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      Bracing for Losses, Democrats Look to Biden for a Reset

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      At a party retreat in Philadelphia, House Democrats hoped the president would offer a winning strategy heading into a challenging midterm election season.PHILADELPHIA — House Democrats planned a retreat here this week hoping for a reset after a difficult period during which President Biden has been buffeted by rising gas prices, soaring inflation and sagging approval ratings.Instead, they arrived in buses in the middle of the night after the president’s latest coronavirus aid package collapsed in Congress late Wednesday, a grim reminder that his legislative agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill as they head into a midterm election season in which they are bracing for big losses.One year to the day after the enactment of Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan — a law that remains broadly popular even if the president, at the moment, is not — Democrats are toiling to retool their message and refocus their agenda. They are worried that the accomplishments they helped deliver to Mr. Biden are being drowned out by concern over the rising price of gas and a focus on their legislative failures.And they are looking to the president, who addressed them at the retreat on Friday, to help them reframe the conversation.“This may be the most important off-year election in modern history,” Mr. Biden told lawmakers on Friday afternoon. If Democrats lose their majorities in the House and the Senate, he said, “the only thing I’ll have then is a veto pen.”The president outlined his administration’s achievements over the past year, noting that few pieces of legislation have had the impact of the stimulus plan he proposed during his first month in office. He criticized Republicans for wrongly blaming him for gas prices.But it was not clear from his remarks how Mr. Biden planned to help his party refashion its message before November.Gone was the talk of a transformative agenda to remake the country’s social safety net, which was once a centerpiece of Democrats’ sales pitch to voters. The words “build back better” were all but forbidden among the groggy lawmakers who arrived in Philadelphia in the wee hours of Thursday morning.Speaking to reporters, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, joked that the slogan for Mr. Biden’s defunct social policy and climate bill had become like the evil Voldemort in “Harry Potter”: that which must not be named.Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the president could use executive actions to address the issues voters care about before the midterm elections.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesInstead, after a year of supporting his agenda, House Democrats have pivoted to beseeching Mr. Biden to act on his own through executive actions to address the outstanding issues they care about before they face voters in November.Ms. Jayapal said the president could pass executive actions to cap the price of insulin, raise the overtime eligibility threshold to increase wages for tens of millions of people, and fix the so-called family glitch in the Affordable Care Act, which can make it impossible for some workers with modest incomes to afford health insurance.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat, said he recently met with White House officials to discuss executive actions that Mr. Biden could take to protect voting rights and overhaul policing after the demise of his efforts to pass major legislation tackling both issues. And Representative Raul Ruiz, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he wanted the president to use his executive power to raise the cap on the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States this year.Other lawmakers said they hoped a shift to the center debuted at Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week, along with strong support for his handling of the war in Ukraine, would be enough to persuade voters that Democrats were focused on kitchen-table issues.“We care about everyday Americans, and they don’t,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said when asked to sum up his party’s pitch to voters.The retreat was the group’s first in-person gathering in three years and a chance for Democrats — who have seen 31 colleagues opt to retire — to talk up their achievements and compare notes on how to move forward.“We have passed two major pieces of legislation that, in any other Congress, would have been historic in and of themselves,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, referring to the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.He acknowledged that the landscape might look bleak, but he said the political environment this summer would matter more.“The polls don’t look particularly good now,” Mr. Hoyer said, “but that’s happened in the past.”Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on Thursday that keeping the majority depended on speaking to voters in a way that was not too preachy or condescending.“We spent a bunch of time talking about attributes in addition to issues,” Mr. Maloney said of a closed-door presentation he delivered on Thursday. “Whether voters think we care about them, whether they think we share their values, whether we have the right priorities.”Every vulnerable Democrat, Mr. Maloney said, was “in the business of having to say, ‘You may not like everything about my political party, but I’m getting it done.’”Some of the moderate Democrats whose seats are most at risk said the tone of the president’s State of the Union address — in which he underscored funding the police, capping the cost of insulin and fighting the opioid epidemic — raised their hopes that he had moved away from simply championing progressive proposals that pleased the party’s left flank but could alienate constituents in conservative-leaning districts like theirs.“Veterans, opioids, these are things we can come together on,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, one of the 32 Democrats identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as running for re-election in a competitive seat. “Ukraine is part of the unity message. That is what I think our caucus is hungry for, especially those of us who believe in the value of reaching out to Democrats and Republicans, and it’s certainly what we’re hearing back at home.”That appeared to be the administration’s focus before Mr. Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia on Friday, as his team worked to highlight positive economic indicators.On Tuesday night, administration officials circulated among House Democrats a slide show about deficit reduction, noting that Mr. Biden had lowered it by $360 billion in 2021. White House officials have also been promoting record job growth, while making clear that getting prices under control remains the president’s top priority.Still, vulnerable Democrats said that was not necessarily enough to bolster their political fortunes.“The metrics are strong — employment, wages — but that doesn’t matter,” said Representative Dean Phillips, who represents a suburban Minneapolis district that was long held by Republicans. “What matters is how people feel.”Mr. Biden’s new message has also angered and concerned some progressives, who fear that their priorities were being pushed to the margins.“People say the speech was unifying — unifying because it brought white moderates and white independents back,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, who is Black, referring to Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. “I was sitting there, like, ‘Damn, again?’”He added: “George Floyd is dead. There’s no national database for police misconduct.”“It’s lazy and unacceptable for the president of the United States to only keep the conversation at that shallow level,” Mr. Bowman said of the discussion about supporting law enforcement. “It’s deeper than that.”Feelings were still raw in Philadelphia this week about the demise of Mr. Biden’s emergency request for Covid-19 aid, which Democratic leaders had stripped from a $1.5 trillion spending bill amid disputes over how to finance it. The money will have to move separately, and Democrats will need Republican support to win its approval.“I would have preferred to just pause for another 24 hours and try to figure out” how to move forward, Ms. Jayapal said in an interview. “I’m not in control.”Jonathan Weisman More

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      Biden Speaks on Voting Rights in Philadelphia

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      WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Tuesday that the fight against restrictive voting laws was the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War” and called Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election “a big lie.”In an impassioned speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden tried to reinvigorate the stalled Democratic effort to pass federal voting rights legislation and called on Republicans “in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for God’s sake.”“Help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote,” the president said in remarks at the National Constitution Center. “Have you no shame?”But his words collided with reality: Even as Republican-led bills meant to restrict voting access make their way through statehouses across the country, two bills aiming to expand voting rights nationwide are languishing in Congress. And Mr. Biden has bucked increasing pressure from Democrats to support pushing the legislation through the Senate by eliminating the filibuster, no matter the political cost.In fact, the president seemed to acknowledge that the legislation had little hope of passing as he shifted his focus to the midterm elections.“We’re going to face another test in 2022,” Mr. Biden said. “A new wave of unprecedented voter suppression, and raw and sustained election subversion. We have to prepare now.”He said he would start an effort “to educate voters about the changing laws, register them to vote and then get the vote out.”The partisan fight over voting rights was playing out even as the president spoke, with a group of Texas Democrats fleeing their state to deny Republicans the quorum they need to pass new voting restrictions there.In his speech, Mr. Biden characterized the conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — hatched and spread by his predecessor, Mr. Trump — as a “darker and more sinister” underbelly of American politics. He did not mention Mr. Trump by name but warned that “bullies and merchants of fear” had posed an existential threat to democracy.“No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny, such high standards,” Mr. Biden said. “The big lie is just that: a big lie.”About a dozen Republican-controlled states passed laws this spring to restrict voting or significantly change election rules, in part because of Mr. Trump’s efforts to sow doubt about the 2020 results.Republicans, who have called Democrats’ warnings about democracy hyperbolic, argue that laws are needed to tamp down on voter fraud, despite evidence that it is not a widespread problem. They have mounted an aggressive campaign to portray Mr. Biden’s voting-rights efforts as self-serving federalization of elections to benefit Democrats.The president’s speech, delivered against the backdrop of the birthplace of American democracy, was intended to present the right to vote as a shared ideal, despite the realities of a deeply fractured political landscape.Democratic efforts to pass voting rights legislation in Washington have stalled in the evenly divided Senate. Last month, Republicans filibustered the broad elections overhaul known as the For the People Act, and they are expected to do the same if Democrats try to bring up the other measure — the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named for a former Georgia congressman and civil rights icon — which would restore parts of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.In a statement, Danielle Álvarez, the communications director for the Republican National Committee, said that Mr. Biden’s speech amounted to “lies and theatrics.” Republicans had unanimously rejected the For the People Act as a Democratic attempt to “pass their federal takeover of our elections,” she said.There were also concerns among more moderate members of Mr. Biden’s party that the legislation was too partisan. Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have publicly said they would not support rolling back the filibuster to enact it.But other Democrats see a worrying increase in efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict voting, along with court rulings that would make it harder to fight encroachments on voting rights.A Supreme Court ruling this month weakened the one enforcement clause of the Voting Rights Act that remained after the court invalidated its major provision in 2013. Mr. Biden said last year that strengthening the act would be one of his first priorities after taking office; but on Tuesday, he sought to shift responsibility to lawmakers.“The court’s decision, as harmful as it is, does not limit the Congress’s ability to repair the damage done,” the president said. “As soon as Congress passes the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, I will sign it and want the whole world to see it.”His rallying cry only underscored the impossibility of the task: Neither bill currently has a path to his desk.Activists who had wondered whether Mr. Biden would stake out a public position on the filibuster got their answer on Tuesday: “I’m not filibustering now,” the president told reporters who shouted questions after his speech.“It was strange to hear,” Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for the anti-filibuster group Fix Our Senate, said after watching the speech. “He did a great job of laying out the problem, but then stopped short of talking about the actual solution that would be needed to passing legislation to address the problem.”As Mr. Biden spoke in Philadelphia, the group of Texas Democrats had traveled to Washington, where they were trying to delay state lawmakers from taking up restrictive voting measures.Representative Marc Veasey, Democrat of Texas, speaking at a press conference with Democratic members of the Texas Legislature on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesBoth measures would ban 24-hour voting and drive-through voting; prohibit election officials from proactively sending absentee ballot applications to voters who had not requested them; add new voter identification requirements for voting by mail; limit the types of assistance that can be provided to voters; and greatly expand the authority and autonomy of partisan poll watchers.In Austin, Republicans vented their anger at the fleeing group, and Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to call “special session after special session after special session” until an election bill passed. The handful of Democratic lawmakers who did not go to Washington were rounded up and ordered onto the Statehouse floor. Shawn Thierry, a Democratic state representative from Houston, posted to Twitter a video of a Statehouse sergeant-at-arms and a state trooper entering her office to order her to be locked in the House chamber.“This is not an issue about Democrats or Republicans,” Vice President Kamala Harris told the Texas lawmakers when she met with them on Tuesday. “This is about Americans and how Americans are experiencing this issue.”James Talarico, 32, the youngest member of the Texas Legislature, said the group of Democrats had gone to Washington, in part, to pressure Mr. Biden to do more.“We can’t listen to more speeches,” Mr. Talarico said. “I’m incredibly proud not only as a Democrat but also an American of what President Biden has accomplished in his first few months in office. But protecting our democracy should have been at the very top of the list, because without it none of these issues matter.”The restrictions in the Texas bills mirror key provisions of a restrictive law passed this year in Georgia, which went even further to assert Republican control over the State Election Board and empower the party to suspend county election officials. In June, the Justice Department sued Georgia over the law, the Biden administration’s first significant move to challenge voter restrictions at the state level.“The 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real,” Mr. Biden said as he listed the details of the Texas bills. “It’s unrelenting, and we are going to challenge it vigorously.”Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

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      Philadelphia’s Progressive District Attorney Fends Off Democratic Challenger

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      Larry Krasner, part of a new breed of prosecutors, easily defeated Carlos Vega in Tuesday’s primary in spite of a rise in gun crime.Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, won the Democratic nomination in his re-election campaign on Tuesday, easily fending off a challenge from a former prosecutor who had argued that Mr. Krasner was making the city less safe.Voters were unconvinced by that argument. When The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday night, Mr. Krasner was ahead of his rival, Carlos Vega, by almost 40,000 votes.Throughout his campaign, Mr. Krasner argued that a 40 percent increase in homicides in Philadelphia last year had nothing to do with his progressive policies, pointing to cities with more traditional prosecutors that had experienced similar trends during the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Krasner does not prosecute some low-level offenses, such as drug possession and prostitution, and has sought more lenient sentences than his predecessors.In a speech to supporters on Tuesday night at a hotel in downtown Philadelphia, Mr. Krasner said he had been re-elected because he had kept his promises, and he claimed a mandate from the voters most affected by serious crime.“We in this movement for criminal justice reform just won a big one,” he said.Mr. Krasner’s convincing victory, achieved in spite of a sharp increase in gun crime in Philadelphia over the past two years, may indicate that the appeal of progressive prosecutors will hold steady for voters even as public safety becomes a more pressing issue.Mr. Krasner acknowledged that in his victory remarks.“We hear all this talk about how somehow progressive prosecution can’t survive,” he said. “That’s not what I see. What I see is that traditional prosecution can’t survive.”Mr. Vega acknowledged his loss in a tweet shortly before midnight on Tuesday, saying, “It looks like tonight we did not get the result we wanted, but even in defeat we have grace & we smile.”He thanked his supporters and expressed his own support for the victims of crimes. A spokesman for his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.As in his first campaign, in which he ran against six other candidates, Mr. Krasner, 60, won significant support from Black voters in the northern and western parts of the city. Those neighborhoods have been the most affected by gun violence, and were places where Mr. Vega, 64, had hoped to make inroads.“Black voters — and not just Black voters — believe that change is necessary and that the direction that Larry Krasner is taking is the right direction,” said State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, who represents several of those neighborhoods. “This is not a close victory. It is an affirmation that we have to go in a different direction in the pursuit of justice.”Enthusiasm for what used to be a low-turnout race remained high. When all the votes are counted, including mail-in ballots, turnout will almost certainly be higher than it was four years ago, when 155,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.Mr. Vega, a longtime homicide prosecutor, was among the first employees whom Mr. Krasner fired after taking over the district attorney’s office in 2018. Mr. Vega argued that the leniency of Mr. Krasner’s policies had led to the increase in crime.Criminologists said there would be no way to prove Mr. Vega’s assertions. David S. Abrams, a professor of law and economics at the University of Pennsylvania who has tracked crime statistics across the country over the past year, said any theory would have to take into account both the rise in homicides and shootings and the overall decline in crime, at least through 2020.“It’s a mystery,” he said. “There are a ton of theories, almost none of which fit all the facts.”Mr. Vega received ample support from the police, whose powerful union poured tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign and tarred Mr. Krasner as soft on crime at every opportunity.Mr. Krasner won office four years ago as part of a new breed of progressive prosecutors. In addition to upholding his campaign pledge not to prosecute low-level crimes, he lowered the number of people in the city’s jail by more than 30 percent.That approach won him approval from voters but also a significant amount of criticism, particularly from former prosecutors and even some of his own employees. Thomas Mandracchia, who worked for Mr. Krasner for about two years, said the district attorney’s insistence on firing so many experienced lawyers had contributed to an office plagued by disorganization. But none of those criticisms appeared to put a dent in Mr. Krasner’s support on Tuesday.In November’s general election, Mr. Krasner will face Charles Peruto Jr., a Republican defense lawyer who has campaigned on a strong message of public safety, saying that it is more important than civil rights. Mr. Peruto has called Mr. Krasner’s tenure “a disgrace” and said he would drop out of the race if Mr. Vega won. More

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      With Violence Rising, Can a Gentler Prosecutor Keep His Seat?

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      PHILADELPHIA — When Larry Krasner was elected Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2017, his story made him one of the most visible of a new wave of progressive prosecutors: A lawyer who had sued the police for civil rights violations 75 times had become a top law enforcement official in one of America’s largest cities.Mr. Krasner promised to stop prosecuting drug possession and prostitution and to hold the police accountable for misconduct. But even as he wrote a triumphal book about his election and starred in a PBS documentary series, homicides and gun violence in Philadelphia were rising to levels not seen since the 1990s.Now Mr. Krasner, 60, is facing a primary challenge from a veteran prosecutor he fired, who is arguing that Mr. Krasner has made the city less safe.Public concern about racism and overincarceration in the criminal justice system during the past decade drove progressive prosecutors like Mr. Krasner, who promote less punitive approaches, into office. But that was after a long period of declining crime. Philadelphia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday poses a test of whether such candidates can continue to win elections when gun violence has risen in cities around the country.The police have seized upon the statistics to promote Mr. Krasner’s opponent, Carlos Vega, 64. Earlier this month, the police union parked a soft-serve ice cream truck outside the district attorney’s office to emphasize that Mr. Krasner had been soft on crime. (In response, Mr. Krasner’s campaign released a statement of support from Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s.)The union has given $25,200 to Mr. Vega’s campaign and has encouraged Republican voters to register as Democrats in order to vote Mr. Krasner out. Minutes after the candidates concluded their only televised debate in early May, a car streaked down Spruce Street, its rear window embossed with the message, “All Real Cops Agree. Fire Krasner.”Eight people were wounded by gunfire outside a transit station in Philadelphia in February. The city’s homicides rose 40 percent last year.Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressIn his first election, Mr. Krasner attracted a coalition of young progressives, labor unions and moderate Black voters. His road to victory has not changed. But the math may have: According to the state, more than 6,300 Republicans in Philadelphia County have become Democrats in the aftermath of the presidential election, which could mean an influx of more conservative primary voters. (That said, Mr. Krasner won his first primary by a margin of nearly 28,000 votes while running against six other Democrats.)Opponents hope that the sharp rise in gun crime over the last two years has made Mr. Krasner vulnerable. Overall, violent crime is down in Philadelphia. But between 2019 and 2020, the number of homicides rose from 356 to 499, a 40 percent increase.Mr. Krasner blames the pandemic. Mr. Vega blames Mr. Krasner.“We are arresting people with guns and there are no consequences,” Mr. Vega said. “There is a revolving door.”He said he would take a more aggressive approach toward what he said was a small group of people that were causing the violence, and would prosecute violent crimes more harshly than his opponent.Criminologists said it would be impossible to substantiate the claim that Mr. Krasner’s policies had led to more gun crime. They point out that gun violence rose sharply in many cities last year, regardless of whether their prosecutors were considered progressive.Theories for the rise in gun violence include pandemic-related factors like a halt to social services and a slowdown in the court system. Another possible factor could be a police pullback in the face of increased public scrutiny, said Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, who cautioned against jumping to conclusions.Mr. Vega, a prosecutor for more than three decades, was fired by Mr. Krasner when he took office.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesMr. Krasner said the pandemic had offered an opportunity for “a throwback culture” to “claw its way back in.” But he said that the tough-on-crime posturing of previous district attorneys had been “nonsense.”“There’s absolutely no scientific support for the notion that all that ranting and raving about the death penalty ever made anybody even a little bit safer,” he said.Mr. Krasner announced his first run in 2017, weeks after Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration. Amanda McIllmurray, a progressive organizer in Philadelphia, said that Mr. Krasner, who had no experience as a prosecutor, was seen as someone who might counter the president’s emphasis on law and order.“He really gave a lot of people hope at a time where we were feeling a lot of despair,” she said.Once in office, Mr. Krasner fired more than two dozen veterans including Mr. Vega, who had been a prosecutor for more than three decades.Mr. Krasner also lowered the number of people in the city’s jail by more than 30 percent, stopped prosecuting some low-level crimes and asked judges for less severe sentences.But even some of his supporters say that he can be tactless and reluctant to accept criticism, and that he has backed away from promises to eliminate cash bail and to stop holding juveniles in adult jails.“We’re at the point now where he’s not open to being challenged on how he can do better from leftists,” said A’Brianna Morgan, a police and prison abolitionist.Mr. Krasner attracted a coalition of young progressives, labor unions and moderate Black voters to win in 2017.Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressMr. Krasner said that he had done a good job getting rid of “dumb, low bails for broke people on nonserious offenses,” but that he was restricted by bail laws on more serious crime, and that he had resolved a vast majority of juvenile cases in juvenile court.And he has cast Mr. Vega as an embodiment of the establishment he sought to upend. He points to Mr. Vega’s role in the retrial of Anthony Wright, a man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder and spent 25 years in prison before his conviction was vacated.The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, then led by Seth Williams, mounted a new trial of Mr. Wright, making him the only client of the Innocence Project ever to be retried after DNA evidence indicated his innocence. Mr. Vega was one of the prosecutors in the retrial.Mr. Vega said that it had not been his decision to retry the case but that he thought the witness testimony had been strong enough to do so. (Mr. Wright was found innocent.)Peter Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project, said that Mr. Vega’s actions during the retrial had been unethical and that he had misled the public about the extent of his involvement.Mr. Vega is backed by more than a hundred of his fellow ex-prosecutors, including Ed Rendell, a former Philadelphia district attorney who later became the mayor of Philadelphia and the governor of Pennsylvania.He is also supported by a number of victims’ family members who feel that Mr. Krasner has been too lenient. Among them is Aleida Garcia, whose son was murdered in 2015. Mr. Vega handled the case until 2018, at which point Mr. Krasner fired him without alerting the family. Though her son’s killer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, Ms. Garcia was frustrated by the way Mr. Krasner’s office handled the case.“The victims don’t have a lot of say,” she said.Supporters of Mr. Vega, who is backed by Ed Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesMr. Krasner is relying on the coalition that backed him four years ago, including more support from a PAC associated with George Soros, which poured $1.7 million into his first race. He has raised $887,000 since Mr. Vega entered the race. Mr. Vega has raised $734,000. The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in the November general election against the Republican candidate, Charles Peruto Jr., a defense lawyer who says that public safety is more important than civil rights. Mr. Peruto has said he will drop out of the race if Mr. Vega wins the primary.A test for Mr. Vega will be if he can cut into Mr. Krasner’s support in neighborhoods where the gun violence is taking place, including the northern and western parts of the city. State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, whose district includes several neighborhoods experiencing violence, said he expected his constituents to continue to support Mr. Krasner and oppose the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, or F.O.P.“They see Larry Krasner as not being afraid of the F.O.P., not being afraid to work toward justice in the truest sense of the word,” he said.Mr. Krasner said he knew that he could not claim a perfect record. He described sidewalk encounters in which voters referred to him as “trying to be fair,” saying that the phrasing initially puzzled him.“I could not figure out why the hell they were saying ‘trying,’” he said. “But when I heard it time and time again, I finally came to the conclusion that the reason they’re saying that is they don’t expect you to be perfect. They know you’re going to mess it up some of the time. They just can’t even believe you’re trying.” More

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      He Wanted to Count Every Vote in Philadelphia. His Party Had Other Ideas.

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      .nytslm_notification_label {
      color: #D0021B;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-weight: 700;
      font-size: 0.6875rem;
      margin-bottom: 0.2em;
      letter-spacing: 0.02em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_link {
      font-weight: 600;
      color: #121212;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_headline {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 1.0625rem;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
      position: relative;
      max-width: 75px;
      margin-left: 10px;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image {
      max-width: 100%;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
      position: absolute;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      bottom: 7px;
      left: 2px;

      font-size: 0.5rem;
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
      font-weight: 700;
      margin-right: 2px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      }

      /* No hover state on in app */
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
      border-bottom: none;
      padding-bottom: 0;
      }

      .Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
      display: none;
      }

      .nytslm_st0 {
      fill: #f4564a;
      }

      .nytslm_st1 {
      fill: #ffffff;
      }

      .nytslm_st2 {
      fill: #2b8ad8;
      }

      Electoral College Results

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      “),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
      return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
      if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
      var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
      // Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
      if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
      // if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
      {expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
      var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
      window.stylnelecsHasLoaded=!0)})(),function(){try{if(navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)){var a=document.getElementsByClassName(“nytslm_title”)[0];a.style.pointerEvents=”none”}}catch(a){}}(); More