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      A Trump-Biden Rematch Is the Election We Need

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      Joe Biden versus Donald Trump is not the choice America wants. But it is the choice we need to face.Yes, both men are unpopular, remarkably so. Only a third of Americans view President Biden favorably, and two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want to nominate someone else for the presidency (no one in particular, just someone else, please). Trump is the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, but his overall approval rating is lower than Biden’s. And while 60 percent of voters don’t want to put Trump back in the White House, 65 percent don’t want to hand Biden a second term, either. The one thing on which Americans seem to agree is that we find a Biden-Trump 2024 rematch entirely disagreeable.This disdain may reflect the standard gripes about the candidates. (One is too old, the other too Trump.) But it also may signal an underlying reluctance to acknowledge the meaning of their standoff and the inescapability of our decision. A contest between Biden and Trump would compel Americans to either reaffirm or discard basic democratic and governing principles. More so than any other pairing, Biden versus Trump forces us to decide, or at least to clarify, who we think we are and what we strive to be.Trump is running as an overtly authoritarian candidate — the illusion of pivots, of adults in the room, of a man molded by the office, is long gone. He is dismissive of the law, except when he can harness it for his benefit; of open expression, except when it fawns all over him; and of free elections, except when they produce victories he likes. He has called for the “termination” of the Constitution based on his persistent claims of 2020 electoral fraud, and according to The Washington Post, in a new term he would use the Justice Department as an instrument of vengeance against political opponents. We know who Trump is and what he offers.Biden’s case to the electorate — for 2020, 2022 and 2024 — has been premised on the preservation of American democratic traditions. In the video announcing his 2020 campaign, he asserted that “our very democracy” was at stake in the race against Trump. In a speech two months before the midterm vote last year, he asserted that Trump and his allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our Republic.” And the video kicking off his 2024 re-election bid featured multiple scenes of the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “The question we are facing,” Biden said, “is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.” That is our choice in 2024.Like so many others, I also wish we could avoid that choice or at least defer it. As the journalist Amy Walter has put it, “Swing voters would rather eat a bowl of glass than have to choose between Trump and Biden again.” Well, it may be time to grab a spoon and unroll the gauze. When half the country believes democracy isn’t working well, when calls for political violence have become commonplace, when the speaker of the House is an election denier, it is time to face what we risk becoming and to accept or reject it. We have no choice but to choose.Even if some combination of poor health and legal proceedings somehow pushed Biden and Trump aside — and some blandly likable generic candidates took their places — we could not simply rewind the past eight years and return to our regularly scheduled programming. America would still face the choices and temptations that Biden and Trump have come to represent; the choice would not change, even if the faces did.A recent New York Times/Siena College poll that shows Trump leading Biden in five battleground states also asked registered voters which candidate they trust on key questions. Trump won on the economy, immigration and national security; Biden received higher marks on just two issues. The first was abortion, a core priority among Democratic voters and one that proved powerful in last year’s midterms and the off-year elections and ballot initiatives last Tuesday in states like Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.The second issue on which Biden commands greater trust? By a slim margin, it is democracy. This advantage is pronounced among Black voters, who trust Biden over Trump by 77 to 16 percent on democracy, and Hispanic voters, who prefer Biden by 53 to 38 percent. (White voters, by contrast, sided with Trump 50 to 44 percent on that issue.) The protection of American democracy offers a potentially resonant message for Biden, precisely among parts of the Democratic coalition that he can ill afford to lose.Oddly, even as the electorate seems to want little to do with either of these two candidates — let alone with both at the same time — Biden and Trump seem to need each other. Biden’s case for saving American democracy loses some urgency if Trump is not in the race; I can’t imagine, say, a Nikki Haley nomination eliciting as much soul-of-America drama from the president. Similarly, Trump’s persecution complex, always robust, is strengthened with Biden as his opponent; the former president can make the case that his indictments and trials represent the efforts of the incumbent administration — and Trump’s political rival — to keep him down. After all, neither Gretchen Whitmer nor Gavin Newsom runs the Department of Justice.Of course, we already faced this choice — and made it — in 2020. Why insist on a do-over? Because a country approaching its 250th birthday does not have the luxury of calling itself an experiment forever; this is the moment to assess the results of that experiment. Because Jan. 6 was not the final offensive by those who would overrun the will of voters. Because a lone Trump victory in 2016 could conceivably be remembered as an aberration if it were followed by two consecutive defeats, but a Trump restoration in 2024 would confirm America’s slide toward authoritarian rule and would render Biden’s lone term an interregnum, a blip in history’s turn. And we must choose again because the fever did not break; instead, it threatens to break us.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Should Joe Manchin Run for President?

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      In the emotional life of the liberal mediasphere, there was so little space between the release of the New York Times/Siena poll showing President Biden losing to Donald Trump handily across a range of swing states (doom! doom!) and the Democratic overperformance in Tuesday’s elections (sweet relief!) that one of the striking features of the polling passed with relatively little comment.This was the remarkably strong showing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy. When added to the swing-state polls, Kennedy claimed 24 percent of registered voters against 35 percent for Trump and 33 percent for Biden.That number is notable along two dimensions. First, for showing Kennedy drawing close to equally from both likely nominees rather than obviously spoiling the race for one or the other. Second, for its sheer Ross Perotian magnitude, its striking-distance closeness to the major party candidates.Yet I don’t see a lot of people entertaining the “Kennedy wins!” scenario just yet, and for good reasons: Most notable third-party candidates eventually diminish, he may be artificially inflated by his famous name, and his crankishness is so overt (whereas Perot’s was gradually revealed) that many voters currently supporting him in protest of a Biden-Trump rematch may well abandon him after a light Googling.The world being strange, we shouldn’t take this conventional wisdom as gospel. But if we assume that Kennedy’s 24 percent is mostly about people seeking a third option rather than explicitly supporting his worldview, the immediate question is whether someone else should try to fill that space.Someone like, say, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who spiced up his announcement bowing out of a re-election bid with some talk about “traveling the country” for a movement to “mobilize the middle.”There is already a potential vehicle for a Manchin candidacy in the No Labels movement, along with an effort to draft Manchin and Mitt Romney to run together, with Romney at the top of the ticket.But the ideal ticket would probably lead with Manchin. For an independent run, his branding as a moderate with strong ideological differences with the left seems stronger than Romney’s branding as a conservative with strong moral differences with Trump.When elites pine for a third-party candidate, they usually imagine someone like Michael Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative and social liberal. But the sweet spot for a third-party candidate has always been slightly left of center on economics and moderate to conservative on cultural issues — and that describes Manchin better than it does most American politicians. (It arguably described Biden once but not as he’s evolved in the past decade.)The West Virginian could run, authentically, as an unwoke supporter of universal health care, fiscal restraint and a middle ground on guns and abortion. That’s a better basis for a run than Bloombergism or Kennedy’s courtship of the fringes, with a chance of claiming votes from Never Trumpers and the center left.But is it worth the effort? Stipulate that Kennedy will remain in the race and hold on to some share of the vote that might otherwise be available to a third-party moderate. Then the question becomes whether both Trump and Biden could fall below their 35 and 33 percent levels in the Times/Siena poll, giving Manchin a plurality of the popular vote and a chance at an Electoral College win (because merely deadlocking the Electoral College would just send the race to the House, where — pending the results in 2024 — Trump would probably prevail).In a polarized landscape, that kind of mutual G.O.P. and Democratic collapse seems unlikely. But if you were drawing up a scenario for it to happen, it might resemble the one we’re facing — in which one candidate seems manifestly too old for the job and the other might be tried and convicted before the general election. Such a landscape seems as if it should summon forth a responsible alternative. Confronting the American people with a Trump-Biden-Kennedy choice would be a remarkable dereliction by our political elites.But comes the response from anxious liberals: Isn’t an even greater dereliction for a Democrat — however ornery and moderate — to embark on a run that could help re-elevate Trump to the White House?Let’s allow that it might be, but then let’s also allow that, if current polling holds, it’s not running an alternative to Biden that seems most likely to put Trump back in the presidency.That Trump-friendly polling may change. But it’s entirely possible to begin an independent candidacy and then suspend it (just ask Perot) if the situation looks entirely unpropitious. Which is what I’d advise Manchin to consider, if the donors and infrastructure are there: a patriotic attempt, to be abandoned if it’s going nowhere, but to be seen through if enough of the country desires a different choice.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      For Both Trudeau and Biden, Polls Suggest an Uphill Political Path

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      The economy, and particularly inflation, has soured voters on both leaders, polls indicate, though well in advance of upcoming votes.When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Biden next meet, they will have something to commiserate over: their dismal standings in polls.President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have seen their poll ratings slump.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesFor months now, Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party has been rapidly sinking in public opinion surveys, while more recent polls suggest that the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre would win any election held now.Similarly, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found that Mr. Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states.[Read: Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds][The detailed Times/Siena Poll data]Comparing the political situations in Canada and the United States is a fraught business because of a variety of differences between the countries and their political systems. And, of course, Americans don’t vote for another year, and Canada’s next federal election is likely to be two years off.But disaffected voters in both countries share a major concern: inflation, and the economy in general.“There’s ample evidence that inflation is destructive to an incumbent government’s performance and how people feel about it,” David Coletto, the chairman and chief executive of Abacus Data, told me.Mr. Coletto’s latest poll found that 39 percent of committed voters would vote for the Conservatives and 26 percent would vote Liberal, while the New Democrats were backed by 18 percent of those voters. (In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois was supported by 34 percent of committed voters.)That is a long way down for Mr. Trudeau from his early days as prime minister, when his leadership approval ratings hit an eye-watering 73 percent in one poll. The current Abacus poll found that 53 percent of respondents had a negative view of Mr. Trudeau, with just 29 percent holding a favorable view.Many factors, Mr. Coletto said, contribute to that dissatisfaction, but inflation, higher interest rates, housing costs and a general feeling of ennui about the economy are at the top.Voters polled in the Times/Siena survey, by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin — the largest gap relating to any issue in the survey — said they had more trust in Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden on the economy.Some of the criticism of Mr. Trudeau’s economic record, Mr. Coletto said, is based on perceptions that don’t match reality. In an earlier Abacus survey, Mr. Coletto found that most Canadians incorrectly believed that inflation was higher in Canada than in other countries. International Monetary Fund statistics for October show that Canada’s 3.6 percent rate is well below Germany’s 6.3 percent or France’s 5.6. Similarly, Mr. Biden gets little or no credit for the significant job creation under his watch.“But it doesn’t calm nerves to say, ‘Folks, things are good here relatively speaking,’ when relative to where they were five years ago, things are not better,” Mr. Coletto said. “And that’s how people evaluate their situation because people don’t live in those other countries where inflation still remains very high.”High housing prices, inflation and interest rates are all weighing down Mr. Trudeau’s poll numbers.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressThe other big factor for Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Coletto said, is simply that many voters are tiring of a leader like him, who has been around since 2015 and led his party through three successful elections. Mr. Biden may only be in his first term as president, but he has been a national political figure since first being elected to the Senate 50 years ago.Mr. Biden’s age, 80, is also an issue. In the Times/Siena survey, 71 percent of respondents said he was “too old” to be effective as president. Only 39 percent thought that of Mr. Trump, who is 77.“Inflation kills governments plus time kills governments,” Mr. Coletto said.While the standing of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government has never before dipped this low in the polls, there have been other periods when his popularity has ebbed, only to recover. And relatively few Liberals have publicly suggested it might be time for the prime minister to step aside despite his repeated vow to fight the next election. Similarly, calls for Mr. Biden to retire from prominent Democrats remain limited.“Is the prime minister going to stay, or go?” Mr. Coletto said. “I have no idea. But where his leadership is today is a very different place than it was five months ago.”Trans CanadaNew Zealand’s curling team is living in the Chartwell Colonel Belcher Retirement Residence while it trains in Canada.Todd Korol for The New York TimesThe latest, and youngest, residents of the Chartwell Colonel Belcher Retirement Residence in Calgary are the members of New Zealand’s curling team, who have come to Canada to hone their skills.The trial of David DePape, who the police say broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoned her husband in 2022, when she was still speaker of the House, is underway. Mr. DePape, a Canadian, was living illegally in the United States at the time. His lawyer is not contesting prosecutors’ evidence.Following its bankruptcy filing, WeWork closed four Canadian locations. A Canadian real estate investor told The New York Times that the bankruptcy signified the end of projections that flexible office space would one day account for a significant portion of commercial office rentals.Marcel Dzama, the Winnipeg-born artist, spoke with Julia Halperin about his collection of 250 handmade masks.Kathleen Mansfield, a Toronto pharmacist, is among a group of people who told The Times Magazine about why they wanted space to be their final resting place.A first-class dinner menu from the Titanic dated April 11, 1912, which was found in a photo album from the 1960s that once belonged to a community historian in Dominion, Nova Scotia, is expected to sell for upward of $86,000 at auction.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      Ohio Voted to Protect Abortion Rights. Could Florida Be Next?

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      A coalition of groups collecting petition signatures for a ballot protecting abortion rights says its fund-raising got a boost after the Ohio results.Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, campaigns to protect abortion rights have galvanized voters in state after state. It has become Democrats’ most successful issue ahead of an uncertain 2024 election cycle — and their biggest hope, especially after voters in Ohio approved on Tuesday a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the State Constitution.That triumphant streak has propelled campaigns for similar abortion measures in swing, or potentially swing, states, including Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. But none might be as tantalizing a prize as Florida, which has moved increasingly out of Democrats’ grasp in electoral contests.But getting a question on next year’s ballot in the state is hardly guaranteed.Like in Ohio, Florida’s government is controlled by Republicans. Also like Ohio, Florida has put in place a six-week abortion ban, with its enactment pending approval by the state’s Supreme Court. (That case centers on Florida’s existing 15-week ban, but affirming that restriction would then trigger the six-week ban approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April.)Abortion rights supporters reacted after the ballot measure in Ohio passed. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe parallels between the two states give Florida organizers hope for success, despite steep obstacles that include a court review of the proposed ballot measure and a costly petition-gathering process. If voters in Florida get to weigh in on the abortion question, organizers say, they too are likely to want to protect their rights.“Florida has always been a deeply libertarian state,” said Anna Hochkammer, executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition. “‘Find your tribe, find your people, live your life — we’ll leave you alone.’ It’s part of Floridian culture. And Floridians reject outright that the government should be involved in these decisions. It is deeply offensive to Floridians’ sense of independence and freedom.”Since June 2022, when Roe was overturned, states have given voters a direct say on abortion access, either to protect abortion rights, weaken them or explicitly exclude them from state constitutions. Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan all voted to expand or maintain abortion rights.In Florida, a coalition of groups under the umbrella organization of Floridians Protecting Freedom, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, has collected a little more than half of the nearly 900,000 petition signatures it needs for a ballot measure that aims to limit “government interference with abortion” before a fetus is considered viable, which is often around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion was legal up to 24 weeks in Florida until last year.The coalition had collected about $9 million by the end of September but says its next report will show that more than $12 million has been raised. Most donations have come from Florida, with limited interest so far from the out-of-state donors who propelled campaigns in Ohio and elsewhere.The coalition raised more than $300,000 on Wednesday after the Ohio victory, Ms. Hochkammer said, with more people clicking through the group’s fund-raising emails or taking calls.State Senator Lori Berman of Florida speaking at a news conference in March to voice her opposition to the state’s near total abortion ban.Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated Press“The phones started ringing, and pledges started coming in,” she said. “I think that there were a lot of people that were sitting on their money, waiting to see what happened in Ohio. And we had a great day.”Among the places where volunteers and paid petition-gatherers have found eager supporters are screenings of the “Barbie” movie and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie, both of which have feminism as a key theme and strong female leads, said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.The coalition still needs to collect — and the state must validate — about 400,000 more signatures by Feb. 1, a difficult and expensive task.The ballot language must also be approved by the conservative-leaning Florida Supreme Court. The state’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, announced a challenge to the measure last month.She and several groups that oppose abortion have argued that the measure is too broad, vague and misleading. Florida requires that ballot questions be clear and limited to a single subject.“This effort to hoodwink the Florida electorate should be rebuffed,” Ms. Moody wrote in a legal brief filed Oct. 31.The ballot question, which would include a summary of the amendment that would be added to the State Constitution if the initiative passes, would read in part, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” The question does not adequately define “viability”; whether “the patient’s health” would include mental health; and who would be considered a “health care provider,” Ms. Moody argued.“It’s abortion on demand for any reason,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian group. “It’s not only extreme, but it’s deceptive — and that’s a problem.”Mr. Stemberger said there was “a very good chance” that the State Supreme Court, whose ideological balance has shifted from liberal to conservative, could strike down the amendment. If not, his organization and others have already formed a political committee, Florida Voters Against Extremism, to prepare for a campaign.“Ohio is just a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “We have to go back to the drawing board and explain to people why unborn children are valuable, why adoption is always the better option.”Unlike in Ohio, where protecting abortion rights passed with about 57 percent of the vote, Florida requires citizen-led ballot initiatives to obtain more than 60 percent of the vote to pass. A University of North Florida poll found last year that 60 percent of residents opposed the 15-week ban after they were told that it does not include exceptions for rape or incest.Ms. Hochkammer said the coalition’s polling suggested that more than 70 percent of Floridians supported the abortion rights measure, including 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of voters who supported former President Donald J. Trump.Florida voters have tended to support ballot measures championing liberal causes, even while also electing Republican leaders who in many cases later watered down or undermined the implementation of those measures once in office.Until recently, Florida was considered the nation’s largest presidential battleground, with elections decided by tiny margins and former President Barack Obama winning the state twice. But Republicans have been making gains: Mr. Trump won by more than three percentage points in 2020, and Governor DeSantis by 19 points, a landslide, last year.Still, significant citizen-led constitutional measures have done well once they have overcome the hurdles to make it onto the ballot.In 2020, voters backed a $15 hourly minimum wage — and Mr. Trump. In 2018, they voted to restore felons’ voting rights — and for Mr. DeSantis. In 2016, they voted to legalize medical marijuana — and for Mr. Trump.“We are not a deeply conservative, extremist state,” Ms. Hochkammer said. “We are a deeply gerrymandered state, and the fact that our divided election results have been skewing a certain way should not mislead people about what the political appetite is in Florida.” More

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      As Haley Rises, the Clock Is Ticking on Taking Down Trump

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      Nikki Haley has had three solid debates, has ample cash and has climbed in the polls. She’s still banking on a breakthrough to catch up to the front-runner.In the Republican nomination contest, even five-inch stilettos might not be enough to overcome the towering figure of Donald J. Trump.For a third time on Wednesday night, Nikki Haley won praise for her deft performance on a Republican primary debate stage.Over the course of the two-hour face-off, Ms. Haley displayed her foreign policy credentials, parried attacks on her record and even transformed her shoes into a campaign weapon. When Vivek Ramaswamy, Ms. Haley’s most aggressive antagonist, derided her as “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels,” Ms. Haley was ready to rise above.Literally, at least, if not figuratively.“They’re five-inch heels,” she said, standing tall in her spiky black shoes. “And they’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”Still, months of campaigning, a series of strong debate performances, healthy campaign accounts and rising numbers in surveys of early voting states haven’t been enough to put Ms. Haley within striking distance of Mr. Trump, who remains the dominant front-runner. While Ms. Haley’s support has increased, particularly in Iowa, voters have yet to flock to her candidacy in overwhelming numbers. A number of megadonors have taken a wait-and-see approach, keeping an eye on Ms. Haley but remaining on the sidelines.Now, a little less than 10 weeks before Iowa voters cast the first ballots in the caucuses there, the clock is ticking.“The momentum is clearly there, but momentum is a very elusive thing,” said Kevin Madden, a former Republican operative who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 and 2008 presidential campaigns. “How does she turn it into an avalanche — 1,236 delegates to secure the nomination at the convention? The blueprint for that has yet to be unveiled.”Ms. Haley’s backers say that Wednesday’s performance should help her continue to make inroads — drawing major donors and gaining support among voters eager for an alternative to Mr. Trump.Fred Zeidman, a Texas businessman who has been one of Ms. Haley’s biggest fund-raisers since the start, said he fielded calls on Wednesday night from people who were “ready to get out their checkbooks.”Onstage, she showed her “substantive” knowledge on policy issues and kept her cool “even when her mettle was tested by Vivek,” he said.Beyond her confrontations with Mr. Ramaswamy, Ms. Haley seized opportunities to demonstrate her foreign policy experience and political acumen and continue making her general election pitch. While her male opponents tried to soften their tone on abortion — the debate came a day after Democrats successfully leveraged the issue against Republican candidates in the off-year elections this week — Ms. Haley simply repeated the conciliatory message of compassion she has been pushing for months.And when it came to international affairs, she offered a rejoinder that none of her rivals could match. When Mr. DeSantis said that as president, he “would be telling” Benjamin Netanyahu to eliminate Hamas after the horrific Oct. 7 attack, Ms. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, immediately made it clear she had already delivered the message to the Israeli prime minister.“The first thing I said to him when it happened was I said, ‘Finish them,’” Haley said.Yet Ms. Haley faces a significant climb. One recent poll of Iowa had Ms. Haley tied at 16 percent support with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — with Mr. Trump 27 points ahead. Part of her challenge is the crowded field, which has made it more difficult for any single candidate to consolidate support. And plenty of donors, of course, have stuck with Mr. Trump: On Thursday, Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot founder, who had not committed to matching his previous financial support for the former president, announced he would be backing his third presidential bid.Ms. Haley’s supporters say that the race remains fluid and that there is still time for the field to winnow into a Haley-Trump matchup in South Carolina, her home state and the third on the nominating calendar. They believe that Ms. Haley can emerge as the central alternative to Mr. Trump, even if her main primary rival — Mr. DeSantis — remains in the race.A close second-place finish — or even capturing the biggest vote share in Iowa after Mr. Trump — could catapult Ms. Haley into New Hampshire and the contests that follow, attracting fresh support and prompting some rivals to bow out, argue her aides and surrogates.Ms. Haley’s team has been trying to leverage her unique profile. The only woman on the stage, she stands out by definition.Campaign aides and surrogates describe women as some of her most critical enthusiastic boosters, donors and volunteers. “Women for Nikki” groups have been expanding across the country since her campaign began in February, largely based on word-of-mouth and friends reaching out to friends, campaign aides and volunteers said. They now include spinoffs for young mothers, students and military spouses.“This is being driven by a momentum because of who she is and how she connects with people,” said Jennifer Nassour, a regional co-chairwoman of the “Women for Nikki” coalition. On the campaign trail, both men and women are quick to cite their excitement for the possibility of the first female president, but they argue that Ms. Haley’s qualifications, competence and projection of calmness in the face of chaos are driving their support.“I want to see a woman that will fight for our country and put our country first, and that’s what she did when she was at the U.N., and I believe that’s what she will do,” said Noel Searles, 75, a retired sales manager who recently listened to her speak at a diner in Londonderry, N.H.Yet, in some ways, Ms. Haley has been caught in a circular cycle. Some of the Republican Party’s largest donors have been cautious, expressing interest but wanting to see if she can capture enough support among primary voters to make a serious run at Mr. Trump. Supporters of Ms. Haley argue that the backing of major party donors could help her consolidate support by nudging some rivals toward the exits.As the race heads toward Iowa, one advantage Ms. Haley has is money. Between July 1 and the end of September — the most recent numbers available in federal campaign finance filings — she raised $11 million across her political committees, a steady increase over the two previous quarters.What’s more, her campaign has kept costs low: In the third quarter, her campaign spent $3.5 million, about 43 cents of every dollar it took in. That is a marked contrast with Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign, which spent $2.70 of every dollar it received, and Mr. DeSantis’s campaign, whose spending slowed over the quarter but still leveled out spending nearly every dollar it took in.As of Thursday, the campaign had not itself bought any advertising time. (A super PAC backing Ms. Haley has spent more than $22 million on advertising in early primary states, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.)There are some signs major donors are turning their attention to her. Harlan Crow, a wealthy real estate developer, hosted a fund-raiser for her in October with well-connected real estate and oil and gas donors in attendance. Former Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois, a top giver to Mr. DeSantis, transferred his allegiance to Ms. Haley after the first debate. Last week, one of former Vice President Mike Pence’s top donors — the Arkansas poultry magnate Ron Cameron — said he would back her, after Mr. Pence dropped out of the race.Arun Agarwal, a Haley donor and textiles executive in Dallas, expressed optimism more key backers would follow. He said he received several texts from major Texas donors as the debate progressed asking what they could do to help. Mr. Agarwal added that he had seen this slow and steady rise before: He first reached out to Ms. Haley sometime around 2004 when he came across a news article of her long-shot bid for the South Carolina State House. To his surprise, she won that race.There were such “high expectations going into last night and she met them,” he said. “We need to get off the sidelines and start supporting what we believe in.” More

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      What Democrats Can Learn From Joe Biden and Poll Numbers

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      Well, this week has been an emotional roller coaster. On Sunday, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed President Biden behind Donald Trump in a bunch of battleground states, sending Democrats into a tizzy. Then on Tuesday, voters handed Democrats a string of election victories — the kind they have enjoyed in election after election since Trump was inaugurated in 2017.What’s going on here? Are the polls wrong? Are the Democrats strong but Biden weak? Let me offer a few thoughts:Americans increasingly use polls to vent, not to vote. During the 20th century, when Americans were in a better mood about the state of the country, presidents generally had high approval ratings and broad support during their time in office. Since 2003, the national mood has grown unbelievably sour, and since 2005, sitting presidents have had underwater approval ratings during about 77 percent of their terms.As the progressive political strategist Michael Podhorzer argues, a lot of this negativity is not a reflection on particular politicians. It is “indicative of broad and intense dissatisfaction with our governing institutions and political parties.” These days, when pollsters call people a year away from the election, they take the opportunity to lash out at whoever is in the White House. It’s their way of venting and saying they want change.This does not mean that, when it comes time to cast ballots and actually pick a president, their preferences will be the same. “Americans know the difference between answering a survey and casting a ballot, even if the polling industrial complex and pundits don’t,” Podhorzer writes. George W. Bush and Barack Obama had periods of low poll numbers but still won re-election when voters had to make an actual decision.Podhorzer notes that since 2017, there have been significant anti-MAGA majorities pretty much every time voters went to the voting booths. There’s a good chance that that anti-MAGA majority will still be there when voters go to the ballot box in 2024. After all, Trump’s favorability ratings haven’t gone up. They’re lower now than they were through most of his presidency — and are basically at the same low level as Biden’s.Biden doesn’t have to become magically popular; he just has to remind the tens of millions of Americans who voted against MAGA multiple times before why they need to vote against MAGA again, just as Democrats did in 2020, 2022 and, to some degree, 2023.The median voter rule still applies. The median voter rule says parties win when they stay close to the center of the electorate. It’s one of the most boring rules in all of politics, and sometimes people on the left and the right pretend they can ignore it, but they usually end up paying a price.The Democrats’ strong showing in elections across the country this week proves how powerful the median voter rule is, especially when it comes to the abortion issue. Abortion was not always a great issue for Democrats. But it became one because of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the subsequent Republican legislation to severely restrict abortion. This year, Democrats and their supporters effectively played to median voters, with, for example, an ad in Ohio in which a father who grew up in the church castigated the G.O.P. for not allowing abortion exceptions for rape and the health of the mother, and one in Kentucky in which a woman who was raped by her stepfather noted that she would have had to carry the baby to term under the extreme Republican laws.Dull but effective government can win, and circus politics is failing. The Trumpian G.O.P. has built its political strategy around culture war theatrics — be they anti-trans or anti-woke. That culture war strategy may get you hits on right-wing media, but it has flopped for Ron DeSantis, flopped for Vivek Ramaswamy, and it flopped Tuesday night on the ballot. Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, did so well in Kentucky in part because he stayed close to the practicalities, focusing on boring old governance issues like jobs, health care costs and investment in infrastructure. He also demonstrated a Christian faith that was the opposite of Christian nationalism. As he told E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post, “For me, faith is about uniting all people. It says all children are children of God. And if you’re truly living out your faith, you’re not playing into these anger and hatred games.”Remember that none of us know what the political climate will be like a year from now. Neither you nor I have any clue how some set of swing voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are going to see things in 12 months, or what events will intervene in the meantime. Nobody does.It’s better to ask the simple question: Do I think Joe Biden is doing a good job? I look around and conclude that he is. The economic trends are good for average Americans. The U.S. economy grew at a torrid 4.9 percent annualized rate in the third quarter of this year, by far the highest cumulative, inflation-adjusted growth in the Group of 7. The prime age employment rate is near record highs and inflation is down to 3.7 percent.Household debt is way down. The average family’s net worth increased by an inflation-adjusted 37 percent between 2019 and 2022. The gains were broadly felt: Income increased almost across the board, benefiting urban and rural people, homeowners and renters, white people and Black people.The mood is so glum, many voters don’t yet perceive these improvements, reeling as they are from the recent bout of inflation. Will they come to appreciate all the positive trends this time next year? I have no idea, and neither do you. It can take a long time for perceptions to catch up with economic realities. The only thing we can do is put our faith in the idea that good policy deserves our support.I spoke this week to Mitch Landrieu, who oversees Biden’s infrastructure initiative. It was like talking to someone from a saner epoch. He described hundreds of productive meetings he’s had over the past year with Republican and Democratic governors and mayors to get over 40,000 different projects off the ground — roads, clean water and all the rest. “It’s gone swimmingly well, it really has. This is not a conservative or liberal thing,” Landrieu said. And the scope is huge: nearly $400 billion has gone into investments. “When history renders its verdict, this will be comparable to Works Progress Administration, or the Eisenhower highway construction program or rural electrification,” Landrieu added.I’m not saying this election won’t be close. Democrats don’t like that Biden is so old, and he’s not getting younger. I’m just saying he has a path to victory. As the former Obama adviser David Axelrod has been saying, Biden has to make this a comparison election — him versus Trump. And I’d add that he has to make this a prosaic election. It’s not which of these two men do you dislike least, it’s which set of goods do you want to buy: low prescription drug prices or higher ones, some student debt forgiveness or none, abundant infrastructure jobs or few? If Biden can make this about concrete benefits to everyday Americans, I suspect he’ll be fine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Biden Campaign Wants Democrats to Calm Down

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicElisa Gutierrez and Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOver the course of a few days this week, we got two pretty remarkable data points for the 2024 election. On Tuesday, Democrats had a very good night.Gov. Andy Beshear was re-elected in Kentucky. In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that established a right to abortion in the State Constitution. In Virginia, Democrats took control of the state legislature, flipping the House of Delegates and preserving control of the Senate.Just a few days earlier, though, The New York Times and Siena College released a new poll of battleground states. Former President Donald J. Trump was leading President Biden in five out of the six states where voters were surveyed. What to make of bad news for the president followed by good news for his party just a few days later?It could mean that while Democrats are doing better on the grass-roots level, the president has a unique weakness with the voters he needs — specifically regarding his age.And if that is the case, what is the Biden campaign doing about it?The first place to go for an answer is Wilmington, Del., and the Biden campaign headquarters to hear directly from Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, about how the campaign views challenging poll numbers — and the difficulties ahead.Beyond the view inside the campaign, we also hear from Jim Messina, a longtime Democratic strategist, who helped re-elect an incumbent president when he managed Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.About ‘The Run-Up’The 2024 presidential election will be one for the record books. If President Biden succeeds in his re-election bid, he will be the oldest person to occupy that office. On the Republican side, Mr. Trump is dominating the crowded primary field — despite four criminal indictments. To make sense of it all, and to understand how voters around the country are feeling, “The Run-Up” and its host, Astead W. Herndon, will be with you every step of the way. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      The Joe Biden Re-election Dilemma

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      Joe Biden should be far and away the favorite to win re-election in 2024.The American economy continues to gather strength. He has a solid string of policy victories. And his main Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is lost in a jungle of legal troubles.The Democratic Party continues to score electoral victories as voters coalesce on the issue of abortion rights, as we saw in Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky on Tuesday night. But it is not clear at this point whether Biden’s fate is linked to down-ballot candidates or issues.In Ohio, where abortion access and marijuana legalization won, and in Pennsylvania, where a Democratic State Supreme Court justice won, Trump appears to hold an edge in several polls. Biden is polling ahead in Virginia, where Democrats flipped control of the House of Delegates and maintained control of the Senate, but it’s also a state where Democrats have won the last several presidential elections.And while abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats, it’s not clear yet if it will be on the ballot next November in any swing states — Arizona is one where it might be — or if Biden will effectively capitalize on the issue.Taken together, this is why Biden’s continued struggles in the polls are so worrisome. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday found Biden trailing Trump in five of six swing states. We’re a year out from Election Day, but Biden’s relative weakness compared to Trump’s position is still shocking.The poll would be easier to dismiss if it were the only one showing Biden’s weakness against Trump, but it’s not. Recent polls from CBS News and ABC News/Ipsos also reveal troubling signs for Biden.David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, posted on social media on Sunday that if Biden continues to run, he will surely be the Democratic nominee in 2024. But, Axelrod said: “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” because “the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.”Some understandably thought that Axelrod was suggesting that Biden drop out of the race, but Axelrod himself insisted that was not what he was saying.I don’t view Axelrod’s comments as controversial. They’re not a dig at Biden for his performance. It is ridiculous to ask people to ignore the erosion of Biden’s support among demographic groups that he must secure to win re-election.The risk of a Biden loss is real, and no amount of political ego or posturing can disguise that.According to the Times/Siena poll, Biden is losing ground among younger, nonwhite and less engaged voters.At The Times’s Nate Cohn put it, “Long-festering vulnerabilities on his age, economic stewardship, and appeal to young, Black and Hispanic voters have grown severe enough to imperil his re-election chances.”The economic piece is a conundrum. The economy is improving, but many people don’t see it or feel it, and they blame Biden. There is a clear disconnect in the data. And it is possible that people are also injecting a more general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country into their feelings about the economy. Either way, this may be fixable.The age issue, which I view as largely a manufactured one, is one that has calcified. Unlike feelings about the economy, which change as conditions shift, Biden is only getting older.What is his campaign going to do? Put him in more jeans and rolled-up dress shirts? Have him jog up to the mic at rallies? Make sure that he appears tanned and rested? Every scenario designed to signal youth and virility has the downside potential of looking ridiculous.I still remember the cringe-worthy moment in 2019 when an Iowa voter raised questions about Biden’s age, and Biden responded by challenging the man to a push-up contest. No more of that, I beg you.Biden is an elderly man, yes. And he will look and behave in ways that demonstrate that. But he seems to me to be handling his job well now and capable of continuing. The irony is that Trump is also elderly, but the immaturity in his defiance, anger and petulance can read as young.Lastly, the minority outreach question is also more complicated than it might appear. I sense a growing dissatisfaction with Biden, particularly among young minorities, and the war in Gaza is only making it worse. The passions are so high now that I think this tension will remain even after the war ends.Also, both parties and all demographics have segments that are less engaged and informed, but those groups are also open to drift, even if in the end they would be voting against their own interests.Recently, the rising rapper Sexyy Red said in an interview that “the hood” started to love Trump once he started “getting Black people out of jail and giving people that free money” in the form of stimulus checks.Never mind that Trump and Republicans opposed those stimulus checks and Democrats pushed them — that “free money” is still associated in the minds of many with Trump.This just underscores how Biden has trouble on both ends of the engagement spectrum among some young voters: Some of the highly engaged ones criticize him for the U.S.’s actions in the war in Gaza, and some of those less engaged mythologize his predecessor.It is possible that more and better outreach and engagement could change some of these realities, but make no mistake: We are in a very risky situation where the one person likely standing between Trump — and Trump’s destructive impulses — and the White House is a president who is limping into a re-election bid.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More