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      Biden Defends Striking Autoworkers: They Deserve a ‘Fair Share’

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      President Biden forcefully sided with the striking United Auto Workers on Friday, dispatching two of his top aides to Detroit and calling for the three biggest American car companies to share their profits with employees whose wages and benefits he said have been unfairly eroded for years.In brief remarks from the White House hours after the union began what they called a targeted strike, Mr. Biden acknowledged that the automakers had made “significant offers” during contract negotiations, but he left no doubt his intention to make good on a 2020 promise to always have the backs of unions.“Over generations, autoworkers sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially the economic crisis and the pandemic,” Mr. Biden said. “Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”Mr. Biden said that Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a top White House economic adviser, would go to Michigan immediately to support both sides in the negotiations. But he said the automakers “should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the U.A.W.”For decades, Mr. Biden has been an unapologetic backer of unions who rejects even the approach of some Democrats when it comes to balancing the interests of corporate America and the labor movement.During the past several years, he has helped nurture what polls suggest is a resurgence of support for unions, as younger Americans in new-economy jobs push for the right to organize at the workplace. Mr. Biden declares that “unions built the middle class” in virtually every speech he delivers.“That was most pro-union statement from a White House in decades, if not longer,” Eddie Vale, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked for years at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said after the president’s remarks.The president’s decision to weigh in on the side of the union without much reservation will most likely to draw fierce criticism from different quarters. Earlier in the day — even before the president’s White House comments — Suzanne P. Clark, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a searing statement blaming the strike on Mr. Biden for “promoting unionization at all costs.”After Mr. Biden’s remarks, Neil Bradley, the group’s top lobbyist in Washington, said the president’s message and the pro-union policies his administration has pursued have “emboldened these demands that just aren’t grounded in reality.”And in a possible preview of a rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, NBC on Friday aired part of an interview in which Mr. Trump sided just as forcefully with the car companies against the unions.“The autoworkers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China,” Mr. Trump said in an interview set to air Sunday on the network’s “Meet the Press” program. “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.”Friday’s walkout by the U.A.W. is in some ways a broader test of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda beyond just his pro-union stand. It also touches on his call for higher wages for the middle class; his climate-driven push to reimagine an electric vehicle future for car companies; and his call for higher taxes for the wealthy. The strike is centered in Michigan, a state that the president practically must win in 2024 to remain in the Oval Office.“You’ve got rebuilding the middle class and building things again here,” Mr. Vale said. “You’ve got green energy, technology and jobs. You’ve got important states for the election. So all of these are sort of together here in a swirl.”At the White House, Mr. Biden’s aides believe the battle between the car companies and its workers will underscore many of the president’s arguments about the need to reduce income inequality, the benefits of empowered employees, and the surge in profits for companies like the automakers that makes them able to afford paying higher wages.That approach is at the heart of the economic argument that Mr. Biden and his campaign team are preparing to make in the year ahead. But it sometimes comes into conflict with the president’s other priorities, including a shift toward electric vehicles.Mr. Biden’s push for automobiles powered by batteries instead of combustion engines is seen by many unions as a threat to the workers who have toiled for decades to build cars that run on gas. The unions want factories that make electric cars — most of which are not unionized — to see higher wages and benefits too.So far, Mr. Biden has sidestepped the question of whether his push for a green auto industry will hasten the demise of the unions. But Friday’s remarks are an indication that he remains as committed as ever to the political organizations that have been at the center of his governing coalition for years.In his remarks on Friday, he hinted at the tension inherent in the technological transition from one mode of propulsion to another.“I believe that transition should be fair, and a win-win for autoworkers and auto companies,” he said. But he added: “I also believe the contract agreement must lead to a vibrant ‘Made in America’ future that promotes good, strong middle class jobs that workers can raise a family on, where the U.A.W. remains at the heart of our economy, and where the Big Three companies continue to lead in innovation, excellence, quality and leadership.”The targeted strike is designed to disrupt one of America’s oldest industries at a time that Mr. Biden is sharpening the contrast between what rivals and allies call “Bidenomics” and a Republican plan that the president warns is a darker version of trickle-down economics that mostly benefits the rich.“Their plan — MAGAnomics — is more extreme than anything America has ever seen before,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday, hours before the union voted to strike.Mr. Biden was joined on Friday by several of the more liberal members of his party, who assailed the automakers and stood by the striking workers.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, sent out a fund-raising appeal accusing the companies of refusing “to meet the demands of workers negotiating for better pay” despite having “netted nearly a quarter trillion dollars in profit over the last decade.”Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, visited striking Jeep workers at a Toledo plant that makes the popular Wrangler sport-utility vehicle and declared that “Ohioans stand in solidarity with autoworkers around our state as they demand the Big Three automakers respect the work they do to make these companies successful.”How Mr. Biden navigates the strike and its consequences could have a significant impact on his hopes for re-election. In a CNN poll earlier this month, just 39 percent of people approved of the job he is doing as president and 58 percent said his policies have made economic conditions in the United States worse, not better.The fact that the strike is centered in Michigan is also critical. Mr. Biden won the state over Mr. Trump in 2020 with just over 50 percent of the vote. Without the state’s 16 electoral votes, Mr. Biden would not have defeated his rival.Unlike previous strikes involving rail workers or air traffic controllers, Mr. Biden has no special legal authority to intervene. Still, he is not exactly just an observer either.Just before the strike vote, Mr. Biden called Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., as well as top executives of the car companies. Aides said that the president told the parties to ensure that workers get a fair contract and he urged both sides to stay at the negotiating table.Economists say a lengthy strike, if it goes on for weeks or even months, could be a blow to the American economy, especially in the middle of the country.Still, the president is unwavering on policies toward both unions and the environment. In a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden renewed both his vision about what he called a “transition to an electric vehicle future made in America” — which he said would protect jobs — and his rock-solid belief in unions.“You know, there are a lot of politicians in this country who don’t know how to say the word ‘union,’” he said. “They talk about labor, but they don’t say ‘union.’ It’s ‘union.’ I’m one of the — I’m proud to say ‘union.’ I’m proud to be the most pro-union president.” More

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      Why Are Democrats Losing Ground Among Nonwhite Voters? 5 Theories.

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      There’s no shortage of solid hypotheses, and the best explanation may be a combination of them.Why is President Biden losing ground among Black, Hispanic, Asian American and other nonwhite voters?There’s no easy answer for this relative weakness that shows up in polling, and there might never be one. After all, we still don’t have a definitive explanation for why Donald J. Trump made big gains among white working-class voters in 2016 or Hispanic voters in 2020, despite the benefit of years of poll questions, final election results and post-election studies.While the question may be hard, getting the best possible answer matters. Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, recently asked me on social media whether the Democratic challenge is the absence of a “compelling economic vision.”If Democrats believe that’s the answer, Mr. Khanna and his colleagues might approach the election differently than if they believe the answer is crime, the migrant crisis or perceptions of a “woke” left. The choice of approach might not only affect who wins, but also the policies and messages promoted on the campaign trail and perhaps ultimately enacted in government.A definitive answer to our question may be beyond reach, but there’s no shortage of solid hypotheses. The various theories are not mutually exclusive — the best explanation may synthesize all of them.Theory 1: It’s about the moment — Biden, his age, the economy and abortionWhy do surveys show President Biden struggling among all voters nowadays, regardless of race? The biggest reasons typically cited are inflation, the economy and his age.In each case, there’s an argument these issues ought to hurt Mr. Biden more among nonwhite voters, who tend to be younger and poorer than white voters.Of all the explanations, these would probably be the most promising for Democrats in the long term. In the short term, Mr. Biden could hope to gain ground if inflation continued to lose steam and the economy avoided recession.For now, he and the Democrats are counting on issues like abortion to compensate for their weaknesses. That might help Democrats among white voters, but it might not help much among nonwhite voters. In New York Times/Siena College polling over the last year, just 64 percent of nonwhite voters say they believe abortion should be mostly or always legal, a tally that falls beneath usual Democratic benchmarks.On the other hand, 63 percent of white voters say abortion should be at least mostly legal, a tally greatly exceeding the usual Democratic support among white voters.The economy and abortion are plainly important in making sense of recent shifts, but they’re not the whole story. Mr. Biden was relatively weak among nonwhite voters in 2020, as Hispanic voters swung to the right (by about seven points of major party vote share) and the rise in Black turnout didn’t match those of other groups. Democrats showed similar — if less acute — weaknesses with these voters in 2018 and during most Trump-era special elections.Mr. Biden’s weaknesses may exacerbate the problem, but this isn’t a new issue.Theory 2: Democrats are too far to the leftThis theory is brought to you by Democratic centrists, and it’s grounded in an important fact: There are many nonwhite Democrats who self-identify as moderate or even conservative. Many hold conservative views on issues, like opposition to same-sex marriage.These moderate or conservative nonwhite voters consider themselves Democrats because they see the party as representing them and their interests, not because they have party-line views on every issue. If so, Republican gains among nonwhite voters might naturally result from Democrats’ leftward shift over the last few years.This story is logical, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump’s gains in the last election. But is this really what has hurt President Biden since 2020? Democrats didn’t nominate Mr. Sanders, after all. Democratic socialism; calls to defund the police; and Black Lives Matter seem to be in the rearview mirror in 2023. The backlash against “woke” has faded so much that Republicans barely even brought it up in the first presidential debate.Even in 2020, the evidence that the progressive left was responsible for Democratic losses among Hispanic voters was more based on correlation than clear causal evidence. Today, the connection seems even less clear. Perhaps the best evidence is Democratic struggles among nonwhite voters in California and New York, where progressive excesses might weigh most heavily.Theory 3: Democrats aren’t delivering a progressive agendaThis theory is brought to you by the progressive left. You might be skeptical after walking through the centrist position, but there’s a credible story here.To understand it, it’s worth untangling two sentiments that we usually assume go together: a desire for big change and progressivism. They’ve gone hand-in-hand in recent Democratic primaries, with progressive candidates offering fundamental or revolutionary change, while liberal, establishment-backed candidates offer relative moderation, bipartisanship or a return to normalcy.But being a moderate on a left-right ideological scale is not the same thing as being content with the status quo. Many moderates are deeply dissatisfied and want politicians who promise big changes to American life. They may think politics, the economy and the “system” are all broken, even if they’re not animated by progressive slogans like Democratic socialism, a Green New Deal, Medicare for all, and so on.Many nonwhite voters fall into this category. In Times/Siena polling of the key battleground states in 2019, persuadable nonwhite voters said they wanted a relatively moderate Democrat over a liberal, 69 percent to 29 percent. But they also preferred a Democratic nominee who would bring systemic change to American society over one who would return politics back to normal in Washington, 52-32. This might seem contradictory, but it’s not.Mr. Biden is not exactly a great fit for these ideologically moderate “change” voters. He does not channel their dissatisfaction with the country, the establishment, politics or the economy. His accomplishments, like the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS Act, do not register on the “fundamental change” spectrum. Perhaps it’s not surprising that voters — including nonwhite voters — don’t seem to think Mr. Biden has accomplished very much.It seems doubtful that a more ambitious, progressive legislative agenda would have left Mr. Biden in a very different place. He didn’t seem to earn too much support for student debt forgiveness, for instance. But it’s still possible that the mainstream Democratic Party’s relatively conservative, even Whig-like, form of moderation leaves disaffected, nonwhite working-class voters feeling cold.Theory 4: It’s TrumpIt’s easy for Democrats to blame themselves for weakness among nonwhite voters. But what if it’s not really Democratic weakness, but Republican strength?It’s Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, who defines American politics nowadays. Voters say they’re voting based on their feelings toward the former president, not the current one. With numbers like these, perhaps the default assumption ought to be that Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, is the driving force behind recent electoral trends.If it’s Mr. Trump, it’s not hard to see how or why. He has a distinct brand with demonstrated appeal to white working-class voters who previously backed Barack Obama and other Democrats. Many elements of his message might have appeal to nonwhite working-class voters as well. As we’ve established, many persuadable nonwhite voters care about the economy; aren’t liberal; are dissatisfied with the country and mainstream politics; and desire fundamental change. Mr. Trump’s combination of populist economics and anti-establishment outsider politics is potentially a very good match.What about Mr. Trump’s penchant to alienate Black and Hispanic voters with remarks like “very fine people on both sides” or “they’re rapists.” Today, some of these fights may be distant memories. And while Mr. Trump’s remarks may have hurt him at the time, it is striking that they didn’t do more to provoke a more obvious backlash among nonwhite voters, whether in terms of stronger turnout or greater Democratic support.Perhaps other elements of his message might have broken through. His views on crime and immigration have considerable appeal to some Black and Hispanic voters, even though these issues are often seen by liberals as nothing more than a racist dog whistle. And Democrats may bristle at the thought of Mr. Trump as a criminal justice reformer, but he spent millions on a Super Bowl ad promoting exactly that. Mr. Trump’s economic appeal may also be newly salient with continuing perceptions that the economy hasn’t recovered.Mr. Trump’s unique brand of populist conservatism isn’t the full explanation. In the midterms, Republicans overperformed in places like New York City, Florida and Southern California, even though Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ticket.But while Mr. Trump isn’t the whole explanation, he’s probably an underrated one. A recent CNN/SSRS poll found him faring much better among nonwhite voters compared with all the other Republican candidates. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump, 58-34, among nonwhite voters in the poll, compared with a 64-28 result against Ron DeSantis.Theory 5: It’s about a new generationDemocratic strength among nonwhite voters was forged in an earlier era of politics, when the party vanquished Jim Crow and unequivocally represented the working class and the poor. Perhaps that’s still how many Black voters see it, given that they continue to back Mr. Biden and Democrats by wide margins in Times/Siena polling.Younger nonwhite voters might see it differently. At the very least, almost all of Mr. Biden’s losses come among nonwhite voters under 45 in Times/Siena polling.It’s not hard to see how younger nonwhite voters might have a different perspective. The basis for overwhelming Democratic support among nonwhite voters may have gotten weaker over the last 50 years.Second- and third-generation Asian American and Hispanic voters are more affluent and assimilated into American society than their parents.Young Black voters may not be second- or third-generation immigrants, but they are the second or third generation since Black Americans finally achieved equal citizenship. They can’t call up memories of the civil rights movement or Jim Crow. They’re less likely to attend church, which helped tie Black voters to the Democratic Party for decades. The bonds of community and sense of threat that connected voters to the Democrats might be weaker today.The Black Lives Matter movement mobilized a new generation of activists, but also put Democrats in a challenging position: There are few opportunities for Democrats to solve systemic racism. No bill will do it. The party’s claim to being the party of the working class is also quite a bit weaker than it was a half century ago, for good measure.Of all the theories, this one is hardest to tie to a short-term decline in Mr. Biden’s support. But more affluence and integration into mainstream American life might be a prerequisite for today’s Republican gains. And, if true, it would reflect largely positive changes in American society, much as Republican gains among Catholic voters in decades past required their acceptance in the mainstream.It would be hard for any party to hold 90-plus percent of a voting group forever. And if so, perhaps there’s not much Democrats can do about their decline today. It may be bad news for the Democrats in a certain sense, but if there’s any consolation it’s that perhaps Democrats don’t have to flagellate themselves over it. It’s not all their fault. More

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      In New Hampshire, Chris Christie Still Sees a Path to Beat Trump

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      As he stakes his candidacy on the state, Chris Christie is promising to find new ways to confront Donald Trump. “I’m not going to let him get away with being a coward,” he said in an interview.An upset victory over Donald Trump in New Hampshire could be a knockout blow, according to Chris Christie. He is staking his presidential campaign on winning the state.Emily Rhyne/The New York TimesIn his against-all-odds pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has campaigned almost exclusively in New Hampshire: More than 90 percent of his events since February have been in the Granite State, according to a New York Times analysis.To hear Mr. Christie tell it, New Hampshire is his do-or-die state. If he doesn’t perform well here, that will probably be it.“I can’t see myself leaving the race under any circumstances before New Hampshire,” he said in an interview. “If I don’t do well in New Hampshire, then I’ll leave.”Much as he did during his White House bid in 2016, Mr. Christie is betting on the independent streak of New Hampshire voters to validate his candidacy and catapult him into contention. (Mr. Christie ultimately finished sixth in New Hampshire that year and dropped out a day later.)But while he blended into the crowd in the 2016 Republican primary contest, Mr. Christie occupies a nearly solitary position in this race: as the candidate offering the harshest criticisms of the runaway front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Christie’s central pitch to Republicans in New Hampshire is that they must vote with a sense of responsibility and urgency, because defeating Mr. Trump in the first-in-the-nation primary may be the only way to halt his march to the nomination.“The future of this country is going to be determined here,” Mr. Christie told a crowd this week at a local brewery, clutching an I.P.A. “If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.”Though Mr. Christie has improved in recent polls, he still trails Mr. Trump in New Hampshire by double digits, and by much more in national polls and surveys of Iowa, the first nominating state.Mr. Christie signed autographs for supporters at an event on Monday in Rye, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesYet in the interview, Mr. Christie said he still saw a path in New Hampshire. He pointed to numerous past candidates who “broke late” in the state, including Senator John McCain of Arizona during his 2000 campaign. Mr. Christie noted that Mr. McCain, who ended up winning New Hampshire, had driven around the state “basically riding around in a Suburban with two aides.”Mr. Christie is apparently trying to emulate that style. This week, he cruised around New Hampshire with only a driver and two staff members. His campaign does not have staff members on the ground in New Hampshire, and in all, he has only 11 staff members on the payroll, according to his campaign.In the trip to New Hampshire, his first since the opening Republican primary debate last month, Mr. Christie ratcheted up his criticisms of the former president.He now goes so far as to liken Mr. Trump to an autocratic leader, arguing that his conduct is beneath the office of the presidency. Mr. Christie tiptoes toward predicting how the former president’s criminal indictments will unfold, declaring that the country cannot have a “convicted felon” as its leader. And he needles Mr. Trump with subtle jabs at his idiosyncratic tendencies, taunting the former president for his love of cable television and apparent preference for well-done hamburgers.But despite his willingness to take on Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie has been denied his best shot at confronting the former president directly on the debate stage. Mr. Trump skipped the first debate and seems unlikely to attend the second one, which will be held in California at the end of the month.Mr. Christie, who has qualified for the second debate, said he had been drawing up contingency plans.“I’m not going to let him get away with being a coward and running away,” Mr. Christie said in the interview. “It could be meeting him out in front of his event as he’s making his way in. It could be confronting him on his way out. It could be actually going to the event. It could be a whole bunch of options that we’re going to try. I’m not going to tell them exactly which one I’m going to do, because then he would have his staff prepared for it and try to stop me.”Tell It Like It Is PAC, the super PAC supporting Mr. Christie’s bid, latched onto the New Hampshire-or-bust approach early on. Ninety-six percent of the roughly $1 million the group has spent on radio and television advertising has been in New Hampshire markets, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Christie’s events grew more crowded as his swing through New Hampshire progressed, culminating with more than 150 people packed in a gym without air-conditioning in Bedford. Audiences at his events tended to applaud his anti-Trump broadsides.Mr. Christie was greeted with applause at an event in a crowded gymnasium in Bedford, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHis voters are holding out hope, but they acknowledge his path is tough.“You have to believe he’s got a chance,” said Irene Bonner, 75, of Meredith, N.H., who said she was normally apolitical but had been inspired to come to an event by Mr. Christie’s tough talk against Mr. Trump.“The party is so completely blinded by Trump, it just boggles my mind,” said John Bonner, her husband. “After everything’s gone down and the things he’s said and done. But at least Christie is speaking up.” He added, “The rest of them really aren’t.”If Mr. Trump does emerge as the nominee, Mr. Christie said, he will not back off in his criticism.“I can’t imagine that I’ll ever keep quiet,” he said in the interview. “I don’t think it’s in my personality, so I’ll continue to say what I believe is the truth.”He added: “But I’ll also be critical of Joe Biden, I’m certain, because I have been since he became president, and I suspect he is not going to do some sort of miraculous turnaround that’s going to win my support. So I think I probably have difficult things to say about both of them if I was not the nominee.”Asked if he would make an endorsement in a Trump-Biden rematch, the rarely pithy Mr. Christie was succinct: “No.” More

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      Biden, Trump and the 2024 Field of Nightmares

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      In the bottom of the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, with the Boston Red Sox leading the New York Mets 5-3, Red Sox manager John McNamara sent Bill Buckner — a great hitter dealing with terrible leg problems that made him gimp his way around first base — back out to play the infield instead of putting in Dave Stapleton, Buckner’s defensive replacement. A half-dozen at-bats later, a Mookie Wilson ground ball went through Buckner’s wobbly legs, sending the World Series to Game 7 and a certain 6-year-old Red Sox fan to bed in desperate tears.Those tears were my first acquaintance with the harsh truth of a baseball aphorism: The ball will always find you. Meaning that if you place a player where he shouldn’t be, or try to disguise a player’s incapacity by shifting him away from the likely action, or give a player you love a chance to stay on the field too long for sentimental reasons, the risk you take will eventually catch up to you, probably at the worst possible moment.Obviously, this is a column about President Biden’s age. But not only about Biden, because America has been running a lot of Buckner experiments of late. Consider the dreadful-for-liberals denouement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career, where nobody could tell a lifetime-tenured Supreme Court justice who had survived cancer that it was time to step aside and Democrats were left to talk hopefully about her workout regimen as she tried to outlast Donald Trump. And she almost did — but in the end, her legacy was reshaped and even unmade by a decision to stay too long on the political field.Or consider the Trump presidency itself, in which voters handed a manifestly unfit leader the powers of the presidency and for his entire term, various Republicans tried to manage him and position him and keep him out of trouble, while Dave Stapleton — I mean, Mike Pence — warmed the bench.This managerial effort met with enough success that by the start of 2020, Trump seemed potentially headed for re-election. But like a series of line drives at an amateur third baseman, the final year of his presidency left him ruthlessly exposed — by the pandemic (whether you think he was too libertarian or too Faucian, he was obviously overmastered), by a progressive cultural revolution (which he opposed but was helpless to impede), by Biden’s presidential campaign and finally by his own vices, which yielded Jan. 6.Naturally, Republicans are ready to put him on the field again.These experiences set my expectations for what’s happening with Democrats and Biden now. The increasing anxiety over Biden’s lousy poll numbers, which I discussed in last weekend’s column, has yielded a defensive response from Biden partisans. Their argument is that the president’s decline is overstated, that his administration is going well and he deserves more credit than he’s getting and that, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser suggests, the press is repeating its mistake with Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and making the age issue seem awful when it’s merely, well, “suboptimal.”I do not think Biden’s decline is overstated by the media; by some Republicans, maybe, but the mainstream press is, if anything, treading gingerly around the evident reality. But I do think Biden’s defenders are correct that the effect of his age on his presidency has been, at most, only mildly negative. It’s limited his use of the bully pulpit and hurt his poll numbers, but his administration has passed major legislation, managed a foreign policy crisis and run a tighter ship than Trump.Where I have criticisms of Bidenism, they’re mostly the normal ones a conservative would have of any liberal president, not special ones associated with chaos or incompetence created by cognitive decline.But in running Biden for re-election, Democrats are making a fateful bet that this successful management can simply continue through two sets of risks: the high stakes of the next election, in which a health crisis or just more slippage might be the thing that puts Trump back in the White House, and the different but also substantial stakes of another four-year term.“The ball will always find you” is not, of course, an invariable truth. It’s entirely possible that Biden can limp to another victory, that his second term will yield no worse consequences than, say, Ronald Reagan’s did, that having managed things thus far, his aides, spouse and cabinet can see the next five years through.But the Trump era has been one of those periods when providence or fate revenges itself more swiftly than usual on hubris — when the longstanding freedom that American parties and leaders have enjoyed, by virtue of our power and pre-eminence, to skate around our weak spots and mistakes has been substantially curtailed.Even Millhiser’s proposed analogy for the fixation on Biden’s age, the Clinton email scandal, fits this pattern. “Her emails” hurt Clinton at the last because they became briefly entangled with the Anthony Weiner sex scandal. This was substantively unfair, since nothing came of the Clinton emails found on Weiner’s laptop. But it was dramatically fitting, a near-Shakespearean twist, that after surviving all of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals the Clinton dynasty would be unmade at its hour of near triumph by a different, more pathetic predator.So whether it’s certain or not, I can’t help expecting a similarly dramatic punishment for trying to keep Biden in the White House notwithstanding his decline.That I also expect some kind of punishment from the Republicans renominating Trump notwithstanding his unfitness doesn’t make me inconsistent, because presidential politics isn’t quite the same as baseball. Unlike in a World Series, there need not be a simple victor: All can be punished; all of us can lose.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 Surprising Places Where Abortion Rights Are on the Ballot, and Winning

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      IdahoN.D.S.D.TexasOkla.Mo.Ark.La.Miss.Ala.Tenn.Ky.Ind.Wis.W.Va.S.C.Ga.Ky.Kan.Mont.Mich.OhioMo.S.D.Fla.Ariz. Before Dobbs, abortion was legal in all 50 states. In the 14 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 15 states have enacted near-total bans () on abortion, and two states have imposed six-week limits (). But in the same time frame, the results of a series of ballot measures have revealed […] More

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      Second G.O.P Debate: Who Has Qualified So Far?

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      At least six candidates appear to have made the cut so far for the second Republican presidential debate on Sept. 27. Former President Donald J. Trump, the clear front-runner in polling, did not attend the first debate. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will take part in the second, in part because he has not […] More

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      Why We Are So Obsessed With Biden’s Age

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      To our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term, I’d like to add this question: How would we even notice Donald Trump’s lapse into incoherence, when derangement is essentially his brand?Pretty much any interview he gives is a babble bonanza, and his recent lovefest with Tucker Carlson was no exception. He went on wacky tangents, including one about the wages of building the Panama Canal: “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito. Malaria. We lost 35,000 people. We lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world.”“One of the nine wonders,” he added, then corrected himself. “No, no, it was one of the seven.” Seven, nine – he seemed unable to decide, unwilling to commit. “You could make nine wonders,” he ventured. I guess that’s some limit. Once you hit 10, they’re just curiosities. Wonder-ettes.But was there a bevy of headlines about a brain ravaged by time? Were there notations that Trump, at 77, was already as old as Ronald Reagan at the end of his presidency, and that after another four years in the White House, Trump would be a touch older than Biden at the end of his first term and thus the oldest president ever?Most certainly not. And that’s both noteworthy and troubling, because we can’t know — really know — that Biden’s occasionally prolonged, futile search for the right word or name is firmer evidence of cognitive fade than Trump’s hallucinatory musings are.I’m not claiming that Biden, 80, and Trump project the same degree of vigor. I have eyes and ears. Trump talks louder and faster than Biden does and moves with a thudding force. He’s like a freight train to Biden’s cable car, or a big, bulbous tuba to Biden’s tremulous piccolo. Listening to Biden, I want a volume knob I can turn up. Listening to Trump, I crave nonsense-canceling headphones.I’m also aware and suspicious of the paucity of Biden’s interactions with journalists, his avoidance of unscripted public appearances and a schedule that can seem strangely light. I’ve heard from influential Democrats who have crossed paths with him and were alarmed by how slowly he was moving and how disoriented he seemed.But the situation is more complicated than that, and the conversation about it omits dynamics that it shouldn’t. Trump is a mere three years younger than Biden, and he’s overweight. His diet is garbage. His cardio is golf putts. Biden, on the other hand, is a trim tribute to regular exercise.And Trump diverts attention from his age by going to significant lengths to conceal it.A thought exercise: Imagine Biden with more hair — or at least some swooping, swirling, painstakingly contrived facsimile of more hair. Color it a shade of orange-gold that’s less a sneaky evasion of gray than a desperate pummeling of it. Now get to work on his face. Cloak his age spots under a fake tan. Spackle his wrinkles with makeup. Then dress him in suits so dark and baggy that they veil time’s toll on the body they’re tenting.You’ve turned Biden at least partway into Donald Trump. Does he seem a little less ancient?In several recent surveys, roughly three in four Americans, including a majority of Democrats, deemed Biden too old to be effective through a second term. In a recent Associated Press/NORC poll, a much smaller fraction — just over half — expressed reservations about Trump’s age.At least a bit of that discrepancy surely reflects right-wing media organizations’ obsessive focus on Biden’s stumbles and mumbles and such. Their left-wing counterparts don’t home in on Trump’s dubious physical fitness in the same way –— they have so much else on their radar. After all, a candid image of Trump in flab-revealing golf wear or a shot of the wind exposing the truth about his tresses matters little next to candid audio of him hectoring a state official in Georgia to steal the 2020 election.With Trump, it is always thus: The frequency of his outrages and volume of his vices guarantee that no single flaw stands out as it should. It’s just another ingredient in a gumbo of God-help-us.We should also bear in mind that all the hints of Biden’s feebleness are amplified by a larger narrative of older politicians clinging to power despite their obvious physical deterioration. Every image of Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, being wheeled through the Capitol hurts Biden. So does every second that Senator Mitch McConnell, 81, stands frozen and speechless before a group of journalists.“I see people lumping every old person together and using the term ‘gerontocracy’,” Rosanne M. Leipzig, who specializes in geriatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, told me. But Biden isn’t McConnell, no more than McConnell is Feinstein. “There’s no group of people who are more different than older adults,” Leipzig said. “We even have a term for it — the heterogeneity of aging.”Biden is also hurt, in a different way, by Representative Nancy Pelosi, 83, who seems amply vigorous but surrendered her position of House Democratic leadership last year with the proclamation that “the hour has come for a new generation.” If that’s true in the House, why not in the White House?Bob Kerrey, a former senator and onetime governor who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, told me: “I would rather Joe did what Nancy did.” Kerrey turned 80 himself just two weeks ago, and he said that he’d never pursue the presidency at his age.“It’s an offensive act if I were to do it,” he said. “I had my chance.” He added that there are “plenty of 40- and 60-year-olds who can step up and run.” But he’s cognitively up to the task, he said, and so is Biden. Believing in generational change doesn’t mean disbelieving Biden’s competence.And judging competence can be a guessing game, given the partial and selective information that most older political candidates and their physicians divulge. To determine aging’s impact “through superficial means is not an accurate measure,” Bob Blancato, the national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition, a bipartisan advocacy group, cautioned. “Aging is a profoundly personal journey.”Similarly, our takes on it are subjective — and can be colored by irrelevant details. Leipzig noted that to some people, Biden’s cultural frame of reference, embrace of tradition and old-fashioned vocabulary (“God love ya’,” “c’mon man,” “malarkey”) read old, while Trump’s rebel pose reads young.I happen to think that Democrats would be safer with a nominee who’s younger than Biden is and radiates more energy than he does. But I believe at least as strongly that if the unideal choice before Americans winds up being Biden, with his imperfections, or Trump, with his, rejecting Biden because of how old he has grown isn’t a grown-up decision.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