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      Is Trump’s Nomination Now Inevitable?

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      Luke Vander Ploeg, Michael Simon Johnson, Clare Toeniskoetter, Carlos Prieto and Rachel Quester, Lisa Tobin and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicVoters in the 2022 midterms seemed to send a clear message — a rejection of Trumpism and extremism. And yet it appears increasingly likely that he will win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. Astead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The Times and the host of the politics podcast The Run-Up, explains what shifted in Republican politics so that Mr. Trump’s nomination could start to seem almost inevitable.On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Former President Donald J. Trump appears becoming increasingly likely to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBackground readingTo some Republicans and Democrats, the charges brought against Mr. Trump in New York appeared flimsy and less consequential than many had hoped. To others, the case had the potential to reverberate politically.In a phone call with top donors, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida privately argued that Mr. Trump couldn’t win in the general election. Mr. DeSantis is expected to officially enter the presidential race next week.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon More

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      Tim Scott’s Run for President Shines a Spotlight on Black Republicans

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      The South Carolina senator’s bid for the White House — as the sole Black Republican in the Senate — could raise not only his profile, but those of Black conservatives across the country.Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, addressed the Charleston County Republican Party at a dinner in February, offering a stirring message of unity and American redemption that has become the center of his stump speech. The next day, he called the chairman of the county party to ask for his support.Mr. Scott told the chairman that he was considering a presidential run. The chairman, who had planned to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, told the senator he would switch allegiances and back him instead.The exchange was, in some ways, traditional party politicking as Mr. Scott works to build support in his home county and in his home state. But it also underscored a subtle change shaping G.O.P. politics — both men are Black Republicans.“I’m pretty locked in helping Senator Scott in every way that I possibly can,” said the former county party leader, Maurice Washington, who stepped down from his role as chairman in April. It was Mr. Washington, Charleston County’s first Black Republican chairman and a longtime ally of Mr. Scott’s, who first encouraged him to run for a county council seat nearly 30 years ago.Mr. Scott, who plans to formally announce his presidential campaign on Monday, will become one of a handful of Black conservatives to run for president in recent years. Herman Cain made a bid for the White House in 2011 and Ben Carson did so in 2016, but neither garnered widespread support. Mr. Scott will be the second Black conservative to enter the 2024 race: Larry Elder, a talk radio host who ran unsuccessfully for governor in California’s 2021 recall election, announced his long-shot campaign last month.Mr. Scott has been popular among Republicans — and has a sizable campaign fund — but his campaign is seen as a long shot.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressAs a U.S. senator and a former member of the House of Representatives with roughly $22 million in campaign funds, Mr. Scott will begin as more of a contender than most of his predecessors, and he will be one of the best-funded candidates in the 2024 presidential primary. His support is currently in the low single digits, according to public polling. But his candidacy could raise not only his profile, but those of Black conservatives across the country.Black Republicans are a small group of voters and politicians who say they often feel caught in the middle — ignored and subtly discriminated against by some Republicans, ridiculed and ostracized by many Democrats. Those elected to office have expressed frustration that they are viewed not simply as conservatives but as Black conservatives, and they often decry what they describe as the Democratic obsession with identity politics.“I think the commonality of virtually all Black conservatives is that we don’t think we’re victims,” said Mr. Elder, who has emphasized his roots in both California and the segregated South. “We don’t believe we’re oppressed. We don’t believe that we’re owed anything.” He and Mr. Scott share a belief in “hard work and education and self-improvement,” Mr. Elder added. “So it would not surprise me that he and I are saying the same things, if not in different ways.”Other Black Republicans have won state races and primaries since the 2022 midterms. On Tuesday, Daniel Cameron defeated a well-funded opponent in Kentucky’s Republican primary for governor. Mr. Cameron, the first Black man to be elected attorney general in Kentucky, is the Trump-endorsed protégé of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. Last year, a record number of Black Republican candidates ran for state offices. With Mr. Scott in the Senate and four Republicans in the House, there are now five Black Republicans in Congress — the most in more than a century.“I’m pretty locked in helping Senator Scott in every way that I possibly can,” said Maurice Washington, Charleston County’s first Black Republican chairman, who stepped down in April.Travis Dove for The New York TimesStill, the number of Black Republicans who won seats last year is a fraction of the total number who ran for state and local office under the G.O.P. — more than 80. And the Republican Party’s inroads with Black candidates have yet to overcome enduring feelings of distrust among Black voters toward the party. The ascension of Black Republicans such as Mr. Scott and Mr. Cameron comes against the backdrop of a Republican Party that has largely stood by as some of its members have employed overtly racist rhetoric and behavior.Shermichael Singleton, a Black Republican strategist and a former senior adviser to Mr. Carson, said that he spent a lot of time in 2016 determining how Mr. Carson’s hyper-conservative campaign message could remain in step with the party line without alienating critical voting groups. The challenge was twofold: overcoming Black voters’ negative perceptions about Republicans while building a winning coalition that could include some of them.“It’s just more unique and more challenging if you’re a Black person because of our unique experiences politically and the distrust that most of us have for both parties, but the overwhelming distrust that we have is for Republicans,” Mr. Singleton said. “Because they are perceived as being anti-progressive on race.”Much of the party’s base and its presidential contenders have become focused on opposing all things “woke,” using the term as a catchall pejorative for the broader push for equity and social justice. In the party’s embrace of being anti-woke, several Republican-led state legislatures have aimed to ban books written by Black authors and limit conversations about slavery, the civil rights movement and systemic racism in the classroom and elsewhere.For many in the Republican Party, its members of color are proof of its inclusivity. The success of a candidate like Mr. Scott — the first Black Republican to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction — helps in part to rebut claims that the G.O.P. is inherently racist or, more broadly, that systemic racism remains an issue in America, Republicans say.In speeches, Mr. Scott has criticized the “victim mentality” he believes exists in American culture, and has blamed the left for using racial issues as a means of further dividing the electorate. Mr. Elder said racism “has never been a less important factor in American life than today.”Daniel Cameron, the first Black attorney general of Kentucky, won the primary race for governor on Tuesday. He will face Andy Beshear, a popular Democrat who is seeking re-election in a typically deep-red state.Jon Cherry for The New York Times“What Black Republicans have to do is they either have to lean all in and just be an unapologetic, uncritical supporter for where the Republican Party is now, or they have to find a way to walk that tightrope of not alienating the party, but also not alienating their community,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “Somebody like Scott has to find a space to navigate those worlds.”J.C. Watts, who was the first Black Republican to represent Oklahoma in Congress, said he believed Mr. Scott could be “a great asset” to the party’s presidential primary, based on his personal experiences. “Whether or not the party listens,” he added, “that’s something else.”“He will have some that will try to force him to be ‘the Black Republican,’” Mr. Watts continued. “While I don’t think you should run from being Black, or run from being conservative, some will try to force him to play that role.”Nathan Brand, Mr. Scott’s spokesman, pointed to the senator’s remarks at the dinner in Charleston in February, in which he acknowledged “the devastation brought upon African Americans” before extolling America as “defined by our redemption” — themes that have formed the base of his campaign message. The campaign declined to comment further.Like many Black Republicans, Mr. Scott has been reluctant to discuss race as it relates to his party, preferring to focus on policy matters. In recent years, however, he has been called on to weigh in further. In 2020, he was the lead Republican in negotiations on failed police reform legislation.The senator was also a leading conservative voice against Mr. Trump’s comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when the president said there were people to blame on “both sides.” Mr. Scott’s criticisms later spurred Mr. Trump to invite him to the White House.After a series of police killings in the summer of 2016, Mr. Scott gave a detailed speech on the Senate floor about instances when he was racially profiled by law enforcement, including by U.S. Capitol Police. These were moments, he said, when he “felt the pressure applied by the scales of justice when they are slanted.”Now, as he becomes a presidential candidate and the nation’s highest-ranking Black Republican, Mr. Scott will likely have to answer questions about how he and the rest of his party navigate a tenuous relationship with Black voters.“It could be a little bit of a problem to me down the road,” said Cornelius Huff, the Republican mayor of Inman, S.C., who is Black. “You have to have somebody in the family that calls it what it is and straightens those things out.”At a recent town hall in New Hampshire, Mr. Scott told a mostly white audience of supporters that he saw an opportunity to increase the party’s gains with voters of color, particularly men. Despite winning re-election by more than 25 points in 2022, Mr. Scott lost to or narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger in nearly all of South Carolina’s predominantly Black counties. Policy conversations about school choice and economic empowerment, he said, could create an opening with men of color, a group that polling shows has been more open to supporting the Republican Party in recent election cycles.“When we go where we’re not invited, we have conversations with people who may not vote for us,” Mr. Scott said at the event. “We earn their respect. If we earn their respect long enough, we earn their vote. What is disrespectful is to show up 90 days before an election and say, ‘We want your vote.’”The senator appeared to be speaking to a common grievance among Black voters that Democrats often count on and court their votes before major elections, and then fail to deliver on their policy promises. Yet, even as some Black voters bemoan what they see as Democrats’ empty promises on the issues they care most about, they remain the party’s most loyal constituency. More than 90 percent of Black voters voted for President Biden in 2020.Mr. Washington, 62, the former Charleston County Republican chairman, helped found South Carolina State University’s Republican Club while in school there nearly four decades ago. Though he has run for office as a Democrat before, Mr. Washington says his values, and those of many in Black communities, are more conservative and thus more aligned with Republican values. The weeks after Mr. Scott starts his campaign will amount to a waiting game, he added.“Let’s see what happens,” Mr. Washington said. “We’ll know sooner rather than later whether or not that message of unity, of working hard towards rebuilding trust in our nation — in America and its citizenry and in its race relations — is going to be one that is embraced or rejected.” More

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      DeSantis Avoids Talk of Abortion Ban on the Trail

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      The Florida governor is reluctant to talk about the restrictive law he signed as he seeks to attract support from across the Republican Party.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida could not have asked for a friendlier venue to highlight the sweeping six-week abortion ban he signed last month: an annual gala hosted by a deeply conservative Christian group that welcomed him with a sustained standing ovation and provided a bagpiper in full Highland regalia playing “Amazing Grace.”But instead of taking a victory lap on Saturday, Mr. DeSantis breezed through his remarks on Florida’s abortion law, one of the most restrictive in the nation. His rhetoric was far less soaring than that of other speakers, including one who compared abortion to slavery, suggesting it was an evil that should be totally eliminated.“We believe that everybody counts, everybody is special, and our Heartbeat Protection Act shows that we say what we mean and we mean what we say,” said Mr. DeSantis, referring to the law, which he was initially slow to back.He then pivoted to familiar talking points, including his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his opposition to defunding the police and his signing of a law prohibiting gender-transition care for minors.During the primary, Mr. DeSantis will need to court conservative voters without alienating centrists — all while fending off allegations from Republican rivals who could argue he is too extreme on abortion. Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. DeSantis’s brief comments on abortion underscore his general hesitancy to speak about the issue in visits to key states ahead of his upcoming presidential run. On the trail, his remarks about the ban are usually limited to a single line in his roughly 45-minute stump speech, placed alongside a laundry list of his other legislative accomplishments.The reluctance to highlight abortion — even when speaking on his home turf to grateful Christian conservatives — reflects a careful calibration that could be crucial to his campaign for the Republican nomination.Although many evangelicals and hard-core party activists favor abortion bans like the one he signed in Florida, moderate Republicans are less inclined to support them. During the primary, Mr. DeSantis will need to court those conservative voters without alienating centrists — all while fending off allegations from Republican rivals who could argue he is too extreme on abortion. He will also need to avoid delivering any sound bites to Democrats that could become fodder for attack ads in a general election. Other Republican contenders for president, including Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have offered less strident views on abortion. Ms. Haley has declined to support a federal abortion ban at a specific number of weeks of pregnancy. And Mr. Scott, who is expected to declare his candidacy on Monday, has said he would back a 20-week federal ban. Former President Donald J. Trump, who is fighting to retain the backing of the anti-abortion movement, has criticized Florida’s six-week law without saying what restrictions he might support, leading Mr. DeSantis to punch back over his reluctance to take a position. The comments, one of his most direct public challenges to the former president so far, demonstrated how Mr. DeSantis could use his record, which anti-abortion activists praise, to distinguish himself.“He’s giving us action, and that’s what I’m interested in,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, the nonprofit group that hosted Mr. DeSantis’s speech on Saturday. “He’s been stellar and historic.”Democrats ran heavily on abortion rights in last year’s midterms with unexpected success. That has left some Republicans unsure of how to address the issue in 2024.As Mr. DeSantis is hitting the trail and visiting early nominating states, he is talking little about his abortion legislation. When he does, he does not explicitly tell audiences that the law prohibits the procedure after six weeks.“We enacted the Heartbeat Protection Act to promote life,” Mr. DeSantis said without elaborating as he addressed a crowd of voters in Iowa earlier this month. He sandwiched his comment between brief statements on his tax relief efforts and a law that allows Floridians to carry concealed weapons without training or permits. Speaking at Liberty University, another friendly setting, the day after he signed the ban, Mr. DeSantis almost entirely avoided the subject.And during a discussion with state lawmakers in New Hampshire on Friday, the governor did not mention abortion at all. Privately, lawmakers from the moderate state, which limits abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, said they thought Mr. DeSantis’s abortion law was too extreme for voters in New Hampshire. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks.Last spring, Mr. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers in Florida limited access to the procedure after 15 weeks, with exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities or to save the life of the woman. That legislation is being challenged in front of the Florida Supreme Court.The six-week ban, which includes additional exceptions for rape and incest, is not yet in effect and will hinge, in part, on the court’s decision over the existing law. Women in Florida have suffered serious complications from dangerous pregnancies since the 15-week ban was passed, according to news reports. The state previously prohibited abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy.For many conservatives, the governor is fulfilling a mandate from voters after a nearly 20-point re-election in November.“His leadership helped push that through,” Chris Jessee, a Florida pastor who came to Orlando to hear Mr. DeSantis address the Florida Family Policy Council, said of the six-week ban.Still, Mr. Jessee noticed that the governor did not seem to adjust his usual script much for the event, even though the group’s annual gala was its first since Roe v. Wade was overturned.“I really felt like I’d heard that speech before,” he said.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More

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      George Santos Must Be Held Accountable by Republican Leaders

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      George Santos is far from the first member of Congress to be indicted while in office. Both chambers and both parties have endured their share of scandals. In 2005, for instance, F.B.I. agents discovered $90,000 hidden in the freezer of Representative William Jefferson, who was under investigation for bribery. He refused to step down, wound up losing his seat in the 2008 election, and was later sentenced to 13 years in prison. James Traficant was expelled from Congress in 2002 after being convicted of bribery and racketeering. Bob Ney resigned in 2006 because of his involvement in a federal bribery scandal.But in one way, Mr. Santos is different from other members of Congress who have demonstrated moral failures, ethical failures, failures of judgment and blatant corruption and lawbreaking in office. What he did was to deceive the very voters who brought him to office in the first place, undermining the most basic level of trust between an electorate and a representative. These misdeeds erode the faith in the institution of Congress and the electoral system through which American democracy functions.For that reason, House Republican leaders should have acted immediately to protect that system by allowing a vote to expel Mr. Santos and joining Democrats in removing him from office. Instead — not wanting to lose Mr. Santos’s crucial vote — Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed a measure to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee, notorious for its glacial pace, and the House voted predictably along party lines on Wednesday afternoon to follow that guidance.If the House doesn’t reverse that vote under public pressure, it’s incumbent on the Ethics Committee to conduct a timely investigation and recommend expulsion to the full House, where a two-thirds vote will be required to send Mr. Santos back to Long Island.Mr. Santos was arrested and arraigned in federal court last week on 13 criminal counts linked primarily to his 2022 House campaign. Mr. McCarthy and other members of the Republican leadership effectively shrugged, indicating that they would let the legal process “play itself out,” as the conference’s chair, Elise Stefanik, put it.In addition to expulsion, the Republican leaders have several official disciplinary measures they could pursue, such as a formal reprimand or censure, but so far, they have done little more than express concern. Mr. McCarthy has several tough legislative fights looming, including negotiations over the federal budget to avoid a government default, and Mr. Santos’s removal might imperil the G.O.P.’s slim majority. In effect, Mr. Santos’s bad faith has made him indispensable.His constituents believed he held certain qualifications and values, only to learn after Election Day that they had been deceived. Now they have no recourse until the next election.The question, then, is whether House Republican leaders and other members are willing to risk their credibility for a con man, someone whose entire way of life — his origin story, résumé, livelihood — is based on a never-ending series of lies. Of course they should not be. They should have demonstrated to the American people that there is a minimum ethical standard for Congress and used the power of expulsion to enforce it. They should have explained to voters that their commitment to democracy and public trust goes beyond their party’s political goals.At least some Republican lawmakers recognize what is at stake and are speaking out. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah reiterated his view that Mr. Santos should do the honorable thing and step aside, saying, “He should have resigned a long time ago. He is an embarrassment to our party. He is an embarrassment to the United States Congress.”Similarly, Anthony D’Esposito and Mike Lawler, both representing districts in New York, are among several House Republicans advocating his resignation. Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas has gone a step further, calling for Mr. Santos’s expulsion and a special election to replace him. “The people of New York’s 3rd district deserve a voice in Congress,” he wrote on Twitter.Mr. Gonzales gets at the heart of the matter. Mr. Santos has shown contempt for his constituents and for the electoral process. Mr. McCarthy and the other Republican House leaders owe Americans more.Source photograph by Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters.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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      Why ‘Succession’ Is a Work of Fantasy

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      It was interesting, after writing last week’s newsletter on the problems of conservative media, to watch Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Succession,” in which the show’s lightly fictionalized version of Fox News, run by its somewhat more meaningfully fictionalized version of the Fox-owning Murdoch family, takes center stage for an imagined election night. (There will be some spoilers below, fair warning.) Between the Dominion Voting Systems settlement and the Tucker Carlson firing, we’ve had a lot of real-world Fox drama lately, and the contrast between reality and fiction tells us something interesting about how art depicts our politics — and how the nature of democratic politics can resist successful dramatization.In the real world, the last presidential election night saw Fox News call Arizona early (calling it correctly, though probably earlier than was justified by the extremely narrow margin), yielding fury from Donald Trump’s campaign and backlash from the Fox audience, whose drift toward other outlets helps explain why Fox allowed election conspiracy theories to run wild on some of its shows. It was a case study in the problem I described last week, where conservative media has ended up captive to the particular expectations of a large television audience — a demand for infotainment, reality-TV drama, good guys and bad guys, nothing that doesn’t make sense within the expected nightly narrative.In the world of “Succession,” the key election-night dilemma is somewhat similar — when to call a crucial state — but the dynamics are quite different. The show’s presidential election is disrupted by a fire (arson?) at a Milwaukee precinct that destroys thousands of ballots, leaving the right-wing candidate ahead pending litigation, and his campaign wants ATN (the show’s Fox News) to call Wisconsin for him immediately. The decision gets punted up to the Roy siblings, the would-be heirs to their recently deceased father’s corporate empire, and though there are references to what the ATN audience wants, the Roys end up making a very bad, republic-undermining decision for reasons internal to their family dynamics. The brothers, Kendall and Roman, want to keep the company rather than go through with a planned sale to a Scandinavian tech billionaire, the right-wing candidate has promised to block the deal for them if he’s elected, and their sister, Shiv, the liberal of the group, is playing her own double game that blows up in her face.A key question throughout the show’s seasons has been whether “Succession” is ultimately the drama of, well, succession promised by the title — a story in the style of “The Godfather,” where one of the main characters emerges as the (corrupted) heir to the father’s empire — or whether it’s headed for a version of the “Hamlet” ending, where everybody stabs or poisons everybody else and some outsider shows up to claim the throne. With two episodes left, the dice seem loaded for the second outcome: Failsons and a faildaughter lose their company and, oops, bring down the American republic along the way.But as a political drama, which “Succession” is at least secondarily, both of these narratives are essentially elite-driven and family-driven, suggesting a world where to understand what happens in American politics, you mostly need to understand the pressures and pathologies afflicting a narrow group of power brokers.Which is, certainly, part of the truth. I write a lot about elites, everybody writes a lot about elites, because as the word suggests they’re pretty important to figuring out what’s going on in society — and also because when you write about politics for a living, you’re often writing for an audience that thinks of itself as at least elite-adjacent, part of the professional class, the overclass, the meritocracy.Thus a lot of arguments about the Republican Party in the age of Trump necessarily revolve around what some segment of this overclass is getting wrong. Is it liberal elites whose failures and ideological fixations keep giving oxygen to populism? Or media elites who keep covering Trump the wrong way (with vast disagreements about what the right way would be)? Or conservative elites who just need to summon moral courage and stand up against demagogy? Or the entire elite that needs replacement by a better one, ideally forged by classically minded finishing schools and papal encyclicals? The answer varies but the narrative endures because “affecting some change in elite behavior” is the biggest lever that seems within a pundit’s reach.When I watch “Succession” with this mind-set, my main complaint about the show’s political vision is that it mostly leaves out a kind of Republican elite who would be connected to any Fox News-like enterprise. The show obviously has no trouble scripting the amoral cynics getting rich off a conservative base they secretly despise, and it does a decent job channeling the voice of the very-online right (the far-right presidential candidate has a weird patois that sounds like Robert Nisbet crossed with a Nietzschean edgelord). But it doesn’t have much representation for the more normal Republicans who definitely exist inside Fox World, the kind of people who believe in conventional conservative principles and end up compromising with populists they dislike because of liberals they fear more. The show can only imagine weird fanatics on the one hand, and on the other hand pure cynics who secretly know the liberals are right and they themselves are bad guys.But what’s really missing from the political drama on “Succession” isn’t just sincere, non-edgelord Republicans. It’s the crucial role of non-elites — mass opinion, “the people,” anything from a national majority to a primary-season electorate or just a particularly large television audience — as a force unto themselves, a gravity well that every elite stratagem has to work with or around.Sure, the people don’t rule in some naïve or simplistic sense; some kind of elite power is always fundamental. But from a dramatic point of view, the mass American public is as important a “character” in the story of right-wing populism as Rupert Murdoch or for that matter Trump himself. The people, in the form of the mass Fox News audience, drove what happened around and after the 2020 election more than any sibling rivalry inside the House of Murdoch. They’re why the alleged election fraud fiasco went down the way it went down. They’re why Carlson became a cable news ratings king. They’re why, since his firing, a lot fewer people have been watching Fox and Newsmax has been pulling in about as many viewers in its 8 p.m. time slot as CNN.The same point applies to democratic politics writ large. People in rooms talking drive a lot of political action, but if they drove all of it, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have been the Republican nominee in 2016 (when Murdoch’s network was surprised and overwhelmed by Trumpism), Elizabeth Warren probably would have been the Democratic nominee in 2020 and Trump definitely wouldn’t be a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024. Our elites can work to tame mass opinion, to master it or redirect it or find some means of resistance — but it’s always there, always doing something in the story.And if that’s a somewhat difficult thing for punditry to reckon with, at least we can write and talk about it in terms of opinion polling and television ratings and the like. Dramatizing the force of mass opinion artistically is much harder. It’s a big part of why there aren’t that many great novels or great movies about the workings of American democracy, relative to the monarchical systems of the past; one of the democratic age’s central characters, the mass public, is just really hard to realize on the page or on the screen.Likewise, a significant part of the contemporary appeal of both historical fiction and my own favored genre of fantasy is that they return politics to a period where the personal encompasses more of the political — where family rivalries and court intrigues loom larger, and mass politics means the occasional mob or the rampaging army but not the daily poll or the nightly ratings, the force of public opinion that lacks embodiment but constantly drives political action nonetheless.The elite world of “Succession,” where the patriarch Logan Roy was both a corporate king and a political kingmaker, is thus ultimately a kind of fantasy fiction, a George R.R. Martin-ish gloss on contemporary American politics: entertaining and smart and on point in some ways, hopefully headed for a more successful wrap than “Game of Thrones,” but finally inadequate to actual political reality, because it always leaves a protagonist offstage.Programming NotesFirst, a reminder that I’m part of a new Times podcast, “Matter of Opinion,” that comes out every Thursday; find the latest episodes here.Second, The Times has just introduced a new iOS app for audio journalism called New York Times Audio, featuring all our podcasts as well as narrated articles from across all our sections, from Opinion and Politics to Food and Sports. It includes the archive of “This American Life” and read-aloud stories from a range of national magazines. It’s available to Times news subscribers, and you can download it here.BreviaryNathan Pinkoski on the evolution of Francis Fukuyama.Scott Alexander compares Francis Galton and Paul Ehrlich.Alex de Waal on the war for Khartoum.Richard Rushfield and Matt Stoller on the Hollywood writers’ strike.Damon Linker tries to stabilize social liberalism. More

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      Two Theories for Beating Trump in the Primary

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      A successful campaign will probably need the traits of both Trumpism and an alternative to Trumpism.Ronald Reagan rode the issues of 1979, some similar to today’s, to the Oval Office. George Tames/The New York TimesThere are two basic theories for how Donald J. Trump might be defeated in a Republican primary. It’s possible that neither, both or some combination of the two can actually work in practice. But by considering them in depth, it becomes easier to think about and judge the various efforts to beat him — and why so many haven’t pulled it off.In our next article, we’ll consider whether and how Ron DeSantis fits into the picture — and why his campaign has struggled to meet the very real challenge of defeating a former president.Theory One: Trumpism Without TrumpThis type of candidacy assumes that Mr. Trump’s populist conservatism reoriented the Republican Party in irreversible and advantageous ways, but that his personal conduct has been a disaster for conservatives.In this view, his poor hires and lack of experience and focus prevented him from being an effective president. His coarse remarks, tweets, election denialism and ultimately Jan. 6 not only cost Republicans the White House and the Senate, but also the opportunity for a truly decisive victory — like the one Mr. DeSantis won in 2022 in Florida.According to this theory, these same personal weaknesses are his vulnerability in a Republican primary in 2024. A challenger to Mr. Trump, therefore, ought to hew as close as possible to him on the issues, while distinguishing himself or herself on electability, competence and character.If you imagine yourself in a hypothetical brainstorming session for the Trumpism Without Trump campaign, you can imagine the kinds of attacks that might add up to a critique of a hapless, weak president who wasn’t up to the job of making America great again. In this view, Mr. Trump presided over rising crime, a strengthening China, growing trade deficits, rising drug overdose deaths and a stronger Democratic Party. He talked a big game, but didn’t accomplish much. He failed to build a wall. He lost to sleepy Joe Biden. He’s old. The election was stolen from under his nose. He let the Deep State drag him down and did nothing to dismantle it. He let Dr. Fauci into our lives, and the vaccine into our bodies. He didn’t command the respect of the military and hired countless people he now considers disloyal. Not every one of these attacks is ready for prime time, but some combination could work, and you could undoubtedly come up with other examples.The logic of Trumpism Without Trump has merit, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Indeed, it suffers from an obvious and fundamental problem: It doesn’t work if Republicans still want Mr. Trump.There’s another, less obvious issue: It’s hard for this type of candidate to unite the various skeptical-of-Trump factions. After all, many of the most vocal opponents of Mr. Trump oppose both Trumpism and the man himself. This sets up routine clashes between a Trumpism Without Trump candidate and his or her likeliest own supporters. It could even lead many of those supporters to seek an explicitly anti-Trump candidate.Theory Two: An alternative to TrumpismThis theory is a little more complicated. It describes something that doesn’t yet exist. But the case for this theory picks up with the last critique of Trumpism Without Trump.An anti-Trump candidate will probably need to be something more than Trumpism Without Trump: A reinvigorated brand of conservatism would be needed to pull off the challenging task of unifying everyone from the Trumpist types to the supporters of Mitt Romney’s Reaganism to the Ted Cruz Tea Partiers.Needless to say, this would be challenging. To do it, a conservative would need to find a message that at once checks the boxes and wins the hearts of various factions — without alienating the rest. This is not easy, given the many disagreements between the different factions of the Republican Party. But something like this has happened before under circumstances that in some ways resemble today’s.Recall the conditions that brought about the last great renewal of conservatism, in the 1970s. The parallels to today are striking. In both 1979 and 2023, conservatives could say inflation and crime was high; the Kremlin had decided to invade a neighbor; and a new class of young, highly educated activists was at once driving some old-school liberals to the right and sparking a full-blown conservative reaction. In each case, it was 15 years after an epochal breakthrough for Black Americans (the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the election of Barack Obama in 2008).As with today, the right was fractured. The politicians who embodied the different wings of a possible Republican coalition — Barry Goldwater, George Wallace and Gerald Ford — were every bit as ideologically diverse as Mr. Cruz, Mr. Trump and Mr. Romney. But the events of the 1960s and 1970s created conditions that allowed these groups to come together around a reinvigorated conservatism that dominated the Republican Party for the next 30 years.The reaction against the New Left of the 1960s and ’70s was strong enough to bring some once-liberal intellectuals and the religious right together against the excesses of the counterculture. The backlash against the civil rights era, rising crime and the failings of the Great Society brought blue-collar, urban, white ethnic Reagan Democrats together with Sun Belt suburbanites. High inflation and a growing tax burden offered a way for neoliberal economics to align big business, working-class economic interests and white resentment.The conditions for a rejuvenated conservatism today aren’t nearly as favorable as they were in 1979. They don’t even seem as favorable as they were in 2021. But it’s not 2015 anymore, either. Many of the conditions that helped lead to Trumpian populism are gone. Fear of economic stagnation, high unemployment and low interest rates have been replaced by inflation and high interest rates. Globalization is unequivocally in retreat. The Forever Wars are gone, and Great Power politics is back. Meanwhile, the rise of a new “woke” left and lingering resentment over coronavirus restrictions have brought a new set of issues that didn’t exist a decade ago.If you look in the right corners of the internet, you can see these changes congealing into new kinds of conservatives. You can spot neo-neo-cons on Substack, where Obama-era liberals who insist they aren’t conservatives rail against “woke” and forge unusual alliances with longtime conservatives. There’s even a neo-neoliberalism of sorts, as a small corner of the right mulls deregulation to contain costs, and even progressives find themselves mulling “supply side” policies. Many of the people dabbling in these ideas were also skeptics of coronavirus restrictions, especially school closings. Rising concern about Russia and China needs no explanation.If you put all of these various strands together, you can imagine the outlines of a reinvigorated conservatism tied to the challenges of 2023, not 2015 or 1979. Compared with 2015, it would be distinguished by anti-woke cultural politics, a stronger approach to Russia or China, and deregulation aiming to tackle inflation and promote “freedom.” It also fulfills the most important element for the Alternative to Trumpism theory: Moderate elites and Obama-era Tea Partiers can find common ground on all of these issues or at least tolerate the other side.But like Trumpism Without Trump, this approach faces a fundamental problem: It’s not obvious whether these new issues are strong enough to hold the disparate elements of the anti-Trump coalition together through a primary campaign.Over the last year or so, new developments have tended to weaken the punch of the new issues. The pandemic is past, at least politically. “Wokeness” may be fading somewhat as an issue. Meanwhile, the old issues are making a comeback. Inflation is edging down, but the end of pandemic-era restrictions has renewed focus on the border. The end of Roe v. Wade has thrust abortion back to the center of American life. Nothing similar could be said in 1979, when older divisive fights over civil rights or Medicare had plainly given way to a new set of more acute challenges. Imagine how much harder it would have been for Ronald Reagan to balance winning the South and the rest of the country in the Republican primary if Brown v. Board had been overturned by conservative judges in 1978.There’s another reason the new issues might not be enough: They don’t always offer easy avenues for attack against Mr. Trump. There are a few obvious but fundamentally limited opportunities, like Russia and China. But after that, it gets tougher. Inflation could be a plausible path: The argument would go that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, push for lower interest rates, immigration restrictions, government spending, stimulus checks and big tax cuts all contributed to supply chain issues, labor shortages and excess demand. This would even allow for a natural comparison lumping him in with Mr. Biden. But this attack is complicated to pull off, and it doesn’t seem to be political gold.Importantly, it is hard to attack Mr. Trump on “woke,” which is probably still the single new issue with the most resonance across the Republican Party, even if it isn’t quite as salient as it was a year or two ago. The attack on woke does offer some opportunity for a contrast with Mr. Trump, by embracing American Greatness as an explicit critique of woke anti-Americanism and an implicit critique of dystopian MAGA-ism. Nikki Haley has taken this tack. But it is not at all obvious whether this sunnier brand has any resonance with conservative voters.Realistically, a successful campaign will need the traits of both Trumpism Without Trump and an Alternative to Trumpism. Alone, neither quite seems like enough. The strongest candidacy will benefit a bit from some aspects of the other. Done right, perhaps no one would be quite sure which category it falls into.Next, we’ll consider why Mr. DeSantis is a distinct candidate who comes close to pulling off both, but so far hasn’t done either — with poll numbers to show for it. More

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      Tim Scott Is Set to Join 2024 Race, Already Flush With Campaign Cash

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      The South Carolina senator will announce his campaign on Monday and then head to Iowa and New Hampshire.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will announce his candidacy for president on Monday and will enter the race with around $22 million cash on hand, making him one of the most serious competitors for the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, even as Mr. Scott has hovered around 2 percent in Republican primary polls.After announcing his campaign in his hometown, North Charleston, Mr. Scott will head to Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states of the Republican nominating contest. Mr. Scott’s campaign has reserved around $6 million in advertisements across television and radio in those states, according to an adviser with direct knowledge of Mr. Scott’s plans. The Scott campaign also plans to spend millions of dollars on digital ads that will target Iowa and New Hampshire voters and will run through the first Republican primary debate, scheduled to be held in August.Mr. Scott, the most influential elected Black conservative in America, has a compelling life story around which he is expected to build his campaign. He portrays his rise from poverty to become the first Black senator from South Carolina and the only Black Republican in the Senate as an embodiment of the American dream.Mr. Scott rarely criticizes Mr. Trump directly, but his message could not be more different from the former president’s. While Mr. Trump talks ominously of “retribution” — his promise to gut the civil service and law enforcement agencies that he pejoratively calls the “deep state” — Mr. Scott prefers the sunny language of Ronald Reagan.“Americans are losing one of the most inspirational truths we have, which is hope — hope that things can and will get better, hope that education and hard work can equal prosperity, hope that we remain a city on a hill, a shining example of what can be when free people decide to join hands in self-governance,” Mr. Scott said in a speech last year at the Reagan Library on the future of the Republican Party.“America stands at a crossroads,” he said, “with the potential for a great resetting, a renewal, even a rebirth — where we get to choose how we will meet the potential of today and the promise of tomorrow.”There is little evidence, so far, that Mr. Scott’s message strikes a chord with the populist base of the modern G.O.P., which for the last several years has been led by a former TV star who likes to fight. For years, the Republican base has fed on apocalyptic talk that often casts Democrats as enemies bent on destroying America. In a party dominated by Mr. Trump’s message of “American carnage,” Mr. Scott’s talk of the importance of “unity,” “hope” and “redemption” can sound like a message from another time.Mr. Scott’s campaign will have to balance his inherently optimistic message against the brutal realities of Republican primary politics.“We will be authentic to Mr. Scott’s optimistic vision, but we’re also not in any way afraid to draw contrasts where we need to,” said the adviser with knowledge of Mr. Scott’s plans.Mr. Scott will have more than enough money to find out if there’s a bigger market for his ideas than the polls suggest. His support for pro-business policies has made him a favorite of the Republican donor class, and he has billionaires like the Oracle founder Larry Ellison — who was aligned with Mr. Trump while he was in the White House — who are willing to put millions of dollars behind his campaign. More

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      DeSantis Is Set to Enter 2024 Presidential Race Next Week

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      The Florida governor is expected to file paperwork declaring his candidacy on May 25, with a video likely to coincide with his official entrance.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to officially enter the presidential race next week, allowing him to raise the vast amounts of cash he will need to challenge former President Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with his intentions.Mr. DeSantis is expected to file paperwork declaring his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission ahead of a major fund-raising meeting with donors in Miami on May 25 that is meant to act as a show of his financial force. He must formally enter the race before he can solicit donations for his presidential campaign.He is also likely to release a video to coincide with his official entrance into the race, and a blitz of events in the early nominating states will follow in the weeks ahead, according to one of the people. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. DeSantis would file the paperwork next week.Mr. Trump is running roughly 30 percentage points ahead of Mr. DeSantis in national polling averages, but the Florida governor would be the most credible Republican challenger to join the field so far.He is likely to start with more money in an outside group than any Republican primary candidate in history. He has more than $80 million expected to be transferred from his state account to his super PAC, Never Back Down, which has also raised more than $30 million, in addition to having tens of millions more in donor commitments, according to people familiar with the fund-raising.Mr. DeSantis also has a long series of conservative policy accomplishments that he shepherded through Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature after his landslide re-election last year. And he has gathered a large number of endorsements from state legislators in Iowa and New Hampshire, who can be influential in primary elections, as well as from those in his own state.Still, taking on Mr. Trump, whom Republicans rallied behind after he was indicted in New York, is a tall order. While the former president savages him daily, Mr. DeSantis needs to engage in a delicate dance.To win, he must appeal to the large numbers of Republican primary voters who like Mr. Trump but may be ready to move on from a candidate who lost in 2020 and continues to repeat false claims about that election. Doing so requires Mr. DeSantis to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without criticizing him so aggressively that he risks offending those Trump-friendly voters.Mr. DeSantis did seem to walk that line successfully during a weekend trip to Iowa, part of a monthslong string of political events he has attended around the country in the run-up to his announcement.On Saturday, a grinning Mr. DeSantis showed up Mr. Trump by making an unexpected appearance in Des Moines, not far from where the former president had canceled a rally that night because of potential bad weather. “It’s a beautiful night,” the governor said in an apparent jab at the absence of storms.It is still unclear where or when Mr. DeSantis plans to hold a formal rally announcing his candidacy. More