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      Why Are We So Obsessed With the Way Politicians Eat?

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      I never thought I would relate to Ron DeSantis, a man whose political beliefs I vehemently oppose. But a few weeks ago, when I read this report about the Florida governor’s eating habits, I felt a deep sense of somewhat shameful recognition.“He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” an unnamed former DeSantis staffer told The Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before.”This is me. I don’t eat my food; I inhale it.Actually, this is my entire family. I sometimes joke that my husband and I got married because we both eat so quickly and aggressively. Dinner at our house rarely lasts more than 10 minutes. When I eat in public, I have to consciously try to slow down — and I hate that.Where DeSantis lost me, though, is in the one detail about his manners that went viral. Per The Daily Beast:Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert — by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.It’s an image so specific — scooping pudding with not one, not two, but three fingers — that I can’t erase it from my mind. It’s so indelible that it ricocheted around the internet: Talking Points Memo called it “PuddingGate.” In an interview covering DeSantis’s possible run for president, Piers Morgan asked the governor if he’d really eaten pudding with three fingers. “I don’t remember ever doing that,” DeSantis hedged. “Maybe when I was a kid.”PuddingGate reminded me of a similar uproar in 2019, after The Times published an anecdote about Senator Amy Klobuchar, at the time a presidential contender, eating salad with a comb, another surprising and unforgettable moment in the annals of political dining. Then memories of other politicians-and-food stories came flooding back to me: Why do I remember that Barack Obama’s White House chef joked that Obama ate exactly seven almonds as a snack? (An allegation Obama was moved to debunk.) And why is any of my precious brain space, what little is left of it, occupied by a 2016 report that Donald Trump prefers his steak so well done “it would rock on the plate”? (In 2017, The Takeout asked if Trump dunking a $54 steak in ketchup was “a crime” — though not one he was recently charged with.)“I think in our minds, what and how people eat tells us a lot about who they are,” said Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist and an assistant professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, and the author of “How the Other Half Eats.” The public believes that a person’s eating habits tell us something unique and authentic about them, she said, “something that we can’t learn through their political speeches or policy endorsements. It gives us this window into their character, their values, their willpower, self-discipline, virtuousness, laziness.”Our interest in politicians’ eating habits isn’t new, either. According to Harold Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and the author of “The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media — From the Founding Fathers to Fake News,” Americans have been turning a spotlight on the diets of presidents at least since Thomas Jefferson served ice cream at the White House. “People were amazed at what he was eating,” Holzer said.Holzer, who has studied Abraham Lincoln most extensively, said Lincoln didn’t have much of an appetite, “but when he was hungry, he would take out a pen knife and core an apple,” cutting off chunks and eating them, which some people apparently found odd.Perhaps these stories are able to take hold because they correspond with our perceptions of each of these men — Jefferson as the well-traveled aristocrat, bringing a delicacy to greater recognition in the States, and Lincoln as more of a common man, less concerned with appearances. Remember the hubbub when Obama bemoaned the price of arugula during his first presidential run? People glommed onto that detail because it fit with the claims that he was too elitist to appeal to regular, vegetable-hating Americans. (Good thing he didn’t call the bitter green “rocket” or he might not have made it out of the primaries.)As Holzer notes, part of any presidential campaign — any high-profile campaign, really — involves traveling around and eating local delicacies in the correct way: Lord help you if you eat pizza with a knife and fork. Heaven forfend if you order lox, capers and onions on a cinnamon-raisin bagel, Cynthia Nixon’s “troubling” selection during New York’s 2018 gubernatorial race that prompted commentator George Conway to tweet “Lox her up?”Writing for The Atlantic in 2018, the food anthropologist Kelly Alexander called this “gastropolitics”:Since the advent of American democracy, politicians have deployed foods in order to show how populist they are — how much they are like you and me. They attend barbecues in the South (and in Arizona) and corn festivals in the Midwest; they visit citrus growers in Florida, Mexican restaurants in California, and fishermen in Maine and Massachusetts, all while eating whatever the local specialty is in front of as many people and as much press as possible.But there’s a difference between information about eating habits that politicians control or release themselves (for example, Canada’s Green Party leader giving President Biden a “Peace by Chocolate” bar from a company founded by Syrian immigrants) and the often unflattering details that leak, sometimes from anonymous former staffers who seem to have an ax to grind. The latter tend to make more headlines because we may think that the way someone eats in private is more representative of their true self.Which brings me back to DeSantis. I don’t share the view of New York magazine’s Margaret Hartmann, who entertained the possibility that eating pudding with three fingers is “so weird it may end his 2024 presidential bid before it officially starts.” If you’re a fan of the governor, I doubt you’d be moved to vote against him because his hunger overcame his sense of good manners. Though he’s dipping in the national polls against Trump, he beat Trump among regular Florida Republican primary voters in one new poll, and his approval rating is higher in his home state than it was in September. The brand he’s trying to create is that of a regular (you know, Yale-and-Harvard-educated regular) guy who’s battling “elites” on every front. As an unfazed DeSantis said to Morgan: “They’re talking about pudding? Like, is that really the best you’ve got? OK, bring it on.”One sure takeaway, though? If you’re ever running for office, keep spare utensils handy at all times.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My oldest daughter is 19 and in her second year of university. The tiny victories are just as sweet, even though she no longer needs me to wipe her face. As this semester began, she was juggling two part time jobs as well as full time study. I urged her to reduce her waitressing shifts the same week that lectures started. She was sure that she’d be fine to keep working at the restaurant at the same pace for a couple of weeks. Turns out, it was too much. Oh, my friends, how sweet it is to receive a text message that begins “Mum! You were right.”— Miriam McCaleb, North Canterbury, New ZealandIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

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      Three Takeaways From a Tumultuous Day in Politics

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      A blowout in Wisconsin, an indictment in New York and a progressive victory in Chicago.Supporters of the victorious Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Abortion was a key issue. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt has been a big — even historic — week in American politics. Donald J. Trump was indicted. The liberal candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, easily prevailed over a conservative, Daniel Kelly. And Brandon Johnson, a progressive, was elected the mayor of Chicago.What did we learn? While in some cases it’s too soon to say much, here are a few early takeaways:It’s still 2022, at least in WisconsinIf the 2022 midterm elections offered any lesson, it was that liberals excel when abortion and democracy are on the ballot. Liberal voters turn out en masse. A crucial sliver of voters — perhaps as few as one in every 30 or 40 — will flip to vote for the Democrat when they otherwise would have voted Republican.That pattern continued in Wisconsin on Tuesday, when the liberal candidate won by 11 points, a striking margin for Wisconsin. Like many of the best Democratic showings of 2022, the Wisconsin race seemed likely to decide the fate of the state’s abortion ban and its gerrymandered legislative maps.Interestingly, Wisconsin was not a state where Democrats excelled last November. They didn’t fare poorly, but Senator Ron Johnson still won re-election and the incumbent Democratic governor won by just three points. The 2022 showing was no Democratic romp like in Pennsylvania or Michigan, where a stop-the-steal candidate or abortion referendum helped Democrats.This time, the issues facing Wisconsin voters were more like those in Michigan and Pennsylvania. As a result, Wisconsin liberals won a Pennsylvania-like and Michigan-like landslide.Too early to tell on Trump, but a short-term bumpIt’s still far too soon to say how the indictment of Mr. Trump will play out. But there are already plenty of signs that he has gained among Republican primary voters since last Thursday, when news of the indictment broke. Indeed, all four polls taken over this period showed Mr. Trump gaining compared with their previous survey.We’ll probably return to this question in more depth next week. After all, none of these polls were taken after his flight to New York or his surrender to authorities in Manhattan. And he was already gaining before the news of his indictment, so it’s hard to distinguish his latest gains from the continuation of a longer-term trend.Still, it would be no surprise if Mr. Trump is benefiting from the indictment. For days, the conservative media ecosystem has been dominated by a chorus of his defenders, including none other than his chief rival, Ron DeSantis. This is about as favorable of a media environment as it gets for a Republican primary candidate.How this will play over the longer term — especially if Mr. Trump faces other indictments — remains to be seen.Brandon Johnson, a progressive, as he concluded his victory speech on Tuesday in Chicago.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBlack voters are the fulcrum of a divided Democratic electorateThe Chicago mayoral race wasn’t a Democratic primary, but it was about as close as it gets for a general election: Both candidates were Democrats, and 82 percent of Chicago voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Like many Democratic primaries over the last decade, it pitted an activist-backed progressive against a more moderate candidate.But while we’ve grown accustomed to victories for moderate Democrats in most of these intra-primary fights, in Chicago it was the progressive candidate Brandon Johnson who prevailed. That’s in no small part thanks to the backing of Black voters, who have often offered decisive support to high-profile establishment-backed candidates, from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to Eric Adams.With many examples of Black voters backing moderate candidates over the years, it can be tempting to assume that they are the reliable moderate allies of the establishment. In reality, it’s not so simple. In particular, Black voters have often backed Black progressives over white moderates and liberals.In the New York mayoral race, Black voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Adams over the liberal Kathryn Garcia, even though they also preferred the Black progressive Maya Wiley over Ms. Garcia, based on data from ranked choice balloting. When Black voters side with progressives, the establishment’s position suddenly looks a lot weaker: Black voters represent around 20 percent of Democratic voters.Mr. Johnson, who is Black, routinely won 80 percent of the vote in the South Side’s majority Black wards, helping him squeak past the moderate Paul Vallas, who won a lot of the rest of the city.Mr. Johnson’s success doesn’t necessarily mean that Black Democrats are feeling the Bern, or otherwise itching to support progressive candidates. In this year’s primary, Mr. Johnson fared best in relatively young and white progressive areas on Chicago’s North Side, while the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, carried the South Side wards where Mr. Johnson would dominate just a month later.But the importance of Black voters to progressive fortunes might offer a lesson for activists who hope one of their own might win a Democratic presidential primary.After all, the last candidate to beat the Democratic establishment in such a Democratic primary was none other than Barack Obama. More

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      If DeSantis Thinks His Competence Will Help Him Beat Trump, He May Want to Think Again

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      The Republican establishment thought it could have Donald Trump’s political appeal without Donald Trump himself.That’s why many of the most prominent voices in conservative politics and media have lined up behind Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, as the presumptive leader of the Republican Party in the 2024 presidential race. He combines traditional, elite credentials and orthodox conservative views with a pugilistic, Trumpish affect. DeSantis, goes the thinking, could hold Trump’s working-class supporters and reclaim suburban Republicans who decamped for bluer pastures in the 2020 presidential election.To be the nominee, of course, DeSantis has to win the nomination. And to win the nomination, he has to topple Trump, who remains the largest orbital body in Republican politics. Trump’s pull is so powerful — his influence is so great — that he basically compelled much of the Republican Party, including would-be rivals, to defend him in the wake of his indictment by a Manhattan jury.Besting Trump, in other words, will require a certain amount of skill, finesse and political daring.DeSantis has to find an avenue of attack on the former president and actually take the shot, knowing that he could alienate legions of Republican voters in the process. He has to somehow persuade Trump supporters that he could do a better job — more effective and less chaotic — without disparaging Trump to the point where he, DeSantis, is no longer viable. And he has to do all of this before Trump can build steam and roll over him like he did his rivals in the 2016 Republican primary.The problem for DeSantis is that it might already be too late.According to a recent Fox News poll, more than 50 percent of Republican voters support Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, compared with 24 percent for Gov. DeSantis. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 51 percent of Republican voters support Trump, compared with 40 percent for DeSantis. And according to a recent Morning Consult poll, 52 percent of Republicans support Trump, compared with 26 percent for DeSantis.A lot could change between now and next year. Trump could collapse and DeSantis could pick up the pieces. But let’s consider the context of the last 13 years of Republican politics. Republican voters have always liked Trump. When asked in a 2011 NBC News poll whom they wanted to win the party nomination, 17 percent said Trump, just behind Mitt Romney and beating both Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. Trump was so influential even then that Romney asked for his endorsement, sharing the stage with the real estate mogul at an embarrassing Las Vegas news conference.The weakest Trump has ever been among Republican voters was in the wake of Jan. 6, when it seemed as if the entire political class, Republicans included, was ready to cut him loose. But they didn’t. Prominent Republican leaders kept him in the fold. Conservative media defended his actions. He was vulnerable, yes. But he remained the dominant figure in Republican politics.DeSantis could have struck when the former president was weak. He didn’t. And now the most likely outcome is that Trump takes the crown again, tossing his rivals aside like a collection of old dolls.What’s clear in all of this is that the Republican establishment — DeSantis included, it seems — is as clueless about its situation now as it was when Trump came down the escalator in 2015. They seem to think that they can harness Trump’s energy without submitting to Trump himself. But Republican voters want Trump, and they won’t take any substitutes.The draw of Trump is that he is an entertainer and a showman who will turn those skills against their political enemies. DeSantis might be more competent, but Republican voters don’t want a manager, they want a performer. If Trump’s opponents can outperform him, then, maybe, they have a chance. But in a fight for attention between a seasoned celebrity and a conservative apparatchik, I know where I would place my bet.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the slogan “parents’ rights” and what it actually means.The reality of the “parents’ rights” movement is that it is meant to empower a conservative and reactionary minority of parents to dictate education and curriculums to the rest of the community. It is, in essence, an institutionalization of the heckler’s veto, in which a single parent — or any individual, really — can remove hundreds of books or shut down lessons on the basis of the political discomfort they feel. “Parents’ rights,” in other words, is when some parents have the right to dominate all the others.And my Friday column was on the farce that is the Republican Party’s claim to want to “protect children.”When you put all of this together, the picture is clear. The Republican Party will use the law and the state to shield as many children as possible from the knowledge, cultural influences and technologies deemed divisive or controversial or subversive by the voters, activists and apparatchiks that shape and guide its priorities. When Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty say jump, their only question is: How high?But when it comes to actual threats to the lives of American children — from poverty, from hunger, from sickness and from guns — then, well, the Republican Party wants us to slow down and consider the costs and consequences and even possible futility of taking any action to help.Now ReadingEdward Ongweso Jr. on venture capitalists for Slate.Adam Serwer on “wokeness” for The Atlantic.Claire Potter on gun violence in her newsletter.Simona Foltyn on the consequences of the Iraq War for Boston Review.Adolph Reed Jr. on Bayard Rustin for Nonsite.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI have a few more pictures I want to share from my trip to Hawaii last December. This is the Makapu‘u Point Lighthouse, which comes at the end of a nice trail with a decent amount of elevation. I took a few different pictures of this lighthouse, from a few different angles, but this was the one that I think worked best.Now Eating: Pasta and LentilsWe’re all about pasta and legumes in this house — the kids are big fans of the combination — and this recipe from New York Times Cooking is a nice variation on the theme. I usually make this vegetarian, but you can fry pancetta and cook the vegetables in the rendered fat if you prefer.Ingredients3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped8 garlic cloves, smashed and peeledkosher salt and black pepper1 cup brown or green lentils3 thyme sprigs3 fresh or dried bay leaves (optional)1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed10 ounces tubular or ridged pasta, like penne½ cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for servingfresh parsley for garnishDirectionsIn a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Add 5 cups of water, the lentils, the thyme and bay leaves (if using). Partially cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until the lentils are al dente, 25 to 30 minutes.Add the tomatoes and 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil over high. Add the pasta and cook, stirring often to keep the pasta from sticking to the pot, until the pasta is al dente, 10 to 20 minutes. (It may take longer than the cook time on the package.) If the pot starts to look dry at any point, add more water, ¼ cup at a time.Turn off the heat, discard the thyme and bay leaves, then stir in the Parmesan. Cover and let sit for 3 minutes so the flavors meld and the sauce thickens. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Eat with more Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. More

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      What’s ‘Woke’ and Why It Matters

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      A marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years.Gov. Ron DeSantis after signing HB7, dubbed the “stop woke” bill, during a news conference in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., last April.Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald, via Associated PressBelieve it or not, the term woke wasn’t uttered even once in the Republican debates back in 2015 and 2016.Now, I’d be surprised if we make it out of the opening statements of the first primary debate without hearing the term.Whatever you think of the phrase, the rise of “woke” to ubiquity is a helpful marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years.There’s a new set of issues poised to loom over the coming campaign, from critical race theory and nonbinary pronouns to “cancel culture” and the fate of university courses. Fifteen years ago, I would have said these topics could divide a small liberal arts campus, not American politics. I would have been wrong.This change in American politics is hard to analyze. It is hard to craft clear and incisive questions on these complex and emerging topics, especially since the phrase “woke” is notoriously ill-defined. Last week, the conservative writer Bethany Mandel became the subject of considerable ridicule on social media after she was unable to concisely define the term in an interview. She’s not the only one. Apparently, there’s a “woke” part of the federal budget. “Wokeness” was even faulted for the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.But while the definition of “woke” may be up for debate, there’s no doubt that the term is trying to describe something about the politics of today’s highly educated, young “new” left, especially on cultural and social issues like race, sex and gender.As with the original New Left in the 1960s, the emergence of this new left has helped spark a reactionary moment on the right. It has split many liberals from their usual progressive allies. And it has helped power the rise of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has done more to associate himself with fighting “woke” than any other politician. Like it or not, “woke” will shape this year’s Republican primary.What’s woke?The new left emerged in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. At the time, liberalism seemed utterly triumphant. Yet for young progressives, “hope” and “change” had given way to the realization that Mr. Obama’s presidency hadn’t cured income inequality, racial inequality or climate change. These dynamics opened a space for a new left, as young progressives started to reach for more ambitious politics, just as the triumph of the Obama coalition gave progressives the confidence to embrace ideas that would have been unimaginable in the Bush era.A decade later, this new left is everywhere. On economic issues, there has been the Bernie Sanders campaign and calls for Medicare for all; democratic socialism; and the Green New Deal. On race, there has been the Black Lives Matter movement; kneeling in protest during the national anthem; and defund the police. On gender and sex, there has been the Me Too movement and the sharing of preferred pronouns and more.On class and economics, it’s easy to delineate the new left. Mr. Sanders helpfully embraced the democratic socialism label to distinguish himself from those who would incrementally smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. It’s harder to distinguish the new left from Obama-era liberals on race, gender and sexuality. There is no widely shared ideological term like democratic socialism to make it easy.And yet the differences between Obama-era liberals and the new left on race, sexuality and gender are extremely significant, with big consequences for American politics.Here are just a few of those differences:The new left speaks with righteousness, urgency and moral clarity. While liberals always held strong beliefs, their righteousness was tempered by the need to accommodate a more conservative electorate. Mr. Obama generally emphasized compromise, commonality and respect for conservatives, “even when he disagreed.”As Obama-era liberalism became dominant, a more righteous progressive discourse emerged — one that didn’t accommodate and even “called out” its opposition. This was partly a reflection of what played well on social media, but it also reflected that progressive values had become uncontested in many highly educated communities.The new left is very conscious of identity. Obama-era liberals tended to emphasize the commonalities between groups and downplayed longstanding racial, religious and partisan divisions. Mr. Obama was even characterized as “post-racial.”Today’s new left consciously strives to include, protect and promote marginalized groups. In everyday life, this means prioritizing, trusting and affirming the voices and experiences of marginalized groups, encouraging people to share their pronouns, listing identities on social media profiles, and more. This extension of politics to everyday life is a difference from Obama-era liberalism in its own right. While the Obama-era liberals mostly focused on policy, the new left emphasizes the personal as political.Today’s new left is conscious of identity in policymaking as well, whether it’s arguing against race-neutral policies that entrench racial disparities or advocating race-conscious remedies. Obama-era liberals rarely implemented race-conscious policies or mentioned the racial consequences of racially neutral policies.The new left sees society as a web of overlapping power structures or systems of oppression, constituted by language and norms as much as law and policy. This view is substantially informed by modern academic scholarship that explains how power, domination and oppression persist in liberal societies.Indeed, almost everything debated recently — critical race theory, the distinction between sex and gender, we can go on — originated in academia over the last half-century. Academic jargon like “intersectional” has become commonplace. It can be hard to understand what’s going on if you didn’t read Judith Butler, Paulo Freire or Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in college.Academic scholarship is also the source of the expanded, academic meanings of “trauma,” “violence,” “safety” and “erasure,” which implicitly equate the psychological harm experienced by marginalized groups with the physical harms of traditional illiberal oppression.This does not readily lend itself to a “politics of hope,” as virtually everything about America might have to change to end systemic racism. No law will do it. No candidate can promise it. But it does imbue individual actions that subvert oppressive hierarchies with liberatory and emancipatory implications, helping explain the urgency of activists to critique language and challenge norms in everyday life.The new left view that racism, sexism and other oppressive hierarchies are deeply embedded in American society all but ensures a pessimistic view of America. This is quite different from Obama-era liberalism. Indeed, Mr. Obama himself was cast as a redeeming figure whose ascent proved American greatness.When in conflict, the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society over enlightenment-era liberal values. Many of the academic theories, including critical race theory, critique liberalism as an obstacle to progressive change.In this view, equal rights are a veneer that conceal and justify structural inequality, while some liberal beliefs impede efforts to challenge oppression. The liberal value of equal treatment prevents identity-conscious remedies to injustice; the liberal goal of equal opportunity accepts unequal outcomes; even freedom of speech allows voices that would offend and thus could exclude marginalized communities.Is this a definition of woke? No. But it covers much of what woke is grasping toward: a word to describe a new brand of righteous, identity-conscious, new left activists eager to tackle oppression, including in everyday life and even at the expense of some liberal values.A protester during a gathering of trans, queer and Black Lives Matter activists in New York in June 2020.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesWhy woke matters for Republicans The rise of the new left on race and gender is already reshuffling conservative politics.For this year’s Republican primary, one of the most important things about this rise is that it has helped bridge the usual divide between the conservative base and the establishment.At least for now, the establishment and the base share the fight against “woke,” for two reasons:The new left is far enough left that there’s room to side with the right while keeping one or both feet in the center. Whether it’s a MAGA fan or a zombie-Reaganite, there’s a path for an enterprising politician to bash “woke” and get on Fox News without alienating donors. Anyone can be a conservative hero, even a private equity magnate who would have been seen as an establishment squish in 2015, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin.Anti-woke politics seems to animate elite conservatives as much as the activist, populist base. After all, the new left is most prevalent in highly educated liberal bastions like New York or Washington, and among the young in highly educated industries like the news media and higher education. Its rise has probably been felt most acutely by highly educated conservatives as well.Whether this dynamic changes is an important question as the primary heats up.Over the last few months, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have staked out farther-right positions that might put this question to the test. Mr. Trump, for instance, said he would pass a federal law recognizing only two genders and would punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care for minors. Mr. DeSantis, for example, would ban gender studies. As the campaign gets underway, they may go further. We will learn whether other candidates match their positions, and whether there’s a cost if they do not. There is even a chance conservatives go too far.Another big question is whether anti-woke politics can supplant older culture war fights, like abortion or immigration. Most anti-new-left conservatives still vigorously oppose the old liberals on immigration, secularism, feminism and more. It remains to be seen whether attacking D.E.I., Disney and university professors, as Mr. DeSantis did in a recent trip to Iowa, is the red meat for rank-and-file conservatives that it is for conservatives in big cities who feel under siege by an increasingly assertive left.Unfortunately, there is almost no survey data that helps answer these questions at this stage. The behavior of Fox News producers and the rise of DeSantis suggest that there’s some kind of mass constituency for this politics, but whether it amounts to 30 percent or 60 percent of the Republican base and whether it’s compelling enough to carry a primary bid is entirely unclear.In the most extreme case for Democrats, the backlash against the new left could end in a repeat of how New Left politics in the 1960s facilitated the marriage of neoconservatives and the religious right in the 1970s. Back then, opposition to the counterculture helped unify Republicans against a new class of highly educated liberals, allowing Southern opponents of civil rights to join old-school liberal intellectuals who opposed Communism and grew skeptical of the Great Society. The parallels are imperfect, but striking.On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the possibility that a populist, working-class conservative base perceives little distinction between “woke” and “liberal,” and would rather hear the old classics on illegal immigration, crime and coarse language about women and Mexicans than fight new battles against “woke capital,” critical race theorists and transgender teenagers. The range of possibilities for the general election are similarly wide. We’ll save the general election for another time. More

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      DeSantis, on Defense, Shows Signs of Slipping in Polls

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      For now, the Florida governor isn’t firing back at Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with Donald J. Trump in 2019. He has not attacked Mr. Trump, who has not hesitated to attack him. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIt’s been a tough few months for Ron DeSantis.Donald J. Trump and his allies have blasted him as “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” a “groomer,” disloyal and a supporter of cutting entitlement programs. Now, he’s getting criticism from many mainstream conservatives for calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute.”Is all of this making a difference in the polls? There are signs the answer is yes.In surveys taken since the Trump offensive began two months ago, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, has steadily lost ground against Mr. Trump, whose own numbers have increased.It can be hard to track who’s up and who’s down in the Republican race, since different pollsters have had such wildly divergent takes on Mr. Trump’s strength. In just the last few days, a CNN/SSRS poll showed a tight race, with Mr. DeSantis at 39 percent and Mr. Trump at 37 percent among registered voters, while a Morning Consult poll found Mr. Trump with nearly a two-to-one lead, 52 percent to 28 percent.In this situation, the best way to get a clear read on recent trends is to compare surveys by the same pollsters over time.Over the last two months, we’ve gotten about a dozen polls from pollsters who had surveyed the Republican race over the previous two months. These polls aren’t necessarily of high quality or representative, so don’t focus on the average across these polls. It’s the trend that’s important, and the trend is unequivocal: Every single one of these polls has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than before, and Mr. Trump faring better.A Widening Gap Between Trump and DeSantisEvery recent poll has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than he did two months ago — around the time Mr. Trump began publicly attacking him. More

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      Reader Mailbag: Bots and Other Business

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      Answering questions on topics including polling, independent voters and Black turnout.Voters in College Park, Md., in November. There are still some things to review about the midterm elections. T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWe’ve gotten a lot of great questions and feedback over the last few months, and I think we’re inclined to make a mailbag a regular feature, especially during the off-season. If you have a question, send it to dear.upshot@nytimes.com.Bots in pollingLet’s start with a question on an issue that I’d already been mulling:Mr. Cohn, you mentioned “bots” in passing as a potential issue for nonprobability polls. Which makes me wonder, how easy/hard would it be for a malign outside actor to interfere in the polling and make Donald Trump’s chances look better than they are? Because if that would be possible, I’d say countries with an interest in a divided U.S. (Russia and China come to mind) would certainly be tempted to pull that off. — Moritz, ViennaThis is a serious question. A Pew Research study a few years ago used a few simple techniques to find that 4 percent to 7 percent of respondents to nonprobability surveys were “bogus,” to use their term. These “bogus” respondents took the survey multiple times, took the poll too quickly, stated that they lived outside the United States, or offered nonsensical answers in open-ended questioning.Anecdotally, I’ve heard more complaints about these kinds of issues from pollsters. I routinely hear about pollsters who toss as many as half of their respondents for data quality issues. It is reasonable to assume that the better-known pollsters take these challenges seriously, but we don’t know much about their practices, let alone whether they work.Could this be part of Donald J. Trump’s strength in online panel polls? It’s hard to prove, but one emerging pattern has caught my attention: Mr. Trump has fared quite poorly in two online nonprobability polls linked to voter registration files, which require the panelist to provide personal information that matches a real registered voter.Or put differently: Mr. Trump has done quite poorly in the nonprobability polls where there’s an extra layer of confidence that the respondents are human. It’s the pattern we would expect if bogus respondents were a factor.Still, I wouldn’t get too excited about this emerging pattern if you’re a Ron DeSantis fan. It’s just two polls, after all. And Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have gone up over the last few weeks, including in telephone polling. So perhaps these voter-file-matched polls are really the outliers. As we’ve written before, voter-file-matched polls like these can be biased in other ways.I’ve asked a few smart and well-positioned pollsters to look into the “bogus” respondent question in their own data. If you’re a similarly well-positioned pollster interested in digging in, you know where to find me.The tilt of independent voters in the midtermsWe’ve written that Republicans enjoyed a pretty meaningful turnout advantage in the midterm elections, but a few of you thought we overlooked one important group in this analysis: independents.It’s always the independents who determine who wins. How did they vote?— Ed from Calhoun, Ga.Article does not mention the impact of the growing number of independent voters who choose not to vote in the primaries but decide final elections.— Julio Stieffel, MiamiDemocrats did quite well among independent voters, and that’s partly why the party held up despite a Republican turnout advantage.Nationwide, self-identified independent voters backed Democrats by two percentage points, according to the network exit polls. It doesn’t sound so impressive, but it is by the standards of recent midterms, when the president’s party has tended to lose independent voters by double digits.And in the high-profile statewide contests — think Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona — the Democratic candidates fared even better among independent voters than that, allowing Democrats to win marquee races by unusually wide margins.Black turnout before ObamaOn a related midterm note, we observed that the Black share of the electorate was the lowest it has been since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. That left an important question unaddressed:I am interested if the Black voter turnout, which has dropped, is higher or lower than historical norms before the 2008/2012 increase in turnout due to Obama. Thank you. — Lisa Pate, Birmingham, Ala.It depends a bit on how you measure it.By the simplest measure — the proportion of Black adult citizens who vote — Black turnout actually remains slightly higher than it was before Mr. Obama’s historic campaign in 2008.The catch, however, is that turnout is higher across the board than it was before 2008. As a result, the racial gap in turnout in 2020 — that is, the difference between the share of eligible Black voters who turn out, compared with the share of eligible white voters who do — returned almost exactly to what it looked like in the 2004 presidential election. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the racial turnout gap in 2022 will probably look like 2006 or 2002.There’s one last twist to consider: the Black share of the electorate. Oddly enough, the Black share of the electorate has usually remained above pre-Obama levels, even though the gap between white and Black turnout is basically the same as it was back then. That’s because white voters, who turn out at higher rates than Black voters, have dipped as a share of eligible voters, while Hispanic and Asian voters, who turn out at lower rates than Black voters, have increased their share of eligible voters.Put it all together and the Black share of the electorate in 2020 was about halfway between where it was in 2004 and 2012.Alternatives to BidenWe haven’t done much to touch on the possibility of a Democratic primary, but that hasn’t stopped many of you from asking about it:Here is a question my friends and I keep wondering: Is there are any Democrat who could stand a chance if Mr. Biden decided not to run? Thanks much!— The Rev. Lorenzo LebrijaWhoever wins the Democratic nomination will at least stand a chance, and probably more than a chance if Mr. Trump is the nominee. Whether there’s a Democrat who would do as well as or better than President Biden is a slightly different question, and it’s really quite hard to say. I hope you don’t ask me that next time!Mrs. Clinton?Believe it or not, the most frequent question we received was about this sentence I wrote:“After all, most modern presidential nominees — Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, to name eight recent ones — were not exactly superstar political talents distinguished by soaring oratory, made-for-television charisma, clap-backs on social media or dominant debate performances.”Here’s one (nice) version of the question it raised:“Can you please explain why you thought it was appropriate to list each male you were referring to with their full name (first and last) and list Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Clinton?” — Maura FitzgeraldThe answer is actually quite mundane. The Times uses people’s full names when they’re mentioned for the first time, but they typically receive courtesy titles, like Mr. and Ms., when mentioned again. In this case, Hillary Clinton had already been mentioned, but the male presidential candidates were being mentioned for the first time. Consequently, Mrs. Clinton, who prefers Mrs. to Ms., received her courtesy title while the male candidates got their full names.I see how it ended up looking a little weird in this case, so we adjusted the sentence after publication. More

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      The Wisdom and Prophecy of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech

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      On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter emerged from days of isolation to deliver the most important and memorable address of his life. Carter had canceled vacation plans and spent more than a week cloistered at Camp David, where he met with a “steady stream of visitors” who shared their hopes and fears about a nation in distress, most immediately thanks to another in a series of energy crises.Carter, however, discerned a deeper problem. America had a wounded heart. The president believed it suffered from a “crisis of the spirit.” The speech was among the most unusual in presidential history. The word that has clung to it, “malaise,” was a word that didn’t even appear in the text. It was offered by his critics and has since become something close to official history. Everyone above a certain age knows immediately and precisely the meaning of the phrase “the malaise speech.”I believe, by contrast, the best word to describe the speech would have been “pastoral.” A faithful Christian president applied the lessons he’d so plainly learned from years of Bible study and countless hours in church. Don’t look at the surface of a problem. Don’t be afraid to tell hard truths. Be humble, but also call the people to a higher purpose.The resulting address was heartfelt. It was eloquent. Yet it helped sink his presidency.Read the speech now, and you’ll see its truth and its depth. But, ironically, it’s an address better suited to our time than to its own. Jimmy Carter’s greatest speech was delivered four decades too soon.The ostensible purpose of the speech was to address the energy crisis. Anyone who remembers the 1970s remembers gas lines and the helpless feeling that our nation’s prosperity was dependent on foreign oil. Yet that was but one of a seemingly endless parade of American problems.By 1979, this country had experienced a recent string of traumatic political assassinations, urban riots that dwarfed the summer riots of 2020 in scale and intensity, campus unrest that makes the current controversies over “wokeness” look civil and quaint, the defeat in Vietnam, and the deep political corruption of Richard Nixon. At the same time, inflation rates dwarfed what we experience today.When he addressed the nation, Carter took a step back. With his trademark understated warmth, he described his own period of reflection. He’d taken the time to listen to others, he shared what he heard, and then he spoke words that resonate today. “The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us,” he said, and he described symptoms that mirror our current reality.“For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years,” Carter said. (Meanwhile, last year a record 58 percent of Americans told NBC News pollsters that our nation’s best years are behind it.)There was more. “As you know,” he told viewers, “there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions.” He was right, but compared to now, Americans were far more respectful of virtually every major institution, from the government, to the news media, to the private sector. Only the military fares better now in the eyes of the public.Then there was this gut-punch paragraph:We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.When we read these words after the contemporary onslaught of mass shootings, the anguish of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the turmoil of two Trump impeachments, you can again see the parallels today.We’re familiar with political speeches that recite the litany of American challenges, but we’re not familiar with speeches that ask the American people to reflect on their own role in a national crisis. Carter called for his audience to look in the mirror:In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.There is a tremendous amount of truth packed into those words. But there was a problem: Carter correctly described a country of mutual, interlocking responsibilities between the government and the people. Yet he was ultimately unable to deliver the results that matched his pastoral message.For all the scorn heaped on Carter later, the speech was successful, at first. His approval rating shot up a remarkable 11 points. Then came chaos — some of it Carter’s fault, some of it not. Days after the speech, he demanded the resignation of his entire cabinet. (He ultimately fired five.) It was a move that communicated confusion more than conviction.Then the world erupted. In November, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy and took dozens of Americans hostage. In December, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and at least appeared to secure the country quickly and easily. Contrary to popular remembrance, Carter did not respond with weakness. The defense buildup for which Ronald Reagan is remembered actually began under Carter. And in April 1980, he greenlit a daring attempt to fly into the heart of Iran and rescue American hostages by force.It was not to be. Mechanical problems scrubbed the mission far from Tehran, and in the confusion of the withdrawal, two aircraft collided, and eight American servicemembers died. American gloom deepened. The nation seemed to be moving from defeat to defeat.The failed rescue was a hinge moment in history. It’s hard to imagine the morale boost had it succeeded, and we know the crushing disappointment when it failed. Had the Army’s Delta Force paraded down New York’s “Canyon of Heroes” with the liberated hostages, it would have probably transformed the public’s perception of the president. But just as presidents own military victories, they also own defeats. Carter’s fate was sealed. Reagan carried 44 states, and on Inauguration Day — in a final insult by Tehran — the hostages came home.The story of the next 10 years, moreover, cast Carter’s address in a different light. The nation went from defeat to victory: Inflation broke, the economy roared, and in 1991 the same military that was humiliated in the sands of Iran triumphed, with assistance from its allies, over an immense Iraqi Army in a 100-hour land war that astonished the world.The history was written. Carter was wrong. There wasn’t a crisis of confidence. There was no malaise. There was instead a failure of leadership. Better, or at least luckier, leaders revived a broken nation.Yet with every passing year, the deeper truths of Carter’s speech become more apparent. His insights become more salient. A speech that couldn’t precisely diagnose the maladies of 1979 more accurately describes the challenges of 2023. The trends he saw emerging two generations ago now bear their poisonous fruit in our body politic.Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.In 1979, Carter spoke of our civil liberties as secure. They’re more secure now. A generation of Supreme Court case law has expanded our rights to free speech and religious liberty beyond the bounds of precedent. In 1979, Carter said that the United States possessed “unmatched economic power and military might.” That assertion may have rung hollow to a nation facing a Soviet Union that seemed to be at the peak of its power. But it’s unquestionably true today.We’re free, prosperous and strong to a degree we couldn’t imagine then. Yet we’re tearing each other apart now. The words that didn’t quite capture the moment in 1979 land quite differently today:We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.With these words, Carter raised the question, what is our freedom for, exactly? While we want to better ourselves and our families, we cannot become self-regarding. We have obligations to each other. We have obligations to our community. The best exercise of freedom is in service to others.Yet one of the stories of our time is the abuse of liberty, including the use of our freedoms — whether it’s to boycott, condemn or shame — to try to narrow the marketplace of ideas, to deprive dissenters of their reputations and their livelihoods. A porn-saturated culture luxuriates in its own decadence and exploitation, and then wonders why hearts break and families fail. And as Carter noted, our huge wealth cannot heal the holes in our hearts, because “consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”At the start of this piece, I used the word “pastoral” to describe Carter’s speech. But there’s another word: prophetic. His words were not the clarion call necessary for his time, but they are words for this time. As Jimmy Carter spends his last days on this earth, we should remember his call for community, and thank a very good man for living his values, serving his neighbors, and reminding us of the true source of strength for the nation he loved. More

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      Dismiss Ron DeSantis at Your Peril

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      So now Ron DeSantis is wishy-washy. A bit of a wimp. Or at least runs the risk of looking like one.That’s a fresh sentiment discernible in some recent assessments, as political analysts and journalists marvel at, chew over and second-guess his failure to return Donald Trump’s increasingly ugly jabs.I wish I agreed. I’m no DeSantis fan. But where those critics spot possible weakness, I see proven discipline. Brawling with Trump doesn’t flex DeSantis’s muscle. It shows he can be baited. And it just covers them both in mud.The doubters have also theorized that DeSantis could be this presidential election cycle’s Scott Walker, a gleaming governor who can’t make the leap from a local stage to the national one — who dims as the lights grow brighter. Walker’s bid to be the Republican nominee in 2016 winked out even before the Iowa caucuses.But he’d won his second term in Wisconsin in 2014 by less than six percentage points, while DeSantis sailed to re-election in Florida last year by more than 19. And DeSantis faced a much better-known opponent than Walker had.It brings me no joy to make those observations. It gives me the willies. I’m rooting hard against DeSantis, a flamboyantly divisive and transcendently smug operator with the chilling grandiosity to cast his political ascent as God’s will and a rapacity for power that’s one of the best arguments against giving it to him.But the latest wave of commentary underestimates him — and that’s dangerous. He’s not Walker: Nate Cohn explained why in The Times early this week, concluding that DeSantis “has a lot more in common with Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan” when they were gearing up for their first presidential bids than with Walker, Kamala Harris or Rick Perry, whose sizzle fizzled fast.He’s also not Jeb Bush. It has become popular to make that comparison as well, likening DeSantis to his predecessor in the Florida governor’s mansion. But DeSantis has the very venom that Bush didn’t. He’s a viper to Bush’s garter snake.Of course, there’s no guarantee DeSantis will even run for president. But many signs suggest that he’s headed there. Trump is obviously braced for that, and is intensifying his aspersions accordingly. A few months ago, “Ron DeSanctimonious” made its puerile and lavishly syllabic debut. “Meatball Ron” is apparently under consideration. And this month Trump insinuated on social media that when DeSantis was a secondary school teacher decades ago, he behaved inappropriately around female students.DeSantis’s response? “I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden,” he told a reporter who asked him about the vague and unsubstantiated allegation. “I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans,” he added.What he mostly spends his time doing is peacocking and planting unignorable markers along every fault line in the culture wars.Immigration? He sends a planeload of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. “Woke” corporate activism? He punishes Disney for standing up for L.G.B.T.Q. employees and proposes banning any consideration of “environmental, social and governance” factors in decisions about how and where to invest Florida funds.Public education about systemic racism? He goes to war with the College Board over its proposed Advanced Placement course on African American studies. Abortion? He punishes and publicly shames a pro-choice Tampa-area prosecutor. Covid vaccines? He exhorts his state’s Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to look into incomplete and inaccurate information about them. He’s making a list and checking it twice, an anti-Santa of all-purpose antipathy.He’s methodical and relentless, and that compensates for his oratory, more yawn-stoking than heart-stirring, and his debating, more bluster than luster. Those limitations are also the object of current scrutiny and skepticism.Attention to politicians on the rise and on the make comes in predictable phases. They are built up, each observer outdoing the breathlessness of the previous ones, until they must be torn down, because the existing story is stale and new adjectives and anecdotes are in order.So DeSantis has gone from cunning (which he is) to unlikable (ditto), from someone who has outperformed expectations (that 19-point margin) to someone who cannot possibly meet them. In truth, there’s too much time between now and when he’d have to announce his candidacy — and between then and the start of voting — to evaluate his fortunes properly. They’ll change in unpredictable ways, just like the world around him.But voters have chosen plenty of presidential nominees — and presidents — who were humdrum speakers, workmanlike debaters or loath to fling muck at their rivals. None of those qualities nullifies DeSantis.And if he starts savaging Trump, whose flaws hardly need exposure, he doesn’t gain separation from him. He blurs into him.Heaven help us, he may well be too smart for that.For the Love of SentencesMarjorie Taylor Greene at the State of the Union address.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore President Biden’s State of the Union speech recedes too much further into the past, I share two of the funnier riffs on it.Yair Rosenberg, in his Deep Shtetl newsletter for The Atlantic, remarked on how Marjorie Taylor Greene, “shouting ineffectually from the back while draped in an ostentatious white fur coat, looked like she’d just lost her last Dalmatian.” (Thanks to Barbara Steinhardt-Carter of Sacramento, Calif., and Deborah Barnes of Tallula, Ill., among others, for nominating this.)And in The Times, Annie Karni followed up on the visibly tense exchange between Senator Mitt Romney and Representative George Santos: “After the speech, Mr. Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told reporters that Mr. Santos is ‘a sick puppy, he shouldn’t have been there,’ in what could be construed as the Mormon equivalent of an eviscerating, curse-filled diatribe.” (Pam Maines, Goleta, Calif., and Brian Sullam, Baltimore, among others)Sticking with The Times, A.O. Scott reviewed “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” “the final chapter in a trilogy about lust, ambition and abdominal fitness in the modern age,” noting that “the sources of Mike’s appeal — a heart as big as his trapezius, resolve as firm as his glutes, a character as sturdy as his quadriceps — haven’t changed.” (Jane Sapinsky, Cherry Valley, N.Y.)Kyle Buchanan provided background on Andrea Riseborough, whose performance in “To Leslie” netted her an intensely debated Oscar nomination for best actress: “Because Riseborough has played such a wide variety of roles without developing a tangible star persona, she is often described as a ‘chameleon’ or even ‘unrecognizable,’ which is Hollywood-speak for an actress who doesn’t wear eye makeup.” (Paul Dobbs, Relanges, France)Jason Farago argued for the special current relevance of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings: “He matters now precisely for his vindication that we have not wholly decayed into data receptors; that we are still human, and if only we find the right master we can slow down time. What is a masterpiece, in 2023? A thing that returns to you — vitally, commandingly, after this clamorous world of news and notifications seemed to have wiped them out — your powers of concentration.” (Patricia Tracy, Blacksburg, Va., and Gwendolyn Morris, Stamford, Conn., among others)Sam Anderson made clear that he is “not a film critic”: “I am an ordinary American, someone raised on MTV and ‘S.N.L.’ and C.G.I. Which means that my entertainment metabolism has been carefully tuned to digest the purest visual corn syrup. Sarcastic men with large guns. Yearning princesses with grumpy fathers. Explosive explosions explosively exploding.” (Martin Hunt, Melbourne, Australia)“A paradox defines writing: The public sees writers mainly in their victories but their lives are spent mostly in defeat,” Stephen Marche observed. “I suppose that’s why, in the rare moments of triumph, writers always look a little out of place — posing in magazine profiles in their half-considered outfits with their last-minute hair; desperately re-upping their most positive reviews on Instagram; or, at the ceremonies for writing prizes — the Oscars for lumpy people — grinning like recently released prisoners readjusting to society.” (Mitch Kardon, Pittsburgh)And Stuart Stevens weighed in on a contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination who junked her supposed principles: “There is a great future behind Nikki Haley.” (John Connon, Toronto, and Mirinda Kossoff, Pittsboro, N.C., among others)In The New Yorker, James Wood appraised the fiction of Gwendoline Riley, first by comparing her to another writer, Helen Garner: “Riley has Garner’s quick eye for detail but replaces her anguished charity with vengeful clarity. Both of her novels have the unguarded nudity of correspondence; they have no time for the diplomatic niceties, the aesthetic throat-clearing of most literary fiction. The two novels relate to each other like twitching limbs from the same violated torso.” (Merrill Gillaspy, Berkeley, Calif., and Len Philipp, Toronto)Also in The New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin provided historical context for a looming standoff between President Biden and Republicans in Congress: “In 1953, during an earlier debt-limit crisis, the federal government sold off gold coins and bullion that were sitting in its vaults — the change between the cushions of the national couch.” (Larry Feinberg, Chapel Hill, N.C.)And in the BBC Countryfile Magazine, Nicola Chester examined an industrious specimen of nature: “Blackbirds are ostensibly a woodland bird, and can be heard loudly and furiously flinging leaves about to find insects, eggs and grubs beneath hedges and shrubs, like a teenager who has lost something on the bedroom ‘floor-drobe.’” (Anne Fletcher-Jones, New Milton, England)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal Note (Odd Neighborhood Names)Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon/Art Images, via Getty ImagesWhat a gold mine of material about discordantly, pretentiously, adorably, whimsically or just plain strangely named streets and subdivisions you all have sent me. It will generate occasional posts like this deep into the year. I’m going through your hundreds of emails at random, so this isn’t the best of the best. It’s just good stuff in the missives that I’ve had a chance to open, read and enjoy so far.“I grew up near a road whose name couldn’t have been less representative of its character,” Valerie Masin of Boston wrote. “It is a long, winding, lush, beautiful road on the north shore of Long Island. Its name: Skunks Misery Road. Were they trying to keep out the riffraff?!?” Maybe, Valerie. I prefer a more charitable interpretation. They were paying tribute to the roadkill.But it appears that we’re both wrong. I did some extensive research, which is to say I spent about five minutes on Google and I discovered a 2013 article in Newsday that gives a different explanation for the name of the road, which is in the town of Locust Valley. It says that a swamp there was long ago used “as a dump that was a handy fast-food stop for large numbers of skunks that foraged in the refuse. The odor was said to be so bad that people wondered how even the skunks could tolerate it.”As it happens, there are Skunk Misery and Skunk’s Misery roads, forests and such in places beyond Long Island. Miserable skunks and misery-inducing skunks are apparently a longstanding human preoccupation, at least cartographically speaking.Elsewhere in America: “I moved from North Carolina to central Texas in late 2020, to a neighborhood just east of Bastrop called ‘Tahitian Village,’” wrote Wick Baker. “The streets all have South Pacific names. Manawianui Drive, Kaanapali Lane (not to be confused with Kaukonahua Lane or Keanahalululu Lane). My favorites are Puu Waa Waa Lane and Pukoo Drive. No ocean. I pity the Amazon drivers!” And I am suddenly hankering for a pu pu platter.In Lititz, Penn., Mindy Rosenberg has had an oxymoronic experience on the street where she lives, in a community “with a patriotic theme,” she wrote. In addition to her street (whose name I’ll reveal shortly), there’s Independence Way, Glory Way, Patriots Way, Constitution Drive, Allegiance Drive and Presidents Drive. Governing all of them, she wrote, is a homeowners association “with hundreds of rules. So when we got a notice that the third bird feeder we hung up exceeded the two permitted, my son commented, ‘I guess there’s no freedom on Freedom Street!’”Special programming note: It’s an especially busy late winter and spring for me, with a full load of teaching at Duke on top of my journalism. In order to make overdue progress on my next book, I’m taking a March break from the newsletter. I’ll disappear after next week’s newsletter but be back at the start of April. My apologies (and deep thanks) to those of you who look forward to — and read — it weekly. The newsletter will continue to land in your inboxes in March, but will be written by guest authors with some connection, personal or thematic, to me. More on that next week. More