis

      by

      On Wednesday the Biden administration announced that it will offer work permits and deportation protections to over 400,000 Venezuelans who have arrived in the United States since 2021. On paper this is a humanitarian gesture, a recognition of the miseries of life under the Maduro dictatorship. In political practice it’s a flailing attempt to respond to a sudden rise in anti-immigration sentiment in blue cities, particularly New York, as the surge of migrants overwhelms social services and shelters.I say flailing because the fundamental problem facing the Biden administration is on the southern border, where every attempt to get ahead of the extraordinary numbers trying to cross or claim asylum has been overwhelmed.In Eagle Pass, Texas, The Wall Street Journal reports that in a week, an estimated 10,000 migrants have entered the city, whose entire population is less than 30,000. The subsequent movement of migrants to places like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., has been encouraged by red-state governors, but under any circumstances such crowds in Eagle Pass would eventually mean rising numbers in big cities. And policies that make it easier to work in those cities, like the Biden move, are likely to encourage more migration until the border is more stable and secure.The liberal confusion over this situation, the spectacle of Democratic politicians like Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul sounding like Fox News hosts, is a foretaste of the difficult future facing liberals across the Western world.For decades, liberal jurisdictions have advertised their openness to migrants, while relying on the sheer difficulty of international migration and restrictions supported by conservatives to keep the rate of arrivals manageable, and confine any chaos to the border rather than the metropole.What’s changed, and what will keep changing for decades, are the numbers involved. Civil wars and climate change will play their part, but the most important shifts are, first, the way the internet and smartphones have made it easier to make your way around the world, and second, the population imbalance between a rich, rapidly-aging West and a poorer, younger Global South, a deeply unstable equilibrium drawing economic migrants north.All of this is a bigger problem for Europe than the United States — European aging is more advanced, Africa’s population will boom for decades (in 50 years there may be five Africans for every European) while Latin America’s birthrates have declined. The European equivalent of Eagle Pass is the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost possession, where the number of recent migrants exceeds the native population. This surge is just the beginning, Christopher Caldwell argues in an essay for The Spectator on the continent’s dilemmas, which quotes a former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy: “The migration crisis has not even started.”America’s challenge is less dramatic but not completely different. The world has shrunk, and there is no clear limit on how many people can reach the Rio Grande. So what’s happening this year will happen even more: The challenges of mass arrivals will spread beyond the border, there will be an increased demand for restrictions even from people generally sympathetic to migrants, but the sheer numbers will make any restrictions less effectual.This combination can yield a pattern like what we’ve seen in Britain after Brexit and Italy under Giorgia Meloni: Politicians are elected promising to take back control of borders, but their policies are ineffective and even right-wing governments preside over high migration rates. The choice then is to go further into punitive and callous territory, as the Trump administration did with its family-separation policy and its deal with Mexico — or else to recoil as many voters did from Trump’s policies, which encouraged the Democrats to move leftward, which left them unprepared to deal with the crisis when they came to power, which now threatens to help elect Trump once again.In a sense you might distill the challenge facing liberals to a choice: Take more responsibility for restricting immigration, or get used to right-wing populists doing it for you.But in fact the problems for both left and right will be messier than this. The populists themselves will not always know how to fulfill their promises. The interests of liberals in immigrant destinations like New York City may diverge from liberals in college towns or suburbs. The scale and diversity of migration will create unexpected alliances (a lot of Venezuelan migrants might vote for Trump if given the chance, after their experience with socialism) and new lines of internal fracture.Most likely there will be neither a punitive end to the crisis nor a successful humanitarian means of managing it. There will be a general rightward evolution, a growing tolerance for punitive measures (“Build the wall” could be a liberal slogan eventually), that has some effect on the flow of migration — but doesn’t prevent it from being dramatic, chaotic and transformative, on the way to whatever new world order may await.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