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    Biden Should Take Voters’ Concerns About Age Seriously

    Only 47 percent of Democrats want to see Joe Biden on the ballot in 2024, according to the latest Associated Press poll. That’s not because they think he’s done a bad job in office. Democrats tend to like President Biden and continue to give him good marks on handling the economy and foreign policy.But many Democrats, particularly younger ones, are worried that he will simply be too old to be effective in a second term, which would end when he is 86. “My problem with him running in 2024 is that he’s just so old,” one Democrat told pollsters.That may be deeply unfair — people age at different rates — and in Mr. Biden’s case, it’s impossible to deny that politics and conspiracy theories, rather than facts, fuel at least some of the concern. But candidates shouldn’t pretend, as Mr. Biden often does, that advanced age isn’t an issue. Mr. Biden is 80 now, the oldest American to serve as president, and even supporters, including the political strategist David Axelrod, have expressed deep worries that his age will be both a political liability in 2024 and a barrier to a successful second term. If Mr. Biden runs again, as he recently said he intends to, questions will persist about his age until he does more to assure voters that he is up to the job.Mr. Biden’s age makes him an outlier even in an era when the nation’s political leadership is getting older. The current Senate, where the average age is 63.9 years, is the second oldest since 1789. The House, where the average age is 57.5 years, is the third oldest. By comparison, the average age in the United States is 38.8 years.Concerns about age — both in terms of fitness for office and being out of touch with the moment — are legitimate, as Mr. Biden acknowledged in an interview in February with ABC News. His standard line, repeated in that interview, is: “The only thing I can say is, ‘Watch me.’”But Mr. Biden has given voters very few chances to do just that — to watch him — and his refusal to engage with the public regularly raises questions about his age and health.The usual White House method of demonstrating a president’s mastery is to take tough questions in front of cameras, but Mr. Biden has not taken advantage of that opportunity, as The Times reported on Friday. He has held fewer news conferences and media interviews than most of his modern predecessors. Since 1923, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan took fewer questions per month from reporters, and neither represents a model of presidential openness that Mr. Biden should want to emulate. His reticence has created an opening for critics and skeptics.The president also needs to talk about his health openly and without embarrassment, and to end the pretense that it doesn’t matter. Those who are watching him with an open mind have seen a strong performance this year. His State of the Union address on Feb. 7 shattered the Republican attempts to portray him as doddering. With a passion rarely seen at one of these speeches — let alone in his political history — Mr. Biden presented a remarkably effective defense of his presidency and gave a preview of what is likely to be an imminent re-election campaign.The Times reported last summer that Mr. Biden’s overall energy level has declined, and he continues to stumble over words in his public appearances. But those flaws alone don’t signal a politician who is too old to run again. His first term, in fact, is already full of accomplishment: The economy has added 12.6 million jobs since he took office, inflation is cooling, and he has signed significant legislation to fight climate change, improve access to health care, and make investments in manufacturing and infrastructure. He has stood up to Russia’s destructive campaign in Ukraine, and rallied the West to Ukraine’s side.Nonetheless, as Mr. Biden nears his actuarial life expectancy, concerns about his ability to handle the demands of campaigning and a potential second term are unlikely to disappear. Only a combination of performance and complete candor will change the minds of skeptical voters. Old age remains a sensitive topic, and many people, particularly men, are reluctant to discuss personal infirmities for fear of demonstrating weakness or being pushed aside by impatient younger generations. There is good reason for the federal government’s prohibition of age discrimination in employment — a protection that begins at age 40. Ageism is real.That law, however, doesn’t apply to people who are running for office. Voters have every right to ask questions about the medical condition of a candidate who wants their support. In 2016 both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gave the public very few details about their health. (Mr. Trump released a particularly preposterous doctor’s letter claiming he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”)Mr. Biden acknowledged during the lead-up to the 2020 campaign that he was “chronologically” old but said it was up to voters to decide whether that was important. In that election, against an opponent who was only four years younger, the answer was clearly no. In November 2021, he released a medical report that said he was a “healthy, vigorous 78-year-old” and noted nothing more serious than a stiffened gait due to spinal changes and some acid reflux that caused him to cough.His most recent health summary, released on Feb. 16, said much the same thing, describing him as a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” But his cognitive abilities went unmentioned. That’s something he should discuss publicly and also demonstrate to the voters, who expect the president to reflect the nation’s strength.If he runs again, Mr. Biden will need to provide explicit reassurance to voters; many of them have seen family members decline rapidly in their 80s. Americans are watching what Mr. Biden says and does, just as he has asked them to do.Source photograph by Azure-Dragon, 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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    What Older Voters Say About Biden 2024: From ‘He’s Fine’ to ‘Oh, God’

    In interviews, dozens of left-leaning older Americans wrestled with the prospect of a president in his mid-80s, reflecting on their own abilities and changes to their lives — and even their mortality.Over the last three decades, Americans have chosen presidents who felt their pain and channeled their anger, who shattered historical barriers or seemed like enjoyable beer-drinking companions.But if voters often desire leaders who reflect themselves and their struggles, President Biden’s potential bid for a second term, which he would conclude at the age of 86, is prompting exceptionally complicated feelings among one highly engaged constituency: his generational peers.Three years after older voters helped propel Mr. Biden to the Democratic presidential nomination, embracing his deep experience and perceived general-election appeal, his age is his biggest political liability as he moves toward another presidential run, which he could announce as soon as Tuesday. It is a source of mockery and sometimes misinformation on the right — though the now-indicted Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential poll leader who faces a morass of legal troubles, is just a few years younger — and one of widespread anxiety among Democrats.The issue is particularly personal, however, for older voters who are inclined to like Mr. Biden, but often view his age through the prism of their own experiences.They are aging. He is aging. They are not the president of the United States.Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist, encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. But, she said, “one has to know one’s limitations.” Gabby Jones for The New York TimesIn interviews with about three dozen voters, political veterans and prominent Americans between 67 and 98 years old, broaching Mr. Biden’s age prompted not only electoral analysis, but also wide-ranging discussions of their own abilities and adjustments to their lives. Some bluntly wrestled with questions of mortality, and others veered into grandparent mode, admonishing the president to take care of himself.“I’m 72 and I’m a young whippersnapper here in The Villages,” said Diane Foley, the president of The Villages Democratic Club at the Republican-tilted mega-retirement community in Florida, who encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. “There are incredibly energetic, active people well into their 80s, and some 90s.”“One has to know one’s limitations,” advised Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, 94, the famed sex therapist. She keeps busy these days with a project on the grandparent-grandchild relationship, but prefers to take meetings from home.“I would say the president should run again, but he should also not run up to a podium,” she added. “I don’t want him to fall.”And former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who at 92 has a dark sense of humor about his future — “at my age, I don’t buy green bananas” — signaled that he would support a Biden run. But he is eager for a new generation of leaders.“Maybe I’m feeling so strongly because I’m leaving relatively soon and I want to see what’s going to follow,” Mr. Rangel said in an interview. “I truly believe that we should have more candidates, more than two old white men.”Former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who is 92, said he wanted to see a younger generation step into political leadership. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesParty leaders overwhelmingly plan to support Mr. Biden if he runs. But recent polling has shown that while many Democratic voters rate him favorably, they also have reservations about another bid. An Associated Press/NORC poll released Friday found that poll respondents were concerned about his age.Other surveys found that older Democratic voters were more likely to favor another Biden run than younger Democrats, even as roughly 30 to 50 percent of Democrats over 60 preferred that he step aside.“I can’t go on television and say, ‘Let’s not talk about this, let’s pivot to the real issues,’ because people think age is a real issue,” James Carville, 78, the Democratic strategist, said last month.It was top of mind for several people who milled around a community center recently as a canasta game ended in Plantation, Fla.Doreen W., 78, a Democrat who declined to share her last name on the record, citing fear of causing problems for her husband at work, said she hoped Mr. Biden would run again. But she worried about whether he was up to it.“I know how tiring it is for me, and I’m not doing anything but retire,” she said. “I’m aware of his age and I’m concerned about that.”Informed that Mr. Biden was not 78, as she had thought, but 80, she groaned, “Oh, God.”“If I could just keep him at age 80 and active the way he is, I’d be more than happy,” she said.Nursing a canasta defeat nearby, Jacque Deuser, 67, said the way Mr. Biden sometimes walked reminded her of her late husband, who had dementia.“It kind of looks like he’s going to fall down,” said Ms. Deuser, who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and is inclined to support him again if Mr. Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida win the Republican nomination.Mr. Biden’s doctor recently reported that he was a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old” fit to serve, while acknowledging that Mr. Biden had a “stiffened gait,” citing factors including arthritis. But the doctor said there were no findings “consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder.”Mr. Biden works out at least five days a week and does not drink or smoke, and his recent travel, including a covert trip to Ukraine, impressed some of his peers.Mr. Biden made a long trip to Ukraine in February, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times“I don’t know if I could have been on my feet going to Ukraine and taking a 10-hour train ride,” said Peggy Grove, 80, the vice chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. But his public appearances have been uneven. While Mr. Biden has long been gaffe-prone, he has made several striking misstatements as president, and he can sound halting. Moments like a stumble on a stairway or a fall off a bike have attracted attention.“I enjoyed working with him. I watch him from a distance now and I get concerned,” said former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a 76-year-old self-described “not a Trumpian” Republican. “He’s lost a little of his sharpness.”The White House did not directly respond to Mr. Gregg.Several voters said Mr. Biden’s running mate would be important — and many Democrats have privately expressed concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris.But while health is unpredictable, some aging experts have said there are signs Mr. Biden could be a “super-ager.”Dr. John W. Rowe, a former president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics and a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia, said “super-agers” tend to live more of their lives without functional impairment. Dr. Rowe also said age could bring unexpected benefits.Older people, he said, are often better at resolving disputes, and “are less likely to do something imprudent.”“If you have, on the one hand, a super-ager, with no obvious evidence of something bad happening right now, and they bring along these other characteristics, I would feel pretty comfortable for the next four years,” he said, adding that he did not know Mr. Biden.Dr. Rowe, 78, a former head of Aetna, said he, too, had encountered occasional questions about retirement.“I do not feel that I’m functioning any less well than I was a couple years ago,” he said.He stressed that unlike 30-year-olds, older people vary greatly in their abilities.Some Democrats pointed to the differences in aging between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.Mr. Reagan, who announced in 1994 that he had Alzheimer’s disease and died a decade later at 93, long faced questions about his cognitive functioning. Mr. Carter — now in hospice care at 98 — remained active until recently.“I just try to always look at the individual, factor in age as one of many considerations,” said Gloria Steinem, the women’s rights activist, 89. “For myself, retrieval time is longer, but the choice of what to retrieve is richer.”As for Mr. Biden, she said, “I feel fine about re-electing President Biden, depending on both the alternatives and his health.”Mr. Biden and his allies stress his legislative accomplishments, including on issues affecting older Americans.Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden had inherited and helped the country overcome “the worst crises in decades,” and was “now bringing manufacturing back from overseas, rebuilding our infrastructure, empowering Medicare to lower drug prices and standing up for the rights and dignity of every American.” He emphasized Mr. Biden’s experience, judgment and values in office.A recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, Fla. Many attendees said they were unworried about Mr. Biden’s age.Melanie Metz for The New York TimesAt a recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, attendees dismissed concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.“If his head is working, he’s fine,” Muriel Kirschner, 94, pointedly told a reporter. “My head is still working, honey.”Patti Lynn, who will turn 80 this year, retired after having a heart attack, deciding it was “time to have some fun.” But Ms. Lynn, whose phone background was a picture of herself with Mr. Biden, did not think he should do the same just yet.“Does he stumble and forget and have to get his words? I understand that perfectly,” she laughed. “Been there, done that. Oh well, I’m having a senior moment. But he’s respected worldwide, he is stable.”“How do you put him down — because he is old?” she added. “He worked hard to get that old. Me too. I worked hard to get this old.” More

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    Abortion Surges to the Center of the 2024 Campaign

    Nearly a year after the Supreme Court turned abortion into a dominant issue of the 2022 midterms, the battle over abortion rights has catapulted to the center of the emerging 2024 election season, igniting Democrats, dividing Republicans and turbocharging sensitive debates over health care.From North Carolina to Nevada, Democrats running at every level of government are vowing to make support for abortion rights a pillar of their campaigns, and to paint their opponents as extremists on the issue.And as races intensify, Republicans are caught between the demands of their socially conservative base and a broader American public that generally supports abortion rights, exposing one of the party’s biggest political liabilities as it tries to win back the White House, recapture the Senate and expand its narrow House majority.This month, a Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race after running on her support for abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAll of those dynamics have crystallized over the last month. First, a liberal Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race by a commanding margin after running assertively on her support for abortion rights. A few days later, a conservative judge in Texas took the extraordinary step of moving to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court on Friday said the pill would remain widely available for now, halting two separate rulings, including the Texas ruling, while an appeal moves forward.Democrats cast the Supreme Court’s order as a close call, and warned that many Republicans still want as many abortion restrictions as possible, including a national ban. At the same time, Republican presidential hopefuls — whose teams generally did not respond to requests for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday night — are straining to find their footing on the issue.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not know they are pregnant, staking out a position that conservatives applauded, but one that could hurt him in a general election with moderate voters. Others, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have struggled to articulate firm positions. And former President Donald J. Trump, whose choices for the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, recently angered anti-abortion leaders by emphasizing state power over the issue rather than a national ban.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, who signed a measure that banned abortions after 24 weeks, with some exceptions. Mr. Sununu, who calls himself “pro-choice,” was the rare possible Republican presidential candidate to offer a comment on the court’s ruling on Friday: “Good call by the Supreme Court.”Representative Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who leads the House Democratic campaign arm, said Republicans had moved in an increasingly “extreme” direction on abortion. She pointed, for instance, to an Idaho law criminalizing those who help a minor get an out-of-state abortion without parental permission, and to threats more broadly to abortion medication.“It’s dangerous, and people are angry,” she said. “We’re going to see that in 2024 in elections across the country.”Anti-abortion demonstrators gathered in front of the Supreme Court as part of the 50th March for Life in Washington in January. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAs President Biden moves toward announcing a re-election bid as soon as Tuesday, one of his advisers predicted that the issue of abortion rights would be more significant in 2024 than it was last year, as Americans experience the far-reaching results of overturning Roe.Democrats are carefully monitoring — and eagerly broadcasting — the positions on abortion taken by Republicans in the nascent stages of primary season. And they are pressing their own succinct message.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Democratic Senate campaign arm. “Not politicians, not judges.”Republicans are far more divided on what their pitch should be — and party officials acknowledge this poses a steep challenge.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat. “Not politicians, not judges.”Julia Nikhinson for The New York TimesConflict always emerges between the demands of primary voters and the preferences of general-election swing voters. But the overturning of Roe has drastically complicated this calculus for Republican candidates. They now face detailed questions about whether to support national bans; how soon into a pregnancy abortion bans should apply; what exceptions, if any, to permit; and how they view medication used in instances of abortions and miscarriages.“We wrap ourselves around the axle trying to nuance our position as a candidate or a party through the primary, knowing that we’re going to have to reexplain ourselves in the general,” Mr. Sununu said. “It comes off as disingenuous, convoluted, and at the end of the day, it really chases away voters.”The fault lines in the party were illuminated again this past week. After a spokesman for Mr. Trump indicated to The Washington Post that the former president believed abortion should be decided at the state level, the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a stern rebuke.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signing a 15-week abortion ban into law in April 2022. This month, he signed a more restrictive six-week ban.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images, via Sipa USA“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the organization, said in a statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said he “believes it is in the states where the greatest advances can now take place to protect the unborn,” while declaring him the “most pro-life president in American history.”There will be no shortage of opportunities for Republican candidates to highlight their anti-abortion credentials and to navigate the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision, starting as soon as Saturday, at a gathering of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is also expected to give a speech on abortion.Bob Vander Plaats, a socially conservative leader in Iowa whose organization is expected to host a gathering with presidential candidates this summer, said, “There’s a lot of ways to determine a person’s bona fides when it comes to the sanctity of human life, but I guarantee you the Texas ruling will be discussed.”The issue of abortion, he said, “will be a cornerstone issue in the Iowa caucuses. It will be a cornerstone issue in the Republican primary.”On Thursday, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, tried to help her candidates navigate the subject, suggesting that opposing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy was a strong position politically, somewhat mirroring polling she has been showing to members of her party.“In 2022, a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject,” she said in a speech. Noting the onslaught of Democratic ads on the subject, she said, “most Republicans had no response.”She urged Republicans to cast Democrats as “extreme” on the issue, a message echoed by some working on House and Senate races who say Democrats should be pressed on what limitations they support.Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster who worked for the successful re-election campaign of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa last year, pointed to Ms. Reynolds, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia as examples of leaders who embraced tight abortion restrictions but were not defined by that issue alone. All three swept to comfortable victories in states that often lean right, but are not the nation’s most conservative states.“This last election saw some candidates who were unclear or changed their position, lacked conviction and were unprepared to talk about this issue,” she said. “If you have those things — if you have conviction, if you have empathy, if you are prepared and you know how to define yourself and your opposition,” she added, “we can successfully navigate this issue.”But some candidates have shown little interest in managing a rhetorical balancing act.The issue is likely to come to a head in North Carolina, home to what may be the most consequential governor’s race of 2024, with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, term-limited.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican. Sophie Park for The New York TimesMark Robinson, the state’s often incendiary lieutenant governor and a Republican, is expected to announce a run for governor as soon as Saturday. Mr. Robinson, who has said that he and his now-wife aborted a pregnancy decades ago, has since made clear that he wants greater restrictions on abortion rights in North Carolina, where Republicans now have supermajorities in the state legislature. The procedure is currently legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in the state.Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general who is running for governor, said in an interview that there was “no question” that he saw abortion rights as being directly on the ballot. That message was effective for Democrats in governor’s races in several critical states last year.“The only reason North Carolina doesn’t have a ban on abortion now is because we have a Democratic governor,” Mr. Stein said.A spokesman for Mr. Robinson declined to comment for this article.For Democrats elsewhere, it can be more challenging to argue that their races will decide the fate of abortion rights in their state, especially in places where abortion protections are codified. And it is far too soon to know what mix of issues will ultimately determine 2024 campaigns.Still, Democrats noted that if the Supreme Court had let the Texas ruling stand, that would have had major nationwide implications — and many stress the possibility of national abortion bans, depending on the makeup of the White House and Congress.“Even though we may have current protections for this in Nevada, if a nationwide abortion ban is imposed, Nevadans will suffer, and women will die,” Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, a Democrat who recently announced her re-election bid, said in an interview.In a statement, Ms. Rosen called the Supreme Court order “a temporary relief.” But in the interview, she said the Texas ruling underscored how one conservative judge could threaten the power of a major government agency.“It’s pretty frightening,” she said. More

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    Biden 2024 Re-election Announcement Could Come as Soon as Tuesday

    A campaign video is said to be in production, and donors are being mobilized, for a run that could be announced early next week.President Biden is nearing a final decision to formally enter the 2024 presidential race as early as Tuesday, with a video to announce his run already in production, according to four people with knowledge of the plans.Mr. Biden, who said last week while in Ireland that he would enter the race “relatively soon,” will spend the weekend at Camp David, and he is expected to be joined by family members and some advisers. He has not yet given final approval to the announcement plan, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.The New York Times reported on Monday that the Biden operation was discussing the possibility of a low-key video announcement next week on Tuesday, which marks the fourth anniversary of his entry into the 2020 race. One of Mr. Biden’s favorite poems, which he has often quoted, is about making “history and hope rhyme.”On Thursday, The Washington Post first reported that plans for an announcement next week were being finalized with Tuesday as a target.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined to comment in a text Thursday evening. At a press briefing earlier in the day, she told reporters: “What I will say is that any announcement or anything that is related to 2024 certainly will not come from here.” The Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.At 80, Mr. Biden is already the oldest president in American history and, by the end of a potential second term, he would be 86.The timing of a 2024 decision has been closely held by Mr. Biden’s inner circle at the White House, where re-election planning has been underway for months, overseen by two top advisers, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn. Still, planning has intensified in recent weeks with meetings between White House advisers and Democratic Party officials, with a focus on what kind of apparatus would support the president from the outside.Mr. Biden has a long history of extending deadlines around making major political decisions, injecting a measure of uncertainty into the timetable in the eyes of some of his allies.The political durability of the Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, has added to Mr. Biden’s ability to keep a coalition of Democrats together, including progressives who have at times taken issue with some White House policies. Mr. Trump, who has continued leading polls despite being indicted by the Manhattan district attorney this month, has proved to be a glue holding factions of the Democratic Party in place since 2020, when Mr. Biden won the South Carolina primary after losing the first two early state contests.Mr. Biden has already summoned donors to Washington next week, inviting those who have given at least $1 million to a two-day gathering starting on Friday. The event, which is not a fund-raiser, is intended to rally his army of bundlers and donors ahead of a 2024 campaign that is likely to top more than $1 billion, including super PAC spending.Cash considerations have been at the center of the Biden team’s thinking for when to enter the race. Announcing will allow him to begin banking contributions from big and small donors, but opening a campaign will incur significant expenses that might otherwise be deferred.Some outside groups have already begun preparing for a campaign, including a group called Future Forward that is expected to take the lead in television advertising; the long-running Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, which primarily focuses on digital work; and the group American Bridge, which has held events attended by administration officials.For instance, Ms. Dunn attended an American Bridge conference in Fort Lauderdale and appeared as a keynote speaker in her personal capacity.Mr. Biden is expected to face only token opposition in the primary. The author Marianne Williamson, who ran and lost in 2020, and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are both running long-shot campaigns.Chris Cameron More

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    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes His White House Run Official

    Announcing his long-shot bid to challenge President Biden, he spoke to a crowd of people who voiced their shared skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.More than half a century after his father sought the White House to end a calamitous war in Vietnam and to salve the country’s racial wounds, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science.Mr. Kennedy, a California resident, traveled to Boston, once the citadel of his family’s power, to declare that he would challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination in a long-shot bid for the White House.Appearing at the Park Plaza Hotel — a favorite fund-raising venue of his uncle Ted Kennedy’s — he sought to wrap himself in the Kennedy political luster.The event was saturated, in words and images, with reminiscences of Mr. Kennedy’s father as well as another uncle, President John F. Kennedy.In a rambling speech lasting nearly two hours, Mr. Kennedy, 69, evoked his father’s 1968 campaign and death, and spoke in detail about his career as an environmental lawyer decades ago. He also aimed criticisms at the pharmaceutical industry, big social media companies that he accused of censorship, Mr. Biden’s commitment to the war in Ukraine and former President Donald J. Trump’s “lockdown” of the country early in the pandemic.“This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,” Mr. Kennedy said, a reference to his complaint that social media platforms and the mainstream media have not given him a fair hearing. “I got a lot to talk about. They shouldn’t have shut me up for that long because now I’m really going to let loose on them for the next 18 months. They’re going to hear a lot from me.”Late in his speech, an alarm sounded and an announcement asked people to evacuate. Nobody moved. “Nice try,” Mr. Kennedy said, and continued to speak.Numerous attendees, who had come from Boston, neighboring New England states and Florida, recounted in interviews their skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.While polls show that up to half of Democrats want someone besides Mr. Biden as their 2024 nominee, no party leader has stepped up with a challenge, and past opponents have rallied to the president’s side. Mr. Kennedy is the latest in a history of fringe presidential aspirants from both parties who run to bring attention to a cause, or to themselves.For Mr. Kennedy, that cause is vaccine skepticism, which he cloaked in terms of truth-seeking and free speech, a crusade that in the past led him to falsely link childhood vaccines to autism. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he sought to undermine public trust in vaccines, comparing government efforts to impose mandates in some places to “Hitler’s Germany.” Both Facebook and Instagram took down accounts of a group he runs for spreading medical misinformation.Family members have accused Mr. Kennedy of sowing distrust in the science behind vaccines. His campaign has appalled members of his famous Democratic clan.“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information,” Kerry Kennedy, a sister of Mr. Kennedy’s, said in a statement.Bob Shrum, a former aide to Ted Kennedy, said Mr. Kennedy’s attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and the federal government’s top medical and scientific agencies would have infuriated his uncle. “It’s contrary to everything his uncle Ted Kennedy ever did,” he said. “He called health care the cause of his life.”In a statement of his own, Mr. Kennedy said he had made a “difficult choice to put my principles ahead of my personal affections” for Mr. Biden. “Some members of my family agree with me and others do not,” he added. “I bear them no ill will.”On Wednesday in Boston, Mr. Kennedy was introduced by his wife, Cheryl Ruth Hines, an actress, and he pointed out his children and grandchildren seated in a balcony of the hotel ballroom. But there was a notable absence of members of his family who have made careers in politics. A number of them affirmed their support for Mr. Biden’s re-election in recent days, part of a decades-long alliance between the Biden and Kennedy families.Ted Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Austria. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President Kennedy, is ambassador to Australia. And Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, who flew with him this month to Belfast.Though his campaign is unlikely to pose a serious threat to Mr. Biden, the strength of emotions expressed by his supporters on Wednesday pointed to a group that is angry and distrustful of traditional Democrats when it comes to vaccines. Any link between childhood vaccines and autism has been widely rebuked by peer-reviewed scientific studies. Covid vaccines, which have been administered to millions of Americans, are safe and effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Nonetheless, misinformation about vaccines swirls online.Attendees, echoing Mr. Kennedy, took aim at a corrupt alliance of big business and government.“The Covid vaccines are not effective and not safe,” maintained Claire Mortimer, 69, a nurse practitioner who drove from Brooklin, Maine, to hear Mr. Kennedy. “I believe that only Bobby Kennedy Jr. is capable of getting rid of the corruption that is so deeply embedded in every agency of our government.”Andy Migner, 67, who works in regenerative healing in Boston, described herself as a “lifetime Democrat” who now feels politically homeless. She said “our ability to question,” as well as journalism and public debate, “has gone down the tubes.” More

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    Biden Summons Big Donors to Washington as 2024 Campaign Nears

    The gathering is the latest in an intensifying series of planning moves ahead of Mr. Biden’s expected announcement of a re-election bid.Top donors to President Biden have received a last-minute invitation to travel to Washington at the end of next week to see Mr. Biden as he gears up for a 2024 campaign, according to more than a half-dozen people who have been invited to or briefed on the event.Invitations are going out to some of the biggest donors and bundlers for Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign — those who donated or raised at least $1 million, according to one person. The initial round of invitations is being made by phone instead of email.The event, which is not a fund-raiser, is seen as an effort to rally donors before what is expected to be an expensive 2024 run.The gathering is the latest in an intensifying series of discussions and planning meetings between the White House and Democratic National Committee officials ahead of Mr. Biden’s expected campaign. The president has said for months that he plans to run, and last week he said while traveling in Ireland that an announcement would come “relatively soon.”Even as Biden advisers say they feel under no immediate pressure to formally begin a campaign, there has been some discussion of an announcement as early as next week, which would coincide with the anniversary of Mr. Biden’s entry into the 2020 race.Some of the details of the donor event appear to still be coming together, but it is expected to include a meeting on Friday evening with Mr. Biden outside the White House, multiple people said. There might also be briefings from some of Mr. Biden’s top strategists on Saturday.One person familiar with the event described it as something of an outstretched hand after a relatively long drought of interactions between Mr. Biden’s world and some of its donors.Two governors who have previously been top Democratic fund-raisers, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, have also been invited because of their past fund-raising, according to two people briefed on the event. Both have been seen as potential candidates in 2024 if Mr. Biden decides not to run.The White House and the Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment. More

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    ‘One of the Odd and Scary Things About American Politics’ Is What Republicans Are Doing

    Are democracies providing the rope to hang themselves?From Turkey to Hungary, from India to the United States, authoritarian leaders have gained power under the protective cloak of free elections.“There is no doubt that democratic processes and judicial decisions can be used to limit the power of the people, restructuring governments and institutions to make them less representative, more undemocratic,” Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania told me, in response to my emailed inquiry.Smith continued:The classic examples are partisan gerrymandering and barriers to voting, but in recent years Republicans have gone further than ever before in using their overrepresentation in state legislatures to shift power to those legislatures, away from officeholders in Democratic-led cities, from officials elected statewide and from voters.Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, made a parallel argument by email:One of the odd and scary things about American politics, more reminiscent of the 19th century than anything in the post-World War II period, is that when the Republicans lost the presidential election in 2020 and did much worse than expected in 2022 (even worse than in a normal midterm contest), they did not abandon the leaders and policies that produced these results. Instead, they have doubled down on even more extreme and broadly unpopular leaders and policies, from Trump to abortion and guns.Goldstone believes that this developmentis a sign that normal politics have been replaced by extreme polarization and factional identity politics, in which the extremes grow stronger and drain the center. As a minority seeking to exercise control of government, it is actually necessary that the Trumpist G.O.P. suppress democratic procedures that normally produce majority control.If enough voters, Goldstone wrote,are deeply anxious or frightened of some real or imagined threat (e.g. socialism, mass immigration, crime, threats to their religion, transgender takeover), they may well vote for someone who promises to stand up to those threats, even if that person has no regard for preserving democracy, no regard for the rights and freedoms of those seen as “enemies.” If such a leader is elected, gets his or her party to control all parts of government, and wants to turn all the elements of government into a weapon to attack their enemies, no laws or other organizations can stop them.Goldstone warned “that should the Republicans manage to gain control of the House, Senate and presidency in 2024, building an electoral autocracy to impose their views without challenge will be their top priority.”There are two distinct mechanisms involved in overturning democracy, Goldstone argued:First, is controlling all elected and appointed elements of the government. If the same political party controls the House, Senate, judiciary and presidency, and disregards the principles of democracy and independence of officials, then sadly none of the institutions of democracy will prevent arbitrary and autocratic government.The second element, according to Goldstone, is unique to this country: “The United States has so many safeguards for minority rights that it is conceivable that a minority party could obtain complete control of all levers of government.”How so?The U.S. Senate is chosen on the basis of territory, not numbers, so that Wyoming and California both have two senators. Gerrymanders mean that states where Democratic and Republican voters are about even, like Wisconsin and North Carolina, have very unequal representation in Congress. Finally, the Electoral College method of aggregating state votes for president has meant that in 2000 and 2016 candidates with a minority of the people’s votes were elected.The consequences?“A determined effort to twist and benefit from these various opportunities and rules means that a party that represents a minority of the people can, in the U.S., control the House, Senate, and presidency,” Goldstone wrote, enabling “an oppressive government restricting freedom and ruling autocratically, and doing so to impose the goals and beliefs of a minority on an unwilling majority.”Robert Lieberman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins and a co-author, with Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell, of “Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy,” argued in an email that “Democratic procedure is not a threat to democracy per se, but it is fair to say that it has vulnerabilities.”“Democratic procedures,” he continued, “are intended to provide a means to hold leaders accountable,” which include:Horizontal accountability — institutional checks and balances that enable public officials to hold each other accountable; and vertical accountability — ways for citizens to hold public officials accountable, such as elections or popular mobilization. In a well-functioning democracy, both kinds of accountability work together to limit the concentration of power in the hands of a single party or individual.But Lieberman pointed out, “Democratic procedures can also enable would-be authoritarians to undermine both kinds of accountability under the cloak of democratic legitimacy.”Democratic regimes, he wrote, “are less likely than in the past to be overthrown in a sudden violent burst, as in an overt coup d’état. Instead, democracies are more frequently degraded by leaders who use apparently legal, democratic means to hollow out democratic accountability.”Voter suppression or gerrymandering, Lieberman noted,can limit vertical accountability by making it harder for the opposition to win elections, while maneuvers such as court packing can lower barriers for a party in power to expand its power. And these kind of tactics can reinforce one another, as when the Supreme Court upheld the practice of partisan gerrymandering (in Rucho v. Common Cause). Taken together, these kinds of moves can enable a party to gain and keep power without majority support and increasingly unconstrained by public disapproval.How do authoritarian-leaning politicians gain the power to elude the institutional restraints designed to maintain democracy? Stephan Haggard, a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California-San Diego, emailed me to say that “an important feature of populism is the belief in majoritarian conceptions of democracy: that majorities should not be constrained by horizontal checks, various rights, or even by the rule of law: Majorities should be able to do what they want.”This majoritarian conception of democracy, Haggard continued,is a leitmotif of virtually all democratic backsliding episodes. That the will of “the people” is being thwarted by an elite (read “deep state”) that must be purged. Of course, the definition of “the people” does not refer to everyone, but the favored supporters of the autocrat: whites in the U.S., Muslims in Turkey, Russian traditionalists and so on.One common characteristic of democratic backsliding, according to Haggard, is its incrementalism, which, in turn, mutes the ability of the public to perceive what is happening in front of its eyes:A constant refrain from observers who have weathered these systems is how difficult it is to be clear as to what is transpiring. This comes in part because autocrats lie and distort the truth — that is fundamental — but also because behaviors once thought out of bounds are normalized. Think Trump’s open racism or calls for violence against opponents at his rallies; all of that got normalized.Christina Ewig, a professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, views contemporary challenges to democracy from another vantage point.In an email responding to my inquiry, Ewig wrote that she disagrees with the premise that democracy is providing the rope to hang itself. Instead, she argued, “Democracy and democratic procedure are not threats to democracy itself. Instead, anti-democratic actors that abuse the state are a threat to democracy.”The United States, Ewig continued, “shows evidence of becoming what the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way call a ‘competitive authoritarian regime’ — a regime that is civilian, with formal democratic institutions, but in which incumbents ‘abuse’ the state to stay in power.”Prominent examplesinclude former President Trump’s attempts to influence Georgia officials to change election outcomes in November 2020, and then to impede the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6. Senator Mitch McConnell’s refusal to let President Obama nominate a Supreme Court justice is another. At the state level, Wisconsin Republicans, through district gerrymandering, have a chokehold on a purple state.All of these examples, Ewig argued,appear to be abuses of democracy rather than uses of democracy. Democracy requires an acceptance that one’s party will not always be a winner. But the Republican Party in the United States has, on more than one occasion, refused to lose.For now, Ewig wrote, the United States is not a competitive authoritarian regime. The results of the 2020 national elections and the institutional opposition to the insurrection in 2021 “helped to avoid that. But some U.S. states do look suspiciously competitive authoritarian.”Why is democracy under such stress now? There are many answers to that question, including, crucially, the divisiveness inherent in the elevated levels of contemporary polarization that makes democratic consensus so difficult to achieve.In an April 2021 paper, four scholars, Samuel Wang of Princeton, Jonathan Cervas of Carnegie Mellon, Bernard Grofman of the University of California-Irvine and Keena Lipsitz of Queens College, address the basic question of what led to the erosion among a substantial number of voters of support for democratic principles in a nation with a two-century-plus commitment to this tradition:In the United States, rules and institutions from 1790, when voters comprised white male landowners and slave owners in a nation of four million, were not designed to address today’s governance needs. Moreover, existing rules and institutions may amplify background conditions that drive polarization. The decline of civic life in America and the pluralism it once nurtured has hastened a collapse of dimensionality in the system.Americans once enjoyed a rich associational life, Wang and his colleagues write, the demise of which contributes to the erosion of democracy: “Nonpolitical associations, such as labor unions, churches, and bowling leagues, were often crosscutting, bringing people from different backgrounds into contact with one another, building trust and teaching tolerance.” In recent years, however, “the groups that once structured a multidimensional issue space in the United States have collapsed.”The erosion of democracy is also the central topic of a Feb. 13 podcast with Martin Wolf, a Financial Times columnist and the author of “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.” Wolf makes the case that “economic changes and the performance of the economy interacting produced quite a large number of people who feared that they were becoming losers. They feared that they risked falling into the condition of people who really were at the bottom.”At the same time, Wolf continued, “the immense growth of the financial sector and the dominance of the financial sector in management generated some simply staggering fortunes at the top.” Instead of helping to drive democratization, the market system “recreated an oligarchy. I think there’s no doubt about that.”Those who suffered, Wolf noted, “felt the parties of the center-left had largely abandoned them and were no longer really interested in their fate.”Two senior fellows at Brookings, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, explore threats to American democracy in a January 2022 analysis, “Is Democracy Failing and Putting Our Economy at Risk?” Citing data from six surveys, including those by Pew, P.R.R.I., Voter Study Group and CNN, the authors write:Support in the United States for political violence is significant. In February 2021, 39 percent of Republicans, 31 percent of independents and 17 percent of Democrats agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.” In November, 30 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats agreed that they might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Galston and Kamarck observe:Even though constitutional processes prevailed, and Mr. Trump is no longer president, he and his followers continue to weaken American democracy by convincing many Americans to distrust the results of the election. About three-quarters of rank-and-file Republicans believe that there was massive fraud in 2020 and Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.In fact, Galston and Kamarck continue, “the 2020 election revealed structural weaknesses in the institutions designed to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” noting that “if Mr. Pence had yielded to then-President Trump’s pressure to act, the election would have been thrown into chaos and the Constitution placed in jeopardy.”Since then, Galston and Kamarck note, the attack on democracyhas taken a new and dangerous turn. Rather than focusing on the federal government, Trump’s supporters have focused on the obscure world of election machinery. Republican majorities in state legislatures are passing laws making it harder to vote and weakening the ability of election officials to do their jobs.American democracy, the two authors conclude,is thus under assault from the ground up. The most recent systematic attack on state and local election machinery is much more dangerous than the chaotic statements of a disorganized former president. A movement that relied on Mr. Trump’s organizational skills would pose no threat to constitutional institutions. A movement inspired by him with a clear objective and a detailed plan to achieve it would be another matter altogether.“The chances that this threat will materialize over the next few years,” Galston and Kamarck add, “are high and rising.”If democracy fails in America, they contend,It will not be because a majority of Americans is demanding a nondemocratic form of government. It will be because an organized, purposeful minority seizes strategic positions within the system and subverts the substance of democracy while retaining its shell — while the majority isn’t well organized, or doesn’t care enough, to resist. The possibility that this will occur is far from remote.The anxiety about democratic erosion — even collapse — is widespread among those who think about politics for a living:In his January 2022 article, “Democracy’s Arc: From Resurgent to Imperiled,” Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, joins those who tackle what has become an overriding topic of concern in American universities:For a decade, the democratic recession was sufficiently subtle, incremental and mixed so that it was reasonable to debate whether it was happening at all. But as the years have passed, the authoritarian trend has become harder to miss. For each of the last fifteen years, many more countries have declined in freedom than have gained. By my count, the percentage of states with populations over one million that are democracies peaked in 2006 at 57 percent and has steadily declined since, dropping below a majority (48 percent) in 2019 for the first time since 1993.In this country, Diamond continued, “Rising proportions of Americans in both camps express attitudes and perceptions that are blinking red for democratic peril. Common political ground has largely vanished.”He adds: “Even in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, most Americans have still not come to grips with how far the country has strayed from the minimum elements of normative and behavioral consensus that sustain democracy.”At the close of his essay, Diamond goes on to say:It is human nature to seek personal autonomy, dignity and self-determination, and with economic development those values have become ascendant. But there is nothing inevitable about the triumph of democracy.The next test will be in November 2024.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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    For Progressive Democrats, New Momentum Clashes With Old Debates

    A push and pull between progressive and moderate Democrats is shaping the party’s policies and politics.Progressive victories in Wisconsin and Chicago have injected new momentum into the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But those recent electoral successes are masking deeper internal tensions over the role and influence of progressives in a party President Biden has been remaking in his moderate image.Interviews with more than 25 progressive and moderate Democratic leaders and strategists — including current and former members of Congress and directors of national and statewide groups — revealed a behind-the-scenes tug of war over the party’s policy agenda, messaging and tactics. As the party looks toward next year’s elections, its key constituencies have undergone a transformation. Once mostly white, working-class voters, Democrats now tend to be affluent, white liberals, Black moderates and a more diverse middle class.On some fronts, progressives — a relatively young, highly educated and mostly white bloc that makes up about 12 percent of the Democratic coalition and is the most politically active — have made inroads. Their grass-roots networks, including several headed by Black and Latino leaders, have grown sharply since the heights of the widespread resistance to the Trump administration. Beyond the high-profile victories in Chicago and Wisconsin, they have won under-the-radar local and state races across the country. And many of their views have moved into the mainstream and pushed the government to expand the fight against child poverty, climate change and other social ills.“We as a movement helped articulate these things, to do these things,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Washington State Democrat who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus.Yet at the same time, the activist left wing remains very much on the defensive.The negotiations with the White House on some of the most sweeping legislation fell short of the bold, structural change many of their members sought. And progressives remain locked in an old debate with their moderate counterparts — as well as themselves — over how to communicate progressive ideas and values to voters at a time when slogans like “defund the police” have come under attack by Republicans and moderate Democrats.“In 2018, our party seemed to react to Donald Trump winning in 2016, and the reaction was to go further and further left,” said Cheri Bustos, a former Illinois congresswoman who is a moderate and was a leader of the House Democrats’ campaign arm. “When politics swings far to the left or far to the right, there always seems to be a reckoning.”As Mr. Biden has signaled that he plans to run for re-election in 2024, he has been emphasizing the moderate roots he has embodied throughout much of his roughly 50 years in politics. He has replaced a key ally of the left in the White House — Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff — with Jeffrey D. Zients, who some progressive groups see as too friendly to corporate interests. And he has been clashing with activists who have accused him of backsliding on his liberal approaches to crime, statehood for the District of Columbia, climate issues and immigration policy.Progressive is a label that encompasses various factions within the American left and can mean different things to different people. Broadly, progressives tend to believe the government should push for sweeping change to solve problems and address racial and social inequities. Like moderate and establishment Democrats, they support strong economic and social safety net programs and believe the economic system largely favors powerful interests.But points of tension emerge between moderates and progressives over tactics: Progressives tend to call for ambitious structural overhauls of U.S. laws and institutions that they see as fundamentally racist over incremental change and more measured policy approaches.In an interview with the socialist political magazine Jacobin, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the most prominent progressive Democrats in the House, highlighted the tension by criticizing the president for making a “lurch to the right.”“I think it is extremely risky and very perilous should the Biden administration forget who it was that put him over the top,” she told the magazine, referring to the high turnout in the 2020 presidential election of young people and communities of color.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is the rare Democratic member of Congress to publicly criticize the president. Several other progressives said they had accepted their role as having a seat at the table, though not necessarily at the head of it. Some said they believed Mr. Biden would serve as a bridge to new generation of progressive leaders, even if for now they are caught in a waiting game.Progressive Democrats helped give Brandon Johnson a narrow victory in the mayor’s race in Chicago.Evan Cobb for The New York Times“Right now, the progressives are sort of building power — it is like a silent build that is just going to explode in a post-Biden world,” said Representative Ro Khanna of California, a co-chairman of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. “I just can’t conceive of a situation where progressives aren’t dominating presidential elections over the next 15 years after Biden.”The victories in Wisconsin and Chicago followed a similar playbook: Thousands of volunteers knocked on doors, made calls, wrote postcards, fired off mass texts and canvassed college campuses. They shied away from slogans and divisions among Democrats and emphasized the threat of an anti-democratic, Trumpian movement on the right. They turned out diverse coalitions of voters.In Chicago that allowed progressives to propel Brandon Johnson, a once little-known county commissioner and union organizer, to clinch a narrow victory in the mayor’s race over his more conservative Democratic opponent, Paul Vallas, who ran on a tough-on-crime platform and was endorsed by a police union. In Wisconsin, where Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, won a high-stakes race for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court, it allowed Democrats to lean into issues that the establishment wing of the party once tended to avoid in Republican and heavily contested areas: increased access to abortion and collective bargaining rights.“I couldn’t feel more proud or feel more vindicated that the type of politics we argued for are where more Americans are at,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, a grass-roots organization that often works with progressive Democrats and mobilized voters in Chicago and Wisconsin.Progressives have also been increasing their ranks in other places. Members of their wing now hold the mayor’s office in Los Angeles and a majority on the board of aldermen in St. Louis. They have swept into statehouses in Colorado, Connecticut and Wisconsin, where two Democratic Socialists this year revived a socialist caucus inactive since the 1930s. At the federal level, the House’s Congressional Progressive Caucus added 16 new members, bringing the total number of the organization to 102 — one of the largest ideological caucuses in Congress.But as they build their organizing power, progressives are contending with a financial framework at the mercy of boom-and-bust cycles. Major gifts from donors or progressive attention to a cause du jour can draw sudden revenue windfalls and then dry out. In the Trump years, some grass-roots groups had explosive growth as progressives rushed to combat Trump policies, elevate a younger and more diverse crop of candidates and help fuel a national reckoning with racism. By the 2022 midterms, some progressive candidates and groups were having to rewrite budgets, considering laying off staff members and triaging outreach programs and advertising as donations slowed.In Georgia, the Asian American Advocacy Fund, which focuses on mobilizing Asian American voters, went from having six full-time employees and a budget of roughly $95,000 in 2018 to a staff of 14 and a budget of $3 million in 2022. Its executive director, Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, said the boom allowed the group to run better programs but also made those projects harder to sustain when donations ran low. The group was among several in swing states that struggled in 2022 to get political canvassing efforts off the ground as major Democratic donors cut back on their political giving.“We lost momentum, and we lost the vast majority of people who tuned into politics and tuned into elections, many maybe for the first time in their lives, because there was this villain who needed to be defeated,” Mrs. Yaqoob Mahmood said.Political analysts also warned against reading too much into progressive gains in areas that already lean liberal. During the midterms, the candidates who won tough midterm contests in purple places like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada largely adopted more moderate positions. And more progressive nominees who beat moderates in a number of House primaries lost in the general election.“The whole name of the game is creating a majority, and the majority makers are the moderates,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist organization. Referring to progressives, he said: “They can win occasionally. But for the most part, they lose because what they’re selling isn’t what Dems want to be buying.”Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated a conservative opponent for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAs Mr. Trump vies for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, with multiple investigations hanging over his campaign, both moderate and progressive Democrats said they were forming a united front against a common foil and on issues where there is less division within their party, like abortion and protecting democracy. But for progressives, that has still meant a delicate dance about who they are.In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, successfully campaigning for Senate last year, argued that he was not a progressive but “just a Democrat.” In Virginia, Jennifer McClellan, who became the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress, has called herself a “pragmatic progressive,” emphasizing her decades of working across the aisle.The stakes are especially high for progressives in Arizona, where a fierce race is expected over Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s seat, after she left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. Ms. Sinema flipped a Republican-held seat by hewing to the center and relying on progressive groups that turned out a large coalition of Democratic and independent voters.Now, Representative Ruben Gallego of Phoenix, a member of the progressive congressional caucus, is running for the seat.In some ways, Mr. Gallego is a bona fide progressive. He has been promoting policies like expanding affordable health care, enacting a permanent child tax credit and increasing wages. In other ways, he is reluctant to openly embrace the progressive brand, preferring instead to talk about his vision for Arizona or his experience as a Marine combat veteran and former construction worker as a way to help bring those working-class Latinos who now vote Republican back into the Democratic fold.Asked if he sees himself as a progressive, Mr. Gallego said, “I see myself as someone who has been a worker and a fighter for working-class families.” He added, “We are not going to be focusing on D.C. labels.”Susan Campbell Beachy More