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      Can Brandon Presley Help Mississippi Break from the Past?

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      It’s been 23 years since a Democrat was elected governor of Mississippi and 41 years since a Democrat was elected one of the state’s U.S. senators. The Republican lock on the state — along with the policies and noxious traditions that have kept it in the basement among U.S. states for most indicators of social health — sometimes seems impenetrable.Mike Espy, the former Democratic congressman from Mississippi and U.S. agriculture secretary, tried twice to become senator, in 2018 and 2020, but never got more than 46 percent of the vote. Jim Hood, then state attorney general, did a little better in the 2019 governor’s race, getting nearly 47 percent of the vote, but the current Republican governor, Tate Reeves, prevailed.This year, with Mr. Reeves up for re-election in November, there are once again hopes that Mississippi could take a few steps up from the bottom and elect a governor willing to make a break from the past. And even though Donald Trump won the state by more than 16 percentage points in 2020, there are reasons to think it could happen.For one thing, thanks to a significant scandal involving the misappropriation of welfare funds, Mr. Reeves is extraordinarily unpopular for an incumbent Republican, with 60 percent of voters saying they would prefer another candidate, according to a Mississippi Today/Siena College poll that came out last week. For another, he has a promising and energetic Democratic opponent named Brandon Presley who has been polling fairly well and is making a strong case that the state desperately needs a change, advocating a series of popular policies that could make a real difference in the lives of Mississippians, particularly those on the lower economic rungs. The contest is already turning into one of the most interesting races of 2023.Mr. Presley, 45, is one of three elected members of the state Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, and is the former mayor of Nettleton, a small town in the bright-red northeast section of Mississippi. He talks energetically about the need to expand Medicaid and save rural hospitals, and why it’s important to eliminate the extremely regressive state grocery tax, and would rather discuss the lives of poor families than his own family ties to a certain popular singer of the same last name from Tupelo, up the road from Nettleton. (Elvis was his second cousin.)His most effective tactic is his unrelenting attack on Mr. Reeves and the welfare scandal that has swirled around him and the previous Republican governor, Phil Bryant. A 2020 state audit found that as much as $94 million in federal anti-poverty money was improperly diverted to two nonprofit groups that used it for favors to lobbyists, celebrities and some lawmakers. The celebrities included Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. quarterback, who, according to text messages uncovered by the nonprofit news site Mississippi Today, arranged to spend $5 million in welfare funds for a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi, his alma mater. At the same time, the state was rejecting a large majority of requests from families for Mississippi’s meager $170 a month in welfare payments.Mr. Reeves was lieutenant governor when all this was going on, and several people at the center of the scandal have been his friends and supporters. Last summer, his administration fired the lawyer who had been officially assigned to investigate the scandal and recoup the money, after the lawyer issued a subpoena to the university’s athletic foundation regarding the volleyball money. Though Mr. Reeves hasn’t been implicated in the diversion of most of the money, Mississippi Today published text messages in August showing that the former state welfare director, who pleaded guilty to federal and state fraud and theft charges last fall, said he was acting on behalf of Mr. Reeves when he siphoned $1.3 million of the welfare money to a fitness program run by the governor’s longtime personal trainer, Paul LaCoste.That was all Mr. Presley needed.“I got in this when I saw, as all Mississippi did, millions of dollars aimed at working families got diverted by Tate Reeves and his cronies,” he told me last week. “His own personal trainer, who taught Tate Reeves how to do jumping jacks, got a $70,000 vehicle and was paid $11,000 a month, while we’ve got children going hungry in Mississippi. Well, it made me want to puke.”Mr. Presley is funny and garrulous and is often described as the best natural politician in the state, with an easygoing manner that appeals to voters of all types. He grew up as the son of a low-income single mother and speaks with real empathy about the tens of thousands of poor families, Black and white, who can’t get clean drinking water, proper health care or broadband internet after decades of largely racist neglect by the state.His most significant plan is to fully expand Medicaid in Mississippi, which Mr. Reeves — along with Republicans in nine other states, mostly in the South — refuses to do. As The New York Times recently reported, health care is in a serious crisis in the state, where five hospitals have closed since 2005 and 36 percent of the remaining rural hospitals are at risk of closing from lack of funds. Mississippi’s stubbornness has cost it about $1.35 billion a year in federal funds to hospitals and health care providers, money that could be used for 100,000 poor adults who now have no guaranteed health coverage.“This will go down in history one of the dumbest decisions ever made in this state,” Mr. Presley said. “Our health care system is on fire because Tate Reeves is not willing to help working Mississippians, just because of some petty, cheap, childish politics.”The state has a $3.9 billion budget surplus and could easily afford its 10 percent share of the expansion cost, but Mr. Reeves would rather use the money to help prosperous earners by getting rid of the income tax, which most low-income people do not pay. Mr. Presley, on the other hand, is campaigning to eliminate the grocery tax, which at 7 percent is the highest in the nation and hurts poor people the most. Though he is too politic to say so, the grocery tax is yet another legacy of Mississippi’s structural racism, which helps explain why there is more hunger in the state than in any other.Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of state voters say they will support only a candidate for governor who wants to get rid of the grocery tax, and 55 percent will support only a candidate who wants to expand Medicaid. But that same poll shows Mr. Reeves ahead of Mr. Presley by 11 points. (The Presley campaign says its internal polling shows the race to be within the margin of error.) To a large degree, that contradiction can be explained by rote party identification in the state, but it’s also because nearly two-thirds of voters don’t know enough about Mr. Presley yet, particularly in African American areas.“In those neighborhoods, he’s still a white guy that nobody knows,” said State Representative Robert L. Johnson III, the House Democratic leader, who is Black and has been supportive of Mr. Presley. “But he’s not afraid to embrace the African American vote in this state. He’s made commitments to do things that other candidates don’t do. It’s early yet, but the governor has been so bad that I think this time might be different.”Mr. Presley has won the endorsement of Bennie Thompson, the Democratic congressman from Jackson who carries a lot of weight among Black voters, and he has one new advantage: In 2020, voters abolished the Jim Crow-era requirement that candidates for governor have to win not only the popular vote but also the most votes in a majority of the 122 state House districts, a law intended to keep Black candidates out of statewide offices. (Mr. Reeves did not support the repeal.)“I think he can win,” Mr. Espy told me. “He’s very likable, a good retail politician, and Tate Reeves is so very, very unpopular. But he’s got a big job. He needs to raise the money and do more Black outreach.”Mr. Presley said his campaign would do everything possible to get a high turnout among Black voters, noting that the issues he cares about, particularly Medicaid and the grocery tax, resonate well in those precincts.One thing that he doesn’t bring up that much, unless asked, is his support for Mississippi’s extremely restrictive abortion law, which bans abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy was caused by rape. That law has an outsize effect on low-income women who can’t afford to travel outside the state for an abortion.Mr. Presley described himself as “pro-life and Christian.” But he quickly said that to him, being “pro-life” means being pro-hospital, pro-doctor and pro-emergency room, supporting full funding of the state education budget and ending the scams that have prevented federal and state welfare money from going to the families who need it.His position on abortion and his support for gun rights will not win him many friends in the national Democratic Party, but Mississippi is not like the rest of the nation. Winning there and finally beginning to reverse the detestable policies of the past — an enormously difficult task — will require a candidate who can bring together an unusual coalition of voters with very different interests, and Mr. Presley may be the one to do it. It’s been done next door in Louisiana, where Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat in a similar mold, and if it can happen in Mississippi, it might bring hope to thousands of other voters who have ceaselessly struggled for better lives in the Deep South.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 Trump Inevitability Question

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOutside a Manhattan courtroom, on the day of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment, Astead spoke to two camps of spectators. Supporters cast Mr. Trump as the victim of prosecutorial overreach, while opposing voices hoped this was just the beginning of his legal troubles. With an ever-shifting political landscape as America heads toward the 2024 election, what do Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes mean for his electoral viability? Is success for the former president, despite it all, an inevitability?Astead speaks with Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, about what the polls do — and do not — tell us.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Pool photo by Andrew KellyOn today’s episodeNate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times. About ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      With Local Elections in Much of the U.K., Here’s What’s at Stake

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      Municipalities across England will face voters, including in areas that could sway the next national election. Here’s a guide to the ballots and how to interpret them.Votes will be cast across England on Thursday in local elections that will be a test of the popularity of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has stabilized Britain’s politics but whose government remains unpopular in the face of surging inflation, sluggish economic growth and labor unrest.These votes will not affect the national Parliament that gives Mr. Sunak his power: Members of Parliament face the public every five years or so in a general election. The date is flexible but one isn’t expected until next year.But Thursday’s voting could offer important clues about whether Mr. Sunak, whose Conservative Party trails the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls, can turn things around.At stake are seats for around 8,000 representatives in lower tiers of government: municipalities that control services like garbage collection and construction permitting and raise taxes, within strict constraints, on residential property.It’s not an infallible guide to national sentiment. Turnout will be far lower than at a general election and parochial issues like planned housing developments could sway some races.Still, this may be the largest public vote between now and the next general election, and it’s fought across most of the areas likely to determine the next British government, with national issues often prominent in campaigning.What’s the state of play nationally?Recent surveys show Mr. Sunak cutting into Labour’s lead, though it remains in double digits. So he retains hopes of snatching an unlikely fifth consecutive general election victory for the Conservatives.Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, needs a decent result to sustain his hopes of becoming the next prime minister. Despite moving his party close to power, he has failed to excite voters.The Labour leader Keir Starmer on the eve of local elections in Gillingham, England, on Tuesday.Gareth Fuller, via Associated PressThe local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Who’s voting and where?The elections on Thursday take place across much — but not all — of England. Scotland and Wales aren’t voting, and Northern Ireland has local elections on May 18.Up for grabs are seats for representatives in 230 municipalities. The last time these seats were contested was in 2019, when Parliament was gridlocked over Brexit and the two main parties were about equally unpopular. Many big cities are voting (London excepted) but so are more rural areas.Both main parties hold a lot of these seats, but the Conservatives are defending the most — around 3,500 — and polling suggests they will lose plenty.How many is the key question: The parties traditionally seek to massage expectations. Greg Hands, the chair of the Conservatives, has talked of estimates that his party could lose 1,000 seats — a high number that some analysts think he inflated in an effort to portray lower losses as a triumph.Which are the results to watch?Some the most closely watched votes will be in so-called red wall areas in northern England and the Midlands. These deindustrialized regions used to be heartlands of the Labour Party. Mr. Sunak’s predecessor but one, Boris Johnson, fought a pro-Brexit general election campaign in late 2019 that won many of them for the Conservatives.With support dwindling both for the Conservatives and for Brexit, Labour hopes to regain some former strongholds, for example in northeastern England in areas like Middlesborough and Hartlepool.In the south, analysts will watch how the Conservatives perform in their traditional strongholds, prosperous towns like Windsor and Maidenhead, now sometimes known as blue wall areas. Here, Mr. Johnson alienated anti-Brexit Conservative voters, allowing independent candidates and a centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, to make gains. Mr. Sunak hopes his more technocratic style has arrested that slide.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London in April. The local elections will indicate how Labour’s polling lead and Mr. Sunak’s polling progress translate into real votes.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockSome results should emerge overnight — the northern city of Sunderland, for instance, prides itself on having all its votes counted just hours after the polls close, at 10 p.m. local time — but many places start counting the next day. There won’t be a reliable picture of votes across England until later on Friday.What’s the likely impact on British politics?Earlier this year, when Mr. Sunak’s leadership looked shaky, these elections seemed like a potential trigger for a leadership crisis and a comeback opportunity for Mr. Johnson, whose own fall was accelerated by local election losses last year.Since then, Mr. Sunak has struck a post-Brexit deal with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and stabilized the economy after upheavals under Liz Truss, Mr. Johnson’s short-lived successor. By contrast, Mr. Johnson is embroiled in an inquiry into whether he lied to Parliament about lockdown-busting parties during the pandemic.So Mr. Sunak’s position looks secure for now. But a bad result could demoralize party workers, shake confidence in his prospects, embolden his critics and confirm expectations that he will postpone calling a general election until late next year (it must take place by January 2025). A better-than-expected result for the Conservatives would strengthen Mr. Sunak and increase pressure on Mr. Starmer.If the Conservatives do suffer, the prime minister has one big thing going for him: timing. On Saturday, all the British media’s attention will shift to the pomp and pageantry of the coronation of King Charles III. More

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      The ‘Woke Mind Virus’ Is Eating Away at Republicans’ Brains

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      There are a few reasons to think that President Biden might lose his bid for re-election next year, even if Donald Trump is once more — for the third straight time — the Republican nominee.There’s the Electoral College, which could still favor the Republican Party just enough to give Trump 270 electoral votes, even if he doesn’t win a popular majority. There’s Biden’s overall standing — around 43 percent of Americans approve of his job performance — which doesn’t compare favorably with past incumbents who did win re-election. There’s the economy, which may hit a downturn between now and next November. And even if it doesn’t, Biden will still have presided over the highest inflation rate since the 1980s. Last, there’s Biden himself. The oldest person ever elected president, next year he will be — at 81 — the oldest president to ever stand for re-election. Biden’s age is a real risk that could suddenly become a liability.If Biden has potential weaknesses, however, it is also true that he doesn’t lack for real advantages. Along with low unemployment, there’s been meaningful economic growth, and he can point to significant legislative accomplishments. The Democratic Party is behind him; he has no serious rivals for the nomination.But Biden’s biggest advantage has to do with the opposition — the Republican Party has gotten weird. It’s not just that Republican policies are well outside the mainstream, but that the party itself has tipped over into something very strange.I had this thought while watching a clip of Ron DeSantis speak from a lectern to an audience we can’t see. In the video, which his press team highlighted on Twitter, DeSantis decries the “woke mind virus,” which he calls “a form of cultural Marxism that tries to divide us based on identity politics.”Now, I can follow this as a professional internet user and political observer. I know that “woke mind virus” is a term of art for the (condescending and misguided) idea that progressive views on race and gender are an outside contagion threatening the minds of young people who might otherwise reject structural explanations of racial inequality and embrace a traditional vision of the gender binary. I know that “cultural Marxism” is a right-wing buzzword meant to sound scary and imposing.To a normal person, on the other hand, this language is borderline unintelligible. It doesn’t tell you anything; it doesn’t obviously mean anything; and it’s quite likely to be far afield of your interests and concerns.DeSantis is a regular offender when it comes to speaking in the jargon of culture war-obsessed conservatives, but he’s not the only one. And it’s not just a problem of jargon. Republican politicians — from presidential contenders to anonymous state legislators — are monomaniacally focused on banning books, fighting “wokeness” and harassing transgender people. Some Republicans are even still denying the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, doubling down on the election-related conspiracies that hobbled many Republican candidates in the midterms.Not only do Americans not care about the various Republican obsessions — in a recent Fox News poll 1 percent of respondents said “wokeness” was “the most important issue facing the country today” — but a large majority say that those obsessions have gone too far. According to Fox, 60 percent of Americans said “book banning by school boards” was a major problem. Fifty-seven percent said the same for political attacks on families with transgender children.It is not for nothing that in Biden’s first TV ad of the 2024 campaign, he took specific aim at conservative book bans as a threat to freedom and American democracy.And yet there’s no sign that Republicans will relent and shift focus. Just the opposite, in fact; the party is poised to lurch even farther down the road of its alienating preoccupations. On abortion, for example, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, says candidates need to address the issue “head-on” in 2024 — that they can’t be “uncomfortable” on the issue and need to say “I’m proud to be pro-life.”But the Republican Party has veered quite far from most Americans on abortion rights, and in a contested race for the presidential nomination, a “head-on” focus will possibly mean a fight over which candidate can claim the most draconian abortion views and policy aims.There’s more: DeSantis is in the midst of a legal battle with Disney, one of the most beloved companies on the planet, and House Republicans are threatening the global economy in order to pass a set of deeply unpopular spending cuts to widely used assistance programs.Taken together, it’s as if the Republican Party has committed itself to being as off-putting as possible to as many Americans as possible. That doesn’t mean the party is doomed, of course. But as of this moment, it is hard to say it’s on the road to political success.As for Joe Biden? The current state of the Republican Party only strengthens his most important political asset — his normalcy. He promised, in 2020, that he would be a normal president. And he is promising, for 2024, to continue to serve as a normal president. Normal isn’t fun and normal isn’t exciting. But normal has already won one election, and I won’t be surprised if it wins another.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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      As Biden Runs for Re-election, Black Voters’ Frustration Bubbles

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      In interviews, Black voters, organizers and elected officials pointed to what some saw as unkept promises — raising questions about the enthusiasm of Democrats’ most loyal voters.President Biden began his re-election campaign this week vowing to “finish the job” he started in 2021. No one wants him to do that more than Black voters.Long the most loyal Democratic constituency, Black voters resurrected Mr. Biden’s struggling presidential campaign in South Carolina and sent him to the White House with his party in control of the Senate after two runoff victories in Georgia. In return, they hoped the administration would go beyond past presidents in trying to improve their communities — and they listened closely to his promises to do so.Yet some of Black voters’ biggest policy priorities — stronger federal protections against restrictive voting laws, student loan debt relief and criminal justice and police accountability measures — have failed or stalled, some because of Republican opposition and some because Democrats have declined to bypass the Senate’s filibuster rules. Those disappointments, highlighted in interviews with more than three dozen Black voters, organizers and elected officials in recent weeks, leave open the question of just how enthusiastic Democrats’ most important group of voters will be in 2024.The interviews point to an emerging split between Black elected officials — who are nearly uniform in praising Mr. Biden and predicting robust Black turnout for him next year — and voters, who are less sure.“Folks are just tired of being tired,” said Travis Williams, a Democratic organizer in Dorchester County, S.C. “They’re just sick and tired of being tired and disappointed whenever our issues are never addressed.”Marvin Dutton, 38, an entrepreneur who moved to Atlanta in 2020 from Philadelphia, suggested that Mr. Biden needed to be “a little bit more sincere,” rather than “pandering to us when it’s time to vote.”Marvin Dutton, an Atlanta-based entrepreneur, criticized Mr. Biden for “pandering to us when it’s time to vote.”Piera Moore for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s re-election bid and his renewed pledge to achieve his first-term policy goals have forced some reflection and frustration among Black voters in battleground states. Many believe that the big promises he made to Black communities have fallen flat.Democrats can feel confident that if Mr. Biden is his party’s nominee, as expected, a vast majority of Black voters will choose him over a Republican. But the question for the party is whether Democratic voters will bring the same level of energy that led to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory.In his campaign announcement, Mr. Biden made no secret of the importance of Black voters to his re-election. The Biden allies with the most airtime in his three-minute video, aside from his wife, were Vice President Kamala Harris, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton.“I have not found a lack of enthusiasm,” said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who was Mr. Biden’s most important Black surrogate in 2020. “I just haven’t found it. And people keep saying it. But it’s not there.”On Friday, Mr. Clyburn’s annual fish fry, which brings together candidates and hundreds of South Carolina Democrats, offered an early look at that enthusiasm. The state party is preparing to hold its presidential primary first in the nominating process — a move Mr. Biden and Democrats said was made to give Black voters more influence.Mr. Biden’s allies maintain that his administration has delivered for Black voters but that he has failed to trumpet some of his progress. Since taking office, he has provided billions of dollars for historically Black colleges and universities, and he has appointed more Black judges, including Justice Jackson, to the federal bench than any other president. Black unemployment is at a record low. The economy, a top concern for Black voters, has recovered from its pandemic doldrums, though inflation, which spiked last summer, remains higher on a sustained basis than it has been for decades.“The president and vice president have made issues Black Americans care most about a priority and are running to finish the job,” said Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign. “The campaign will work hard to earn every vote and expand on its winning 2020 coalition.”But there is evidence of a drop-off in Black voter engagement during the 2022 midterm election, although the results were broadly seen as heartening for Mr. Biden and his party, despite Republicans winning the House.The share of Black voters in the electorate dropped by 1 percent nationally from 2018 to 2022, the biggest drop of any racial group measured, while the share of white, college-educated voters increased, according to data from HIT Strategies, a Democratic polling firm.Representative Jim Clyburn, who helped President Biden win the state primary in 2020, addressed South Carolina Democrats gathered for his annual fish fry event during the state part convention weekend. Travis Dove for The New York TimesIt does not take much of a decrease in Black voters to alter the outcome of elections in the most competitive states. In 2020, Mr. Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin, each by fewer than 35,000 votes.The number of ballots cast for Democratic Senate candidates by voters in Milwaukee — home to a large majority of Wisconsin’s Black population — dropped by 18 percent from 2018 to 2022, while the statewide turnout remained the same, according to Wisconsin voter data. Had Milwaukee delivered the same margin for Democrats in 2022 that it did in 2018, Mandela Barnes, a Democrat, would have defeated Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican.The city’s mayor, Cavalier Johnson, attributed the difference in part to Republican efforts in Wisconsin to make voting harder — particularly after Mr. Biden’s narrow victory there in 2020.Mr. Johnson cited an array of Mr. Biden’s accomplishments for Black voters: He appointed the first Black woman, Justice Jackson, to the Supreme Court. He has emphasized the creation of manufacturing jobs, which were once the heartbeat of Milwaukee but have been moved overseas. And, Mr. Johnson added, Black voters credit Mr. Biden for trying to make voting laws less restrictive, even if his efforts failed.“They know that Joe Biden stood in the breach and stood up for them and fought to build the economy that’s beneficial for people of color, namely African Americans, and also fought against some of the hate and discrimination against people of color and African Americans,” Mr. Johnson said.Some Black voters said in interviews that their frustrations with the pace of change promised by Mr. Biden in 2020 had led them to question whether they would support him again, or perhaps sit out the next election.Jennifer Roberts, 35, is a lifelong Democrat and was one of the Black Georgians who helped elect Mr. Biden and Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. She was confident in 2020 that Ms. Harris, the first woman of color to become vice president, would use her background to advance policies related to women of color, and “was praying for them to win.”Three years later, Ms. Roberts’s view of Mr. Biden’s promises has changed. Her mother moved in with her because of rising rent costs in Metro Atlanta. Inflation has put an added strain on the tow-truck business she and her husband own.Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat in Atlanta who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said she believed Mr. Trump’s economic policies could provide the “tangible help” she was looking for.Piera Moore for The New York TimesMs. Roberts now says she would support former President Donald J. Trump if he were the Republican nominee next year. What she wants, and has not yet received, is “tangible help” — and she believes Mr. Trump’s economic policies could possibly provide it.“I understand he’s tried,” she said of Mr. Biden. “When you don’t address the things directly, when they don’t go according to what you said publicly they were going to, you can’t just kind of sweep it under the rug.”In Philadelphia, Lamont Wilson, 45, an information technology manager, voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but said he was not inspired by any 2024 candidates so far. He said Mr. Biden had “done a lot of good” but had not fulfilled his expectations.Mr. Wilson said he hoped Mr. Biden would “hold firm” on his promise to eliminate student debt — the president announced a $400 billion plan to forgive up to $20,000 of debt for certain people, though the Supreme Court may block it. Black college graduates carry an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white college graduates, according to the Education Department.“Get rid of that debt and give people a chance,” Mr. Wilson said.Nocola Hemphill, an activist and state party delegate in Winnsboro, S.C., said she had also heard grumblings from Black voters about Mr. Biden. But she saw this as a form of accountability, not evidence of a deeper problem.“Everyone is not happy with the administration,” she said. “And it’s not that we don’t want to see Biden run. We just want to make sure that he’s going to deliver on his promises.”Younger, first-time Black voters such as Evan Spann, 19, a freshman at Morehouse College in Atlanta, are also hoping Mr. Biden will deliver. Mr. Spann said he wanted to hear concrete plans from Mr. Biden for his second term.Evan Spann, 19, a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, wants to hear concrete plans from the president. Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times“I think what he needs to do is directly say what he’s going to do,” Mr. Spann said. “And then I think he needs to really show up and talk to us about it.”Mr. Biden’s proponents say that while some Black voters may be frustrated with the party, Democrats remain a safer choice than Republicans, who have opposed the legislation protecting voting rights and cutting student loan debt that Black lawmakers and voters have championed. In several G.O.P.-controlled state legislatures, lawmakers have sought to cut Black history lessons from school curriculums, outlaw books by Black authors and have drawn congressional maps that curb Black voting power.Democrats plan to underline the G.O.P.’s record on these issues.“Black voters understand all that,” Mr. Clyburn said. “And we’re going to spend a lot of time this year and next reminding them of who is doing this.” At the same time, Democrats must win over voters who are reluctant to support the party again.“It’s a difficult conversation to go back into those communities and explain why we didn’t get criminal justice reform,” said Kevin Harris, a former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus. “It’s a difficult conversation to go into those communities and talk about why we didn’t get the protections that we need with voting rights.”He continued: “That’s a hard conversation to have. But you still go have it.”Jon Hurdle More

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      Fox News Gambled, but Tucker Carlson Can Still Take Down the House

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      For the quarter-century-plus that the Fox News Channel has been coming into America’s living rooms, it has operated according to a cardinal tenet: No one at the cable network is bigger than Fox News itself. It’s a lesson Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly all learned the hard way after they left Fox and saw their fame and influence (if not their fortunes) evaporate. Once the biggest names in cable news, they now spend their days wandering in the wilderness of podcasts and third-tier streaming platforms. Even Roger Ailes, Fox News’s original architect and the man who devised — and then ruthlessly enforced — the no-one-bigger-than rule, discovered that he was expendable when Rupert Murdoch pushed him out as Fox’s chairman and chief executive in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Ailes soon disappeared to a mansion in Florida and, less than a year later, died in exile from the media world he’d once commanded.When Fox News abruptly fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular prime-time host and the most powerful person in conservative media, many savvy press critics predicted the same fate for him: professional oblivion. Mr. Carlson had himself once replaced Ms. Kelly, and later Mr. O’Reilly, and each time he climbed to a new, better slot in the Fox News lineup he garnered bigger and bigger ratings. Now, according to the conventional wisdom, some new up-and-comer would inherit Mr. Carlson’s audience and replace him as the king (or queen) of conservative media. “The ‘talent’ at the Fox News Channel has never been the star,” Politico’s Jack Shafer wrote earlier this week. “Fox itself, which convenes the audience, is the star.”But there’s good reason to believe Mr. Carlson will be the exception that proves the rule. For one thing, unlike previous stars who have left Fox News, Mr. Carlson departed when he was still at the height of his power, making his firing all the more sudden and shocking. Three days before his sacking, he gave the keynote address at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. Two weeks before that, he browbeat Texas’ Republican governor to issue a pardon to a man who had been convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin.More important, at Fox, he exercised power in ways that were new and unique for a cable star. He was a sophisticated political operator as much as he was a talented television host — to an astonishingly unsettling degree, as he continued to thrive while making racist and sexist comments and earning the praise of neo-Nazis. Like Donald Trump — to say nothing of other Republican politicians and conservative media figures — he gave voice to an anger, sense of grievance and conspiratorial mind-set that resonated with many Americans, particularly those on the far right. Unlike Mr. Trump — not to mention his motley crew of cheerleaders and imitators — Mr. Carlson developed and articulated a coherent political ideology that could prove more lasting, and influential, than any cult of personality. Mr. Carlson has left Fox News. But his dark and outsize influence on the conservative movement — and on American politics — is hardly over.Tucker Carlson merchandise at the Heritage Foundation’s Leadership Summit on Friday, April 21. Mr. Carlson is leaving Fox at the height of his power. Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Carlson met with Mr. Ailes in 2009 to discuss a job at Fox News, Mr. Carlson’s career was at a nadir. He’d been let go from both CNN and MSNBC. He’d developed a game show pilot for CBS that wasn’t picked up. His stint on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” lasted just one episode. His finances were so stretched that he’d decided to sell his suburban New Jersey mansion out from under his wife and four children.“You’re a loser and you screwed up your whole life,” Mr. Ailes told Mr. Carlson, according to an account of the conversation Mr. Carlson later gave to his friend, the former Dick Cheney adviser Neil Patel. “But you have talent. And the only thing you have going for you is that I like hiring talented people who have screwed things up for themselves and learned a lesson, because once I do, you’re gonna work your ass off for me.”Mr. Carlson didn’t disappoint. Relegated to weekend morning show anchor duties, he threw himself into the job, participating in cooking segments with guests like Billy Ray Cyrus, competing against (and losing to) his female co-anchor in a Spartan Race and even subjecting himself to a dunk tank. He did it all with a smile, but, for a man who once hosted two prime-time cable news shows, as well as a highbrow talk show on the Public Broadcasting System, it had to have been humiliating. When his wife, Susie, sent an email in 2014 inviting some of Mr. Carlson’s Washington friends up to New York to celebrate his 45th birthday, she told guests they might “throw eggs at the FOX studio window!” (Since Hunter Biden was a friend of Mr. Carlson’s at the time and on the invite list, the email was later discovered on Mr. Biden’s laptop.)During his time as a host on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Carlson’s contrarian streak curdled into resentment against “the elites” who took the country into Iraq, triggered the 2008 financial crisis and refused to give him a television role commensurate with his talents.Noam Galai/Getty ImagesMr. Carlson’s big break at Fox News arrived in 2016 in the form of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Although it’s hard to imagine now, Fox initially seemed intent on torpedoing Mr. Trump’s candidacy. So antagonistic were its hosts and commentators toward Mr. Trump in the early days of the 2016 race that it became a challenge for Fox to produce compelling television about the man who was dominating the G.O.P. field. No one — or at least no one Fox’s producers deemed camera-ready — seemed willing to make a sensible case for him.Enter Mr. Carlson. He’d nursed a soft spot for Mr. Trump ever since the early 2000s, when he made a throwaway joke on CNN about Mr. Trump’s hair and Mr. Trump responded with a blunt voice mail. “It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Mr. Carlson recalled Mr. Trump telling his answering machine. But, Mr. Trump said, with a vulgar boast, he had sex with more women. Mr. Carlson, who’d never met or spoken to Mr. Trump, was amused. More than a decade later, when Mr. Trump ran for president, he became intrigued. And it was that early openness to Mr. Trump’s candidacy that facilitated Mr. Carlson’s rise at Fox.Mr. Carlson had two motivations for not joining in the chorus denouncing Mr. Trump. One was ruthlessly strategic. Through the conservative website he launched with Mr. Patel in 2010, The Daily Caller, Mr. Carlson could see what got clicks: sensational articles about the twin scourges of illegal immigration and Black-on-white crime, plus slide shows of busty supermodels. The Caller’s web traffic metrics served as an early warning system for Mr. Carlson about where the conservative base was headed, and how a populist candidate who explicitly ran on nativism, white grievance and sexism might have a lane in a Republican primary.Mr. Carlson’s openness to Mr. Trump also had something to do with his own ideological journey. He started his career as a writer at The Weekly Standard, as a standard issue Reagan conservative, albeit one with a contrarian streak. The Iraq War, which he initially supported despite harboring doubts, hardened his heterodox views. Then, as his professional struggles mounted, his contrarianism curdled into resentment against “the elites” who took the country into Iraq, triggered the 2008 financial crisis and refused to give Mr. Carlson a television role commensurate with his talents. He paired his staple rep ties and Rolex with this new populist streak — and assumed the role of class traitor.That meant that in 2016, when most of his fellow conservative pundits still believed the G.O.P. needed to broaden its tent and so dismissed Mr. Trump out of hand, Mr. Carlson was able to recognize the potential appeal of the businessman turned reality-TV star turned populist politician. He was willing to say as much on air, which meant that Mr. Carlson began getting more and choicer opportunities at Fox to make the case that Mr. Trump should be taken seriously. Then, shortly after Mr. Trump’s election in November, as a reward of sorts for his prescience, Mr. Murdoch gave Mr. Carlson his own evening show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” By then, of course, Fox News was fully on board the Trump Train. Which is what made Mr. Carlson’s next move so interesting: He took a step off.At one point during Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated show in the history of cable news, drawing over four million viewers on some evenings. But it was not a down-the-line, pro-Trump show. Each night, Mr. Carlson articulated a populist-nationalist ideology best described as Trumpism without Mr. Trump. He borrowed from (and sometimes, on his Fox Nation streaming show, even invited on air) “new right” intellectuals like the blogger Curtis Yarvin and the Claremont Institute fellow Michael Anton, smuggling their fringe ideas — about how the United States would work better as a monarchy, for instance — into the conservative mainstream. Indeed, Mr. Carlson himself often offered views that were more inflammatory and more extreme than the president’s — complaining that immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier and more divided,” for instance, and proclaiming that white supremacy was “a hoax.” A blog post on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer celebrated: “Tucker Carlson is basically ‘Daily Stormer: The Show.’ Other than the language used, he is covering all our talking points.”Mr. Carlson has already folded his firing into the apocalyptic worldview he’s so successfully promulgated these last few years.Max Oden/Sipa, via Associated PressAnd when Mr. Trump wasn’t willing to go as far as Mr. Carlson, Mr. Carlson wasn’t afraid to call Mr. Trump out. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, he lambasted Mr. Trump for not cracking down harder on Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington and elsewhere. “If you can’t keep a Fox News correspondent from getting attacked directly across from your house, how can you protect my family?” Mr. Carlson said on his show. “How are you going to protect the country? How hard are you trying?” He was positioning himself, in opposition to Mr. Trump, as the vanguard of the American right. As Christopher Rufo, the ubiquitous conservative culture warrior whose own rise to prominence began with an appearance on Mr. Carlson’s show, once explained: “Tucker frames the narrative for conservative politics. Tucker doesn’t react to the news; he creates the news.”Mr. Carlson’s criticism of Mr. Trump and the wary distance he kept from him — sometimes even refusing to take his calls — made him that much more intriguing to the president. “Tucker was the hot girl that didn’t want to sleep with him,” says one former Trump White House official. “I think Trump was fascinated by this idea that ‘Everybody else is calling me. Why aren’t you calling me?’” Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as Mr. Trump’s White House communications director, recalls the president frequently fretting about getting on Mr. Carlson’s bad side. “He’d say, ‘Tucker’s crushing us, our base is going to leave us,’” Ms. Farah Griffin says. It was an acknowledgment from Mr. Trump that Mr. Carlson had become bigger than Fox.That certainly seemed to be the view inside the cable network. When Mr. Ailes ran Fox News, the pecking order was clear. If a host or reporter stepped out of line, Mr. Ailes would simply yank that person off the air, instructing producers to “show ’em the red light.” Mr. Carlson’s ascension at Fox occurred after Mr. Ailes’s departure from the network. The executive team that replaced him — the Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott and Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan, who’s the chief executive of the Fox Corporation — did not enforce as much discipline. Mr. Carlson repeatedly seemed to step over lines at Fox — endorsing the racist “great replacement theory,” circulating false conspiracy theories about Covid and Jan. 6, and attacking other Fox hosts on-air — only to have Fox execs then move the line. If Mr. Ailes was always goading disgruntled hosts to quit, telling them they would be nothing without Fox, Mr. Carlson seemed to be daring his bosses to fire him.After Mr. Trump went kicking and screaming from the White House (as well as from Twitter and Facebook), Mr. Carlson, still ensconced on Fox News and with unfettered access to social media, emerged as the far right’s standard-bearer in America’s culture wars, coming to occupy the same mental real estate — among both conservatives and liberals — that Mr. Trump once did. He was no longer just a cable host but a movement leader — working to bring the G.O.P. in line with his own views. On his show, he boosted ideological comrades like J.D. Vance, who shared Mr. Carlson’s skepticism about U.S. support of Ukraine in its war with Russia, gifting Mr. Vance hours of free airtime in the run-up to the Republican primary for the 2022 Ohio Senate race. Off-air, he personally lobbied Mr. Trump to give Mr. Vance his endorsement. At one point Mr. Carlson spent nearly two hours on FaceTime with Mr. Trump, while Mr. Trump golfed in Florida, making the case that Mr. Vance believed what Mr. Trump believed and that, were Mr. Trump to run for president again, he needed someone like Mr. Vance in the Senate. According to a person familiar with the call, Mr. Trump ended it by telling Mr. Carlson, “You’ll be happy.” A few weeks later, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Vance, propelling him to the Republican nomination and, eventually, the Senate — one of the few 2022 bright spots for Republicans.As Mr. Carlson turned his attention toward the 2024 presidential race, his relationship with Mr. Trump, once again, became complicated. On the one hand, he was dead-set opposed to Nikki Haley, for whom he’d developed an intense personal dislike during an ill-fated hunting weekend about 10 years ago. (After Ms. Haley eventually launched her presidential candidacy in February, Mr. Carlson told his viewers, “Nikki Haley believes in collective racial guilt,” before going on to say, “She believes identity politics is our future. ‘Vote for me because I’m a woman,’ she says. That’s her pitch.”) On the other hand, Mr. Carlson, like many at Fox News — including Mr. Murdoch, who, in the wake of Jan. 6, told a former executive that Fox was seeking “to make Trump a nonperson” — appeared to be leaning toward the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, as a less erratic, more electable alternative to Mr. Trump. (In 2020, Mr. Carlson moved from Washington, D.C., to the small resort town of Boca Grande, Fla.)Sensing this, Mr. Trump tried to win back Mr. Carlson, but Mr. Carlson refused a sit-down. Finally, last July, Donald Trump Jr., with whom Mr. Carlson has become close, traveled to Mr. Carlson’s summer residence in rural Maine. There, according to people familiar with the visit, Mr. Trump Jr. pressed Mr. Carlson to meet with his father. A few weeks later, Mr. Carlson showed up at Mr. Trump’s Bedminster resort in New Jersey on the same weekend it was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour. The result was pictures of Mr. Carlson yukking it up with Mr. Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene in the tournament’s V.I.P. section.By keeping his distance from Mr. Trump, Mr. Carlson only made himself more intriguing to the former president.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnd the two have grown closer since. Although Mr. Trump was reportedly upset when text messages from Mr. Carlson calling Mr. Trump “a demonic force” and claiming “I hate him passionately” were released in March as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox, the two patched things up in a phone call. And in April, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” devoted a whole hour to Mr. Carlson’s one-on-one softball interview with Mr. Trump — one of Mr. Trump’s longest appearances on the cable network since he was in the White House.Less than two weeks later, Fox fired Mr. Carlson. The reasons for his sacking remain unclear. It may have had to do with offensive comments he had made about Fox executives in texts uncovered in the Dominion suit. Or it could have been because of another lawsuit, from Abby Grossberg, a former head of booking on his show, accusing him and the network of creating a hostile work environment. Or it might have had something to do with a potential lawsuit from Ray Epps, a Jan. 6 protester from Arizona who was at the center of Mr. Carlson’s false conspiracy theory about the day. Or perhaps, as some reporting from Semafor suggests, the 92-year-old Mr. Murdoch has simply become erratic in his decision-making.Whatever the reason, Mr. Carlson now finds himself with no shortage of options. He could go to work for Newsmax or One America News Network, two upstart right-wing networks that have been trying to outflank Fox. (By Wednesday, two days after Mr. Carlson’s firing, Fox News’s ratings in the 8 p.m. hour had plummeted by roughly half, to their lowest levels in more than 20 years. Meanwhile, Newsmax’s audience in that time slot rose more than 300 percent over the previous week.) He might strike out on his own and form a media company to stream his show online. (“The world is Tucker’s oyster,” says one person who spoke with Mr. Carlson this week. “Many billionaires and others with deep pockets would be eager to fund a new venture.”)Ratings at Fox News during Mr. Carlson’s former time slot have plummetedTotal weeknight viewership at 8 p.m.

      Source: AdweekBy The New York TimesAnd there’s always the chance that he could run for office. That’s a prospect that Mr. Carlson has long pooh-poohed. “I have zero ambition, not just politically but in life,” he demurred last summer when he was asked about any White House ambitions. But one of his friends recalls a family member discussing the possibility of Mr. Carlson running for president as far back as 2012.On Wednesday night just after 8 o’clock — the time when, until his firing two days earlier, he’d usually be launching into his opening monologue on Fox News — Mr. Carlson reappeared with a short, somewhat cryptic video on Twitter. He talked about “how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are” and complained that both political parties and their donors “actively collude” to shut down discussion of the truly important issues: “war, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources.” America has become a “one-party state,” where the “people in charge” know that the old “orthodoxies” won’t last, he said, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. “True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left but there are some, and that’s enough,” he continued. “As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.” In under two hours, the video racked up 11 million views.It was vintage Mr. Carlson, and it showed how he had already incorporated his firing into the apocalyptic worldview he’s so successfully promulgated these last few years. Fox News was now part of “the elite consensus” Mr. Carlson seeks to overturn. And in this moment of unraveling, when hostility toward and distrust of institutions and elites is at an all-time high, it’s not hard to imagine a good segment of Americans following along with this logic. In their minds, Fox will now join Wall Street and big tech, globalists and the deep state, the Republican establishment and the woke as something that must be opposed. And in a world in which an increasing number of Americans are already fracturing into their own realities, Mr. Carlson will stand, for many of them, as the one person who’s independent and courageous and powerful enough to tell them the truth. Just as Mr. Murdoch and Fox failed to make Mr. Trump a nonperson, they likely won’t be able to make Mr. Carlson one, either.

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      Jason Zengerle (@zengerle) is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a New America national fellow. His forthcoming book about Tucker Carlson and conservative media is “Hated by All the Right People.”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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      ¿Cuánto les importa a los votantes la edad de Joe Biden?

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      Más allá de una crisis de salud o una equivocación grave, hay buenas razones para pensar que la edad de Biden puede importar menos de lo que sugieren algunas encuestas.Muchos estadounidenses dicen que no quieren que el presidente Joe Biden vuelva a postularse a la reelección y su edad es una razón de peso. En una encuesta de NBC News publicada el pasado fin de semana, el 70 por ciento de los adultos opinó que Biden, de 80 años, no debería volver a postularse. A la pregunta de si la edad era un factor, el 69 por ciento respondió que sí. Otros sondeos recientes detectan una falta de entusiasmo similar y hay muchos votantes (incluida alrededor de la mitad de los demócratas) que consideran que Biden es demasiado mayor para volver a aspirar a la Casa Blanca.Visto así, es fácil imaginar que su edad pudiera perjudicar la campaña de reelección que anunció de manera formal el martes. Biden, quien ya es el presidente de mayor edad en la historia de Estados Unidos, tendría 86 años al terminar su segundo mandato. Los republicanos han difundido videos de sus lapsus verbales, así como de ocasiones en las que tartamudea, y han sugerido que reflejan un declive cognitivo. La edad de Biden es un chiste frecuente en los programas de la televisión nocturna.Sin embargo, un análisis de las encuestas y las investigaciones académicas muestra un panorama sorprendentemente más ambiguo. Con la advertencia obvia de que una equivocación grave relacionada con la edad o una crisis de salud podrían cambiar las cosas, hay buenas razones para pensar que la edad de Biden puede importar menos de lo que sugieren algunas encuestas.1. Teoría contra prácticaCon frecuencia los estadounidenses suelen expresar su preocupación por los gobernantes de mayor edad, pero eso no ha evitado que voten por candidatos más viejos.En una encuesta reciente de USA Today y la Universidad de Suffolk, la mitad de los estadounidenses dijeron que la edad ideal de un presidente era de entre 51 y 65 años. Una cuarta parte dijo que prefería que los candidatos tuvieran menos de 50 años. Pero cinco de los últimos ocho candidatos presidenciales, incluidos Biden en 2020 y Donald Trump (dos veces), han superado los 65 años. En varios casos, los votantes los eligieron frente a oponentes mucho más jóvenes en las elecciones primarias. Y, en el último siglo, se ha elegido a decenas de senadores o representantes cuya edad supera los 80 años.La preocupación por la edad también tiene más matices de lo que parece a primera vista. Aunque la mayoría de los electores se muestran a favor de limitar la edad de los políticos, no se ponen de acuerdo sobre cuál debería ser ese límite. Muchos también afirman que los legisladores de más edad aportan una valiosa experiencia y no se les debería prohibir servir al país si siguen gozando de buena salud.Eso no significa que los estadounidenses que dicen estar preocupados por la edad estén mintiendo. Sus decisiones al momento de votar pueden reflejar las opciones disponibles. “No hay nada incoherente en que la gente diga que una persona de 80 años no debería ser presidente y luego vote por un candidato de 80 años si esa es la única opción que se les da”, manifestó Whit Ayres, encuestador republicano.Tampoco está claro que la edad sea una desventaja para los candidatos más viejos. Los gobernantes mayores suelen tener índices de aprobación más bajos que los más jóvenes, según un estudio de 2022 del que es coautor Damon Roberts, doctorando en Ciencias Políticas por la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder. Pero en su investigación, los votantes mostraron una apertura más o menos similar al momento de apoyar a candidatos hipotéticos de 23, 50 o 77 años.También sucede que, por estos días, hay muchos políticos de mayor edad en diferentes cargos. “No creo que Biden en particular se vea muy fuera de lugar en la escena política de este momento”, afirmó Roberts.Sin embargo, nadie de la edad de Biden se ha postulado a la reelección presidencial, y otros expertos dudan que se integre facilmente. “La presidencia es fundamentalmente diferente”, dijo Ayres. “La visibilidad es mucho mayor”.2. El partido ante todoLos sondeos sugieren que los votantes perciben temas más importantes para Biden que para candidatos de mayor edad anteriores (aunque los encuestadores parecen haber preguntado con menos frecuencia sobre la edad de los candidatos pasados). Pero, en estos tiempos de polarización, es mucho más probable que la lealtad al partido determine la elección de los ciudadanos.“A fin de cuentas, vamos a votar por el partido ‘D’ o por el ‘R’”, afirma Karlyn Bowman, investigadora emérita del American Enterprise Institute que estudia las encuestas de opinión pública. “En este momento, la lealtad partidista es tan fuerte que eso prevalecerá sobre las demás preocupaciones”.La percepción de las capacidades de Biden también depende de la afiliación partidista. Los republicanos —quienes probablemente no apoyarían a ningún candidato demócrata, por muy en forma que esté— son los más propensos a decir que Biden es demasiado viejo para continuar en la presidencia. Su edad tampoco ha impedido que la gran mayoría de los demócratas consideren su mandato como un éxito (aunque los demócratas más jóvenes muestran menos entusiasmo ante la postulación de Biden a la reelección).“La gente piensa en otras cosas a la hora de votar”, dijo Margie Omero, directora de GBAO, una encuestadora demócrata. “El historial de Biden, el historial de Trump, lo que ven como el futuro del país, los logros legislativos, la lucha por el derecho al aborto”.En última instancia, la edad de Biden podría ser más importante para los votantes indecisos que están abiertos a respaldar a cualquiera de los partidos, lo que les da una gran influencia para elegir al ganador. “Es una porción muy pequeña de la población en la actualidad, pero aún así, es muy importante”, afirmó Bowman.3. Solo un númeroEsto nos lleva al tema de si Biden podrá influir en las opiniones de los electores sobre su idoneidad para el cargo. En febrero, Omero y sus colegas de Navigator Research, una encuestadora demócrata, reclutaron a un pequeño grupo de votantes indecisos para que vieran el discurso de Biden sobre el Estado de la Unión. Antes del discurso, solo un 35 por ciento de ellos lo describía como “apto para la presidencia”. Tras el discurso —en el que se produjo un intercambio de opiniones inesperado entre Biden y los congresistas republicanos sobre la Seguridad Social y Medicare— el 55 por ciento consideró que Biden tiene las capacidades necesarias para ejercer el cargo.Biden también podría tratar de evadir este tema si continúa limitando sus apariciones públicas. En 1996, Ayres trabajó en la campaña de reelección al Senado de Carolina del Sur de Strom Thurmond, quien en ese entonces tenía 93 años, en un momento en el que, al parecer, sufría un deterioro cognitivo. “Intentamos mantenerlo lo más invisible posible”, dijo Ayres.Presidentes anteriores, como Dwight Eisenhower y Ronald Reagan, lograron superar las dudas sobre sus edades y ganaron la reelección con un buen margen.Pero Biden es mayor de lo que ellos eran cuando trataron de reelegirse. “La cuestión no es tanto cómo es hoy”, dijo Ayres. “La cuestión es cómo será en 2028”. Es posible que el mandatario tenga que confiar en que los votantes pasen por alto cualquier preocupación a largo plazo sobre su edad.4. El factor TrumpTrump, quien tendrá 78 años el día de las elecciones, parece ser el aspirante mejor posicionado para ganar las primarias republicanas de 2024. Supera a su competidor potencial más cercano —el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, de 44 años— en las encuestas nacionales y en los respaldos de otros republicanos.Aunque las edades similares de Biden y Trump podrían hacer que el tema pierda importancia; por ahora, los electores dicen estar más preocupados por la edad de Biden. Y si Trump ataca con agresividad el estado físico de Biden, podría generar más escrutinio sobre ese tema que un aspirante más joven pero más comedido.Pero también es un mensaje que Trump ya ha usado antes —como cuando, en 2020, le puso el sobrenombre de “Sleepy Joe” (“Joe, el dormilón”)— en una contienda que no ganó. En algún momento, todo ese discurso sobre la edad de Biden puede comenzar a parecerle anticuada a los votantes.Ian Prasad Philbrick es redactor del boletín The Morning. @IanPrasad More

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      Joe Biden and the Not-So-Bad Economy

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      Joe Biden has, to nobody’s surprise, formally announced that he is seeking re-election. And I, for one, am dreading the year and a half of political crystal ball gazing that lies ahead of us — a discussion to which I will have little if anything to add.One thing I may be able to contribute to, however, is the way we talk about the Biden economy. Much political discussion, it seems to me, is informed by a sense that the economy will be a major liability for Democrats — a sense that is strongly affected by out-of-date or questionable data.Of course, a lot can change between now and November 2024. We could have a recession, maybe as the delayed effect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. We might all too easily face a financial crisis this summer when, as seems likely, Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling — and nobody knows how that will play out politically.Right now, however, the economy is in better shape than I suspect most pundits or even generally well-informed readers may realize.The basic story of the Biden economy is that America has experienced a remarkably fast and essentially complete job market recovery. This recovery was initially accompanied by distressingly high inflation; but inflation, while still high by the standards of the past few decades, has subsided substantially. The overall situation is, well, not so bad.About jobs: Unless you’ve been getting your news from Tucker Carlson or Truth Social, you’re probably aware that the unemployment rate is hovering near historic lows. However, I keep hearing assertions that this number is misleading, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the labor force — which was true a year ago.But it’s not true anymore. There are multiple ways to make this point, but one way is to compare where we are now with projections made just before Covid struck. In January 2020 the Congressional Budget Office projected that by the first quarter of 2023 nonfarm employment would be 154.8 million; the actual number for March was 155.6 million. As a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers points out, labor force participation — the percentage of adults either working or actively looking for work — is also right back in line with pre-Covid projections.In short, we really are back at full employment.Inflation isn’t as happy a picture. If we measure inflation by the annual rate of change in consumer prices over the past six months — my current preference for trying to extract the signal from the noise — inflation was almost 10 percent in June 2022. But it’s now down to just 3.5 percent.That’s still above the Fed’s target of 2 percent, and there’s intense debate among economists about how hard it will be to get inflation all the way down (intense because nobody really knows the answer). But maybe some perspective is in order. The current inflation rate is lower than it was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.Or consider the “misery index,” the sum of unemployment and inflation — a crude measure that nonetheless seems to do a pretty good job of predicting consumer sentiment. Using six-month inflation, that index is currently about 7, roughly the same as it was in 2017, when few people considered the economy a disaster.But never mind these fancy statistics — don’t people perceive the economy as terrible? After all, news coverage tends to emphasize the negative: You hear a lot about soaring prices of gasoline or eggs, much less when they come back down. Even amid a vast jobs boom, consumers report having heard much more negative than positive news about employment.Even so, do people consider the economy awful? It depends on whom you ask. The venerable Michigan Survey still shows consumer sentiment at levels heretofore associated with severe economic crises. But the also well-established Conference Board survey — which, as it happens, has a much larger sample size — tells a different story: Its “present situation” index is fairly high, roughly comparable to what it was in 2017. That is, it’s more or less in line with the misery index.And for what it’s worth, both the strength of consumer spending, even in the relatively soft latest report on G.D.P., and the failure of the much-predicted red wave to materialize in the midterm elections look a lot more Conference Board than Michigan.Again, a lot can happen between now and the election. But what strikes me is that consumers already expect a lot of bad news. The Conference Board expectations index is far below its “present situation” index; consumers expect 4 to 5 percent inflation over the next year, while financial markets expect a number more like 2. If we either don’t have a recession or any recession is brief and mild, if inflation actually does come down, voters seem set to view those outcomes as a positive surprise.Now, I’m not predicting a “morning in America”-type election; such things probably aren’t even possible in an era of intense partisanship. But the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.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