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      Tim Scott Tackles Race and Racism in Chicago, Trying to Gain Traction

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      Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina gave his speech as his struggling presidential campaign said it would move most of its staff to Iowa.Senator Tim Scott, struggling to gain traction less than three months before the first Republican primary ballots are cast, came to the South Side of Chicago on Monday to rebuke the welfare state and the liberal politicians he dismissed as “drug dealers of despair.”The speech was at New Beginnings Church in the poor neighborhood of Woodlawn. It may have been delivered to Black Chicagoans, but the South Carolina senator’s broadsides — criticizing “the radical left,” the first Black female vice president, Kamala Harris, and “liberal elites” who want a “valueless, faithless, fatherless America where the government becomes God” — were aimed at an audience far away. That audience was Republican voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the donors who have peeled away from his campaign.His political persona as the “happy warrior” gave way to a chin-out antagonism toward the Black leaders who run the nation’s third-largest city, and the Democratic Party that “would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar on their own leadership.”Speaking to a largely receptive audience in a church run by a charismatic Republican pastor, Mr. Scott added: “They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise, but their actions take us in the opposite direction. The actions say they want us to sit down, shut up and don’t forget to vote as long as we’re voting blue.”The speech came just minutes before a Scott campaign staff call announcing that the senator’s once-flush campaign would move most of its resources and staff to Iowa, in a last-ditch effort to win the first caucus of the season and rescue the campaign.“Tim Scott is all in on Iowa,” his campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, said in a statement.Mr. Scott, the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century, launched his presidential bid in May, with a roster of prominent Republicans behind him, a $22 million war chest and a message of optimism that separated him from the crowded primary field. To many white Republicans, his message on race, delivered as a son of South Carolina, where slavery was deeply embedded and where the Civil War began, resonated, while many Black Democrats found it naïve and insulting.“If you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America, because the story of America is not defined by our original sin,” he said early this year as he considered a presidential run. “The story of America is defined by our redemption.”But from the beginning, even supporters wondered aloud whether optimism and uplift were what Republican voters wanted, after so many years of Donald J. Trump and the rising culture of vengeance in the G.O.P.This past weekend, Don Schmidt, 78, a retired banker from Hudson, Iowa, put it bluntly to Mr. Scott as the senator campaigned in Cedar Falls before the University of Northern Iowa beat the University of North Dakota in football. Mr. Schmidt told Mr. Scott he was thinking of supporting him or Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.“But,” he cautioned, “I don’t know whether you can beat Trump.”Race has lately been a particularly problematic subject for Mr. Scott. He has at once maintained there is no such thing as systemic racism in the United States, but has also spoken of having a grandfather forced from school in the third grade to pick cotton in the Jim Crow South, and of his own brushes with law enforcement simply because he was driving a new car.His audience on Monday on the South Side were the grandchildren of the Black workers who left the segregated South during the Great Migration to lean their shoulders into the industrialization of the Upper Midwest. And he seemed to invite the pushback he got after the speech as part of the political theater.Rodrick Wimberly, a 54-year-old congregant at the New Beginnings Church, was incredulous that Mr. Scott really did not believe that the failings of some Black people were brought on by systemic impediments. He brought up redlining that kept Black Chicagoans out of safer neighborhoods with better schools and lending discrimination that suppressed Black entrepreneurship and homeownership.“What we see in education, in housing, the wealth gap widening, there is statistical data to show or suggest at the very least there are some issues that are systemic,” Mr. Wimberly told the senator. “It’s not just individual.”But Mr. Scott held his ground, just as he has since June, when the senator tried to stir up interest in his campaign with a clash on the television show “The View” over an assertion that he didn’t “get” American racism.When Mr. Wimberly suggested that the failing educational system was an example of the systemic racism holding Black Chicagoans back, Mr. Scott responded: “But who’s running that system? Black people are running that system.”Such sparring has largely failed to lift his campaign, however. On Saturday, his hometown newspaper, The Post and Courier of Charleston, advised Mr. Scott and other Republican candidates to drop out and endorse Ms. Haley as the candidate best positioned to challenge Mr. Trump in the primaries, which begin in fewer than three months.Last week, Mr. Scott’s super PAC, Trust in the Mission PAC, or TIM PAC, told donors it would cancel “all of our fall media inventory.”“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo. As Bill Brune, 73, a Republican and Army veteran from La Motte, Iowa, put it this weekend: “There’s a lot of good people, but they get no attention. The good guys finish last.”Republican politicians, including Mr. Trump, who has a glittering high-rise hotel on the Chicago River, have for years used the city as a stand-in for urban decay and violence, though that portrait is at best incomplete. Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential candidate, came to a different South Side neighborhood three miles from New Beginnings in May to discuss tensions among Black residents over the city’s efforts to accommodate an influx of migrants, many of whom were bused there from the border by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — but also to show his willingness to speak with audiences usually ignored by Republican candidates.Monday’s appearance was, in effect, Mr. Scott’s take on adopting — and amplifying — Mr. Ramaswamy’s flair for the dramatic. Shabazz Muhammad, 51, was released from prison in 2020, after serving 31 years. Since then, he said, he has struggled to find work and housing because of his record and what he called “the social booby traps” in his way. Beyond the candidate’s critique of the welfare state, Mr. Muhammad wanted to know specifically what Mr. Scott wanted to do to help people like him.Mr. Scott, though sympathetic, was unwavering in his description of social welfare policies as “colossal, crippling, continual failures.”“Are we tough enough to get better and not bitter?” he asked his audience.Neil Vigdor More

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      Indigenous Australians Say ‘Reconciliation Is Dead’ After ‘Voice’

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      The rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is likely to lead to an irreversible shift in the nation’s relationship with its first peoples.The result of the referendum was decisive, and at the same time, divisive. It bruised Indigenous Australians who for decades had hoped that a conciliatory approach would help right the wrongs of the country’s colonial history. So, the nation’s leader made a plea.“This moment of disagreement does not define us. And it will not divide us,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, visibly emotional, said this month, after voters in every state and territory except one rejected the constitutional referendum. “This is not the end for reconciliation.”But that was a difficult proposition to accept for Indigenous leaders who saw the result as a vote for a tortured status quo in a country that is already far behind other colonized nations in reconciling with its first inhabitants.The rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament — a proposed advisory body — was widely anticipated. Nonetheless, it was a severe blow for Indigenous people, who largely voted for it. With many perceiving it as the denial of their past and their place in the nation, the defeat of the Voice not only threatens to derail any further reconciliation but could also unleash a much more confrontational approach to Indigenous rights and race relations in Australia.Supporters of the “Yes” campaign in Sydney this month.Jenny Evans/Getty Images“Reconciliation only works if you have two parties who are willing to make up after a fight and move on,” said Larissa Baldwin Roberts, an Aboriginal woman and the chief executive of GetUp, a progressive activist group that campaigned for the Voice. “But if one party doesn’t acknowledge that there is even a fight here that’s happened, how can you reconcile?”She added, “We need to move into a space that is maybe not as polite, maybe not as conciliatory and be unafraid to tell people the warts-and-all story around how dispossession and colonization continues in this country.”For Marcia Langton, one of the country’s most prominent Aboriginal leaders, the consequences were obvious. “It’s very clear that reconciliation is dead,” she said.For decades, Ms. Langton and others championed a moderate approach to Indigenous rights. They worked within Australia’s reconciliation movement, a broadly bipartisan government approach aimed at healing and strengthening the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.One visible sign of this effort is the flying of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags next to the Australian flag in most official settings. Many public events start with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land the event is held on.But activists have long said that these displays can be tokenistic, and the focus on unity can come at the expense of agitating for Indigenous rights. And the referendum has shown that wide schisms still persist in how Australia views its colonial past — as benign or harmful — and over whether the entrenched disadvantages of Indigenous communities result from colonization or people’s own actions, culture and ways of life.“We are very much behind other countries in their relationships with Indigenous people,” said Hannah McGlade, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, who is an Aboriginal woman and a supporter of the Voice.A rally against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Melbourne last month.James Ross/Australian Associated Press, via ReutersIn countries like Finland, Sweden and Norway, the Sami people have a legal right to be consulted on issues affecting their communities. Canada has recognized First Nations treaty rights in its Constitution, and New Zealand signed a treaty with the Maori in the late 1800s.British colonialists considered Australia uninhabited, and the country has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people, who are not mentioned in its Constitution, which was produced more than a century after Captain Cook first reached the continent.To rectify this, more than 250 Indigenous leaders came together in 2017 and devised a three-step plan for forgiveness and healing. The first was a Voice, enshrined in the Constitution. A treaty with the government would follow, and finally, a process of “truth-telling” to uncover Australia’s colonial history.But some Indigenous activists argued that forgiveness shouldn’t be on offer. And other Australians were rankled by the suggestion that there was something to forgive.“The English did nothing wrong. Neither did any of you,” one author wrote for a national newspaper earlier this year. Another columnist argued that any compensation paid to Aboriginal people now would be “by people today who didn’t do the harm, to people today who didn’t suffer it.”Some Aboriginal leaders opposed the Voice but by and large, polls showed, the Indigenous community was in favor of it.Aboriginal residents in Jimbalakudunj in a remote part of Western Australia.Tamati Smith for The New York TimesBut for many opponents, “this was cast as a referendum about race, division and racial privileges, special privileges — it really failed to grasp or respect Indigenous people’s rights and the shocking history of colonization, which has devastating impacts to this day,” Ms. McGlade said.For decades, the country has gone back and forth on how improve Indigenous outcomes. The community has a life expectancy that is eight years shorter than the national average, and suffers rates of suicide and incarceration many times higher than the general population.Although many Indigenous leaders and experts have said the repercussions of and trauma from colonization are the root cause of this disadvantage, governments — particularly conservative ones — have been resistant to this idea. The remedy, some former prime ministers have said, is to integrate remote Indigenous communities with mainstream society.During the debate about the Voice, this view was echoed by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Aboriginal senator who became a prominent opponent of the Voice, and who said that Indigenous people faced “no ongoing negative impacts of colonization.” Aboriginal communities experienced violence “not because of the effects of colonization, but because it’s expected that young girls are married off to older husbands in arranged marriages,” she added.Such arguments helped galvanize opposition to the Voice.“A significant chunk of the Australian public has been able to find legitimacy in that opposition to not to come to terms with that past,” said Paul Strangio, a professor of politics at Monash University.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, delivering statements on the referendum results in Canberra this month.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockIn April, the main opposition party, the conservative Liberal Party, said it would vote against the Voice, all but sealing its fate — constitutional change has never succeeded in Australia without bipartisan support. Its leaders argued that proposal was divisive, lacked detail, could give advice on everything from taxes to defense policy, and was a politically correct vanity project from Mr. Albanese, the prime minister, that distracted people from issues like the high cost of living.This stance, Mr. Strangio said, appealed to a sense of “economic and cultural insecurity” among many voters, particularly those outside big cities.The particulars of the Voice, Mr. Albanese and other supporters said, would have been hashed out by Parliament if it succeeded. But the lack of concrete details gave rise to misinformation and disinformation, the sheer volume of which shocked experts. In such a climate, any pursuit of more forceful politics by Indigenous activists may bring a more combative response. On Friday, Tony Abbott, a former conservative prime minister, said Australia should stop flying the Aboriginal flag next to the national flag, and acknowledging traditional place names.The defeat of the Voice, Mr. Strangio said, is likely to emboldened the conservative opposition to continue with “the politics of disenchantment, of cultural and economic insecurity, that taps into that grievance politics.”He added, “We are in for a polarized, divisive debate.” More

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      As Haley and Ramaswamy Rise, Some Indian Americans Have Mixed Feelings

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      Democrats and Republicans have been courting the small but fast-growing and vital demographic in purple suburbs and swing states.Suresh Reddy, a centrist Democrat and city councilman, is watching the Republican presidential primary with a mix of pride and disappointment.When Mr. Reddy and his wife, Chandra Gangareddy, immigrants from southern India, settled in the Des Moines suburbs in September 2004, they could count the number of Indian American families on one hand. Only one Indian American had ever served in Congress at the time, and none had dared to mount a bid for the White House.Now, for the first time in the nation’s history, two Indian Americans — Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — are serious presidential contenders who regularly invoke their parents’ immigrant roots. But their deeply conservative views, on display as they seek the Republican nomination, make it difficult for Mr. Reddy to fully celebrate the moment, he said.“I’m really proud,” he said. “I just wish they had a better message.”That disconnect, reflected in interviews with two dozen Indian American voters, donors and elected officials from across the political spectrum — in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and across the country — may complicate the G.O.P.’s efforts to appeal to the small but influential Indian American electorate.Indian Americans now make up about 2.1 million, or roughly 16 percent, of the estimated 13.4 million Asian Americans who are eligible to vote, the third largest population of Asian origin behind Chinese and Filipino Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey. Indian Americans also have tended to lean more Democratic than any other Asian American subgroups, according to Pew.Though a small slice of the overall electorate, the demographic has become one of the fastest-growing constituencies, and is large enough to make a difference at the margins in swing states and in purple suburbs, including in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.Debate over the prominence of Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy is playing out in Indian American homes and places of worship in Des Moines and beyond. In interviews, many described their rise as a political triumph at a time when Indian Americans have become more visible in fields beyond medicine, tech and engineering.Venu Rao, a Democrat and retired engineer and program manager in Hollis, N.H., said Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy captured the ideological diversity among South Asian Americans, even if he doesn’t agree with their positions.“I am glad that we have a choice,” Mr. Rao said.But many of those interviewed also expressed frustration and dismay over the candidates’ hard-line positions on issues like race, identity and immigration. Some worried Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledges to dismantle agencies like the Education Department would destroy the same institutions that had been crucial to Indian American success and upward mobility.Others said they appreciated Ms. Haley’s attempts to strike a more center-right tone on some topics like abortion and climate change but indicated concern about what they described as her tepid pushback against former President Donald J. Trump and his 2020 election lies.“It can be really easy to see this as a win and be like, ‘Oh my god — look there, those are two brown faces on national TV. That’s amazing,’” said Nikhil Vootkur, 20, a student at Tufts University in Boston. But, “the diaspora, it has matured, and when a diaspora matures, you have a lot of ideological cleavages.”Over the past decade, Indian Americans have been rapidly climbing the political ranks. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, is the first woman, first Black person and the first Asian American to hold her office.Khimanand Upreti, the priest at a Hindu temple in Madrid, Iowa, described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without former President Donald Trump’s controversies.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn 2015, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star, became the first Indian American to run for president. But Mr. Jindal, who changed his name, Piyush, to Bobby and converted to Christianity when he was young, made a push for assimilation that turned off many Indian American voters. Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy have toggled between proud embraces of their roots and scorching criticism of the “identity politics” that has been known to alienate the Republican Party’s largely white and evangelical Christian base.Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur from Cincinnati, Ohio, uses his Hindu faith to connect with Christian voters and expresses gratitude that his parents immigrated from the southwestern coast of India to the “greatest nation on Earth.”Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador from Bamberg, S.C., has written and spoken extensively about her experience as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from northern India, including the pain of watching her father, who wears a turban, endure racism and discrimination.Mr. Ramaswamy, who is running in the mold of Mr. Trump, has made a concerted effort to appeal to Indian Americans in the primary. He has made several appearances at the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Iowa, where many patrons have met his parents, and he has drawn the independent support of its Hindu priest, Khimanand Upreti, who in an interview described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without Mr. Trump’s controversies.On the trail, Ms. Haley has talked less about her identity and often describes her immigrant family in general terms. But in a response to a voter question at a town hall in Hampton, N.H., on Thursday night, she explained how her father’s experience with prejudice helped her connect with a hurting community and persuade state lawmakers to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston. She also used her parents’ immigrant background to tear into President Biden’s decision to provide temporary protected status and work permits for Venezuelan migrants.“My mom would always say if you don’t follow the laws to get into this country, you won’t follow the laws when you are in this country,” she said.At their home in Waukee, west of Des Moines, Nishant Kumar and Smita Nishant, who immigrated from New Delhi and Mumbai some two decades ago, and their daughter, Anika Yadav, 17, said the 2024 Iowa caucuses would be the first election they would all be able to participate in. The Nishants have only recently obtained citizenship, and Ms. Yadav will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election.The Nishant family in Waukee, Iowa: Smita Nishant and her husband, Nishant Kumar, with Anika Yadav and Atiksh Yadava. They are looking forward to voting next year.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe family first became politically engaged when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 — and would have backed Democrats in the past few elections if they could have voted. But as they weigh the 2024 presidential contenders, they have found Mr. Ramaswamy smart and refreshing, they said.They have seen less of Ms. Haley, but Ms. Yadav says she likes Ms. Haley’s experience on foreign policy and the way she holds herself on the national stage, even if she has not made her Indian American identity central to her campaign.“I think a lot of women, specifically young women, are leaning toward Nikki Haley — even young women who are Democrats,” she said.Still, some Indian American Democratic-leaning voters and prominent Indian American Democrats expressed concern or sadness over Mr. Ramaswamy’s and Ms. Haley’s approaches to issues of race and identity, saying they fed into “model minority” stereotypes and carried dog whistles that minimized or diminished the specific systematic racism faced by Black Americans.Both, when discussing their life story, tend to emphasize their successes as evidence of racial and ethnic progress in the United States. Both promote hard-line immigration measures and denounce race-conscious policies such as affirmative action in school admissions.Mr. Ramaswamy in particular has generated criticism for suggesting white supremacy was an exaggerated “boogeyman” and for pledging to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. Ms. Haley has said she opposes birthright citizenship for people who have illegally entered the country.Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, criticized their approach on immigration and faulted them for ignoring the history of Asian exclusion in the nation’s immigration laws. The work of Indian and Black leaders during the civil rights movement helped open the pathways to migration and citizenship for Indian families to enter the United States, he said.“Their story about the Indian American experience will not fully connect because it has so many omissions,” Mr. Khanna said.But Bhavna Vasudeva, a longtime friend of Ms. Haley’s in Columbia, S.C., argued that Ms. Haley’s Republican values held real appeal for second-generation Indian Americans, adding that her approach to her family’s racial struggles exhibited a strong sense of “Chardi Kala,” an expression that for Punjabi and Sikh Indians and Indian Americans has become synonymous with “resilience” and a “positive attitude” in the face of fear or pain.“You can’t tell anyone who is a brown woman about racism and discrimination,” Ms. Vasudeva, a donor to Ms. Haley’s campaign, said. “We have faced it all with our heads high and crown straight.” More

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      After Jacksonville, Tensions Flare Between DeSantis and Black Floridians

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      At a vigil for the shooting victims, Mr. DeSantis had to speak over loud boos from a largely Black crowd. His agenda in Florida has earned him few Black allies.Days after being sworn in as Florida’s governor in 2019, Ron DeSantis pardoned the Groveland Four, a group of Black men who had been wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting a white woman decades earlier.At the time, Mr. DeSantis’s decision seemed like it could serve as a vital olive branch to Florida’s wary African American community. Accusations of racism had trailed him throughout a bruising general election, which he had begun by warning voters not to “monkey this up” by voting for his Democratic opponent, who was Black. The case of the Groveland Four, who all died before having their names cleared, had received national attention, and Mr. DeSantis said their treatment represented a “miscarriage of justice.”Four years later, Mr. DeSantis’s relationship with Black Floridians could hardly be worse. As he moved increasingly to the right ahead of his run for president, Mr. DeSantis pushed an agenda that cemented his status as a rising conservative star nationally but that has outraged many Black voters and leaders in his home state.Those policies include changing how slavery is taught in schools, cutting funding for diversity and inclusion initiatives and redistricting a Black-led congressional district in northern Florida out of existence. Some Black professional groups have stopped holding conferences in the state, while several Black leaders have condemned Florida — and Mr. DeSantis — as an example of racism in policymaking.Now, a racially motivated shooting in Jacksonville that killed three Black people over the weekend has escalated those tensions to new heights.At a vigil on Sunday for the victims, Mr. DeSantis had to speak over loud boos from the largely Black crowd. He condemned the murders and called the killer, a white man who the authorities said intentionally targeted Black people before killing himself, “a major-league scumbag.”Mr. DeSantis was confronted with loud boos at the vigil for the shooting victims.John Raoux/Associated PressJeffrey Rumlin, a pastor who spoke after Mr. DeSantis, offered a correction. “Respect for the governor,” Mr. Rumlin, who is Black, told the crowd, but “he was not a scumbag. He was a racist.”Shevrin Jones, a state senator from South Florida, said Mr. DeSantis’s reception at the vigil was telling.“The response from Jacksonville’s Black community was the response from the Black community across the state of Florida,” said Mr. Jones, a Black Democrat. “We’ve never had a relationship with the governor.”Mr. DeSantis’s office, which is preparing for a major hurricane, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his campaign.Kiyan Michael, a Republican state representative from the Jacksonville area, defended Mr. DeSantis. Far from being racist, she said, his support for policies like universal school choice and efforts to crack down on the employment of undocumented immigrants, had helped African Americans. The governor made modest gains with Black voters in his re-election last year, according to an Associated Press analysis.Ms. Michael, who is Black, also praised Mr. DeSantis for attending the Jacksonville vigil.“He could have sent somebody in his place. He didn’t,” she said. “He knew that he was going into a hornet’s nest, but he came himself to show his heart, his concern, his compassion.”The list of policies that Mr. DeSantis’s critics describe as harmful to African Americans is long, and many have been challenged in court.As governor, Mr. DeSantis sought to restrict enacting a popular referendum to restore the voting rights of many felons. After the George Floyd rallies, he signed legislation that many civil rights activists said criminalized political protests, as well as laws eliminating diversity and inclusion spending from state universities and restricting the teaching of the academic framework known as critical race theory. He also set up a new state police force to enforce election laws that arrested mainly Black people in a high-profile sweep and has seen many of its cases stumble in court. And he removed two elected state attorneys from office. Both were Democrats who supported criminal justice reform. One was Black.Perhaps the biggest backlash was early this year, when Florida education officials rejected an Advanced Placement course on African American studies and subsequently adopted new standards that said students should be taught how enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The line was widely denounced, with a number of Black conservatives, including Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 rival Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, criticizing its inclusion.In the presidential race, Mr. DeSantis has leaned on his “war on woke,” aiming to eliminate liberal viewpoints on race and gender from many parts of public life.Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald, via Associated PressA backlash came when Florida education officials said students should be taught how enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated PressMr. DeSantis defended the changes, saying on Fox News this month that the standards overwhelmingly showed the “injustices of slavery,” while also demonstrating that “people acquired skills in spite of slavery, not because of it, and then they used those when they achieved their freedom.”As a young man, Mr. DeSantis taught American history at a private boarding school in Georgia. There, The New York Times previously reported, some students said he offered lessons on the Civil War that seemed slanted, factually wrong and sometimes presented in ways that sounded like attempts to justify slavery.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has leaned on his record leading Florida, particularly his “war on woke,” which seeks to eliminate liberal viewpoints on race and gender from many parts of public life. Republican primary voters have generally responded well, although Mr. DeSantis is still polling far behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.A general election, however, could be a different story. Mr. DeSantis’s status as a lightning rod for racial issues could galvanize Black turnout against him. Black voters are a key part of the Democratic electorate and their participation at the polls is vital. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Mr. Trump as Black turnout declined in a presidential election for the first time in 20 years, according to the Pew Research Center. Four years later, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won as Black voters came back to the polls in higher numbers.Angie Nixon, a Democratic state representative from Jacksonville, said in an interview that the harms of Mr. DeSantis’s policies were not just limited to Black voters.“He attacks marginalized communities in general because his base doesn’t like them,” Ms. Nixon said. “Because that’s low-hanging fruit for him to gain even more points politically among a base of voters. That’s all he’s ever done — is to try to appeal to a base of people.”Black leaders in Florida described their relationship with Mr. DeSantis as strained at best. In his five years as governor, Mr. DeSantis has held no formal meetings with the state’s legislative Black caucus, according to its members. In contrast, his predecessor, Rick Scott, did sit down with the Black legislators, although the meetings grew contentious and were eventually canceled after the caucus members said they were not being listened to.“I worked with Jeb Bush. I worked with Martinez. I worked with Rick Scott,” said the former congressman Al Lawson, referring to several past Republican Florida governors, including Bob Martinez. “None of them disenfranchised Blacks as much as this governor, DeSantis.”Mr. Lawson’s former district — once heavily Black and Democratic — is now held by a Republican, a product of a redistricting process in which Mr. DeSantis took the unusual step of putting forth his own maps, rather than leaving it entirely to the Legislature, where he enjoys significant support with G.O.P. supermajorities. (A legal challenge asserting that the changes harmed Black voters could restore Mr. Lawson’s district.)This summer, Black national organizations have shunned the state or encouraged their members to travel elsewhere. The National Association of Black Engineers said it would move its 2024 convention, originally set for Orlando, to Atlanta. Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest Black fraternity, said it would no longer hold its 2025 convention in Orlando. Both organizations cited recent policies in Florida that they felt posed a threat to Black Americans.In May, the N.A.A.C.P. released a travel advisory to Black Americans considering visiting Florida, calling the state “openly hostile” to members of racial minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people.Carol Greenlee, 73, pushed for decades for the pardon and eventual exoneration of her father, Charles Greenlee, one of the Groveland Four, over the 1949 crime in Central Florida. She saw the pardon as a moment of hope and reconciliation, especially after the previous governor, Mr. Scott, had declined to take up the case, despite the urging of the Legislature.“It felt like we were moving forward,” she said. “It felt like the pendulum was swinging toward justice.”Ms. Greenlee, who lives in Tennessee but has followed Mr. DeSantis’s path as governor, said his subsequent actions had left her baffled and angry.“I have to shake my head and wonder what happened with some of the stances he has taken,” she said. “It’s almost like a 180-degree turnaround.” More

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      Trump Voters Can See Right Through DeSantis

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      Earlier this year, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, appeared to be a formidable challenger to Donald Trump — on paper at least.He didn’t back down from fights with the left; he started them.“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dustbin of history,” DeSantis said.He has thumbed his nose at blue state governors, shipping them planeloads of immigrants. He has removed locally elected Democratic prosecutors. Whenever he sees what he believes to be an excess on the left, he stamps it out — from drag shows to critical race theory.He is not just a supporter of the hard-right agenda; he has personally weaponized it. Unlike traditional conservatives, wary of the abuse of state power, DeSantis relishes using his authority to enforce his version of what is moral and what is not.Since declaring his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, however, DeSantis has lost traction: Support for him has fallen from 31.3 percent on Jan. 20 to 20.7 percent on May 15, the day he announced, all the way down to 14.9 percent on Aug. 21, according to RealClearPolitics.As DeSantis prepares for the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, the central question he faces is why his support collapsed and whether he can get his campaign back on track.There are a lot of answers to the first question, most of them with a grain or more of truth. DeSantis has turned out to be a stiff on the stump, a man without affect. He speaks in alphabet talk: C.R.T., D.E.I., E.S.G. His attempts to outflank Trump from the right — “We’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one” — seem to be more politically calculated than based on conviction. In terms of executive competence, attention to detail and commitment to an agenda, DeSantis stands head and shoulders above Trump, but he has so far been unable to capitalize on these strengths.That much is understood, but is DeSantis burdened by a larger liability? I posed the following question to a cross section of political operatives and political scientists:Ron DeSantis has been noticeably unsuccessful in his challenge to Trump. Why? Is it because DeSantis does not or cannot demonstrate the visceral animosity that Trump exudes?Trump has a talent for embedding language more common to a Queens street corner — in either long, rambling speeches covering a host of subjects, some controversial, some not, or in having seemingly unacceptable rhetoric leaked from private meetings.The net result is that his supporters get to realize Trump is willing to refer to “shithole countries” in Africa and Latin America, to say about immigrants that “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” or to describe Latino gang members: “These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”The response to my inquiries was illuminating.“Trump’s speech style,” Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Law School-San Francisco, wrote by email, “adeptly channels the talk traditions of blue-collar men who pride themselves on not having to suck up and self-edit to get ahead, which is the way they see professionals’ traditions of decorum.”Not only that, Williams continued, “Trump is way ahead of DeSantis in his perceived ability to get things done as a strong leader — that’s Trump cashing in on his enactment of blue-collar traditions of tough, straight-talking manliness. Also Trump is fun while DeSantis is a drip.”Like many Democrats, Williams argued, “DeSantis holds the delusion that politics is chiefly about policy differences” when in practice it is more often “about identity and self-affirmation. Trump understands instinctively that non-college Americans feel distinctly dissed: Non-college grads are 73 percentage points lower than grads to believe they’re treated with dignity.”Williams described DeSantis’s approach to campaigning as “a clumsy color-by-numbers culture-wars formula” accompanied by a speaking style “more Harvard than hard hat, as when he talked about ‘biomedical security restrictions’ in his speech to the Republican Party convention in North Carolina (whatever those are??).”Williams cautioned against categorizing all Trump voters as racist:In 2016, 20 percent of Trump voters were true “grievance voters” who were very identified with being white and Christian and had cold feelings toward people of color and immigrants. But 19 percent were “anti-elites” with economically progressive views and moderate views on race, immigration, the environment and gay marriage. Writing off all Trump voters as mere racists is one of the many ways, alas, the left helps the right.Williams cited a paper published earlier this year, “Measuring the Contribution of Voting Blocs to Election Outcomes” by Justin Grimmer, William Marble and Cole Tanigawa-Lau, that “showed that, while racial resentment strongly predicts Trump voting, that’s not why he won: He won because he also attracted a much larger group of voters with only moderate levels of racial resentment.”Taking a different, but parallel, tack, Linda Skitka, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago, wrote by email: “Another alternative is that Trump tends to be all reaction and hot rhetoric, but weak or inconsistent on policy. People can therefore project their preferred policy preferences on him and believe he represents them via ‘gist.’”In Skitka’s view,DeSantis, in contrast, is very specific and consistent about policy, and he is too extreme for many on the right. To ice the cake, he appears to be really bad at retail politics — he just isn’t likable, and certainly isn’t charismatic. Together, I don’t think DeSantis can compete to overcome these obstacles, even if he were to start using Trump-like rhetoric.In a particularly devastating comparison of DeSantis with Trump, David Bateman, a political scientist at Cornell, wrote: “Trump is able to speak the language of hate and resentment in a way that everyone believes is real, and not just a calculated act.”Everything about DeSantis,by contrast, seems calculated. He’s the Yale and Harvard guy now complaining about intellectuals and elites. He’s talking about wokism and critical race theory, when no one knows what those are (even Trump noted no one can define woke, though he yells against it himself). When he tries to be as visceral as Trump, he just comes off as weird. DeSantis saying he’s going to start “slitting throats” reminded me of Romney’s “severely conservative.” While DeSantis’s is a dangerous escalation of violent imagery, they both sound bizarre and unnatural.At a more fundamental level, Bateman wrote:It’s not at all clear that what most Republican voters (rather than donors) want is a mainstream and party-credentialed version of Trump. The fact that Trump legitimately was an outsider to Republican politics was a core part of his appeal. So too was the calculation by donors and party activists that Trump’s being simultaneously aligned with social and racial conservatives, but able to present himself as not tied to Republican orthodoxy, made him a more attractive candidate in a national election.Bateman suggested that insofar as DeSantis is seen as “an establishment Trump, who I expect most voters will see as fully aligned with G.O.P. orthodoxy but even more focused on the priorities of racial and social conservatives (taking over universities, banning books, or attacking transpersons), he starts to look more like a general election loser.”David O. Sears, a professor of psychology at U.C.L.A., wrote by email that he “was inspired by your inquiry to do a free association test” on himself to see what he linked with both Trump and DeSantis.The result for Trump was:Archie Bunker, trash-talking, insulting people, entertaining, male, white, older, angry, impolite on purpose, Roller Derby, raucous, uninhibited, tell it like it is, high school locker room, dirty socks thrown in a corner, telling his locker room buddies that he threw his mom the finger when she told him to clean up his room for the millionth time (but of course didn’t dare).For DeSantis:Serious, boring, no sense of humor, Wimbledon, ladies’ tea party, PBS/NPR, civics class, lecture, Ivy League, expensive suit neatly pressed hanging in the closet. “Yes, Mom.”DeSantis’s drive to displace Trump from his position as the party’s top dog faces a combination of personal and structural hurdles.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, argued in an email that DeSantis has adopted an approach to the nomination fight that was bound to fail:DeSantis’s strategy, and that of any candidate not named Trump, should be to consolidate the Maybe Trump voters. But DeSantis has seemed like he was going after the Always Trump voters with his aggressive language (“slitting throats”), his comment that Ukraine was just a “territorial dispute,” his suggestion that vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. would be a good candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control, and his doubling down on whether slavery might have been beneficial to some enslaved people.The problem with this approach, Ayres continued, is that “the Always Trump voters are ‘Always Trump’ for a reason — they are not going to settle for the second-best Trump if they can get the real thing.”Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, wrote:There is no room for DeSantis or anyone else to outflank Trump on the right, where Trump has his most loyal base. Candidates can argue that Trump is insufficiently conservative on some issues, but that it not the point for Trump loyalists. Candidates can try to echo the ugliness of Trump’s rhetoric, but that too misses what really draws these voters to Trump.What other candidates cannot replicate, in Garin’s view,is Trump’s persona and style. Nobody else (especially DeSantis) has his performance skills, and no one else conveys the same boldness, naturalness, and authenticity in voicing the grievances of MAGA voters. Trump makes hatred entertaining for his supporters. DeSantis, by contrast, is a boring drag in his meanness.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, places even more emphasis on the built-in challenges facing a Republican running against Trump: “It is extremely difficult to unseat an incumbent party leader in a primary,” Lee wrote by email. “Approval of Trump among Republicans is still high enough to make it extraordinarily difficult for any alternative candidate to make a case against him.”As if that were not daunting enough, Lee added,DeSantis’s difficulties are compounded by the fact that the roughly one third of Republicans who disapprove of Trump disapprove of him for different reasons. Some Republicans would like to see a more moderate alternative, in the mode of the pre-Trump Republican Party. Other Republicans fully embrace the changes Trump brought to the party, but oppose him for various reasons relating to him personally (such as his behavior on Jan. 6, his crude and offensive style, or doubts about his electability). It is extremely difficult for any alternative to consolidate the support of all the Republicans who would like an alternative to Trump. Even if a candidate succeeds in doing so, he or she still would not have a majority among Republicans, unless Trump drops further in support.Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, elaborated on the difficulties facing DeSantis’s bid to position himself to the right of Trump. “The DeSantis strategy is weak in that there are not enough Republican voters to be gained to the right of Trump,” he wrote in an email. ” In addition, Shapiro contended, “Trump’s style and language are more authentic and natural.” Trump’s “Queens street-rhetoric style may help, but the point is that Trump sounds real and not staged for political purposes, in contrast to DeSantis’s endless use of ‘woke,’ which is very vague and has had more meaning in liberal-left and educated elite circles and does not have the clear meaning that Trump’s position-taking has. DeSantis sounds staged and forced in discussing this.”Robert Erikson, a colleague of Shapiro’s in the Columbia political science department, wrote by email:DeSantis appears about to become the latest in a long line of promising candidates who failed to convince their party’s base that they should be president. The list includes many seasoned politicians who were otherwise successful at their craft. For the G.O.P., the line runs from George Romney (1968) through Rudy Giuliani (2008) to Jeb Bush and Scott Walker (2016). Democratic examples include Ed Muskie (1972) and John Glenn (1984). All saw an early collapse of their seemingly strong position, with some dropping out before Iowa or New Hampshire.“Can DeSantis overcome this challenge?” Erikson asked in his email. “Underdogs often surprise and win nominations by arousing enthusiasm among a sizable bloc of primary and caucus voters. Jimmy Carter was an example. The more contemporary list includes Obama and Trump.”So far, DeSantis shows no signs of following in the footsteps of past insurgents.Martin Carnoy, a professor at Stanford’s graduate school of education, argued that Trump has successfully carved out a special place in the Republican universe and there is no room left for a challenger like DeSantis.“DeSantis’s main problem,” Carnoy wrote by email,is that he is not Trump and Trump is still around largely filling the space that Trump himself has defined and continues to define. This is the “victim” space, where the “victims” are the “forgotten core Americans,” besieged by liberals who want to help everyone but them — migrants, blacks, LGBTQIA, homeless, foreign countries in fights for democracy.Carnoy argued that “large blocs of the U.S. population have not been swept up in the economic growth of the past 40 years, which has largely enriched the top 1 percent of income earners.” Blame Ronald Reagan, he added, “but also blame Democrats, who left this political space to the very Republicans that created it.”While Democrats failed to compete for this space, Carnoy contended that “Trump figured out in 2015 that he could continue to help the rich (including himself) economically through traditional tax reduction policies — stoking inequality — and simultaneously enthuse the forgotten by throwing rich red ‘victim identity’ meat to this bloc of white (and Hispanic) working class voters.”Dianne Pinderhughes, a political scientist at Notre Dame, wrote by email that an image of DeSantis at a campaign event captured for her the weakness of his campaign for the nomination.“He has no affect,” Pinderhughes wrote. “My favorite example is a photo of him. He’s surrounded by a group of people, campaign supporters, but every face in the photo is flat, unexcited, unsmiling (including of course the candidate).”DeSantis’s interests, according to Pinderhughes, “are similar to Trump’s but his persona doesn’t allow or facilitate his emotional engagement with his public, who also want to align with him, but there’s no arousal there. He’s not emotionally down and dirty in the way that Trump’s wild stump speeches arouse support in the broader public.”The 2024 contest for the Republican nomination is exceptional in that the leading candidate is a once successful, once failed candidate seeking to represent his party for the third time.Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out in an email that “the Republican presidential primary is not a typical open-seat race, because Donald Trump occupies an unusual position as a quasi-incumbent. He has extraordinary name recognition and familiarity, having served a term as president and dominated headlines for eight years.”Because of that, “DeSantis needs to do more than simply taking positions that are popular with Republican voters — he needs to give G.O.P. primary voters a reason to leave behind Trump, a figure who remains popular among the party’s activists and voters,” according to Hopkins’s analysis of the contest.It will be very difficult to persuade Republican primary voters to abandon Trump, Hopkins wrote, citing “a nationwide survey I conducted earlier this summer. I found that on key issues from immigration to health care and climate changes, the differences between all Republicans, Trump supporters, and DeSantis supporters were typically fairly minimal. On issues alone, it’s hard to envision DeSantis convincing G.O.P. voters to abandon Trump.”DeSantis’s best shot, Hopkins suggested, “may be to follow Biden’s lead from 2020 and convince primary voters that he’s the most likely to win a general election.”One of the questions I posed to the people I queried for this column was “whether the willingness to give undiluted expressions of views on race and immigration has become the equivalent of a threshold issue on the right” — a must for anyone seeking the Republican nomination.Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, expressed a jaundiced view of the question itself:The premise of the question implies that this is a new phenomenon and I would dispute this characterization. Issues of race and immigration have been significant partisan issues for at least the last 150 years. Trump has not created these issues in the G.O.P., but he has simply harnessed them more effectively than his co-partisan competitors.Trump, in Hutchings’s view, is more than a match for DeSantis:Trump — unlike DeSantis — can perhaps communicate more effectively with the average G.O.P. voter. Also, whatever else one thinks about the former president, as a onetime television personality he is also more telegenic than your typical politician. And, finally, Trump’s status as the primary target of liberals and progressives makes him all the more appealing to many G.O.P. supporters. In short, if the left hates him (Trump) so much, then he must be doing something right from the vantage point of these voters. DeSantis simply can’t match Trump on these various dimensions.Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at Berkeley, succinctly summed up DeSantis’s predicament. “The Republican primary electorate is not especially interested in candidates’ policy positions,” Grumbach wrote by email, citing a 2018 paper, “Does Party Trump Ideology? Disentangling Party and Ideology in America,” by Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope.So, Grumbach continued, “it’s unlikely that an alternative policy platform would’ve had DeSantis in the lead at this point. Instead Republican voters see Trump as more effective at combating liberals and Democrats.”Finally, Grumbach added: “You don’t need research to tell you that Trump has charisma, wit, and humor (though it’s not always clear it’s intentional) in a way that DeSantis does not.”Not everybody thinks Trump has charisma, wit and humor, but many of his supporters remain captivated. They want the show to go on.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      ‘I Don’t Think Trump Will Be the Nominee’: Three Writers on the First G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Ann Coulter, who writes the Substack newsletter Unsafe, and Stuart Stevens, a former Republican political consultant, to discuss their expectations for the first Republican debate and the future of American politics.Frank Bruni: Stuart, I’ve done many of these political roundtables, but never one at a juncture this titanically and transcendentally bizarre. The first Republican debate of the presidential election season is tonight, the party front-runner is absent, and he’s running, oh, infinity points ahead of his Republican rivals despite two impeachments, 91 felony counts and unquantifiable wretchedness. Color me morose.But also, illuminate me: Given Donald Trump’s lead and its durability, does this debate matter, and how? Is there an argument that it could change the trajectory of this contest?Stuart Stevens: If a candidate enters the debate with a strategy of taking out another candidate, it can change a trajectory. In the 2012 primary, Mitt Romney did this to Rick Perry in their first debate and again in a subsequent debate to Newt Gingrich. (I was the campaign strategist for that Romney campaign.) But you must go into a debate with the attitude “one of us will walk off this stage alive.” I don’t think anyone has the nerve to do that.Ann Coulter: I think this is Ron DeSantis’s to lose. If he’d just ignore the media and be the nerd that he is, he’ll do great.Bruni: Stuart, do you agree that DeSantis has an underappreciated strength and that there’s really a path for him to this nomination? And other than DeSantis, is there anyone on that stage tonight who could have a breakout moment and matter in this nomination contest?Stevens: DeSantis is Jeb Bush without the charm. He is a small man running for a big job and looking smaller every day. If I were advising Tim Scott or another candidate, I’d advise them to use the debate to attack DeSantis and blow him up. This is a man who lost a debate to Charlie Crist.Coulter: I’m sorry, but this just shows that you have zero understanding of the country, much less the party. Also, famous last words, but: I don’t think Trump will be the nominee, but you’d really do the country a solid if you could get Democrats to stop indicting him.Bruni: Ann, in just a few sentences, why won’t Trump be the nominee? That’s a renegade perspective. (Or, given recent Republican political history, should I say maverick?) Convince me.Coulter: Trump can barely speak English. He’s a gigantic baby. The only reason he crushed in 2016 is because of immigration — the wall, deport illegal immigrants, the travel ban (which imposed limits on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries). That is DeSantis this time — without the total lack of interest in carrying it out.Bruni: OK, but before we move on, is there anyone else in this debate who could break out and matter?Coulter: No.Bruni: Stuart, do you too believe Trump will not or might not get the nomination, as Ann does?Stevens: Trump is what the Republican Party wants to be. He’s a white grievance candidate in a party that is over 80 percent white and has embraced its victimhood. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson are alternatives, but there isn’t a winning market for an anti-Trump message. Trump will be the nominee.Coulter: I think you’re both more focused on personalities and whiteness than the voters are. It’s issues. And on the issues, Christie is totally out of step with the G.O.P. — and I’d say the country. He weeps about Ukrainians killed and raped by Russians, but doesn’t seem to give two figs about Americans killed and raped by illegal immigrants in our country.Bruni: Fair point about personalities, Ann, so let’s indeed turn to issues and larger dynamics. You’ve identified Ukraine as an issue getting too much attention. What else is getting lots of attention but largely irrelevant to this race’s outcome, and what’s hugely relevant and being overlooked?Stevens: It is actually all about race. Eighty-five percent of the Trump coalition in 2020 was white non-Hispanic in a country that is about 60 percent non-Hispanic white, and less since we’ve been chatting. The efforts in 2020 to deny votes was focused in places like Atlanta and Philadelphia. Why? That’s where a lot of Black people voted.Coulter: So you think the G.O.P. is racist. Wow, never heard that before.Stevens: In 1956, Eisenhower got about 39 percent of the Black vote. In 2020 Trump got 8 percent. A majority of Americans 15 years and younger are nonwhite or Hispanic white. This is what terrifies Republicans.Coulter: This is just your excuse for your candidate losing a winnable election in 2012.Bruni: You and Stuart are both hugely down on Trump as a human and as a candidate. Do you think he loses to Biden despite Biden’s age and low approval ratings, or is this a jump ball if Trump gets the nomination?Coulter: If Trump gets the nomination, I say he will lose. I know it, you know it, the American people know it (to paraphrase Bob Dole).Stevens: Trump could win. In 2020, he lost by a combined 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Otherwise, he would still be president. Biden needs to win by 4.5 percent to carry the Electoral College. So it is inevitable it will be close.Coulter: Nah. OK, maybe. I think Trump loses, but who knows? He’s not the Trump he was in 2016 — it’s the same old thing over and over and over again. “Shifty Schiff,” “perfect phone call,” “we won BIG,” strong, strongly, strong — zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.Bruni: There’s sustained chatter that someone significant — Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp — could join and upend the Republican field at a late moment, presented as a savior. Do you foresee that? How would it play out?Stevens: There is this need among some in the donor Republican class and the National Review types that the Republican Party can revert to being a normal party. That’s insane. Take Glenn Youngkin. He endorsed Kari Lake for her Arizona gubernatorial run. Youngkin didn’t change her, she changed him.Coulter: I hope it doesn’t come to that because DeSantis is head and shoulders above every other G.O.P. presidential candidate (or politician) on the three most important issues: immigration, crime and the Covid response. Unless the prime minister of Sweden is running in this race, no one beats DeSantis on the Covid response. That’s the 3 a.m. phone call — every state and world leader faced the exact same unseen-before virus. Only those two got it exactly right.Bruni: Ann, I have to ask you this simply because your pom-poms for DeSantis are so large and exuberantly shaken. How are you comfortable with how negative, vengeful, naming-of-enemies, slaying-of-enemies his whole shtick and strategy are? Dear God, you are the biggest Reagan lover I know, and there’s no “It’s Morning Again in America” from the Florida governor. It’s the darkest night, all the time.Coulter: So glad you asked that. As I describe in my book “In Trump We Trust” — about the greatest presidential campaign in history (followed by the most disappointing, wasted presidency in history) — this “I’m optimistic!” talking point that campaign consultants feed their candidates is absurd. Ronald Reagan was not optimistic in 1980 — it was only after four years in office that it was “Morning in America.” He was not “positive” or “optimistic” in 1980 at all.It’s nauseating to see candidates try to pull off the “I’m optimistic” nonsense — which I promise you they will in the debate, especially Tim Scott.Bruni: Well, I’m not optimistic, for what that’s worth.Coulter: Yes, Frank — you’re like most voters! That’s why the “I’m optimistic” idiocy falls so flat.Stevens: Republican donors looked at a model for Republican success as a big-state governor: Reagan, George W. Bush and Romney won the nomination. But all of those candidates were optimistic, expansive candidates. DeSantis is an angry little man who can’t articulate why he wants to be president. He got in a fight with the Happiness Company, Disney, and lost. He created a private police force at a cost of over $1 million to go after voter fraud in his own state, which he had claimed had a perfect election. They arrested 20 people — and convicted just one.Bruni: I still prefer candidates who, I don’t know, tell us to try to find the good in, and common cause with, one another rather than identify whom to hate and how much. I’m old-fashioned that way. To return to the debate: Is there any chance Trump is hurt by his decision to skip it? Or is he showing considerable smarts? By choosing tomorrow to turn himself in in Georgia, he will compete with and shorten the media’s post-mortems on the debate. He will, in his signature manner, yank the spotlight back toward … himself!Coulter: The only reason Trump will “stay in the news” is that the media keep him there. The weird obsession liberals have with Trump is driving normal people away from the news. Even I, MSNBC’s most loyal viewer, cannot watch it anymore. The same words, same arguments, same info, same topics for over two years now! “We almost lost our democracy!”Trump is a bore. Please stop covering him.Bruni: Let’s do a lightning round. Fast and quick answers. If something happened soon and Biden couldn’t or didn’t run, which nationally known Democrat would be the party’s fiercest presidential candidate, assuming that candidate had just enough runway to take off, and in a few phrases or one sentence, why?Stevens: Gavin Newsom. He’s a skilled politician who can build the coalition it takes to win. It’s not a bad exercise to ask, “Could this candidate win X state as governor?” Newsom is someone you could see as governor of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio.Coulter: No one the Democrats would ever nominate — for example, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, possibly Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.Bruni: Why?Coulter: Because they’re all white men.Bruni: Is the widespread belief that Kamala Harris negatively impacts Biden’s prospects for re-election overstated or understated?Stevens: Overstated. Has anybody actually looked at her record as a candidate? She’s won big, tough races. Until her presidential bid, she never lost.Coulter: Understated. I heard a discussion on MSNBC yesterday about how she’s fantastic one-on-one, a laugh riot, a charm offensive. That just doesn’t come out when she’s in front of a crowd, you see.The last person they tried that with was Al Gore, who apparently reached comedic highs alone in his bathtub.Bruni: Should Clarence Thomas be impeached?Stevens: Is that a rhetorical question? A Supreme Court justice who acts like an oligarch’s girlfriend, flying around on special vacations. Of course. He’s a disgrace.Coulter: No, he should be made czar of our country. For decades, liberals were mostly OK with the Supreme Court as it was inventing rights like abortion or Miranda or throwing out the death penalty. But now, suddenly there’s a major ethics issue about a justice who’s gotten the left’s goat since he was nominated.Thomas votes and writes opinions exactly as his judicial philosophy would predict. The idea that he ruled a certain way because someone took him on a fishing trip is ludicrous.Bruni: Lastly, rank these American institutions in the order of influence they might have over the final results — the winner — of the 2024 presidential contest: Fox News, Facebook, The New York Times, the Supreme Court.Coulter: Fox News: almost zero, unless the nominee is Trump — then you can blame Fox. Facebook: 2 percent. New York Times: 8 percent, maybe 10. The political economist Tim Grosseclose wrote a book (“Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind”) estimating the influence of the media on elections and concluded it was about 8 percent. But that was roughly 10 years ago. It’s probably more now. The Supreme Court: hopefully zero.Stevens: The Supreme Court by far. In the history of the country, only five justices were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the country’s population. All five are on the court today. It is completely out of step with the majority of the country, and the results played out in 2022.I don’t think Fox created the Republican Party; the Republican Party created Fox. For the most part, Fox didn’t support John McCain, didn’t support Romney, didn’t support Trump in his nomination campaign. They couldn’t affect the outcomes with their own base.Facebook has the potential to impact the race, as it did in 2016.I don’t think The Times has played a major role in a presidential campaign, and I think that’s a good thing — it’s not their job to play a major role.Bruni: Thank you both for your time, your insights and your energy.Coulter: Thank you, Frank, thank you, Stuart.Stevens: Thanks, all!Source photograph by Mark Wallheiser/Getty.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram • @FrankBruni • FacebookAnn Coulter is the author of the Substack newsletter Unsafe.Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens), a former Republican political consultant who has worked on many campaigns for federal and state office, including the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.” More

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      Does It Matter What Trump Really Believes?

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      More from our inbox:Anti-Trump Republicans as Swing VotersRacial Disparities in the Swimming PoolMultitask? Maybe.A Dog’s Behavior Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump, in Shadow of Capitol, Issues a Not Guilty Plea” (front page, Aug. 4):So, Donald Trump pleads not guilty to fraud and obstruction charges that resulted in violence, death and utter chaos on Jan. 6.He truly doesn’t know what guilt means. Nor responsibility. Nor having an honest reckoning with himself over the conduct he chose leading up to and on that infamous day. He knows only lies, blaming others and outrage.These are not traits that serve a president of a local board, never mind a chief executive of a large and complex nation battling sophisticated economic, diplomatic and social problems crying out to be addressed.I hope we never again have enough citizens who fall for a presidential candidate with these major character deficiencies.Amy KnitzerMontclair, N.J.To the Editor:Re “The Trial America Needs,” by David French (column, nytimes.com, Aug. 1):For the life of me I just cannot understand why prosecutors must prove that Donald Trump knew he was lying when he claimed he won the election.How can refusing to see the truth be a valid defense for his actions? In law school I learned about the “reasonable person” standard for determining liability in a number of circumstances. If a reasonable president would have known that he lost an election in view of the overwhelming evidence, shouldn’t this former president be imputed with this knowledge whether he believed it or not?Refusing to acknowledge facts is not reasonable. He can’t be allowed to use obtuseness to avoid the consequences for his actions.Rhonda StarerHarrington Park, N.J.To the Editor:Re “A President Accused of Betraying His Country” (editorial, Aug. 3):In his final presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump was asked whether he would accept the result of the election if he lost. He refused to say. “I will look at it at the time,” he responded. “I will keep you in suspense.”That the moderator, Chris Wallace, thought it necessary to pose the question should have been shocking. Mr. Trump’s unabashed contempt for democracy should have been disqualifying in the minds of enough voters to ensure he’d not be elected.Looking back now, nobody can claim that Mr. Trump didn’t put us on notice for what we’re facing now. It is an example of how we ignore certain kinds of red flags at our own great peril.David SabrittSeattleTo the Editor:Re “First Amendment Is Likely Linchpin of Trump Defense” (front page, Aug. 3):It may make sense as a legal strategy, but as a political argument for re-election, “I have a constitutional right to lie all I want” doesn’t sound like a winner, at least to this voter.Anna Cypra OliverGreat Barrington, Mass.Anti-Trump Republicans as Swing VotersRepublican voters are apparently not concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasing legal peril.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Far Ahead in the G.O.P. Race Despite Charges” (front page, July 31):I draw an important inference from the data in the poll described in the article: Donald Trump will lose the general election if he is the Republican nominee.The nearly one in four G.O.P. voters who are truly anti-Trump will do what they did in 2020 and vote for the presumed Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. Those swing voters proved to be a deciding factor last time, and their numbers increase with each new indictment of the former president.It doesn’t matter how unwavering Trump supporters are. If they want to elect a Republican president, they need to choose someone other than Mr. Trump. Nearly all the other G.O.P. candidates tiptoe around the mention of Mr. Trump to avoid alienating his base, but sycophancy won’t sway his followers.A more effective (and pragmatic) approach would be to repeatedly argue that swing voters, a.k.a. moderate Republicans, will hand this election to the Democrats if Mr. Trump is the nominee.Jana HappelNew YorkRacial Disparities in the Swimming Pool Allison Beondé for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Why We Need More Public Pools,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, July 30):Kudos to Ms. Gay for highlighting an important public health disparity and drowning crisis. The disproportionately high rates of drowning among Black and brown people should be unacceptable and widely recognized as a safety and public health priority.The racist policies discussed by Ms. Gay that limit resources for access to swimming opportunities contribute to the wide disparities in swimming ability and water safety.More inclusive access to competitive swimming is also important to provide swimming role models. The reversal in 2022 of the ban on the Soul Cap for Black hair by the International Swimming Federation (FINA) shows that policy change can occur through public campaigns.A much greater national public health campaign can help ensure that not only are water safety and swimming training made widely available but also that the physical and mental health benefits of swimming are widely understood and enjoyed by all, especially as the climate heats and relief is needed.Adrienne WaldHigh Falls, N.Y.The writer is an associate professor of nursing at Mercy College, specializing in public health and health promotion, and an avid swimmer.Multitask? Maybe. Janet MacTo the Editor:“Today’s Superpower Is Doing One Thing at a Time,” by Oliver Burkeman (Opinion guest essay, July 30), hit a chord in me. Mostly, because I desperately want to stop multitasking, but I simply cannot: I am a mother.Mr. Burkeman’s article is written from such a place of privilege — white, male and well off — that it began to sicken me that he was imploring the rest of us to stop multitasking. In fact, I reread the article, searching for any quotes he might have from a woman, but indeed, all his sources were men.In other words, not multitasking is a privilege that very few of us can afford.Melissa MorgenlanderBrooklynTo the Editor:I began reading Oliver Burkeman’s essay using the newspaper as a kind of readable place mat on which I enjoyed my Sunday lunch. I made it just past the second paragraph when I closed and removed the paper, carrying on with lunch atop the bare table.I felt empowered but haven’t managed to get to the rest of the piece since then.Pablo MonsivaisSpokane, Wash.A Dog’s Behavior Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Stressed-Out Life of a Biter in Chief,” by Alexandra Horowitz (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 3):Thank you for publishing this piece about dog behavior, specifically biting.I am one of the many who don’t like dogs. In fact, I fear them. The reason? Every dog that has ever jumped on me, growled at me or attempted to bite me did so immediately after its human companion told me that the dog is friendly and safe to be around, followed by dismay and surprise that their dog would do such a thing.It is helpful to know more about the myriad reasons that dogs bite, even if it doesn’t assuage my fear of them.Lisa M. FeldsteinNew York More

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      in Elections

      Why Ron DeSantis Isn’t Beating Donald Trump

      by

      As he flails to reverse a polling decline that is beginning to resemble a rockslide, Gov. Ron DeSantis must be feeling a little clueless about why his political fortunes are crumbling so quickly. Attacking wokeness and bullying transgender people seemed to work so well in Florida, so why aren’t national Republicans in awe of the divisions he’s deepened? Making repeated appearances with racial provocateurs never stopped him from getting elected as governor, so why did he have to fire a young aide who inserted Nazi imagery into his own video promoting Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign?But the political bubble inhabited by Mr. DeSantis is so thick — symbolized by the hugely expensive private-plane flights that are draining his campaign of cash, since he and his wife, Casey, won’t sit with regular people in a commercial cabin — that he has been unable or unwilling to understand the brushoff he has received from donors and potential voters and make the changes he needs to become competitive with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.For years, Mr. DeSantis has created an entire political persona out of a singular crusade against wokeness, frightening teachers and professors away from classroom discussions of race, defending a school curriculum that said there were benefits to slavery, claiming (falsely) that his anti-vaccine crusade worked and engaging in a pointless battle with his state’s best-known private employer over school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. He had the support of the Florida Legislature and state Republican officials in most of his efforts and presumably believed that an image of a more effective and engaged Trump would help him beat the real thing.But it’s not working. A Monmouth University poll published on Tuesday showed Mr. Trump with a 20-point lead over Mr. DeSantis in a head-to-head match, and the advantage grew to more than 30 points when all the other candidates were thrown in. Major donors have started to sour on him, and The Times reported on Thursday that they are disappointed with his performance and the management of his campaign, which he says he will somehow reboot.“DeSantis has not made any headway,” wrote the poll’s director, Patrick Murray. “The arguments that he’d be a stronger candidate and a more effective president than Trump have both fallen flat.”The most obvious fault in his strategy is that you can’t beat Donald Trump if you don’t even criticize him, and Mr. DeSantis has said little about the multiple indictments piling up against the former president or about his character. Granted, there are downsides to a full-frontal attack on Mr. Trump at this point, as other Republicans have become aware, and Mr. DeSantis still needs to establish some kind of identity first. But he can’t become an alt-Trump without drawing a sharp contrast and holding Mr. Trump to account for at least a few of his many flaws. There are graveyards in Iowa and New Hampshire full of candidates who tried to ignore the leader through sheer force of personality, and even if he had one of those, Mr. DeSantis hasn’t demonstrated the skills to use it. Both men will speak Friday night at the Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, and if Mr. DeSantis leaves his rival unscathed, it’s hard to imagine how he goes the distance.The deeper problem, though, is that Mr. DeSantis is peddling the wrong message. Only 1 percent of voters think that wokeness and transgender issues are the country’s top problem, according to an April Fox News poll — essentially a repudiation of the governor’s entire brand. Race issues and vaccines are also low on the list.Lakshya Jain, who helps lead the website Split Ticket, which is doing some really interesting political analysis and modeling, said Mr. DeSantis misinterpreted what Florida voters were saying when they re-elected him by a 19-point margin in 2022.“The economy was doing well in Florida, and Democrats didn’t put up a good candidate in Charlie Crist,” Mr. Jain told me. “I’m not sure the majority of Florida voters really cared what he was saying on wokeness. It’s not really an issue people vote on.”The economy, naturally, is what people care most about, but Mr. DeSantis hasn’t said much about his plans to fight inflation (which is already coming down) or create more jobs (which is happening every month without his help). Clearly aware of the problem, he announced on Thursday that he would unfurl a Declaration of Economic Independence in a major speech in New Hampshire on Monday (a phrase as trite and tone-deaf as the name of his Never Back Down super PAC).That appears to be the first fruit of his campaign reboot, but there are good reasons he doesn’t like to stray from his rigid agenda, as demonstrated by his occasionally disastrous footsteps into foreign policy. Bashing Bidenomics means he’ll immediately have to come up with an excuse for why inflation is so much higher in Florida than the nation as a whole. Though the national inflation rate in May was 4 percent compared with a year earlier, it was 9 percent in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area for the same period and 7.3 percent in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.The primary reason for that is the state’s housing shortage, an issue that Mr. DeSantis largely ignored during his first term and has only belatedly taken a few small steps to address. When the issue inevitably comes up on the campaign trail, you can bet that Mr. DeSantis will find some way of blaming it on President Biden. That way he can quickly pivot to his preferred agenda of rewriting Black history, questioning science and encouraging gun ownership.He really can’t help himself; just this week he said he might hire the noted anti-vaccine nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then he got into an online fight with Representative Byron Donalds, Florida’s only Black Republican member of Congress, over the state’s astonishingly wrong curriculum on slavery, and a DeSantis spokesman called Mr. Donalds a “supposed conservative.”Great way to expand your base. Remind me: When does the reboot start?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More