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      The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024

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      The 2022 election went better than Democrats could have hoped. The party picked up governor’s mansions and state legislatures and expanded their Senate majority. It held down losses in the House. The promised “red wave” never crashed ashore. Perhaps it would have been better if it had.Looking back, the seeds of Democrats’ 2024 wipeout were planted in the quasi-victory of 2022. Three things happened in the aftermath. The pressure on President Biden not to run for re-election, and the possibility of a serious primary challenge if he did run, evaporated. Democrats persuaded themselves of a theory of the electorate that proved mistaken. And as a result, the Biden-Harris administration avoided the kind of hard, post-defeat pivot that both the Clinton and Obama administrations were forced to make after the midterm defeats of 1994 and 2010.In 2020, Democrats had worried over Biden’s age, but were comforted, in part, by the soft signals he sent that he would serve only one term. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” he said in 2020. By mid-2022, as Biden signaled his intention to run again, the party was growing alarmed. In June of that year, The Times interviewed nearly 50 Democratic officials and found that among “nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability.”Nor was the public thrilled about the results the Biden administration was delivering. In October of 2022, amid widespread anger over inflation, the Times-Siena poll found Biden with a 38 percent job approval rating and trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch.If Democrats had been wiped out in the midterms, the pressure on Biden to be the transitional figure he’d promised to be would have been immense. If he’d run again despite that pressure, he might have faced serious challengers. But Democrats fared far better than they had expected. The president’s saggy approval rating and the widespread anger at inflation were nowhere to be found in the election results. In their first referendum under Biden, Democrats did much better than they had under Clinton or Obama. Any pressure on Biden to step aside — and any possibility of a real primary challenge — ended.In its place, a new theory of the electorate emerged, based on the way Democrats over-performed in contested states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and underperformed in safe states, like New York and California. There were two coalitions: the MAGA coalition and the anti-MAGA coalition. The anti-MAGA coalition was bigger, but it needed to be activated by the threat of Donald Trump or the Dobbs abortion ruling. A slew of special election victories in 2023 seemed to confirm the theory. Democrats were winning elections they had no business winning, given Biden’s low approval rating and public anger over inflation. But the anti-MAGA coalition’s hatred of Trump had changed the electoral math.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

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      Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netflix’s Martha Stewart Documentary Says She Was the Original Influencer. Was She?

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      The new Netflix documentary “Martha” examines the homemaking diva’s illustrious, and complicated, career and personal life.“Martha,” a new documentary now on Netflix, offers a candid portrait of the rise and fall (and rebirth?) of the homemaker extraordinaire, who last year, at 81, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.The film, by R.J. Cutler, touches on Ms. Stewart’s troubled childhood, troubled marriage, time on Wall Street and where everything really began: the idyllic Connecticut countryside where she renovated a farmhouse. It looks at how a high-end catering business made her a media mogul with her own magazine, television show and brand of Kmart sheets. And it digs into her highly publicized trial, conviction and prison time.In an edited conversation, members of the Styles staff — Vanessa Friedman, Madison Malone Kircher and Jacob Gallagher — and James B. Stewart, a business reporter and columnist whose book “Tangled Webs” examined the insider trading probe that incriminated Ms. Stewart, discussed the documentary and the life of a woman who built a man’s empire on being the ultimate homemaker.MADISON MALONE KIRCHER: I realized how little I actually knew about a woman who was basically a canonized saint in my house growing up. Which is to say I was hooked!JAMES STEWART: I liked the film a lot. Her body language and expressions were so revealing. She looked very uncomfortable most of the time. But it was very kind to her.VANESSA FRIEDMAN: I found watching the film especially interesting in the context of the election, and the complicated feelings around women — particularly, powerful, successful women. Because it did reveal very complicated feelings about Martha.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump Wins Arizona, Reversing the State’s Blue Trend

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      The victory added to the list of battleground states that Mr. Trump lost in 2020 and flipped back four years later.President-elect Donald J. Trump has won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes, The Associated Press said on Saturday night, flipping yet another swing state and bringing his final Electoral College tally to 312. With his victory in Arizona, Mr. Trump has now won all seven of this year’s battleground states.Mr. Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona is a reversion to the state’s traditionally conservative status: It has voted for a Democrat only twice since the 1940s, including in 2020, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. eked out a win over Mr. Trump by just over 10,000 votes.But this year, Democrats appeared to be fighting an uphill battle from the start in Arizona, a border state where voters expressed fury over the migrant crisis and deep economic concerns over the cost of housing and the high prices of everyday goods, like groceries and gasoline.Near a polling location in Guadalupe, Ariz., on Tuesday.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesRepublicans outnumber Democrats in the state, so Ms. Harris needed to persuade the significant number of Arizona independents and moderate Republicans to vote for her. And there were signs she might have been able to do so: Independents, especially white women in the Phoenix suburbs, had been drifting left, and Democrats hoped they would be motivated by protecting reproductive rights and denying Mr. Trump another term.Instead, it was Mr. Trump who put together a winning coalition, keeping enough of the state’s Republicans in line while also securing the votes of enough independents. Polls had also long suggested he was cutting into the Latino vote, a fast-growing and crucial voting bloc in Arizona that Democrats had been relying on as part of their coalition.Ms. Harris appeared to have the superior ground game in Arizona, with her campaign and allied groups, like unions, working efficiently to knock on doors and turn out voters. Mr. Trump’s operation, meanwhile, relied heavily on outside committees to do that work, an untested strategy for Republicans.Still, conservative groups like Turning Point seemed well-prepared, knocking on doors throughout the summer and fall and urging lower-propensity conservative voters to return their ballots early — a shift from 2020, when Mr. Trump was more adamant in maligning early voting. Republicans were encouraged by the early vote numbers in Arizona this year, hoping they would be enough to forestall a late surge from Democrats. More

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      Trump Won’t Have Haley or Pompeo in New Administration

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump ruled out roles for Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, who served in his previous administration.President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he would not invite Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, or Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, to join his incoming administration.Mr. Trump’s announcement on Truth Social, his social media platform, was an early indication of the decision-making process of the president-elect as he navigates the ideologic differences within the Republican Party.Days after his election win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s team has already started his first formal transition meetings and ramped up the process for building his new cabinet.By ruling out Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump was rejecting two Republicans who had backed U.S. support for Ukraine at a time when Mr. Trump and many of his allies have pushed to curtail American aid for allies and military involvement overseas.“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” Mr. Trump said in the post. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country.”Mr. Trump was also turning away two top officials in his first administration who in recent years had shared criticism of him.Many in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including David Sacks, a major Trump donor, viewed Mr. Pompeo as being too eager to use the military overseas. Mr. Trump also likely did not forget that, in 2023, Mr. Pompeo warned during the Conservative Political Action Conference that Republicans should not follow “celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics — those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality.”Days later, during an interview with Fox News, Mr. Pompeo claimed he was not talking about Mr. Trump, while also criticizing his former boss’s fiscal policy.Mr. Pompeo in 2022 also criticized Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after the F.B.I. raided his home in Mar-a-Lago.“No one gets to keep classified information outside of a place classified information should be. That is certainly true,” Mr. Pompeo said, while also denouncing the Justice Department for its handling of the case.Ms. Haley was also Mr. Trump’s last rival to drop out of the race for the Republican nomination. Just days before the election, Ms. Haley said the Trump campaign’s rhetoric was driving away women and minorities, citing the racist and misogynistic remarks by speakers at a Trump rally held at Madison Square Garden in October.“This bromance and this masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable,” Ms. Haley said. Despite repeated offers to provide advice to the campaign, Mr. Trump mostly kept her at a distance during his presidential run. Mr. Trump’s gamble to mobilize men, despite them historically voting less than women, would end up paying off.Both Mr. Pompeo and Ms. Haley did eventually vocally support Mr. Trump and endorse his nomination. More

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      Trump Should Not Let Putin Claim Victory in Ukraine, Says NATO Official

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      Adm. Rob Bauer warned against any peace deal that was too favorable to Russia, arguing that it could undermine American interests.A senior NATO military official suggested on Saturday that any peace deal negotiated by President-elect Donald J. Trump that allowed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to claim victory in Ukraine would undermine the interests of the United States.In a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of a European defense summit in Prague, Adm. Rob Bauer, the Dutch chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said: “If you allow a nation like Russia to win, to come out of this as the victor, then what does it mean for other autocratic states in the world where the U.S. has also interests?”He added: “It’s important enough to talk about Ukraine on its own, but there is more at stake than just Ukraine.”Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that he could end the war in Ukraine in a day, without saying how. A settlement outlined by Vice President-elect JD Vance in September echoes what people close to the Kremlin say Mr. Putin wants: allowing Russia to keep the territory it has captured and guaranteeing that Ukraine will not join NATO.A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, Karoline Leavitt, said he was re-elected because the American people “trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world.”“When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary actions to do just that,” Ms. Leavitt said on Saturday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Is About to Face the Choice That Dooms Many Presidencies

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      As happens every time a new president is elected, Donald Trump is experiencing a sudden role reversal. His campaign to earn support from voters has ended abruptly and a new one has begun among donors and activists to earn his support for their priorities. The election was about tax cuts, or maybe cryptocurrency, the arguments go. What Americans really want, sir, is fewer protections on the job and a weaker safety net.This is the first moment when presidencies go wrong. Rather than prepare to govern on behalf of the electorate that put them in power — especially the independent swing voters who by definition provide the margin of victory in a two-party system — new presidents, themselves typically members of the donor and activist communities, convince themselves that their personal preferences are the people’s as well. Two years later, their political capital expended and their agendas in shambles, their parties often suffer crushing defeats in midterm elections.As he looks toward his new term, Mr. Trump could claim a mandate to lead however he wishes, huddle with his supporters at Mar-a-Lago and then see how much of their agenda he can advance before his popularity falls too far to effect further change. That is the formula that has left a nation seemingly resigned to the loss of both common purpose and institutional competence. It is not a formula for a successful presidency, let alone for making America great again.He has another option. He is an iconoclastic leader with a uniquely unfiltered relationship to the American people and a disdain for the chattering class of consultants. He is also the first president since Grover Cleveland to get a second shot at a first term. He has already experienced the bruising tax fight that helped bring his approval rating down to 36 percent a year after his inauguration, the failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the loss of more than 40 House seats and control of the chamber in a midterm election. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, he made a promise to “every citizen” that he would “fight for you, for your family and your future” and that “this will truly be the golden age of America.” Achieving that will require focusing on the challenges and respecting the values broadly shared by not only his voters, but also many others who might come to support him.Take immigration. A promise to secure the border has long been a central aspect of Mr. Trump’s appeal, and Democrats are now clambering to get on his side of the issue. A Trump administration serving American voters would stanch the flow of migrants with tough border enforcement and asylum restrictions, reverse the Biden administration’s lawlessness by removing recent arrivals and protect American workers and businesses by mandating that employers use the E-Verify program to confirm the legal status of the people who work for them. That program, which strikes at the harm that illegal immigration does to American workers, is wildly popular. A recent survey of 2,000 adults conducted by my organization, American Compass, in partnership with YouGov, found 78 percent support overall and 68 percent support even among Democrats. Law-abiding businesses tend to like it, too — they’re tired of getting undercut by competitors that get away with breaking the rules.That’s the path to solving the problem. Mr. Trump will hear a lot of counterarguments from the affluent and influential class that builds its business model on underpaid, undocumented labor, especially in industries such as construction and hospitality, where he has personal experience, as well as in agriculture. Those voices are likely to suggest that instead he condescend to the masses with border theater and hostile rhetoric, while expanding temporary worker programs. To this end, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who opposes the E-Verify program on libertarian grounds, has already been mentioned as a potential candidate for secretary of agriculture. Moves like that will keep the guests at Mr. Trump’s golf clubs happy but ensure growing frustration and disillusion elsewhere.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Howard Lutnick Is Scouting Trump’s Nominees. Some Will Oversee His Interests.

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      Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team and a Wall Street financier, is leading the search for appointees while still running his businesses.The financier Howard Lutnick has been given a high-profile assignment from President-elect Donald J. Trump, one that raises questions about the Wall Street executive’s dual role and what he might gain from it.As co-chair of the transition team, Mr. Lutnick is in charge of identifying 4,000 new hires to fill the second Trump administration, including antitrust officials, securities lawyers and national security advisers who have global expertise.But Mr. Lutnick has not stepped away from running financial firms that serve corporate clients, traders, cryptocurrency platforms and real estate ventures around the world — all of which are regulated by the same agencies whose appointees he is helping to find.Given his sprawling business interests, it’s not known how Mr. Lutnick might keep from violating the transition’s own code of ethics, which echo federal conflict-of-interest guidelines for transition team members. The Trump transition guidelines say that individuals who work on the team must disqualify themselves from matters that may directly conflict with their own financial interests or those of an organization with which they do business.It is not clear whether Mr. Lutnick, who gained national attention when many of his employees died in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, has signed the code of ethics or whether he has recused himself from providing lists of possible nominees for any specific agencies that have oversight of his businesses.Mr. Lutnick declined an interview request from The New York Times. People who work with Mr. Lutnick say that he is careful about separating his private business from his transition work.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More