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    Trump’s Verbal Slips Could Weaken His Attacks on Biden’s Age

    Donald Trump, 77, has relentlessly attacked President Biden, 80, as too old for office. But the former president himself has had a series of gaffes that go beyond his usual freewheeling style.One of Donald J. Trump’s new comedic bits at his rallies features him impersonating the current commander in chief with an over-the-top caricature mocking President Biden’s age.With droopy eyelids and mouth agape, Mr. Trump stammers and mumbles. He squints. His arms flap. He shuffles his feet and wanders laggardly across the stage. A burst of laughter and applause erupts from the crowd as he feigns confusion by turning and pointing to invisible supporters, as if he does not realize his back is to them.But his recent campaign events have also featured less deliberate stumbles. Mr. Trump has had a string of unforced gaffes, garble and general disjointedness that go beyond his usual discursive nature, and that his Republican rivals are pointing to as signs of his declining performance.On Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, Mr. Trump wrongly thanked supporters of Sioux Falls, a South Dakota town about 75 miles away, correcting himself only after being pulled aside onstage and informed of the error.It was strikingly similar to a fictional scene that Mr. Trump acted out earlier this month, pretending to be Mr. Biden mistaking Iowa for Idaho and needing an aide to straighten him out.In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also told supporters not to vote, and claimed to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election. He has praised the collective intellect of an Iranian-backed militant group that has long been an enemy of both Israel and the United States, and repeatedly mispronounced the name of the armed group that rules Gaza.“This is a different Donald Trump than 2015 and ’16 — lost the zip on his fastball,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida told reporters last week while campaigning in New Hampshire.“In 2016, he was freewheeling, he’s out there barnstorming the country,” Mr. DeSantis added. “Now, it’s just a different guy. And it’s sad to see.”It is unclear if Mr. Trump’s recent slips are connected to his age. He has long relied on an unorthodox speaking style that has served as one of his chief political assets, establishing him, improbably, among the most effective communicators in American politics.But as the 2024 race for the White House heats up, Mr. Trump’s increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans’ most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Mr. Biden is too old to be president.Mr. Biden, a grandfather of seven, is 80. Mr. Trump, who has 10 grandchildren, is 77.Even though only a few years separate the two men in their golden years, voters view their vigor differently. Recent polls have found that roughly two out of three voters say Mr. Biden is too old to serve another four-year term, while only about half say the same about Mr. Trump.If that gap starts to narrow, it’s Mr. Trump who has far more to lose in a general-election matchup.Mr. Trump and President Biden are the front-runners for each party’s nomination, setting up the likelihood of a 2020 rematch. Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesAccording to a previously unreported finding in an August survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 43 percent of U.S. voters said both men were “too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president.” Among those voters, 61 percent said they planned to vote for Mr. Biden, compared with 13 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump.Last week, similar findings emerged in a Franklin & Marshall College poll of registered voters in Pennsylvania, one of the most closely watched 2024 battlegrounds.According to the poll, 43 percent of Pennsylvanians said both men were “too old to serve another term.” An analysis of that data for The New York Times showed that Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump among those voters by 66 percent to 11 percent. Among all voters in the state, the two men were in a statistical tie.Berwood Yost, the director of the Franklin & Marshall poll, said that Mr. Biden’s wide lead among voters who were worried about both candidates’ ages could be explained partly by the fact that Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to identify age as a problem for their party’s leader. “The age issue is one that if Trump gets tarred with the same brush as Biden, it really hurts him,” Mr. Yost said.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, noted that the former president maintained a commanding lead in Republican primary polls and that in the general election, several recent polls had shown Mr. Trump with slight leads over Mr. Biden.“None of these false narratives has changed the dynamics of the race at all — President Trump still dominates, because people know he’s the strongest candidate,” Mr. Cheung said. “The contrast is that Biden is falling onstage, mumbling his way through a speech, being confused on where to walk, and tripping on the steps of Air Force One. There’s no correcting that, and that will be seared into voter’s minds.”Mr. Trump’s rhetorical skills have long relied on a mix of brute force and a seemingly preternatural instinct for the imprecise. That beguiling combination — honed from a lifetime of real estate negotiations, New York tabloid backbiting and prime-time reality TV stardom — often means that voters hear what they want to hear from him.Mr. Trump’s speaking style has often meant that his supporters, or voters who are open to backing him, hear what they want to hear from him. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesTrump supporters leave his speeches energized. Undecided voters who are open to his message can find what they’re looking for in his pitch. Opponents are riled, and when they furiously accuse him of something they heard but that he didn’t quite precisely say, Mr. Trump turns the criticism into a data point that he’s unfairly persecuted — and the entire cycle begins anew.But Mr. Trump’s latest missteps aren’t easily classified as calculated vagueness.During a Sept. 15 speech in Washington, a moment after declaring Mr. Biden “cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead,” the former president warned that America was on the verge of World War II, which ended in 1945.In the same speech, he boasted about presidential polls showing him leading Mr. Obama, who is not, in fact, running for an illegal third term in office. He erroneously referred to Mr. Obama again during an anecdote about winning the 2016 presidential race.“We did it with Obama,” Mr. Trump said. “We won an election that everybody said couldn’t be won, we beat …” He paused for a beat as he seemed to realize his mistake. “Hillary Clinton.”At a Florida rally on Oct. 11, days after a brutal terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israelis, Mr. Trump criticized the country for being unprepared, lashing out at its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Trump appears to have soured on Mr. Netanyahu, once a close ally, after the Israeli leader congratulated Mr. Biden for winning the 2020 election.In the same speech, Mr. Trump relied on an inaccurate timeline of events in the Middle East to criticize Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign affairs and, in the process, drew headlines for praising Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group.Last week, while speaking to supporters at a rally in New Hampshire, Mr. Trump praised Viktor Orban, the strongman prime minister of Hungary, but referred to him as “the leader of Turkey,” a country hundreds of miles away. He quickly corrected himself.At another point in the same speech, Mr. Trump jumped into a confusing riff that ended with him telling supporters, “You don’t have to vote — don’t worry about voting,” adding, “We’ve got plenty of votes.”Mr. Cheung, the Trump campaign spokesman, said the former president was “clearly talking about election integrity and making sure only legal votes are counted.”Under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has been dealt a series of electoral defeats since 2016. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn a speech on Saturday, Mr. Trump sounded as if he were talking about hummus when he mispronounced Hamas (huh-maas), the Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip and carried out one of the largest attacks on Israel in decades on Oct. 7.The former president’s pronunciation drew the attention of the Biden campaign, which posted the video clip on social media, noting that Mr. Trump sounded “confused.”But even Republican rivals have sensed an opening on the age issue against Mr. Trump, who has maintained an unshakable hold on the party despite a political record that would in years past have compelled conservatives to consider another standard-bearer. Mr. Trump lost control of Congress as president; was voted out of the White House; failed to help deliver a “red wave” of victories in the midterm elections last year; and, this year, drew 91 felony charges over four criminal cases.Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former governor of South Carolina, opened her presidential bid this year by calling for candidates 75 or older to pass mental competency tests, a push she has renewed in recent weeks.On Saturday, Ms. Haley attacked Mr. Trump over his comments about Mr. Netanyahu and Hezbollah, suggesting in a speech to Jewish donors in Las Vegas that the former president did not have the faculties to return to the White House.“Let me remind you,” she added with a small smile. “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”Jazmine Ulloa More

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    Trump Is Still Far Ahead in Iowa Poll, With Haley Matching DeSantis for 2nd

    Former President Donald J. Trump leads his closest competitors by 27 percentage points in a new Des Moines Register poll, but Nikki Haley has surged to tie Ron DeSantis.Former President Donald J. Trump still has a huge lead in Iowa, according to a poll released Monday, but Nikki Haley has surged to tie Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for a distant second place.Mr. Trump has the support of 43 percent of voters likely to participate in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses in January, the new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll found — about the same as the 42 percent he had in the same poll in August.Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, are tied at 16 percent. That is a decline of three percentage points for Mr. DeSantis and an increase of 10 points for Ms. Haley, driven in part by increasing support for Ms. Haley among independent voters.The poll was conducted by J. Ann Selzer and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.Behind Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina at 7 percent, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at 4 percent, and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota at 3 percent. None of those candidates have moved significantly since the August poll.The new survey was conducted before former Vice President Mike Pence dropped out of the race on Saturday. He had only 2 percent support — down from 6 percent in August — and his supporters were redistributed to their second-choice candidates in the final results. More

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    Why Less Engaged Voters Are Biden’s Biggest Problem

    His weakness is concentrated among those who stayed home in the midterms but who may show up in 2024.Higher turnout is not necessarily positive for Democrats. Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesIf you’re looking to reconcile the surprisingly strong Democratic showing in the midterm elections with President Biden’s weakness in the polls today, consider the political attitudes of two groups of respondents from New York Times/Siena College polls over the last year.First, let’s consider the 2,775 respondents from Group A:It’s relatively old: 31 percent are 65 or older; 9 percent are under 30.It’s split politically: 33 percent identify as Republicans compared with 31 percent who consider themselves Democrats. About 72 percent are white. Black and Hispanic respondents are at 9 percent each.It’s relatively well educated: 41 percent have a college degree. Next, let’s look at the 1,534 respondents from Group B:It’s relatively young: 26 percent are 18 to 29; 17 percent are 65 or older.It’s relatively Democratic: 26 percent identify as Democrats, compared with 19 percent who identify as Republicans. Only 54 percent are white; 13 percent are Black and 19 percent are Hispanic.Just 28 percent have a college degree.Mr. Biden probably won Group B by a comfortable margin in the 2020 presidential election, whether based on fancy statistical models or based on what those respondents told us themselves.But it’s actually Group B that backs Donald J. Trump in Times/Siena polling over the last year. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden, 41-39, among Group B respondents, while Group A backs Mr. Biden, 47-43.OK, now the reveal:“Group A” is people who voted in the 2022 midterm elections.“Group B” is people who did not vote in the 2022 midterms.Is this a surprising finding? Yes. But it also makes sense of a lot of what’s going on in the polling today.Mr. Biden may be weak among young, Black and Hispanic voters today, but that weakness is almost entirely concentrated among the voters who stayed home last November. As a consequence, Democrats paid little to no price for it in the midterms, even as polls of all registered voters or adults show Mr. Biden struggling mightily among these same groups against Mr. Trump.These less engaged voters might just be the single biggest problem facing Mr. Biden in his pursuit of re-election, the Times/Siena data suggests. If there’s any good news for Mr. Biden, it’s that his challenge is concentrated among voters who still consider themselves Democrats — a group that, in theory, ought to be open to returning to the president’s side.Whom Voters Say They’ll Support in 2024 More

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    An Anti-Obesity Drug and Cultural Stigmas

    More from our inbox:Seeking More Insight Into Republican VotersScandal at Liberty UniversityFree Analysis? Alice Rosati/Trunk ArchiveTo the Editor:Re “Ozempic Can’t Fix What Our Culture Has Broken,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom (column, Oct. 15):By “broken” in the headline, the column implies that we still perpetuate a cultural bias against obese people.Yes, we do stigmatize fat people. I’m fat. What’s also broken, though, is our habit of blaming society for failing to accept us, and medical institutions for failing to fix us, before we take an honest look at our own choices contributing to becoming unhealthy in the first place.Clearly obesity is an epidemic with complex environmental, economic and genetic factors. But for most, physical activity and healthy eating are still nature’s best prevention and remedy. Unlike Ozempic, they’re not a sexy quick fix. They’re work.Maybe healthy eating and activity are just too simple. But viewing ourselves first as victims of unfair systems is also not the answer.Society will always judge. Institutions will always be profit-driven. Blaming is easy. Honest self-assessment and changing habits are hard.Leslie DunnCarmel, Calif.To the Editor:Tressie McMillan Cottom’s fine column covers almost all the issues that I, as a slightly overweight but not obese woman, have with the new weight-loss drugs.But one issue needs to be addressed: What will we think about and how will we treat people (women) who choose not to take this drug, for whatever reason? Maybe it’s because it’s too expensive; maybe because it’s a commitment to a lifetime of taking the drug; maybe it’s just, amazingly, because they are comfortable in their rounded, plush bodies, and don’t desire to change them. Will they face even more opprobrium for that choice than they already do?I’ve spent the last 66 years (and counting) being told that my body isn’t “right,” by doctors, family and society. I’ve just finally come to terms with the fact that I’m stuck in it, and I’m lucky to be able to wake up every morning and get out of bed. Isn’t that enough?Naomi Weisberg SiegelPittsburghTo the Editor:While I agree with the author on many points, one point she didn’t address effectively is that Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs help cover up a main culprit that is causing our obesity: the U.S. food industry and “ultraprocessed foods.”Up until about the 1980s the U.S. didn’t have such a serious obesity problem. Then sugar began being added to everything, along with other things not found in any garden or kitchen.Dr. McMillan Cottom points out that people can be obese and be healthy, but that is not true of most obese people. Ozempic was created because of rampant diabetes in the U.S., the risk of which is increased by eating ultraprocessed foods.Our food industry is killing us with slow deaths from chronic diseases.Deborah JerardMontpelier, Vt.The writer is a pediatrician.Seeking More Insight Into Republican VotersWhy These 11 Republican Voters Like Trump But Might Bail on HimThe group discusses what it would take for a candidate other than Trump to win their vote.To the Editor:Re “Could These Republican Voters Abandon Trump?” (“America in Focus” series, Opinion, Oct. 22):This piece was disturbing but unenlightening about why voters support Donald Trump.Focus groups are supposed to probe for deeper understanding of participants’ views, yet your moderator accepted answers without delving into how participants reached those views.For example, when Cristian said about Donald Trump that “he does get things done,” the moderator could have asked for specifics. It would have been an interesting answer because Mr. Trump actually got very little done.The most glaring omission was Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Do participants agree with Mr. Trump? Where do they get their news? Does this issue even matter to them?We have known for months that Mr. Trump maintains strong voter support. We might have gotten some insight into why had the moderators asked more clarifying questions.Ann LaubachAustin, TexasTo the Editor:First, I will applaud both Kristen Soltis Anderson for her skilled questions and moderation, as well as Patrick Healy and the Times Opinion team for sticking with your amazing series, most recently “Could These Republican Voters Abandon Trump?” Fascinating stuff.But just like the infamous CNN town hall with Donald Trump, it leaves an urgent set of questions. Mainly these:1. What about the criminal cases against Mr. Trump?2. What about climate change and the green agenda?Without understanding in depth these 11 Republicans on these topics, I just don’t see how I can evaluate. Of course, I recognize that these individuals have most likely completely dismissed these entire areas of thought. Nonetheless, to understand the situation in my country, I need to see what rationales they are using to do that.George OdellNewburyport, Mass.Scandal at Liberty University Julia Rendleman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Worst Scandal in American Higher Education,” by David French (column, Oct. 23):Thank you to Mr. French for bringing the truly appalling behavior of Liberty “University” officials to our attention. Yet while he reports that the $37.5 million fine Liberty might face would be “unprecedented,” I can’t help but wonder why the Department of Education wouldn’t strip Liberty of its accreditation altogether, making it ineligible to receive federal money.Such a move is long overdue, and not just because Liberty has lied about campus crime and pressured victims of sexual assault to stay quiet. Liberty, and a host of other Christian institutions, are not colleges in the critical sense. These are places where answers precede questions, where intellectual exploration is hemmed in by theological dogma, and where basic tenets of academic freedom are treated as optional.Why should taxpayers be funding education at such places at all?Steven ConnYellow Springs, OhioThe writer is a professor of history at Miami University.Free Analysis?James AlbonTo the Editor:“How Do You Charge a Friend for a Professional Favor?” (Business, nytimes.com, Oct. 21): Another favor-asking situation that commonly occurs is asking physicians, be they friends or a recent acquaintance at a social event, for free medical opinions or even advice. The many ways of handling those situations would warrant an entire New York Times article.There is another common experience that occurs when one is introduced to someone as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst or therapist in nonprofessional settings.Such introductions often evoke the question, “Are you analyzing me?” To which I almost always respond, “Not if you’re not paying me.” And we move on.Jack DrescherNew YorkThe writer, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is past president of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry. More

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    ‘Chaos Doesn’t Scare Me. American Decline Does.’

    Jim Jordan’s bid last week to become speaker of the House — together with the withdrawal on Tuesday of Thomas Emmer from his campaign for the same job — revealed not only how far House Republicans have moved to the right, but also how weak the intraparty forces for moderation have become.The full House, including all 212 Democrats, rejected Jordan in the first floor vote, but 90 percent of Republicans backed the election-denying Trump avatar.Minutes before Emmer withdrew from the race yesterday, Politico reported that Donald Trump told an associate, “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.” It was, according to Politico, a reflection of Trump’s veto power among House Republicans — “that while Trump may not be able to elevate someone to the post — his earlier choice for the job, Jordan, flopped — he can ensure that a person doesn’t get it.”Lee Drutman, a political scientist and senior fellow at New America, published a piece on Oct. 20 on his Substack, “The U.S. House Has Sailed Into Dangerously Uncharted Territory. There’s No Going Back.”“Republicans have moved far to the right and polarization is at record highs,” Druckman wrote, citing a measure of ideological polarization between House Democrats and Republicans known as DWNominate which shows House Republicans moving steadily to the right, starting in 1968, reaching a level in 2022 substantially higher than at any point in time since 1880.House Democrats, in contrast, moved very slightly to the left over the same 1968-2022 period.I asked Drutman whether he thought House Republicans could move further right. He replied by email:Hard to say. We keep thinking the G.O.P. can’t move any further to the right and still win nationally, and yet, when more than 90 percent of districts are safe, and the Democratic Party is equally unpopular, and there are only two parties. the G.O.P. can win in too many places just by not being the Democrats.In 2022, Drutman continued, “the G.O.P. definitely paid a small but significant MAGA penalty. So I want to say there are limits, and that I really do hope we are close to reaching them. But I wouldn’t bank on that hope.”For those banking on hope, a closer examination of the Oct. 17 ballot I mentioned earlier, when Jordan won the votes of 200 of the 221 Republican members of the House, may dampen optimism.Not only did the Republican Caucus overwhelmingly back Jordan, but the intraparty forces that would normally press for centrist policies failed to do so.There are 18 Republicans who represent districts President Biden carried in 2020. These members, more than others, were forced to choose between voting for Jordan and facing sharp criticism in their districts, or voting against him and facing a potential primary challenger.This group voted two to one (12-6) for Jordan, deciding, in effect, that the threat of a primary challenge was more dangerous to their political futures than the fallout in their Democratic-leaning districts from voting for Jordan.Or take the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which describes its members as “tired of the obstructionism in Washington where partisan politics is too often prioritized over governing and what is best for the country.” Jordan’s approach to legislation and policymaking embodies what the problem solvers are tired of.Despite that, the Republican members of the caucus voted decisively for Jordan, 21-8, including the co-chairman of the caucus — Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Tom Kean, the son and namesake of the distinctly moderate former governor of New JerseyIn a statement posted on the Problem Solvers’ website, Kean declared that he joined the group “to help find solutions for families and businesses in New Jersey. Every day of gridlock in Washington is another day that issues impacting my constituents at home go unaddressed.”A third overlapping group, The Republican Governance Group, would, in normal times, be a bastion of opposition to Jordan. The governance group calls for “common-sense legislation on issues including health care, energy, infrastructure and work force development” and its members “represent the most marginal, swing districts, and are ranked among the most bipartisan and most effective lawmakers on Capitol Hill.”The conference declares that it “needs to lead in a time when partisan gridlock often derails progress.”How did its members vote on Jordan? More than three quarters, 32, voted to make Jordan speaker; 10 voted against him.In the middle of the weeklong Jordan-for-speaker saga, Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic, wrote in “The Threat to Democracy Is Coming From Inside the U.S. House” that win or lose,Jordan’s rise, like Trump’s own commanding lead in the 2024 GOP presidential race, provides more evidence that for the first time since the Civil War, the dominant faction in one of America’s two major parties is no longer committed to the principles of democracy as the U.S. has known them.Each time the Republican Party has had an opportunity to distance itself from Trump, Brownstein continued,It has roared past the exit ramp and reaffirmed its commitment. At each moment of crisis for him, the handful of Republicans who condemned his behavior were swamped by his fervid supporters until resistance in the party crumbled.Earlier this week, Nate Cohn, a Times colleague, wrote in “Fight for Speaker Reveals Four Types of House Republicans”:Mr. Jordan fell short of winning the gavel three times. But his failed bid nonetheless revealed that the ultraconservative faction of congressional Republicans is larger in number and potentially more broadly acceptable to mainstream congressional Republicans than might have been known otherwise.An examination of the votes, Cohn continued, suggeststhat nearly half of congressional Republicans are sympathetic to Mr. Jordan and the conservative right wing, putting anti-establishment outsiders within striking distance of becoming the predominant faction in the House Republican conference. It suggests that the party’s right wing could, under circumstances not necessarily too different from those today, make a serious bid for House leadership — and win.The analyses above focus on the 90 percent of Republicans who voted for Jordan as evidence of the party’s rightward shift.There is an alternative approach: to focus on the 20-plus dissenters. This approach leads to different conclusions.An Oct. 19 Times article by my news-side colleague Catie Edmondson, for example, was headlined, “Mainstream Republicans, ‘Squishes’ No More, Dig in Against Jordan.”Focusing on the small group of Republicans who rejected Jordan, Edmondson wrote:In a remarkable reversal of roles, a group of roughly 20 veteran Republicans, including institutionalists and lawmakers in politically competitive districts, are flexing their muscles against Mr. Jordan’s candidacy. Their choice to do so has prolonged an extraordinary period of paralysis in the House, which began more than two weeks ago when the hard right deposed Kevin McCarthy as speaker. It has continued as Republicans wage an extraordinary feud over who should replace him.The next day, a Washington Post article by Jacqueline Alemany, “Concerns About Jordan’s Election Denialism Flare During Failed Bid for Speaker,” made the case that Jordan’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election proved to be a significant factor in his defeat.Alemany wrote:As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) waged his battle to become House speaker, some House Republicans were uncomfortable with the possibility of having an election denier occupying the most powerful legislative seat in the U.S. government heading into a presidential election year.I asked Matthew Green, a political scientist at Catholic University, whether it was more significant that House Republicans could not come up with enough votes to push either Steve Scalise or Jordan over the top or that both Scalise and Jordan actually received plus or minus 200 votes each? He emailed back:I think it’s more significant that neither Scalise nor Jordan could get the votes they needed to be elected Speaker. It’s a norm for lawmakers to vote for their party’s nominee for Speaker, no matter how odious they may find that person. That the G.O.P. could not keep McCarthy in power or immediately elect a replacement, even at the risk of extended paralysis of the House and major damage to the party’s reputation, signifies just how weak and divided the Republican Conference is right now.There is little doubt that the three-week-long struggle, still unresolved, to pick a new speaker is quite likely to inflict some costs on Republicans.First and foremost, if, as appears possible, the government is forced to shut down because of a failure to reach agreement on federal spending, Republicans have set themselves up to take the fall when the public decides which party is at fault.Previous government shutdowns, especially those in 1995 and 1996, backfired on Republicans, reviving Bill Clinton’s re-election prospects to the point that he won easily in November.I asked Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about the current situation, and he emailed back: “A failure to choose a speaker before appropriations expire and the government shutdowns — that would look bad to many voters.”The Jordan campaign for speaker may turn into a liability for Republican members in districts won by Biden in 2020.After Fitzpatrick voted for Jordan, his probable Democratic challenger, Ashley Ehasz, a West Point graduate and combat veteran, declared:Brian Fitzpatrick has campaigned on his supposed commitment to reaching across the aisle and solving problems — but time and again his votes have shown who he really is. He voted to install an anti-abortion, election-denying extremist as speaker and has made his values perfectly clear.Sue Altman, executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance and the probable Democratic challenger to Kean, said, after Kean voted for Jordan:Tom Kean Jr. just voted for a man who in his personal life helped cover up sexual abuse and in his political life tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and pass a national abortion ban. This is not the Republican Party of Tom Kean Jr.’s father, and Tom Kean Jr. has done nothing but enable the most extreme elements of his own party instead of being a voice for moderation. Jim Jordan is a radical election denier who does not represent the values of this district and Tom Kean Jr. should be ashamed of his vote.I asked Michael Olson, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, about the possible costs of a Jordan vote for these 12 Republicans in Democratic-leaning seats. He replied by email:Concerns about appearing extreme should be particularly acute for these legislators. Most won by quite narrow margins. Voters do care about extremism on the margins — more extreme candidates seem to be more likely to subsequently lose — so a vote for Jordan could be a real liability in a campaign, or a vote against him a real feather in these folks’ caps as they try to establish their independent bona fides.The political calculus of these 12 Republicans is, however, complicated. Olson cited a 2023 paper, “A Good Partisan? Ideology, Loyalty and Public Evaluations of Members of Congress,” by Geoffrey Sheagley, Logan Dancey and John Henderson that reveals the difficulty of the choices facing members of Congress.Using poll data on the vote to impeach Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection, Sheagley, Dancey and Henderson write that Democrats are:More approving of a Republican representative who voted to impeach Trump. Republican respondents, however, are more approving of a conservative Republican representative and less approving of a representative who voted to impeach Trump.For a Republican deciding whether to vote for or against a Trump impeachment, the loss of support among Republican voters far outweighs the gains from Democrats: “Approval for a Republican representative who voted to impeach Trump decreases by nearly a full point on the 4-point approval scale, while support among Democrats increases by only half a point.”The political implications of this choice are, however, very different for a Republican evaluating prospects in a closed primary in which no Democrats can vote, than in the general election, when Democrats do cast ballots.I asked Dancey, a political scientist at Wesleyan, about the calculations a Republican in a Democratic district has to make and he emailed back to say that a vote against Jordan would not prove excessively costly in November:In a general election matchup where the main choice is between a Republican and a Democrat, I suspect that the vast majority of Republican voters would stick with a Republican candidate who voted against Jordan. Even if they don’t like the position the Republican took on that one vote, they won’t see the Democratic candidate as a better option.In contrast, Dancey continued,Voting for Jordan carries some risk of losing support from independents and moderate Democrats in the general election, especially since Jordan received Trump’s endorsement. Republicans running in Biden districts have incentives to create an image as a more independent-minded Republican who isn’t fully aligned with Trump.That said, Darcey wrote, “Jordan is a less high-profile figure than Trump and at this point isn’t on track to actually become speaker. As a result, I doubt this one vote will be as consequential as something like voting to impeach Trump.”Perhaps most damaging to Republicans is the perception that they are dominated by a group more determined to wreak havoc than to govern.In 2019, I looked at a small percentage of voters committed “to unleash chaos to ‘burn down’ the entire political order in the hope they gain status in the process.”The notion was salient once more on Oct. 3, when a cadre of eight Republican members of the House — led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida — brought down Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Gaetz evoked havoc again on Oct. 19 when he posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter:Ever seen a SWAMP actually drained? This Florida Man has. It’s not orderly. Turns out, the alligators & snakes get unruly when the comfort of their habitat is disrupted. Chaos doesn’t scare me. American decline does.I asked Kevin Arceneaux, a political scientist at Sciences Po Paris and lead author of the 2021 paper “Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn: the Prevalence, Psychology and Politics of the ‘Need for Chaos,’ ” about the role of Gaetz and his seven allies. Arceneaux emailed back that he has no way of knowing, without conducting tests and interviews, how the eight “would answer the need for chaos survey items.”But, Arceneaux added, “their behavior is certainly consistent with the ‘burn-it-all-down’ mentality that we found associated with the need for chaos.”In addition, he continued,We also found that a drive to obtain status along with a sense that one’s group has lost social status increases one’s need for chaos. It would be interesting to study whether Freedom Caucus members are more preoccupied with concerns about status loss relative to other Republicans. If so, that would offer some circumstantial evidence that a need for chaos could at least partly explain their willingness to damage their own party.I asked Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, for his perspective on recent events in the House. He replied by email:I’ve long thought that a party’s drift to the ideological extreme would inevitably be stopped and reversed to a certain degree by big defeats that force party voters to come to terms with pragmatic reality. These days, I’m starting to believe that Republicans moving headlong to the right may just give in to the inertia of motion and continue their lunge toward extremism until they can no longer win an overall majority. I’m not convinced of this yet, but the G.O.P. has put the idea on the table.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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    Germany’s Far-Left Wagenknecht Forms New Populist Party

    Sahra Wagenknecht has announced a new party, which could become another populist force scrambling German politics.Germany’s political landscape has been fracturing for a decade or more as traditional parties lose ground to populist elements, forcing the establishment of a three-way coalition government for the first time in the country’s modern history.A significant new fissure opened on Monday, when one of the country’s most prominent leftist politicians, Sahra Wagenknecht, announced that she would form her own party, throwing up yet another wild card and challenging the political mainstream.Few Germans do not know Ms. Wagenknecht. A gifted orator, she has made something of a brand for herself with her biting criticism of the government and over-the-top political rhetoric. She is a frequent presence on television debate shows and at signings for her new best-selling book; on weekly YouTube clips, which are watched hundreds of thousands of times; and on the floor of the parliament, where she is a member of the Left party, or Die Linke.True to form, the association she founded with four others to build the party is named after herself: the Sahra Wagenknecht Coalition, or BSW in the German acronym, making it the first party in postwar Germany built entirely around one figurehead. Ms. Wagenknecht said the party would be a home for those who feel abandoned by mainstream politics, and stand for “reason and fairness.”“We decided to establish a new party because we are convinced that things cannot go on as they are at present,” Ms. Wagenknecht told Berlin’s press corps on Monday, adding: “Otherwise, in ten years’ time, our country will be unrecognizable.”For decades after World War II, Germany was governed by just two major parties — the conservative Christian Democrats and the progressive Social Democrats. As that consensus breaks down, Ms. Wagenknecht’s new populist party may present another hurdle to finding parliamentary consensus in what has long been a consensus-minded country.The new party threatens not only to break up the far left, who are the political heirs to Communist East Germany, but to further erode the political mainstream. It may also compete for the disaffected voters who have flocked to the country’s leading populist party on the far right, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is now polling at 22 percent support.Ms. Wagenknecht argues that progressives are too focused on diet, personal pronouns and the perception of racism, and are not worried enough about poverty.Steffi Loos/Getty ImagesA poll taken over the weekend by Bild found that 27 percent of voters would consider voting for Ms. Wagenknecht’s party, even if little concrete information about her actual platform is available. In a country where more than one in five say they would vote for the far-right AfD, Ms. Wagenknecht’s new party has the potential to act as a spoiler, effectively loosening the AfD’s grip on protest voters.Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist who studies populism at the Federal Armed Forces university in Hamburg, says the new party could attract voters who are on the political right when it comes to migration, but believe in the importance of the welfare state.“The thinking is that there are AfD voters who on things like migration are very far to the right of the spectrum, but at the same time maybe fear for their own social status, and also have economic fears,” he said. “There’s no guarantee, but there is potential that it could work.”As long as Ms. Wagenknecht sticks to her vow not to collaborate with the far-right AfD, her party could help buffer a takeover from the right, especially in the East, where Ms. Wagenknecht has her roots and is especially popular.Ms. Wagenknecht is one of the very few federal politicians still active who started their political career in the former East Germany. Months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she joined the Communist Party.She made her name after reunification in the party’s successor, which is now called the Left, and was voted into the European Parliament in 2004 and Germany’s national parliament in 2009. Since then she has held almost every post in the Left party, including acting as head of its parliamentary group.Ms. Wagenknecht loves to attack what she calls the “lifestyle left.” She argues that progressives are too focused on diet, pronouns, and the perception of racism, and are not worried enough about poverty and an ever-growing gap between rich and poor.She says immigration by people who do not have a chance for asylum has gotten out of control. “It definitely has to be stopped because it is completely overwhelming our country,” she said on Monday.Though details are still scant, Ms. Wagenknecht and her allies have outlined four major planks for the party platform. Perhaps surprisingly for a left-wing politician, the economy is the first and most important.Ms. Wagenknecht announcing the formation of the new party on Monday.John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“If the economy goes under, you don’t even have to worry about pensions and wages and social benefits,” Ms. Wagenknecht said during an interview in her office last month. “All those things will go under too.”During the interview, Ms. Wagenknecht was especially critical of the environmentalist Green party, part of the governing coalition, for focusing on things like rules governing the heating of public buildings.“People think this government is haphazard, shortsighted, plain, incompetent and ideologically driven,” she said, adding, “And that — in fact — is the case.”She has long criticized Germany’s support for Ukraine, especially the 7.4 billion euros worth of weaponry Germany has sent to help in its defense. On Monday, she proposed buying Russian energy directly from Russia again, and decried the billions spent trying to replace Russian gas.It’s a message that could play well among voters for the AfD, who tend to be less supportive of Ukraine than others.Manfred Güllner, whose polling firm, the Forsa Institute, conducted a poll gauging Ms. Wagenknecht’s viability as a political brand, says the new party has as much a chance of attracting voters from traditional parties as it does of attracting those who vote on the right.Noting that the far right was at a high point after successes in state elections in Bavaria and Hesse earlier this month, he said: “All those who have migrated to the AfD, they see now that the AfD is successful — why should they suddenly vote for the Wagenknecht party?”After hinting at the move for months, Ms. Wagenknecht said on Monday that she would form the party. Nine other parliamentarians joined her in leaving the Left. It could represent a death blow to her old party, which will lose not only its most recognizable member, but also its status as a parliamentary group, which is linked to funding and provides hundreds of jobs.The timing of Ms. Wagenknecht’s announcement will allow her and her team to field candidates for the European Parliament’s election in June, where no minimum hurdle is required to win seats. And if that goes well, they could then field candidates for state elections taking place in three eastern Germany states in the second half of 2024.“Now she will actually have to give concrete answers instead of just criticizing the woke left-wing lifestyle,” said Frank Decker, a political scientist at the University of Bonn, who has studied the AfD.At a recent book signing in her native city of Jena, in the eastern state of Thuringia, Ms. Wagenknecht was treated like a celebrity by the roughly 1,000 people who gathered to watch her read from her best-selling book, “Die Selbstgerechten” or “The Self-Righteous.”Many in the audience were disappointed in mainstream politics, they said afterward. Thomas Hultsch, 52, had brought his two daughters to the reading. Mr. Hultsch said that while he would never vote for the AfD, he does not like the traditional parties either.“I would give her a chance,” he said. More

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    The Blind Ambition of Chris Christie

    Chris Christie’s presidential announcement at a June town hall at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire may not have had the drama of, say, a “West Wing” episode, but it did help clarify our current political moment and its most intriguing character. For over two hours — you could turn it into a mini-series — Mr. Christie, a former New Jersey governor and federal prosecutor, built a case against Donald Trump. To nominate him for the presidency again, Mr. Christie said, would be a moral and political disaster. “Trump made us smaller,” Mr. Christie told his audience as he prowled the stage, explaining that he wanted to go after Mr. Trump for two reasons: “One, he deserves it. And two, it’s the way to win.”It’s a bold premise, but more sound than it might seem. Almost any pollster will tell you that Mr. Trump’s support is soft once you look beyond the MAGA base. A CNN poll conducted in late August found that 44 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning independents said they were seriously worried that Mr. Trump’s legal issues could impair his ability to win the general election. Mr. Christie is the only candidate speaking directly, specifically to this fear. A separate poll found that almost a third of Republican voters who intend to support Mr. Trump said they might still change their minds based on what happens in the months leading up to the first votes being cast.But in national surveys, Mr. Christie is still polling in the low single digits. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, looks increasingly inevitable as the Republican nominee. Even in New Hampshire, a state where moderate voters hold outsize influence, Mr. Christie is languishing in fourth place, at just 9 percent in the polls. Why isn’t his message resonating?There are the obvious explanations: Mr. Trump has advantages as a former president, and his legal troubles have given him an excuse to present himself as an outsider, persecuted by the powers that be; Mr. Christie, meanwhile, is competing in a crowded field, packed with other candidates desperate for the same voters. But there is something deeper at work here, and it holds clues about what it would take to attack Mr. Trump successfully. Because while Mr. Christie may sound like the perfect Trump nemesis — pugnacious, outspoken, loud — he is a uniquely flawed foil for the former president, compromised in ways that blunt his most effective attacks. And though Mr. Christie’s journey through Republican politics is especially colorful — he is from New Jersey, after all — most of the other candidates are running up against similar problems as they struggle to maneuver through a political landscape forever changed by Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More

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    Biden’s Handling of Israel War Could Change How Voters See Him, Strategists Say

    Plagued by low approval ratings, the president has projected himself as a world leader. Strategists warn, however, that his re-election may depend more on domestic issues like the economy.When President Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office this week, he presented himself as a world leader during a moment of peril amid wars in Ukraine and Israel.The speech was only the second time that Mr. Biden has spoken in prime time from the Resolute Desk, and it came as he confronts a challenging re-election campaign weighed down by low approval ratings and lingering concern among Democrats about his fitness to seek a second term.Mr. Biden’s forceful proclamation of the nation’s leadership on the international stage since the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis — he has given two major White House speeches and traveled to Tel Aviv to meet with local leaders and console grieving Israelis — has given Democrats hope that he can persuade skeptical voters to view him in a new light.But strategists from both parties said that even if Mr. Biden successfully steers his country through the latest international crisis, any political lift that he might enjoy could be short-lived. Perceptions of a bad economy have continued to drag down his re-election prospects, and domestic concerns historically supersede foreign policy in American presidential contests.President George H.W. Bush’s approval numbers jumped to roughly 90 percent in the spring of 1991 — more than twice what Mr. Biden registers now — after he led an international coalition in defeating Iraq when it invaded Kuwait.Mr. Bush’s aides thought his re-election the next year was all but certain. But he lost the White House to Bill Clinton 18 months later, defeated by voters’ concerns about the economy, the appeal of a more vigorous opponent and the most significant independent presidential candidate in a generation.“People were caught up in the good news and forgot that ‘it’s the economy, stupid,’” said Ron Kaufman, a longtime political aide to Mr. Bush, echoing a sign that was posted in the Clinton campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., in 1992.American politics are also far more polarized now than they were 32 years ago, when Mr. Bush was at the peak of his popularity.President George H.W. Bush’s approval numbers jumped to roughly 90 percent in the spring of 1991 after the Persian Gulf war. He still lost re-election a year and a half later.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesMr. Biden’s polling numbers have been mired in dangerous territory since he oversaw the chaotic American military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The enactment of popular legislation on infrastructure and renewable energy investments has done little to improve his popularity. A White House push to promote economic improvements under the banner of “Bidenomics” has done little to convince voters of its merits.“I don’t anticipate any long-term benefits politically,” Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University, said of Mr. Biden’s handling of the war in Israel. “We live in an era now where polarization is so deep that no matter what the magnitude of the crisis is, or the performance of the president, it’s not likely to make a difference.”Several voters interviewed on Friday were skeptical of Mr. Biden’s call to send $14 billion to help Israel — let alone another $60 billion for Ukraine.Samantha Moskowitz, 27, a psychology student at Georgia Gwinnett College in the Atlanta suburbs, said the prospect of sending billions to Israel and Ukraine “makes me anxious, especially where our economy is right now.”“I don’t love the idea that the money is being sent,” said Ms. Moskowitz, who did not vote for either Mr. Biden or Donald J. Trump in 2020 and said it was “too early to tell” if she would vote in 2024. “There is a need, but do we really need that significant amount?”She said she did not watch Mr. Biden’s Oval Office address on Thursday.About 20.3 million people watched Mr. Biden’s speech across 10 television networks, according to preliminary data from Nielsen. The total audience for the speech was certainly bigger, given that the Nielsen data does not capture some online viewing numbers.When Mr. Trump spoke about immigration from the Oval Office in January 2019, about 40 million people tuned in. Just over 27 million people watched Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speech in February.Stanley B. Greenberg, who was Mr. Clinton’s pollster in 1992, called Mr. Biden’s Oval Office address “a very important speech in terms of defining America’s security and bringing Iran and Russia to the forefront,” and predicted that it could help rally voters around the president and push Congress to pass his $106 billion international aid plan, which includes money for Ukraine and the Middle East.“Of course, a year from now, voters will be voting on the cost of living, the economy, the border, crime and other issues,” he said. “Foreign policy is rarely a voting determinant, but President Biden may be leading the attack on isolation and a new partisan choice on how we gain security.”The initial polling suggests that broad majorities of Americans endorse Mr. Biden’s staunch support for Israel. A Fox News poll found that 68 percent of voters sided with Israel, and 76 percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University poll said that supporting Israel was in the national interest of the United States.With the exception of 2004, when President George W. Bush confronted rising criticism about having led the nation into war against Iraq, no national election has been driven by foreign policy since the end of the Vietnam War.The nature of the presidential campaign could change if the conflict in Israel continues to dominate the news for weeks and months. Unlike the elder Mr. Bush after the 1991 Iraq war — which began and ended quickly with what at the time seemed a clear victory — Mr. Biden could be presenting himself as a wartime president through the course of his re-election bid, a prospect that also carries political risks.Mr. Biden’s support for sending military aid to Israel, even accompanied by gentle pleas to the country’s leaders for restraint, has alienated many on the left wing of his party, who point to a high Palestinian death toll in Gaza that is likely to rise as Israel presses its offensive.This week, thousands have marched on the Capitol amid a series of open letters — including one from a long roster of former presidential campaign staff members for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — demanding that Democratic lawmakers urge Mr. Biden to push for a cease-fire in Israel, which he is unlikely to do.The president has picked sides in a conflict over which he has little control. Most immediately, Mr. Biden faces the challenge of what he can do to secure the release of Americans being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. Hamas released two American hostages on Friday afternoon, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that 10 more Americans had yet to be freed.Dr. Zelizer said, “I think the assumption should be that things will go south and there will be detrimental effects.” Referring to Mr. Biden and his administration, he added, “There’s assistance, but they don’t have real control over how this unfolds.”For all of those risks, these next few months may give Mr. Biden a window to shake up the contest in ways that could put him on firmer ground.“It gives him an opportunity to change and strengthen his image,” said Charles R. Black Jr., a strategist for the presidential campaigns of both Bushes and Ronald Reagan. “It gives him a chance to demonstrate his strength and also his knowledge.”Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said that this political moment could prompt voters to give Mr. Biden a second look. “The fear with an incumbent president is that voters write you off, they stop listening,” he said.“What’s the biggest thing about Biden?” Mr. Begala added. “Old. This gives him a chance to lean into it. I don’t think people are going to vote on how he does in Israel. But I think this can let them reframe the age problem. It is a way for people to look and say, maybe it’s good we have the old guy in there. He is steady and strong.”For Mr. Biden, an orderly handling of the crisis would be likely to buttress what is expected to be another dominant theme of his campaign if he finds himself running for a second time against Mr. Trump, with turmoil continuing among House Republicans as they seek to elect a speaker.“Hopefully the House chaos will calm down long before the election,” Mr. Black said. “But Trump is so ad hoc on foreign policy that it’s always chaos.”John Koblin More