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      The Rage and Joy of Donald Trump’s MAGA America

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      I’ve shared this fact with readers before: I live in Tennessee outside Nashville, a very deep-red part of America. According to a New York Times tool that calculates the political composition of a community, only 15 percent of my neighbors are Democrats. I’ve been living here in the heart of MAGA country since Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the world of my friends, my neighbors and many members of my family. That is perhaps why, when I’m asked what things are like now, eight years into the Trump era, I have a ready answer: Everything is normal until, suddenly, it’s not. And unless we can understand what’s normal and what’s not, we can’t truly understand why Trumpism endures.It’s hard to encapsulate a culture in 22 seconds, but this July 4 video tweet from Representative Andy Ogles accomplishes the nearly impossible. For those who don’t want to click through, the tweet features Ogles, a cheerful freshman Republican from Tennessee, wishing his followers a happy Fourth of July. The text of the greeting is remarkable only if you don’t live in MAGA-land:Hey guys, Congressman Andy Ogles here, wishing you a happy and blessed Fourth of July. Hey, remember our Founding Fathers. It’s we the people that are in charge of this country, not a leftist minority. Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you. Have a blessed Fourth of July. Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.Can something be cheerful and dark at the same time? Can a holiday message be both normal and so very strange? If so, then Ogles pulled it off. This is a man smiling in a field as a dog sniffs happily behind him. The left may be “coming after you,” as he warns, but the vibe isn’t catastrophic or even worried, rather a kind of friendly, generic patriotism. They’re coming for your family! Have a great day!It’s not just Ogles. It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties.Or take the Trump rally, the signature event of this political era. If you follow the rallies via Twitter or mainstream newscasts, you see the anger, but you miss the fun. When I was writing for The Dispatch, one of the best pieces we published was a report by Andrew Egger in 2020 about the “Front Row Joes,” the Trump superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally the way some people used to follow the Grateful Dead. Egger described the Trump rally perfectly: “For enthusiasts, Trump rallies aren’t just a way to see a favorite politician up close. They are major life events: festive opportunities to get together with like-minded folks and just go crazy about America and all the winning the Trump administration’s doing.”Or go to a Southeastern Conference football game. The “Let’s Go Brandon” (or sometimes, just “[expletive] Joe Biden”) chant that arises from the student section isn’t delivered with clenched fists and furious anger, but rather through smiles and laughs. The frat bros are having a great time. The consistent message from Trumpland of all ages is something like this: “They’re the worst, and we’re awesome. Let’s party, and let’s fight.”Why do none of your arguments against Trump penetrate this mind-set? The Trumpists have an easy answer: You’re horrible, and no one should listen to horrible people. Why were Trumpists so vulnerable to insane stolen-election theories? Because they know that you’re horrible and that horrible people are capable of anything, including stealing an election.At the same time, their own joy and camaraderie insulate them against external critiques that focus on their anger and cruelty. Such charges ring hollow to Trump supporters, who can see firsthand the internal friendliness and good cheer that they experience when they get together with one another. They don’t feel angry — at least not most of the time. They are good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand.Indeed, while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy.Once you understand both dynamics, however, so much about the present moment makes clearer sense, including the dynamics of the Republican primary. Ron DeSantis, for example, channels all the rage of Trumpism and none of the joy. With relentless, grim determination he fights the left with every tool of government at his disposal. But can he lead stadiums full of people in an awkward dance to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People? Will he be the subject of countless over-the-top memes and posters celebrating him as some kind of godlike, muscular superhero?Trump’s opponents miss the joy because they experience only the rage. I’m a member of a multiethnic church in Nashville. It’s a refuge from the MAGA Christianity that’s all too present where I live, just south of the city, in Franklin. This past Sunday, Walter Simmons, a Franklin-based Black pastor who founded the Franklin Justice and Equity Coalition, spoke to our church, and he referred to a common experience for those who dissent publicly in MAGA America. “If you ain’t ready for death threats, don’t live in Franklin,” he said.He was referring to the experience of racial justice activists in deep-red spaces. They feel the rage of the MAGA mob. If you’re deemed to be one of those people who is trying to “destroy our country and our family,” then you don’t see joy, only fury.Trump’s fans, by contrast, don’t understand the effects of that fury because they mainly experience the joy. For them, the MAGA community is kind and welcoming. For them, supporting Trump is fun. Moreover, the MAGA movement is heavily clustered in the South, and Southerners see themselves as the nicest people in America. It feels false to them to be called “mean” or “cruel.” Cruel? No chance. In their minds, they’re the same people they’ve always been — it’s just that they finally understand how bad you are. And by “you,” again, they often mean the caricatures of people they’ve never met.In fact, they often don’t even know about the excesses of the Trump movement. Many of them will never know that their progressive neighbors have faced threats and intimidation. And even when they do see the movement at its worst, they can’t quite believe it. So Jan. 6 was a false flag. Or it was a “fedsurrection.” It couldn’t have really been a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government, because they know these people, or people like them, and they’re mostly good folks. It had to be a mistake, or an exaggeration, or a trick or a few bad apples. The real crime was the stolen election.It’s the combination of anger and joy that makes the MAGA enthusiasm so hard to break but also limits its breadth. If you’re part of the movement’s ever-widening circle of enemies, Trump holds no appeal for you. You experience his movement as an attack on your life, your choices, your home and even your identity. If you’re part of the core MAGA community, however, not even the ruthlessly efficient Ron DeSantis can come close to replicating the true Trump experience. Again, the boat parade is a perfect example. It’s one part Battle for the Future of Civilization and one part booze cruise.The battle and the booze cruise both give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging. They see a country that’s changing around them and they are uncertain about their place in it. But they know they have a place at a Trump rally, surrounded by others — overwhelmingly white, many evangelical — who feel the same way they do.Evangelicals are a particularly illustrative case. About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement. Even among actual churchgoing evangelicals, political alignment is often so important that it’s hard to feel a true sense of belonging unless you’re ideologically united with the people in the pews around you.During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail. More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Campaign of Contempt

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      If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.The version of most politicians that we need to worry about is the one that they don’t want us to see. That’s why campaign reporters dog them; they’re waiting for the veil to slip.But the version of Ron DeSantis that we need to worry about is the one that he proudly shows us. He embraces his meanness. He luxuriates in his darkness. Let other politicians peddle the pablum of inspiration. He prefers to ooze the toxin of contempt.That’s one of the morals of a provocative anti-gay, anti-trans video that the DeSantis campaign shared late last week. The campaign’s promotion of it prompted accusations of homophobia even from some Republicans, and justly so: In an attempt to smear Donald Trump, the video doesn’t just accuse him of coddling L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. It revels in DeSantis’s vilification of them.Initially distributed by a Twitter account called Proud Elephant, it presents a bizarre montage that’s superficially an anti-woke battle cry, pitting a truculent DeSantis against a scourge of degenerates. But while his viciousness comes through precisely as planned, so does something unintended: an undercurrent of homoerotic kink. Up pops a shirtless hunk with a ripped chest. Here’s a glowering Brad Pitt in his “Troy” drag. Are honchos with a Homer fetish some new thing? I need to get out more.But the perversely purposed beefcake is less striking than the way in which the video exultantly spotlights DeSantis’s biggest critics and celebrates their harshest criticism, treating the words with which they’ve described him and his initiatives as the best measures of his mettle. “Most extreme” becomes a trophy, “horrifying” a crown and “evil” a sash.The Florida governor is running one freaky and unsettling presidential campaign. He’s more focused on putting certain Americans in their places than on lifting others to new heights. He’s defined by the scores he pledges to settle instead of the victories he promises to achieve. He casts himself as someone to fear rather than revere. That video actually flashes an image of Christian Bale in “American Psycho” as a flattering DeSantis analogue.Vote DeSantis: He’s a monster, but he’s your monster.How does someone with that pitch possibly bring together and lead an entire diverse country, if he gets that chance, and what does it say about the United States today that he has come this far? Have we put tolerance, grand ideals and optimism so fully to rest? I remember “morning in America.” I guess it’s now midnight.To read deeply and widely about DeSantis is to learn that his cruel politics match a cold personality. He seems to trust almost no one other than his wife, who’s his twin in unalloyed ambition. He’s a collector of slights. He gets an A+ in grudge holding and an F in humility, and he’s taking etiquette pass/fail. He has resting disdain face.When I find pictures of him laughing, his expression is a bad stage actor’s — it’s a labored and spurious guffaw — as if a campaign aide intent on warming him up had just pulled hard on some string embedded in DeSantis’s back. Only his rants have a genuine air. He looked perfectly comfortable on Fox News recently saying that anyone who cut through a border wall between Mexico and the United States to traffic fentanyl would “end up stone cold dead.” He’s out to out-Trump Trump, who reportedly wondered aloud about a water-filled border trench stocked with snakes and alligators. I’m counting the minutes until DeSantis’s proposal for a moat stocked with great white sharks.Raising questions about illegal immigration and border security is necessary and just. But what’s served by doing so with such bloodthirstiness?Establishing guidelines for the age at which it’s appropriate for children in public schools to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity is legitimate. But what’s gained by inviting the word “groomers” into the conversation and casting yourself as a pulchritudinous gladiator who will teach them a pitiless lesson?DeSantis mistakes spite for spiritedness, bullying for strength. I hope voters don’t do likewise.Forward this newsletter to friends …… and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Thursday.For the Love of SentencesErin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Supremes sure made lots of news lately, so let’s start with them. In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick parsed the generosity from billionaires that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have so richly enjoyed: “A #protip that will no doubt make those justices who have been lured away to elaborate bear hunts and deer hunts and rabbit hunts and salmon hunts by wealthy oligarchs feel a bit sad: If your close personal friends who only just met you after you came onto the courts are memorializing your time together for posterity, there’s a decent chance you are, in fact, the thing being hunted.” (Thanks to Robert E. Gordon of Sarasota, Fla., for nominating this.)In The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri mined that material by mimicking the famous opening line of “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice.” (Nicole Seligman, Sag Harbor, N.Y.)And in The Times, Tyler Austin Harper contextualized the battle over affirmative action: “Civil rights leaders did not endure the dogs and the cold baptism of the fire hoses in the hopes that one day their children’s children could become Ivy-minted venture capitalists and management consultants.” (Adam Fix, Minneapolis)Also in The Times, Farhad Manjoo discussed the futility of debating Robert Kennedy Jr.: “He starts with a few sprinkles of truth — Ohio’s vote was run by a partisan official, some vaccines have serious side effects — and then swirls them up with enough exaggerations, omissions and leaps of logic to create a veritable McFlurry of doubt.” (James Brockardt, Pennington, N.J.)Kim Severson noted how buffets struggled to emerge from the pandemic: “A model of eating based on shared serving spoons and food seasoned with the breath of strangers seemed like a goner.” (Elise Magers, Chicago)Alex Halberstadt introduced readers to the Oregon winemaker Maggie Harrison: “Warm, funny and observant in person, she cultivates a persona of a curmudgeon, the way an octopus might disguise itself as a rock to throw off sand sharks.” (Michael T. Reagan, Ottawa, Ill.) Also, of a tasting room of Harrison’s with an unappealing entrance: “The scene was so hushed and civilized-looking, after the dinginess of the exterior, that it was like entering a chapel through the back of an airport Cinnabon.” (Robert Mugford, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Tricia Chatary, Middlebury, Vt., among others)And Ligaya Mishan described a magical dessert from her Hawaiian childhood made by a frozen-treat wizard named Kon Ping Young: “He’d sneak in one of the whole plums, which he’d cover with more slush. I’d find it buried deep, a shriveled prize, so tangy that when I sucked on it, the world condensed to that one flavor, a tiny neutron star of sweet-sour-salt.” (Cindy Kissin, New Haven, Conn.)In The Washington Post, T.A. Frank traced the arc of Mike Pence: “When he was a radio host, Pence liked to call himself ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ a mild concoction even then, to say nothing of an era when even Limbaugh on meth would be too laid back for some of today’s partisans.” John Hitzeroth, Wilmington, Ohio, and Doug Sterner, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)In The Ringer, Roger Sherman imagined how hard it was for N.B.A. teams to decide which of the 6-foot-6, identical Thompsons, Amen and Ausar, to draft first: “Normally, you can identify the evil twin by looking for the one with the handlebar mustache, but neither had one, making this a tough assignment for scouts.” (Marshall Sikowitz, Bassano del Grappa, Italy)And in The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson was rattled by moments in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” when a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford didn’t look quite right: “For the love of Ponce de León, stop using this technology until it’s perfected, Hollywood!” (Pat Isgro, Greenwich, N.Y.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.What I’m Watching, Reading and Listening ToSarah Lancashire in “Happy Valley.”James Stack/Lookout Point/AMCI wish I could say that I loved the third (and, apparently, final) season of the British crime drama “Happy Valley” as much as I loved the first one nine years ago, but this great series did what many great series do: It fell a bit too much in love with its main characters and the superb actors who played them. I refer to Sarah Lancashire as a grief-haunted police sergeant and James Norton as the perversely charismatic thug who had a heavy hand in her grief. The latest season, whose American airing wrapped up a little more than a week ago, seems intent on giving them tricky or intensely emotional scenes in which to show their acting chops, and they deliver and then some. But the trade-off is a sometimes sluggish pace and lugubrious air. Regardless, if you never found your way to “Happy Valley,” correct that. The whole of it is undeniably worth watching. (It’s streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV; you can also purchase episodes or seasons, as I did, through Apple TV+. There’s more information here.)The Gay Pride month of June this year seemed to yield a particular bounty of reflections on what it means to be gay or queer, possibly because of a backlash in the United States right now against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The essay that most intrigued and delighted me appeared here in Times Opinion. It was Richard Morgan’s “As a Gay Man, I’ll Never Be Normal,” whose standout passages could have filled the entire For the Love of Sentences section this week. (Joan Vohl Hamilton, South Hadley, Mass., and Sarah Patrick, Carbondale, Ill., among others, nominated sentences from the essay.)Another recent article in The Times that I especially loved was Elisabeth Egan’s 25-years-later look at the phenomenon — and impact — of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” It, too, is a gold mine of spirited prose, along with acute observations.Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post is a treasure (and appears frequently in For the Love of Sentences), and this recent article of hers about the friendship of the former tennis rivals Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert is a gem, also with sterling sentences galore about two women who “exemplify, perhaps more than any champions in the annals of their sport, the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship.” (Rebecca Howey, Detroit, and Tom Fortner, Point Clear, Ala., among others)I’ve retired the occasional newsletter feature that delved into great songs and song lyrics but will mention popular music randomly and occasionally in this space. A Pandora station of mine just introduced me to the young singer-songwriter Ilsey and “No California,” a relatively new single of hers. She has an album due in October, according to this article in Variety, which also embeds the song, so you can listen. Despite its love-lost subject matter, it’s buoyant, summery and very, very catchy.On a Personal Note (Odd Neighborhood Names)Errol Flynn in the 1938 film “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”Everett CollectionYou’ve been excellent about sending me examples of strangely or strikingly named streets, neighborhoods and towns, a subject that I first wrote about in January and revisited in this newsletter, this one and this one. Today’s Odd Neighborhood Names installment will be the last — we’ll find other fun topics to commune over — and I apologize to the many of you who have submitted unused material. Thanks to your generosity. I’ve had more options than space for them.Almost all have fallen into one of three categories. I think of the first as “let’s pretend we’re somewhere we’re not.” Jane Houssiere of Boulder, Colo., wrote: “I live on the interface where the Rocky Mountains meet the semiarid high plains. We are nowhere near any ocean.” But, she added, “developers must have been homesick for the coast.” Behold, in this mountainous interior, Barnacle Street, Starboard Drive, Driftwood Place, Sandpiper Circle, Beachcomber Court, Outrigger Court, Jib Court and more. It’s a high tide of nautical nomenclature.The second category is the motif-a-palooza, whereby the namers of streets work a theme as aggressively as my Regan does her favorite bones. Rob Boas of Atlanta alerted me to that city’s “Sherwood Forest” neighborhood, where the streets include Robin Hood Road, Friar Tuck Road, Lady Marian Lane, Nottingham Way and Little John Trail.John FX Keane of New Providence, N.J., noted that his childhood home of Binghamton, N.Y., has byways that pay homage to classical composers: Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner and more.The motifs can be … unexpected. Mary Beth Norton noted that Ithaca, N.Y., has a grouping of streets seemingly named for cigarette and cigar brands: Winston Court, Salem Drive, Tareyton Drive and Muriel Street. Lest that seem eccentric, Barbara Lerner wrote that in the Gibson section of Valley Stream, N.Y., where she used to live, there is a profusion of roads with cigarette- or liquor-related appellations: Marlboro, Munro (an English gin), Carstairs (a blended whiskey), Gordon (gin), Dubonnet (vermouth). The Gibson, of course, is the martini’s cousin, garnished with a pickled onion rather than an olive.The third category: utter failures of imagination. Into this group falls what was probably your most nominated street name, Toronto’s soul-crushingly prosaic, spectacularly redundant Avenue Road. But Sheila Gerstenzang of Las Vegas wrote in with another fine example: Overthere Lane in North Las Vegas.Beyond those categories are street, neighborhood and town names that just don’t seem like such names at all. In Ipswich, Mass., there’s Labor in Vain Road, as a former Ipswich resident, Douglas Atkins, and a current one, Tamsin Venn, pointed out.And the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador is known for its amusing place names, including Dildo, Witless Bay, Blow Me Down, Tickle Harbour, Tickle Cove, Come by Chance and Heart’s Content. Thanks to Patricia Maher of Vancouver, B.C., for drawing attention to those. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Conspiracy Theories Go Beyond Vaccines

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      A longtime vaccine skeptic, Mr. Kennedy is leaning heavily on misinformation as he mounts a long-shot 2024 campaign.He has promoted a conspiracy theory that coronavirus vaccines were developed to control people via microchips. He has endorsed the false notion that antidepressants are linked to school shootings. And he has pushed the decades-old theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, is a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories who has leaned heavily on misinformation as he mounts his long-shot 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination.But as voters express discontentment at a likely rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has garnered as much as 20 percent of the vote in recent Democratic primary polling.Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not publicly acknowledged Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy and have declined to comment on his campaign. Nevertheless, the public scrutiny that accompanies a White House bid has highlighted other questionable beliefs and statements Mr. Kennedy has elevated over the years.Here are five of the many baseless claims Mr. Kennedy has peddled on the campaign trail and beyond.He has falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions.Mr. Kennedy has promoted many false, specious or unproven claims that center on public health and the pharmaceutical industry — most notably, the scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.That notion has been rejected by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies across multiple countries. The National Academy of Medicine reviewed eight vaccines for children and adults and found that with rare exceptions, the vaccines are very safe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Seen by many as the face of the vaccine resistance movement, Mr. Kennedy has asserted that he is “not anti-vaccine” and seeks to make vaccines more safe. But he has advertised misleading information about vaccine ingredients and circulated retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions. At a rally in Washington last year, he compared the vaccination records some called “vaccine passports” to life in Germany during the Holocaust, a statement he later apologized for. And he falsely told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”Children’s Health Defense, an organization Mr. Kennedy originally founded as the World Mercury Project, has frequently campaigned against vaccines. Facebook and Instagram removed the group’s accounts last year for espousing vaccine misinformation, and Mr. Kennedy has often lamented the perils of “censorship” in campaign speeches since.Mr. Kennedy, who many see as a prominent representative for the vaccine resistance movement, attended the New York Rally for Vaccine Injury and Vaccine Rights in Albany in 2019.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesHe has made baseless claims about a connection between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure.In an interview last month with Jordan Peterson, a conservative Canadian psychologist and public speaker, Mr. Kennedy falsely linked chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity.“A lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing,” he said. He referred to research on an herbicide, atrazine, in which scientists found that it “induces complete feminization and chemical castration” in certain frogs.But no evidence exists to indicate that the chemical, typically used on farms to kill weeds, causes the same effects in humans, let alone gender dysphoria. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Most people are not exposed to atrazine on a regular basis.”He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings.Drawing on longstanding dubious claims, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of heightened use of antidepressants.“Kids always had access to guns, and there was no time in American history or human history where kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates,” he told the comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of the podcast, “Club Random With Bill Maher.” “It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”While both antidepressant use and mass shooting occurrences have increased in the last several decades, the scientific community has found “no biological plausibility” to back a link between the two, according to Ragy Girgis, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.Antidepressants often have warnings that reference suicidal thoughts, Mr. Girgis said. But those warnings refer to the possibility that people who already experience suicidal ideation might share pre-existing beliefs aloud once they take the medicine as part of their treatment.Mr. Kennedy, however, has pointed to such warnings as evidence of the false notion that the drugs might induce “homicidal tendencies.”Several high-profile figures, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have amplified similar claims following recent mass shootings.Most school shooters were not prescribed with psychotropic medications before committing acts of violence, a 2019 study found. And even when they were, researchers wrote, “no direct or causal association was found.”He has bolstered a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. assassinated his uncle.Former President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, the former first lady, are shown in the back of a car minutes before Mr. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.Bettmann, Getty ImagesMr. Kennedy has long promoted a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.He claimed, without evidence, during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in May that Allen W. Dulles, a C.I.A. director fired by President Kennedy, helped cover up evidence of the organization’s involvement when he served on the Warren Commission, convened in 1963 to investigate the Kennedy assassination.Referencing a House committee inquiry in 1976, he said: “Most of the people in that investigation believed it was the C.I.A. that was behind it because the evidence was so overwhelming to them.”But even that investigation, which found that President Kennedy was “probably” the victim of a conspiracy of some kind, flatly concluded that the C.I.A. was “not involved.”The Warren Commission found that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone and was not connected to any governmental agency.And he has said that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy told The Washington Post in June that he still believed that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, had won the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy first promoted that idea in a 2006 article in Rolling Stone, asserting that Republicans had “mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people” and assure the re-election of President George W. Bush. He claimed that their efforts “prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted.”But it is one thing to complain of vote suppression; it is another thing to demonstrate that Mr. Kerry won more of the votes cast.Mr. Bush defeated Mr. Kerry by a margin of 35 electoral college votes nationally; he carried Ohio and its 20 electoral votes by more than 118,000 ballots.The Times reported in 2004 that a glitch in an electronic Ohio voting machine added 3,893 votes to Mr. Bush’s tally. That error was caught in preliminary vote counts, officials said. But the event, alongside other voting controversies nationwide, spurred widespread questions about election integrity that caught traction with people like Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Kerry, however, conceded the race a day after the election. More

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      Kennedy, Christie and the Supreme Court: Are They Changing the Race?

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      A painful ruling from the court can sometimes free a party from an unpopular stance.A recent Supreme Court decision won’t necessarily hurt Democrats politically. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressWhen I returned from a trip to China almost exactly eight years ago, I found my inbox full of requests from editors to write about two huge stories that unfolded while I was gone: the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage and the emergence of a surprising candidate who entered the race after my departure, Donald J. Trump.Needless to say, my inbox this week after a couple of weeks off in the Pacific Northwest does not have nearly as many requests as it did in the wake of the Obergefell decision and Mr. Trump’s trip down the escalator. But the requests I do have nonetheless center on a similar set of topics: a major Supreme Court decision, this time to end affirmative action programs, and two upstart candidates who weren’t receiving a lot of attention before I left, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chris Christie.Court gives Democrats some coverAs I wrote at the time, the Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a fundamental right was probably politically advantageous for Republicans. Yes, the court decision was popular and the Republican position on same-sex marriage was increasingly unpopular, but that’s precisely why that decision did them a favor: It all but removed the issue from political discourse, freeing Republicans from an issue that might have otherwise hobbled them.In theory, something similar can be said for the court’s affirmative action ruling, but this time with the decision helping Democrats. Here again, the court is taking a popular position that potentially frees a political party — this time the Democrats — from an issue that could hurt it, including with the fast-growing group of Asian American voters.It’s worth noting that this would be nothing like how the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade helped Democrats. Then, the court ruling sparked a backlash that energized liberals and gave Democrats a new campaign issue with appeal to the base and moderates alike. If the most recent case were to help Democrats, it would do so in nearly the opposite manner: To take advantage of the ruling politically, Democrats might need to stop talking about it.It was fairly easy for Republican elites to stop talking about same-sex marriage in 2015, as many were already keen to move on from a losing political fight. It is not as obvious that Democratic elites are keen to move away from the fight over affirmative action or whether they even can, given their base’s passion for racial equality.About those other candidatesObviously, any analogy between the first few weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the slow emergence of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie will be much more strained. For one, Mr. Christie and Mr. Kennedy were already making ripples in the race when I left, and I did think I might need to write about them at some point. In contrast, Mr. Trump couldn’t have been further from my mind in mid-June 2015. Upon hearing about his bid on my return, I thought he might fade so quickly that I would never even have to write about him. Whatever you think about Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie, there’s not much reason to think they simply might go “pop.”Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Christie don’t have much in common — other than their unequivocally low chance of actually winning — but they have, in their own ways, become factors in the race simply by being the best or even only vessel for expressing explicit opposition to their party’s front-runners, Joe Biden and Mr. Trump.Chris Christie has been direct in his criticism of Donald Trump.John Tully for The New York TimesUsually, willingness to oppose a front-runner isn’t enough to distinguish an aspiring candidate. This year, it is. No current or former elected official has challenged the incumbent president thus far in the Democratic primary. And while many prominent Republicans appear willing to enter the race against Mr. Trump, few appear willing to directly, forcefully and consistently attack him. When they do attack him — as Ron DeSantis recently did for supporting L.G.B.T.Q. people a decade ago — it’s often from the right, and not on the issues that animate the base of any hypothetical not-Trump coalition: relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.Of the two, Mr. Christie is probably the one who is most effectively fulfilling this demand for direct opposition to the front-runner. There may not be a large constituency for anti-Trump campaigning, but it exists and Mr. Christie is feeding it what it wants. Just as important, directly attacking Mr. Trump ensures a steady diet of media coverage.All of this makes Mr. Christie a classic factional candidate, the kind that doesn’t usually win presidential nominations but can nonetheless play an important role in the outcome of the campaign. If he gains the allegiance of those outright opposed to Mr. Trump, he’ll deny an essential not-Trump voting bloc to another Republican who might have broader appeal throughout the party — say, Mr. DeSantis. This is most likely to play out in New Hampshire, where fragmentary survey data (often from Republican-aligned firms) shows Mr. Christie creeping up into the mid-to-high single digits.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of vaccination.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy is a more complicated case. With the help of a famous family name, he’s nudged ahead of Marianne Williamson for the minor distinction of being Mr. Biden’s top rival in Democratic primary polls. On average, Mr. Kennedy polls in the mid-teens, with some surveys still showing him in the single digits and one poll showing him above 20 percent. That’s more than Mr. Christie can say.But unlike Mr. Christie, Mr. Kennedy is not exactly feeding Biden skeptics what they want. Instead, he’s advancing conspiracy theories, appearing on right-wing media and earning praise from conservative figures. And unlike Mr. Trump, whose most ardent opposition is probably toward the center, Mr. Biden is probably most vulnerable to a challenge from the ideological left. This is not what Mr. Kennedy is offering, and it’s reflected in the polls. While Times/Siena polling last summer showed Mr. Biden most vulnerable among “very liberal” voters and on progressive issues, Mr. Kennedy actually fares much better among self-described moderates than liberals. He doesn’t clearly fare better among younger Democrats than older ones, despite Mr. Biden’s longstanding weakness among the younger group.It’s too early to say whether Mr. Kennedy’s modest foothold among moderate and conservative Democrats reflects a constituency for anti-modernist, anti-establishment liberalism, or whether Mr. Kennedy’s family name is simply getting him farther among less engaged Democrats, who are likelier to identify as moderate. Either way, his ability to play an important role in the race is limited by embracing conservatives and conspiratorial positions, even if he may continue to earn modest support in the race because of the absence of another prominent not-Biden option. More

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      DeSantis Campaign Struggles to Make a Strong Case Against Trump

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      The Florida governor, who has yet to demonstrate himself as a campaigner on a national stage, has been plagued by a series of unforced errors and has yet to make a strong case against Donald Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, looking to shift his run for president into a higher gear after an early series of missteps, spent the last two weeks rolling out an immigration policy and holding town halls with voters. But rather than correcting course, he stumbled again this week, raising questions about where his campaign is heading.First, Mr. DeSantis’s team was forced to battle allegations, including from fellow Republicans, that it had shared a homophobic video on social media. Then, a top spokesman for the main super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis acknowledged that former President Donald J. Trump was the race’s “runaway front-runner,” while Mr. DeSantis faced an “uphill battle.”“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” the adviser, Steve Cortes, said in a livestream Twitter event on Sunday. It was an admission notably at odds with the confidence that the governor’s advisers usually project in public.To top it off — in a visual representation of his recent troubles — Mr. DeSantis got soaked by a rainstorm as he marched in an Independence Day parade alongside several dozen supporters in New Hampshire — the crucial early nominating state where his super PAC, Never Back Down, stopped running television advertisements in mid-May.Meanwhile, Mr. Trump hosted a rally in South Carolina that attracted thousands of people over the holiday weekend, a reminder of his enduring popularity with Republicans despite losing in 2020 and now facing at least two criminal trials.The race is still in its early days, but Mr. DeSantis’s rough week highlights the challenges his underdog campaign faces as it seeks a coherent strategy to break through against Mr. Trump.So far, Mr. DeSantis has tried to undermine his chief rival by subtly contrasting their ages, temperaments and records on issues like the coronavirus pandemic without saying anything too unkind about the former president, whom he almost never mentions by name. He has also attempted to move to the right of Mr. Trump on issues like abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, at the same time as he argues that he is the Republican candidate best placed to attract swing voters and defeat President Biden.But Mr. DeSantis, who has not shown that he is a natural campaigner, has failed to take off in the polls, and his carefully choreographed public events have offered few headline-generating moments, as his campaign, until recently, has worked to shield him from potentially awkward unscripted interactions with voters and the news media.The wobbly launch of his presidential campaign makes for a stark contrast with the confident way Mr. DeSantis has governed Florida, where he silenced opposition within his own party and crushed Democrats at the polls during the midterm elections. It also has given hope to other primary candidates, several of whom have jumped into the race in recent weeks, that they can replace him as the party’s most plausible alternative to Mr. Trump.“DeSantis’s argument is electability,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who holds regular focus groups with G.O.P. voters. “But he is undermining the electability argument by running to Trump’s right. He is alienating college-educated, suburban voters who want to move past Trump,” as well as the independents he would need to beat Mr. Biden in a general election.Ms. Longwell said Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without directly criticizing him risked leaving the Florida governor without a natural constituency in the primaries.“You cannot go around Trump,” she said. “You have to go through him.”National polls show Mr. DeSantis trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 points — a gap that has widened significantly since Mr. DeSantis began traveling the country this spring to introduce himself to voters.Yet Mr. DeSantis remains the leading challenger to the former president. He has shown fund-raising prowess, and Never Back Down is training an army of field organizers in early voting states. And in the dog days of summer, before a primary debate scheduled for August has even taken place, it is far too early to predict how Iowans and New Hampshirites will vote next year.Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, said in an email that Mr. DeSantis had been “underestimated” in every race he has won.“This campaign is a marathon, not a sprint; we will be victorious,” Mr. Griffin wrote.Mr. DeSantis has rolled out his campaign in deliberate phases, first with a series of speeches to introduce the candidate to audiences in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, then a round of town halls where Mr. DeSantis took questions directly from voters, and now gradual announcements of in-depth policy proposals, starting with immigration.His campaign says it has focused its spending on field operations rather than on television advertising, a strategy that may not produce immediate polling bumps but will, his advisers argue, pay off when it comes time to vote.There are precedents for Mr. DeSantis’s slow strategy. At this point in the 2016 cycle, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was polling at under 10 percent in Iowa. But Mr. Cruz then went on to win the state, thanks in part to a well-drilled get-out-the-vote operation that Never Back Down is seeking to emulate. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has so far heavily focused on winning Iowa, where polls last month showed him trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 20 points.Mr. Cortes, the spokesman for Never Back Down, said his comments about the difficulties of running against Mr. Trump, first reported by Politico, were simply an acknowledgment of reality. But he added that he believed Mr. DeSantis could win.“Taking on an incumbent or former president in the primary always represents a significant challenge,” Mr. Cortes, who worked on Mr. Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020, said in an email. “I gladly embraced that reality in joining the team. All of us on Team DeSantis remain convinced that the governor has a strong path to the nomination, and the best chance of any Republican to defeat Biden in the general election.”Mr. DeSantis has fumbled as he has tried to contrast himself with Mr. Trump, and some of his grabs for attention have backfired.David Degner for The New York TimesMr. Trump, a gifted showman, is notorious for vacuuming up media coverage and attention, sucking away the oxygen from his rivals and trying to stifle their campaigns before they become larger threats.Mr. DeSantis has also become known as a provocateur, successfully drawing criticism from liberals and using it to gin up support from his base. But a recent attempt that seemed devised to garner such attention — a video that condemned Mr. Trump for expressing support for L.G.B.T.Q. people — appeared to backfire over the weekend, leading to criticism not only from Democrats but also from other Republicans, including the largest group representing gay, lesbian and transgender conservatives.The video, taken from another Twitter user and reposted by Mr. DeSantis’s rapid-response campaign account, relied heavily on obscure conservative memes.Richard Barry, a former New Hampshire state lawmaker who attended a rainy Fourth of July breakfast visited by several presidential candidates, said he was eager to support someone other than Mr. Trump. But Mr. DeSantis has turned him off, he said, citing a criticism some voters have leveled against Mr. Trump — a sign that Mr. DeSantis is not yet differentiating himself from the former president in a meaningful way.“He has a street kid attitude that says, ‘It is my way or the highway,’” Mr. Barry said of Mr. DeSantis. “He doesn’t listen to people.”Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Merrimack, N.H., Jonathan Swan contributed reporting from Washington and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York. More

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      Where Trump, DeSantis and the Other Republican Candidates Stand on Ukraine

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      The war has illuminated one of the biggest ideological divides within the Republican Party: between members who see a significant global role for the United States, and a more isolationist wing.Few issues have been more divisive among the Republican presidential candidates than the war in Ukraine and how, if at all, the United States should be involved.It has illuminated one of the biggest ideological divides within the Republican Party: between traditional members who see the United States as having a significant role to play in world affairs, and an anti-interventionist wing that sees foreign involvement as a distraction from more important issues at home.The old school has more adherents in the 2024 field, including Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Tim Scott, who support sending Ukraine military equipment and weapons but not troops. This aligns with President Biden’s strategy, though they maintain that Mr. Biden is executing it wrong.But the anti-interventionist wing is dominant in terms of influence, with two members, Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis, far outpolling everybody else.Only one candidate, Will Hurd, wants to significantly expand U.S. involvement.The anti-interventionistsDonald J. TrumpFormer President Donald J. Trump has said that the war in Ukraine is not of vital importance to the United States.In a CNN town hall event, he did not give a straight answer when asked repeatedly whether he would continue to provide military aid, instead declaring that he would end the war “within 24 hours” by meeting with Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. He claimed falsely that the United States was sending so much equipment that “we don’t have ammunition for ourselves.”Former President Donald J. Trump has said that the war in Ukraine is not of vital importance to the United States.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump — who was impeached in 2019 for withholding aid to Ukraine to pressure Mr. Zelensky to help him electorally — also suggested to Fox News that he could have prevented the war by ceding Ukrainian land to Russia. “I could’ve made a deal to take over something,” he said. “There are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly.”Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has called the war a “territorial dispute” whose outcome does not materially affect the United States.“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” he told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson in March.After criticism from fellow Republicans, he backtracked, saying that his comments had been “mischaracterized” and that Russia’s invasion was wrong.He has since endorsed a cease-fire, saying he wants to avoid a situation “where you just have mass casualties, mass expense and end up with a stalemate.” He has maintained his position that the United States should not get more involved.Vivek RamaswamyThe entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy opposes aid to Ukraine because, he argues, the war does not affect American interests.He says he would pursue an agreement that would offer sweeping concessions to Mr. Putin, including ceding most of Ukraine’s Donbas region to Russia, lifting sanctions, closing all U.S. military bases in Eastern Europe and barring Ukraine from NATO. In exchange, he would require Russia to end its military alliance with China and rejoin the START nuclear treaty.The presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy greeted Iowa voters at the Veterans Freedom Center during a pancake breakfast last month. He’s a staunch opponent of aid to Ukraine.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“I don’t think it is preferable for Russia to be able to invade a sovereign country that is its neighbor, but I think the job of the U.S. president is to look after American interests, and what I think the No. 1 threat to the U.S. military is right now, our top military threat, is the Sino-Russian alliance,” Mr. Ramaswamy told ABC News. “I think that by fighting further in Russia, by further arming Ukraine, we are driving Russia into China’s hands.”The traditionalistsNikki HaleyNikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says that it is “in the best interest of America” for Ukraine to repel Russia’s invasion, and that she would continue sending equipment and ammunition.“A win for Ukraine is a win for all of us, because tyrants tell us exactly what they’re going to do,” she said on CNN. She added: “China says Taiwan’s next — we’d better believe them. Russia said Poland and the Baltics are next — if that happens, we’re looking at a world war. This is about preventing war.”Victory for Ukraine, Ms. Haley said, would “send a message” more broadly: warning China against invading Taiwan, Iran against building a nuclear bomb, and North Korea against testing more ballistic missiles. To Russia, it would signal that “it’s over.”In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, she said President Biden had been “far too slow and weak in helping Ukraine.”Mike PenceFormer Vice President Mike Pence supports aid to Ukraine and has accused Mr. Biden of not supplying it quickly enough. In June, he was the first Republican candidate to travel to Ukraine, where he met with Mr. Zelensky.Like Ms. Haley, he has described helping Ukraine as a way to show China that “the United States and the West will not tolerate the use of military force to redraw international lines,” a reference to a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.This position sets him apart from the president he served under. Criticizing Mr. Trump’s description of Mr. Putin as a “genius,” Mr. Pence said on CNN that he knew “the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”Former Vice President Mike Pence meets with Iowa voters at Midland Power Cooperative in Boone, Iowa on Tuesday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesHe has emphasized that he would “never” send American troops to Ukraine, and said he did not yet want to admit Ukraine to NATO because he wanted to prevent the United States from becoming obligated to send troops. But he said he was open to admitting the country into NATO after the war.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina supports aid to Ukraine and told NBC News that Mr. Biden had “done a terrible job explaining and articulating to the American people” what the United States’ interests are there, an argument Mr. Pence has also made.“First, it prevents or reduces attacks on the homeland,” Mr. Scott said. “Second, as part of NATO and land being contiguous to Ukraine, it will reduce the likelihood that Russia will have the weaponry or the will to attack on NATO territory, which would get us involved.” He has endorsed a forceful defense of Ukraine from the start, writing in March 2022 that the fight was “for the principles that America has always championed.” That May, he voted for an emergency funding measure that went beyond what Mr. Biden proposed. He accused Mr. Biden of waiting “too long to provide too little support,” but Mr. Biden supported the increase.Chris ChristieFormer Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has said that the United States should continue to support Ukraine until the war is “resolved.”“None of us like the idea that there’s a war going on and that we’re supporting it, but the alternative is for the Chinese to take over, the Russians, the Iranians and the North Koreans,” Mr. Christie said in a CNN town hall, calling the conflict “a proxy war with China.”He added that “some kind of compromise” with Russia might eventually be needed, and that the United States should help negotiate it once “Ukraine can protect the land that’s been taken by Russia in this latest incursion.”He has said that Mr. Trump “set the groundwork” for the war and called him “Putin’s puppet.” And he compared Mr. DeSantis to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease Hitler.Asa HutchinsonFormer Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas supports aid to Ukraine with audits to ensure funds are used as intended. He told C-SPAN that U.S. leadership was “important in supporting Ukraine and bringing the European allies together” against Russia, and that he disagreed with Mr. Trump’s and Mr. DeSantis’s more “isolationist view.”Like several other candidates, he has argued that allowing Russia to win would embolden it and other authoritarian countries to attack elsewhere.“If we stand by and let this nation falter, it leaves a hostile Russia on the doorstep of our NATO allies,” he said, adding, “By taking a supportive and public stand in Ukraine, we’re sending a message to Russia and to China that their aggressive posture towards other nation-states is unacceptable.”Doug BurgumGov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has indicated that he supports military aid with “accountability on every dollar.”“Russia cannot have a win coming out of this, because if it’s a win for them, it’s a win for China,” Mr. Burgum told KFYR, a television station in North Dakota, while adding that he wanted Europe to shoulder more of the financial burden.He told CNN in June that the domestic turmoil in Russia had created an opening that the United States and NATO could exploit. “Let’s give them the support they need,” he said of Ukraine, without elaborating. “Let’s get this war over now instead of having it be protracted.”Francis SuarezMayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami supports aid but wants to tie it to new NATO rules requiring Europe to carry an equal burden.In a National Review essay, he said Mayor Vitali Klitschko of Kyiv had warned him that if Mr. Putin was not stopped, Russia and China would continue to attack the West, possibly including the United States. Mr. Suarez added that Russia had to be defeated because it was part of “a broader resurgence of communist-inspired regimes,” though Mr. Putin’s Russia is not communist.Without naming him, Mr. Suarez criticized Mr. DeSantis’s position. “It doesn’t take a Harvard lawyer to see that the war in Ukraine is not a territorial dispute,” he wrote, shortly after Mr. DeSantis used that phrase to describe it. “It is a moral and geopolitical struggle between two visions of the world.”The hawkWill HurdFormer Representative Will Hurd of Texas — who said from the start that the United States should send Ukraine “as much weaponry as we can” — has espoused a more hawkish policy than any other major candidate, arguing that the United States should go well beyond providing equipment and weapons.Mr. Hurd told ABC News that he supported establishing and helping enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. NATO leaders and U.S. lawmakers from both parties rejected that last year, saying they feared escalation. Mr. Hurd has brushed that concern aside, arguing that Mr. Putin had not escalated when a mercenary leader threatened a coup.He said that the United States should help Ukraine retake not only the territory Russia invaded in 2022, but also Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. More

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      The Biden-Trump Rematch Is Already Here

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      One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won whites with college degrees in 2020, 51-48, but Trump won by a landslide, 67-32, among whites without degrees, according to network exit polls.Even so, there is new data that reflects Trump’s ongoing and disruptive quest for power.In a paper published last year, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, political scientists at Sciences Po-Paris and Princeton, analyzed 40 days of polling conducted intermittently over the crucial period from Oct. 27, 2020, through Jan. 29, 2021.The authors found that Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him has had continuing ramifications:The lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem.In reaction to the lie, Arceneaux and Truex write, “there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed.”Endorsement of the lie pays off for Republicans, Arceneaux and Truex argue: “Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle.”These trends are among the most striking developments setting the stage for the 2024 elections.Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency; the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings; an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority; and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers.These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.Republican advantages include high rates of crime (although modestly declining in 2023 so far), homelessness and dysfunction in cities run by Democrats; a parents’ rights movement opposed to teaching of so-called critical race theory and gender-fluid concepts; and declining public support for gay rights and especially trans rights.There are, needless to say, a host of uncertainties.One key factor will be the salience on Election Day of issues closely linked to race in many voters’ minds, including school integration, affordable housing, the end of affirmative action, crime, urban disorder and government spending on social programs. As a general rule, the higher these issues rank in voters’ priorities, the better Republicans do. In that respect, the success of conservatives in barring the use of race in college admissions has taken a Republican issue off the table.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, noted in an email that in the “sour environment” of today’s politics, “many voters may be tempted toward a protest vote, and it is likely that there will be some options available for such voters.” It is not clear, Lee added, “what No Labels will do, but the potential there introduces considerable additional uncertainty.”Asked what factors he would cite as crucial to determining the outcome of the 2024 election, Ray La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, pointed out by email:The economy is the source of the most uncertainty — it is doing well, although inflation is not fully tamed. Will things continue to improve and will Biden start to get credit? This is especially important for white working-class voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate.”As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race.From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the Transformation paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”Most important, Abramowitz wrote, therise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day.Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources.This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-choice voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, gays and African Americans, all Democratic constituencies.My Times colleague Jonathan Weisman argued in a July 1 article, “Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening,” that the rulings giveDemocrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.In addition, Weisman wrote, “Republicans’ remarkable successes before the new court may have actually deprived them of combative issues to galvanize voters going into 2024.”The education trends favoring Democrats are reinforced by Americans’ changing religious beliefs. From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical Protestant share of the population fell from 23 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16 to 26.8 percent.Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, found that the nonreligious can be broken down into three groups: atheists, who are the most Democratic, voting 85-11 for Biden over Trump; followed by agnostics, 78-18 for Biden; and those Burge calls “nothing in particular,” 63-35 for Biden.The last of the pro-Democratic developments is an initial advantage in Electoral College votes, according to an analysis at this early stage in the contest.Kyle D. Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week.“We are starting 260 electoral votes worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik writes, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need to win 20 more Electoral College votes while the Republican nominee would need to win 35.The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”In the case of Arizona, Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, argued in an email that domestic migration from California to Arizona is substantial enough to help shift the state from red to purple.“In some recent work we have done comparing California, Arizona and Texas,” Cain added, “we find that the movement of Californians is greater in absolute numbers to Texas, but proportionately more impactful to Arizona.”People who move, Cain continued,make Arizona a bit more polarized and close to the Arizona purple profile. They contribute to polarized purpleness. Enough move over a four-year period to have a measurable impact in a close race. Unlike immigrants, domestic migrants can become voters instantly.How about the other side of the aisle?Daniel Kreiss, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina, writing by email, cited the Republican advantage gained from diminished content regulation on social media platforms: “This platform rollback stems broadly from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which gave other platforms a green light to drop electoral and public health protections.”The beneficiaries of this deregulation, Kreiss continued, are “Trump and Republicans more broadly who use disinformation as a strategic political tool.”These content regulation policies are a sharp policy shift on the part of the owners and managers of social media websites, Bridget Barrett, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, and Kreiss write in a June 29 paper, “Platforms Are Abandoning U.S. Democracy.”They argue that in the aftermath of the 2020 electionplatforms took serious steps to protect elections and the peaceful transfer of power, including creating policies against electoral disinformation and enforcing violations — including by Trump and other candidates and elected officials. And deplatforming the former president after an illegitimate attempt to seize power was a necessary step to quell the violence.More recently, Barrett and Kreiss note, “social media platforms have walked away from their commitments to protect democracy. So much so that the current state of platform content moderation is more like 2016 than 2020.”Frances Lee pointed out that Cornel West’s entry into the presidential election as a candidate of the Green Party will siphon some liberal voters away from Biden: “West has announced a presidential bid and has now moved from the People’s Party to the Green Party, which will have ballot access in most states,” she wrote.Insofar as West gains support, it will in all likelihood be at Democrats’ expense. West is a prominent figure in progressive circles and his agenda is explicitly an appeal to the left.In a June 28 appearance on C-SPAN, West declared:We need jobs with a living wage. We need decent housing, quality education, the basic social needs. You can imagine disproportionately Black and brown are wrestling with poverty. The abolition of poverty and homelessness. I want jobs with a living wage across the board. I want a U.S. foreign policy that is not tied to big money and corporate interests.While West will draw support from very liberal Democrats, there is another factor that may well weaken Democratic support among some moderate voters: the seeming insolubility of homeless encampments, shoplifting, carjacking and crime generally in major cities. This has the potential to tilt the playing field in favor of Republican law-and-order candidates, as it did in the 2023 Wisconsin Senate race and in suburban New York House contests.In 2022, crime ranked high among voter concerns, but Republicans who campaigned on themes attacking Democrats as weak on crime met with mixed results.A recent trend raising Republican prospects is the Gallup Poll finding that the percentage of people “who say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable” fell by 7 percentage points, from a record high of 71 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year.There was a six-point drop among Democrats on this question, from 85 to 79 percent approval, and a precipitous 15-point falloff among Republicans, 56 to 41 percent. Independents, in contrast, went from 71 percent approval to 72 percent. The overall decline reversed 20 years of steadily rising approval, which has grown from 39 percent in 2002 to 71 percent in 2022. Gallup also found that the public is holding increasingly conservative views on key issues related to gender transition.Asked “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity or should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” the public favored birth gender by 28 points, 62-34, in May 2021. In May 2023, the margin grew to 41 points, 69-28.Similarly, Gallup asked “Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong to change one’s gender.” In May 2021, 51 percent said morally wrong, 46 percent said acceptable. In May 2023, 55 percent said morally wrong, 43 percent said acceptable.President Biden is a strong supporter of transgender rights. On March 31, the White House released “Statement From President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Visibility,” in which Biden vowed:My administration will never quit fighting to end discrimination, to stand against unjust state laws, and to guarantee everyone the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are. We’ll never stop working to create a world where everyone can live without fear; where parents, teachers and whole communities come together to support kids, no matter how they identify; and every child is surrounded by compassion and love.Republican candidates are moving in the opposite direction. At the Faith and Freedom conference last month in Washington, Mike Pence promised to “end the gender ideology that is running rampant in our schools, and we will ban chemical and surgical gender transition treatment for kids under the age of 18.”Ron DeSantis told the gathering:The left is lighting the fire of a cultural revolution all across this land. The fire smolders in our schools. It smolders in corporate board rooms. It smolders in the homes of government. We’re told that we must accept that men can get pregnant. We are told to celebrate a swimmer who swam for three years on the men’s team, then switches to the women’s team and somehow is named the women’s champion.The 2020 election raised a new concern for Democrats: Trump’s success in increasing his support from 2016 among Latino voters.Kyle Kondik’s analysis shows that Nevada (17 percent of the vote was Hispanic in 2020) and Arizona (19 percent was Hispanic) are two of the four tossup states in 2024. This suggests that the Latino vote will be crucial.While acknowledging the gains Trump and fellow Republicans have made among Latino voters, a June 2023 analysis of the 2022 election, “Latino Voters & The Case of the Missing Red Wave,” by Equis, a network of three allied, nonpartisan research groups, found that with the exception of Florida, “at the end of the day, there turned out to be basic stability in support levels among Latinos in highly contested races.” In short, the report’s authors continued, “the G.O.P. held gains they had made since 2016/2018 but weren’t able to build on them.”In Florida, the report documented a six-year collapse in Democratic voting among Hispanics: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the Latino vote; in 2020, Biden won 51 percent and in 2022 Democratic congressional candidates won 44 percent.The Equis study also pointed to some significant Democratic liabilities among Latino voters: Substantial percentages of a key bloc of pro-Democratic Hispanics — those who say they believe Democrats “are better for Hispanics” — harbor significant doubts about the party. For example, 44 percent agreed that “Democrats don’t keep their promises” and 44 percent agreed that “Democrats take Latinos for granted.”In addition, the percentage of Latino voters describing immigration as the top issue — a stance favoring Democrats — has nose-dived, according to the Equis analysis, from 39 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2022.Where, then, does all this contradictory information leave us as to the probable outcome of the 2024 election? The reasonable answer is: in the dark.The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent Trump vs. Biden polls has Trump up by a statistically insignificant 0.6 percent. From August 2021 to the present, RealClear has tracked a total of 101 polls pitting these two against each other. Trump led in 56, Biden 38, and the remainder were ties.While this polling suggests Trump has an even chance, surveys do not fully capture the weight of Trump’s indictments and falsehoods on his own candidacy and, as evidenced in competitive races in 2022, on Republicans who are closely tied to the former president.Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.Even before the votes are counted on Nov. 5, 2024, the most important question may well turn out to be: If Trump is the Republican candidate for a third straight time and loses the election for a second, will he once again attempt to claim victory was stolen from him? And if he does, what will his followers — and for that matter, everyone else — do?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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Pro-Vaccine Views Are Winning. Don’t Fear the Skeptics.

      by

      With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, vaccine skepticism has been back in the headlines. Though Kennedy has said he isn’t anti-vaccine and that his children have had vaccines, and his campaign manager (the former Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich) says calling Kennedy “anti-vax” is a “left-handed smear,” Kennedy continues to suggest a link between vaccines and autism — a link that has leaned heavily on flawed and retracted science. He’s also been a vocal opponent of Covid vaccines.When a flurry of April polls indicated that Kennedy would enjoy double-digit support in a Democratic primary, I wondered if the respondents knew about his views on vaccines and agreed with them, if they were intrigued about the possibility of a contested primary or if they just had warm feelings about the Kennedy name. I worried that Covid vaccine skepticism had potentially sullied Americans’ feelings about all vaccines: If a meaningful slice of the Democratic electorate was either vaccine hesitant or indifferent to vaccine skepticism, I’d be concerned about dangerous diseases like polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps making a comeback.I was relieved, then, to see a survey from Pew Research in May that found that in 2023, 88 percent of American adults believe that the benefits of the M.M.R. (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine outweigh the risk — the same percentage that Pew found in 2016 and 2019. Per Pew, there’s been some softening in vaccine trust, particularly among Republicans and white evangelical Christians (who lean Republican), and this jibes with Republicans’ negative views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several other government agencies. But overall, the picture isn’t dire.When you look at rates of vaccination among young children for potentially dangerous infectious diseases, the data is encouraging. According to a study published in January in the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report:Vaccination coverage among young children has remained high and stable for most vaccines, although disparities persist. The National Immunization Survey-Child identified no decline overall in routine vaccination coverage associated with the Covid-19 pandemic among children born during 2018-2019, although declines were observed among children living below the federal poverty level and in rural areas.Per the C.D.C., for children born in 2018 and 2019, coverage was over 90 percent for the polio, M.M.R., hepatitis B and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines. A major barrier to receiving vaccines seems to be access to health care — according to the C.D.C., “The proportion of children who were unvaccinated by age 24 months was eight times higher for uninsured compared with privately insured children.”Even for children who missed routine visits and vaccine doses in the darkest days of 2020, the C.D.C. “did not identify any consistent or persistent decline in vaccination coverage associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.” When there were “transient declines” in coverage of some vaccines, children appeared to catch up with their doses at later dates.Acceptance of Covid vaccines is also one the rise in the United States. In a survey of Covid vaccine acceptance in 23 countries in 2022, published in January in the journal Nature, researchers found that 80.2 percent of Americans accepted the Covid vaccine, higher than the global average of 79.1 percent. (Vaccine acceptance was defined as “having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and, if not, willingness to take the Covid-19 vaccine when it is available to them.”)Still, parents in the United States are more hesitant about getting the vaccines for their kids than for themselves. Though 33.1 percent of American parents were hesitant about the vaccine in 2022, that was a nearly 12.9 percent decrease in hesitancy from 2021 — with time, more parents are able to trust that the vaccines’ benefits matter. (Hesitancy for children among parents was defined as “having reported ‘no’ to the question of whether children received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and also ‘unsure/no opinion’, ‘somewhat disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ to the question of whether children will take a Covid-19 vaccine when available to them.”That it was going to take time for parents to get comfortable with Covid vaccines for their kids was predictable. As Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician and the chief health officer at Indiana University, wrote for The Atlantic in 2021: “Parents tend to be skeptical of new vaccines. Whenever one is introduced, many of them are initially hesitant to adopt it.” He went on to explain that though the highly effective varicella vaccine was approved in 1995, “uptake levels were initially low, with only 34 percent of eligible adolescents fully immunized by 2008,” despite recipients showing few side effects. But now, as noted above, the vaccination rate for varicella is over 90 percent.Two years ago, when I talked to parents who were skeptical about Covid vaccines for their children, they weren’t broadly anti-vaccine. They were worried about the newness of the vaccines, about allergies and about side effects. As one mom put it, “I’m not anti-vax but this all seems just too fast for me. I don’t want my children to be responding to those lawyer ads you see on TV 25 years from now. You know the ones: ‘If you were under the age of 16 in the years 2021-2022 and received the Covid-19 vaccination you could be entitled to compensation …’.”I know there’s some concern that amplifying Kennedy’s beliefs about vaccines will make the vaccine hesitant even more hesitant. But I wonder if all of the attention paid to vaccine skeptics in recent years could be having the opposite effect — that people are being exposed to skeptics’ unfettered theories on podcasts and social media and ultimately finding those views unconvincing. In June, my Opinion colleague Michelle Goldberg went to a Kennedy rally to talk to some of his supporters and she wrote: “As media coverage has made Democrats more aware of Kennedy’s conspiratorial views, his support has fallen; a recent St. Anselm poll had him at only 9 percent” among registered voters in the early and influential primary state of New Hampshire.Many scientific experts have worked to promote accurate and up-to-date information about vaccines, including Covid vaccines. In some cases, they’ve spent a lot of social capital in their efforts to debunk falsehoods. Many journalists have asked vaccine skeptics tough questions. Simply shaming those who don’t want to get their children vaccinated, for whatever reason, is not effective.What does work? As Dr. Katelyn Jetelina and Dr. Kristen Panthagani write for the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist, some people have serious, good-faith questions about vaccines, and they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand:Legitimate concerns exist. In fact, the vast majority of people who have questions or doubts about vaccines don’t outright deny vaccines as beneficial. They are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.Answering people with valid questions needs to be scientists’ priority. We need to meet them where they are, answer their questions from a place of empathy not condescension, equip trusted messengers, and anticipate concerns so we can prevent information voids that will otherwise be filled with false rumors.This is happening all the time. And looking at the data, I have confidence that it’s working. More