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      Fine, Call It a Comeback

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      If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election. Here’s hoping he does.But that’s not the only thing from Thursday night that I hope Biden holds onto. So far, the Biden team has been more sure-footed attacking Donald Trump’s threat to democracy than it has been defending Biden’s incumbency. That reflects a strange problem they face. By virtually any measure save food prices, Biden is presiding over a strong economy — stronger, by far, than most peer countries. As Noah Smith has noted, the Biden economy looks far better than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”: Unemployment is lower, inflation is lower, interest rates are lower, stock market returns are better.But Americans feel otherwise. The most recent Times/Siena poll found that 74 percent of registered voters rated the economy either “poor” or “fair.” By a 15-point margin, voters said Trump’s policies helped them personally. By a 25-point margin, they said Biden’s policies hurt them personally.Voters seem to remember the tail end of Trump’s third year, when the economy was strong, and not the utter calamity of his fourth year, when his Covid response was chaos and the economy was frozen. In November of 2020, unemployment was 6.7 percent and Trump had just turned a White House celebration into a superspreader event. Republicans who say Americans should ask whether they’re better off than they were four years ago should be careful what they wish for.But Biden is in a tough spot. You don’t want to run for re-election telling voters they’re wrong and the economy is actually great. Nor can you run for re-election telling voters that they’re right and the economy is bad. Biden has often seemed a little unsure what to say about his own record. Thursday night, he figured it out.“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history,” Biden said. “We have. It doesn’t make news, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Haley Voters Should Support Biden

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      Last Wednesday, a day before he delivered a rousing State of the Union address, Joe Biden issued an invitation to the roughly 30 percent of Republican primary voters who had voted for Nikki Haley in the G.O.P. presidential primaries before she dropped out. The message was simple: Donald Trump doesn’t want you, but we do. After all, Trump said on Truth Social that anyone who made a “contribution” to Haley would be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.” Biden, by contrast, acknowledged differences of opinion with Haley voters but argued that agreement on democracy, decency, the rule of law and support for NATO should unite Haley voters against Trump.Is Biden correct? Is there an argument that could persuade a meaningful number of Haley conservatives to vote for Biden? In ordinary times the answer would be no. It still may be no. Negative polarization is the dominant fact of American political life. Asking a person to change political teams is like asking him or her to disrupt friendships and family relationships, to move from the beloved “us” to the hated “them.” They’re going to do it only as a last resort, when they truly understand and feel the same way about the Republican Party that Ronald Reagan felt when he departed the Democratic Party: He didn’t leave the party. The party left him.Now, however, it’s the G.O.P. that is sprinting away from Reagan — and from Haley Republicans — as fast as MAGA can carry it. The right is not just mad at Republican dissenters for defying Trump; it has such profound policy disagreements with Reagan and Haley Republicans that it’s hard to imagine the two factions coexisting for much longer. Given the power imbalance in a Trump G.O.P., that means that for the foreseeable future traditional conservatives will face a choice: conform or leave.It’s likely that most people will conform. But they ought to leave. If a political party is a shared enterprise for advancing policies and ideas with the hope of achieving concrete outcomes, then there are key ways in which a second Biden term would be a better fit for Reagan Republicans than Round 2 of Trump.Take national security. Even apart from his self-evident disregard for democracy, Trump’s weakness in the Ukraine conflict and his hostility to American alliances may represent the most dangerous aspects of a second term, with potential world-historic consequences similar to those of American isolationism before World War II.Biden’s continuing support for NATO, by contrast, has made America stronger. The accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO has added their potent militaries to the Western alliance. The strategic Baltic Sea is now a “NATO lake.” Biden was smart to start his State of the Union address by contrasting Reagan’s demand to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall with Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin’s Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who “don’t pay.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      If There’s One Thing Trump Is Right About, It’s Republicans

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      For the thousandth time, the Republican Party refused an off-ramp that would free itself from Donald Trump. As long as he’s around, it never will.In this year’s presidential primary campaign, the party had the chance to nominate Nikki Haley, a successful, conservative former two-term governor of South Carolina. Unlike Mr. Trump’s, her public career hasn’t been characterized by a lifetime of moral squalor. And many polls show she would be a more formidable candidate against President Biden than Mr. Trump. No matter. Mr. Trump decimated Ms. Haley, most recently on Super Tuesday. She suspended her campaign the next day. But she never had a chance.The Republican Party has grown more radical, unhinged and cultlike every year since Mr. Trump took control of it. In 2016, there was outrage among Republicans after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. On the tape, in words that shocked the nation, Mr. Trump said that when you’re a star, “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”In 2023, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. His “locker room talk” turned out to be more than just talk. Yet no Republican of significance said a critical word about it.The same was true earlier this year when Mr. Trump was found liable for civil fraud. The judge in the case, Arthur F. Engoron, said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on “pathological.” Yet Republicans were united in their outrage, not in response to Mr. Trump’s actions but at the judge for the size of the penalty.Today, many Republicans not only profess to believe that the election was stolen; prominent members of Congress like Representative Elise Stefanik and Senator J.D. Vance say they would not have certified the 2020 election results, as Vice President Mike Pence, to his credit, did. Mike Johnson, who played a leading role in trying to overturn the election, is speaker of the House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supermartes: quién ganó, quién perdió y qué está por definirse

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      Donald Trump y Joe Biden avanzan hacia una revancha y se espera que Nikki Haley retire su candidatura. Pero los aspirantes presidenciales no eran los únicos en la contienda.Donald Trump y el presidente Joe Biden salieron victoriosos del Supermartes, el día más importante de la temporada de primarias, y solo la estrecha victoria de Nikki Haley en Vermont la ayudó a evitar quedar fuera en las 15 contiendas republicanas. Se esperaba que pusiera fin a su campaña el miércoles.Pero los candidatos presidenciales que han ido avanzando hacia una revancha no fueron los únicos en la votación. He aquí algunas de las otras contiendas importantes que se decidieron el martes.CaliforniaEl representante Adam Schiff, congresista demócrata desde hace mucho tiempo, y Steve Garvey, un novato republicano, pasaron a las elecciones generales en la contienda por el Senado, asegurándose dos pases de salida de la “jungla” de las primarias para competir por el escaño que quedó libre tras la muerte el año pasado de la senadora Dianne Feinstein. Con un electorado dominado por los liberales, Schiff tendrá una ventaja significativa en noviembre.Tres escaños de la Cámara de Representantes de tendencia demócrata quedaron vacantes porque sus titulares se habían presentado para el escaño vacante del Senado: el Distrito 12, representado por Barbara Lee; el Distrito 30, representado por Schiff; y el Distrito 47, representado por Katie Porter. Esas contiendas están aún por decidirse.El que fuera el escaño del expresidente de la Cámara de Representantes Kevin McCarthy en el Distrito 20 también quedó vacante porque renunció a la Cámara. El representante David Valadao, uno de los 10 republicanos de la Cámara que votaron a favor de la destitución de Trump en 2021, también se enfrenta a serios retos en las primarias del Distrito 22. Ambas primarias están aún por definirse.Carolina del NorteWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California’s Primary Election Is Today

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      The nominees for president and many other offices will be decided today, Super Tuesday, as voters in California and 14 other states head to the polls.Super Tuesday voting in 2020.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesWelcome to Super Tuesday.California and 14 other states are casting ballots for presidential nominees and many down-ballot races today, on the busiest day of the primary season.California, which used to hold its primaries in June, switched in 2020 to holding primaries in presidential election years in March in the hope of increasing the state’s influence on the national outcome. But that part of the primary is a little anticlimactic this year, with President Biden and Donald Trump already on glide paths to secure their parties’ nominations. (You can follow nationwide Super Tuesday results and the latest developments here.)What’s likely to be more interesting this time are the many other races and questions on the California ballot.Voters will have their say on State Assembly and State Senate candidates, and on a ballot measure championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would finance mental health treatment in the state. And congressional races in the state could help determine control of the U.S. House, where Republicans now have only a seven-seat majority.California’s delegation currently has 40 Democrats, 11 Republicans and one vacant seat. And 10 of the 74 most competitive House races in the nation are in California, according to the Cook Political Report, including several in the Central Valley and Orange County.The two top vote-getters in each race today, regardless of party, will compete in the general election — effectively a runoff — in November. This CalMatters tool lets you find your district and see whether it has a competitive race.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Wins North Dakota Caucuses, Resuming March to Nomination

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      Donald J. Trump defeated Nikki Haley in the North Dakota Republican caucuses on Monday, according to The Associated Press, as he resumed his march to the nomination after a victory by Ms. Haley in the Washington, D.C., primary the day before.Mr. Trump received over 84 percent of the vote, according to The A.P., an overwhelming victory that awarded the former president all 29 of the state’s delegates because he earned more than 60 percent of the vote.Turnout was very low in this election. Just under 2,000 votes have been counted. The numbers are not directly comparable, but the Democratic caucuses in North Dakota tallied more than 14,000 votes in 2020, and North Dakota is a deep-red state.Mr. Trump now has 273 delegates. Ms. Haley, who received no delegates from the North Dakota caucuses, has 43.The contest resumed Ms. Haley’s string of defeats in the nominating contests so far, most by double-digit margins, beginning with the Iowa caucuses in January and continuing through the Michigan primary last Tuesday.Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, had briefly interrupted her losing streak with a victory in the nation’s capital, winning about 63 percent of the vote on Sunday. The contest was small — just over 2,000 Republicans voted in the overwhelmingly Democratic city — but awarded Ms. Haley 19 delegates, nearly doubling her total.But it is unclear if Ms. Haley can win any of the coming state contests. North Dakota was the last state to hold a nominating contest before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will hold Republican primaries and caucuses that will distribute about a third of all delegates. Mr. Trump leads by wide margins in polls both nationally and in states that will vote on Tuesday. Recent polls in Texas, for example, show him with about 80 percent support.While Mr. Trump won’t be able to clinch the nomination on Super Tuesday, a strong performance could put him very close to the majority of delegates he needs. If Ms. Haley doesn’t win some states soon, Mr. Trump could secure the nomination by the end of March. More

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      Nikki Haley gana las primarias de Washington y corta la racha de Trump

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      La candidata obtuvo el 63 por ciento frente al 33 por ciento de Donald Trump, convirtiéndose en la primera mujer en ganar unas primarias presidenciales republicanas.El domingo, Nikki Haley ganó las primarias republicanas en Washington, D. C., registrando su primera victoria tras una serie de derrotas ante el expresidente Donald Trump, quien respondió amargamente en las redes sociales, diciendo que había evitado a propósito la contienda “porque es el ‘pantano’”.Haley obtuvo alrededor del 63 por ciento de los votos frente al 33 por ciento de Trump, según The Associated Press, asegurándose los 19 delegados disponibles y convirtiéndose en la primera mujer que gana unas primarias presidenciales republicanas. Sin embargo, Trump sigue bien posicionado para asegurarse la nominación este mes.La contienda en Washington fue pequeña: poco más de 2000 republicanos votaron en la ciudad abrumadoramente demócrata, un gran contraste en comparación con los 110.000 en Iowa, 325.000 en Nuevo Hampshire y 757.000 en Carolina del Sur.Haley pareció reconocer esto en una publicación en la red social X. “¡Gracias, D. C.!”, escribió. “Luchamos por cada centímetro”.Pero Trump no podía dejar pasar ese centímetro. En su sitio de redes sociales, afirmó falsamente que Haley había “gastado todo su tiempo, dinero y esfuerzo allí”. Nunca utilizó su nombre, y se refirió a ella repetidamente con su despectivo apodo de “cabeza de chorlito”.Haley trató de jugar con el simbolismo de Washington —que no es precisamente el lugar favorito de los republicanos— a su favor, escribiendo: “Los republicanos más cercanos a la disfunción de Washington saben que Donald Trump no ha traído más que caos y división en los últimos ocho años”.Karoline Leavitt, portavoz de Trump, dijo en un comunicado que Haley “acaba de ser coronada ‘reina del pantano’ por los grupos de presión y los expertos de D. C. que buscan proteger el fracasado statu quo”.La contienda se centrará ahora en los 15 estados que celebrarán elecciones republicanas el Supermartes, el 5 de marzo. Aunque no es matemáticamente posible que Trump consiga la nominación todavía, podría acercarse mucho con una buena actuación en el Supermartes y posicionarse para lograrlo en las próximas dos semanas.Maggie Astor cubre política para The New York Times, enfocándose en noticias de última hora, legislaciones, campañas y cómo los grupos subrepresentados o marginados se ven afectados por los sistemas políticos. Más de Maggie Astor More

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      Trump’s Tax Cut Fueled Investment but Did Not Pay for Itself, Study Finds

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      The most detailed research yet on corporate response to the 2017 Republican tax law shows modest gains for workers and high cost to the federal debt.The corporate tax cuts that President Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017 have boosted investment in the U.S. economy and delivered a modest pay bump for workers, according to the most rigorous and detailed study yet of the law’s effects.Those benefits are less than Republicans promised, though, and they have come at a high cost to the federal budget. The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to paying for themselves, as conservatives insisted they would. Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according to the quartet of researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department.The researchers found the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker.The study is the first to use vast data from corporate tax filings to draw conclusions about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed with only Republican support. Its findings could help shape debate on renewing parts of the law that are set to expire or have begun to phase out.That includes a key provision targeting investment, which the authors identify as the most cost-effective corporate cut. That benefit, which allowed companies to immediately deduct investment spending from their income taxes, would be renewed as part of a bipartisan tax bill that passed the House in January.It also challenges narratives about the bill on both sides of the aisle. Democrats have claimed the tax cuts only rewarded shareholders and did not help the economy. Republicans have called them a cost-free boon to the middle class. Both appear to have been wrong.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More