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      The ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics

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      The legal imbroglios of Donald Trump have lately dominated conversation about the 2024 election. As primary season grinds on, campaign activity will ebb and wane, and issues of the moment — like the first Trump indictment and potentially others to come — will blaze into focus and then disappear.Yet certain fundamentals will shape the races as candidates strategize about how to win the White House. To do this, they will have to account for at least one major political realignment: educational attainment is the new fault line in American politics.Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.It’s both economics and cultureThe impact of education on voting has an economic as well as a cultural component. The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows.According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, since 1989, families headed by college graduates have increased their wealth by 83 percent. For households headed by someone without a college degree, there was relatively little or no increase in wealth.Culturally, a person’s educational attainment increasingly correlates with their views on a wide range of issues like abortion, attitudes about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the relationship between government and organized religion. It also extends to cultural consumption (movies, TV, books), social media choices and the sources of information that shape voters’ understanding of facts.This is not unique to the United States; the pattern has developed across nearly all Western democracies. Going back to the 2016 Brexit vote and the most recent national elections in Britain and France, education level was the best predictor of how people voted.This new class-based politics oriented around the education divide could turn out to be just as toxic as race-based politics. It has facilitated a sorting of America into enclaves of like-minded people who look at members of the other enclave with increasing contempt.The road to political realignmentThe diploma divide really started to emerge in voting in the early 1990s, and Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 solidified this political realignment. Since then, the trends have deepened.In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump by assembling a coalition different from the one that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. Of the 206 counties that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 that were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Biden won back only 25 of these areas, which generally had a higher percentage of non-college-educated voters. But overall Mr. Biden carried college-educated voters by 15 points.In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats carried white voters with a college degree by three points, while Republicans won white non-college voters by 34 points (a 10-point improvement from 2018).This has helped establish a new political geography. There are now 42 states firmly controlled by one party or the other. And with 45 out of 50 states voting for the same party in the last two presidential elections, the only states that voted for the winning presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on educational levels — Pennsylvania (23rd in education attainment), Georgia (24th), Wisconsin (26th), Arizona (30th) and Michigan (32nd).In 2020, Mr. Biden received 306 electoral votes, Mr. Trump, 232. In the reapportionment process — which readjusts the Electoral College counts based on the most current census data — the new presidential electoral map is more favorable to Republicans by a net six points.In 2024, Democrats are likely to enter the general election with 222 electoral votes, compared with 219 for Republicans. That leaves only eight states, with 97 electoral votes — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — up for grabs. And for these states, education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.The 2024 mapA presidential candidate will need a three-track strategy to carry these states in 2024. The first goal is to further exploit the trend of education levels driving how people vote. Democrats have been making significant inroads with disaffected Republicans, given much of the party base’s continued embrace of Mr. Trump and his backward-looking grievances, as well as a shift to the hard right on social issues — foremost on abortion. This is particularly true with college-educated Republican women.In this era of straight-party voting, it is notable that Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania governors’ races. They also made significant inroads with these voters in the Senate races in Arizona (13 percent), Pennsylvania (8 percent), Nevada (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).This represents a large and growing pool of voters. In a recent NBC poll, over 30 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they were not supporters of MAGA.At the same time, Republicans have continued to increase their support with non-college-educated voters of color. Between 2012 and 2020, support for Democrats from nonwhite-working-class voters dropped 18 points. The 2022 Associated Press VoteCast exit polls indicated that support for Democrats dropped an additional 14 points compared with the 2020 results.However, since these battleground states largely fall in the middle of education levels in our country, they haven’t followed the same trends as the other 42 states. So there are limits to relying on the education profile of voters to carry these states.This is where the second group of voters comes in: political independents, who were carried by the winning party in the last four election cycles. Following Mr. Trump’s narrow victory with independent voters in 2016, Mr. Biden carried them by nine points in 2020. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they carried them by 15 points, and their narrow two-point margin in 2022 enabled them to hold the Senate.The importance of the independent voting bloc continues to rise. This is particularly significant since the margin of victory in these battleground states has been very narrow in recent elections. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980. In Arizona, 40 percent of voters in 2022 considered themselves political independents.These independent voters tend to live disproportionately in suburbs, which are now the most diverse socioeconomic areas in our country. These suburban voters are the third component of a winning strategy. With cities increasingly controlled by Democrats — because of the high level of educated voters there — and Republicans maintaining their dominance in rural areas with large numbers of non-college voters, the suburbs are the last battleground in American politics.Voting in the suburbs has been decisive in determining the outcome of the last two presidential elections: Voters in the suburbs of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Phoenix determined the winner in the last two presidential elections and are likely to play the same pivotal role in 2024.These voters moved to the suburbs for a higher quality of life: affordable housing, safe streets and good schools. These are the issues that animate these voters, who have a negative view of both parties. They do not embrace a MAGA-driven Republican Party, but they also do not trust Mr. Biden and Democrats, and consider them to be culturally extreme big spenders who aren’t focused enough on issues like immigration and crime.So in addition to education levels, these other factors will have a big impact on the election. The party that can capture the pivotal group of voters in the suburbs of battleground states is likely to prevail. Democrats’ success in the suburbs in recent elections suggests an advantage, but it is not necessarily enduring. Based on post-midterm exit polls from these areas, voters have often voted against a party or candidate — especially Mr. Trump — rather than for one.But in part because of the emergence of the diploma divide, there is an opening for both political parties in 2024 if they are willing to gear their agenda and policies beyond their political base. The party that does that is likely to win the White House.Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a senior adviser to the Brunswick Group.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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      The 2024 Presidential Campaign is Finally Kicking into Gear

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      Candidates are visiting early primary states, attending cattle calls and holding donor summits. The nascent campaign seems to be kicking into gear.From small towns in Iowa and New Hampshire to the grand stages of interest groups’ conventions, the 2024 presidential campaign is underway, whether or not Americans are ready.The past week has brought at least four declared or likely candidates to New Hampshire, three to Iowa and one to South Carolina. Nine addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual forum in Indianapolis, and three attended a Republican donor retreat in Nashville.The formal choreography of the campaign is falling into place. Last Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee chose Chicago to host its convention next August. On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee, in a surprise to no one, chose Fox News to host the party’s first debate this August.The declared candidates filed their quarterly fund-raising reports late this week, revealing the first big campaign finance error of the season. The campaign of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, exaggerated her fund-raising total by more than $2 million by double-counting sums transferred between different committees.Five major candidates have officially announced campaigns: four Republicans (former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and author) and one Democrat (the self-help author and 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson).But on the campaign trail, it seems like more.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who announced an exploratory committee on Wednesday, had a particularly packed week, with trips to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A tour of Alex’s Restaurant in Goose Creek, S.C., on Friday had the look and feel of a full-blown campaign stop, with supporters holding signs and the number of reporters rivaling the number of diners.Mr. Scott talked with voters and restaurant staff before heading outside to take questions from reporters — walking a thin line between being a declared candidate and one in waiting.“The message is resonating,” he said, underlining his belief that his conservative talking points with religious overtones will appeal to a broad swath of Republican voters. Asked if he had made up his mind about running for president, he said: “I’m getting closer. Without any question.”He added that he would return to Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming days and had plans to stop in Nevada, another early-voting state.While Mr. Scott was in South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — the top challenger to Mr. Trump in early polls, though not officially in the race — spoke at Liberty University in Virginia and then flew to New Hampshire. Mr. DeSantis addressed a crowd of 500 at a state Republican Party dinner in Manchester.The event raised $250,000 for the state party, with the party chairman saying Mr. DeSantis had directed his own donors to give an additional $132,000.After his nearly 40-minute speech, Mr. DeSantis spent just as long methodically working his way through the crowd, visiting all 50 tables for handshakes, backslaps, photos and small talk. “Did you get it?” he asked picture takers. “County chairman for where?”The low-stakes interactions appeared designed to dispel criticism that Mr. DeSantis was unwilling to engage in the traditional retail campaigning that political activists in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire value. On Saturday, he also stopped by an airport diner.The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, was in Nashville, far away from home, testing out his own possible campaign at the Republican National Committee’s private donor retreat. There he spoke at a luncheon on Saturday and implicitly blamed Mr. Trump for the party’s underwhelming performance in the midterm elections. (Data backs him up: A New York Times analysis found that candidates Mr. Trump supported in primaries performed about five percentage points worse than other Republicans did in the general election.)Mr. Trump was at the retreat, too, casting himself against that evidence as the only candidate who could win a general election. So was his former vice president, Mike Pence, whom Trump supporters declared their desire to hang when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.“The old Republican Party is gone, and it’s never coming back,” Mr. Trump said in a speech Saturday, less than two weeks after he was arraigned in New York on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. “Instead of being the party of the establishment class, we are now the party of the working class, the party of all Americans.”The evening before, Mr. Pence cast the 2024 election as a fight between “one vision grounded in traditional Republican principles, and another vision that grasps what some think the American people want to hear.” He took repeated but indirect aim at Mr. Trump, noting that in 2022, “candidates that were focused on the past, particularly those focused on relitigating the last election, did not do well.”On Sunday, Mr. Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who announced his campaign this month and was in Iowa a few days ago, partook in another campaign staple: the Sunday morning talk show interview.Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Mr. Hutchinson gave the usual answer to the question of why he was running — “because we need leadership that brings out the best of America and doesn’t appeal to our worst instincts.” Then the host, Margaret Brennan, pressed him on how he would respond to the country’s bleak parade of mass shootings.He did not endorse any new federal legislation and expressed skepticism about whether red-flag laws — which allow the removal of guns from people deemed to pose a danger to themselves or to others — protected due process. At the same time, he urged states to make greater use of existing laws that allow the institutionalization of people deemed to pose a danger to themselves or to others.There has been much less activity across the aisle, where President Biden is inching toward formally declaring a re-election campaign that he has already said was definite. (“We’ll announce it relatively soon,” he said on Friday.)No one with a large support base has risen to challenge him. But he does have one official competitor, Ms. Williamson, who has been traversing New Hampshire since Friday, hitting Dover, Henniker, Keene, Lancaster and Littleton.A second challenger, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., plans to announce his campaign this Wednesday.The election will be just 566 days away.Rebecca Davis O’Brien More

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      Fox News Is on Trial, and So Are Falsehoods About 2020

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      A jury in Delaware will be asked to weigh the limits of the First Amendment. Another question in the case is whether the network will pay a financial penalty for disseminating election lies.WILMINGTON, Del. — On Monday, a judge in Delaware Superior Court is expected to swear in the jury in a defamation trial that has little precedent in American law. Fox News, one of the most powerful and profitable media companies, will defend itself against extensive evidence suggesting it told its audience a story of conspiracy and fraud in the 2020 election it knew wasn’t true.The jury will be asked to weigh lofty questions about the limits of the First Amendment and to consider imposing a huge financial penalty against Fox. Some of the most influential names in conservative media — Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson — are expected to be called to testify. But there is another fundamental question the case raises: Will there be a price to pay for profiting from the spread of misinformation?Few people have been held legally accountable for their roles in trying to delegitimize President Biden’s victory. Sidney Powell, a lawyer who was one of the biggest purveyors of conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems, the company suing Fox for $1.6 billion, avoided disbarment in Texas after a judge dismissed a complaint against her in February.Jenna Ellis, an attorney who worked with Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign, received a reprimand last month instead of losing her license with the Colorado bar. Donald J. Trump, whose false insistence that he was cheated of victory incited a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, is running for president a third time and remains the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination.Political misinformation has become so pervasive in part because, there is little the government can do to stop it.“Lying to American voters is not actually actionable,” said Andrew Weissmann, the former general counsel of the F.B.I. who was a senior member of the special counsel team under Robert S. Mueller that looked into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.It’s a quirk of American law that most lies — even ones that destabilize the nation, told by people with enormous power and reach — can’t be prosecuted. Charges can be brought only in limited circumstances, such as if a business executive lies to shareholders or an individual lies to the F.B.I. Politicians can be charged if they lie about a campaign contribution, which is the essence of the criminal case against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.In the Fox News case, the trial is going forward because the law allows companies like Dominion, and people, to seek damages if they can prove their reputations were harmed by lies.The legal bar that a company like Dominion must meet to prove defamation is known as actual malice. And it is extremely difficult to prove because of the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times Company v. Sullivan, which held that public officials can claim defamation only if they can prove that the defendants either knew that they were making a false statement or were reckless in deciding to publish the defamatory statement.“There are all sorts of times you can lie with impunity, but here there’s an actual victim,” Mr. Weissmann added. “It’s only because of the serendipity that they actually attacked a company.”Usually, there is great deference among media lawyers and First Amendment scholars toward the defendants in a libel case. They argue that the law is supposed to provide the media with breathing room to make mistakes, even serious ones, as long as they are not intentional.But many legal scholars have said that they believed there was ample evidence to support Dominion’s case, in which they argue they were intentionally harmed by the lies broadcast by Fox, and that they would not only be surprised but disappointed if a jury didn’t find Fox liable for defamation.“If this case goes the wrong way,” said John Culhane, professor of law at Delaware Law School at Widener University, “it’s clear from my perspective that would be a terrible mistake because this is about as strong as a case you’re going to get on defamation.” Mr. Culhane added that a Fox victory would only make it harder to rein in the kind of misinformation that’s rampant in pro-Trump media.“I think it would embolden them even further,” he said.This case has proved to be extraordinary on many levels, not only for its potential to deliver the kind of judgment that has so far eluded prosecutors like Mr. Weissmann, who have spent years pursuing Mr. Trump and his supporters who they believe bent the American democratic system to a breaking point.“Even if this didn’t involve Donald Trump and Fox and the insurrection, this is a unique libel trial, full stop,” said David Logan, a professor of law at Roger Williams School of Law and an expert on defamation. “There’s never been one like this before.”It is extremely rare for defamation cases to reach a jury. Mr. Logan said his research shows a steady decline over the years, with an average of 27 per year in the 1980s but only three in 2017.Some experts like Mr. Logan believe the case’s significance could grow beyond its relevance to the current disinformation-plagued political climate. They see an opportunity for the Supreme Court to eventually take the case as a vehicle to revisit libel law and the “actual malice” standard. The justices have not done that since a 1989 case involving a losing candidate for municipal office in Ohio who successfully sued a newspaper after it published a false story about him a week before the election. The court said that a public figure cannot recover damages unless there was “clear and convincing proof” of actual malice..The actual malice standard has been vital for individual journalists and media outlets who make mistakes — as long as they are honest mistakes. But some scholars like Mr. Logan — as well as two conservative Supreme Court justices, Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — have argued that “actual malice” should be reconsidered as too high a standard. Justice Thomas specifically cited as a reason “the proliferation of falsehoods.”“The nature of this privilege goes to the heart of our democracy, particularly in this case,” said Mr. Logan, whose paper arguing that the courts have made it too difficult for victims of libel to win relief was cited in a dissent by Justice Gorsuch in 2021.Fox lawyers are already preparing for an appeal — a sign they are under no illusion that beating Dominion’s case will be easy. At several recent hearings in front of Judge Eric M. Davis, Fox has been represented by Erin Murphy, an appellate lawyer with experience arguing cases before the Supreme Court.Dominion also apparently considers the possibility of an appeal quite realistic. It had an appellate attorney of its own, Rodney A. Smolla, arguing on its behalf when questions of Fox’s First Amendment defense arose last month — the kind of constitutional questions that federal appellate courts will entertain.The belief that the Supreme Court could eventually hear the Fox-Dominion case is shared by the general counsel of Fox Corporation, Viet Dinh. Mr. Dinh, who is likely to be called as a witness by Dominion during the trial, has told colleagues privately that he believes Fox’s odds at the Supreme Court would be good, — certainly better than in front of a Delaware jury, according to people who know his thinking. The evidence against Fox includes copious amounts of text messages and emails showing that producers, hosts and executives belittled the claims being made on air of hacked voting machines and conspiracy, details that Dominion has said prove the network defamed it.But Fox lawyers and its public relations department have been making the case that its broadcasts were protected under the First Amendment because they encompassed the kind of coverage and commentary that media outlets have a right to do on official events of intense public interest.“A free-flowing, robust American discourse depends on First Amendment protections for the press’ news gathering and reporting,” a network spokeswoman said in a written statement. The statement added that Fox viewers expected the kind of commentary that aired on the network after the election “just as they expect hyperbole, speculation and opinion from a newspaper’s op-ed section.”Judge Davis has overruled Fox on some of its First Amendment claims, limiting its ability to argue certain points at trial, such as its contention that it did not endorse any false statements by the president and his allies but merely repeated them as it would any newsworthy statement.A spokeswoman for Dominion expressed confidence, saying: “In the coming weeks, we will prove Fox spread lies causing enormous damage to Dominion. We look forward to trial.”Inside Fox, from the corporate offices in Los Angeles to the news channel’s Manhattan headquarters, there is little optimism about the case. Several current and former employees said privately that few people at the company would be surprised to see a jury return a judgment against Fox. Judge Davis has expressed considerable skepticism toward Fox in the courtroom. He issued a sanction against Fox last week when Dominion disclosed that the company had not revealed details about Mr. Murdoch’s involvement in Fox News’s affairs, ruling that Dominion had a right to conduct further depositions at Fox’s expense.But he does not have the final say. Twelve men and women from Delaware will ultimately decide the case. And defamation suits so rarely prevail, it’s also reasonable to consider the possibility that Fox does win — and what a 2024 election looks like with an emboldened pro-Trump media. More

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      Why DeSantis Needs to Run This Year

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      The resurgence of Donald Trump in the 2024 primary polls, the unsurprising evidence that his supporters will stand by him through a prosecution, and the tentativeness of Ron DeSantis’s pre-campaign have combined to create a buzz that maybe DeSantis shouldn’t run at all. It’s been whispered by nervous donors, shouted by Trump’s supporters and lately raised by pundits of the left and right.Thus the liberal Bill Scher, writing in The Washington Monthly, argues that Trump looks too strong, that there isn’t a clear-enough constituency for DeSantis’s promise of Trumpism without the florid drama, and that if DeSantis runs and fails, he’s more likely to end up “viciously humiliated,” like Trump’s 2016 rivals, than to set himself up as the next in line for 2028.Then from the right, writing for The Spectator, Daniel McCarthy channels Niccolò Machiavelli to argue that while DeSantis probably will run, he would be wiser to choose a more dogged, long-term path instead — emphasizing “virtu” rather than chasing Fortune, to use Machiavelli’s language. In 2024 Trump might poison the prospects of any G.O.P. candidate who beats him, while Joe Biden could be a relatively potent incumbent. But if the Florida governor continues to build a record of conservative accomplishment in his home state, “2028 would offer a well-prepared DeSantis a clear shot.”I think they’re both wrong, and that if DeSantis has presidential ambitions he simply has to run right now, notwithstanding all of the obstacles that they identify. My reasoning depends both on the “Fortune” that McCarthy invokes and on an argument that Scher’s piece nods to while rejecting: the idea that presidential candidates are more likely to miss their moment — as Chris Christie did when he passed on running in 2012, as Mario Cuomo did for his entire career — than they are to run too early and suffer a career-ending rebuke.It’s true that fortune doesn’t always favor the bold. (As McCarthy notes, that phrase originates in Virgil’s “Aeneid,” where it’s uttered by an Italian warlord just before he gets killed.) But the key to the don’t-miss-your-moment argument is that when it comes to something as difficult as gaining the presidency, mostly fortune doesn’t favor anybody. Every would-be president, no matter their virtues as a politician, is inevitably a hostage to events, depending on unusual synchronicities to open a path to the White House.A great many successful political careers never have that path open at all. A minority have it open in the narrowest way, where you can imagine threading needles and rolling lucky sixes all the way to the White House. Only a tiny number are confronted with a situation where they seem to have a strong chance, not just a long-shot possibility, before they even announce their candidacy.That’s where DeSantis sits right now. The political betting site PredictIt places his odds of being president in 2024, expressed as a share price, at 23 cents, slightly below Trump and well below Biden, but far above everybody else. Those odds, representing a roughly 20 percent chance at the White House, sound about right to me. If you look at national polls since Trump’s indictment, DeSantis’s support has dipped only slightly; if you look at polls of early primary states he’s clearly within striking distance, Trump has a floor of support but also a lot of voters who aren’t eager to rally to him (his indictment may have solidified support, but it didn’t make his numbers soar) and DeSantis has not yet even begun to campaign. He’s in a much better position than any of Trump’s rivals ever were in 2016, and you could argue that he starts out closer to the nomination than any Republican candidate did in 2008 or 2012.Not to run now is to throw this proximity away, in the hopes of starting out even closer four years hence. But DeSantis’s current position is itself a creation of unusual political good fortune. Yes, he’s been skillful, but that skill wouldn’t have gotten him here without events beyond anyone’s control — the Covid-19 pandemic, the woke revolution in liberal institutions, the split between Mike Pence and Trump after Jan. 6, the strength of the Florida economy, and more.It’s obviously possible to imagine a future where fortune continues to favor DeSantis and he goes into 2028 as the prohibitive favorite. But time and chance are cruel, and there are many more paths where events conspire against him, and he wakes up in 2027 staring at PredictIt odds of 5 percent instead.If he were at 5 percent odds right now — if Trump were leading him 75-20 in New Hampshire and Iowa rather than roughly 40-30, or if Biden’s approval ratings stood at 70 percent instead of 43 percent — I would buy the argument for waiting.But DeSantis today is a man already graced by Fortune. And even if the goddess doesn’t always favor boldness, she takes a stern view of those to whom favor is extended who then refuse the gift.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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      DeSantis Attempts to Woo Young Evangelicals at Liberty University

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      The Florida governor pitched himself as a defender of traditional values to students at Liberty University, an important stage for Republican presidential hopefuls.The morning after signing one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bills into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pitched himself to thousands of evangelical college students as a defender of truth, common sense and morality in the public square.“Yes, the truth will set you free,” Mr. DeSantis said, invoking the words of Christ. “Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service, which the school bills as “the world’s largest gathering of Christian students.”He was introduced by pastor Jonathan Falwell, recently named the school’s chancellor, who drew sustained applause when he mentioned Mr. DeSantis’s signing of the abortion law on Thursday night. The law prohibits the procedure past six weeks.Mr. DeSantis did not explicitly mention the abortion law. He opened his speech on a personal note, thanking the audience for their prayers after his wife’s cancer diagnosis in 2021.“The prayers have been answered,” he said. He went on to tout his record in Florida on an array of issues including new restrictions on gender-affirming medical treatments.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We did not back down.”Students listened to a band playing Christian worship music before Mr. DeSantis’s speech. Eze Amos for The New York TimesThe visit was part of Mr. DeSantis’s national tour of centers of conservative influence as he builds momentum for his widely anticipated entry into the 2024 presidential campaign. More than that, it was a crucial opportunity to gauge, and perhaps advance, his relationship status with evangelical Christians — a voting bloc that helped vault Donald J. Trump to the presidency and appears to be open to new presidential suitors.Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., has long been an important stop for Republican politicians and conservative celebrities eager to reach the campus’s undergraduates.It is the stage where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced his candidacy in 2015. It is also where Mr. Trump introduced himself to a wider evangelical audience, pitching himself as the defender of a Christianity under attack — and famously referred to “Two Corinthians” in a fumbled attempt to speak the same language as his listeners.Ultimately, Mr. Trump did not need to “speak evangelical” to win them over. He won an even higher share of the white evangelical vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Though some evangelical leaders have signaled they would consider supporting another Republican candidate, many remain loyal to Mr. Trump and have so far shown few signs of abandoning him en masse over his recent indictment.For Mr. DeSantis, the question is whether he can loosen that extraordinary bond.Jesse Hughes, a junior at Liberty, had been hoping to hear Mr. DeSantis offer a more intimate account of how his faith influenced his approach to governing and helped him navigate challenges like his wife’s cancer diagnosis. Instead, he said he mostly heard material he recognized from Mr. DeSantis’s other speeches.Still, he is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record in Florida, including his approach to abortion legislation, education, and “how he’s willing to take bold stances and not cave to media pressure.” Under Mr. DeSantis, the state has banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades. Mr. Hughes read Mr. DeSantis’s recent memoir, “The Courage to Be Free,” but said he found little to help him understand the governor’s personal spiritual life. “There are references to his faith, but he doesn’t go into much detail on anything,” he said.Jesse Hughes, a student at Liberty University, is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record but said he was hoping to hear the governor talk about how his faith helped him navigate challenges.Eze Amos for The New York Times Mr. Hughes brushed off the indictment against Mr. Trump as “political persecution.” But he also said that many of his fellow students are ready to move past Mr. Trump.Mr. Hughes, 21, is the president of the campus’s College Republicans club, which is conducting a small informal poll of student preferences in the primary. Hours before the poll closed on Friday, Mr. DeSantis had 53 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 31 percent, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 13 percent.“What I’m seeing is definite interest in DeSantis, but not a rejection of Trump” among white evangelicals, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian at evangelical Calvin University in Michigan and the author of “Jesus and John Wayne.”Ms. Du Mez sees Mr. DeSantis making a similar appeal to conservative evangelicals as Mr. Trump did, positioning himself as a combative culture warrior who is “protecting the vulnerable Christians.” He may appeal to voters who are drawn to Mr. Trump but exhausted by the chaos that follows him, or doubtful of his chances to win in a general election, she said.But there is a trade-off. “What you gain in terms of stability in turning to DeSantis,” Ms. Du Mez said, “you lose in terms of charisma.”She said that most conservative evangelicals at this early stage seem genuinely open to either of the leading candidates. Among voters, at least, “it’s a friendly competition.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service. Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis was raised in a Catholic family in Florida. “Growing up as a kid, it was nonnegotiable that I would have my rear end in church every Sunday morning,” he wrote in his memoir. He has an aunt who is a nun and an uncle who is a priest, both in Ohio. (Both declined to comment on their nephew’s religious upbringing.)Until now, he has deployed mentions of his personal faith fairly cautiously, while positioning himself as a defender of “God-fearing” people. In speeches, he often refers to putting on “the full armor of God” — a biblical reference and an evangelical touchstone — telling audiences to “stand firm against the left’s schemes.”He closed his speech at Liberty with another scripture reference, telling the crowd that “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race, and I will keep the faith,” paraphrasing the apostle Paul in the book of 2 Timothy.Liberty University has long been an important stop for Republican presidential hopefuls.Eze Amos for The New York TimesDaniel Hostetter, the student body president, said his initial impression of Mr. DeSantis’s address was that it felt less personal than what he had heard from other politicians on Liberty’s stage, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia.“I feel like I just don’t know as much about DeSantis as I’d like,” he said. In a candidate, he is looking for someone “who looks like Christ” — someone who is kind and “full of mercy” but will stand by his convictions.He noted that one of the biggest applause lines of the morning did not even come from Mr. DeSantis, but from Mr. Falwell, when he mentioned Florida’s new six-week abortion ban. He speculated that Mr. DeSantis may be waiting to see how the ban is received nationally.Abortion has become a thorny issue for Republicans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A portion of its base will settle for nothing less than the strongest restrictions, putting them out of step with the electorate as a whole and raising concerns about how any candidate who could win the Republican primary on the issue could then go on to win the general election. Sixty-four percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most cases, according to a poll this year from the Public Religion Research Institute.Daniel Griffith, a graduate student who leads a youth ministry at Liberty, said he was disappointed by some of Mr. DeSantis’s more aggressive rhetoric. He noted that the governor’s lines about “wokeness” got more applause than his recitation of his economic achievements in Florida. “I have friends who he would probably consider woke,” he said. “It gets the cheers, it gets the noise, which kind of stinks.”Mr. Griffith said he is leaning toward supporting Mr. DeSantis over Mr. Trump.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said in his speech, referring to his record in Florida.Eze Amos for The New York Times“People are sick of the controversies and sick of the scandal,” he said. “Even at Liberty, we’ve had our own mess and we’re sick of that,” he added, comparing Mr. Trump’s outbursts and legal entanglements with the problems of a former president of the school, Jerry Falwell Jr.Mr. Falwell, a former president of Liberty, was one of Mr. Trump’s first prominent evangelical supporters. He endorsed Mr. Trump in January of 2016, about a week after the candidate spoke at Liberty’s convocation, and became one of his most vocal allies.Mr. Falwell resigned as president in 2020 in a haze of tawdry controversies and is currently suing the school over his retirement payments. The school named a new president in March, Dondi Costin, a former Air Force chaplain who was most recently the president of Charleston Southern University.Out of power and without a platform, Mr. Falwell is an observer in this election cycle, not an influencer. Reached at home on Wednesday, he said he no longer has Mr. Trump’s phone number.But his political instincts have not changed.“I’ve got nothing against DeSantis at all, I just don’t think he’s ready for prime time yet,” Mr. Falwell said, remarking that the governor “looks like a little boy.”He added, “I’m still 100 percent a Trump man.” More

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      Reader Mailbag: Presidential Announcements, That Fox Call and What’s Woke

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      A look at Tim Scott and whether he has an angle to build a base of support.Senator Tim Scott has started an exploratory committee for a 2024 run for president.Charles Krupa/Associated PressThere’s been surprisingly little post-Trump-indictment polling of the Republican race. As a result, we’re still in wait-and-see mode here at the Tilt — and we’ve been waiting long enough that it has become easy to forget what we were even waiting for.In the interim, let’s jump into the mailbag.Off-season?As I wrote a few weeks ago, we’d like the mailbag to be a regular feature during the “off-season,” which brings us to our first question:What is meant by “during the off-season?” Off-season of what? — Jan PanellaI suppose it’s off “election season” or “campaign season.” There’s a predicable ebb and flow to the pace and import of political news, with a slow first half of odd-numbered years ramping up to the heart of the campaign season in the fall of even-numbered years.Reacting to announcementsOf course, it hasn’t exactly been the slowest news week. Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, announced an exploratory presidential committee on Wednesday.What, if anything, do you “do” or look for when you see a presidential announcement from a lesser-known candidate, like Sen. Scott or Nikki Haley? — Kevin in Windsor Terrace, BrooklynI watch a lot of YouTube videos. I watch the speeches the candidates gave at the last party convention. I watch their interviews on Fox News. I watch their victory speeches on election night, and so on. I do not read their books.What am I looking for? A lot of it is entirely superficial: I want to know if they have that “it” factor that might help them catch fire. This is fairly subjective, of course, but there isn’t usually much debate about the truly special candidates, and it usually takes a pretty special candidate to rise from obscurity on the strength of performance on the trail or on the campaign stage.I wouldn’t usually comment on this sort of thing, but Mr. Scott is a fairly typical presidential candidate by these sorts of measures. I would not expect him to break through simply on the strength of his media appearances, campaign speeches and debate performances.What I would comment on, however, is whether candidates have an angle that might help them build a base of support. Usually, the easiest way to build a base is to cater to the needs of a major faction, especially if that faction is out of the grasp of the party’s leading candidate. Most relatively unknown candidates gain a foothold in this way, like Bernie Sanders’s appeal to progressives.These two big questions interact in important ways. A factional candidate might not need to have “it” to play a big role in the race even if they might struggle to win in the end. On the other hand, broadly appealing candidates without a factional base might really need some special performances to break through. Otherwise, they might languish in obscurity alongside the likes of Jay Inslee or Tim Pawlenty.By this measure, Mr. Scott seems likelier to languish. Like a fellow South Carolinian, Nikki Haley, Mr. Scott has positioned himself as an antidote to the “woke” left’s views on race and America. While this is likely to have broad appeal throughout the party, it doesn’t make him the natural favorite of any particular segment of the party. He’s certainly not going to outdo Ron DeSantis in the “anti-woke” department. His announcement video did emphasize his religious faith and opposition to abortion, but it is not obvious that he’s a natural leader of the religious right — like a Mike Huckabee or a Rick Santorum.Front-runnersThis cycle, there’s another consideration: What if the front-runners fade?In the jungle, male lions often battle one another for dominance of the pride. The loser usually departs with his tail between his legs or leaves to go nurse what can be life-threatening injuries. The victorious lion may have incurred some injuries in the battle, which makes him a target for a younger male lion who senses an opportunity.Question: if Trump and DeSantis go at one another viciously, is there a viable Republican candidate on the sidelines who might step in and capitalize on their weakness? — Roger LevineHistorically, it would be pretty unusual for two candidates as strong as Donald J. Trump or Mr. DeSantis to collapse, whether on their own or while locked in hand-to-hand combat. That said, Mr. Trump’s legal issues and Mr. DeSantis’s status as a first-time candidate make this possibility seem likelier than usual for two candidates with good poll numbers.If the front-runners collapse, many viable candidates will jump into the race. But I’m not sure there’s anyone I would describe as “stepping in,” which at least to me implies someone strong, waiting in the wings, and ready to take over and restore order to the situation, sort of like if Joe Biden had stepped in if Hillary Clinton had been sidelined for any reason in 2016. This time, Ted Cruz might be the closest analogue. Perhaps Mike Pence could still play a similar role, too.Questions on what’s wokeOur newsletter on “woke” and the new left received more email feedback than just about any we’ve done. Most of the feedback was positive, though at least a few points of clarification may be in order:What a misleading article to portray the Democratic Party as having been taken over by this entity known as the new left. I don’t think that the elections of 2020 or 2022 indicate a takeover by the new left. — Ira BezozaWhoa, Ira, I did not say the Democratic Party had been taken over by the “new” New Left. Mr. Biden is the president, after all. Mr. Sanders lost, twice. The Squad is not an army. Indeed, one of the biggest reasons Republicans have struggled to capitalize on the rise of the “woke” left may be exactly because the Democrats have tended to nominate relatively moderate candidates.The new left, however, is very real and it’s a focal point of Republican attacks. And while this new left may be out of power, it exercises outsized influence in American life, thanks to its presence in upper echelons of society.About that Fox callThe Fox call on Arizona also elicited a lot of feedback, including plenty who simply wondered why the press is involved in the race-calling business at all:Great piece on Fox … But isn’t there a massive bigger issue missed in this entire debate which is the media stampede to call the election itself? I mean, seriously, isn’t it time someone reflected on all that? — Catherine CusackFor what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s a stampede to call the election. Here at The Times, we didn’t call the 2020 presidential election until the Saturday after. We didn’t call control of the House in 2022 for a week.But this is slightly different than the question at hand: Why call races at all? The simple explanation is that there isn’t an “official” winner for a month, and people want and need to know who won well before then. The alternative to media projections isn’t pretty. There would be great uncertainty about the outcome, and bad actors might step in. Mr. Trump’s declaration of victory on election night, for instance, might have been far more confusing and convincing to the public if not for the expectation that the media would call the race if it was truly over. More

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      DeSantis Allies Pressure Florida Lawmakers Against Endorsing Trump

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      After four members of Congress backed Donald J. Trump, Republicans close to the Florida governor are trying to keep others from wading into the brewing fight for the G.O.P. presidential nomination.Supporters of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, who is considering a run for president, have begun pressing members of the state’s Republican congressional delegation to hold off on any endorsements in the brewing presidential primary after four House members from Florida publicly backed Donald J. Trump.The effort, first reported by NBC News, was indicative of the growing concern in Mr. DeSantis’s orbit that the former president was building a significant structural advantage as the governor considers jumping in. One Republican familiar with the calls, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss private conversations, said that Mr. DeSantis had been “blindsided” by the Trump endorsements from Representatives Byron Donalds, Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna and Cory Mills, all staunch supporters of the former president who also backed Mr. DeSantis’s re-election last year.It also shows how important the megastate of Florida will be in 2024. Once a general election battleground, Florida has drifted out of reach for Democrats. But with Florida’s governor and arguably its most famous resident, Mr. Trump of Palm Beach, battling for endorsements, donors and voters, the Republican primary will be a local brawl, assuming Mr. DeSantis jumps in.The calls, led by Ryan Tyson, a Florida pollster, and his political team based in Tallahassee, have reached Representatives Kat Cammack, Vern Buchanan, Mario Diaz-Balart, Greg Steube, Aaron Bean and Laurel Lee. Others in the 20-member Republican delegation from Florida are almost certainly on the call list, another Republican official familiar with the effort said on Thursday.“Yeah, they have reached out,” Mr. Steube confirmed to The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “When we are ready to endorse a candidate for president, we will.”The endorsement of Mr. Trump by Mr. Donalds was especially stinging, coming from one of the few Black Republicans in the U.S. House and a former member of the Florida House of Representatives. Mr. Donalds introduced the governor at his victory party on election night in November.Mr. Donalds wrote in his endorsement on Monday that “2024 isn’t simply an election.” He continued: “It is an inflection point in our nation’s history, and it is an inflection point in world history. There is only one leader at this time in our nation’s history who can seize this moment and deliver what we need.”The calls may be having an impact, according to the sources familiar with them. Mr. Tyson’s team was told by some members that no more endorsements were imminent.Neil Vigdor More