Presidential Election of 2024

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      As Democrats Fret About Biden, Murphy Says He Must Address Voters’ Concerns

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      Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said Sunday that President Biden’s first television interview since his disastrous debate performance fell short of alleviating deep concerns about his age and mental acuity, and that the president has more work to do to convince voters he is fit to run for and win re-election.“Voters do have questions,” Mr. Murphy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”He added: “Personally, I love Joe Biden, and I don’t know that the interview on Friday night did enough to answer those questions. This week is going to be absolutely critical. I think the president needs to do more.”Mr. Murphy said he would urge Mr. Biden to “do a town hall, do a press conference — show the country he is still the old Joe Biden.”He avoided directly answering whether Mr. Biden should step aside, saying, “I know there are a lot of voters out there that need to be convinced that Thursday’s night’s debate performance was a bad night.”The carefully calibrated comments from Mr. Murphy were some of the first public alarm bells from the ranks of Senate Democrats, who have stayed mostly silent since the debate over a week ago, but who are increasingly concerned about Mr. Biden’s ability to serve as the party’s nominee. It came as Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, was set to convene top House Democrats later Sunday to discuss Mr. Biden’s candidacy, and at a time when a handful from within his ranks have already publicly called on the president to step aside.Mr. Murphy’s comments reflected where many Senate Democrats are landing as they head back to Washington for a critical week: They want to give Mr. Biden a little more room to prove himself, or exit the race on his own terms, before making any explicit call for him to do so. But they are also aware that there may be no way, at this point, to prove to voters that he is not too old for the task of defeating former President Donald J. Trump.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 Campaigns in Pennsylvania, as Calls Continue for Him to Quit the Race

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      President Biden will continue his efforts to rescue his imperiled re-election effort on Sunday, with two campaign stops in Pennsylvania, a key swing state.Mr. Biden will visit Philadelphia and then Harrisburg, as a growing number of Democrats from across the party’s ideological spectrum are calling for him to drop out of the race over concerns about his age and mental sharpness.Pennsylvania is one of the states that Mr. Biden almost certainly must win if he hopes to retain the White House. And its largest city, Philadelphia, is one of his favorite places to campaign. But former President Donald J. Trump has pulled ahead in the state in many polls.Mr. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020, but Mr. Trump now leads the president by about three percentage points, according to a FiveThirtyEight polling average. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a top Biden surrogate, spent Friday and Saturday campaigning for the president in Western Pennsylvania and Bucks County, a hotly contested battleground.Mr. Biden had been expected to speak at a meeting of the National Education Association in Philadelphia on Sunday, but he pulled out after the powerful education union’s staff went on strike. He will instead deliver an address at a church service in Northwest Philadelphia on Sunday morning.“President Biden is a fierce supporter of unions, and he won’t cross a picket line,” Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement.After Philadelphia, Mr. Biden will travel to Harrisburg for a community organizing event with union members on Sunday afternoon. His campaign said he would be joined throughout the day by Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania’s two senators, Bob Casey and John Fetterman, both Democrats.Since a poor debate performance where he frequently lost his train of thought, Mr. Biden has largely stuck to delivering prepared remarks from a teleprompter. Without the device, he has sometimes struggled to speak clearly.This week, he stumbled over his words during two radio interviews, even though his aides had provided the hosts with the questions, a practice that goes against standard journalistic ethics. And he gave several confusing answers during an interview with ABC News on Friday.Even Mr. Biden’s allies have said that his campaign should ensure that he appears more in public without a teleprompter to demonstrate his mental sharpness.“They don’t need scripted remarks,” said Steve Sisolak, the former Democratic governor of Nevada, who supports Mr. Biden. “He needs to show people that he can do it on the spot and answer questions — tough questions — and be out there with voters. Be out there, mingle with your folks.”Despite doubts from many Democrats, Mr. Biden has defiantly insisted that he will stay in the race. On Friday, the president told ABC News that only the “Lord Almighty” could force him to drop out. More

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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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      ‘Goodest Job’ or ‘Good as Job’? The White House Wants a Word.

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      ABC News tweaked its transcript of an intriguing moment in its Friday interview with the president after the Biden administration and news outlets raised questions.ABC News adjusted its initial transcript of a much-discussed moment during President Biden’s Friday interview after White House officials told the network that they believed the president’s words had been inaccurately rendered, according to several people familiar with the discussion.The moment occurred toward the end of Mr. Biden’s interview, when George Stephanopoulos asked the president how he would feel if he stayed in the presidential race and was defeated by former President Donald J. Trump.“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Mr. Biden said, according to the official transcript that was distributed by ABC on Friday night.By Saturday afternoon, the quote in the network’s online transcript had changed slightly: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” The network appended an editors’ note explaining that the transcript “has been updated for clarity.”Mr. Biden’s actual words at that point during the interview were difficult to make out and open to some degree of interpretation.ABC’s standards team decided to review the audio after receiving queries on Saturday from the White House along with several news organizations, asking whether Mr. Biden had said “goodest” or “good as,” according to a person briefed on the network’s discussions.After conducting its review, the network decided to adjust the transcript and append the editors’ note, the person said. The network did not modify the audio and video of the interview itself.After the ABC transcript was adjusted on Saturday, a spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign emailed several reporters for The New York Times requesting that the word “goodest” be changed in the newspaper’s coverage of the interview, citing the updated transcript.The Times has revised Mr. Biden’s quote in its articles about the interview to conform with the updated ABC transcript.At a moment of high political peril for Mr. Biden, and widespread discussion about his physical and mental health, nearly every word he utters in public — particularly in an unscripted setting such as the ABC interview — is under a microscope.Following Friday’s interview, White House stenographers, who are not political appointees and regularly record all of the president’s public remarks, noticed a difference between their recordings and the ABC transcript, according to one person familiar with the situation.That led a White House official to raise the issue of the quote’s accuracy with representatives of ABC on Saturday morning, the person said.The 22-minute interview, which aired on Friday at 8 p.m., was watched by 8.5 million viewers, according to early data from Nielsen. It was ABC’s most-watched prime-time news program, aside from election nights and debates, since Mr. Stephanopoulos interviewed the former F.B.I. director James Comey in April 2018. 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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      White House Provided the Questions in Advance for Biden’s Radio Interviews

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      The host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia said the president’s aides provided her with a list of eight questions to choose from.The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by Mr. Biden’s aides at the White House, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said White House officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday.“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” she told Victor Blackwell, the host of “First of All” on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was.“I got several questions — eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said it is “not uncommon” for the campaign to share preferred topics, but added that officials “do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions” by the interviewer.“Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners,” she said. “In addition to these interviews, the president also participated in a press gaggle yesterday as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”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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      Joe Biden’s Blind Spot

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      King Lear gave up power too early. President Biden will give it up too late.And that is Joe’s tragedy.Unlike Biden, Lear had a loyal lord who was willing to tell him the truth. When the old king disinherits his good daughter and divides the kingdom between his maleficent daughters, the Earl of Kent tries to tell Lear he’s bollixing everything up:“What wouldst thou do, old man? Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows?” Lear, swayed by his bad daughters’ sycophancy, screams at Kent, “Out of my sight!”Kent urges the king to “see better.”Some eyes get plucked out in “Lear,” but the play is really a lesson about inner blindness, the way power can occlude the ability to see yourself, and the world. A lack of self-knowledge in a leader can lead to ruination.And that is where we are with President Biden. His raison d’être for running, at 81, is stopping Donald Trump, a mendacious scofflaw who will become even more incorrigible with the egregious decisions of his radical Supreme Court and his own age spiral.But Biden’s contention that he alone can beat Trump was never true. And now he has lost some moral high ground because he hid the evidence of cognitive deterioration.Trump is the master con man, but Biden is giving him a run for his money.He, his wife, his vice president and his longtime aides worked hard to conjure a mirage where everything is fine in Bidenworld.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