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      Biden and Trump Are Tied in a Possible 2024 Rematch, Poll Finds

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      A Times/Siena poll suggests a slight Biden edge among voters who don’t like either candidate.Will they stick with the same candidates in 2024?Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesAfter Democrats fared well against MAGA candidates in the midterms last year, it might have been reasonable to think that President Biden would have a clear advantage in a rematch against Donald J. Trump.Yet despite the stop-the-steal movement, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the numerous investigations facing Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are still tied, each at 43 percent, among registered voters in our first Times/Siena poll of the 2024 election cycle.The possibility that criminal indictments haven’t crippled Mr. Trump’s general election chances might come as a surprise or even a shock, but the result is worth taking seriously. It does not seem to be a fluke: Our Times/Siena polls last fall — which were notably accurate — also showed a very close race in a possible presidential rematch, including a one-point lead for Mr. Trump among registered voters in our final October survey.Mr. Trump’s resilience is not necessarily an indication of his strength. In most respects, he appears to be a badly wounded general election candidate. Just 41 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of him, while a majority believe he committed serious federal crimes and say his conduct after the last election went so far that it threatened American democracy.But Mr. Biden shows little strength of his own. His favorability rating is only two points higher than Mr. Trump’s. And despite an improving economy, his approval rating is only 39 percent — a mere two points higher than it was in our poll in October, before the midterm election. At least for now, he seems unable to capitalize on his opponent’s profound vulnerability.Democrats can’t necessarily assume the race will snap back into a clear Biden lead once people tune into the race, either. The 14 percent of voters who didn’t back Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump consisted mostly of people who volunteered — even though it wasn’t provided as an option in the poll — that they would vote for someone else or simply wouldn’t vote if those were the candidates. They know the candidates; they just don’t want either of them.As I mentioned to my colleague David Leonhardt for The Morning newsletter, it’s reasonable to believe that Mr. Biden has the better path to winning over more of these voters. They dislike Mr. Trump more than they dislike Mr. Biden, and the political environment, including promising economic news, seems increasingly favorable to Mr. Biden. But it hasn’t happened yet.And the upside for Mr. Biden among the dissenting 14 percent of voters isn’t necessarily as great as it might look. He leads by a mere two points — 47 percent to 45 percent — if we reassign these voters to Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden based on how they say they voted in the 2020 election. And Mr. Biden still leads by two points, 49-47, if we further restrict the poll to those who actually voted in 2020 or 2022.A two-point edge is certainly better for Mr. Biden than a tie, but it’s not exactly a commanding advantage. It’s closer than his 4.5-point popular vote win in 2020, and it’s well within a range in which Mr. Trump can win in the key battleground states, where he has usually done better than he has nationwide.The survey suggests that the electorate remains deeply divided along the demographic fault lines of the 2020 presidential election, with Mr. Trump commanding a wide lead among white voters without a college degree, while Mr. Biden counters with an advantage among nonwhite voters and white college graduates.To the extent the survey suggests a slightly closer race than four years ago, it appears mostly attributable to modest Trump gains among Black, Hispanic, male and low-income voters. The sample sizes of these subgroups are relatively small, but we’ve seen signs of Trump strength among these groups before. In some cases, like Hispanic and lower-income voters, they’re groups that have already trended toward Republicans during the Trump era. It would hardly be a surprise if those trends continued. Here again, it’s a story worth taking seriously.Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s “predictive” of the final result, certainly not with 15 months to go. What it means, however, is that Mr. Trump doesn’t appear to have sustained disqualifying damage — at least when matched against a president with a 39 percent approval rating. For now, it suggests that the Biden campaign can’t necessarily count on anti-Trump sentiment alone; it may need to do some work to reassemble and mobilize a winning coalition. More

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      How Did We Do? A Review of 2022 Before Our First Poll of 2023.

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      Trying to learn from a strong midterm run as we start surveying the G.O.P. primary.It was a good year. Getty ImagesHere’s a list of survey results of the 2022 midterm elections, all from the same pollster. As you read them, think about whether you think this pollster’s results were good or bad or whatever adjective you’d like.Poll: D+6; result: D+2.4Poll: R+4; result R+1.5Poll: D+5, result D+4.9Poll: R+5; result R+7.5Poll: EVEN; result D+0.8Poll: D+3, result D+1All right, what did you think?I hope you thought they were at least good, because this is a sample of about half of our final New York Times/Siena College polls in 2022. On average, the final Times/Siena polls differed from the actual results by 1.9 percentage points — the most accurate our polls have ever been. Believe it or not, they’re the most accurate results by any pollster with at least 10 final survey results in the FiveThirtyEight database dating to 1998. We were already an A+ pollster by its measure, but now we’ve been deemed the best pollster in the country.My hope is that most of you thought those poll results were good, but I’d guess you didn’t think they were incredible. They’re not perfect, after all. And I can imagine many reasonable standards by which these polls might not be considered especially accurate. They certainly weren’t objective truth, which we might usually think of as the standard for Times journalism.Even so, this level of accuracy is about as good as it can get in political polling. We may never be this accurate again. There may be room to debate whether “great for political polling” is the same as “great,” but if you’re judging polls against perfection it may be worth scaling back your expectations. Even perfectly designed surveys will not yield perfect results.Nonetheless, we try to be perfect anyway. With the data from 2022 in and final, we’ve been poring over the data — including our experiment in Wisconsin — to identify opportunities for improvement. I must admit this has been a less urgent (and more pleasant!) experience than similar exercises after prior election cycles, which have felt more like an “autopsy” or “post-mortem” than a routine doctor’s visit.Still, I did make sure to get our polls in for their biennial checkup ahead of our first national survey of the cycle, which is in the field as I type. More on that later, but for today here’s the good news and some bad news from our dive into last year’s polling.Good newsOur polls were right for the right reasons. With one interesting exception (which we’ll discuss later), they nailed the composition of the electorate, the geographic breakdown of the results and the apparent results by subgroup.The raw data was quite a bit cleaner, for lack of a better word, than it was in 2020. Back then, the statistical adjustments we made to ensure a representative sample made a big difference; without them, our polls would have been far worse. This time, the final results were only about a point different from our raw data. It’s hard to tell whether that’s because of refinements to our sampling or because survey respondents have become more representative in the wake of the pandemic or with Donald J. Trump off the ballot, but it’s a nice change either way.The big Wisconsin mail experiment — where we paid voters up to $25 dollars to take a mail survey — didn’t reveal anything especially alarming about our typical Times/Siena polls. There was no evidence to support many of our deepest fears, like the idea that polls only reach voters who are high in social trust. There was no sign of the MAGA base abstaining from polling, either. On many measures — gun ownership, evangelical Christianity, vaccination status — the Times/Siena poll looked more conservative than the mail poll.OK, now the bad newsThe Wisconsin study didn’t offer easy answers to the problems in polling. Yes, it’s good news that the problems aren’t as bad as we feared, but we went to the doctor’s office for a reason — the state of polling isn’t completely healthy, and we’re looking to get better. We may have ruled out many worst-case diagnoses, but a clearer diagnosis and a prescription would have been nice.The Wisconsin study did offer ambiguous evidence that Times/Siena phone respondents lean a bit farther to the left than the respondents to the mail survey. I say ambiguous partly because the Times/Siena telephone survey isn’t large enough to be sure, and partly because it doesn’t show up in the top-line numbers. But if you account for the extra tools at the disposal of the Times/Siena survey (like ensuring the right number of absentee vs. mail voters), the mail data does lean more conservative — enough to feel justified in going to the doctor.This modest tilt toward the left appears mostly explained by two factors I’ve written about before. One: The less politically engaged voters lured by a financial incentive appear to be ever so slightly more conservative than highly engaged voters. Two: People who provide their telephone numbers when they register to vote are ever so slightly more Democratic than those who do not, and they respond to surveys at disproportionate rates as well. It’s not clear whether these issues would be so problematic in other states where there’s additional information on the partisanship of a voter compared with Wisconsin.We did get lucky in one big case: Kansas’ Third District. Our respondents there wound up being far too liberal, yet our overall result was mostly saved by grossly underestimating the vigor of the Democratic turnout. In a higher-turnout election in 2024 — when there’s far less room for turnout to surprise — we wouldn’t be so lucky.Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ballot. That’s not exactly bad news, but it might be in 2024 if his presence in some way increases the risk of survey error by energizing Democrats to take polls while dissuading the already less engaged and irregular conservatives who only turn out and vote for him.What we’ve changed/what we’re changingWe’ll make a number of fairly modest and arcane changes to our Wisconsin and state polls, reflecting a series of modest and arcane lessons from the Wisconsin study. But so far none of these insights have yielded fundamental changes to our surveys heading into 2024. That said, there are a few larger tweaks worth mentioning:When deciding whether someone is likely to vote, we will rely even less on whether voters say they’ll vote, and more on their demographics and whether they’ve actually voted in the past. This is the third cycle in four — with the exception being 2018 — when we would have been better off largely ignoring whether voters say they will vote in favor of estimates based on their demographics and voting record. We won’t ignore what voters tell us, but we will look at it that much more skeptically when estimating how likely someone is to vote.We’re reordering our questionnaires to let us look at and potentially use respondents who drop out of a survey early. This isn’t usually an issue for us — our state and district polls have never taken longer than eight minutes or so to complete — but about 15 percent of respondents who made it to the major political questions on our longer national polls and the Wisconsin study later decided to stop taking the survey. Not surprisingly, they’re the kind of low-interest voters we need the most.When it comes to Republican primary polling, we might adjust our sample — or weight it — using a new category: home value. In our two national polls with the Republican primary ballot last year, home value was an exceptionally strong predictor of support or opposition to Mr. Trump, even after controlling for education.Overall, Mr. Trump had a lead of 60 percent to 17 percent among people whose homes were worth less than $200,000, based on L2 data, while Ron DeSantis led, 47-24, among respondents whose homes were worth more than $500,000.I don’t think these changes will make very much of a difference, but we’re putting it to the test in the Republican primary now.There’s one last change to mention, one with no effect on the qualify of our polls: For candidates who receive less than 1 percent of the vote but over 0.5 percent, we will record them as less than 1 percent ( More

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      Hard Questions if Biden’s Approval Doesn’t Follow Economy’s Rise

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      This is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.President Biden promoting domestic chip manufacturing.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDoesn’t it feel as if everything’s breaking President Biden’s way lately?His chief rival — whom Mr. Biden already beat in 2020 and whom Democrats, in a sense, beat again in the midterms — is facing criminal indictments and yet currently finds himself cruising to the nomination anyway.The economy — which teetered on the edge of recession for two years with inflation rising and real wages declining — seems as if it might be on track for a soft landing, with inflation falling, real wages rising and the stock market recovering.The backlash against “woke” — a topic Republicans seemed most keen on exploiting in the Biden era — appears to have receded significantly, whether because Donald J. Trump has taken up much of the oxygen; conservatives have overreached; or progressives have reined in their excesses and fallen back to defense after conservatives went on offense.It’s probably too soon to expect these recent developments to lift Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, which remain mired in the low 40s. But if these trends persist, many of the explanations for Mr. Biden’s low approval will quickly become less credible. If his numbers don’t start to move over the next several months — with the wind seemingly at his back — it will quickly begin to raise more serious questions about his standing heading into the 2024 election.To this point in his presidency, it has been fairly easy to attribute his low ratings to economic conditions. Yes, unemployment was low and growth remained steady. But inflation surged, real incomes dropped, stocks fell into a bear market, a recession seemed imminent, and voters could see the signs of a struggling economy everywhere, including supply chain shortages and onerous interest rates.It’s fair to question whether economic conditions have actually been as bad as voters say, but it’s also fair to acknowledge these kinds of conditions can yield a pessimistic electorate. Two bouts of inflation that are reminiscent of today’s post-pandemic economy — the postwar economies of 1920 and 1946 — were catastrophic for the party in power, even as unemployment remained low by the standards of the era.Historically, it can feel as if almost every major political upheaval comes with inflation, whether it’s the Great Unrest in Britain, the Red Summer in the U.S. or even the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany. If high bread prices can be argued to have helped cause the French Revolution, it’s easy to accept that 9 percent inflation (at its peak in June 2022) could hurt Mr. Biden’s approval ratings by five or 10 percentage points.But if inflation has been what’s holding Mr. Biden back, it’s hard to say it should hold him back for too much longer. Annual inflation fell to 3 percent last month, and real incomes have finally started to rise. The stock market — one of the most visible and consequential measures of the economy for millions of Americans — has increased around 15 percent over the last six months. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index surged 13 percent in July, reaching the highest level since September 2021 — the first full month Mr. Biden’s approval ratings were beneath 50 percent.There’s another factor that ought to help Mr. Biden’s approval rating: the onset of a new phase of the Republican primary campaign, including debates. As the Republican candidates become more prominent in American life, voters may start judging Mr. Biden against the alternatives, not just in isolation. Some of the Democratic-leaning voters who currently disapprove of Mr. Biden might begin to look at the Biden presidency in a different light.Perhaps in part for these reasons, this is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were clearly on the upswing at this stage of the election cycle — though both were still beneath 50 percent — as voters began to see and feel an improving economy.We will see in the months ahead whether Mr. Biden’s ratings begin to increase. I wouldn’t expect it to happen quickly: Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton’s ratings increased by less than a point per month between roughly this time and their re-election. Barack Obama’s ratings increased at a similar, if slightly slower, pace from his post-debt-ceiling-crisis nadir a little later in the year.But even if it is not quick, I would expect Mr. Biden’s ratings to begin to increase if these conditions remain in place. Today’s era may be polarized, but there are plenty of persuadable and even Democratic-leaning voters — who disapprove of his performance — available to return to his side.If the economy keeps improving and yet his ratings remain stagnant in the months ahead, it will gradually begin to raise hard questions about the real source of his weakness — including the possibility that his age, by feeding the perception of a feeble president, prevents voters from seeing him as effective, whatever his actual record. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Where Paranoia Meets Legacy Admissions

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      It feels dangerous to write about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: In the lag between when I put the finishing touches on this and when it becomes publicly available, I could be a conspiracy theory or two behind.I could be mulling his apparent belief that the coronavirus was diabolically engineered to spare Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish people while he has already moved on to the hypothesis that Ron DeSantis is a hologram gone haywire (I could buy into this one), the revelation that earbuds deliver subconsciously perceptible government propaganda through our auditory canals or the epiphany that French bulldogs cause global warming. He’s a crank who cranks out whoppers the way Taylor Swift disgorges perfect pop songs.But we hang on her words for her craft. We hang on his for his clan. Kennedy is where paranoia meets legacy admissions. Like Donald Trump, with whom he has much more in common than he probably cares to admit, he’s an elitist hawking anti-elitism, an insider somehow branding himself an outsider, a scion styled as a spoiler, a populist as paradox. Why do Americans keep falling for these arrogant oxymorons?Oh, I understand the appeal of the perspective that narcissists like Trump and Kennedy peddle: that sinister operators deploy nefarious tricks to shore up their own dominance and keep hard-working, well-intentioned, regular folks in their places. It’s an exaggeration of inequities and injustices that really do exist, and it simplifies a maddeningly complex world. Ranting about George Soros or Anthony Fauci feels a whole lot better than raging at the vicissitudes of fate.But why turn to preachers like Trump and Kennedy for this anti-gospel? It’s like consulting sharks about veganism. Trump commenced his career with a big, fat wad of money from his rich father. He attended business school in the Ivy League. He hobnobbed with big-name politicians before he turned against them. He has an eagle’s nest of a penthouse in the financial capital of the world.And Kennedy? He belongs to perhaps the most storied family in American political life. His uncle’s White House was nicknamed Camelot, for heaven’s sake.That legacy is suffused with immeasurable heartache. I can’t imagine his pain at seeing that uncle murdered and then having his own father meet the same fate. I bet it stings to this day.But Kennedy’s place in a bona fide dynasty has also meant access, influence, mulligans. “Kicked out of an elite roster of prep schools, he still managed to arrive at Harvard in 1972,” Rebecca Traister wrote in an excellent recent profile of him and his presidential campaign in New York magazine, where she also described how he is “leaning hard into his family in this contest; his logo even borrows the iconography of his father’s 1968 campaign.”In an insightful column in The Times, my colleague Michelle Goldberg noted how, at a June rally in New Hampshire, Kennedy pitched his presidential bid as a return of his family’s magic and majesty. “We can restore America to the awesome vitality of the original Kennedy era,” he told an adoring crowd.It takes a yachtload of nerve to flaunt that pedigree while disparaging an entrenched political class, but across his speeches and interviews, Kennedy tries to have it all ways. He’s marginalized! He’s royalty! He’s the skunk at the garden party! He’s the cucumber sandwiches!All of which makes him an especially incoherent opportunist. Let’s be clear: As Kennedy promotes the specter of microchips in vaccines, as he posits that H.I.V. may not be the sole cause of AIDS, as he says that Anne Frank had it better than Americans under Covid lockdown, as he claims that Covid vaccines are often deadlier than what they’re supposed to prevent, as he fingers the C.I.A. for his uncle’s assassination and Prozac for mass shootings, he can portray a society in which the deck is stacked against all the little people because the deck has been stacked so heavily in his favor. His rapt audiences and his shimmering Kennedy-ness are inextricable.He has complained of being “deplatformed” for his, um, unconventional thinking, but he has conventional platforms aplenty. He does interviews galore. If there’s a conspiracy afoot, it’s working to his advantage. His visage, voice and views are everywhere I turn.And they speak to what a strange and scary time this is. So many Americans are so angry and distrustful that they’ll look for answers in the strangest of places. They’ll bow down to and elevate the unlikeliest of prophets. Trump and Kennedy are the self-proclaimed martyrs of the moment. There will be more where they came from.For the Love of SentencesDiane Keaton in the 1984 film adaptation of the John le Carré novel “The Little Drummer Girl.”Everett CollectionAs someone who has barely scratched the surface of John le Carré’s oeuvre, I very much needed Sam Adler-Bell’s recent guide in The Times to the best plotted, best written and most alluring of the prolific novelist’s works. It was, additionally, a lode of deft prose, such as his pitch for “A Perfect Spy,” published in 1986: “This is a great, whooshing thrill of a book! I recommend it constantly, the way annoying people recommend hydration.” (Thanks to Eric Andrus of Chelmsford, Mass., for nominating this.)Also in The Times, Kevin Roose wrestled with the grim undercurrent of the work done at a company trying to develop safe, responsible A.I. tools: “Not every conversation I had at Anthropic revolved around existential risk. But dread was a dominant theme. At times, I felt like a food writer who was assigned to cover a trendy new restaurant, only to discover that the kitchen staff wanted to talk about nothing but food poisoning.” (Ralph Begleiter, Ocean View, Del.)And Nick Kristof contrasted the dynamism and visual vibrancy of Eastern European countries today with their drabness when he traveled through them during the Soviet era and his “main impression was that in the Communist bloc you didn’t need color film.” (Jim Grout, Brentwood, Tenn.)In The Atlantic, Matt Seaton described his area of Vermont after the recent deluge: “If you were close enough to the river on Monday, above the roar of millions of gallons of raging brown murk, you could hear the uncanny kerthunk of huge rocks being smashed into one another, like a terrifying subaquatic game of pinball played by angry rain gods.” (Donna Meadows, Houston)Also in The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg assessed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s antisemitic rant about Covid: “Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist, and the arc of conspiracy is short and bends toward the Jews.” (Rhoda Leichter, Pacific Palisades, Calif.)In The New Yorker, Susan Orlean conducted a funny, incisive tour of cooking gadgets come and gone: “The graveyard of kitchen fads is wide and deep, littered with the domestic equivalent of white dwarf stars that blazed with astonishing luminosity for a moment and then deteriorated into space junk.” (Ray Smith, Lutz, Fla.)In The New York Review of Books, Jessica Riskin assessed the limits of a new kind of student shortcut: “My teaching assistants and I became expert at sniffing out A.I.-generated essays by their flat, featureless feel, the literary equivalent of fluorescent lighting.” (Paul Ansell, Tampa Bay, Fla.)In The Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang managed, in his review of “Barbie,” to allude to its pink-and-purple palette and its opening on the same weekend as “Oppenheimer” in the same sentence: “I must point out the existence of Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie, who presumably discovered the secrets of nuclear fuchsian.” (Bob Meadow, Los Angeles) That review also had an aptly playful headline that made rhyming reference to the movie’s stars, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling: “With Robbie in pink and Gosling in mink, ‘Barbie’ (wink-wink) will make you think.”And in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay appraised Carlos Alcaraz’s victory over Novak Djokovic in an epic five-set showdown at Wimbledon by noting Djokovic’s preternatural stamina. “There may be no harder opponent to close out in sports,” Gay wrote, adding: “Even after you defeat Djokovic, you should go up to the scorekeeper and get the result in writing, just to confirm.” (Barbara Gaynes, Harrison, N.Y.)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.What I’m Reading, Watching and DoingFrank BruniThe work of the Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle is a mainstay of the For the Love of Sentences section. His recently published book, “The Book of Charlie: Wisdom From the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man,” is a gorgeously written examination of one centenarian’s eventful past as an example of all the disruption that life can mete out — and all the fortitude with which a human being can respond.A line from Anthony Lane’s review in The New Yorker of “Master Gardener,” Paul Schrader’s latest movie, appeared in For the Love of Sentences in early June, but I hadn’t seen the film at that point. I subsequently watched it. While it doesn’t rise nearly to the level of “First Reformed,” the first installment of what Schrader has called a trilogy of movies about boxed-in, haunted men — the second was “The Card Counter” — it has one sublime supporting performance, by the actress who plays Norma Haverhill, the owner of an estate with extensive formal gardens “whose name is like a mash-up of Norma Desmond and Miss Havisham, and whose gaze could nip the buds off a damask rose at 40 yards,” as Lane wrote. Lane went on to pay fitting tribute to that performer: “One thing I do believe in is the power of Sigourney Weaver. She makes Norma authentically scary, investing every gesture with the fierce languor of entitlement.” (“Master Gardener” is streaming on several platforms and can, for example, be rented through Prime Video or Apple TV+.)I don’t keep careful track, but it has apparently been about a month and a half since I gave you a report or photo of my four-legged companion. And you let me know it! I love that many of you miss Regan and ask after her and even worry that her absence from the newsletter means that something’s wrong. She and I recently hit the road for just a bit to visit a few friends, and as you can see from the picture above, Regan has an awful time trying to get comfortable in new surroundings. If only she could learn to relax.On a Personal NoteChristopher Dubia/Gallery StockAlmost every afternoon last week, I took a very long, very fast walk with intervals of running mixed in; just once, I didn’t bother to stretch when I was done. The next morning, I paid for that. My creaky knees! My knotted calves! There was no forgiveness for my lapse, not the way there was in years past, when my stretching was reliably unreliable.Similarly, I get no allowance anymore for evenings of gluttony. Back when I was The Times’s restaurant critic in my early 40s, I could atone for an excessive dinner and erase its effects by just increasing my exercise in its immediate aftermath. Now I need the better part of a week to get back to where I was.At 58, I reflect often on the differences between youth and age. One of the biggest is the margin for error. You have a big, broad one when you’re young, and that applies not just to muscles and midriffs but also to relationships, jobs and more.You can be sloppy, and the wages are modest. You can be heedless and recover. You can squander an opportunity and still find another (and maybe even another) and make the most of it, having learned from your mistakes. You have time. You have flexibility. Everything is more elastic — your knees, your calves, your skin, your heart.Don’t get me wrong: Age has its benefits. I much prefer 58 to 28. As I described in my most recent book, “The Beauty of Dusk,” age can bring a perspective and sense of peace that are so elusive in youth, when many of us are too distracted — by self-doubt, by want, by envy, by vanity — to learn the trick of contentment.But age also compels us to proceed with caution. To take greater care. The flesh-and-blood vessels that we occupy are more fragile. The promises we mean to keep and the plans we intend to execute can be postponed only so much. Time is of the essence. Which is perhaps why we’re graced with the wisdom to see that. More

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      What Really Happened in the Midterms?

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      A segment of swing voters decided to back Democratic candidates in many critical races.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesMore than eight months later, all the data from the 2022 midterm elections is — finally — final. The two most rigorous reports, from the Pew Research Center and Catalist, are finished.And yet despite all the data, there is a piece of the midterm puzzle that still hasn’t quite been resolved: How exactly did the Democrats manage to nearly sweep every competitive House and Senate race, even though they often fared quite miserably elsewhere?The Catalist report suggested it was the turnout, finding that Democrats won “with electorates in these contests looking more like the 2020 and 2018 electorates than a typical midterm.” Pew also pointed to turnout, but with a different interpretation, writing that Republicans won control of the House “largely on the strength of higher turnout,” and found that disproportionate numbers of Biden voters and Democrats from 2018 stayed home.You might imagine ways to square the two claims, but neither report offers a clear way to reconcile these competing stories. Catalist, a Democratic data firm, doesn’t mention a word on the partisan makeup of the electorate, despite possessing the data to do so. The Pew report, meanwhile, is framed around explaining how Republicans won the House popular vote by three points — an important outcome, but one overshadowed by the Democratic hold in the Senate and the razor-thin Republican House majority.Fortunately, our data at The New York Times can help piece together what remains of the puzzle. Over the last few years via Times/Siena College polls, we’ve interviewed tens of thousands of voters nationwide and in the crucial battleground states and districts. This data can be linked to voter registration files — the backbone of both the Catalist and Pew reports — that show exactly who voted and who did not (though not whom they voted for, of course), including in the states and districts that decided the midterm election.The findings suggest that the turnout was mostly typical of a midterm election and helped Republicans nationwide, but there are good reasons to doubt whether it was as helpful to the party out of power as it had been in previous midterms.It certainly wasn’t enough to overcome what truly distinguished the 2022 midterm election: the critical sliver of voters who were repelled by specific Republican nominees, Donald J. Trump’s “stop the steal” movement and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.At a glance, a typical midterm electorateTo some degree, every midterm leans toward the party out of power, and has an older, whiter electorate. Last November was no exception. Just consider these figures on 2022 voters nationwide:73 percent of registered Republicans (defined by whether someone is registered as a Republican or participated in a recent Republican primary) turned out in 2022, compared with 63 percent of registered Democrats. The 10-point turnout advantage meant Republicans narrowly outnumbered Democrats among 2022 voters given that there are about five percentage points more registered Democrats than registered Republicans by this measure.Just 45 percent of Black and 38 percent of Hispanic voters turned out, compared with 58 percent of non-Hispanic whites, according to data from the Census Bureau. The findings are consistent with data from voter registration files and the actual results, as we reported last fall, along with the Pew and Catalist reports, in showing a weak turnout among Black voters.Voters over 65 represented 33 percent of the electorate, according to the L2 data, compared with just 10 percent for those 18 to 29.All of these patterns are consistent with a typical midterm turnout.The size of the Republican registration advantage is almost exactly in line with the available historical data. It also aligns neatly with our pre-election estimates, which you can see for yourself in our final (and highly accurate) Times/Siena polls.And as we reported in December, this basic story holds up in the battleground states as well. Republicans outvoted Democrats everywhere, including in the very states where Democrats excelled.A hidden Democratic turnout advantage?All of this seems to add up to a stark Republican turnout advantage, powered by an older, whiter and more Republican electorate.But perhaps surprisingly, there are reasons to think the actual turnout advantage for Republican candidates might not have been nearly so large as these figures suggest.Just start with the Pew report, which found that Trump voters were four points likelier to turn out than Biden voters, 71 percent to 67 percent. That’s an important advantage, but it’s less than half the size of the 10-point Republican turnout advantage by registration. The Pew figures actually suggest the 2022 midterm electorate backed Joe Biden in 2020, even though registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats.The Times data suggests something similar. According to our estimates, 69.1 percent of Trump voters turned out compared with 66.7 percent of Biden voters — essentially the same as the Pew figures, though edging even closer to parity.These estimates are based on a statistical model that marries Times/Siena polling data and voter records (including someone’s party registration) to predict how registrants voted in the 2020 election. I’ve forced you through that wonky sentence because it means that these estimates are entirely consistent with and inclusive of all of those various Republican-friendly turnout figures offered earlier: Our estimate is that Republicans outvoted Democrats by 10 points but that Trump voters nonetheless outvoted Biden voters by only two points.Looking at the data more carefully, the source of this disparity is mostly among Democrats. The registered Democrats who stayed home in 2022 were disproportionately likely to be those who sometimes vote Republican. The Democrats who turned out, on the other hand, were especially loyal Democrats who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. This is partly because of education — midterm voters are more highly educated — but the survey data suggests that this Democratic advantage ran a lot deeper.It’s worth being cautious about this finding. The 10-point G.O.P. turnout advantage cited earlier is essentially a fact. The possibility that the practical turnout advantage for Republican candidates might have been only a third of that or less is an estimate based on fallible survey data. It’s also dependent on accurately surveying a group of people — nonvoters — who are very difficult for pollsters to measure.But the Times and Pew data tell a very similar story, despite very different methodologies, and the accurate topline results of the pre-election surveys add additional harmony. The possibility of some kind of hidden underlying Democratic advantage in motivation is also consistent with other data points on 2022, like Democrats’ astonishing success in ultra-low-turnout special elections.Close to parity in the battlegrounds?The 2022 midterm election was not a simple election decided by a national electorate. It was unusually heterogenous, with Republicans enjoying a “red wave” in states like Florida or New York while other states, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, could be argued to have ridden a “blue wave.”As we’ll see, nowhere near all of the difference between these states can be attributed to turnout. But part of the difference was the disparate turnout, with Republicans enjoying a far larger turnout advantage than they did nationwide in states like Florida, while Democrats did better than they did nationwide in states like Pennsylvania. And since our estimates suggest that the Republican turnout advantage nationwide was fairly modest — more modest than the party registration figures suggest — the estimates also show that neither party enjoyed a significant turnout advantage in many battleground states where Democrats turned in above-average performances.In Northern battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Ohio, Biden and Trump voters turned out at nearly identical rates, according to our estimates.In contrast, Trump voters were likelier to turn out than Biden voters by around 10 percentage points or more in states like Florida and New York. In practice, this meant that the Florida electorate most likely voted for Mr. Trump by double digits, even though he carried the state by just three points in 2020.Most states, including the key Sun Belt battlegrounds like Arizona and Georgia, fell in between the Northern battlegrounds and the red-wave states like New York or Florida.A decisive advantage among swing votersThe resilient Democratic turnout in many key Northern battleground states might seem like a key that unlocks what happened in 2022, but it explains less than you might think.According to our estimates, Biden voters only narrowly outnumbered Trump voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan. But Democratic candidates for Senate and governor won in landslides that greatly exceeded Mr. Biden’s margin of victory. Similarly, Trump voters outnumbered Biden voters in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, where Democrats posted crucial wins that assured control of the Senate.Ultimately, the Democratic performance depended on something that went far beyond turnout: A segment of swing voters decided to back Democratic candidates in many critical races.For all the talk about turnout, this is what distinguished the 2022 midterms from any other in recent memory. Looking back over 15 years, the party out of power has typically won independent voters by an average margin of 14 points, as a crucial segment of voters either has soured on the president or has acted as a check against the excesses of the party in power.This did not happen in 2022. Every major study — the exit polls, the AP/VoteCast study, the Pew study published this week — showed Democrats narrowly won self-identified independent voters, despite an unfavorable national political environment and an older, whiter group of independent voters. A post-election analysis of Times/Siena surveys adjusted to match the final vote count and the validated electorate show the same thing. It took the Democratic resilience among swing voters together with the Democratic resilience in turnout, especially in the Northern battlegrounds, to nearly allow Democrats to hold the U.S. House.In many crucial states, Democratic candidates for Senate and governor often outright excelled among swing voters, plainly winning over a sliver of voters who probably backed Mr. Trump for president in 2020 and certainly supported Republican candidates for U.S. House in 2022. This was most pronounced in the states where Republicans nominated stop-the-steal candidates or where the abortion issue was prominent, like Michigan.Democratic strength among swing voters in key states allowed the party to overcome an important turnout disadvantage in states like Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. That strength turned Pennsylvania and Michigan into landslides. And it ensured that the 2022 midterm election would not go down as an easy Republican victory, despite their takeover of the House, but would instead seem like a setback for conservatives. More

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      Democrats, It’s OK to Talk About Hunter Biden

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      If you travel in predominantly Democratic circles and want to have a really trying day, write or publicly say something unflattering but true about President Biden, a lament legible or audible beyond people who can be safely depended on to vote for him. Then brace for the furies.Observe that it’s one thing — a noble, beautiful thing — for him to give steadfast support and unconditional love to his profoundly troubled son, but that it’s another for that son to attend a state dinner days after he had cut a deal with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges. Many of your liberal acquaintances will shush and shame you: Speak no ill of Joe Biden! That’s an unaffordable luxury. You’re playing into his MAGA adversaries’ hands.Note that Biden seems less physically peppy and verbally precise than in years past and suggest that it might be best, for him and for continued Democratic control of the White House, if he let Democrats choose a different 2024 nominee. You’ll be likened to an anchor for Fox News. You’ll be chided for age discrimination. Never mind that you’re examining his behavior, not the year on his birth certificate. You’re being counterproductive.You’ll be asked: What do Hunter Biden and diminished vim matter next to the menace of Donald Trump and a Republican Party in his lawless, nihilistic thrall? That’s a fair question — to a point. But past that point, it’s dishonest and dangerous.Dishonest because the question is often leveled at essentially Biden-friendly observers who have lavished, oh, 100 times as many words on Trump’s epic moral corruption as on Biden’s blind spots and missteps, creating zero impression of any equivalence.Dangerous because it suggests that Americans can’t be trusted to behold politicians in their full complexity — and reality in all its messiness — and distinguish unideal from unconscionable, scattered flaws from through-and-through fraudulence. I don’t see how that’s consonant with the exaltation and preservation of democracy, in which it exhibits scant trust.It also plays into the portrait of Democrats as elitists who decide what people should and shouldn’t be exposed to — what they can and can’t handle. How’s that a winning look?I believe that a victory by Trump in 2024 would be devastating beyond measure for the United States. I believe that a victory by any Republican who has indulged, parroted or promoted Trump’s fictions and assaults on democratic norms would also be a disaster. His abettors have shown their colors and disqualified themselves. And I’ve said that — and will continue to say that — repeatedly.I also believe that Biden has been a good president at a very difficult time, and that even if he’s not near peak vigor, we’d be much, much better served by the renewal of his White House lease than by a new tenant in the form of Trump or one of his de facto accomplices. Biden’s second term, like his first, would be about more than the man himself. It would be about a whole team, a set of principles, a fundamental decency, a thread of continuity, an investment in important institutions.And I believe that there’s more than ample room in all the above to talk about whether Biden is the strongest of the possible Democratic contenders to take on Trump, Ron DeSantis or whomever — although that particular conversation may soon be moot, given the ever-shrinking amount of time for those contenders to put together campaigns and for Democratic voters to assess them.Likewise, it’s possible — no, necessary — to have nuanced conversations about Biden’s and his administration’s mix of virtues and vices. If a big part of the horror of Trump is his estrangement from and perversion of truth, how is the proper or even strategic response to gild or cloak truth and declare it subservient to a desired political end?The intensity of many House Republicans’ fixation on Hunter Biden is deranged, and journalists would be wrong to chronicle every breathless inch of their descent down that rabbit hole. But we’d also be wrong to ignore Hunter Biden entirely, and Democratic partisans who urge that aren’t being realistic and are doing as much to feed suspicions as to quell them.As Peter Baker wrote in The Times last month, “In modern times, the harsh spotlight of media scrutiny has focused on Donald Nixon’s financial dealings with Howard Hughes, Billy Carter’s work as an agent for Libya, Neil Bush’s service on the board of a failed savings and loan, Roger Clinton’s drug convictions and of course the various financial and security clearance issues involving Mr. Trump’s children and son-in-law.”Baker later added: “Even some of the president’s Democratic allies have privately said there were legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China that seemed to trade on his name.”This is a strange, scary time. The leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is an indicted, twice-impeached former president who cares only for his own eminence and survival and doesn’t let a shred of civic concern, genuine patriotism or recognizable scruple dilute his solipsism. He could well take up residence in the White House again.So the temptation, given the stakes, is to bathe whichever Democrat stands in the way of that in a beatific light, to sing that person’s praises as loudly and unflaggingly as vocal cords permit. That feels like the prudent response. It feels like the ethical one.It’s neither, certainly not for those of us in the news media. It would put us in the business of creating outcomes, not chronicling events, which would be obvious to voters on top of being wrong. It would further erode our credibility, which has suffered plenty of erosion already. It would betray the fundamental purpose and real power of journalism.We do best as a profession — and all of us do best as a democracy and a society — when we hold everyone accountable, regardless of the special circumstances, and when we’re honest across the board. To act otherwise is to send the message that all is gamesmanship and that integrity is for suckers. That’s probably not how we defeat Trump. It’s more likely how he defeats us, long before and long after whatever happens in November 2024.For the Love of SentencesAdele performs in Las Vegas.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for ADIn recognition of a time of year with much volitional long-haul air travel, David Mack mulled matters baggage-related in The Times: “I’m terrible at packing. Laughably terrible. Concerningly so. On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my boyfriend (I’m gay) and both our mothers (again, we are extremely gay) to see Adele (you get the idea), we both packed so much that you’d be forgiven for thinking we were moving there.” (Thanks to Conrad Macina of Landing, N.J., and Jean Dunn of Southbury, Conn., for spotlighting this.)Also in The Times, Jane Margolies described a growing trend of corporate office buildings trimmed with greenery that requires less maintenance: “As manicured lawns give way to meadows and borders of annuals are replaced by wild and woolly native plants, a looser, some might say messier, aesthetic is taking hold. Call it the horticultural equivalent of bedhead.” (Sally Hinson, Greer, S.C.)And Michael Kimmelman bemoaned the Sisyphean efforts to make Penn Station in Manhattan bearable: “The only thing everyone seems to know for certain is that nothing meaningful ever really happens to improve North America’s busiest and most miserable train hub, despite decades of demands and promises. Hope has long gone to die on the 6:50 to Secaucus.” (Guy Heston, Las Vegas, and David Ballard, Asbury Park, N.J.)In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Cathal Kelly pondered the cantankerous trajectory of the tennis star Andy Murray: “In his dotage, Murray has become the guy who’s visibly counting what you’ve put down in the ‘eight items or less’ checkout line.” (Hamish Cameron, Toronto)In The Guardian, Stuart Heritage reflected on the end of the Sussexes’ deal with Spotify, for which Meghan Markle hosted “Archetypes,” a short-lived, inspiration-minded podcast on which she interviewed other prominent women: “As an entity, Harry and Meghan are only interesting for as long as they can destabilize the monarchy. Their Oprah interview did that. Their documentary did that. Harry’s book ‘Spare’ did that. ‘Archetypes’ did not do that, and as such was roughly as interesting as listening to changing-room chatter in the world’s most insufferable yoga studio.” (John Donaldson, Carlsbad, Calif.)In The Boston Globe, Scot Lehigh pondered a popular current riddle: “DeSantis must have some political skills. Saddled with qualities that evolution traditionally rewards in porcupines but not politicians, he has still managed to succeed on a state level.” (Kathie Lynch Nutting, Mashpee, Mass.)In The New Yorker, Julian Lucas profiled the trailblazing and visionary science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, now 81: “With long white hair, heavy brows and a chest-length beard that begins halfway up his lightly melanated cheeks, Delany has the appearance of an Eastern Orthodox monk who left his cloister for a biker gang.” (Max Sinclair, DeKalb, Ill.)And in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post, a reader named Michael D. Schattman poked fun at the oddities of a now-famous plaintiff: “A fair reading of the Supreme Court’s opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis is that the Colorado anti-discrimination law is in fact constitutional, except when applied to a business that does not wish to provide a product it does not offer to a nonexistent gay couple who are not seeking a website for an imaginary wedding of which the business owner does not approve.” (Lee Hudson, Gilboa, N.Y.)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 NoteStephen Speranza for The New York TimesNot all seasons are created equal. If you live in a place with a real autumn — with that football-weather nip in the air, those leaves going out in a blaze of glory — you know that it has no match. And if you live in a place with a real spring — with that sudden return of birdsong, those pink and red and purple blossoms — you know that it comes a close second.But how to rank summer and winter? Most of the people I know put winter last, and many of them misguidedly vault summer all the way to the top. For me, summer’s the bottom, and T.S. Eliot’s take on the calendar was all wrong. August is the cruelest month, barely edging out July.In the great outdoors, it’s harder to get cool in the summer than warm in the winter, when layers do the trick. And it’s getting harder all the time. Earth experienced what scientists said was probably its hottest day in modern history a week ago Monday. Then it beat that — twice — in the days just after that.The languid summer air is a soporific. And summer comes wrapped in the oppressive insistence that it’s the season of liberation, of abandon, of fun: no school, less clothing, vacations, the beach, the beach, the infernal beach. Summer is like New Year’s Eve that way. It’s decreed revelry. I like my revelry spontaneous, serendipitous and in soft, long-sleeved, flab-concealing flannel shirts.I like seasons with fewer ticks, fewer mosquitoes, less sunburn. Summer is hazardous. I’m surprised it doesn’t make everyone sign some sort of waiver.Perhaps you disagree? I hope you disagree. Because if you do, I invite you to send me, at this address, anywhere from one to four sentences arguing summer’s case. If I get enough deft, spirited responses, persuasive in their humor or eloquence, I’ll compile and share some of them in a newsletter between now and the end of this over-baked stretch of the calendar.Meantime? Apply your sunscreen. Trim your toenails (all those damned sandals and flip-flops). HAVE FUN! Summer will tolerate nothing less. More

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      The Rage and Joy of Donald Trump’s MAGA America

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      I’ve shared this fact with readers before: I live in Tennessee outside Nashville, a very deep-red part of America. According to a New York Times tool that calculates the political composition of a community, only 15 percent of my neighbors are Democrats. I’ve been living here in the heart of MAGA country since Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the world of my friends, my neighbors and many members of my family. That is perhaps why, when I’m asked what things are like now, eight years into the Trump era, I have a ready answer: Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not. And unless we can understand what’s normal and what’s not, we can’t truly understand why Trumpism endures.It’s hard to encapsulate a culture in 22 seconds, but this July 4 video tweet from Representative Andy Ogles accomplishes the nearly impossible. For those who don’t want to click through, the tweet features Ogles, a cheerful freshman Republican from Tennessee, wishing his followers a happy Fourth of July. The text of the greeting is remarkable only if you don’t live in MAGA-land:Hey guys, Congressman Andy Ogles here, wishing you a happy and blessed Fourth of July. Hey, remember our Founding Fathers. It’s we the people that are in charge of this country, not a leftist minority. Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you. Have a blessed Fourth of July. Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.Can something be cheerful and dark at the same time? Can a holiday message be both normal and so very strange? If so, then Ogles pulled it off. This is a man smiling in a field as a dog sniffs happily behind him. The left may be “coming after you,” as he warns, but the vibe isn’t catastrophic or even worried, rather a kind of friendly, generic patriotism. They’re coming for your family! Have a great day!It’s not just Ogles. It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties.Or take the Trump rally, the signature event of this political era. If you follow the rallies via Twitter or mainstream newscasts, you see the anger, but you miss the fun. When I was writing for The Dispatch, one of the best pieces we published was a report by Andrew Egger in 2020 about the “Front Row Joes,” the Trump superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally the way some people used to follow the Grateful Dead. Egger described the Trump rally perfectly: “For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.”Or go to a Southeastern Conference football game. The “Let’s Go Brandon” (or sometimes, just “[expletive] Joe Biden”) chant that arises from the student section isn’t delivered with clenched fists and furious anger, but rather through smiles and laughs. The frat bros are having a great time. The consistent message from Trumpland of all ages is something like this: “They’re the worst, and we’re awesome. Let’s party, and let’s fight.”Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election.At the same time, their own joy and camaraderie insulate them against external critiques that focus on their anger and cruelty. Such charges ring hollow to Trump supporters, who can see firsthand the internal friendliness and good cheer that they experience when they get together with one another. They don’t feel angry — at least not most of the time. They are good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand.Indeed, while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy.Once you understand both dynamics, however, so much about the present moment makes clearer sense, including the dynamics of the Republican primary. Ron DeSantis, for example, channels all the rage of Trumpism and none of the joy. With relentless, grim determination he fights the left with every tool of government at his disposal. But can he lead stadiums full of people in an awkward dance to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People? Will he be the subject of countless over-the-top memes and posters celebrating him as some kind of godlike, muscular superhero?Trump’s opponents miss the joy because they experience only the rage. I’m a member of a multiethnic church in Nashville. It’s a refuge from the MAGA Christianity that’s all too present where I live, just south of the city, in Franklin. This past Sunday, Walter Simmons, a Franklin-based Black pastor who founded the Franklin Justice and Equity Coalition, spoke to our church, and he referred to a common experience for those who dissent publicly in MAGA America. “If you ain’t ready for death threats, don’t live in Franklin,” he said.He was referring to the experience of racial justice activists in deep-red spaces. They feel the rage of the MAGA mob. If you’re deemed to be one of those people who is trying to “destroy our country and our family,” then you don’t see joy, only fury.Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of that fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad you are. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met.In fact, they often don’t even know about the excesses of the Trump movement. Many of them will never know that their progressive neighbors have faced threats and intimidation. And even when they do see the movement at its worst, they can’t quite believe it. So Jan. 6 was a false flag. Or it was a “fedsurrection.” It couldn’t have really been a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government, because they know these people, or people like them, and they’re mostly good folks. It had to be a mistake, or an exaggeration, or a trick or a few bad apples. The real crime was the stolen election.It’s the combination of anger and joy that makes the MAGA enthusiasm so hard to break but also limits its breadth. If you’re part of the movement’s ever-widening circle of enemies, Trump holds no appeal for you. You experience his movement as an attack on your life, your choices, your home and even your identity. If you’re part of the core MAGA community, however, not even the ruthlessly efficient Ron DeSantis can come close to replicating the true Trump experience. Again, the boat parade is a perfect example. It’s one part Battle for the Future of Civilization and one part booze cruise.The battle and the booze cruise both give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging. They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do.Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement. Even among actual churchgoing evangelicals, political alignment is often so important that it’s hard to feel a true sense of belonging unless you’re ideologically united with the people in the pews around you.During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail. More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Campaign of Contempt

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      If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.The version of most politicians that we need to worry about is the one that they don’t want us to see. That’s why campaign reporters dog them; they’re waiting for the veil to slip.But the version of Ron DeSantis that we need to worry about is the one that he proudly shows us. He embraces his meanness. He luxuriates in his darkness. Let other politicians peddle the pablum of inspiration. He prefers to ooze the toxin of contempt.That’s one of the morals of a provocative anti-gay, anti-trans video that the DeSantis campaign shared late last week. The campaign’s promotion of it prompted accusations of homophobia even from some Republicans, and justly so: In an attempt to smear Donald Trump, the video doesn’t just accuse him of coddling L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. It revels in DeSantis’s vilification of them.Initially distributed by a Twitter account called Proud Elephant, it presents a bizarre montage that’s superficially an anti-woke battle cry, pitting a truculent DeSantis against a scourge of degenerates. But while his viciousness comes through precisely as planned, so does something unintended: an undercurrent of homoerotic kink. Up pops a shirtless hunk with a ripped chest. Here’s a glowering Brad Pitt in his “Troy” drag. Are honchos with a Homer fetish some new thing? I need to get out more.But the perversely purposed beefcake is less striking than the way in which the video exultantly spotlights DeSantis’s biggest critics and celebrates their harshest criticism, treating the words with which they’ve described him and his initiatives as the best measures of his mettle. “Most extreme” becomes a trophy, “horrifying” a crown and “evil” a sash.The Florida governor is running one freaky and unsettling presidential campaign. He’s more focused on putting certain Americans in their places than on lifting others to new heights. He’s defined by the scores he pledges to settle instead of the victories he promises to achieve. He casts himself as someone to fear rather than revere. That video actually flashes an image of Christian Bale in “American Psycho” as a flattering DeSantis analogue.Vote DeSantis: He’s a monster, but he’s your monster.How does someone with that pitch possibly bring together and lead an entire diverse country, if he gets that chance, and what does it say about the United States today that he has come this far? Have we put tolerance, grand ideals and optimism so fully to rest? I remember “morning in America.” I guess it’s now midnight.To read deeply and widely about DeSantis is to learn that his cruel politics match a cold personality. He seems to trust almost no one other than his wife, who’s his twin in unalloyed ambition. He’s a collector of slights. He gets an A+ in grudge holding and an F in humility, and he’s taking etiquette pass/fail. He has resting disdain face.When I find pictures of him laughing, his expression is a bad stage actor’s — it’s a labored and spurious guffaw — as if a campaign aide intent on warming him up had just pulled hard on some string embedded in DeSantis’s back. Only his rants have a genuine air. He looked perfectly comfortable on Fox News recently saying that anyone who cut through a border wall between Mexico and the United States to traffic fentanyl would “end up stone cold dead.” He’s out to out-Trump Trump, who reportedly wondered aloud about a water-filled border trench stocked with snakes and alligators. I’m counting the minutes until DeSantis’s proposal for a moat stocked with great white sharks.Raising questions about illegal immigration and border security is necessary and just. But what’s served by doing so with such bloodthirstiness?Establishing guidelines for the age at which it’s appropriate for children in public schools to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity is legitimate. But what’s gained by inviting the word “groomers” into the conversation and casting yourself as a pulchritudinous gladiator who will teach them a pitiless lesson?DeSantis mistakes spite for spiritedness, bullying for strength. I hope voters don’t do likewise.Forward this newsletter to friends …… and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Thursday.For the Love of SentencesErin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Supremes sure made lots of news lately, so let’s start with them. In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick parsed the generosity from billionaires that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have so richly enjoyed: “A #protip that will no doubt make those justices who have been lured away to elaborate bear hunts and deer hunts and rabbit hunts and salmon hunts by wealthy oligarchs feel a bit sad: If your close personal friends who only just met you after you came onto the courts are memorializing your time together for posterity, there’s a decent chance you are, in fact, the thing being hunted.” (Thanks to Robert E. Gordon of Sarasota, Fla., for nominating this.)In The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri mined that material by mimicking the famous opening line of “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice.” (Nicole Seligman, Sag Harbor, N.Y.)And in The Times, Tyler Austin Harper contextualized the battle over affirmative action: “Civil rights leaders did not endure the dogs and the cold baptism of the fire hoses in the hopes that one day their children’s children could become Ivy-minted venture capitalists and management consultants.” (Adam Fix, Minneapolis)Also in The Times, Farhad Manjoo discussed the futility of debating Robert Kennedy Jr.: “He starts with a few sprinkles of truth — Ohio’s vote was run by a partisan official, some vaccines have serious side effects — and then swirls them up with enough exaggerations, omissions and leaps of logic to create a veritable McFlurry of doubt.” (James Brockardt, Pennington, N.J.)Kim Severson noted how buffets struggled to emerge from the pandemic: “A model of eating based on shared serving spoons and food seasoned with the breath of strangers seemed like a goner.” (Elise Magers, Chicago)Alex Halberstadt introduced readers to the Oregon winemaker Maggie Harrison: “Warm, funny and observant in person, she cultivates a persona of a curmudgeon, the way an octopus might disguise itself as a rock to throw off sand sharks.” (Michael T. Reagan, Ottawa, Ill.) Also, of a tasting room of Harrison’s with an unappealing entrance: “The scene was so hushed and civilized-looking, after the dinginess of the exterior, that it was like entering a chapel through the back of an airport Cinnabon.” (Robert Mugford, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Tricia Chatary, Middlebury, Vt., among others)And Ligaya Mishan described a magical dessert from her Hawaiian childhood made by a frozen-treat wizard named Kon Ping Young: “He’d sneak in one of the whole plums, which he’d cover with more slush. I’d find it buried deep, a shriveled prize, so tangy that when I sucked on it, the world condensed to that one flavor, a tiny neutron star of sweet-sour-salt.” (Cindy Kissin, New Haven, Conn.)In The Washington Post, T.A. Frank traced the arc of Mike Pence: “When he was a radio host, Pence liked to call himself ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ a mild concoction even then, to say nothing of an era when even Limbaugh on meth would be too laid back for some of today’s partisans.” John Hitzeroth, Wilmington, Ohio, and Doug Sterner, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)In The Ringer, Roger Sherman imagined how hard it was for N.B.A. teams to decide which of the 6-foot-6, identical Thompsons, Amen and Ausar, to draft first: “Normally, you can identify the evil twin by looking for the one with the handlebar mustache, but neither had one, making this a tough assignment for scouts.” (Marshall Sikowitz, Bassano del Grappa, Italy)And in The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson was rattled by moments in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” when a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford didn’t look quite right: “For the love of Ponce de León, stop using this technology until it’s perfected, Hollywood!” (Pat Isgro, Greenwich, N.Y.)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.What I’m Watching, Reading and Listening ToSarah Lancashire in “Happy Valley.”James Stack/Lookout Point/AMCI wish I could say that I loved the third (and, apparently, final) season of the British crime drama “Happy Valley” as much as I loved the first one nine years ago, but this great series did what many great series do: It fell a bit too much in love with its main characters and the superb actors who played them. I refer to Sarah Lancashire as a grief-haunted police sergeant and James Norton as the perversely charismatic thug who had a heavy hand in her grief. The latest season, whose American airing wrapped up a little more than a week ago, seems intent on giving them tricky or intensely emotional scenes in which to show their acting chops, and they deliver and then some. But the trade-off is a sometimes sluggish pace and lugubrious air. Regardless, if you never found your way to “Happy Valley,” correct that. The whole of it is undeniably worth watching. (It’s streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV; you can also purchase episodes or seasons, as I did, through Apple TV+. There’s more information here.)The Gay Pride month of June this year seemed to yield a particular bounty of reflections on what it means to be gay or queer, possibly because of a backlash in the United States right now against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The essay that most intrigued and delighted me appeared here in Times Opinion. It was Richard Morgan’s “As a Gay Man, I’ll Never Be Normal,” whose standout passages could have filled the entire For the Love of Sentences section this week. (Joan Vohl Hamilton, South Hadley, Mass., and Sarah Patrick, Carbondale, Ill., among others, nominated sentences from the essay.)Another recent article in The Times that I especially loved was Elisabeth Egan’s 25-years-later look at the phenomenon — and impact — of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” It, too, is a gold mine of spirited prose, along with acute observations.Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post is a treasure (and appears frequently in For the Love of Sentences), and this recent article of hers about the friendship of the former tennis rivals Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert is a gem, also with sterling sentences galore about two women who “exemplify, perhaps more than any champions in the annals of their sport, the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship.” (Rebecca Howey, Detroit, and Tom Fortner, Point Clear, Ala., among others)I’ve retired the occasional newsletter feature that delved into great songs and song lyrics but will mention popular music randomly and occasionally in this space. A Pandora station of mine just introduced me to the young singer-songwriter Ilsey and “No California,” a relatively new single of hers. She has an album due in October, according to this article in Variety, which also embeds the song, so you can listen. Despite its love-lost subject matter, it’s buoyant, summery and very, very catchy.On a Personal Note (Odd Neighborhood Names)Errol Flynn in the 1938 film “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”Everett CollectionYou’ve been excellent about sending me examples of strangely or strikingly named streets, neighborhoods and towns, a subject that I first wrote about in January and revisited in this newsletter, this one and this one. Today’s Odd Neighborhood Names installment will be the last — we’ll find other fun topics to commune over — and I apologize to the many of you who have submitted unused material. Thanks to your generosity. I’ve had more options than space for them.Almost all have fallen into one of three categories. I think of the first as “let’s pretend we’re somewhere we’re not.” Jane Houssiere of Boulder, Colo., wrote: “I live on the interface where the Rocky Mountains meet the semiarid high plains. We are nowhere near any ocean.” But, she added, “developers must have been homesick for the coast.” Behold, in this mountainous interior, Barnacle Street, Starboard Drive, Driftwood Place, Sandpiper Circle, Beachcomber Court, Outrigger Court, Jib Court and more. It’s a high tide of nautical nomenclature.The second category is the motif-a-palooza, whereby the namers of streets work a theme as aggressively as my Regan does her favorite bones. Rob Boas of Atlanta alerted me to that city’s “Sherwood Forest” neighborhood, where the streets include Robin Hood Road, Friar Tuck Road, Lady Marian Lane, Nottingham Way and Little John Trail.John FX Keane of New Providence, N.J., noted that his childhood home of Binghamton, N.Y., has byways that pay homage to classical composers: Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner and more.The motifs can be … unexpected. Mary Beth Norton noted that Ithaca, N.Y., has a grouping of streets seemingly named for cigarette and cigar brands: Winston Court, Salem Drive, Tareyton Drive and Muriel Street. Lest that seem eccentric, Barbara Lerner wrote that in the Gibson section of Valley Stream, N.Y., where she used to live, there is a profusion of roads with cigarette- or liquor-related appellations: Marlboro, Munro (an English gin), Carstairs (a blended whiskey), Gordon (gin), Dubonnet (vermouth). The Gibson, of course, is the martini’s cousin, garnished with a pickled onion rather than an olive.The third category: utter failures of imagination. Into this group falls what was probably your most nominated street name, Toronto’s soul-crushingly prosaic, spectacularly redundant Avenue Road. But Sheila Gerstenzang of Las Vegas wrote in with another fine example: Overthere Lane in North Las Vegas.Beyond those categories are street, neighborhood and town names that just don’t seem like such names at all. In Ipswich, Mass., there’s Labor in Vain Road, as a former Ipswich resident, Douglas Atkins, and a current one, Tamsin Venn, pointed out.And the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is known for its amusing place names, including Dildo, Witless Bay, Blow Me Down, Tickle Harbour, Tickle Cove, Come by Chance and Heart’s Content. Thanks to Patricia Maher of Vancouver, B.C., for drawing attention to those. More