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Biden, in Midterm Campaign Pitch, Focuses on Social Security and Medicare
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — President Biden pressed his argument on Tuesday that a Republican victory in next week’s midterm congressional elections would endanger Social Security and Medicare, bringing his case to the retirement haven of Florida, where the politics of the two programs resonate historically.During a whirlwind one-day swing through vote-rich South Florida, Mr. Biden took credit for legislation he pushed through Congress to curb the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients and asserted that Republicans plan to undermine the foundations of the two major government programs benefiting older Americans.“They’re coming after your Social Security and Medicare, and they’re saying it out loud,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at his first full-fledged campaign rally since Labor Day. By contrast, he boasted that Social Security just approved an 8.7 percent increase in benefits, the largest in four decades. “The checks are going to go up and the Medicare fees are going to go down at the same time. And I promise you: I’ll protect Social Security. I’ll protect Medicare. I’ll protect you.”The president has turned increasingly to stark warnings about Social Security and Medicare in the closing days of the campaign, banking on a traditional Democratic issue to galvanize older voters, who tend to turn out more reliably during midterm elections than other generations. Republicans complain that such “Mediscare” tactics unfairly distort their position and reflect desperation by Democrats on the defensive over inflation, which is near a 40-year high.As he presented Republicans as the party of radicalism during his stops on Tuesday, Mr. Biden chastised some of its prominent figures for not taking an attack early Friday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband seriously and spreading conspiracy theories about it.More on Social Security and RetirementEarning Income After Retiring: Collecting Social Security while working can get complicated. Here are some key things to remember.An Uptick in Elder Poverty: Older Americans didn’t fare as well through the pandemic. But longer-term trends aren’t moving in their favor, either.Medicare Costs: Low-income Americans on Medicare can get assistance paying their premiums and other expenses. This is how to apply.Claiming Social Security: Looking to make the most of this benefit? These online tools can help you figure out your income needs and when to file.“Look at the response of Republicans, making jokes about it,” Mr. Biden said at an earlier fund-raising reception for former Gov. Charlie Crist, who is seeking to reclaim his old office. “The guy purchases a hammer to kneecap” the woman who stands second in line to the presidency, he said of the assailant, and some Republicans brushed it off. “These guys are extremely extreme,” he said.The president’s trip to Florida opened a final week of campaigning before next Tuesday’s vote, but it did not go without its bumps. Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, fumbled at one point during his first talk of the day, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine. While trying to correct himself, he then misstated how his son Beau, who served in the Delaware Army National Guard in Iraq, died in 2015.“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach. “Excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” he said. To explain, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” Then he seemed to catch himself again and sought to amend his words one more time. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s brain cancer stemmed from his service in Iraq and exposure to toxic burn pits.In addition to Florida, Mr. Biden’s travels this week are expected to take him to New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania and Maryland. With anemic approval ratings, the president is avoiding some of the most competitive states, like Arizona, Georgia and Ohio, where Democrats are not eager to have him at their side. But he will join former President Barack Obama on Saturday in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden was born, to bolster John Fetterman’s campaign for Senate, one of the hottest and tightest races in the country.Florida would seem to be fertile territory for Mr. Biden, given that the Inflation Reduction Act, which he signed into law after it passed on party-line votes this summer, caps out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses for Medicare recipients, limits the cost of insulin and empowers the government to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, longtime goals of many older Americans. “We beat Big Pharma,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday.But when national Democrats talk about states where they believe they have good prospects next week, Florida does not make the list. Even though statewide races have been close in recent cycles, Democrats have felt burned by narrow losses and have been reluctant to invest the sizable amounts of money required in a state with so many media markets only to be disappointed again.In addition to Mr. Crist, who is seeking to oust the incumbent Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, Mr. Biden appeared with Representative Val B. Demings, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marco Rubio. Mr. DeSantis leads by roughly nine percentage points and Mr. Rubio by about seven percentage points, according to an aggregation of polls by the political data website FiveThirtyEight.Democrats chose a modest arena at Florida Memorial University, a historically Black college, for the rally, assembling a far smaller crowd than typically mustered by former President Donald J. Trump, a Florida resident.Addressing a largely Black audience, Mr. Biden boasted of his nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other diverse appointees. “Guess what? I promised you I would have a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” he said. “She’s on the Supreme Court. And she’s smarter than the rest of them.”He went after some Republicans by name. He called Mr. DeSantis “Donald Trump incarnate.” He accused Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the would-be new speaker, of being “reckless and irresponsible.” And he assailed Republicans like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the onetime QAnon follower who has worked to push the party to the right, for criticizing his effort to forgive some student loan debt while having their own Covid-19 loan debt forgiven.The president appeared most irritated by attacks on him over inflation. In Hallandale Beach, he pointed to his efforts to limit health care costs for seniors. “They talk about inflation all the time,” he said. “What in God’s name?” He added: “If you have to take a prescription and it cost you an arm and a leg and I reduce that, you don’t have to pay as much. That reduces your cost of living. It reduces inflation.”To bolster his contention that Republicans are aiming to undercut Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Biden once again cited a legislative agenda put forth by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, that has been disavowed by other Republicans, most notably Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party’s leader in the upper chamber. Mr. Scott’s legislative agenda called for “sunsetting” all federal legislation every five years, meaning programs like Social Security and Medicare would expire unless reauthorized by Congress.Before the president’s trip to Florida, Mr. Scott said on Sunday that his position had been twisted and that “I don’t know one Republican” who favors cutting Social Security payments or cutting Medicare benefits.“I believe we’ve got to preserve them and make sure that we keep them,” Mr. Scott told Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on CNN. “What I want to do is make sure we live within our means and make sure we preserve those programs. People paid into them. They believe in them. I believe in them. I’m going to fight like hell to make sure we preserve Medicare and Social Security.” More
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Biden Misstates How His Son Beau Died in 2nd Verbal Fumble in Florida
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — President Biden verbally fumbled during a campaign swing in Florida on Tuesday, confusing the American war in Iraq with the Russian war in Ukraine, and then he fumbled again while he tried to correct himself, misstating how his son Beau died in 2015.In defending his record on inflation, Mr. Biden was trying to blame rising costs on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his invasion of Ukraine, which has roiled international energy markets. It’s a point that he makes regularly in public speeches, but this time he mixed up his geography and history.“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing,” Mr. Biden told a crowd during a speech at O.B. Johnson Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., before heading to Miami Gardens for an evening campaign rally with Democratic candidates. He quickly caught his own mistake. “Excuse me,” he said, “the war in Ukraine.”But as he tried to explain how he mixed up the two wars, he told the audience, “I think of Iraq because that’s where my son died.” In fact, Beau Biden, a military lawyer in the Delaware Army National Guard, served for a year in Iraq. He returned home in 2009 and died of brain cancer in the United States in 2015.Mr. Biden, who has made the same mistake before, once again sought to correct himself. “Because, he died,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that Beau’s cancer could have been caused by his service in Iraq, where he may have been exposed to toxic burn pits.Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, has a long record of gaffes dating back to when he was a young man. But his misstatements have become more pronounced, and more noticed, now that he has the spotlight of the presidency constantly on him. While Mr. Biden has said he intends to run for a second term, his age ranked at the top of the list for Democratic voters who told pollsters that they want the party to find an alternative, according to a survey by New York Times and Siena College this summer. More
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Putin Says Russia Is Battling ‘Strange’ Western Elites
Ahead of U.S. elections, the Russian leader sounded like some right-wing Westerners, saying his fight is not with those in the West who hold “traditional values.”President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday that Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens.Mr. Putin, addressing an annual foreign policy conference outside Moscow, appeared intent on capitalizing on political divisions in the United States and its allies that have only heightened since they began showering Ukraine with military aid to fend off the Russian invasion.Many of the Russian leader’s themes were familiar, but they took on particular resonance given the coming midterm elections in the United States and growing discontent in Europe over the costs of the war.“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.One, he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” for which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” and trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on everyone else. He peppered his remarks with references to “dozens of genders” and “gay parades.”Mr. Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened by the possible expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies — to countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.He denied that Moscow was preparing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. “We have no need to do this,” he said. “There’s no sense for us, neither political nor military.”It is Mr. Putin himself, however, who has raised that prospect, as have other senior Russian officials. And past Kremlin assurances about its intentions have proved unreliable. In the days before the war began, for example, Russia denied that it planned to invade Ukraine.Mr. Putin has tried to blame the West for the war in Ukraine. This residential building in Kyiv was hit by missiles on the second day of the Russian invasion.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times“This is a trick — it shouldn’t make anyone relax,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, noting that Mr. Putin has blamed the West and its support for an independent Ukraine for every escalation in the war. “His goal is to show that escalation is the product of Western policies.”In his nearly four-hour speech and question-and-answer session, the Russian leader did not mention the U.S. midterm elections taking place on Nov. 8. But his barbs against “elites” were a reminder that he still hopes to build alliances with supporters of Russia in the West.The State of the WarFears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.The Looming Fight for Kherson: As Russian forces pillage the occupied southern port city and pressure residents to leave for Russia, a nearby hydroelectric dam has emerged as a linchpin in what is shaping up to be the site of the next major battle in Ukraine.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine, which has shown recent signs of fraying with the approach of U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.Anti-Drone Warfare: Since Russia began terrorizing Ukrainian cities in recent weeks with Iranian-made drones, Ukraine has turned its focus to an intense counter-drone strategy. The hastily assembled effort has been surprisingly successful.In the United States, Republican leaders have said that should they regain control of the House and Senate, President Biden can no longer expect a “blank check” when it comes to sending military aid to Ukraine, despite strong popular backing for that aid. Even some Democrats, faced with restive constituents, have appeared to distance themselves from support for the war effort.And Mr. Putin’s attack on “elites” may also play well in the United States, where many Republican candidates have rallied voters by denouncing leaders they say are out of touch, and their liberal approaches to divisive social issues.“In the United States,” he said, “there’s a very strong part of the public who maintain traditional values, and they’re with us. We know about this.”Mr. Putin’s attempts to gain political ground in the West came as his military is struggling — often without success — to keep hold of the territory it seized in Ukraine after invading on Feb. 24.Ukrainian soldiers receiving a meal near the front line in the Kherson region on Thursday.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesIn the question-and-answer session, the foreign policy analyst moderating the event, Fyodor Lukyanov, pressed Mr. Putin on those setbacks, and said there was a widespread view that Russia had “underestimated the enemy.”“Honestly, society doesn’t understand — what’s the plan?” Mr. Lukyanov asked.Mr. Putin brushed aside the implicit criticism, arguing that Ukraine’s fierce resistance showed that he was right to launch the invasion. The longer Russia had waited, he said, “the worse it would have been for us, the more difficult and more dangerous.”Mr. Putin also repeated Russia’s claims that Ukraine was preparing to detonate a “dirty bomb” to spread radioactive material on its territory and then blame Moscow. Ukraine and the West say that the claims — for which Russia has offered no evidence — are baseless disinformation that could be used as a pretext by the Kremlin to use a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.Ms. Stanovaya, the political analyst, said Mr. Putin appeared to be trying to harness worldwide anti-establishment sentiment.“There’s now a sense that he is building an anti-Western coalition on a global scale,” she said. “He doesn’t think he’s been backed into a corner. He thinks he’s a witness to the birth of a new world.”Mr. Putin himself said he was confident that eventually, the West would be forced to engage Russia and other world powers in talks on a future world order.“I always believed, and believe, in the power of common sense,” Mr. Putin said. “I am therefore convinced that sooner or later, the new centers of the multipolar world order and the West will have to start a conversation of equals.”As Western leaders have tried to punish Moscow for the war with crushing sanctions, Russian leaders have sought to build new ties to other nations and strengthen existing ones. On Thursday, the government of one of those nations, China, an increasingly important ally, offered a full-throated endorsement of Mr. Putin’s leadership.In a telephone call with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that any attempt to block the progress between the two countries would never succeed, the Chinese ministry said in a statement.In Ukraine on Thursday, Russian forces pursued their drone and missile assaults on infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power. And the Ukrainian military said it was increasing the number of soldiers near its northern border with Belarus, where it noted what it said were unusual troop movements.Tanks during Russian and Belarusian military drills in Belarus in February, days before the invasion of Ukraine.Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr./Associated PressBrig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov said Kyiv had no new evidence to suggest that Belarusian or Russian forces were preparing a strike force, but concern has mounted in recent days after the Kremlin dispatched thousands of soldiers to Belarus.Moscow used Belarus, its closest military and political ally, to help stage its invasion of Ukraine, and the movement of Russian soldiers there is closely monitored by Ukraine and its Western allies.Ukraine’s government has issued broad statements in recent weeks indicating that it was aware of the threat of an offensive from that direction, with the military releasing a video recently warning that “if the Belarusian army supports Russian aggression,” Kyiv would respond “with our entire arsenal of weapons.”But the more immediate concern for Ukrainian officials is the continuing use of Belarus as a launching pad for aerial assaults.Russia has deployed its troops to airfields in Belarus, and this week, it used Belarusian territory to carry out 10 launches of Iranian-made drones, General Hromov said.Reporting was contributed by More
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Jill Biden Discusses Friend’s Abortion and Rebukes ‘Extremist Republicans’
The first lady said she had once helped a friend recover from an abortion before there was a constitutional right to the procedure. “Women will not let this country go backwards,” she said.Jill Biden, the first lady, said on Friday that she had once helped a friend recover from an abortion before there was a constitutional right to the procedure, evoking the issue in deeply personal terms at a political fund-raiser as she warned of further restrictions from “extremist Republicans.”Dr. Biden, who was introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi before speaking to a group of donors in San Francisco, said that in the late 1960s — years before the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade established a right to abortion — a friend got pregnant. At that time, abortion was outlawed in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Biden grew up.Her friend, whom she did not name, told her that she had undergone a psychological evaluation to be declared mentally unfit before a doctor agreed to administer one.“I went to see her in the hospital and then cried the whole drive home,” said Dr. Biden, who said she was 17 at the time. “When she was discharged from the hospital, she couldn’t go back to her house, so I gathered my courage and asked my mom, ‘Can she come stay with us?’”Dr. Biden, now 71, said that her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, allowed her friend to visit and that the two kept it a secret. Mrs. Jacobs died in 2008.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.“Secrecy. Shame. Silence. Danger. Even death,” Dr. Biden said. “That’s what defined that time for so many women.”President Biden, a Roman Catholic who has struggled with his views over abortion access, often connects his argument to the broader right for Americans to make private medical decisions. In speeches and public statements, he uses the word “abortion” sparingly, focusing instead on broader phrases, like “reproductive health” and “the right to choose,” that might resonate more widely with the public.Dr. Biden has also been judicious with her use of the word. But her story, shared publicly for the first time, cast the issue in a personal light as Democrats seek to capitalize on voter anger over the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade this summer to hold onto Congress in the November midterm elections. As abortion bans have taken effect in more than a dozen states, there are already signs that the issue has helped buoy the party against rampant inflation and Mr. Biden’s poor approval ratings.“I was shocked when the Dobbs decision came out,” Dr. Biden said, referring to the case that overturned Roe. “It was devastating — how could we go back to that time?“I thought of all the girls and women, like my friend, whose education, careers and future depended on the ability to choose when they have children,” she said..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.After decades of marriage to Mr. Biden, the first lady, who teaches full-time at a community college in Virginia, has evolved into an avid campaigner whose remarks often carry a personal touch.Like her husband, she has often avoided confrontational language when talking about the Republican Party in public. (During Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign, Dr. Biden and her aides had decided that they could draw a contrast between her husband and former President Donald J. Trump just by describing her husband, rather than attacking Mr. Trump directly.)Still, both Bidens have started to take a more aggressive stance toward Republicans, who have broadly backed abortion restrictions, even as they have struggled to unite around the idea of a national ban. In her remarks, Dr. Biden repeatedly called their agenda “extremist.”“But here’s the thing that those extremists don’t understand about women,” she said. “This isn’t the first time that we’ve been underestimated. It’s not the first time that someone has tried to tell us what we can and can’t do.”As the midterms grow closer, Dr. Biden is expected to ramp up her traveling and deliver speeches related to her own portfolio of issues, including cancer research, education and support for the military. But she will also emphasize fund-raising and supporting Democrats in tight races, according to a person familiar with her plans.On Friday, the fund-raiser, which raised money for congressional Democrats, starting at $500 a plate, was tucked between a visit to a cancer research center and a Saturday event focused on military families in Seattle, where she plans to appear with Senator Patty Murray of Washington.During the event, Dr. Biden urged supporters to “defend congressional seats held by women like Teresa and Mary” — referring to Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico, a swing-district Democrat, and Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska, a Democrat who won an August special election to replace Don Young, a Republican who died in March after serving there for 49 years.“Women will not let this country go backwards,” Dr. Biden said. “We’ve fought too hard for too long. And we know that there is just too much on the line.” More
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A Rematch of Biden v. Trump, Two Years Early
Dispensing with his unity message, President Biden reached into the 2020 file cabinet and vowed to win “a battle for the soul of this nation,” the cornerstone of his successful election.WASHINGTON — By this point in his term, President Biden figured things would be different. His predecessor would have faded from the scene and the country would have restored at least some semblance of normalcy. But as he said on Thursday night, “too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.”And so the president who declared when he took office that “democracy has prevailed” declared in a prime-time televised speech that in fact democracy 19 months later remained “under assault.” Former President Donald J. Trump “and the MAGA Republicans,” as Mr. Biden termed his predecessor’s allies, still represent a clear and present danger to America.If it sounded like a repeat of the 2020 campaign cycle, in some ways it is, although the incumbent and likely challenger have changed places. A country torn apart by ideology, culture, economics, race, religion, party and grievance remains as polarized as ever. Mr. Biden has scored some bipartisan legislative successes, but he has been singularly unable to heal the broader societal rift that he inherited. It may be that no president could have.With an opposition party that has largely embraced the lie that the last election was stolen and remains in thrall to a twice-impeached and defeated former president who encouraged a mob that attacked the Capitol to stop the transfer of power, Mr. Biden’s appeals to national unity have found little traction. Some Republicans have argued that his efforts to build consensus were fainthearted at best, while some Democrats complain they were excessive.Either way, they have made little difference in the national conversation. And so with the midterm congressional campaign getting underway in earnest, Mr. Biden has dispensed with the unity message, at least for now, reaching into the 2020 file cabinet and bringing out the call to win “a battle for the soul of this nation” that was the cornerstone of his successful election.The immediate strategy is self-evident. Rather than a referendum on his own presidency, which has been hurt by high inflation and low public morale, Mr. Biden wants to make the election a choice between “normal” and an “extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” as he put it on Thursday.If he has his way, it would be a rerun of Biden vs. Trump without either man actually listed on the ballot. If Americans are asked whether they support Mr. Biden, they may say no. If they are asked whether they support him over Mr. Trump, they may say yes. At least, that is the theory in the White House.It is a view borne out by recent opinion surveys. In the wake of a string of legislative and policy victories, Mr. Biden’s anemic approval ratings have ticked upward, though they remain in the 40s. But when pitted against Mr. Trump in a new Wall Street Journal poll, Mr. Biden came out on top in a theoretical 2024 rematch, 50 percent to 44 percent.Mr. Trump has arguably helped Mr. Biden set the stage for such a political showdown with his highly visible efforts to maintain his grip on the Republican Party. But it means that Mr. Biden will take on a more confrontational posture for the next two months, undermining his desire to be a conciliator.That left him in the odd position of being accused on Thursday night of being divisive by allies of the most divisive president in modern times. Trump Republicans argued that Mr. Biden was the one tearing the country apart and threatening democracy, not the other way around. He had insulted, in their contention, the 74 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump. More
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Takeaways From Biden’s Speech in Philadelphia
Just before the traditional Labor Day launch of the political season, President Biden inserted himself into the midterm elections on Thursday with a fierce speech castigating former President Donald J. Trump and his followers but ending with optimism for the nation’s democratic future.Here are four takeaways from the prime-time address from Independence Hall in Philadelphia:It’s still about Trump.Sure, Mr. Biden rattled off the accomplishments of his first year and a half in office — infrastructure, gun safety, prescription drug price controls and “the most important climate initiative ever.” But in his address to the nation, Mr. Biden tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor still looms over the politics of the moment, like it or not. And he took it to Mr. Trump directly, calling him out by name and seeking to differentiate between “the MAGA Republicans” loyal to Mr. Trump and what he deemed reasonable Republicans who still stand by the American democratic experiment.“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” he said. “And that is a threat to this country.”Midterm elections are usually a referendum on the party of the president in power, especially when that party also controls Congress. But Mr. Biden and the Democrats are betting that if they can make this November a choice between Democratic and Republican control, they can win, or at least keep their losses to a minimum. Mr. Biden’s speech was all about making the choice this Election Day between what he called “the light of truth” and “the shadow of lies.”Approval ratings be damned.Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have risen of late, buoyed by legislative successes as well as falling gas prices. Still, with a composite disapproval rate of 53 percent, and job approval still in the low 40s, the president is no one’s idea of Mr. Popularity.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.But on Thursday, the White House rolled the dice, apparently assuming that lying low would not help matters and hoping that a big, televised speech might remind voters why they chose Mr. Biden in 2020. Republicans have caricatured the president as a doddering old man, unable to assemble a string of coherent sentences. Rather than let such aspersions go unchallenged, the White House moved to dispel them with a forceful speech that would, if nothing else, rally the Democratic base, which was already energized by the Supreme Court’s decision to end the nearly 50-year-old right to an abortion.The president’s emphasis on the historic nature of the largest climate change measure ever enacted was aimed at young Democratic voters who are among the most disenchanted with him personally. But above all, Mr. Biden appealed to the fears that have gripped some of the most reliable Democratic voting groups — L.G.B.T.Q. voters, young voters and women — when he suggested the overturning of Roe v. Wade was just the beginning: “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”The two Americas, divided and suspicious.During the Trump administration, much was made of the former president’s willingness to castigate his political enemies on the left, to the delight of his supporters. He tried to roll back transgender rights across the government, attacked the rights of lesbian and gay Americans, told the women of color in the House Democrats’ “Squad” to “go back” to where they came from, and gleefully attacked cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Baltimore.In his speech, Mr. Biden took pains to say, “Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans; not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.” But a Republican Party still dominated by Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again ideology was not going to accept that distinction, not when the tribe of “Never Trump” Republicans has shriveled to a tiny cohort.On Thursday, it was the Republicans’ turn to denounce the divisiveness of a president who was scorning them. The Republican National Committee cast Mr. Biden as “the divider-in-chief” who “epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”But at times, the Republican response felt like an extended taunt of “I know you are, but what am I?” Before Mr. Biden’s speech, the man who hopes to be House speaker next year, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, also spoke in Pennsylvania, trying to pre-empt a presidential address previewed as an appeal for the soul of the nation by — with little factual basis — turning Mr. Biden’s themes against him.“In the past two years, Joe Biden has launched an assault on the soul of America,” Mr. McCarthy, the House minority leader, said, “on its people, on its laws, on its most sacred values. He has launched an assault on our democracy.”It’s not the economy: a possibly stupid position.The entreaty from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid,” has become a truism in American politics, in good times and in bad. Today, a majority of Americans still rate the economy as their No. 1 concern, and large numbers believe the nation is in a recession.Not Mr. Biden, who declared, “today, America’s economy is faster, stronger, than any other advanced nation in the world.” The word “inflation” did not pass his lips.In the 2010 campaign season, after President Barack Obama and his vice president, Mr. Biden, labored to bring the nation out of the global financial crisis, Mr. Obama barnstormed the country, insisting that Democrats had lifted the nation’s economy out of the ditch that the Republicans had driven it into. Voters delivered what Mr. Obama called a “shellacking” — huge losses in Congress that Democrats would not overcome for eight years.Mr. Biden, learning from that mistake, had been trying to show voters he understood their pain and anxiety over rising prices and lingering uncertainty. On Thursday night, he seemed to set that aside to make the election about an entirely different issue: the fate of democratic pluralism.“America is still the beacon to the world, an ideal to be realized, a promise to be kept,” he concluded. “There’s nothing more important, nothing more sacred, nothing more American. That’s our soul.” More
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Ahead of Biden Speech, McCarthy Embraces Trump After Mar-a-Lago Search
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, on Thursday aligned himself with former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to undercut federal law enforcement over the search of Mar-a-Lago, condemning the court-ordered seizure of classified documents from the former president’s home as an “assault on democracy.”In a half-hour speech delivered from Scranton, Pa., Mr. McCarthy sought to take the themes that President Biden was hitting in a prime-time address and turn them on their head against Democrats, in a remarkable attempt at political jujitsu aimed at muddying the waters about Mr. Trump’s conduct and his handling of sensitive government material.Mr. McCarthy’s remarks, delivered from a competitive congressional district that Republicans hope to wrest from Democrats in November’s midterm congressional elections, were largely a point-by-point condemnation of Mr. Biden’s policies.The top House Republican, who has seen his party’s chances of sweeping into the majority dim in recent weeks, painted the November elections as a referendum on Mr. Biden’s presidency and said that it was the current president who had “launched an assault on our democracy” with policies that had “severely wounded America’s soul.”“Joe Biden is right: Democracy is on the ballot in November,” Mr. McCarthy said. “And Joe Biden and the radical left in Washington are dismantling Americans’ democracy before our very eyes.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Using one of Mr. Trump’s favorite tactics, Mr. McCarthy falsely equated Mr. Biden’s conduct with actions that Mr. Trump himself has taken.“Joe Biden and a politicized Department of Justice launched a raid on the home of his top political rival, Donald Trump,” Mr. McCarthy said. “That is an assault on democracy.”In fact, the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago came after a year and a half of failed efforts by government officials to recover presidential documents, including classified material, from Mr. Trump. Those efforts included a subpoena that was not fully complied with and a signed letter from one of the former president’s lawyers that turned out to be false.It was Mr. Trump who was impeached in 2019 for using the powers of his office to try to get the president of Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump also sought to use the Justice Department to help him overturn the 2020 election. And it was his lies of a stolen election that inspired the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, perhaps the most literal assault on democracy in recent American history.Still, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Biden was at fault. He demanded that the president “apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists,” a reference to comments that Mr. Biden made at a recent fund-raiser in Maryland denouncing “extreme MAGA philosophy” as akin to “semi-fascism.”“I respect conservative Republicans,” Mr. Biden said. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”Mr. McCarthy’s speech reflected the needle he is trying to thread as he attempts to win back control of the House and secure the speakership. He has labored to stick to issues that Republicans believe resonate with voters across the ideological spectrum — chiefly the economy, public safety and border security — while also showing fealty to Mr. Trump and courting the hard-right voters and candidates whose support he will need to propel him to power.“We will fight to lower the cost of gas,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We will stop taxpayer dollars from being wasted on failed programs.” He added, “We will conduct vigorous oversight, check abuses of power and hold all wrongdoers accountable, including our Department of Justice.” More
