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      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Wealthy Republican Who Thinks Trump Didn’t Go Far Enough

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      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican wunderkind running for his party’s presidential nomination, would like potential supporters to know he believes in the rule of law and the Constitution’s separation of powers — though his applications of such principles can seem selective.After intense study of the Constitution, Mr. Ramaswamy says he believes that the awesome powers of the presidency would allow him to abolish the Education Department “on Day 1,” part of an assault on the “administrative state” that his 2024 rival, Donald J. Trump, fell short on during Days 1 through 1,461 of his presidency. Never mind that the Constitution confers the power of the purse on Congress, and a subsequent law makes it illegal for the president not to spend that money.Mr. Ramaswamy also wants to eradicate teachers’ unions, though he concedes that they are governed by contracts with state and local governments.And he says he would unleash the military to stamp out the scourge of fentanyl coming across the Southern border, unworried by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military for civil law enforcement.In short, Mr. Ramaswamy, a lavishly wealthy 37-year-old entrepreneur and author pitching himself as a new face of intellectual conservatism, is promising to go farther down the road of ruling by fiat than Mr. Trump would or could.Mr. Ramaswamy has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million, and he has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. John Tully for The New York Times“I respect what Donald Trump did, I do, with the America First agenda, but I think he went as far as he was going to go,” Mr. Ramaswamy told a crowd of about 100 on Tuesday night at Murphy’s Tap Room in Bedford, N.H. “I’m in this race to take the America First agenda far further than Donald Trump ever did.”Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, would seem to be the longest of long shots: He has never held elective office and has vanishingly low name recognition. But he is playing to sizable crowds and exudes a confidence that can be infectious. He has already lent his well-appointed campaign more than $10 million and has said he will spend over $100 million if necessary. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.His overt shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he labels a visionless “implementer” without the courage to venture into the hostile territories of college campuses or NBC News, are intended to clear what he sees as an eventual showdown with Mr. Trump. His brashest criticism of the former president is over Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he might skip primary debates, depriving Mr. Ramaswamy of the stage he says he needs to catch his rival.Mr. Ramaswamy sees a simple path to the White House: score respectably in the Iowa caucuses, win New Hampshire, vault to the nomination — and then triumph in a landslide that would exceed Ronald Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.“Even as a freshman, he had a similar voice, confident, articulate, very sure of himself,” said Anson Frericks, a high school friend of Mr. Ramaswamy’s and a business partner at the asset management firm they founded to give investors financial options untethered to socially conscious corporations. “Confidence builds with success. It’s a virtuous cycle.”And though his promises may be legally problematic, they sound correct to many Republicans — or at least authoritative. Mr. Ramaswamy at Linda’s Breakfast Place in Seabrook, N.H., on Thursday. Recent polling, both nationally and in New Hampshire, shows him on the rise in the Republican field, though at no more than 5 percent.John Tully for The New York Times“He seems like he knows what he’s talking about,” said Bob Willis, a self-described “Ultra-MAGA Trump person” who was waiting for Mr. Ramaswamy to arrive on Wednesday in Keene, N.H.Confidence is Mr. Ramaswamy’s gift. His father, an engineer and a patent lawyer at General Electric, is, the candidate says, far more liberal than his son. His mother is a physician. He attributes his strict vegetarianism to his Indian roots. A piano teacher began Mr. Ramaswamy’s political journey with long asides on the evils of government and the wrongs of Hillary Clinton. At Harvard, he majored in biology and developed a brash libertarianism complete with a political rapper alter ego, “Da Vek.”Between graduation and Yale Law School, he worked in finance, investing in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Before getting his law degree, he was already worth around $15 million, he said in an interview, during which he worried about wealth inequality.“I think it fuels a social hierarchy in our country that rejects the premise that we’re all coequal citizens,” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, has never held elective office and has low name recognition.John Tully for The New York TimesIndeed, Mr. Ramaswamy’s promises have an overarching theme that the nation — especially his generation and younger — has lost its spiritual center, creating what the mathematician Blaise Pascal called “a God-shaped vacuum in the heart.” That hole is being filled, Mr. Ramaswamy says, by “secular cults” — racial “wokeism,” sexual and gender fluidity, and the “climate cult” — which can be “diluted to oblivion” only with the rediscovery of the American ideals of patriotism, meritocracy and sacrifice. Mr. Ramaswamy can say things that stretch credulity or undermine his seriousness. He boasts on the campaign trail of his recent star turn jousting with Don Lemon just before Mr. Lemon was fired by CNN. But his statement in that exchange that Black Americans did not secure their civil rights until they secured their right to bear arms made little historical sense, since the civil rights movement was predicated on nonviolence. Indeed, the arming of the Black Panthers led to a deadly government crackdown.Mr. Ramaswamy accepts the established science that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but his answer is to “drill, frack, burn coal” and use more fossil fuels. That will supposedly unleash economic growth that will pay for mitigation efforts to shield everyone from climate change.He also says he is the first presidential candidate to promise to end race-based affirmative action, ignoring that this was the centerpiece of Ben Carson’s presidential run in 2016. Mr. Ramaswamy would end affirmative action by executive order, he says.He would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.Gregg Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt. John Tully for The New York TimesOn Wednesday night in Windham, N.H., Mr. Ramaswamy suggested he would name Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic vaccine skeptic challenging President Biden, as his running mate. On Tuesday in Bedford, he was asked by a woman with a Black son-in-law and a mixed-race grandson to clarify the meaning of “anti-woke.”Mr. Ramaswamy — the author of “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” — answered, “I’ve never used that word to actually describe myself,” as aides handed out stickers reading: “Stop Wokeism. Vote Vivek.”All of this can be somewhat mystifying to prominent people who worked with him. Mr. Ramaswamy’s real fortune comes from the pharmaceutical investment and drug development firm Roivant Sciences, founded after the entrepreneur had a “brilliant” idea, said Donald M. Berwick, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.Pharmaceutical giants often abandon research efforts after concluding that even if they are successful, the medicinal product might not be profitable. Roivant would then pick up such ventures and bring them to market. Roivant’s advisory board eventually included Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator and Senate majority leader; Dr. Berwick; and Kathleen Sebelius, a health and human services secretary in the Obama administration.Part of the appeal, Mr. Daschle said, was Mr. Ramaswamy’s commitment to bringing prescription drugs to market at affordable prices.“I just assumed that because he was so interested in doing as much as he was to lower costs, social responsibility and corporate responsibility was part of his thinking,” Mr. Daschle said.Then, after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Mr. Ramaswamy began publicly castigating corporations for speaking out on social issues like Black Lives Matter, voting rights and “E.S.G.” — environmental, social and governance investing. Opinion columns in The Wall Street Journal were followed by appearances on Tucker Carlson’s now-canceled Fox News show.“I was rather shocked,” said Dr. Berwick, who resigned from Roivant on Jan. 12, 2021. Within days, Mr. Daschle and Ms. Sebelius quit. Mr. Ramaswamy soon followed, to write three books, help start the asset management company with Mr. Frericks and run for president.Mr. Ramaswamy says he would not spend another dollar on aid to Ukraine but would use military force to “annihilate” Mexican drug cartels.John Tully for The New York TimesAt this very early stage of the campaign, Mr. Ramaswamy is open about the limits of his appeal. Evangelical Christians who dominate the Republican caucuses in Iowa will need to be brought along to his Hindu faith. His “war with Mexico” may go over well in South Carolina, but faces resistance among more libertarian voters in New Hampshire, he said.And New Hampshire cynics don’t quite know how seriously to take him. Victoria Gulla, 50, of Spofford, N.H., questioned whether he was part of a back-room deal with Mr. Trump to help take out Mr. DeSantis in exchange for a position in the next Trump administration, in the way she thinks Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, helped take down Senator Marco Rubio in New Hampshire in 2016.In a statement on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump fueled that kind of speculation, saying he was “pleased to see that Vivek Ramaswamy is doing so well” in a recent poll and “seems to be on his way to catching Ron DeSanctimonious.”A hundred million dollars in self-funding could keep Mr. Ramaswamy in the race for a long time, and some voters were clearly persuaded by Mr. Ramaswamy’s nearly messianic appeal for a spiritual and social renewal.Gregg Dumont, 45, of Manchester, broke into tears in Windham as he praised the candidate for daring to save his children from moral decay and what he called the “racism” of identity politics.Mr. Dumont, wearing a T-shirt picturing Mr. Trump in jail as a political prisoner, said Mr. Ramaswamy had his vote over the man on his shirt: “All the policies with an upgrade, and none of the personality,” he said. “I’m sick of the narcissism.” More

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      5 Applause Lines from Vivek Ramaswamy’s Stump Speech

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      “End” this, “shut down” that, “annihilate” the other thing. A political newcomer promises to outdo Donald Trump.Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and author running for president as a Republican, has never run for elective office before, but he has clearly picked up the art of the stump speech. Here are five of his most reliable applause lines over a few days on the trail in New Hampshire.“I will be the first presidential candidate to say I will end race-based affirmative action.”It is a questionable assertion, because Ben Carson made ending affirmative action central to his 2016 campaign. But to the overwhelmingly white audiences that Mr. Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, is addressing, the promise goes over well. It fits in with his broader criticism of group identity and of the praise for diversity that is fundamental to liberal politics. But his pledge to end racial preferences by executive order could be more complicated than he makes it sound.“I will shut down the fourth branch of government, the administrative state. You cannot tame that beast. You must end it.”Mr. Ramaswamy insists that he will go much further than former President Donald J. Trump did to “drain the swamp” of the “Deep State.” And he says he will do it unilaterally, ending Civil Service protections by executive order, imposing eight-year term limits on federal positions, shuttering the Education Department and replacing the F.B.I., the I.R.S., and other agencies. The notion that “those elected to government should actually run the government” is central to his campaign, which demonizes the unelected bureaucracy that he says runs Washington.“We will use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels.”While in Keene, N.H., on Wednesday, Mr. Ramaswamy mused about using a local precision-weapons plant to elaborate on his threat of military action against organized crime across the southern border in Mexico. Never mind that such a strike would be against a U.S. ally and neighbor. Mr. Trump made similar threats but never carried them out. And Mr. Ramaswamy has conceded that among some libertarian-minded voters, the promise sounds disconcertingly bellicose.“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?”The proposal might not win the hearts of Generation Z, but it appeals to older Republican primary voters who believe the country has lost its sense of citizenship and purpose. It might also resonate with those who understand how lopsided the youth vote is in favor of Democrats.“Today we depend on our main enemy for our entire modern way of life. That is a problem. The Declaration of Independence that I will sign as your next president will be our Declaration of Independence from Communist China.”Mr. Ramaswamy says confronting China would be his top foreign policy priority, and it will entail short-term pain. He would prevent American businesses from expanding into Chinese markets unless “our demands are met” by Beijing. Those include more intellectual property protections and an end to required joint ventures with state-controlled businesses. Unwinding consumer dependence on China would be difficult and economically distressing, he concedes, but he said the endeavor would be the essence of citizen sacrifice and would forge national unity. More

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      Something’s Got to Give

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      It’s been 52 years since Congress passed, and the country ratified, a constitutional amendment — the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 in the wake of the Vietnam War and the broader disruption of the 1960s. (The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was passed in 1789.) It’s been 64 years since Congress added states to the union — Alaska and Hawaii, in 1959. And it’s been 94 years since Congress capped the size of the House of Representatives at 435 members.You might be tempted to treat these facts as trivia. But the truth is that they say something profound about American politics. For more than 50 years, the United States has been frozen in a kind of structural and constitutional stasis. Despite deep changes in our society — among them major population growth and at least two generational waves — we have made no formal changes to our national charter, nor have we added states or rearranged the federal system or altered the rules of political competition.One reason this matters, as Kate Shaw and Julie C. Suk observe in a recent essay for Times Opinion, is that “several generations of Americans have lost the habit and muscle memory of seeking formal constitutional change.” Unaccustomed to the concept and convinced that it is functionally impossible, Americans have abandoned the very notion that we can change our Constitution. Instead, we place the onus for change on the Supreme Court and hope for the best. Out with popular sovereignty, in with judicial supremacy.There is another reason this matters. Our stagnant political system has produced a stagnant political landscape. Neither party has been able to obtain a lasting advantage over the other, nor is either party poised to do so. The margins of victory and defeat in national elections are slim. The Republican majority that gave President George W. Bush a second term in the White House — and inspired, however briefly, visions of a permanent Republican majority — came to just 50.7 percent of the overall vote. President Barack Obama won his second term by around four percentage points, and President Biden won by a similar margin in 2020. Donald Trump, as we know, didn’t win a majority of voters in 2016.Control of Congress is evenly matched as well. Majorities are made with narrow margins in a handful of contested races, where victory can rest more on the shape of the district map — and the extent of the gerrymandering, assuming it holds — than on any kind of political persuasion. That’s the House. In the Senate, control has lurched back and forth on the basis of a few competitive seats in a few competitive states. And the next presidential election, thanks to the Electoral College, will be a game of inches in a small batch of closely matched states rather than a true national election.Past eras of political dynamism often came from some change in the overall political order. Throughout the 19th century, for example, the addition of states either transformed the terrain on which Americans fought partisan politics or opened avenues for long-term success for either one of the two major parties. States could be used to solidify partisan control in Washington — the reason we have two Dakotas instead of one — or used to extend and enlarge an existing coalition.Progressive-era constitutional transformations — the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage and Prohibition — reverberated through partisan politics, and the flood of Black Americans from Southern fields to Northern cities put an indelible stamp on the behavior of Democrats and Republicans.We lack for political disruption on that scale. There are no constitutional amendments on the table that might alter the terms of partisan combat in this country. There’s no chance — anytime soon — that we’ll end the Electoral College or radically expand the size of the House, moves that could change the national political calculus for both parties. There are no prospects, at this point, for new states, whether D.C., Puerto Rico or any of the other territories where Americans live and work without real representation in Congress.There’s nothing either constitutional or structural on the horizon of American politics that might unsettle or shake the political system itself out of its stagnation. Nothing that could push the public in new directions or force the parties themselves to build new kinds of coalitions. Nothing, in short, that could help Americans untangle the pathologies of our current political order.The fact of the matter is that there are forces that are trying to break the stasis of American politics. There’s the Supreme Court, which has used its iron grip on constitutional meaning to accumulate power in its chambers, to the detriment of other institutions of American governance. There’s the Republican Party, which has used the countermajoritarian features of our system to build redoubts of power, insulated from the voters themselves. And there is an authoritarian movement, led and animated by Trump, that wants to renounce constitutional government in favor of an authoritarian patronage regime, with his family at its center.Each of these forces is trying to game the current system, to build a new order from the pieces as they exist. But there’s nothing that says we can’t write new rules. And there’s nothing that says that we have to play this particular game.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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      Nikki Haley, on the Trail in South Carolina, Says, ‘Yes, I Am in My Prime’

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      Nikki Haley drew a rally crowd’s applause with a reference to Don Lemon’s remarks about women and age as she struggled to gain ground against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in the Republican field.Nikki Haley’s supporters are quick to repeat a theme that has become central to her campaign: She has been underestimated before.So when Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, recounted on Thursday evening what the former CNN anchor Don Lemon had said about her during a recent broadcast, the crowd of hundreds who had gathered to hear her speak erupted in applause.Ms. Haley, who has couched her campaign message in a call for “a new generation of leaders,” encouraged the crowd to “leave the drama of the past” behind — a thinly veiled allusion to former President Donald J. Trump’s administration. And she repeated her calls for term limits and mental competency tests for elected leaders, adding that she was willing to be flexible about age ranges.“We’ve got to make sure that these people are ready to fight — and I don’t care if you do it for ages 50 and over,” she told the crowd in Greer, in the northwest corner of South Carolina. “Because yes, I am in my prime.”She added: “God bless Don Lemon. I just want to say, ‘Who’s in their prime now?’”Ms. Haley, 51, was alluding to a moment in February when Mr. Lemon said that he was “uncomfortable” about Ms. Haley’s raising the question of age and mental competency among political leaders.Ms. Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Mr. Lemon said. “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Mr. Lemon later apologized for the remarks. He was ousted from CNN last week.The energy that Ms. Haley can capture on the campaign trail contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressThe line resonated in particular with women in the crowd, and several attendees said they saw Ms. Haley’s response to Mr. Lemon as a creative means of pointing out — and making fun of — a moment of sexism.Yet, the energy that Ms. Haley can capture in a room like the one in Greer contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum in an increasingly crowded Republican primary field. She will most likely soon have to contend with the entry of a fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, into the race, as well as with the two candidates who are garnering the most attention and the bulk of the support in polls: Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.After her stump speech, as Ms. Haley greeted supporters and took photos with them, Rachel Dankel, a real estate agent in her 50s who is based in Greenville, S.C., said she had told Ms. Haley how much she appreciated her pushing back on Mr. Lemon’s words. When she first heard about his comment, she said, “I wanted to throw up.”“I thought that was, to me, the worst thing that somebody could say,” she said. “That’s so degrading. You have men in their 80s, and they’re not over — they’re not too old?”Ms. Haley, who was the first Republican presidential candidate to challenge Mr. Trump in the current campaign, has aimed to separate herself from the pack by taking early stances on issues like age limits among political leaders. Last week, she suggested in an interview with Fox News that President Biden, who is 80, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected.Ms. Haley has also raised money off Mr. Lemon’s comments. Her campaign website sells a beverage koozie that reads: “Past my prime? Hold my beer”Ms. Haley’s campaign is counting on her in-state bona fides — she was a longtime State House member in a district close to the State Capitol and the first woman to serve as governor — to bolster her standing in the Palmetto State. The South Carolina primary is third on the Republican calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire, and it is the Haley campaign’s belief that her home-state electorate will propel her to the top of the primary field.And while she is polling in the low single digits in most national surveys, an April poll conducted by Winthrop University showed her with her 18 percent support in her home state, well behind Mr. Trump but within striking distance of Mr. DeSantis.“There’s a certain segment out there that’s very excited about her running, and then there’s the hard-core Trumpists who are mad at her for running,” said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina Republican political strategist.At the rally on Thursday, Christy Willis, 50, a teacher who is still undecided about whom she will support in 2024, said she had not heard about Mr. Lemon’s comments before hearing Ms. Haley repeat them on Thursday at the Cannon Center, an event space. After learning of the context, she said she had found the back-and-forth intriguing.“It does open a discussion about ageism and sexism and feminism,” she said, referring to Mr. Biden’s age. “He’s allowed to do things that a woman probably would not be able to do.” More

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      The Devolution of Ron DeSantis

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      After a promising start, he has become bogged down in issues that have divided and hurt Republicans in the past.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has fallen sharply in the polls.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAt the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis looked as if he might be the answer to all of the Republican Party’s problems.For the first time in decades, a conservative politician rose to national prominence on issues that unified the party’s populist base with its beleaguered establishment — and without triggering a Resistance from Florida Democrats. He seemed to offer Republicans a path beyond the divisions and defeats of the last 15 years.Mr. DeSantis does not seem like the answer anymore. His poll numbers are cratering. His strength as a general election candidate is being questioned. This is partly because he’s fallen flat on the national stage, but it’s also because he’s slowly devolved into an older kind of Republican — the kind without answers to the party’s problems.He’s been bogged down in the very issues that divided and hurt Republicans in the past, like abortion, entitlements, Russia and the conduct of Donald J. Trump. Against Mr. Trump and without Democrats as a foil, his instinct to take the most conservative stance has pushed him far to the right. He’s devolved into another Ted Cruz.Mr. DeSantis will probably never be an entertainer like Mr. Trump, an orator like Ronald Reagan, or someone to get a beer with like George W. Bush. But to compete for the nomination, he will at least need to be who he appeared to be a few months ago: a new kind of conservative, who can appeal to the establishment and the base by focusing on the new set of issues that got him here: the fight for “freedom” and against “woke.”Mr. DeSantis’s varying campaigns against everything from coronavirus restrictions to gender studies curriculums weren’t extraordinarily popular, at least not in terms of national polling, but it was a type of political gold nonetheless. It let him channel the passions of the Republican base and get on Fox News without offending bourgeoise conservative sensibilities on race, immigration and gender. In fact, many elite conservatives disliked “woke” and coronavirus restrictions just like the rank-and-file. Even some Democrats sympathized with his positions. As a result, he won re-election in Florida in a landslide. Democratic turnout was abysmal.This combination of base and elite appeal made him a natural candidate to lead an anti-Trump coalition. In the last presidential primary, in 2016, Mr. Trump held the center of the Republican electorate and left his opposition split on either side. To his right, there was Mr. Cruz and the orthodox conservatives. To his left, there was Marco Rubio, John Kasich and the relatively moderate, business-friendly establishment. None of these factional figures stood a chance of unifying those two disparate groups, but for a fleeting moment after the midterms last year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to assemble all of the various not-necessarily-Trump factions under his banner.Since then, Mr. DeSantis’s coalition has unraveled. His superficial struggles on the campaign trail might be evident to most, but what is more easily overlooked is an overarching struggle to balance the competing needs of an ideologically diverse coalition in a Republican primary.His challenge has two halves. First, his instinct to move to the right has been more fraught in a Republican primary than it was when “woke” liberals were his foil. After all, there’s plenty of room to line up to the right of “woke” without alienating anyone on the right. Trying to be to the right of Mr. Trump, on the other hand, involves greater risk regarding both the general electorate and his relatively moderate supporters.Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis actually fares best among moderate voters in Republican primary polling. This probably says more about which Republicans are most skeptical about Mr. Trump than it does about Mr. DeSantis, but it nonetheless means that his conservative instincts routinely put him at odds with his own base.In some cases, the tension between Mr. DeSantis and his base is unavoidable — and his moderate supporters will sometimes lose. A politician can’t always please every constituency. Abortion, for instance, poses a legitimate problem for Mr. DeSantis — and every Republican nowadays.But Mr. DeSantis has not always seemed cognizant of the delicate balancing act ahead of him and has committed errors as a result. His relatively soft position on Russia regarding Ukraine, for instance, overlooked that the elite, hawkish, neoconservative right not only cares deeply about containing Russia but would also inevitably be part of any successful anti-Trump coalition. Mr. DeSantis doesn’t need to be a neocon to hold this support against Mr. Trump, but it does seem he needs to support defending Ukraine.The second half is that the fights for “freedom” and against “woke” have not been a glue that’s held his fractious coalition together. So far this year, he’s struggled to make the race about these issues at all. Instead, abortion, entitlements, Russia and Mr. Trump have dominated the conversation.Of all the things that have happened to Mr. DeSantis so far this year, this might be the most troubling and telling. Tactical mistakes can be fixed, but if fighting for “freedom” and against “woke” isn’t a powerful, organizing theme, then he’s not especially different from any other Republican.This might not be entirely Mr. DeSantis’s fault. The coronavirus pandemic is over — at least for political purposes. The peak of “woke” might have come and gone as well: The arc of new left culture fights seems to have bent into a reactionary phase in which debate centers as much or more on proposed Republican restrictions on books, drag shows and A.P. history curriculums as on the latest controversy about the excesses of the left. Mr. DeSantis’s renewal of a year-old fight against Disney — the exact origins of which I suspect would stump even many regular readers of this newsletter — is a telling indicator that his campaign against “woke” is struggling for oxygen.At the same time as Mr. DeSantis’s new issues have faded, the old issues have come roaring back. The Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin made sure of it. So did Mr. Trump, who attacked Mr. DeSantis for old statements on cutting entitlements. And while all of these issues make Mr. DeSantis vulnerable in various ways, there are few opportunities to attack Mr. Trump as too woke.The devolution of Mr. DeSantis, in other words, is partly due to forces beyond his control. But if “freedom” or “woke” is not enough, he will probably need a new set of issues to unite open-to-anyone-but-Trump voters. More

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      The Trump Inevitability Question

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOutside a Manhattan courtroom, on the day of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment, Astead spoke to two camps of spectators. Supporters cast Mr. Trump as the victim of prosecutorial overreach, while opposing voices hoped this was just the beginning of his legal troubles. With an ever-shifting political landscape as America heads toward the 2024 election, what do Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes mean for his electoral viability? Is success for the former president, despite it all, an inevitability?Astead speaks with Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, about what the polls do — and do not — tell us.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Pool photo by Andrew KellyOn today’s episodeNate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times. About ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Repulsed by Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump? Tough.

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      The presidential race sure does seem like it’ll wind up coming down to Biden vs. Trump — and a whole lot of people would rather have an alternative.Here’s an important early message: Even if you aren’t thrilled by the Republican and Democratic options come Election Day, don’t vote for anybody else.We’re talking here about the attraction of third parties. So tempting. So disaster-inducing.The lure is obvious. Donald Trump’s terrible and Joe Biden’s boring. Much more satisfying to go to the polls and announce you’re too far above the status quo to vote for either.The way so many people did in 2016, when Trump won the presidency thanks to the Electoral College votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Which Hillary Clinton would probably have carried if the folks who were appalled by Trump had voted for her instead of the Libertarian or Green Party candidates.OK, ticked-off swing staters, how did that work for you in the long run?This brings us to No Labels, a new group that’s warning it might launch a third-party candidacy if it isn’t happy with the two major party nominees.“We care about this country more than the demands of any political party,” No Labels announces on its website. Its founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, told interviewers that his group believes the American people “are so dissatisfied with the choice of Presidents Trump or Biden that they want a third alternative.”Yeah. But let’s stop here to recall that Lieberman is a former U.S. senator, Democrat of Connecticut. Who ran for vice president with Al Gore on the Democratic ticket in 2000, hurt Gore’s chances with a terrible performance in a debate with Dick Cheney, then made a totally disastrous attempt to run for president himself four years later.Hard to think of him as a guy with big answers. And about that business of voters wanting a third choice: A lot of them do, until it turns out that option throws the race to the worse of the top two.Remember all the chaos in the 2000 Florida vote count? The entire presidential election hinged on the result. In the end, Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, got more than 97,000 votes there. In a state that George W. Bush eventually won by 537.Now Nader had a phenomenal career as a champion of consumer protection and the environment. But this was a terrible finale. His candidacy gave Floridians who felt that Gore was not very exciting a chance to declare their disaffection. It gave them a chance to feel superior. It gave the country a new President Bush. And a war in Iraq.I talked with Nader about his role much later, and he basically said the outcome was Gore’s fault for being a bad candidate. This conversation took place when the country was bearing down on the 2016 election, and Nader vowed not to vote for either Trump or Clinton. “They’re not alike,” he acknowledged, but added, “they’re both terrible.”Think that was the last time I ever consulted Ralph Nader.The third-party thingy also comes up in legislative races. Remember the 2018 Senate contest in Arizona? No? OK, that’s fair. The Democratic candidate was Kyrsten Sinema, who seemed to be in danger of losing because the Green Party was on the ballot, capable of siphoning off a chunk of her supporters. Even though Sinema had a good environmental record! Well, a few days before the election the Green candidate — have I mentioned her name was Angela Green? — urged her supporters to vote for Sinema. Who did squeak out a win.As senator, Sinema became an, um, unreliable Democratic vote. Who you might call either principled or egocentrically uncooperative. In any case, it didn’t look like she’d have much chance of being renominated. So now she’s very likely to run as … an independent.Another senator who frequently drives Democratic leaders crazy is Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who hasn’t announced his own plans. But he’s started to flirt with a presidential run. On a No Labels ticket? “I don’t rule myself in and I don’t rule myself out,” he helpfully told an interviewer.Sigh.Politicians are perfectly well aware of what effect a third option can have on elections. Back in 2020, a group of Montanans who’d signed petitions to put the Green Party on the ballot discovered that the Republicans had spent $100,000 to support the signature-gathering effort — undoubtedly in hopes that the Green candidate would take votes away from former Democratic governor Steve Bullock when he ran for the Senate. The irate voters went to court and a judge finally ruled that they could remove their names.Didn’t help Bullock win, but it does leave another message about the way too many options can be used to screw up an election. Really, people, when it comes time to go to the polls, the smartest thing you can do is accept the depressing compromises that can come with a two-party democracy. Then straighten your back and fight for change anyhow.Don’t forget to vote! But feel free to go home after and have three or four drinks.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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      in Elections

      Chris Christie Taunts Trump as ‘Afraid’ of Presidential Debates

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      Mr. Christie, who is weighing a presidential bid, also called Donald Trump “a child” for fixating on the 2020 election and said “he doesn’t have a lot of serious answers” for the nation’s problems.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, one of the few potential Republican presidential candidates willing to attack Donald J. Trump directly, laced into the former president on Wednesday over his reported reluctance to participate in presidential debates.“Obviously, he’s afraid,” taunted Mr. Christie, a Trump defender-turned-critic, in an interview with the conservative media personality Hugh Hewitt. “He’s afraid to get on the stage against people who are serious.”Mr. Trump, the current Republican poll leader, appears likely to skip at least one of the first two debates of the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest, indicating that he does not want to elevate lower-polling rivals. A number of them — most notably Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to announce his campaign soon — have been reluctant to confront Mr. Trump frontally, a sign of the sway he continues to hold over much of the Republican base.“If he really cares about the country — and I have deep questions about that — but if he really cares about the country, then he’s going to get up there, and he shouldn’t be afraid,” Mr. Christie said. He added: “If, in fact, his ideas are so great, if his leadership is so outstanding, then his lead will only increase if he gets on the stage, not decrease.”Asked for comment, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, replied, “Who?”He said that Mr. Christie “has no idea what he is talking about and should stick to being a talking head instead of trying to play pretend candidate.”In the interview, Mr. Christie — who is currently polling at 1 to 2 percent — also indicated that he would make a decision about his own presidential plans in the next two weeks.“The presidency is not a scripted exercise, and so that’s why I think debates are important,” Mr. Christie said.He suggested that Mr. Trump, who continues to lie about the integrity of the 2020 election, was reluctant to debate “because he doesn’t have a lot of serious answers for the problems that are facing the country right now. All he wants to do is go back and reprosecute the 2020 election because his feelings are hurt. He’s a child in that regard.” More