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      4 conclusiones de la entrevista de Joe Biden en ABC News tras el debate

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      En su primera entrevista televisiva desde el debate, el presidente de EE. UU. intentó tranquilizar a sus partidarios, pero pasó gran parte de la conversación resistiéndose a las preguntas sobre sus capacidades.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Le restó importancia. Lo negó. Lo desestimó.La primera entrevista televisiva del presidente Joe Biden desde su floja actuación en el debate de la semana pasada se anunciaba como una oportunidad para tranquilizar al pueblo estadounidense en horario de máxima audiencia y asegurarle que aún tiene lo necesario para postularse, ganar y ocupar el cargo más alto de la nación.Pero Biden, con voz claramente carrasposa, pasó gran parte de los 22 minutos resistiéndose a una serie de preguntas que le había planteado George Stephanopoulos, de ABC News, sobre su aptitud, sobre la aplicación de un examen cognitivo y sobre su posición en las encuestas.El viernes, el presidente no tuvo dificultades para cerrar sus ideas como en el debate. Pero tampoco era el senador de su juventud que hablaba con suavidad, ni siquiera el mismo estadista mayor al que el partido le confió hace cuatro años la misión de derrotar al expresidente Donald Trump.Fue una entrevista de alto riesgo con un presidente de 81 años cuyo propio partido está dudando cada vez más de él, pero que no sonaba como un hombre con dudas sobre sí mismo.A continuación, cuatro conclusiones:Biden minimiza el debate como un error puntualLa entrevista fue la aparición sin guion más larga de Biden en público desde su vacilante actuación en el debate. El retraso había desconcertado a sus aliados en el Capitolio y fuera de él acerca de las razones que tenían al presidente en actos a puerta cerrada —o valiéndose de apuntadores— durante tanto tiempo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fact-Checking Biden’s ABC Interview

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      The president defended his debate performance with exaggerations about polling, his recent appearances and his opponent.President Biden rejected concerns about his fumbling performance in the first presidential debate last month in a prime-time interview on Friday.In the interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Mr. Biden downplayed and misstated polls showing him falling farther behind former President Donald J. Trump since the debate, exaggerated Mr. Trump’s proposals and made hyperbolic statements about his own record and recent events.Here’s a fact check.what Was SAID“After that debate, I did 10 major events in a row, including until 2 o’clock in the morning after the debate. I did events in North Carolina. I did events in — in — in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no — no — no slipping.”This is exaggerated. Since the debate on June 27, Mr. Biden has traveled up and down the East Coast and participated in more than a dozen events, according to his public calendar. Whether or not the events can be considered “major” and crowds “large” are matters of opinion, but Mr. Biden did misspeak at several.Before the interview on Friday, Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump at a rally in Wisconsin that he would “beat him again in 2020.”At a Fourth of July barbecue with military members and their families, Mr. Biden referred to Mr. Trump as “one of our former colleagues” before correcting himself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dear Elites (of Both Parties), the People Will Take It From Here, Thanks

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      I first learned about the opioid crisis three presidential elections ago, in the fall of 2011. I was the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s campaign and questions began trickling in from the New Hampshire team: What’s our plan?By then, opioids had been fueling the deadliest drug epidemic in American history for years. I am ashamed to say I did not know what they were. Opioids, as in opium? I looked it up online. Pills of some kind. Tell them it’s a priority, and President Obama isn’t working. That year saw nearly 23,000 deaths from opioid overdoses nationwide.I was no outlier. America’s political class was in the final stages of self-righteous detachment from the economic and social conditions of the nation it ruled. The infamous bitter clinger and “47 percent” comments by Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney captured the atmosphere well: delivered at private fund-raisers in San Francisco in 2008 and Boca Raton in 2012, evincing disdain for the voters who lived in between. The opioid crisis gained more attention in the years after the election, particularly in 2015, with Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s research on deaths of despair.Of course, 2015’s most notable political development was Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch and subsequent steamrolling of 16 Republican primary opponents committed to party orthodoxy. In the 2016 general election he narrowly defeated the former first lady, senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who didn’t need her own views of Americans leaked: In public remarks, she gleefully classified half of the voters who supported Mr. Trump as “deplorables,” as her audience laughed and applauded. That year saw more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses.In a democratic republic such as the United States, where the people elect leaders to govern on their behalf, the ballot box is the primary check on an unresponsive, incompetent or corrupt ruling class — or, as Democrats may be learning, a ruling class that insists on a candidate who voters no longer believe can lead. If those in power come to believe they are the only logical options, the people can always prove them wrong. For a frustrated populace, an anti-establishment outsider’s ability to wreak havoc is a feature rather than a bug. The elevation of such a candidate to high office should provoke immediate soul-searching and radical reform among the highly credentialed leaders across government, law, media, business, academia and so on — collectively, the elites.The response to Mr. Trump’s success, unfortunately, has been the opposite. Seeing him elected once, faced with the reality that he may well win again, most elites have doubled down. We have not failed, the thinking goes; we have been failed, by the American people. In some tellings, grievance-filled Americans simply do not appreciate their prosperity. In others they are incapable of informed judgments, leaving them susceptible to demagoguery and foreign manipulation. Or perhaps they are just too racist to care — never mind that polling consistently suggests that most of Mr. Trump’s supporters are women and minorities, or that polling shows he is attracting far greater Black and Hispanic support than prior Republican leaders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Says Only ‘Lord Almighty’ Could Make Him Quit Race

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      President Biden dismissed concerns about his age, his mental acuity and polls showing him losing his re-election bid.President Biden on Friday dismissed concerns about his age, his mental acuity and polls showing him losing his re-election bid, saying in a prime-time interview that his sharpness is tested every day while he is “running the world.” He vowed to drop out only if “the Lord Almighty” tells him to.During a 22-minute interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which aired unedited, Mr. Biden, 81, said there was no need for him to submit to neurological or cognitive testing. He said he simply did not believe the polls showing him losing. And asked how he would feel if former President Donald J. Trump were elected in November, he brushed off the question.“I feel as long as I gave it my all and I did as good a job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Mr. Biden said in an interview that was intended to assuage growing concerns about his age following last Thursday’s debate. But speaking in a hoarse voice and defiant throughout, there was little indication that the interview would do much to staunch the bleeding during the deepest crisis of this long political career.Again and again, Mr. Biden told Mr. Stephanopoulos that voters should consider his accomplishments in office.“Who’s going to be able to hold NATO together like me?” he said. “Who’s going to be able to be in a position where I’m able to keep the Pacific Basin in a position where, at least we’re checkmating China now? Who’s going to do that? Who has that reach?”Mr. Biden repeatedly waved off “hypothetical” questions about whether he would step aside for another Democrat if people he respects say that he can’t win in the fall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why More French Youth Are Voting for the Far Right

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      Most young people in France usually don’t vote or they back the left. That is still true, but support has surged for the far right, whose openly racist past can feel to them like ancient history.In the 1980s, a French punk rock band coined a rallying cry against the country’s far right that retained its punch over decades. The chant, still shouted at protests by the left, is “La jeunesse emmerde le Front National,” which cannot be translated well without curse words, but essentially tells the far right to get lost.That crude battle cry is emblematic of what had been conventional wisdom not only in France, but also elsewhere — that young people often tilt left in their politics. Now, that notion has been challenged as increasing numbers of young people have joined swaths of the French electorate to support the National Rally, a party once deemed too extreme to govern.The results from Sunday’s parliamentary vote, the first of a two-part election, showed young people across the political spectrum coming out to cast ballots in much greater numbers than in previous years. A majority of them voted for the left. But one of the biggest jumps was in the estimated numbers of 18-to-24-year-olds who cast ballots for the National Rally, in an election that many say could reshape France.A quarter of the age group voted for the party, according to a recent poll by the Ifop polling institute, up from 12 percent just two years ago.There is no one reason for such a significant shift. The National Rally has tried to sanitize its image, kicking out overtly antisemitic people, for instance, who shared the deep-seated prejudice of the movement’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And the party’s anti-immigrant platform resonates for some who see what they consider uncontrolled migration as a problem.Young people at an anti-far-right gathering in Paris after the results of the first round of the parliamentary elections. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden les dijo a sus aliados que los próximos días serán cruciales para salvar su candidatura

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      Los comentarios del presidente son el primer indicio de que está considerando seriamente si puede recuperarse de su actuación en el debate. La Casa Blanca dijo que el reporte era falso.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El presidente Joe Biden les ha dicho a algunos aliados clave que sabe que los próximos días son cruciales y que entiende que quizá no pueda salvar su candidatura si no logra convencer a los votantes de que está a la altura del cargo tras su desastrosa actuación en el debate de la semana pasada.Según dos aliados que han hablado con el mandatario, Biden ha enfatizado que sigue profundamente comprometido con los esfuerzos por su reelección, pero entiende que su viabilidad como candidato está en juego.El presidente trató de proyectar confianza el miércoles en una llamada con su equipo de campaña, incluso cuando funcionarios de la Casa Blanca trataban de calmar los nervios en las filas del gobierno de Biden.“Nadie me está echando”, dijo Biden en la llamada. “No me voy”.La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris también estaba en la conversación telefónica.“No retrocederemos. Seguiremos el ejemplo de nuestro presidente”, afirmó Harris. “Lucharemos y venceremos”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are We in the Middle of a Spiritual Awakening?

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      When I asked readers who identified as spiritual but not religious to reach out to me, I was astounded by how much variety there was in the faith experiences of individuals in this group. Some said they found spirituality both in the beauty of the physical world and in communing with other people.“I found the 12-step program to be sort of a spirituality that worked for me,” a woman named Maggie who lives in the Northeast told me. (I’m not using her last name because one of the tenets of her 12-step program is anonymity.) “It’s about making a connection with a higher power. It’s about trying to improve that connection with prayer and meditation,” she said.Maggie lost her taste for organized religion, she said, after being disappointed by the way her church handled a situation in which a minister had an affair with an employee. She finds the 12-step program to be free of that kind of hypocrisy and appreciates the “bone-scraping honesty” of her fellow group members. People talk about “what’s really going on in their lives,” she said. “It’s refreshing and often relatable, and it feeds me.”As I read and listened to the wide range of spiritual stories that readers shared with me over the past few weeks, I thought about the way that nones — the catchall term that describes atheists, agnostics and nothing-in-particulars — can imply blankness and almost a kind of nihilism.But as I learn more about the idea and the history of being spiritual but not religious, and the growth of this self-definition over the past few decades, alongside the documented move away from traditional church attendance, I wondered if I hadn’t given enough weight to new expressions of faith. Rather than seeing this moment as reflecting the slow demise of organized religion in America, one that leaves some people bereft of community and meaning, it’s worth asking if we’re in the middle of the birth of a messy new era of spirituality.First, I want to be honest that I’m not going to be able to give a definitive answer through the data here. The polling around questions of spirituality is pretty noisy, because the terms “spiritual” and “religious” are “so amorphous and they overlap so greatly,” said Robert Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University and the author of “Spiritual but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America,” when we spoke last week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden to Hold Crisis Meeting With Democratic Governors at the White House

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      The president is trying to reassure his supporters that he can still win in November despite his debate debacle last week.President Biden is scheduled to meet on Wednesday with several Democratic governors in a closed-door meeting at the White House, part of a push to reassure the president’s supporters that he can still win the election in November despite his debate debacle last week.The White House has not released the names of the governors who will be meeting with Mr. Biden in the Roosevelt Room, just down the hall from the Oval Office.The meeting was added to the president’s schedule even as he is trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the middle of the biggest political crisis since he took office almost four years ago. Before meeting with the governors, Mr. Biden will posthumously present the Medal of Honor to two Civil War Army soldiers for their actions fighting the Confederacy in 1862.But the situation swirling around the president is anything but normal.Democrats are openly talking about whether Mr. Biden, 81, should abandon his bid for re-election because he is too old to effectively campaign against former President Donald J. Trump. Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, called for Mr. Biden to step aside on Tuesday.At the same time, the first independent polls since the debate are beginning to emerge, showing that the president has lost ground against Mr. Trump. A CNN poll showed Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump by six percentage points, 49 percent to 43 percent. A series of polls by a pro-Biden super PAC leaked to the news site Puck showed the president slipping across the battleground states and in New Mexico, New Hampshire and Virginia, where he was previously winning.Privately, Mr. Biden and his top lieutenants are trying to reassure lawmakers, donors and activists that he can turn things around. Publicly, the White House and the campaign have scheduled a series of events intended to show voters that the debate was just an off night.Mr. Biden will sit for an interview with the ABC host George Stephanopoulos on Friday, his first lengthy interview since the debate. That same day, he will travel to Madison, Wis., for a campaign event. On Sunday, he will campaign in Philadelphia. More