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      Muscle memory and a fight to inspire: on the campaign trail with Biden

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      “The fact is that this election, a lot is at stake,” said Joe Biden, collar unbuttoned, mic in hand, watched by about 50 guests at tables dotted with small US flags at Mary Mac’s Tea Room in downtown Atlanta. “It’s not about me. It’s about the alternative as well.”The off-the-cuff remark was telling. After more than half a century in national politics, Joe Biden’s final campaign is defined not by his record but his opponent: Donald Trump. The outcome of November’s presidential election will decide whether he is remembered by history as the man who saved democracy twice – or as a mere interregnum in the onward march of Trumpism.The Guardian spent a weekend with Biden on the campaign trail, shuttling from swing state to swing state on Air Force One and in presidential motorcades, from small gatherings of supporters to flashy receptions for big-money donors. It observed a candidate struggling to articulate an inspiring vision for a second term and recapture the kind of enthusiasm that Barack Obama once generated, but galvanised by the dire threat that Trump poses to his legacy.Biden understands that his long and storied career could yet end in failure. Surveys suggest that he is less popular than other members of his own party. Last week a swing-state opinion poll from the New York Times and Siena College found a generic Democratic Senate candidate led a generic Republican by five points, where Biden trailed Trump by six points.Specifically, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin were doing 14, 11, eight and seven points better than Biden in their respective states. Other polls have come up with similar findings that may tempt Democratic candidates to keep the president at arm’s length. Senator Jon Tester of Montana has already run an ad that says he “fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico”.A key reason for Biden’s weakness this time could be a lack of enthusiasm among African American voters, a demographic that powered Biden to the White House in 2020. A Pew Research report this week showed Biden leading Trump by 77% to 18% among Black voters – a shift from 2020 when Biden had 92% compared with Trump’s 8%. Among younger Black voters, Trump’s support crept up to 29%.Last weekend Biden flew on Air Force One to Georgia and Michigan, two critical battleground states, embracing a gruelling schedule that belied concerns about his 81 years. The first campaign stop was Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta, a historic Black-owned small business, where Biden-Harris campaign signs were plastered on a door.View image in fullscreenBiden’s entrance was greeted with applause and cheers that might be described as moderate rather than raucous. Some supporters and volunteers hugged him as he worked the room and music continued to boom from loudspeakers.He then took a handheld mic and spoke for five minutes without notes, like an ageing tennis player hitting shots from memory. “Look, here’s the deal,” he assured his audience. “You hear about how, you know, we’re behind in the polls. Well, so far, the polls haven’t been right once.”He said of Trump: “I think it’s fair to say – I won’t use the exact phrase that I’d use if I was still playing ball, but my opponent is not a good loser. But he is a loser.” The was an explosion of clapping and laughter. Biden himself chuckled. “Oh, I don’t want to get started. I’m going to get in trouble.”Turning serious, the president warned: “Everything you let me do, everything you helped me do, everything we’ve done, they want to undo … Our democracy is really on the line.”The speech was short on second-term promises but long on warnings about Trump, a familiar pattern. His next event was a significant shift up the wealth ladder: the Arthur M Blank Family office, home to a community-building foundation in a faux-Italian building with Roman-style mosaics.Biden delivered a speech in a room with an ornate ceiling – 15 illuminated recess panels and five chandeliers – and a floor of polished wood. Behind the lectern was a tapestry depicting birds in a bucolic setting. At either end of the room gold-framed mirrors hung above grand fireplaces. About a hundred well-heeled guests had gathered.When the president appeared, people stood, applauded, whooped and took photos. One woman shouted: “We love you, Joe!” This time he spoke for 18 minutes, beginning with relaxed humour: “Who’s that good-looking guy on the end there? How old are you?” The boy replied: “Thirteen, sir.” Biden said: “Thirteen. You got to remember me when you’re president, OK?”He again questioned the validity of polls while insisting that he was running strongest among likely voters and outperforming Trump in primary elections. Biden claimed that his team was building the strongest ground campaign in the history of the US, opening more than 150 field offices compared with Trump’s zero.The message of his campaign, he went on, was that the threat Trump poses is greater in a second term than it was in the first term. “When he lost in 2020, something snapped in Trump. I’m not being facetious; I’m being serious. He just can’t accept the fact he lost, and he lost it.” He accused his opponent of “running for revenge”.Biden listed some of his own accomplishments as president: 15m new jobs, an expansion of health insurance, lower prescription drug costs, climate action and investment in science and technology innovation. He promised that, if Democrats control Congress, he will restore the constitutional right to abortion. The room burst into applause. It seemed sure that dollars would follow.The president spent the night an upscale hotel in a tony neighbourhood then, the following morning, delivered a commencement address at Morehouse College, an all-male historically Black college. Democratic fears that he would be heckled and disrupted by protesters against the war in Gaza were not realised. But nor did Biden get the kind of adulatory reception that Obama might once have done.View image in fullscreenOn the college lawn, framed by redbrick buildings and trees, there was clapping and cheering from Morehouse alumni; less so from young graduates. Perhaps this was the worst fate of all: apathy. Jeremy Mensah, a 2024 graduate who voted for Biden in 2020 but is less sure this time, told the Politico website: “[Biden’s] speech didn’t move me at all. It was very much so a campaign speech. Like, ‘Oh I did this for the Black community.’ I didn’t feel connected to it.”Trump is leading Biden by 10 points in Georgia, according to last week’s New York Times/Siena College poll. Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, said: “Black voters make up more than half of Democratic voters in Georgia and so if you have anemic turnout then it’s going to be difficult to stitch together a multi-racial coalition that is large enough to beat Republicans in the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s the challenge. Biden can’t afford to lose any constituency. If Black women and Black men don’t turn out at rates that they could possibly turn out to vote in the election then that will cause him to lose.”The president then headed to Detroit, Michigan, where the sun was bright and hot despite the swing state’s proximity to Canada. His motorcade swept from the airport past the Uniroyal Giant Tire, the world’s biggest tire model at 80ft and 12 tons, and into Detroit’s east side, one of the oldest parts of the city, dotted with both fading paint and glimmers of urban renewal.Biden was greeted by the Crawford family, including the former professional basketball players Joe and Jordan Crawford, who opened Cred Cafe as a family business that doubles as a coffee shop by day and a speakeasy by night. The room had bare brick walls, exposed silver air ducts and a ceiling made of rough wooden panels. Audio cassettes, CDs, VHS videos, XBox games, a guitar and a dartboard adorned the walls.Music played as Biden worked the room, meeting and greeting about 50 guests. He took a handheld mic and ad-libbed for four minutes. “We got three reverends back there,” he said. “I saw them at the airport. In addition to asking them to pray like hell for me, I asked their advice on a bunch of things.”View image in fullscreenBiden nodded to the African American vote by talking about his childhood in racially segregated Delaware. “Dr King was one of my heroes, like many of my generation.” The audience listened in polite silence, punctuated by the wailing of a baby. Biden recounted how he left law school, got a job with “fancy law firm”, then quit and became a public defender. “And one thing led to another, here I am.”The final stop was a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) dinner at the cavernous Huntington Place Convention Center in Detroit, with bad acoustics and an estimated 5,000 guests. Some chanted, “Four more years! Four more years!” as the president took the stage. He declared: “I don’t feel tired. I feel inspired.”Biden said the NAACP was the first organisation he ever joined and he got involved in civil rights when he 15. He reeled off a list of accomplishments: cheques that reduced Black child poverty, reconnecting Black neighbourhoods cut off by old highways; removing lead pipes; investing a record $16bn in historically Black colleges and universities. Biden said Black unemployment was at a historic low and Black small businesses were starting up at the fastest rate in 30 years.He also asserted that the racial wealth gap was its lowest level in 20 years. This claim is open to dispute. According to data from the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances, the wealth disparity between Black and white families has persistently grown since 2010. It increased by $49,950 during the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a difference of $240,120 between the median white household and the median Black one.View image in fullscreenHe accused Trump and his allies of trying to erase Black history. “Let me ask you, what do you think he would’ve done on January the 6th if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol?” The question struck a chord with this audience, prompting gasps and murmurs. “No, I’m serious. What do you think? I can only imagine.”But Biden’s speech was littered with unforced errors. He recalled that as vice-president he tried to fix Detroit during the “pandemic” when he meant recession; he said he was humbled to receive an “organisation” when he meant award; he said the Affordable Care Act saves families “$8,000” a year in premiums when he meant $800; he referred to January 6 “irrectionists” when he meant insurrectionists; he said Trump had predicted “bloodshed” if he loses in November when he meant “bloodbath”.Still, the audience applauded warmly and soon he was back on Air Force One to Philadelphia, then flying by helicopter to Delaware, where he finally reached home at 11pm. There would be more flying and campaigning in the week to come. Joe Biden is an old political warhorse making one last big push, desperate to avoid the fate of one-term presidents such as Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush, who found the magic gone and incumbency a burden.It might not be enough.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “He’s the most opaque presidential candidate in years: you might go back to George HW Bush, who blended into the background. Biden just doesn’t have magnetism. He’s charisma-challenged. For voters, you need to energise and rally and mobilise.“Even the orchestrated events with Biden mixing it up with the ordinary person, it’s remarkable how blasé they are. Bill Clinton going into a bar; Trump stopping by the Cuban restaurant in Miami – these are exciting moments for the supporters of those candidates. But the speech that Biden gave at Morehouse, there’s just utter lack of excitement, engagement. There’s a real powerful disconnect between Biden and the voters that he needs to turn out.” More

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      Biden campaign releases De Niro-voiced video ad warning Trump has ‘snapped’

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a high-profile new video ad they are calling Snapped, which attacks Donald Trump as a candidate who will stop at nothing to grab power again.The aggressive, 30-second spot is voiced by an old Hollywood foe of the former president, the actor Robert De Niro, and will be distributed nationally.Against a backdrop of dramatic orchestral music and news images from Trump’s presidency, the De Niro voiceover begins: “From midnight tweets, to drinking bleach, to teargassing citizens and staging a photo-op, we knew Trump was out of control when he was president, and then he lost the 2020 election and snapped.”In relevant photographs, Trump is shown on his phone on Air Force One and at the podium in the White House briefing room in a notorious press conference in 2020 when he suggested that being treated internally with bleach might combat Covid-19. Then he is shown posing with a Bible outside what’s known as the Church of the Presidents, near the White House, after nearby demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality, following the murder of George Floyd in May, 2020, had been violently cleared by the authorities.Then it goes on to show the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, when extremist supporters of Trump, encouraged by the then president, broke into US congressional chambers to try, ultimately in vain, to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over him.De Niro continues that Trump was “desperately trying to hold on to power”. Then adds: “Now he’s running again, this time threatening to be a dictator, to terminate the constitution.”Footage of Trump shows him warning there will be a “bloodbath” if he does not win in 2024, and additional images showing a mob carrying pro-Trump and election-denying flags clashing with police.“Trump wants revenge and he’ll stop at nothing to get it,” the voice of De Niro continues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US president then says in his voiceover: “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message”. The closing image is Biden walking towards a doorway and saluting the troops that guard him. More

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      Senate Republicans block bipartisan border security bill for a second time

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      Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill for a second time, part of an attempt by Chuck Schumer to flip the script on immigration – a major political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats in this year’s election.The 43-50 vote was far short of the necessary 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded Democrats act on the border, abandoned the compromise proposal at the behest of Donald Trump who saw it was a political “gift” for Biden’s re-election chances.In bringing the proposal to the floor, Democrats hoped the doomed effort would underline their argument that Republicans are not serious about addressing the situation at the US border with Mexico, an issue that polls show is a major concern among voters.“To those who’ve said for years Congress needs to act on the border,” said Schumer, the Senate majority leader, in a floor speech before the vote. “This bipartisan bill is the answer, and it’s time show we’re serious about fixing the problem.”Democrats had spent the days leading up to Thursday vote hammering the message that the president and his party are trying to solve the issue, but have been thwarted by Republicans following Trump’s lead.“Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a statement. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”Biden trails Trump in national and battleground-state surveys. Voters trust the former president over Biden to tackle the border issue by a wide margin, according to several recent surveys, with immigration often ranking as a top concern.In February, after months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators had unveiled an immigration compromise – legislation Republicans said was necessary to unlock their support for a foreign aid package that included assistance to Ukraine.The legislation, which would have made major changes to immigration law and received endorsements from the National Border Patrol Council and the US Chamber of Commerce, initially appeared to have the support to pass. But then Trump denounced the plan as weak and demanded his allies in the Senate abandon it. They quickly followed his lead.When it came to the floor, the measure failed in a 50-49 vote, far short of the 60 ayes needed to move forward. All but four Republicans opposed it. They were joined by a group of liberal and Latino Democrats who argued that the approach was too punitive and failed to include relief for immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for years.“The Senate border bill once again fails to meet the moment by putting forth enforcement-only policies and failing to include provisions that will keep families together,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a statement this week, urging a vote against the bill, which none of its members were involved in negotiating. They called on Congress to pass legislation to protect Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to the US as children, and to expand work visas.No Republican voted for the bill this time around. Instead Republicans accused Schumer of holding a “show vote”, aimed at protecting Democrats’ narrow majority ahead of this year’s election.“This is not trying to accomplish something. This is about messaging now,” Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who helped negotiate the border deal, said earlier this week. “This is trying to poke Republicans rather than try to actually solve a problem.”Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona who negotiated the compromise with Lankford, also opposed Schumer’s move, which she called an act of “political theater”.“To use this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work in the first place,” she said in a floor speech on Thursday.Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, both Republican senators, also changed their vote, opposing the measure after supporting it in February. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the lone Republican senator to vote in favor of advancing the bill.But the bill also lost support from Democrats, among them Cory Booker, the senator of New Jersey, and Laphonza Butler of California. The liberal senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Alex Padilla of California again voted against it.In a statement, Booker said he voted for the bill in February in part because it included “critical foreign and humanitarian aid”, which was passed as a standalone package last month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I remain committed to pursuing commonsense, bipartisan legislation to modernize our immigration system so that it aligns with our most fundamental values,” he said.The White House had lobbied Republicans in advance of the vote. Biden on Monday spoke to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, urging them to “stop playing politics and act quickly to pass this bipartisan border legislation”, according to a White House summary of the conversations.“You caused this problem,” McConnell said he told Biden during their call, while urging the president to reinstate Trump-era immigration policies. “Why don’t you just allow what the previous administration was doing?” McConnell said he told the president.Since the bill’s failure in February, Biden has taken a series of executive actions to stem the flow of migration and speed up the asylum process, which can take months or even years. But the administration has maintained there are limits to what the president can do unilaterally.“Only Congress can fix our broken immigration system,” the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a statement after the vote. “I urge Congress to do so. In the meantime, we will continue to enforce the law with full force with the limited resources we have.”In advance of the vote, Schumer repeatedly acknowledged that he did not expect all 51 members of the Democratic caucus to support it. Johnson had already declared it “dead on arrival”.In a statement, the speaker called the procedural vote an “election year Hail Mary” by Democrats and said the onus was on the president to “use his executive authority to finally secure the border and protect American families”.The measure was designed to clamp down on illegal border crossings, which reached record levels last year, though the overall numbers have dropped in recent months. Among its provisions, the bill proposes provisions that would make it more difficult to seek asylum in the United States, while expanding detention facilities and speeding up the deportation process for those who enter the country unlawfully.It would also institute a new emergency authority that would in effect close the border if the number of migrants encountered by immigration officials averaged more than 4,000 people a day at the border over the course of one week. The authority would be triggered automatically if the average surpassed 5,000 a day or if 8,500 try to enter unlawfully in a single day.Democrats have emphasized the aspects of the bill they say would curtail fentanyl smuggling, which has led to a drug overdose epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. Despite Republican claims, illicit opioids are overwhelmingly smuggled over the border by US citizens, not migrants.The White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a memo released on the eve of the vote: “Congressional Republicans have to choose: will they again decide that politics is more important than stopping fentanyl traffickers and saving the lives of innocent constituents? Joe Biden knows where he stands.” More

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      Biden is dramatically out of touch with voters on Gaza. He may lose because of it | Moira Donegan

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      Joe Biden’s re-election team is playing it cool. The Biden campaign has long been shrugging at the president’s fading polls, turning down opportunities to put him in front of voters, and generally doing their best to portray an air of confident nonchalance. The campaign’s apparent lack of concern seems, or perhaps is meant to seem, like an expression of certainty in the outcome: that Biden will win re-election, and that it won’t be close. They want us to think that they’ve got it in the bag.They do not. Biden is in no way guaranteed re-election, and all available information suggests that the contest will be close. Donald Trump has been narrowly but consistently ahead in national polls. A new dataset released by the New York Times on 13 May found that Biden was trailing in five key swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania – and suffering from disillusionment among young voters as well as Black and Latino ones.In typical style, the Biden camp brushed this off. “Drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake,” Geoff Garin, a pollster for the Biden campaign, told the New York Times. But at this point, it’s not just one poll. It’s a lot of polls.What’s driving this discontent among young voters and voters of color – those cornerstones of Biden’s coalition that were so key to his 2020 victory over Trump in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania? There are several factors, but one issue remains consistent in these voters’ accounts of their dissatisfaction with Biden: his handling of Israel’s assault on Gaza.The indiscriminate bombing and civilian massacres that have accompanied Israel’s assault on Palestinians are a moral catastrophe that has shaken many Americans’ souls. The United Nations now estimates that more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the start of the fighting. Since many human bodies are buried beneath the rubble of Gaza’s bombed homes, schools and hospitals, that number is likely to be a significant undercount. The dead are mostly women and children. More than 1,000 children in Gaza have lost limbs to Israel’s war of revenge.If that figure cannot shake you into moral recognition, consider that many of those children have endured their amputations without anesthesia, since medicine – like food – has largely been prohibited from being delivered to Gaza by Israeli authorities. More than 75% of Gaza’s population is now displaced, according to the UN; they have left homes, worlds, entire lives that they will never be able to retrieve. More than 1.5 million people are now sheltering in Rafah, the strip’s southernmost city, which Israel is currently bombing and is poised to invade. Many human rights advocates and experts in international law have described Israel’s actions against Gazans as genocide. The death toll will keep climbing.Many voters believe, with good reason, that none of this would have happened without Biden’s assent. Biden has continued to speak of Israel’s attack on Palestinian civilians using the absurd language of “self-defense”. He has insulted Jewish Americans and the memory of the Holocaust by invoking them to justify the slaughter. And though his White House repeatedly leaks that he is “privately” dismayed by Israel’s conduct of the war, he has done little to stop the flow of US money and guns that support it.Even after the US state department issued a vexed and mealy-mouthed report on Israel’s conduct, which nevertheless concluded that it was reasonable to assess that Israel was in violation of international humanitarian law, the Biden administration has continued to fund these violations. That state department report was published on 10 May. The Biden administration told Congress that it intends to move forward with a $1bn arms sale to Israel. “OK, [Israel] likely broke the law, but not enough to change policy,” is how one reporter summarized the administration’s judgment. “So, what is the point of the report? I mean, in the simplest terms, what’s the point?”Meanwhile, Biden has expressed public disdain for the Americans – many of whom he needs to vote for him – who have taken to protest on behalf of Palestinian lives. Speaking with evident approval of the violent police crackdowns against anti-genocide student demonstrations, he said coolly: “Dissent must never lead to disorder.”It is a creepy and nonsensical claim, almost chilling in its Orwellian ahistoricism. But Biden does not see the protest movement against his war support as a legitimate instance of dissent, because he does not seem to understand concern for Palestinians as a legitimate moral claim. At times, he has seemed almost incredulous that any Americans would take sincere offense at the massive violence and waste of Palestinian life, as if such a concern was incomprehensible to him.But it is not incomprehensible to the voters he needs in order to win re-election. The genocide in Gaza has quickly become a moral rallying cry for many Americans, particularly young people and people of color. And the disgust at Israel’s massacres is not confined to campus radicals: more than half of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s handling of the Gaza war, according to a recent Gallup poll. Maybe that’s one of the same polls that the Biden campaign feels determined to ignore. But they shouldn’t: the “uncommitted” movement that aimed to express displeasure at Biden’s support for the attack on Gaza in the Democratic primary produced vote tallies higher than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in some states.Biden’s supporters are quick to point out that the alternative to Biden’s re-election will be dramatically worse, both for Americans domestically, and for those Palestinians who suffer as a result of US policy. And they are right. Biden supporters are right, too, that voting is a binary choice, between the options available. And they are right that abstaining from voting hastens a statistically likely Trump victory.But these lesser-of-two-evils argument do not lessen the tax on the conscience that many anti-war Americans will feel when they consider whether to vote for Biden in spite of his support for the genocide in Gaza. And they are certainly not justifications for Biden’s continued aid to Israel’s war project. Rather, the extreme dangers of a second Trump presidency are all the more cause for Biden to abandon this support, and to align himself with the moral cause championed by the voters he needs.On the issue of Gaza, Biden is dramatically out of touch with the voters he needs to win re-election. If he will not be moved by morality to stop his support of this war, he should be moved by vulgar self-interest. Gaza is not a distant foreign conflict: it is an urgent moral emergency for large swaths of voters. Biden will lose those voters – and may indeed lose the election – if he does not cease his support of these atrocities.Biden has that rare opportunity in politics: to help the country, and himself, by doing the right thing. But he must do so now. Both the Palestinian people and his own election prospects are running out of time.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Pro-Israel group pours millions into unseating New York progressive Jamaal Bowman

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      A Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has revved up its campaign spending, pouring $2m into a New York congressional primary to oppose the progressive incumbent Jamaal Bowman.Campaign finance disclosures released this weekend showed the Super Pac, called United Democracy Project (UDP), spending about $1m in support of Bowman’s opponent, the moderate Democrat George Latimer and $1m in negative advertisements opposing Bowman. If the group succeeds in defeating Bowman, it will deliver a significant blow to the progressive wing of the House.“They don’t want Israel to be criticized, they don’t want Israel to be held accountable – they don’t want anyone to mention Palestine or speak up for Palestinian rights and lives,” said Bowman during an interview with MSNBC on Saturday.In comparison, progressive groups including Justice Democrats and Working Families Party have spent less than $300,000 in support of Bowman and opposing Latimer. Latimer’s campaign has similarly outpaced Bowman’s in fundraising, with Latimer garnering more than $3.6m and Bowman raising about $2.6m so far.In an email to the Guardian, an Aipac spokesperson previously described Latimer as “a strong advocate for the US-Israel relationship in clear contrast to his opponent who is aligned with the anti-Israel extremist fringe”. Bowman has sharply criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and was among the first of his colleagues to call for a ceasefire.Notably, ads countering Bowman do not mention Israel at all. One ad from UDP accuses Bowman of having “his own agenda”, highlighting policy differences between the congressman and Joe Biden.The heavily Democratic contested district, with large numbers of Black, Jewish and Latino constituents, elected the progressive “Squad” member Bowman in 2020 in an upset primary election in 2020.Aipac’s forays into campaigns represent a new avenue of political activism for the pro-Israel lobbying group, which until the 2022 election cycle did not spend on campaigns. By forming a Super Pac, which can legally contribute unlimited amounts of money on advertisements and communications in races, Aipac has been able to ramp up its influence.Aipac planned to spend $100m on campaigns this year and has so far targeted a wide and at times unexpected range of races – with mixed results.In an Indiana congressional primary, UDP spent $1.6m in a successful bid to stop the former Republican congressman John Hostettler, an isolationist-leaning Republican who in the past made antisemitic remarks, from regaining a seat in the House. In a Maryland race, the Super Pac threw its support behind the Democratic candidate Sarah Elfreth, who beat the former US Capitol police officer Harry Dunn. Neither Dunn, whose book about the January 6 attack propelled him to national prominence, or Elfreth, a Maryland state senator, made comments about Israel-Gaza during the race.But candidates backed by pro-Israel groups have not succeeded in every race so far this year – UDP also dropped $4.6m in a failed bid to stop the Democratic congressional candidate Dave Min from advancing in his primary race against Democratic candidate Joanna Weiss. More

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      ‘She’s in the pantheon now’: Kristi Noem and the politicians who hit self-destruct

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      She could have been a contender. But then she wrote a book. And suddenly Kristi Noem was caught like a rabbit – or a rambunctious puppy – in the headlights.The governor of South Dakota found herself insisting that a false claim she met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un had been put in her book by accident. Wait, said Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation, you recorded the whole audiobook version and read this passage out loud. Why didn’t you take it out then?Noem blinked, nodded and waffled. She was pressed on the point twice more. Finally she asked in desperation: “Did you want to talk about something else today?”It was a car crash interview at the end of a train wreck week. Noem went on to abruptly cancel further appearances on CNN and Fox News, sparing herself further vilification over both the Kim lie and an admission that she had once dealt with a misbehaving puppy by shooting it dead in a gravel pit.Branded a fabulist and a dog murderer, her hopes of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election lay in ruins. Noem had become the latest in a long line of politicians – from Gary Hart’s affair to Sarah Palin’s gaffes to Mark Sanford’s cover up – to perform a spectacular act of self-immolation.“She’s in the pantheon now,” said Rick Wilson, a strategist who has worked on many Republican election campaigns. “The arrogance of a lot of political candidates who think they’re good with the press is they’re good with the press until they realise they’ve been skating on thinner and thinner ice and, when that ice goes, they are under the water.”The rise and fall of Kristi Noem happened with dizzying speed. The rancher and farmer served in the South Dakota legislature for years then entered Congress in the rightwing populist Tea Party wave of 2010. She became South Dakota’s first female governor in 2019 and won plaudits from Republicans for resisting coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.View image in fullscreenIn 2022 Noem published a book, Not My First Rodeo, with a front cover that shows her wearing a cowboy hat on horseback, reins in one hand, giant American flag in the other. “From humorous barnyard battles with feisty cattle and rodeo horses … ” was part of the PR pitch. The book seemed to shore up her status as a serious player in the Make America Great Again (Maga) universe.There were concerns over Noem’s hardline stance on abortion and media reports of an affair with the former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski. But in February this year, when the Conservative Political Action Conference held a straw poll for Trump’s vice-presidential pick, she came in joint first with Vivek Ramaswamy among 17 possible candidates.But things began to unravel when Noem appeared in a bizarre infomercial-style video lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas. Then she went a book too far. In No Going Back, as first reported by the Guardian, she wrote that she took Cricket, her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, on a bird-hunting trip with older dogs in hopes of calming down the wild puppy.Instead Cricket chased the pheasants, attacked a family’s chickens during a stop on the way home and then “whipped around to bite me”, she recalled. Later she led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her. For good measure, she added that she also shot a goat that the family owned, claiming that it was mean and liked to chase her kids.Although Trump once famously asserted that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, it soon transpired that shooting a dog is the last taboo of American politics, the one sacrilegious act that Democrats and Republicans can unite to condemn in an otherwise hyper-partisan time.Joe Biden’s re-election campaign posted on social media a photo of the president strolling on the White House lawn with one of his three German Shepherds. The Democrat Hillary Clinton reposted a 2021 comment in which she warned: “Don’t vote for anyone you wouldn’t trust with your dog.” She added now: “Still true.”The former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich told the Politico website: “Killing the dog and then writing about it ended any possibility of her being picked as VP.” The far-right extremist Laura Loomer, a Trump devotee, posted on X: “Wow. No coming back from this. This is so heartless. She killed a puppy? As a dog lover, that is just too much for me.”What was she thinking? Some speculated that, because the story has circulated for years among state politicians that Noem killed a dog in a “fit of anger” – and there were witnesses – she was going public now because she was being vetted as a candidate for vice-president.Others felt sure it was a misguided attempt to curry favor with Trump, who admires “killers” and has no love of dogs. Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Writing about killing a dog was not about writing about killing a dog for her.“Corey Lewandowski or someone around her told her: you need to show Trump that you’re tough and mean and bad, you can do the hard thing, you can be the one who would never be like Mike Pence, you can be counted on by Trump to be as brutal and ugly as he needs, no matter what the order is.”View image in fullscreenHe added: “That’s why she wrote that way, to say, I’d kill a puppy and isn’t that good enough for you, Donald? But even Donald Trump, who hates dogs, hates bad PR more. Kristi Noem became the definition of bad PR.”Then came the catastrophic book tour. Noem gave interviews on CBS, NewsNation, Newsmax and Fox Business, where the normally Maga-friendly Stuart Varney pushed her on the dog story until she snapped: “Enough, Stuart. This interview is ridiculous – what you are doing right now. So you need to stop.”Wilson commented: “By the third or fourth day of her getting humiliated over and over again in public, even I felt like somebody should put her out of her misery and take her to the gravel pit and end this pain. She was absolutely just flailing at every moment and did not have a sense of clarity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you’re on a PR tour trying to appeal to the Maga base, there is this belief in the Maga world that you never ever apologise, never say you were wrong, never back down. But unfortunately that’s not how humans work. Even in the Maga media space, she started getting her head caved in on this thing and rightly so. She deserved it.”Noem faced a particular grilling over the passage in her book that stated she remembered meeting Kim: “I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor after all).” She subsequently conceded that no such encounter took place and promised to correct later editions.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Being a woman in the Republican party, she wanted to project the image of toughness and she’s trying out for the position of running mate. It’s not really the dog; the giveaway is Kim Jong-un. That could have been any foreign leader.“Why did she pick and lie about meeting Kim Jong-un? Because she remembered the ‘love affair’ between Trump and Kim Jong-un, so she thought that Trump would be particularly impressed if she met and talked with him. That’s something they have in common – except they don’t.”Noem is not the first American politician to push the self-destruct button.View image in fullscreenEarl Butz, a secretary of agriculture, was on a flight after the 1976 Republican National Convention when he said: “I’ll tell you what the coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit.” The remark was reported in the media, prompting a reprimand from the then president, Gerald Ford, and the resignation of Butz, who claimed “the use of a bad racial commentary in no way reflects my real attitude”.The senator Gary Hart, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, told a reporter: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.” The Miami Herald duly did watch Hart, who was married, and report that he spent a night with a young model named Donna Rice. He withdrew from the race.John Edwards, a young and charismatic star of the Democratic party, ran for president in 2008 while conducting an affair and fathering a child with a woman even as his wife was battling cancer. The scandal was exposed and destroyed his political career.The Republican Sarah Palin was John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 election but became a liability with gaffes revealing her lack of foreign policy experience or knowledge of the supreme court. Asked what newspaper or magazine she regularly reads, Palin replied: “Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.”Mark Sanford was the governor of South Carolina when, in 2009, he flew to Argentina to be with a woman who was not his wife but told his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. The deceit was quickly uncovered, made vivid headlines and ended his 20-year marriage.View image in fullscreenSanford told the Guardian this week: “The reality of life is ups and downs and I think the measure of all of us is how we respond to the down more than the up. The record stands for itself in terms of I was honest and laid my cards out on the table and dealt with things as they came and that’s best you can do in those situations.“Anybody who’s failed publicly at anything, if they’ve learned anything from it, they’ve learned to do exactly what the Bible says in not judging others. It’s just recognising the nature of the human condition is imperfect. Those who pretend to be most perfect aren’t and inevitably live in a glass house.”But Sanford admits that he is baffled how Trump, who faces 88 charges in four criminal cases, seems to get a free pass and is once again the Republican presidential nominee. “The higher you climb, the further you fall and, appropriately, there’s a magnifying glass that’s applied to people in public office that frankly ought to be there.“People shouldn’t be above the law and get away with things that other people don’t and there is an added level of scrutiny that that goes with public life, which may have something to do with the fact that we live in country of 330 million people and, remarkably, [Trump and Biden] are the best two folks the country has to offer on the Republican and Democratic side. Are you kidding me?”Other politicians undone by a fatal flaw include Andrew Gillum, Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. Some appear destined to fly too close to the sun. Sabato commented: “They want it all and they’re used to being very lucky. That’s what does them in. They assume they’re going to continue to be lucky. That’s fatal for anybody. If you’re lucky, go have a drink but don’t expect to get lucky every day. It doesn’t happen.” More

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      Beware the Biden factor, Keir Starmer: you can govern well and still risk losing the country | Jonathan Freedland

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      The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.All of which partly explains why it’s a comparison to the US president that Starmer should be thinking about – even if it’s not nearly so encouraging.Start with those aspects of the Biden story that can give Starmer heart. The veteran Democrat showed it is possible to win office thanks less to a wave of popular enthusiasm than a hunger for change after years of chaos. He proved that you can make a virtue of a lack of swash and buckle, offering steady solidity as a respite after frantic drama. In 2020, Biden demonstrated that dependable and capable can be enough to win when voters have had enough of charismatic and crazy. It worked for him after the era of Donald Trump, just as it’s working for Starmer after an era that, for all Rishi Sunak’s efforts, is defined by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.In other words, in 2020, Biden showed that playing a hand much like the one dealt to Starmer can be enough to win. The trouble is, in 2024 he’s showing why that might not be enough to win twice.Take a look at the New York Times poll published this week. The headline findings are bad enough, with Biden trailing in five of the six battleground states where the election will be decided. Behind in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, he’s ahead in Wisconsin alone. The underlying numbers are worse still with, improbable as it may seem, Trump gaining among Black, Latino and young voters especially. Most alarming for Biden is the finding that 70% think the US political and economic systems need major change – or should be torn down altogether. It makes the 2024 contest a change election in the US, just as it is in the UK – and for an incumbent such as Biden, that is dangerously bad news.Put another way, the US appetite for change is so great that it is causing the unravelling of key parts of the Obama coalition – minorities and the young – and its reassembly behind Trump. Barack Obama offered himself as the change candidate in 2008, an outsider who would challenge the establishment, and Trump, even though he is a self-described billionaire and a former president less than four years out of office, is successfully making the same rebel pitch.What’s more, those Americans itching for something new are prepared to use as their agent of change a man who incited a violent insurrection against the US government, sought to overturn a democratic election, has made no secret of his dictatorial ambitions for a second term, has been found liable for sexual abuse and is now standing trial on criminal charges in New York. When so many Americans are willing to flock to that person as the alternative, it tells you how much they dislike what they have now.There is a warning here for Starmer. Not for his prospects in the coming election – Biden’s success in 2020 tells him he can be confident – but for the election after that. The former Conservative cabinet minister David Gauke thinks Priti Patel is a decent bet as the next Tory leader, perhaps offering to keep the seat warm for the return of Boris Johnson. If Trump makes the comeback to end all comebacks in November, do not think Johnson will not be tempted to repeat the trick.How is it that a second Trump presidency is even conceivable; how is it that Biden can be lagging behind such a flawed, widely loathed rival? The US economy is improving; the stock market is roaring; inflation is falling. The US is set to grow at double the rate of its fellow G7 nations this year. More to the point, through a series of landmark legislative achievements – a record that outstrips Obama’s – Biden has spread the jobs and investment around, even to those parts of the US left derelict by decades of post-industrial decline. Take his gargantuan infrastructure package, the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act: more than 80% of its green investment dollars have gone to counties with below-average wages. This is levelling up made real.And yet, Biden is struggling, even in those places he has helped most. It’s a reminder of a core fact that is so often forgotten. That politics is an emotions business, one that turns not on what people think but what they feel. All the economic data in the world won’t help you if voters feel squeezed and reckon the country is on the wrong track.As the US commentator Joe Klein puts it, politics often comes down to “the art of competitive storytelling”. The successful politician tells a story that goes beyond the practical matters of pay and public services, speaking instead to voters about the way they see their own lives and the future, for themselves, their families and the country. In that competition, Trump beats Biden. His story is dark and vengeful, pitting his people against a menacing other, but it is compelling. Biden has a narrative, too – he will protect democracy and abortion rights from the Trump threat – but it is defensive.This is the gap Starmer needs to plug – and you can see how he might do it. One Labour luminary says that too many Britons “don’t just feel a loss of income, but a deficit of dignity” and that politicians have to address that. Starmer gets close when he speaks of “dignity at work”, of the human need for respect. It sounds authentic, as if it might even be his animating purpose, when he recalls the way his father, a toolmaker who worked in a factory, “always felt … that he was looked down on. Disrespected.”Whatever the story is, he needs to tell it. Right now, what Keir Starmer offers will almost certainly be enough to get him into No 10. But the lesson of Joe Biden is that, if he wants to stay there, it will take much more.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More