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      Las lecciones de las campañas de Bush y Obama para Biden

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      En manos de un candidato hábil, las encuestas preliminares pueden ser un mapa de ruta para darle un giro total a una campaña en dificultades.Mucho antes del día de las elecciones en 2004, algunos estrategas le advirtieron al presidente George W. Bush que tendría una campaña difícil porque los electores estaban angustiados por la guerra en Irak y la economía, dos temas que esperaba sortear para llegar a un segundo mandato.Los asesores de Bush se apresuraron a restructurar la campaña. Su meta fue evitar que el público centrara su atención en el presidente y su historial y lograr, más bien, presentar al opositor demócrata más probable, el senador de Massachusetts, John Kerry, veterano de la guerra de Vietnam, como alguien que cambiaba de opinión con facilidad, que no era de fiar en temas de seguridad nacional y que no podía guiar a la nación, que todavía estaba recuperándose de los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre.“Identificamos una debilidad que sin duda podríamos explotar en nuestro beneficio en unas elecciones que se esperaba que fueran cerradas”, explicó Karl Rove, asesor político sénior de Bush durante mucho tiempo.Ocho años después, los asesores de otro presidente en funciones, Barack Obama, gracias a su análisis de varias encuestas públicas y privadas, llegaron a la conclusión de que las inquietudes de los votantes en torno a los efectos persistentes de la Gran Recesión y la dirección de la nación podrían arruinar sus posibilidades de llegar a un segundo mandato.Siguiendo el ejemplo de Bush, Obama ajustó su campaña y, en vez de poner énfasis en los logros obtenidos durante su primer mandato, se concentró en desacreditar a su opositor, el exgobernador de Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, presentándolo como un empresario adinerado totalmente desconectado de los estadounidenses de clase trabajadora.En esta era de división y polarización, el presidente Joe Biden no es el primero en recibir datos que parecen indicar que su reelección está en riesgo. El problema es que las campañas de reelección de Bush y Obama, quienes lograron ganar un segundo mandato en la Casa Blanca, ahora más bien son prueba de que las encuestas realizadas con tanta anticipación no pueden predecir lo que ocurrirá el día de las elecciones. En manos de un candidato hábil, incluso pueden ser un mapa de ruta para darle un giro total a una campaña en dificultades.Bush y Obama eran candidatos diferentes y enfrentaban obstáculos distintos: en el caso de Bush, el embrollo de una guerra; en el de Obama, una economía nacional sacudida por la crisis financiera global de 2008. Sin embargo, ambos decidieron transformar su campana de reelección de un referendo sobre el presidente en funciones a una operación para resaltar cuánto contrastaban con un opositor que ellos mismos definieron, con anuncios televisivos fulminantes, meses antes de que Romney o Kerry fueran nominados en las convenciones de sus partidos.En el caso contrario, un presidente republicano de la era moderna que perdió las elecciones para un segundo mandato, George H.W. Bush en 1992, cometió el error de ignorar los datos mostrados por las encuestas sobre la angustia de los electores en el tema de la economía y su avidez de un cambio tras 12 años de republicanos en la Casa Blanca.Bush padre, según dijeron sus asesores en entrevistas recientes, se confió por el reconocimiento del que fue objeto por su papel al frente de la coalición que expulsó a Saddam Hussein e Irak de Kuwait, además del desdén que sentía por su opositor, un joven gobernador demócrata que había evitado el reclutamiento militar y tenía un historial de relaciones extramaritales.El expresidente Barack Obama reformuló su campaña para centrarse en desacreditar a su oponente, Mitt Romney, y mostrarlo como un empresario adinerado totalmente desconectado de los estadounidenses de clase trabajadora.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden tiene grandes dificultades, pero creo que es posible ganar la contienda”, aseveró David Plouffe, antiguo asesor sénior en la campaña de reelección de Obama. “Claro que comprendo que un presidente o gobernador en funciones piense que las personas deban saber más sobre sus logros. Es cierto, pero, a fin de cuentas, esto es un ejercicio comparativo. Eso fue lo que descubrimos”.La Casa Blanca de Biden ha desestimado las encuestas —incluida una realizada por The New York Times en colaboración con el Siena College que se dio a conocer recientemente— por considerarlas poco significativas tanto tiempo antes de las elecciones. Los asesores del presidente indicaron que las victorias demócratas en las elecciones de este mes demuestran que el partido y su abanderado están en una buena posición.Sin embargo, después de meses de una campaña basada en sus logros económicos con pocas señales de éxito, Biden ha comenzado a centrar su atención en Donald Trump, el expresidente republicano que probablemente sea su opositor, en particular en sus políticas de inmigración y derecho al aborto. Por este motivo ahora se transmite un anuncio en el que el expresidente aparece caminando por un campo de golf mientras se escucha al anunciante decir que Trump apoyó los recortes fiscales “para sus amigos ricos”, mientras que las empresas estadounidenses fabricantes de automóviles tuvieron que cerrar plantas.“Por supuesto que estamos considerando opciones para propiciar conversaciones en torno a Trump y MAGA (sigla del eslogan “Hagamos a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”) lo más que se pueda”, comentó Kevin Munoz, vocero para la campaña de Biden. No obstante, Munoz añadió: “Estamos en una posición diferente a la de Obama y Bush. Tuvimos excelentes resultados en las elecciones de medio mandato. Hemos tenido elecciones especiales muy exitosas. Nuestra teoría se demostró de nuevo el martes pasado”.Cambiar drásticamente la dinámica de la contienda puede resultar menos fructífero para Biden que para sus predecesores. Obama y George W. Bush lograron desacreditar a Romney y Kerry porque los electores, en esa etapa temprana de la campaña para las elecciones generales, no sabían mucho de ellos.En cambio, no hay mucho que la campaña de Biden pueda decirles a los electores acerca de Trump que no sepan ya (de hecho, tampoco pueden decirles mucho sobre Biden que no sepan ya). Además, al menos hasta ahora, Trump no ha pagado ningún costo político por el tipo de declaraciones (como cuando se refirió a sus críticos como “alimañas”) que en el pasado podrían haber estropeado las probabilidades de un candidato más convencional. Hasta ahora, el hecho de que se hayan presentado acusaciones formales en su contra por 91 delitos del ámbito penal en cuatro casos solo ha afianzado su apoyo.Cuando la campaña de Bush comenzó a planificar su reelección, se enfrentó a cifras de encuestas que, si bien no eran tan inquietantes para el presidente como algunas que han salido a la luz en las últimas semanas sobre Biden, sí eran motivo de preocupación. Una encuesta realizada por el Centro de Investigaciones Pew reveló que el 46 por ciento de los encuestados dijo que las políticas económicas de Bush habían empeorado la economía y el 39 por ciento dijo que las tropas estadounidenses debían regresar de Irak lo antes posible; frente al 32 por ciento del mes anterior.“Decidimos desde el principio que queríamos que las elecciones giraran en torno a la seguridad nacional, aunque la economía fuera el tema número uno”, dijo Matthew Dowd, el principal estratega de la campaña de Bush en 2004. “Estábamos en desventaja respecto a los demócratas en materia económica. Y como parte de esa estrategia, deseábamos definir a Kerry negativamente en materia de seguridad nacional desde el principio, y como un líder débil e inseguro para poder posicionar a Bush como un líder fuerte y sólido en materia de seguridad nacional”.Al poco tiempo, la campaña de Bush estaba al aire con anuncios que atacaban a Kerry por comprometerse a revertir la Ley Patriota, la cual le otorgaba al gobierno federal mayores poderes para perseguir a terroristas. Esa ley fue aprobada poco después de los ataques del 11 de septiembre con un apoyo abrumador en el Congreso, incluido Kerry.“John Kerry. Jugando a la política con la seguridad nacional”, decía un locutor.El expresidente George W. Bush se enfrentó a cifras de encuestas que, si bien no eran tan inquietantes para el presidente como algunas que han salido a la luz en las últimas semanas sobre Biden, sí eran motivo de preocupación.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOcho años más tarde, mientras Obama preparaba su campaña de reelección, muchos estadounidenses le dijeron a los encuestadores que el país iba en la dirección equivocada y que su situación financiera era peor que antes de que Obama asumiera el cargo. Por ejemplo, una encuesta del Washington Post/ABC News encontró que tres cuartas partes de los estadounidenses decían que el país iba en la dirección equivocada.Los asesores de Obama estudiaron las campañas de reelección de otros presidentes en funciones en problemas. “Sabíamos que la mayoría de las campañas de reelección eran un referéndum”, dijo Joel Benenson, quien fue el encuestador del equipo de Obama.“También sabíamos que teníamos una crisis económica masiva que no fue en absoluto culpa de Obama. Pero también sabíamos que era el presidente en funciones y no podía culpar a su predecesor por ello. No podíamos convencerlos de que la economía estaba mejorando”.Pero Romney, dijo, “no estaba completamente formado entre los votantes”, lo que presentó una oportunidad para resaltar su riqueza y retratarlo como alguien cuyas políticas favorecerían a los ricos.Por el contrario, George H.W. Bush, dijeron sus asesores, ignoró las advertencias, confiando en que el índice de aprobación de los votantes cercano al 90 por ciento que registró después de la guerra en Kuwait hacía que su reelección estuviera casi garantizada. “La adulación de la guerra de alguna manera silenció los instintos políticos normales de muchas personas cercanas al presidente”, dijo Ron Kaufman, quien fue asesor principal de esa campaña.Rove subrayó que la posición de Biden está más deteriorada en este momento que la de Bush padre en 1992. “Bush parecía no tener ideas para el futuro, pero la gente lo consideraba un ser humano admirable”, explicó Rove. “El problema de Biden es que la gente ha llegado a la conclusión de que no puede desempeñar el trabajo, pues es demasiado viejo y no tiene ni el vigor ni la agudeza mental necesarios para hacerlo”.En encuestas recientes conducidas por el Times y el Siena College en cinco estados clave, el 71 por ciento de los participantes respondió que Biden era “demasiado viejo” para ser un presidente efectivo.Plouffe afirmó que la campaña de Biden debería aprovechar la lección que aprendió el equipo de Obama después de estudiar la campaña perdedora de Bush padre. “La gente de Bush intentó convencer a los ciudadanos de que la economía estaba en mejores condiciones de lo que pensaban”, indicó. “Algo que he aprendido es que no puedes decirles a las personas qué pensar de la economía. Ellos te dirán lo que piensan de la economía”.“Yo empezaría cada discurso con la frase: ‘Estados Unidos tiene una decisión frente a sí, ambos somos hombres blancos mayores’”, afirmó Plouffe. “‘Pero hasta ahí llegan las similitudes’”.Adam Nagourney cubre política nacional para el Times, en especial la campaña de 2024. Más de Adam Nagourney More

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      With Joe Biden Turning 81, the White House Is Focused Elsewhere

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      President Biden has no plans for a lavish public celebration when he turns 81 on Monday, even as Democrats search for a strategy to assuage voters’ concerns about his age by next year’s election.For many of a certain age, there comes a point when marking yet another birthday, taking note of yet another passage of the calendar, is not greeted with the same enthusiasm it once was. And that’s for people who are not even running for president.For President Biden, who turns 81 on Monday, another birthday may bring more liability than revelry, offering one more reminder of his age to an already skeptical electorate. Unlike other presidents who have celebrated birthdays with lavish political events, Mr. Biden plans to observe his milestone privately with family in Nantucket later this week.The best birthday gift the oldest president in American history could hope for would be a strategy for assuaging voters’ concerns, but that has been hard to come by. Mr. Biden and his team have taken the approach that his record of domestic legislation and international leadership should belie any worries about his capacity, even though polls have shown consistently that that line of argument has not been persuasive, at least not yet.Some Democrats argue that Mr. Biden needs to do more to draw the contrast with his likeliest Republican challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, who at 77 has himself exhibited confusion in public lately. Mr. Trump has warned that the country is on the verge of World War II, mixed up the leaders of Hungary and Turkey, and boasted of beating former President Barack Obama in the polls when of course Mr. Obama is not running. If Mr. Trump wins next year and serves out four years, he would take over the status as the country’s oldest president.Others, including some current and former administration officials, said Mr. Biden’s staff members should stop treating him like an old man they do not trust and let him interact with the public and reporters more. Some said the president needed to start getting out on the campaign trail more to show his vigor, deploy more humor to defuse the matter and even boast about his age rather than ignore it.Others, however, said he needed to be protected even more, allowed more time to rest and not sent on so many draining international trips — what some cheekily call the “Bubble Wrap” strategy, as in encasing him in Bubble Wrap for the next 12 months to make sure he does not trip and fall.If some of this is contradictory, it may be because there is no easy answer, much as Democrats have been obsessing about Mr. Biden’s age. One thing the White House cannot do is make him younger. In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of battleground states, 71 percent said Mr. Biden was “too old” to be president, including 54 percent of his own supporters. By contrast, 39 percent said that about Mr. Trump.“He doesn’t look and speak the part,” said John B. Judis, the longtime political analyst and author with Ruy Teixeira of “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” published earlier this month. “He’s not a commanding or charming presence on a presidential or presidential election stage.”Mr. Judis said he thought Mr. Biden had demonstrated “astonishing success” in passing major legislation building infrastructure, lowering the cost of medicine and combating climate change, and added that he planned to vote for the president himself. But he noted that presidents were expected to be both the head of government and the head of state — a prime minister and a king, if you will — and that the public performance part had eluded Mr. Biden.“I think a lot of voters, and young people in particular, who are not at all put off by his political positions or accomplishments, are put off by his utter failure as a regal persona,” Mr. Judis said. “And I don’t know how that can be fixed. Not by bicycling. Biden’s best hope in that regard is the voters’ perception of Trump as a bad or even evil father who wants to wreck the family.”Nothing irritates White House officials more than discussion of Mr. Biden’s age, which they view as an obsession of the news media that does not correspond with the energetic and mentally sharp president they describe inside the Oval Office. While Mr. Biden shuffles when he walks, talks in a low tone that can be hard to hear and sometimes confuses names and details in public, they note that he maintains a crushing schedule that would tire a younger president.In the past few weeks alone, he has devoted countless hours to managing the Israel war with Hamas while also hosting separate summit meetings with leaders from Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere. He made a one-day trip to Israel, flying across the world and back without stopping in a hotel room, and they said he has worked the phone endlessly to deal with high-stakes foreign crises.Asked about his forthcoming birthday, the White House did not directly address the age issue on Sunday but chose to focus on the president’s accomplishments, making the point that his long experience in Washington has paid off.“Because of President Biden’s decades of experience in public service and deep relationships with leaders in Congress, he passed legislation that has helped to create more than 14 million jobs, lower prescription drug costs, invest in America’s infrastructure and technology and led to the strongest economic recovery in the developed world,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said in a statement.“He has revitalized alliances on the world stage — cultivated over many years — to promote America’s interests and respond forcefully when global crises arise,” Mr. LaBolt added.Simon Rosenberg, a veteran Democratic strategist, said the White House should lean even more into the benefits of Mr. Biden’s age rather than be defensive.“He’s been successful because of his age, not in spite of it,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “We’re all going to have to make that case because it’s true. We can’t run away from the age issue. It’s going to be a major part of the conversation, but we would be making a political mistake if we don’t contest it more aggressively.”Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, said there were naturally limits to what the White House could do. “Nothing anyone, even a president, can do to avoid having a birthday,” she said. “President Biden should continue to do what he’s been doing: connecting personally with people, making jokes about the coverage and highlighting his administration’s accomplishments.”Some party strategists argued that age had dominated the discussion about Mr. Biden lately in part because the president had not yet fully engaged in the contest against Mr. Trump. At the end of the day, they said, Democrats and independents who may be leery of a president who would be 86 at the end of a second term will conclude that it is better to support an octogenarian they agree with than another soon-to-be octogenarian they consider a threat to democracy, abortion rights and other issues that matter to them.“This issue, like many others, will fade once the campaign moves into the general election phase,” said Brian Fallon, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “Once the race gets reframed as a choice, it will be impossible for Republicans to try to weaponize the issue of age when their own nominee would also be over 80 in his next term.”If that were to work, it would be the best birthday gift Mr. Biden could hope for when he turns 82 next year. It is, of course, a big if. More

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      Donald Trump Endorsed by Greg Abbott at Texas Border Event

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      Gov. Greg Abbott threw his support behind the former president in the Republican presidential primary at an event near the southern border.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas endorsed former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday in an appearance near the southern border, echoing Mr. Trump’s talk about an existential crisis of illegal immigration.“I’m here to tell you that there is no way, no way that America can continue under the leadership of Joe Biden as our president,” Mr. Abbott said in Edinburg, Texas, after he and Mr. Trump greeted Border Patrol agents. “We need a president who’s going to secure the border. We need a president who’s going to restore law and order in the United States of America.”Mr. Abbott, a three-term governor with a strongly conservative record, castigated President Biden for reversing Trump-era policies that had expedited deportations and required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting hearings, and claimed that Mr. Biden was facilitating terrorism.Mr. Abbott has taken extraordinary measures on border crossings during the Biden administration — including putting razor wire along the border and buoys in the Rio Grande — that have injured many migrants. Under his administration, Texas has also bused tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants around the country, frequently to big cities run by Democrats.His aggressive policies align him closely with Mr. Trump, whose plans if elected to a second term include detaining undocumented immigrants in camps, relying on a form of expulsion that doesn’t involve due process hearings, and deputizing local police officers and National Guard troops from Republican-led states to carry out immigration raids.Mr. Trump took to the microphone after the endorsement and gave an unusually short speech: just 10 minutes long, compared with his 75-minute address in Iowa on Saturday and nearly two hours in New Hampshire last weekend. Mr. Trump’s appearance at the border did not bear resemblance to his typical campaign events this year, and it was not widely open to supporters.“We’re going to make the governor’s job very easy,” he said, suggesting that his immigration policies would remove the need for Mr. Abbott to handle the issue and claiming falsely that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had never visited the border.“Our country is going to hell,” he added, before returning to familiar territory of demonizing his political opponents: “We have some people that either they don’t care, they’re not very smart or they hate our country, and nobody really knows the answer.”Both this weekend and last, he had railed at length against President Biden and vowed vengeance upon his opponents, whom he described as “vermin” who posed a greater threat to the country than any outside force — rhetoric reminiscent of fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini.Mr. Trump has received endorsements from a number of Republican governors in addition to Mr. Abbott, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Kristi Noem of South Dakota.However, he did not secure the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular governor, who is instead backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. More

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      In Iowa, DeSantis Talks Abortion to Win Over Evangelical Voters

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      The Florida governor is courting white evangelicals by using Donald J. Trump’s criticisms of hard-line abortion restrictions against him.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida paused, looked down and then told a banquet hall filled with conservative Iowa Christians something that he had never before said in public: His wife, Casey DeSantis, experienced a miscarriage several years ago during her first pregnancy.The couple, Mr. DeSantis explained on Friday at a forum for Republican presidential candidates hosted by an influential evangelical group, had been trying to conceive before taking a trip to Israel.“We went to Ruth’s tomb in Hebron — Ruth, Chapter 4, Verse 13 — and we prayed,” Mr. DeSantis, citing Scripture, said at the event in Des Moines. “We prayed a lot to have a family, and then, lo and behold, we go back to the United States and a little time later we got pregnant. But unfortunately we lost that first baby.”The deeply personal revelation — in response to a question about the importance of the nuclear family — was an unexpected moment for Mr. DeSantis, who is usually tight-lipped about both his faith and his family life. On the campaign trail, he rotates through a limited set of anecdotes about Ms. DeSantis and their three young children, as well as his religious beliefs. Still, at the Iowa event, he lingered only briefly on his wife’s miscarriage, calling it simply a “tough thing” and a test of faith.Mr. DeSantis, a Roman Catholic, is heavily courting Iowa’s religious right, which has helped deliver the state’s last three competitive Republican presidential caucuses to candidates who wore their faith on their sleeves. White evangelical voters are likely to play a decisive role in the state’s Jan. 15 caucuses, the first contest in the 2024 G.O.P. primary, and they often turn to politicians who speak the language of the church.“You have to talk authentically from the heart,” said Terry Amann, a conservative pastor from Des Moines. “Anybody can cite Bible verses.”A majority of evangelical voters in Iowa favor former President Donald J. Trump over Mr. DeSantis. But some say they fear Mr. Trump is backing off on abortion.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIf Mr. DeSantis has any hope of beating former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner, who leads him by roughly 30 points in Iowa polls, it lies in winning over conservative Christian voters while fending off the challenge of Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who is seen as more moderate.A DeSantis victory in Iowa remains a long shot, but Mr. Trump’s criticisms of the hard-line abortion restrictions favored by many evangelical voters in Iowa may have created a lane for the Florida governor to bolster his standing. The former president has described a six-week abortion ban signed by Mr. DeSantis in Florida as “a terrible mistake.” Mr. Trump has blamed extreme positions on abortion for recent Republican losses at the polls and, looking to win over moderates in the general election, has avoided supporting a federal abortion ban. That has deeply disappointed some evangelical leaders and voters who cheered him after his appointments to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.“Trump has backed off his pro-life position,” said Mike Demastus, who leads an evangelical church in Des Moines. “And that’s caused voters like myself to pause and be willing to listen to other candidates.”Mr. DeSantis is trying to take advantage of concerns like Mr. Demastus’s. As he opened his new Iowa campaign headquarters outside Des Moines on Saturday, the governor told reporters that Mr. Trump’s comments on abortion had been the real “mistake.” He had previously said of Mr. Trump, during an interview with an Iowa radio station, that “all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”Still, Mr. Trump remains immensely popular with conservative Christians, and not only because of his role in Roe’s demise. Mr. Trump moved the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an issue of deep importance to many evangelicals. He is also credited for his anti-immigration policies and for a strong economy during his presidency, reflecting the fact that many religious voters have political concerns beyond their faith.Even many of the evangelical voters who support Mr. DeSantis are deeply grateful to the former president.“The reversal of Roe v. Wade — I didn’t ever think that would happen in my lifetime, and he did that,” Jerry Buseman, 54, a retired school administrator from Hampton, Iowa, said of Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have battled for months to win over influential evangelical leaders and top Republicans in Iowa, a state some say is still Mr. Trump’s to lose.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNow, the DeSantis and Trump campaigns are engaged in a back-and-forth to win over faith leaders and voters. Evangelicals are the single largest religious group among Iowa Republicans, accounting for more than a third of their ranks, according to Pew Research Center. So far, polls suggest Mr. Trump is winning the race for their votes. The former president had the support of 51 percent of white evangelical voters, compared with 30 percent for Mr. DeSantis, according to a September poll by CBS News and YouGov. It’s a major shift from 2016, when evangelicals flocked to Ted Cruz rather than to Mr. Trump, helping the Republican senator from Texas win the caucuses that year.“Trump has already proven himself to have a backbone,” said Brad Sherman, a pastor and state legislator who has endorsed Mr. Trump, even though he said he wished the former president would take a “stronger stand” against abortion. “He’s shown that he will do what he says.”Like Mr. Sherman, many Iowans backing Mr. Trump seem willing to forgive his more recent comments on abortion. Only 40 percent of Trump supporters agreed that he was right to criticize six-week abortion bans, according to an October poll by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom.Alex Latcham, the Trump campaign’s early-states director, said the former president had gotten results on issues that had been “the top priorities” for evangelical voters for decades. In his Des Moines office, Mr. Latcham said, he keeps a map of Iowa showing the locations of more than 100 religious leaders who have endorsed Mr. Trump.“There’s plenty of time, but right now it’s Trump’s to lose,” said Steve Scheffler, the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, who is staying neutral through the caucuses.To counter Mr. Trump’s popularity, Mr. DeSantis held his first official campaign rally in May at a church outside Des Moines, where a group of pastors prayed over him. He has rolled out his own endorsements from more than 100 religious leaders around the state. Before each Republican presidential debate, he has invited a pastor to pray for him and his wife in the green room backstage. His campaign holds a monthly video call for pastors. And unlike Mr. Trump, he has attended several church services in Iowa, including alongside the Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who hosted Mr. DeSantis at the forum where he discussed his wife’s miscarriage.Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting the DeSantis campaign, has produced advertisements that accuse Mr. Trump of a “betrayal of the pro-life movement,” call into question his support for Israel and criticize his attacks on Kim Reynolds, the popular Iowa governor who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis and has also signed a six-week abortion ban.”DeSantis has done an outstanding job networking with evangelicals,” said David Kochel, a veteran Iowa political strategist. “He’s running the campaign the right way. The problem is he’s doing it against someone who has already delivered for evangelical voters.”Ms. Haley, the other top runner-up in the race, who is now tied with Mr. DeSantis in many Iowa polls, does not appear to be pursuing the state’s faith leaders as aggressively, and her more measured way of talking about abortion has turned off many evangelicals.In Iowa, Mr. DeSantis must also fend off Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has become a formidable challenger for second place.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesOlivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, highlighted Ms. Haley’s “steadfast support for Israel” as a reason for evangelical voters to get behind her. And she pointed to Ms. Haley’s recent endorsement by Marlys Popma, a prominent anti-abortion activist in Iowa. For Mr. DeSantis, a lack of folksy charm may still be an issue in Iowa, despite his efforts to be more personal with evangelical voters.Evangelical voters “want to see the heart,” said Sam Brownback, a conservative Christian and former Republican senator from Kansas whose own presidential campaign failed to take off in 2008. “They want to see what you really are inside.”The last three Republicans to win contested caucuses — former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Mr. Cruz — all talked easily about their faith. (None of them captured the nomination.)Mr. DeSantis, who has been criticized as stilted on the campaign trail, is not built in that mold. Instead, he is relying on his record as Florida governor, which includes, in addition to the six-week abortion ban, laws to restrict the rights of transgender people and to limit discussions of sexuality in schools.When a reporter asked why he was a better fit for Iowa’s evangelicals than Mr. Trump — a thrice-married former Democrat — Mr. DeSantis replied that he was “better representative of their values.”“I have a better record of actually delivering on my promises and fighting important fights on behalf of children, on behalf of families and on behalf of religious liberty,” he said on Saturday at a coffee shop in Ottumwa, Iowa.Heidi Sokol, 51, a Republican voter who teaches at a Christian school in Clear Lake, Iowa, said she wasn’t bothered that Mr. DeSantis spoke far more about policy than about his personal faith when she saw him speak at a Des Moines church this fall.“We’re not hiring the president to be our pastor,” Ms. Sokol said.Ruth Igielnik More

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      Trump Focuses on Iowa as He Looks to Close Out the Republican Race

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      The former president has made Iowa his priority, hoping to thin the field and turn his attention to a campaign against President Biden.With just under two months until the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday returned to the state and made explicit a campaign strategy that he had only hinted at for months.Speaking in a crowded high school gym, Mr. Trump made clear that he saw a decisive victory in the first Republican nominating contest as the swiftest path to end the Republican primary and focus on a general election race against President Biden.“You know, we have to send a great signal,” Mr. Trump said. Referring to his Republican rivals, he added, “And then maybe these people say, ‘OK, it’s over now.’”After his speech concluded, Mr. Trump also made a departure from his normal rally routine. The former president, who has largely eschewed the retail politicking characteristic of the state, stuck around for roughly 10 minutes to pose for pictures and shake voters’ hands.Mr. Trump’s speech, which covered issues including energy, foreign policy and criminal justice with an Iowa frame, suggested a subtle shift in his campaign’s approach to the Republican primary. For months Mr. Trump has appeared at small “commit to caucus” events, which his campaign hopes will ensure that his popularity in the state propels him to victory in January, pushing out most of the field.Still, Mr. Trump — who is the front-runner in the Republican primary in both polls and fund-raising — has maintained a fairly light campaign schedule in Iowa.His challengers, who lag far behind, have barnstormed the state, hoping that a strong showing could weaken Mr. Trump’s foothold and give them a path to the Republican nomination.On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked his campaign on the state, opened a new Iowa campaign headquarters outside Des Moines. He was joined by Iowa’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, who recently endorsed him.Ms. Reynolds, who previously pledged to stay neutral in the caucuses, praised Mr. DeSantis and said that Iowa caucusgoers “expect you to show up, they expect you to earn their votes,” in an apparent dig at Mr. Trump.But speaking in Fort Dodge, Mr. Trump projected confidence. He relied on a tactic that seemed to reflect his transactional approach to politics: recounting to Iowans what he did for them as president and asking them to return the favor.At one point, he took credit for keeping their caucuses the first presidential nominating contest, in contrast with Democrats, who shifted Iowa later in their nominating calendar.“Look, I kept you first in the nation,” he said. “I’m the one that — will you please give me a good show, at least, out of it? OK? Please.”Mr. Trump reaffirmed his commitment to ethanol, which is important to Iowa’s economy. And as he often does here, he repeatedly touted the $28 billion in aid his administration provided to farmers, money that he has said came from tariffs on China. Mr. Trump suggested that those funds alone should secure him a win in January.“My guys say: ‘Please, sir, don’t take it for granted that you’re going to win Iowa. It doesn’t sound good,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “I say to them, ‘Of course it does. I got them $28 billion. Who the hell else would you vote for?’”But even as he said Iowans’ support in the caucuses was crucial, Mr. Trump made clear that he was already looking ahead to a general election race against President Biden.Citing Mr. Biden’s meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, he accused the president of being corrupted by Chinese influence and too soft on the country.“We have a Manchurian candidate in the Oval Office,” Mr. Trump said, apparently referring to the 1962 film about a Communist sleeper agent in the U.S. government. The reference did not seem to resonate with the crowd.“You know, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’?” Mr. Trump continued. “Go check it out.”In another riff on his usual stump speech, Mr. Trump accused Democrats of conducting a witch hunt with their investigations of him, bringing up the so-called Steele dossier, which contained a salacious claim about his encounters with prostitutes in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.Mr. Trump lamented that he had to explain to his wife, Melania, accusations that he instructed the prostitutes to urinate on each other and the bed in the hotel, where President Barack Obama had once slept.“Actually, that one she didn’t believe, because she said: ‘He’s a germaphobe. He’s not into that, you know?’” Mr. Trump said. “‘He’s not into golden showers,’ as they say they call that.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that idea. No, I didn’t.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Pardon Recipients Seek to Sell Trump on His Own Sentencing Law

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      The Republican front-runner has a history of making racist statements, but some advisers think highlighting his signature law could help increase support among Black voters and potentially swing the election.In early July, former President Donald J. Trump received a somewhat unlikely visitor at his golf club and estate in Bedminster, N.J.: Michael Harris, the founder of Death Row Records, who had been imprisoned for drug trafficking and attempted murder, came to meet privately with the man who had pardoned him.Mr. Harris was connected to the former president by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka Trump, who had helped push him as a pardon candidate, according to two people familiar with the process. The couple were staying at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster when the meeting took place, and Mr. Kushner joined, two people briefed on the matter said.But their lunch served another purpose for some people close to Mr. Trump: Mr. Harris is the type of high-profile Black celebrity that some Trump associates hope will next year highlight the former president’s signature criminal justice reform law, the First Step Act, which was one of Mr. Kushner’s key priorities during his time as an adviser in the White House.Although Mr. Harris is not a beneficiary of the sentencing law, having received his pardon on Mr. Trump’s last full day in office after serving decades in prison as part of a series of clemency grants, he has nonetheless become an evangelist for it.Mr. Trump, who has shown gains among Black voters in some recent polls, is hoping to win a slightly larger margin than he has in the past, with the potential to swing key states. He has been indicted four times, a fact that his advisers and allies insist — without offering any evidence — will somehow be helpful with Black voters because he asserts that he’s a victim of overzealous prosecution. (He has also repeatedly called the three Black prosecutors investigating him “racist.”)But some of his closest allies who have been trying to impress on him the value of boasting his own record on the issue insist that he has absorbed their message, though it is unclear whether that’s true or more of a projection of their own wishes.Mr. Harris declined to discuss what took place in their meeting, but he expressed gratitude toward the Trump administration in a statement and praised the sentencing law. “The passing of the First Step Act and similar initiatives surrounding” criminal justice reform “has provided much needed relief for so many deserving individuals and families,” he said.An aide to Mr. Kushner and a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.Not everyone around the former president believes that he should highlight the First Step Act, which Mr. Trump himself soured on soon after signing it. Mr. Trump, who is often influenced by what he thinks his core voters want, felt affirmed in that view after a number of hard-core Republicans began to criticize it in 2021 and 2022 amid a rise in crime. Some of his conservative associates, who see the bill as problematic with Republicans, said privately that they were unhappy that he had met with Mr. Harris.While the issue poses a potential challenge for Mr. Trump’s team, the discussions also underscore a broader challenge for President Biden’s team heading into 2024: how to pin down an opponent who has a four-year record as well as decades’ worth of statements on almost every issue that are contradictory.Michael Harris, the founder of Death Row Records, was pardoned on Mr. Trump’s last full day in office.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Trump has a long history of making racist statements, including attacking a judge’s Mexican heritage; calling for the death penalty for the teenagers who were arrested and later coerced into giving confessions in a case of brutal rape in Central Park in 1989; telling a group of congresswomen of color — almost all of whom were born in the United States — to go back to their countries; and, perhaps most famously, insisting that the first Black president might not have been born in the United States.He has also grown increasingly violent in his rhetoric about crime in America, saying that he admires the freedom that despots have to execute drug dealers and that shoplifters should be shot on the spot.At the same time, he has made clear that he viewed the law, which, among other things, sought to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes, as something that should have won him support from Black voters.“Did it for African Americans,” he wrote to this reporter for a book in 2022 when asked about his repeated expressions of regret about the law. “Nobody else could have gotten it done. Got zero credit.”But the Democratic coalition of Black, Latino and younger voters has frayed since Mr. Biden’s victory, with Mr. Trump picking up support from those groups. And one difficulty in holding Mr. Trump to account is that he often has a contradictory set of words and actions that different people can latch onto.And the bipartisan First Step Act, which Mr. Trump signed in December 2018, is one part of his record that some of his allies believe they can use in 2024 to downplay his strongman rhetoric and actions around race and violence.“Trump was both bloodthirsty in his rhetoric but signed the First Step Act, which was significant sentencing reform,” said Michael Waldman, the president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice, who also served in the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Whether he truly believed in it or not, he did it.”While Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, attacked Mr. Trump over the law, calling it a “jailbreak” bill despite voting for an early version of it, his criticisms didn’t dent Mr. Trump’s support. And Republican criticisms of the law have become more muted as the party has coalesced around him.Both praising the legislation and making racist statements would be in keeping with Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, which was a mix of demagoguing immigrants and small-time criminals, using law-and-order rhetoric, and accusing Hillary Clinton of racism against Black men.It is also far from the only issue on which Mr. Trump has decades of action and statements he can point to that allow different people to read what they want into his behavior, and will happily play to whatever audience he’s in front of.Other than Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, no person is more responsible than Mr. Trump, who gave the Supreme Court its 6-3 conservative majority, for overturning the landmark decision that recognized abortion rights as constitutionally protected. Yet, Mr. Trump called a six-week abortion ban signed by Mr. DeSantis a “terrible mistake,” and has refused to be specific about a national ban. That has alarmed Democrats, who worry he will try to appear moderate on the issue in a general election race against Mr. Biden.More recently, some of Mr. Biden’s allies watched angrily as the Spanish-language network Univision, which Mr. Trump has attacked in the past but now has new ownership, gave the former president a relatively soft interview, one that Mr. Kushner arranged, and minimized pushback from Mr. Biden’s team.It remains to be seen how willing Mr. Trump will be, if at all, to speak about the criminal justice law, or whether Mr. Harris might be asked to speak publicly.The same week that Mr. Harris met with Mr. Trump, the former president received a call from Alice Johnson, whose life sentence on charges related to cocaine possession and money laundering was commuted after a meeting between Mr. Trump and the celebrity Kim Kardashian. Ms. Johnson was the person who recommended to Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump that Mr. Harris be granted clemency.“My whole conversation was just encouragement” about the criminal justice reform bill, said Ms. Johnson, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2020 and was pardoned by Mr. Trump a short time later. She said no one had asked her to call him or engage in politics for him next year. But, she added, “he actually is proud of that piece of legislation.” More

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      The Axe Is Sharp

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      David Axelrod is not a prick.Truly.I’ve known him since 2007 and if I had to pick a noun to describe him, it would be mensch.So when President Biden privately employs that epithet for Axelrod, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, it’s bad for a few reasons.The ordinarily gracious president is punching down at the strategist who helped elevate him onto the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008 and who thinks he was “a great vice president” and has done a lot of wonderful things as president.When some in the Obama camp chattered in 2011 about switching Biden out for Hillary Clinton, Axelrod said, he protested: “That would be an incredible act of disloyalty to a guy who has done a great job for us.”Surely, Mr. Biden does not want to lower himself to the vulgarity of the growling, brawling, thieving Republicans in the Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of our Congress.(As Seth Meyers noted, George Santos — who spent campaign money on Hermès, Ferragamo, Botox, Sephora and OnlyFans — had “the shopping list of a 98-year-old oil tycoon’s 20-year-old wife.”)Axelrod drew Biden’s ire because he urged the president to consider stopping at one term, throwing open the race to younger Democrats while there’s still time, and leaving as a hero. He said that, despite Biden’s insult, he got a slew of messages agreeing with him.“I don’t care about them thinking I’m a prick — that’s fine,” the strategist told me. “I hope they don’t think the polls are wrong because they’re not.”According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Donald Trump is ahead in five battleground states and, as some other surveys have found, is even making inroads among Black voters and young voters. There’s a generational fracture in the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Hamas horror and Biden’s age. Third-party spoilers are circling.The president turns 81 on Monday; the Oval hollows out its occupants quickly, and Biden is dealing with two world-shattering wars, chaos at the border, a riven party and a roiling country.“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod said. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”The president’s flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.Like other pols, Biden has a healthy ego and like all presidents, he’s truculent about not getting the credit he thinks he deserves for his accomplishments. And it must be infuriating that most of the age qualms are about him, when Trump is only a few years younger.No doubt the president is having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that the 77-year-old Mar-a-Lago Dracula has risen from his gilded coffin even though he’s albatrossed with legal woes and seems more deranged than ever, referring to Democrats with the fascist-favored term “vermin” and plotting a second-term revengefest. Trump’s campaign slogan should be, “There will be blood.”For Biden, this is about his identity. It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office.But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time it helped get him to No. 1 and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and that’s all he cares about. In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump gloated about how his audience on Jan. 6 was “the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of by far.”Never mind that it was one of the most dangerous, shameful days in our history. To Trump, it was glorious.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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      Can Nikki Haley Beat Trump?

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      It’s time to admit that I underestimated Nikki Haley.When she began her presidential campaign, she seemed caught betwixt and between: too much of a throwback to pre-Trump conservatism to challenge Ron DeSantis for the leadership of a Trumpified party, but also too entangled with Trump after her service in his administration to offer the fresh start that anti-Trump Republicans would be seeking.If you wanted someone to attack Trump head-on with relish, Chris Christie was probably your guy. If you wanted someone with pre-Trump Republican politics but without much Trump-era baggage, Tim Scott seemed like the fresher face.But now Scott is gone, Christie has a modest New Hampshire constituency and not much else, and Haley is having her moment. She’s in second place in New Hampshire, tied with DeSantis in the most recent Des Moines Register-led poll in Iowa, and leading Joe Biden by more than either DeSantis or Trump in national polls. Big donors are fluttering her way, and there’s an emerging media narrative about how she’s proving the DeSantis campaign theory wrong and showing that you can thrive as a Republican without surrendering to Trumpism.To be clear, I do not think Haley has proved the DeSantis theory wrong. She is not polling anywhere close to the highs DeSantis hit during his stint as the Trump-slayer, and if you use the Register-led poll to game out a future winnowing, you see that her own voters would mostly go to DeSantis if she were to drop out — but if DeSantis drops out, a lot of his voters would go to Trump.As long as that’s the case, Haley might be able to consolidate 30 or 35 percent of the party, but the path to actually winning would be closed. Which could make her ascent at DeSantis’s expense another study in the political futility of anti-Trump conservatism, its inability to wrestle successfully with the populism that might make Trump the nominee and the president again.But credit where it’s due: Haley has knocked out Scott, passed Christie and challenged DeSantis by succeeding at a core aspect of presidential politics — presenting yourself as an appealing and charismatic leader who can pick public fights and come out the winner (at least when Vivek Ramaswamy is your foil).So in the spirit of not underestimating her, let’s try to imagine a scenario where Haley actually wins the nomination.First, assume that ideological analysis of party politics is overrated, and that a candidate’s contingent success can yield irresistible momentum, stampeding voters in a way that polls alone cannot anticipate.For Haley, the stampede scenario requires winning outright in New Hampshire. The difficulty is that even on the upswing, she still trails Trump 46-19 in the current RealClearPolitics Average. But assume that Christie drops out and his support swings her way, assume that the current polling underestimates how many independents vote in the G.O.P. primary, assume a slight sag for Trump and a little last-moment Nikkimentum, and you can imagine your way to a screaming upset — Haley 42, Trump 40.Then assume that defeat forces Trump to actually debate in the long February lull (broken only by the Nevada caucus) between New Hampshire and the primary in Haley’s own South Carolina. Assume that the front-runner comes across as some combination of rusty and insane, Haley handles him coolly and then wins her home state primary. Assume that polls still show her beating Biden, Fox News has rallied to her fully, endorsements flood in — and finally, finally, enough voters who like Trump because he’s a winner swing her way to clear a path to the nomination.You’ll notice, though, that this story skips over Iowa. That’s because I’m not sure what Haley needs there. Victory seems implausible, but does she want to surge so impressively that it knocks DeSantis out of the race? Or, as the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has suggested, does the fact that DeSantis’s voters mostly have Trump as a second choice mean that Haley actually needs DeSantis to stay in the race through the early states, so that Trump can’t consolidate his own potential support? In which case maybe Haley needs an Iowa result where both she and DeSantis overperform their current polling, setting her up for New Hampshire but also giving the Florida governor a reason to hang around.This dilemma connects to my earlier argument that beating Trump requires a joining of the Haley and DeSantis factions, an alliance of the kind contemplated by Trump’s opponents in 2016 but never operationalized. But I doubt Haley is interested in such an alliance at the moment; after all, people are talking about her path to victory — and here I am, doing it myself!Fundamentally, though, I still believe that Haley’s destiny is anticipated by the biting, “congrats, Nikki,” quote from a DeSantis ally in New York Magazine: “You won the Never Trump primary. Your prize is nothing.”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