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      Could a Democrat Really Challenge Biden at This Point? Here’s What to Know.

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      It’s really hard to run against a sitting president. And beginning at this point, just two months before primary voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.The Democratic anxiety that has swirled around President Biden for over a year has kicked into overdrive in recent weeks, as his approval ratings have stayed stubbornly low and polls have shown the possibility of his losing to former President Donald J. Trump.That anxiety has crystallized into one question, repeated like a drumbeat: Can’t some big-name Democrat challenge him? Someone more prominent than Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips?The answer: In theory, sure. In practice, the prospects are remote.There are several reasons for that, most of which boil down to it being really hard to run a successful primary campaign against a sitting president. And doing so at this point, just two months before voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.Making things still more difficult for a would-be challenger is that Mr. Biden remains relatively popular among Democratic voters. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 79 percent of party voters in six battleground states somewhat or strongly approve of his performance, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for another Democrat.“Logistically, it’s impossible,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Hillary Clinton and Amy Klobuchar. “Politically, it’s a suicide mission.”Ballot deadlines are approaching, or pastTo appear on each state’s primary ballot, candidates must submit paperwork along with, in many cases, a hefty filing fee and hundreds or even thousands of voter signatures.The deadlines for those submissions have already passed in South Carolina and Nevada, the first two states on the Democratic calendar; in New Hampshire, which is holding an unsanctioned primary in January; and in Alabama and Arkansas.Michigan, another early-voting state, released its list of candidates this month. By mid-December, the window to get added to the ballot there will have closed. The deadline is similar for California, which will account for more delegates than any other state; and for Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.So even if a candidate entered the race tomorrow, they would be unable to get on the ballot in the first two primaries, and probably in a lot of others. It would be a tall order, for instance, to secure 26,000 signatures in California by its Dec. 15 deadline.Pretty soon, defeating Mr. Biden goes from difficult to mathematically impossible.Biden has an enormous financial advantageMr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee said they raised a combined $71.3 million in the third quarter of this year. They reported having $90.5 million in cash on hand as of the end of September.That would put any new candidate at a staggering disadvantage. Consider that on the Republican side, Mr. Trump alone announced a $45.5 million haul in the third quarter, and his leading rivals, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, reported raising $15 million and $11 million.Big-name politicians are thinking long termMany voters looking for a savior candidate are, naturally, looking to people seen as rising stars in the Democratic Party — like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.But rising stars generally want to maximize their chances at the right time.“Ambitious candidates are risk-averse,” said Casey Dominguez, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego who studies primaries. “They don’t want to ruin their chances at a successful run for president by having an unsuccessful run for president, particularly one where you’re running against a sitting president, potentially dividing the party.”Crucially, there is no precedent in the last 50 years for candidates to look to for a path.Pat Buchanan, challenging an unpopular President George Bush in 1992, gave Mr. Bush an unexpectedly close call in New Hampshire but did not end up winning a single primary. Edward M. Kennedy, challenging an unpopular President Jimmy Carter in 1980, won 12 states and contested the nomination all the way to the Democratic convention, but did not come close to a majority.“History tells a story,” said Barbara Norrander, an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy who studies presidential primaries. “Ted Kennedy versus Jimmy Carter 1980 is what you would look back at, and Kennedy had a lot of pluses going for him, but he wasn’t able to unseat Carter. So it’s highly unlikely that someone today could unseat an incumbent president.”Democrats are worried about weakening BidenThe driving force behind many Democrats’ desire to jettison Mr. Biden is fear of another Trump presidency. But the same driving force is behind other Democrats’ desire to stick with him.Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities, including his age and low approval ratings, are very real. But the electoral advantages of incumbency, universal name recognition and an established campaign organization are real, too.At this point, for a new candidate, “there’s just no way to build momentum and get the resources necessary,” Mr. Hogan said.Potential challengers also have to weigh the possibility that a primary battle could weaken Mr. Biden in the general election, even if he overcame it. Though there is no consensus, some historians believe primary challenges hurt Mr. Bush and Mr. Carter in 1992 and 1980.“Nobody wants to be the person that divided the party and helped to elect Donald Trump,” Professor Dominguez said.There is no ‘generic Democrat’Any challenger would come with their own weak points that would turn off one Democratic faction or another and be exploited by Republicans over the long months of a general-election campaign — a reality not necessarily captured by polls that show an unnamed Democratic candidate performing better than Mr. Biden.“You can’t run a generic Democrat,” Mr. Hogan said. “You have to run a person.”Take Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who entered the race in October. After debuting around 7.5 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, he quickly fell to about 4 percent.That reality played out in 1968, the only time in modern history that an incumbent president was successfully challenged in his party’s primary.Two challengers with substantial name recognition and support — Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy — helped drive President Lyndon B. Johnson not to seek re-election. He announced his decision in March 1968, as the primaries were underway. That August, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the nomination of an agonizingly divided Democratic Party.Humphrey lost the general election with 191 electoral votes to Richard Nixon’s 301.What happens if Biden can’t run?To state the obvious, all of the considerations are what they are because Mr. Biden is running. If something were to change that — if he had a health crisis, for example — the party would be in a difficult situation.If he withdrew just before or early in the primary season, voters would be limited to the other options already in the race. It is highly unlikely that ballot access deadlines, which are set by individual states and not by national party officials, would be reopened.If he withdrew later in the primary season — after he had won enough delegates in early primaries that no candidate could surpass him — the nomination would be decided on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in August, where delegates have the final say in choosing a nominee. That would also be the case if he withdrew between the primaries and the convention. More

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      Trump Health Report Claims ‘Weight Reduction’ but Skimps on Specifics

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      The former president’s doctors have often offered hyperbolic or unverifiable claims in reports about his health.Former President Donald J. Trump posted a fawning but vague health report from his doctor on Monday that declares that Mr. Trump’s health is “excellent” and that he has recently lost weight through an “improved diet” and “daily physical activity.”Mr. Trump’s physician, Dr. Bruce Aronwald, wrote the single-page report over two months after Mr. Trump, 77, underwent a “comprehensive” health examination in September, the document says.In August, Mr. Trump reported to the Fulton County Jail, during an intake process for one of four criminal cases he is facing, that he weighed 215 pounds. That was nearly 30 pounds less than the White House doctor reported in 2020.But the report on Monday did not include even basic details such as Mr. Trump’s weight, his blood pressure, his cholesterol levels, any prescriptions or even how much weight he had lost. Dr. Aronwald instead wrote that Mr. Trump’s “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about specific details regarding Mr. Trump’s health.The timing of the report appeared to be taking a jab at President Biden on his 81st birthday. While Mr. Trump has repeatedly mocked Mr. Biden’s age, he has had his own verbal stumbles on the campaign trail.Mr. Trump’s doctors — an eclectic group of personal and White House physicians — have previously released memos and reports that have offered few details about his health and included hyperbolic claims and descriptions of his condition as “excellent.”Dr. Harold Bornstein, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal physician, declared in late 2015 that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He then later told The New York Times that Mr. Trump was taking medication for various ailments, including a prostate-related drug to promote hair growth. Dr. Bornstein later said that Mr. Trump sent his bodyguard among others to seize his medical records from Dr. Bornstein’s office after the physician fell from Mr. Trump’s orbit.Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a White House physician for Mr. Trump, asserted in 2018 that with a better diet, Mr. Trump could have lived to be 200 years old. Another White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, repeatedly misled the public about the severity of Mr. Trump’s illness after he contracted Covid in 2020.Mr. Biden, as president, has undergone annual physical exams and releases significantly more detailed health reports. His latest report, in February, was five pages long, noting specific ailments, like arthritis, and the regimen of tests taken — to detect neurological disorders, for example.But tests and reports have done little to reassure voters that Mr. Biden has not slowed in his senior years, and any slip of the tongue or stumble on a stairway draws further public attention. During remarks at the White House on Monday, he confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears.Concerns about age and health have been a sore subject for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, who would each be well past 80 by the end of a term in 2029. They have repeatedly dismissed such concerns, and each asserts that he is more than capable of serving another four years in the Oval Office.In one notable episode, Mr. Trump repeatedly bragged in television appearances about acing a cognitive test that looks for signs of conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, wielding it as proof that he was sharper than Mr. Biden — who at the time was his opponent in the 2020 election.Mr. Trump was particularly boastful of completing a memory test that involved reciting the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in the correct order.Recent polls have found that roughly two of every three voters say Mr. Biden is too old to serve another four-year term. About half say the same about Mr. Trump. More

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      Las lecciones de las campañas de Bush y Obama para Biden

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      En manos de un candidato hábil, las encuestas preliminares pueden ser un mapa de ruta para darle un giro total a una campaña en dificultades.Mucho antes del día de las elecciones en 2004, algunos estrategas le advirtieron al presidente George W. Bush que tendría una campaña difícil porque los electores estaban angustiados por la guerra en Irak y la economía, dos temas que esperaba sortear para llegar a un segundo mandato.Los asesores de Bush se apresuraron a restructurar la campaña. Su meta fue evitar que el público centrara su atención en el presidente y su historial y lograr, más bien, presentar al opositor demócrata más probable, el senador de Massachusetts, John Kerry, veterano de la guerra de Vietnam, como alguien que cambiaba de opinión con facilidad, que no era de fiar en temas de seguridad nacional y que no podía guiar a la nación, que todavía estaba recuperándose de los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre.“Identificamos una debilidad que sin duda podríamos explotar en nuestro beneficio en unas elecciones que se esperaba que fueran cerradas”, explicó Karl Rove, asesor político sénior de Bush durante mucho tiempo.Ocho años después, los asesores de otro presidente en funciones, Barack Obama, gracias a su análisis de varias encuestas públicas y privadas, llegaron a la conclusión de que las inquietudes de los votantes en torno a los efectos persistentes de la Gran Recesión y la dirección de la nación podrían arruinar sus posibilidades de llegar a un segundo mandato.Siguiendo el ejemplo de Bush, Obama ajustó su campaña y, en vez de poner énfasis en los logros obtenidos durante su primer mandato, se concentró en desacreditar a su opositor, el exgobernador de Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, presentándolo como un empresario adinerado totalmente desconectado de los estadounidenses de clase trabajadora.En esta era de división y polarización, el presidente Joe Biden no es el primero en recibir datos que parecen indicar que su reelección está en riesgo. El problema es que las campañas de reelección de Bush y Obama, quienes lograron ganar un segundo mandato en la Casa Blanca, ahora más bien son prueba de que las encuestas realizadas con tanta anticipación no pueden predecir lo que ocurrirá el día de las elecciones. En manos de un candidato hábil, incluso pueden ser un mapa de ruta para darle un giro total a una campaña en dificultades.Bush y Obama eran candidatos diferentes y enfrentaban obstáculos distintos: en el caso de Bush, el embrollo de una guerra; en el de Obama, una economía nacional sacudida por la crisis financiera global de 2008. Sin embargo, ambos decidieron transformar su campana de reelección de un referendo sobre el presidente en funciones a una operación para resaltar cuánto contrastaban con un opositor que ellos mismos definieron, con anuncios televisivos fulminantes, meses antes de que Romney o Kerry fueran nominados en las convenciones de sus partidos.En el caso contrario, un presidente republicano de la era moderna que perdió las elecciones para un segundo mandato, George H.W. Bush en 1992, cometió el error de ignorar los datos mostrados por las encuestas sobre la angustia de los electores en el tema de la economía y su avidez de un cambio tras 12 años de republicanos en la Casa Blanca.Bush padre, según dijeron sus asesores en entrevistas recientes, se confió por el reconocimiento del que fue objeto por su papel al frente de la coalición que expulsó a Saddam Hussein e Irak de Kuwait, además del desdén que sentía por su opositor, un joven gobernador demócrata que había evitado el reclutamiento militar y tenía un historial de relaciones extramaritales.El expresidente Barack Obama reformuló su campaña para centrarse en desacreditar a su oponente, Mitt Romney, y mostrarlo como un empresario adinerado totalmente desconectado de los estadounidenses de clase trabajadora.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden tiene grandes dificultades, pero creo que es posible ganar la contienda”, aseveró David Plouffe, antiguo asesor sénior en la campaña de reelección de Obama. “Claro que comprendo que un presidente o gobernador en funciones piense que las personas deban saber más sobre sus logros. Es cierto, pero, a fin de cuentas, esto es un ejercicio comparativo. Eso fue lo que descubrimos”.La Casa Blanca de Biden ha desestimado las encuestas —incluida una realizada por The New York Times en colaboración con el Siena College que se dio a conocer recientemente— por considerarlas poco significativas tanto tiempo antes de las elecciones. Los asesores del presidente indicaron que las victorias demócratas en las elecciones de este mes demuestran que el partido y su abanderado están en una buena posición.Sin embargo, después de meses de una campaña basada en sus logros económicos con pocas señales de éxito, Biden ha comenzado a centrar su atención en Donald Trump, el expresidente republicano que probablemente sea su opositor, en particular en sus políticas de inmigración y derecho al aborto. Por este motivo ahora se transmite un anuncio en el que el expresidente aparece caminando por un campo de golf mientras se escucha al anunciante decir que Trump apoyó los recortes fiscales “para sus amigos ricos”, mientras que las empresas estadounidenses fabricantes de automóviles tuvieron que cerrar plantas.“Por supuesto que estamos considerando opciones para propiciar conversaciones en torno a Trump y MAGA (sigla del eslogan “Hagamos a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”) lo más que se pueda”, comentó Kevin Munoz, vocero para la campaña de Biden. No obstante, Munoz añadió: “Estamos en una posición diferente a la de Obama y Bush. Tuvimos excelentes resultados en las elecciones de medio mandato. Hemos tenido elecciones especiales muy exitosas. Nuestra teoría se demostró de nuevo el martes pasado”.Cambiar drásticamente la dinámica de la contienda puede resultar menos fructífero para Biden que para sus predecesores. Obama y George W. Bush lograron desacreditar a Romney y Kerry porque los electores, en esa etapa temprana de la campaña para las elecciones generales, no sabían mucho de ellos.En cambio, no hay mucho que la campaña de Biden pueda decirles a los electores acerca de Trump que no sepan ya (de hecho, tampoco pueden decirles mucho sobre Biden que no sepan ya). Además, al menos hasta ahora, Trump no ha pagado ningún costo político por el tipo de declaraciones (como cuando se refirió a sus críticos como “alimañas”) que en el pasado podrían haber estropeado las probabilidades de un candidato más convencional. Hasta ahora, el hecho de que se hayan presentado acusaciones formales en su contra por 91 delitos del ámbito penal en cuatro casos solo ha afianzado su apoyo.Cuando la campaña de Bush comenzó a planificar su reelección, se enfrentó a cifras de encuestas que, si bien no eran tan inquietantes para el presidente como algunas que han salido a la luz en las últimas semanas sobre Biden, sí eran motivo de preocupación. Una encuesta realizada por el Centro de Investigaciones Pew reveló que el 46 por ciento de los encuestados dijo que las políticas económicas de Bush habían empeorado la economía y el 39 por ciento dijo que las tropas estadounidenses debían regresar de Irak lo antes posible; frente al 32 por ciento del mes anterior.“Decidimos desde el principio que queríamos que las elecciones giraran en torno a la seguridad nacional, aunque la economía fuera el tema número uno”, dijo Matthew Dowd, el principal estratega de la campaña de Bush en 2004. “Estábamos en desventaja respecto a los demócratas en materia económica. Y como parte de esa estrategia, deseábamos definir a Kerry negativamente en materia de seguridad nacional desde el principio, y como un líder débil e inseguro para poder posicionar a Bush como un líder fuerte y sólido en materia de seguridad nacional”.Al poco tiempo, la campaña de Bush estaba al aire con anuncios que atacaban a Kerry por comprometerse a revertir la Ley Patriota, la cual le otorgaba al gobierno federal mayores poderes para perseguir a terroristas. Esa ley fue aprobada poco después de los ataques del 11 de septiembre con un apoyo abrumador en el Congreso, incluido Kerry.“John Kerry. Jugando a la política con la seguridad nacional”, decía un locutor.El expresidente George W. Bush se enfrentó a cifras de encuestas que, si bien no eran tan inquietantes para el presidente como algunas que han salido a la luz en las últimas semanas sobre Biden, sí eran motivo de preocupación.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOcho años más tarde, mientras Obama preparaba su campaña de reelección, muchos estadounidenses le dijeron a los encuestadores que el país iba en la dirección equivocada y que su situación financiera era peor que antes de que Obama asumiera el cargo. Por ejemplo, una encuesta del Washington Post/ABC News encontró que tres cuartas partes de los estadounidenses decían que el país iba en la dirección equivocada.Los asesores de Obama estudiaron las campañas de reelección de otros presidentes en funciones en problemas. “Sabíamos que la mayoría de las campañas de reelección eran un referéndum”, dijo Joel Benenson, quien fue el encuestador del equipo de Obama.“También sabíamos que teníamos una crisis económica masiva que no fue en absoluto culpa de Obama. Pero también sabíamos que era el presidente en funciones y no podía culpar a su predecesor por ello. No podíamos convencerlos de que la economía estaba mejorando”.Pero Romney, dijo, “no estaba completamente formado entre los votantes”, lo que presentó una oportunidad para resaltar su riqueza y retratarlo como alguien cuyas políticas favorecerían a los ricos.Por el contrario, George H.W. Bush, dijeron sus asesores, ignoró las advertencias, confiando en que el índice de aprobación de los votantes cercano al 90 por ciento que registró después de la guerra en Kuwait hacía que su reelección estuviera casi garantizada. “La adulación de la guerra de alguna manera silenció los instintos políticos normales de muchas personas cercanas al presidente”, dijo Ron Kaufman, quien fue asesor principal de esa campaña.Rove subrayó que la posición de Biden está más deteriorada en este momento que la de Bush padre en 1992. “Bush parecía no tener ideas para el futuro, pero la gente lo consideraba un ser humano admirable”, explicó Rove. “El problema de Biden es que la gente ha llegado a la conclusión de que no puede desempeñar el trabajo, pues es demasiado viejo y no tiene ni el vigor ni la agudeza mental necesarios para hacerlo”.En encuestas recientes conducidas por el Times y el Siena College en cinco estados clave, el 71 por ciento de los participantes respondió que Biden era “demasiado viejo” para ser un presidente efectivo.Plouffe afirmó que la campaña de Biden debería aprovechar la lección que aprendió el equipo de Obama después de estudiar la campaña perdedora de Bush padre. “La gente de Bush intentó convencer a los ciudadanos de que la economía estaba en mejores condiciones de lo que pensaban”, indicó. “Algo que he aprendido es que no puedes decirles a las personas qué pensar de la economía. Ellos te dirán lo que piensan de la economía”.“Yo empezaría cada discurso con la frase: ‘Estados Unidos tiene una decisión frente a sí, ambos somos hombres blancos mayores’”, afirmó Plouffe. “‘Pero hasta ahí llegan las similitudes’”.Adam Nagourney cubre política nacional para el Times, en especial la campaña de 2024. Más de Adam Nagourney More

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      Rosalynn Carter, First Lady and a Political Partner, Dies at 96

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      She helped propel Jimmy Carter from rural Georgia to the White House and became the most politically active first lady since Eleanor RooseveltRosalynn Carter, a true life partner to Jimmy Carter who helped propel him from rural Georgia to the White House in a single decade and became the most politically active first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, died on Sunday in Plains, Ga. She was 96. The Carter Center in Atlanta announced her death. It had disclosed on May 30 that Mrs. Carter had dementia. “She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” a statement by the center said at the time. On Friday, the center said she had entered hospice care at home.Mr. Carter, 99, the longest-living president in American history, has also been in hospice care at their home, but so far he has defied expectations. The Carter Center had announced in February that he was stopping full-scale medical care “after a series of short hospital stays,” and his family was preparing for the end. But he has hung on — and celebrated his most recent birthday on Oct. 1.Mrs. Carter was the second longest-lived first lady; Bess Truman, the widow of President Harry S. Truman, was 97 when she died in 1982.Over their nearly eight decades together, Mr. and Mrs. Carter forged the closest of bonds, developing a personal and professional symbiosis remarkable for its sheer longevity.Their extraordinary union began formally with their marriage in 1946, but, in a manner of speaking, it began long before that, with a touch of kismet, just after Rosalynn (pronounced ROSE-a-lynn) was born in Plains in 1927.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      With Joe Biden Turning 81, the White House Is Focused Elsewhere

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      President Biden has no plans for a lavish public celebration when he turns 81 on Monday, even as Democrats search for a strategy to assuage voters’ concerns about his age by next year’s election.For many of a certain age, there comes a point when marking yet another birthday, taking note of yet another passage of the calendar, is not greeted with the same enthusiasm it once was. And that’s for people who are not even running for president.For President Biden, who turns 81 on Monday, another birthday may bring more liability than revelry, offering one more reminder of his age to an already skeptical electorate. Unlike other presidents who have celebrated birthdays with lavish political events, Mr. Biden plans to observe his milestone privately with family in Nantucket later this week.The best birthday gift the oldest president in American history could hope for would be a strategy for assuaging voters’ concerns, but that has been hard to come by. Mr. Biden and his team have taken the approach that his record of domestic legislation and international leadership should belie any worries about his capacity, even though polls have shown consistently that that line of argument has not been persuasive, at least not yet.Some Democrats argue that Mr. Biden needs to do more to draw the contrast with his likeliest Republican challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, who at 77 has himself exhibited confusion in public lately. Mr. Trump has warned that the country is on the verge of World War II, mixed up the leaders of Hungary and Turkey, and boasted of beating former President Barack Obama in the polls when of course Mr. Obama is not running. If Mr. Trump wins next year and serves out four years, he would take over the status as the country’s oldest president.Others, including some current and former administration officials, said Mr. Biden’s staff members should stop treating him like an old man they do not trust and let him interact with the public and reporters more. Some said the president needed to start getting out on the campaign trail more to show his vigor, deploy more humor to defuse the matter and even boast about his age rather than ignore it.Others, however, said he needed to be protected even more, allowed more time to rest and not sent on so many draining international trips — what some cheekily call the “Bubble Wrap” strategy, as in encasing him in Bubble Wrap for the next 12 months to make sure he does not trip and fall.If some of this is contradictory, it may be because there is no easy answer, much as Democrats have been obsessing about Mr. Biden’s age. One thing the White House cannot do is make him younger. In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of battleground states, 71 percent said Mr. Biden was “too old” to be president, including 54 percent of his own supporters. By contrast, 39 percent said that about Mr. Trump.“He doesn’t look and speak the part,” said John B. Judis, the longtime political analyst and author with Ruy Teixeira of “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” published earlier this month. “He’s not a commanding or charming presence on a presidential or presidential election stage.”Mr. Judis said he thought Mr. Biden had demonstrated “astonishing success” in passing major legislation building infrastructure, lowering the cost of medicine and combating climate change, and added that he planned to vote for the president himself. But he noted that presidents were expected to be both the head of government and the head of state — a prime minister and a king, if you will — and that the public performance part had eluded Mr. Biden.“I think a lot of voters, and young people in particular, who are not at all put off by his political positions or accomplishments, are put off by his utter failure as a regal persona,” Mr. Judis said. “And I don’t know how that can be fixed. Not by bicycling. Biden’s best hope in that regard is the voters’ perception of Trump as a bad or even evil father who wants to wreck the family.”Nothing irritates White House officials more than discussion of Mr. Biden’s age, which they view as an obsession of the news media that does not correspond with the energetic and mentally sharp president they describe inside the Oval Office. While Mr. Biden shuffles when he walks, talks in a low tone that can be hard to hear and sometimes confuses names and details in public, they note that he maintains a crushing schedule that would tire a younger president.In the past few weeks alone, he has devoted countless hours to managing the Israel war with Hamas while also hosting separate summit meetings with leaders from Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere. He made a one-day trip to Israel, flying across the world and back without stopping in a hotel room, and they said he has worked the phone endlessly to deal with high-stakes foreign crises.Asked about his forthcoming birthday, the White House did not directly address the age issue on Sunday but chose to focus on the president’s accomplishments, making the point that his long experience in Washington has paid off.“Because of President Biden’s decades of experience in public service and deep relationships with leaders in Congress, he passed legislation that has helped to create more than 14 million jobs, lower prescription drug costs, invest in America’s infrastructure and technology and led to the strongest economic recovery in the developed world,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said in a statement.“He has revitalized alliances on the world stage — cultivated over many years — to promote America’s interests and respond forcefully when global crises arise,” Mr. LaBolt added.Simon Rosenberg, a veteran Democratic strategist, said the White House should lean even more into the benefits of Mr. Biden’s age rather than be defensive.“He’s been successful because of his age, not in spite of it,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “We’re all going to have to make that case because it’s true. We can’t run away from the age issue. It’s going to be a major part of the conversation, but we would be making a political mistake if we don’t contest it more aggressively.”Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, said there were naturally limits to what the White House could do. “Nothing anyone, even a president, can do to avoid having a birthday,” she said. “President Biden should continue to do what he’s been doing: connecting personally with people, making jokes about the coverage and highlighting his administration’s accomplishments.”Some party strategists argued that age had dominated the discussion about Mr. Biden lately in part because the president had not yet fully engaged in the contest against Mr. Trump. At the end of the day, they said, Democrats and independents who may be leery of a president who would be 86 at the end of a second term will conclude that it is better to support an octogenarian they agree with than another soon-to-be octogenarian they consider a threat to democracy, abortion rights and other issues that matter to them.“This issue, like many others, will fade once the campaign moves into the general election phase,” said Brian Fallon, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “Once the race gets reframed as a choice, it will be impossible for Republicans to try to weaponize the issue of age when their own nominee would also be over 80 in his next term.”If that were to work, it would be the best birthday gift Mr. Biden could hope for when he turns 82 next year. It is, of course, a big if. More

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      The Bush-Obama Blueprint That Gives Biden Hope for ’24

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      President Biden isn’t the first incumbent to face grim polling a year out from Election Day.Well before Election Day in 2004, President George W. Bush was warned by strategists that he would face a tough campaign battle because of voter distress over the war in Iraq and over the economy — two issues he had once hoped to ride to a second term.Mr. Bush’s aides moved quickly to retool the campaign. They turned attention away from the president and his record and set out to portray his likely Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Vietnam War veteran, as a flip-flopper, unreliable on national security and unfit to lead a nation still reeling from the terror attacks of Sept. 11.“We saw a weakness we knew we could exploit to our advantage in what was going to be a close election,” said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s longtime senior political adviser.Eight years later, aides to another sitting president, Barack Obama, reviewing public and private polls, concluded that concern among voters about the lingering effects of the Great Recession and the direction of the nation could derail his hopes for a second term.Taking a lesson from Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama recast his campaign away from his first-term record and set out to discredit his opponent, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, as a wealthy businessman unsympathetic to working-class Americans.President Biden is hardly the first president during this era of division and polarization to be confronted with polling data suggesting his re-election was at risk. But the re-election campaigns rolled out by Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, who both returned to second terms in the White House, stand today as reminders that polls this early are not predictions of what will happen on Election Day. In the hands of a nimble candidate, they can even be a road map for turning around a struggling campaign.Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama were different candidates facing different obstacles: a quagmire of a war for Mr. Bush, a domestic economy shaken by the global financial crisis of 2008 for Mr. Obama. But both moved to transform their re-election campaigns from a referendum on the incumbent into a contrast with an opponent they defined, with slashing television advertisements, months before either Mr. Romney or Mr. Kerry were nominated at their party conventions.By contrast, a modern-day Republican president who lost a bid for a second term, George H.W. Bush in 1992, failed to heed polls showing voters distressed about the economy and ready for a change after 12 years of Republicans in the White House.The elder Mr. Bush, his aides said in recent interviews, was lulled by the accolades for leading the coalition that repelled Saddam Hussein and Iraq out of Kuwait, and contempt for his opponent, a young Democratic governor who had avoided the draft and had a history of extramarital liaisons.Former President Barack Obama recast his campaign to discredit his opponent, Mitt Romney, as a wealthy businessman unsympathetic to working-class Americans.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden has a very high degree of difficulty but I think the race is winnable,” said David Plouffe, who was a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. “Listen, I have sympathy for an incumbent president or governor who says, ‘people need to know more about my accomplishments.’ That is true, but at the end of the day this is a comparative exercise. That’s the one thing we learned.”The Biden White House has dismissed polls — including a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week — as meaningless this far before Election Day. The president’s advisers pointed to Democratic gains in this month’s elections as evidence that the party and its standard-bearer are in fine shape.Yet, after months of trying to run on his economic record with little sign of success, Mr. Biden has begun turning his attention more to Donald J. Trump, the Republican former president and his likely opponent, particularly his policies on immigration and abortion rights. That includes an advertisement that shows Mr. Trump plodding through a golf course as the announcer said that Mr. Trump pushed through tax cuts “for his rich friends” while U.S. automakers shut down plants.“We are absolutely looking at ways that we can help drive the conversation around Trump and MAGA as much as we can,” said Kevin Munoz, the Biden campaign spokesman. But, Mr. Munoz added, “We are in a different position than Obama and Bush. We had very strong midterms. We have had very strong special elections. Our theory of the case was proved again last Tuesday.”Upending the race dynamics might prove more daunting for Mr. Biden than for his predecessors. Mr. Obama and George W. Bush were able to discredit Mr. Romney and Mr. Kerry because voters, at this early stage of the general election campaign, did not know much about them.But there is not much the Biden campaign can tell voters about Mr. Trump that they don’t already know. (Or for that matter, not much Mr. Biden can tell voters about Mr. Biden that they don’t already know.) And Mr. Trump has, so far at least, not paid a political cost for the kind of statements — such as when he described his critics as “vermin” — that might have previously derailed a more conventional candidate. Being indicted on 91 criminal counts in four cases has, so far, only solidified his support.When Mr. Bush’s campaign began planning for his re-election, they confronted polling numbers that — while not as unnerving for the president as some that have come out in recent weeks about Mr. Biden — were cause for concern. A poll by the Pew Research Group found that 46 percent of respondents said Mr. Bush’s economic policies had made the economy worse and 39 percent said American troops should be brought back from Iraq as soon as possible; up from 32 percent the month before.“We decided early on that we wanted to make the election about national security even though the economy was the No. 1 issue,” said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign. “We were at a disadvantage to Dems on the economy. And as part of that strategy, we desired to define Kerry negatively on national security early on, and as a weak flip-flopping leader so we could position Bush as a strong leader and strong on national security.”Before long, the Bush campaign was on the air with advertisements assailing Mr. Kerry for pledging to roll back the Patriot Act, giving the federal government expanded powers to go after terrorists. The Patriot Act was passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks with overwhelming support in Congress — including Mr. Kerry.“John Kerry. Playing politics with national security,” an announcer said.Former President George W. Bush confronted polling numbers that — while not as unnerving for the president as some that have come out in recent weeks about Mr. Biden — were cause for concern.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEight years later, as Mr. Obama mounted his re-election campaign, many Americans were telling pollsters that the country was heading in the wrong direction and that they were worse off financially than they had been before Mr. Obama took office. For instance, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found three-quarters of Americans saying the country was heading in the wrong direction.Mr. Obama’s advisers studied the re-election campaigns of other embattled sitting presidents. “We knew that most re-elect campaigns were a referendum,” said Joel Benenson, who was the pollster for Mr. Obama’s team. “We also knew we had this massive economic crisis which absolutely was not all of Obama’s making. But we also knew you are the incumbent president, and you can’t blame it on your predecessor. We couldn’t convince them that the economy was getting better.”But Mr. Romney, he said, “was not fully formed with voters,” which was an opportunity to spotlight his wealth and portray him as someone whose policies would favor the rich.By contrast, George H.W. Bush, aides said, disregarded the warnings, confident the near 90 percent voter approval rating he registered after the war in Kuwait made his re-election all but certain. “The adulation from the war somehow muted the normal political instincts of a lot of people around the president,” said Ron Kaufman, who was a senior adviser to that campaign.Mr. Rove said Mr. Biden was in worse shape today than the elder Mr. Bush had been in 1992. “Bush seemed bereft of ideas for the future, but people saw him as an admirable human being,” Mr. Rove said. “The problem for Biden is that people have concluded he’s not up to the job — too old and lacking the necessary stamina and mental acuity.”In recent polls conducted in five battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College, 71 percent of respondents said Mr. Biden was “too old” to be an effective president.Mr. Plouffe said the Biden campaign should embrace the lesson the Obama campaign learned studying the losing campaign of the elder Mr. Bush. “The Bush people tried to convince people that the economy was better than they thought it was,” he said. “One thing I’ve learned is you can’t tell people what they think about the economy. They’ll tell you what they think about the economy.”“I’d start every speech saying, ‘America is faced with a choice, we are both old white men,’” Mr. Plouffe said. “‘But that’s where the similarities end.’” More

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      An Interview With Kamala Harris on What’s at Stake in the 2024 Election

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicKenny Holston for The New York TimesVice President Kamala Harris is crucial to the Biden campaign’s strategy for winning over a skeptical Democratic base.Her central role — combined with President Joe Biden’s advanced age — means that certain questions have taken on renewed importance.Specifically: What does Ms. Harris believe, and what kind of president would she be?These are questions that “Run-Up” host Astead W. Herndon has heard from voters, Democratic operatives and even fans of Ms. Harris ever since he began covering her in 2019, as she was preparing to run for president.The question of what Ms. Harris believes is one Astead returned to in August. That’s when he sat with the vice president for a wide-ranging interview in Chicago, conducted as part of the reporting for a New York Times Magazine cover story on Ms. Harris.In the interview, the vice president recounts how she grew up and how her community instilled in her the possibly “radical notion” that she belongs anywhere she chose to go. She discusses her approach to criminal justice and why creating change from the inside is what drew her to become a prosecutor. And she reflects on being chosen as Mr. Biden’s running mate in the summer of 2020.Looking ahead to 2024, she previews the administration’s message to voters in 2024 — it might be “soul of America, Part 2,” but they haven’t made that official. She also directly addresses concerns about lagging enthusiasm among groups — especially Black voters and young people — that the Democratic Party can’t afford to lose.Ultimately, she says she isn’t worried about lack of engagement. When democracy is on the line, she believes Democrats will show up to vote.About ‘The Run-Up’The 2024 presidential election will be one for the record books. If President Biden succeeds in his re-election bid, he will be the oldest person to occupy the office. On the Republican side, Mr. Trump is dominating the crowded primary field — despite indictments in four criminal cases. To make sense of it all, and to understand how voters around the country are feeling, “The Run-Up” and its host, Astead W. Herndon, will be with you every step of the way.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Love Can Win Trump the Nomination. It Will Take Hate to Win Back the White House.

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      A few weeks ago, I was talking to a local pastor here in Tennessee, and he started the conversation by asking a question I hear all the time: “Can anybody beat Trump?” He was desperate for someone else, anyone else, to claim the Republican nomination. He ticked through the names — DeSantis, Haley, Scott, Pence (he was still in the race then) — and they were all better. Why can’t they gain traction? “It’s not a binary choice anymore,” he said. “It’s not Trump or Biden.”“But,” he quickly added, “if it is Trump or Biden, then I’m voting Trump. It’s just who I am.”It’s just who I am. I thought of that conversation when I saw last weekend’s headlines. Donald Trump is now leading President Biden in five swing states, and if the race goes the way the poll suggests, Trump could win the presidency with more than 300 electoral votes. At the same time, we know from previous Times/Siena College polling that the hard-core MAGA base is 37 percent of the Republican Party. Another 37 percent can be persuaded to oppose Trump, while 25 percent are completely opposed to his nomination.How is it possible that a person whose true base is only 37 percent of his party, who faces four separate criminal indictments and who already lost once to Biden might sit in the electoral driver’s seat?I’ve written quite a bit on the enduring bond between Trump and his base. There’s the strange combination of rage and joy that marks the MAGA community. They’re somehow both furious about the direction of the country and having the time of their lives supporting Trump. There’s also the power of prophecy. Millions of Christians are influenced by claims that Trump is divinely ordained to save the United States. But the MAGA millions aren’t enough to put him back in the White House.To understand his general election prospects, we have to go beyond Trump’s MAGA core. He needs millions more votes — including from my pastor friend, a man who’s desperate to see Trump leave American politics.Trump’s viability in the Republican Party depends on the loyalty of his base, but his viability in the general election depends on a dark combination of negative partisanship and civic ignorance. “Negative partisanship” is the term political scientists use to describe partisan loyalty that exists not because a voter loves his party or its ideas but because he loathes the opposing party and the people in it. And why do voters loathe the opposition so darn much? That’s where civic ignorance plays its diabolical role. Partisan Americans are wrong about each other in a particularly dangerous way: Each side thinks the other is more extreme than it really is.This hostility is what permits Trump to convert his primary plurality into a potential electoral majority. This hostility both predated Trump and powered his election. In previous American political generations, nominating a person perceived to be an extremist or a crank was the kiss of electoral death. You wouldn’t merely expect to lose. You would expect to lose in a landslide.When Republicans nominated far-right Barry Goldwater in 1964, for example, he won six states and lost the popular vote by 23 points. Eight years later, when Democrats nominated far-left George McGovern, they won one state and also lost the popular vote by 23 points. There was enough partisan mobility in the electorate to decisively reject two different candidates, from opposing edges of the political spectrum.But now? It is unthinkable for many millions of partisans — or even for those independents who lean right or left and maybe secretly don’t want to admit to themselves that they’re truly partisan — to either vote third party or cross the aisle and vote for a candidate of the opposing party. They simply hate the other side too much. The result is that virtually any Republican or Democratic nominee begins the race with both a high floor and a low ceiling and no one has much margin for error. Every nominee is going to be fragile, and every national presidential race is going to be close. The margin in the last two races has been agonizingly slim. A few thousand votes cast differently in key swing states, and Hillary Clinton wins, or Joe Biden loses.To understand the power of negative partisanship, it’s important to understand the sheer scale of the mutual partisan hatred. Dating back to June 2014 — a full year before Trump came down that escalator — the Pew Research Center reported an extraordinary increase in polarization. Between 1994 and 2014, the percentage of Democrats and Republicans who expressed “very unfavorable” views of their opponents more than doubled, to 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans. Overall, 82 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of Democrats had either unfavorable or very unfavorable views of their political opponents.During the Trump era, this mutual contempt and loathing only grew. A June 2019 report by More in Common found that 86 percent of Republicans believed Democrats were brainwashed, 84 percent believed Democrats were hateful and 71 percent believed Democrats were racist. Democrats also expressed withering disgust for Republicans: 88 percent believed Republicans were brainwashed, 87 percent believed Republicans were hateful and 89 percent believed Republicans were racist.There is an interesting additional wrinkle to the More in Common report. Yes, it found that the two sides hated each other, but it also discovered that both sides were wrong about their political opponents. Both Democrats and Republicans believed their opponents were more politically extreme than they really were. The findings are startling: “Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents … hold views they consider ‘extreme’ ” than is actually the case.The media compounds the problem. More in Common found that consuming news media (with the exception of broadcast news on ABC, NBC and CBS) actually increased the perception gap. As a practical matter, this means that parties are almost always defined by their ideological extremes and each party uses the existence of those extremes to generate fear and increase turnout. Even if a party does try to moderate to appeal to the middle, partisan media still highlights the radicals that remain, and the perception gap persists. The fear persists.We can start to see why Trump is viable beyond his base. When you ask right-leaning voters to abandon Trump, you’re asking them to empower a political party they view as brainwashed, hateful and racist. You’re asking them to empower a political party they view as extreme. That’s the source of Trump’s strength in a general election. He’s surfing on top of a huge wave of fear and animosity, a wave he did not create but one that he’s making bigger through his malignant, destructive influence.That’s not to say that we face a political stalemate. After all, we’ve seen MAGA candidates perform poorly in multiple swing state elections, but many of those elections — even against plainly incompetent or corrupt candidates — have been extraordinarily close. Trump’s loss in 2020 was extraordinarily close. In a narrowly divided country, it becomes difficult for one party to deliver the kind of decisive blows that Republicans suffered in 1964 or Democrats suffered in 1972.When the Trump Republican Party is forced to take three steps back, it often consoles itself with two steps forward. It lost the House in 2018, but it gained seats in the Senate. It lost the presidency and the Senate in 2020, but it gained seats in the House. It lost ground in the Senate in 2022, but it did (barely) win back control of the House. There weren’t many bright spots for Republicans in the 2023 elections, either, but there weren’t many races, and MAGA will still believe that Biden is weak even if other Democrats have proved stronger than expected.Already Trump and his allies are blaming electoral setbacks on the Republican establishment. The radio host Mark Levin claimed that the Republican nominee for governor in Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, lost to the Democrat, Andy Beshear, because Cameron is a “Mitch McConnell protégé.” Trump echoed the same theme, declaring on Truth Social that Cameron “couldn’t alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell.” MAGA’s solution to electoral setbacks is always the same: more MAGA.There are two potential paths past this Republican dynamic. One is slow, difficult and dangerous. That’s the path of the Democratic Party defeating Trump and other MAGA candidates, race by race, year by year, with the full knowledge that the margin of victory can be razor thin and that there’s always the risk of a close loss that brings catastrophic consequences for our Republic. One negative news cycle — like Anthony Weiner’s laptop surfacing in the closing days of the 2016 election — can be the difference between victory and defeat.The other path — the better path — requires the Republican Party to reform itself, to reject Trump now. A two-party nation needs two healthy parties. Any republic that depends on one party defeating the other to preserve democracy and the rule of law is a republic that teeters on the edge of destruction. A Nikki Haley nomination, for example, might make Biden’s defeat more likely, but farsighted Democrats should welcome a potential return to normalcy in the Republican Party. It would mean that politics will perhaps return to a world of manageable differences, rather than a series of existential threats to democracy itself.As of now, however, internal Republican reform is a pipe dream. Ron DeSantis is falling, and while Haley is rising, she hasn’t even hit 10 percent support in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Trump leads by a staggering spread of 43.7 points. Perhaps a criminal conviction could reverse Trump’s primary momentum, but after watching Trump’s Republican approval rating survive every single scandal of his presidency and political career, the idea that anything will shake his Republican support is far more of a hope than an expectation.Until that unlikely moment, we’re stuck with the current dynamic. Love for Trump fuels his support in the Republican primary contest. Hatred of Democrats makes him viable in the general election. American animosity gave Trump the White House once, and as long as that animosity remains, it threatens to give him the White House once again. More