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      Analysis: A Very Bad 3 Weeks for Trump After Losses and Legal Setbacks

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      For the former president, who raced to announce his third run for the White House in hopes of clearing the Republican field, the losses, legal setbacks and embarrassments are rapidly piling up.Donald J. Trump’s unusually early announcement of a third presidential campaign was aimed in part at clearing the Republican field for 2024, but his first three weeks as a candidate have undercut that goal, highlighting his vulnerabilities and giving considerable ammunition to those in the G.O.P. arguing to turn the page on him.Since emerging from the November election with a string of humiliating losses to show for his pretensions to be a midterm kingmaker, Mr. Trump has entertained a leading white supremacist and a celebrity antisemite at his South Florida mansion.He has suggested terminating the Constitution — the one that a president swears to preserve, protect and defend — in furtherance of his long-running lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.His business was just convicted on all 17 counts in a tax-fraud case in New York City.And his handpicked candidate for the Senate in Georgia — Herschel Walker, the football star Mr. Trump employed in a brief stint as a pro football team owner in the 1980s — went down to defeat Tuesday night after a campaign that will be remembered as a string of scandals and self-inflicted wounds.Extending his streak of self-sabotage, Mr. Trump himself spent Tuesday night entertaining yet another fringe character, posing for thumbs-up photos at his club with an adherent of the QAnon and “Pizzagate” conspiracy theories, ABC News reported.For Mr. Trump, the losses and embarrassments are rapidly piling up, aggravating longstanding concerns among his fellow Republicans that his 2016 victory may have been an aberration — and that his persistence with a comeback attempt could sink the party’s hopes of reclaiming the White House in 2024.“I know a lot of people in our party love the former president,” Senator Mitt Romney said on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, responding to Mr. Walker’s defeat. “But he’s, if you will, the kiss of death for somebody who wants to win a general election. And at some point, we’ve got to move on and look for new leaders that will lead us to win.”Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist and former top adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the last three weeks “devastating for Trump’s future viability.”“His rushed announcement, serious legal setbacks and the defeat of his handpicked Senate candidates — which once again cost the G.O.P. control of the Senate — have raised serious concerns with his donors and supporters,” Mr. Reed said.“Abandonment,” he added, “has begun.”It is too soon to weigh the long-term effects on Mr. Trump’s latest candidacy of the current run of defeats and denunciations, especially given his long track record of weathering controversies.His rise reflected, and accelerated, the ascendancy of the right wing of the Republican Party, and with a solid one-fourth or more of the G.O.P. still solidly in his corner, he remains a clear favorite in polls of potential Republican contenders. But it is not clear that Mr. Trump will be able to replicate his appeal to the much broader coalition that delivered him an unexpected victory in 2016.A Trump rally in Texas in October.Jordan Vonderhaar For The New York Times/Getty Images North AmericaIt has been an inauspicious beginning for Mr. Trump, who has now led Republicans to defeat or disappointment in three straight election cycles.Ignoring most of his advisers, Mr. Trump chose to announce his campaign a week after the midterm election, counting on a strong result for Republicans. Instead, the G.O.P. barely captured the House and failed to take the Senate, prompting many in the party to assign blame to Mr. Trump, for endorsing flawed candidates and pressuring them to embrace his lies about the 2020 election.“If we would have taken the Senate, and the House by a good majority instead of a slim margin, then that would have paved the way for Trump to get the nomination and wrap it up quickly,” said Lori Klein Corbin, an Arizona member of the Republican National Committee. “Now, we just don’t know.”Mr. Trump has held no campaign events since he got into the race, has yet to name people to key campaign posts and has not established a campaign headquarters. He has largely kept to Mar-a-Lago, participating remotely in just a few public events, like a rally by telephone for Mr. Walker in Georgia.Yet Mr. Trump found time to dine on Nov. 22 with Kanye West, the rap artist whose approval Mr. Trump had repeatedly sought as president, and who had been widely denounced for a series of antisemitic comments, and with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, a notorious racist and Holocaust denier. (And when his former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, was among those to chastise him, Mr. Trump responded by privately complaining that Mr. Friedman had shown disloyalty.)In a statement, Steven Cheung, a senior communications adviser to Mr. Trump, dismissed questions about the start of the campaign, calling Mr. Trump “the single, most dominant force in politics” and insisting that all was going according to plan.“We’re focused on building out the operation and putting in place a foundation to wage an overwhelming campaign that’s never been seen before,” Mr. Cheung said. “We’re building out teams in early voting states and making sure we are positioned to win on all levels.”Mr. Trump’s losing streak includes serious legal setbacks.His four-year effort to block congressional Democrats from obtaining his tax returns ended in defeat at the Supreme Court, and the House Ways and Means Committee said on Nov. 30 that it had obtained access to six years of his returns. A federal appeals court on Dec. 1 shut down a lawsuit by Mr. Trump that had, for nearly three months, slowed the inquiry into whether he illegally kept national security records at Mar-a-Lago.Trump supporters at his 2024 campaign announcement in Florida in November.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesOutside Trump Tower in Manhattan after the 2024 announcement.Adam Pape for The New York TimesThen, in New York on Tuesday, a jury returned guilty verdicts against Mr. Trump’s family business on all 17 counts related to a tax-fraud scheme, detailing what prosecutors called a “culture of fraud and deception” at the company that bears his name.A hardware store Bath County, Va., showing its 2024 allegiance.Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. Walker’s defeat Tuesday night in his runoff with Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, came as a final blow capping Mr. Trump’s miserable year as a political mastermind.Mr. Trump had pressed Mr. Walker to run and endorsed him early on, disregarding Republicans in Washington who urged caution before anointing Mr. Walker given the allegations of domestic violence in his past. Mr. Trump was adamant that Mr. Walker would prevail, just as Mr. Trump himself had weathered his own scandals.But while Mr. Walker kept the race surprisingly close, given the crush of headlines about the previously undisclosed children he had fathered and abortions he had reportedly urged romantic partners to get, he lost by nearly 100,000 votes — and Democrats gained an invaluable 51st seat in the Senate.Julianne Thompson, a Republican consultant in Atlanta and former spokeswoman for the state G.O.P., said the overall midterm results in Georgia — where voters rejected Trump-endorsed candidates for Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general — showed that “a lot of people are questioning the direction of the party.”“There is a big part of the Republican Party that is ready to move on,” she said.More broadly, Mr. Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad three weeks appear to have called into question whether his seeming imperviousness to the normal rules of political gravity may have worn off at long last.“People see what’s been happening, and will interpret that as weakness and as an opportunity to challenge President Trump,” said Michael Barnett, the Republican chairman in Palm Beach County, Fla. “I don’t think his influence has dropped that much — if at all — but he’s going to have opponents.”Emily Cochrane More

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      Wait! Wait! Georgia’s Over?

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      As the sun sinks over Georgia, we bid adieu to the Senate runoff election that seems to have been contested since the beginning of time.Yes, dinosaurs once ruled the earth and Senate candidate Herschel Walker probably has a theory about how they could be killed by a werewolf. Or maybe a vampire.This certainly was a race to remember. But now it’s over; Georgia very rightly decided that Senator Raphael Warnock, an estimable candidate, was better for the job than a guy who couldn’t seem to be clear about how many children he’d fathered or abortions he’d paid for.But … Wait! Wait! Warnock got only a little more than 51 percent of the vote. That means more than 1.7 million Georgians thought it’d be a better plan to have a senator whose theory on global warming is: “Don’t we have enough trees?”And who had his legal address in Texas for tax-saving purposes.Let’s face it: Warnock was running against one of the worst candidates in modern American history. Who once referred to the upcoming election as an “erection.” It was one of the most expensive races of all time, during which the Warnock folks were able to buy about $54 million in TV ads — more than twice what Walker could afford.Warnock, a much-respected minister at Martin Luther King’s old church, had served in the Senate with dignity. (His maiden speech was a call for — what could be more daring? — making it easier for people to exercise the right to vote.) His campaign was as dignified as Walker’s was … not. You’d think he’d at least win by four or five points.Georgia’s election is part of the “Wait! Wait! There’s More!” theme that’s been dominating our politics lately.Good news always seems to have a disturbing downside. And it’s never just one weird/bad/unnerving thing. You think this is all because of Donald Trump?Well, the Herschel Walker candidacy sure was. How many times have we heard the stirring story about Trump first noticing Walker’s great gifts when the young man joined the United States Football League, of which Trump was, of course, a great team owner?Walker played for three seasons with the U.S.F.L., and really impressed Trump, who was also otherwise engaged in running the whole league into the ground.OK, forget the football stuff. That’s hardly core to Trump’s identity, which he’s always assured us is that of a great businessman.Wait! Wait! (You knew that was coming, right?) This week the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud and other assorted crimes. Seventeen counts in all, including giving free off-the-books-don’t-tell-the-I.R.S. cars and apartments and cash to top employees.Yep. However, Trump wasn’t really on trial himself. It was just his people.But wait, wait … there are other potential crimes under investigation. What about the whole Mar-a-Lago classified records thing?Well, it’s hardly the same as that mean old New York court case. Our former president probably feels he deserves kudos for personally hiring people to search his golf course and Trump Tower and the storage closet at Mar-a-Lago to make sure there weren’t any overlooked official documents there.But wait, wait, wait, wait … Those papers were all supposed to go to the National Archives, right?Yeah, but the Trumpians will assure you that we’ve moved far away from the central matter of the Donald’s identity as a wealth-building genius. Snatching up official presidential documents and stashing them in your private home has nothing to do with bad business practices whatsoever.We certainly are living in a time of wait-wait. Whatever we thought yesterday turns out to be way less interesting and less awful than what we learn today. Imagine all those stolid Republican politicians who’ve spent years finding ways to express support for their former president when he says something … scary.You know, you just get used to smiling vaguely when a reporter asks you whether you think it’s strange that the former president was hanging out with an antisemitic rapper and an antisemitic white supremacist. Or why he was telling the nation nobody would be able to get a turkey for Thanksgiving. And you’re feeling you’ve got things pretty well in hand and then — wait, wait! He just called for terminating the Constitution.We’ve been going down this road a long time, folks, and things are the way they are. I don’t know about you, but I just want to forget about Georgia and Senate races and get back to thinking about a future when we’ll have different stuff to talk about.Wait, wait — stuff like the next presidential election? Trump tooting his horn a trillion times a day while folks like the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, try to help you really get to know them. You’re going to see so much of those folks, Herschel Walker will begin to seem like an old pal you should have invited on a trip to the Catskills.OK, maybe not. But I hear Joe Biden’s pretty much got his hat in the ring. How many times a day are we going to have to hear Republicans mention the possibility of an 86-year-old in the White House?Gee, at this very moment, that doesn’t sound terrible at all.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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      After Georgia Senate Loss, Republicans Stare Down Their Trump Dilemma

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      ATLANTA — The Democrats’ capstone re-election victory of Senator Raphael Warnock forced Republicans to reckon on Wednesday with the red wave that wasn’t, as they turned with trepidation to 2024 and the intensifying divisions in the party over former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Warnock’s two-and-a-half percentage point win over Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff left Democrats with a 51-49 seat majority in the upper chamber, a one-seat gain. That came despite dire predictions for a blood bath for President Biden’s party.It quickly had Republican fingers pointing every which way: at Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader accused by detractors of abandoning or belittling embattled Republican Senate candidates; at Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who many feel badly mismanaged the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm; and at Mr. Walker himself, for hiding and lying about his past, only to see the details stream out steadily over the course of his campaign.But for a handful of Republicans, newly emboldened by re-election or retirement to say so aloud, the biggest culprit was Mr. Trump. In increasingly biting terms, they slammed him for promoting flawed candidates, including Mr. Walker, dividing his party and turning many swing voters against the G.O.P. for the third election cycle in a row.“I think he’s less relevant all the time,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, said of the former president, who has begun a third bid for the White House.“It’s just one more data point in an overwhelming body of data that the Trump obsession is very bad for Republicans,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a retiring Republican whose seat was flipped to Democrats by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Trump campaign aides responded with defiance, in a back-and-forth likely to be on repeat for the foreseeable future. Steven Cheung, a senior communications adviser for the former president, said they “are not going to be lectured by political swamp creatures who are already looking to find ways to make a quick buck in 2024 by running to the media and providing cowardly quotes.”The midterm losses like Mr. Walker’s not only squashed the G.O.P.’s high hopes of retaking control of the Senate but also signaled the party’s steep climb ahead. Voters in several presidential battleground states resoundingly rejected candidates aligned with the former president, handing Republicans losses in winnable races in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and, finally, Georgia.Mr. Trump’s influence was indisputable in the suburbs, said Rusty Paul, the Republican mayor of Sandy Springs, a booming suburban city on Atlanta’s northern edge.Mr. Paul allowed that the once almost-wholly affluent, almost-wholly white community had become more diverse ethnically, racially and economically, tipping it in Democrats’ favor.Herschel Walker giving his concession speech on Tuesday night.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesA scorecard with election results left at Mr. Walker’s election night party.Nicole Buchanan for The New York Times“All of those are factors, but the greatest factor is Trumpism,” he said.“There’s a very strong conservative streak in the northern suburbs, Cobb, North Fulton — if Trump’s not engaged, they’ll still vote Republican,” he continued, speaking of the northern edge of Atlanta’s main county and Cobb County, just to the west. “But if they feel Trump’s influence, they’ll vote against him.”Trump loyalists in Georgia and beyond disputed that assessment. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who represented many of those suburbs for years as a House Republican, blamed a list of factors beside Mr. Trump, down to the mockery by “Saturday Night Live” of Mr. Walker three days before the runoff election. It’s the G.O.P. versus the media, Big Tech, Hollywood and the nation’s social power structures, he said.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.“We underestimate how big the mountain is that we’re trying to climb,” he said.But Mr. Gingrich also raised the prospects of a disastrous 2024, as Trump’s supporters split acrimoniously with its anti-Trump wing of the party the way conservatives in 1964 backed Barry Goldwater and moderates sided with Nelson Rockefeller.“My greatest fear is that we’re going to end up in a 1964 division” that left Republicans crippled in Congress, he said in an interview Wednesday. “I can imagine a Trump-anti-Trump war over the next two years that just guarantees Biden’s re-election in a landslide and guarantees that Democrats control everything.”Senator Raphael Warnock visited students at Georgia Tech on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Warnock speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Norcross, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesEmerging from the midterms, the anti-Trump wing has plenty of ammunition to make its case for a break. Two of Mr. Trump’s most prominent Republican foils in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, won re-election easily, in part because of their refusal to back the former president’s lie that the state had been stolen from him in 2020. Their resistance confirmed to Republican-leaning swing voters that they were not in Mr. Trump’s thrall.In contrast, Mr. Walker, who was urged to run by the former president and has already said he intends to vote for Mr. Trump for president, lost ground among almost every type of precinct in the four weeks between Election Day on Nov. 8 and runoff day on Tuesday, according to a New York Times analysis.The Republican fared worse in the runoff at precincts that initially backed Mr. Warnock and Mr. Kemp, at precincts dominated by college graduates, at urban and suburban precincts, affluent precincts and at Black precincts and Hispanic precincts. The only precincts where he held his own were in rural areas and areas with white, noncollege voters.Mr. Walker, a first-time candidate and former football star, had plenty of troubles that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump. His campaign was repeatedly hit with damaging revelations that might have knocked other candidates out of the race, including accusations of domestic violence, unacknowledged children and hypocrisy on abortion.And beyond Mr. Trump, there are other factors changing Georgia’s political hue: the in-migration of voters of color from around the country, the movement of politically active Black voters from central Atlanta to suburbs near and far, where they carried on their organizational activities, and the activation of white women like Jennifer Haggard, a real estate agent and lifelong Sandy Springer, who cast aside reflexive conservatism for a more open-minded politics.“I’m the white Republican who turned swing voter for sure,” Ms. Haggard said after voting for Mr. Warnock. She cited Mr. Trump as easily the biggest factor, but happily voted for Mr. Warnock.In the face of trends favoring Democrats, Georgia Republicans failed to nominate a Senate candidate who could galvanize both the party’s hyper-conservative base and its moderate factions — a group that many in the G.O.P. believe still makes up a majority of the state’s electorate.That failure extended beyond Georgia. Republican candidates in the primary season reached into Mr. Trump’s ideological milieu to capture his voters, moving so far that they could not credibly swing to win back the center in the general election.“Even if you capture all of the Trump voters, you may be able to win a primary but you’re not necessarily going to win a general election and in this business, you have to win an election before you can actually govern,” said Mr. Cornyn, who for years dodged questions about Mr. Trump. “It’s not like coming in second and getting a trophy like you did in junior high school for participation.”For many Trump-loyal voters, the question may come down to whether they are willing to make a cold-eyed assessment of electability or follow their hearts. The chorus of Republican voices arguing for electability is growing louder.“More strings of defeats delivered to us clearly by Donald Trump is enough for our party to realize we’ve got to move on if we want to win,” Paul D. Ryan, the former Republican Speaker of the House, said in a SiriusXM interview. “We should not just concede the country to the left by nominating an unelectable candidate like Donald Trump.”Even Mr. Walker’s team seemed to acknowledge Mr. Trump was a drag on the candidate in the final weeks of the race. As the former president teased a visit to Georgia, Trump aides worked with the Walker campaign to agree to scrap an in-person rally and instead hold the event via phone. Mr. Walker did not frequently mention Mr. Trump in his campaign speeches. And in his final concession speech, he did not say the former president’s name.Jack Kingston, a former House Republican from the Savannah area, argued that Mr. Trump’s influence was overblown. In 2021, as two Georgia Senate races headed to a runoff, Mr. Trump, then the president, was railing against a rigged election, signaling to Republicans that their vote wouldn’t count, he noted. This time around, he was far less present.“I would not say the invisible hand of Donald Trump was telling Herschel Walker what to do,” Mr. Kingston said on Wednesday. “He was his own man.”Stephanie Lai More

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      Where Trump Stands in Early (Very Early) 2024 Polls

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      The former president’s support has not collapsed. But Republican voters appear strikingly open to another Florida-based politician.Donald Trump’s support in the Republican Party has not collapsed, and perhaps it never will. But a look at the major polls taken since Election Day suggests that the ice is shifting beneath his feet.The data also shows Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida gaining ground in hypothetical 2024 matchups, even though he has yet to declare his intentions.And it underscores the careful line any presidential hopeful must walk with Republican voters; whatever they might think about Trump’s third bid for the White House, there’s little evidence of a clear anti-Trump majority that wants to repudiate him altogether.One of the sharpest articulations of this point I’ve seen came from Nate Hochman, a conservative writer. “If DeSantis allows himself to be defined as the Never Trump — or even the anti-Trump — candidate, he will be permanently discredited in the eyes of many of the voters he needs to win,” Hochman wrote in an essay for Unherd. “If he can convince those voters that he is the next step in the MAGA movement, he may just have a chance.”As Hochman noted in an interview, that will be a far harder trick to pull off when DeSantis actually enters the arena against Trump and the attacks start flying. And he won’t be facing the former president alone, or at least not right away.“In some ways, Trump is in a stronger position now than he was in 2015,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio.A methodological note: Keep in mind that the margin of error goes up whenever you’re looking at smaller subsamples like this. So don’t take the numbers themselves as definitive; focus on the overall trend lines.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Warnock’s Narrow Victory Over Walker in Georgia

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      More from our inbox:Trump’s Very Bad DayThe Crypto IllusionEncourage BreastfeedingFood Buying That Reflects Our Values Nicole Craine for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Warnock Victory Hands Democrats 51st Seat in Senate” (front page, Dec. 7):Although I am relieved that Senator Raphael Warnock prevailed in the Georgia runoff, I am absolutely disgusted that this election was so close.We have lost our way as a country when we do not see that political leadership takes skill; knowledge of the law, the Constitution and history; the ability to negotiate and cooperate; and a worldview that is larger than your own.I would not be at all qualified to play professional football, and it was clear from the start that Herschel Walker did not have the knowledge or skill to be a U.S. senator.Dawn MenkenPortland, Ore.The writer is the author of “Facilitating a More Perfect Union: A Guide for Politicians and Leaders.”To the Editor:I have new respect for Herschel Walker: He gave a concession speech. He declared that he lost. He called on his supporters to respect their elected officials and to believe in America. He said he had no excuses for his loss because he put up a good fight. This probably reflects both who he is and his football heritage — you win but also lose games fair and square.He may have helped us back to the old pre-Trump norms. We may disagree with his views and abhor his scandals, but the most important thing is that he believes in democracy. Let’s hope Donald Trump watched that concession speech.When Mr. Walker said, “I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials most of all,” it could be the biggest takeaway of the election.James AdlerCambridge, Mass.To the Editor:Raphael Warnock was extremely lucky to win the Senate race in Georgia — lucky because he faced an opponent plagued by ignorance, myriad character flaws and an endorsement by Donald Trump. Almost certainly, a moderate Republican, Black or white, could have defeated Mr. Warnock, perhaps by a margin as large as the seven-plus percentage points that Brian Kemp scored over Stacey Abrams for the Georgia governorship just four weeks earlier.I am very happy about Mr. Warnock’s win, but it should not be interpreted as signaling a major shift in the political landscape of Georgia.Peter S. AllenProvidence, R.I.To the Editor:Every time the Republicans lose an election — most recently Tuesday in Georgia — the Times coverage predicts that the party will engage in “soul-searching,” suggesting that the G.O.P. has a desire to change course. Yet, again and again, the party persists in its pandering to far-right, anti-democratic forces of white nationalism and heteropatriarchy.The G.O.P. has made its soul abundantly clear. Perhaps some Republican voters have done their own soul-searching and decided to reject what their party has become.Pamela J. GriffithBrooklynTo the Editor:As a liberal Democrat I am very pleased with the results of the Georgia runoff and most of the rest of the 2022 U.S. Senate results in competitive races. How do we make sure that Donald Trump continues to influence the choice of Republican candidates for Senate in 2024?Michael G. RaitenBoynton Beach, Fla.Trump’s Very Bad Day Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Tuesday was a Trumpian negative hat trick: a defeat in the Senate runoff in Georgia, the conviction of the Trump Organization on tax fraud and other crimes, and a report of grand jury subpoenas from the special counsel to local officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.Of course the Republican Party has neglected to take any prior offramps to dump Donald Trump, most notably Jan. 6, so unfortunately the latest Trump failures will probably go by the wayside too. And the G.O.P. of yore — the party of Lincoln, T.R. and Ike — will continue to be the clown car it has become.Bill MutterperlBeverly Hills, Calif.The Crypto IllusionFederal authorities are trying to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against the founder of the crypto firm FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and others over the company’s collapse.Winnie Au for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘It Just Angers Me.’ Crypto Crisis Drains Small Investors’ Savings” (front page, Dec. 6):Is it too early, or far too late, to suggest that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” in relation to the FTX and BlockFi difficulties? Should this concern be extended to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general?There was a time when people earned the coins in their wallets from the sweat on their brow rather than from a computer program most people can’t understand that creates imaginary coins to be stored in wallets that seem easy to rob or lose. It is, however, sad to read of people who have lost so much in such a short time.As a teacher, I wasn’t that well paid, and so I saved as much as I could to buy a house and set myself up for retirement by sensible, boring approaches. But the gains to be made from Bitcoin are in its questionable uses or in realizing the increase in its value before it drops. For me it seems to have no actual value or use, and I doubt that I am the only one who thinks that.It’s time for me to forget the world of imaginary computer profits and go back to a boring life on my unicorn farm.Dennis FitzgeraldMelbourne, AustraliaEncourage Breastfeeding Vanessa Leroy for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What It Really Takes to Breastfeed a Baby” (news article, Dec. 6):As a pediatrician who spends many hours with new mothers and their babies discussing the challenges and difficulties that come with breastfeeding, I felt that this article was not as positive as it should have been. It focused on following mothers who were having a hard time keeping up their breastfeeding.These days, any literature or news related to breastfeeding should only be encouraging new mothers to breastfeed, not scaring them away from doing it and making it sound so hard while working and raising other children.In my practice, I share my own personal experiences of breastfeeding my three children, each for a year, while working in a busy pediatrics office. My stories are useful and effective in making the breastfeeding experience achievable to the new moms I meet.We need to reverse the steady decline of breastfeeding mothers in this country.Naomi JackmanPort Washington, N.Y.Food Buying That Reflects Our Values Pavel PopovTo the Editor:Re “Help Black Farmers This Holiday Season,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom (column, Nov. 30):New York State’s food procurement laws are an extension of the disenfranchisement of Black farmers. Provisions require that municipalities contract with farmers who sell their produce at the “lowest” cost. This often comes at the expense of small, hyperlocal farmers and bars them from entering negotiations for public contracts — meaning that opportunities to support historically marginalized food producers are currently limited in New York.The Good Food New York bill would democratize local food purchasing decisions by allowing municipalities to galvanize around racial equity, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, nutrition, local economies and workers’ rights — and contract with producers that uphold these values.It is more critical than ever to rectify the wrongs of this country’s past and prepare for a future where the strength of our food systems and supply chains will be tested by the consequences of climate change. New York State legislators, we are counting on you to make the right decision for our food futures.Ribka GetachewTaylor PateNew YorkThe writers are, respectively, director and campaign manager of the NY Good Food Purchasing Program Campaign for Community Food Advocates. More

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      Walker, Trump’s Celebrity Pick, Underscores Trump’s Fall

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      Donald Trump loved Herschel Walker.He told him so when he “fired” him from “Celebrity Apprentice.” As Trump put it: “You know how much I like you. I love you. I love you. I am not a gay man, and I love you, Herschel. Herschel, you’re fired.”As Walker said in an interview years ago, “I’ve known Donald before he became the Donald. I started out with Donald Trump. I tell everyone that little Donald and little Ivanka lived with me during the summer.” He took them to Disney World, Sea World, the Bronx Zoo, “any place.”Walker’s son Christian referred to Trump as Uncle Don.The men were clearly close. Trump believed in Black exceptionalism — but only for athletes and entertainers.When New York’s elite shunned Trump, he found a home in pop culture. He came to understand the currency in it and the power of it. Unlike high society, which thrived on exclusion, entertainment fed on the possibility of inclusion and economic ascendance.Trump learned early the lucrative industry of dream selling. He learned early the power of celebrity as the embodiment of those dreams.To him, celebrities were a class unto themselves, people who could transcend race and wealth, crossing over into the golden plane of the hero. You can admire a Black celebrity, cheer for him, be thoroughly entertained by him and never relinquish your animus for or prejudices against other Black people.As long as those entertainers avoided any mention or invocation of race — other than to discuss their upbringing or praise a parent — even people hostile to Black people could be fans of theirs.This is why Trump could argue that he was not racist — he could always say he had known and been friendly with so many Black entertainers. But he was friendly with them even as he was hostile to other Black and Brown people. Walker has said his warm relationship with Trump dates back to 1982, but it was only a few years later, in 1989, that Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York, so that the Central Park Five, who were just boys at the time, would “be afraid.”The boys implicated in the attack have since been exonerated, but Trump has refused to apologize for his ad.Trump, like many people, is able to compartmentalize on the issue of race, segregating the masses whom he abhorred from the few he idolized.And so, when there was a need for a Republican to run for the Senate seat in Georgia against Raphael Warnock — a man who, with the support of Black voters as well as others, shocked the political establishment in that state when he won his first Senate race nearly two years ago — Trump did a simplistic racial calculation: he knew a conservative Black acolyte who could run against the liberal Black intellectual.He called on his old friend Walker. It didn’t matter that Walker was not a political figure or even a politically engaged person. It didn’t matter that he was wholly unsuited for any form of public office. It didn’t even matter that he didn’t live in Georgia.Trump drafted him, and he agreed. Celebrity, Trump thought, would cover all flaws.In the end, it did not. Trump’s brand, his celebrity worship and promulgation, was not enough to push Walker over the edge. But while Walker failed, Trump failed even worse. Unlike some races this cycle in which Trump simply endorsed a candidate, Walker was one Trump personally chose.And even before Tuesday night, Georgia had rejected Trumpism, choosing some Republicans in November who had defied Trump’s pressure campaign to steal the 2020 election and incurred his wrath because of it.Yes, Walker was a historically horrific candidate, but the Trump brand has also begun to sour in Georgia. This is in no way to excuse the Georgia Republicans who went along with the Walker charade, even after seeing up close that he was not only unqualified to be a senator, but likely incapable of performing the duties. They saw up close his incompetence, intellectual deficiencies and glaring defects, but they still hewed more to their partisanship than to their principles.They twisted themselves into knots to excuse Walker, using a roundabout racism to do so. Some said that what we saw as a lack of intelligence was in fact a regional affectation: Walker speaks the way many Black people in Georgia speak.In their construction of things, deficiency was endemic to Blackness and ubiquitous among Black people. The best that could be hoped for was a Black person who was willing to fall in line and vote with the party. Walker had proven that he would do that. He would be a willing puppet for their ventriloquism.And he came dangerously close to winning.This will remain a stain on the Republican Party. But Walker didn’t win. Cynicism didn’t win. Trump didn’t win.Competence and common sense prevailed.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Warnock Wins, and Once Again Trump Loses

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      The last Senate runoffs in Georgia fell on the 5th of January, 2021, which meant they were immediately overridden in the nation’s imagination by the events of Jan. 6. But everything that’s happened since has somehow brought us back around to where we stood just before the riot at the U.S. Capitol, with yet another Georgia runoff providing yet another case study in why the Republican Party desperately needs to move on from Donald Trump.In the case of the previous runoffs, Trump’s influence on the outcome was flagrant and direct: He made the entire pre-runoff period a stage for his election-fraud dramatics, pushing the Republican Senate candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, into attacks on the integrity of the elections they were trying to win. And he almost certainly dampened Republican turnout with his suggestion that the fix was in — a suggestion amplified by his more lunatic allies, who discouraged Republican voting outright.This time around the Trumpian influence was a little more indirect, but still important. He publicly encouraged his old U.S.F.L. pal Herschel Walker to run for Senate and helped to clear the field with his endorsement, ensuring that the G.O.P. would have a hapless, incompetent and morally suspect candidate in one of the year’s most important Senate races. And then he forced Walker to stagger through the runoff against Raphael Warnock in the shadow of Trump’s own low-energy campaign announcement, which was succeeded by Trump’s dinner with anti-Semites, which was succeeded by Trump’s call to suspend the Constitution in order to restore him to the presidency.All of this predictably helped make the runoff a fractal of the larger 2022 pattern: Under Trump’s influence, with Trump’s preferred candidates, the Republican Party first sacrificed a potential Senate majority and then sacrificed one more Senate seat for good measure.The natural question evoked by the memory of the last runoffs, though, is whether this will make any long-term difference inside the G.O.P. If Republican voters didn’t tire of Trump after he gave away a winnable election and then inspired a mob to storm the Capitol the very next day, why would merely giving away another runoff be a deal-breaker? If Trump somehow managed to remain the 2024 front-runner after the insanity of 2021’s Jan. 6, why would his loyalists abandon him after the mere political disappointments of 2022’s Nov. 8 and Dec. 6?One answer is that the truest loyalists won’t; there will be a strong Trump vote in any imaginable Republican primary where he doesn’t drop out early. But for the Republicans who aren’t the deepest loyalists — the ones who didn’t vote for Trump in the early primaries of 2016, the ones giving Ron DeSantis leads here and there in early primary polling — there are two reasons to suspect that this runoff’s aftermath will be different from the last one’s.The first is just the compounding effect of multiple defeats. Like a miracle sports team, the ’69 Mets or this year’s Moroccan World Cup soccer squad, Trump earned himself a storehouse of belief with his stunning upset in 2016. That the Republican Party then lost the House in 2018 — well, that was to be expected, since incumbent parties generally struggle in the midterms. That the G.O.P. lost the presidency in 2020 — well, there was a plague, mass protests, rejiggered election rules and a general atmosphere of craziness, and anyway the polls were wrong and Trump almost pulled it out in the Electoral College, the miracle juice still there but just not quite enough.But to disappoint again in 2022, in a context where many Republicans expected to do extremely well — and more, to have so many of Trump’s preferred candidates flop while other Republicans won easily — well, at a certain point the memory of 2016 fades, and the storehouse of faith and good will is depleted. At a certain point even a potent demagogue needs to post some actual wins to hold his coalition together. At a certain point — maybe it isn’t here yet, but it’s closer — the leader who loses just starts to look like, well, a loser.The second reason this time might be different is that there will be time for the defeat’s reality and lessons to sink in, for the stink of loserdom to circulate — whereas last time Trump was actually helped in his bid to hold onto influence and power by the way the Georgia results vanished into the smoke of the Capitol riot.Yes, there was a brief moment where his obvious culpability in the mob’s behavior weakened him dramatically, leaving him potentially vulnerable to a concerted push from congressional Republicans. But when that push didn’t come, when the G.O.P. leadership took the cautious (in the case of Mitch McConnell) or craven (in the case of Kevin McCarthy) way instead, their decisions helped to rebuild Trump’s relevance and power.And so did the peculiar nature of Jan. 6 itself, which despite the best efforts of its media interpreters was always destined to be an unstable signifier — a deathly serious insurrection from one vantage point, but from another a more absurd affair, defined more by the spectacle of the QAnon Shaman roaming the Senate floor than by the threat of an actual coup d’état. However shameful some of the spin that Trump defenders settled on to explain away the day’s violence, they had material to work with in the sheer strangeness of the riot, which in a polarized atmosphere inevitably yielded to warring interpretations of its meaning.Stark election defeats, on the other hand, while less serious and less extreme than a violent disruption of the Senate’s business, are also harder to reinterpret in ways that make your own side out to be martyrs rather than just losers.Trump’s election fraud narrative managed that kind of reinterpretation once. But if Trump has to run in 2024 against DeSantis, he’ll be facing a rival who won’t need to reinterpret defeats as stolen victories, because he himself won easily when Walker and so many other Trumpian picks and allies lost. And the old rule that if you’re explaining, you’re losing, may apply especially to a situation where Trump has to explain to primary voters why the winning he promised them turned into so many unnecessary defeats.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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      For Sunak, Like Biden, Dullness Could Be a Secret Weapon

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      For all their differences, President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain share a challenge: operating in the wake of a larger-than-life predecessor. They have tactics in common, too.LONDON — For years, Boris Johnson and Donald J. Trump were viewed as populist twins — flamboyant, scandal-scarred, norm-busting figures, acting in a trans-Atlantic political drama. With both out of office, at least for now, a more timely and intriguing comparison is between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Biden.Though they differ by obvious metrics — young vs. old, conservative vs. liberal — Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden are using strikingly similar methods to govern in the wake of their larger-than-life predecessors. Both have tried to let the steam out of their countries’ hothouse politics by making a virtue of being, well, a little boring.The similarities are more than stylistic: Both lead parties that are divided between centrist and more extreme forces, whether to the right, for Mr. Sunak, or the left, for the American president. And both are dogged by poor poll numbers, in part because of economic ills but also because their pragmatic, undramatic style can seem ill-suited to the polarized politics of post-Brexit Britain and post-Trump America.For Mr. Sunak, who took office in October amid an economic crisis and after months of political upheaval that left his Conservative Party exhausted and unpopular, Mr. Biden might offer a blueprint for political rehabilitation.Two years into his term, Mr. Biden has confounded the skeptics, with the Democratic Party performing unexpectedly well in the midterm elections, in defiance of historical trends that typically punish the party in power.“Boris and Trump were generalists, short on details and ideologically flexible, but the sheer force of their personality brought them to the top, and eventually led to their downfalls,” said Frank Luntz, an American political strategist and pollster who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University.“Rishi and Biden are the exact opposite,” Mr. Luntz continued. “Not particularly great communicators, quite often trapped in the weeds of details, but able to move their governments forward because of their detailed knowledge and experience.”President Biden and Jill Biden after returning from Camp David on Sunday.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesCircumstances forced both leaders to press for emergency legislation right off the bat: Mr. Biden, to cushion the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic; Mr. Sunak, to counter the disastrous foray into trickle-down tax policy engineered by his immediate predecessor, Liz Truss. That spooked financial markets, sent the British pound into a tailspin and drove up interest rates.After passing his Covid relief bill, Mr. Biden managed to push through ambitious legislation to combat climate change. With narrow majorities in the House and especially in the Senate, he had to fend off progressives in his party and win over centrists like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who held up that bill until he negotiated compromises with the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Mr. Sunak, who has a more than 70-seat majority in Parliament, may not face as much legislative needle-threading in passing his package of tax increases and spending cuts. But he does have to contend with an increasingly unruly Tory Party, which is making it difficult for him to settle a trade dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland, overhaul Britain’s cumbersome planning rules for home building, or even construct onshore windmills.“He’s being pushed around by various factions in the Tory Party,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the United States. “Biden, by contrast, is quite resolute about his moderate, centrist principles.”While Mr. Sunak’s allies make no explicit comparisons between him and Mr. Biden, several have claimed his quiet, unflashy competence is restoring stability after the political roller-coaster of the last three months. On returning to the cabinet as a senior minister, Michael Gove declared “boring is back,” and joked that it was the government’s “utter determination to try to be as dull as possible.”Asked in an interview whether the motif of Mr. Sunak’s leadership was that “boring is the new sexy,” Mark Harper, the transport secretary, smiled and replied: “What he’s about is a government that’s grown up, that grips the issues that people are concerned about and gets on with governing.”Mr. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, returning to 10 Downing Street last month after visiting a food and drinks market promoting British small businesses.Pool photo by Toby MelvilleUnlike Mr. Biden, 80, whose aides still periodically find themselves having to clean up unguarded statements, Mr. Sunak, 42, rarely commits a gaffe. His cautious persona and stilted speaking style have drawn comparisons to John Major, who in 1990 succeeded a more forceful prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.Mr. Major’s electoral record was mixed: He surprised many by winning a modest majority of 21 in the general election in 1992. But that victory was followed swiftly by a financial crisis that sapped his reputation and paved the way for a landslide victory five years later by the Labour Party leader, Tony Blair.This time, the crisis struck before Mr. Sunak took office. But it leaves him with no more than two years to rescue his party before the next election, and he faces the headwinds of soaring inflation, rising interest rates, labor unrest and a recession. Depending on when Mr. Sunak chooses to call that vote, there is a chance that American voters could be electing a president around the same time.Will Mr. Biden be in that race? The chances of his running again rose after the midterms, not to mention the president’s proposal to rearrange the Democratic Party’s primary calendar, so that South Carolina, which resurrected his presidential fortunes in 2020, will now vote first, ahead of the Iowa caucus.There is no evidence that Mr. Biden and Mr. Sunak talked politics in their first face-to-face meeting as leaders at a summit in Indonesia last month. Indeed, given their disparity in age, background and politics, there is little indication they will develop the kind of rapport enjoyed by, say, Mr. Blair and President Bill Clinton. When the Tories elected Mr. Sunak as leader, Mr. Biden hailed it as a “groundbreaking milestone,” though he added, “As my brother would say, ‘Go figure.’”At the moment, the oddsmakers are betting against Mr. Sunak. There is even speculation that if the Conservatives get thrashed in local elections next May, his enemies might move against him and try to reinstall Mr. Johnson. But Mr. Sunak’s allies hope for a Biden-like surprise, which could give him a solid base for the next general election (it must take place by January 2025).Given Labour’s formidable lead in opinion polls — and a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who rivals Mr. Sunak in competence over charisma — few analysts see a path for Mr. Sunak to a convincing victory. But some think the outcome could be much closer than some of Labour’s supporters now expect. For one thing, Mr. Sunak’s poll ratings exceed those of his battered party, which is the reverse of Mr. Biden and the Democrats before the midterm elections.“There is a big difference between what voters think of the Conservative Party and what voters think of Sunak,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The big question now is whether the Tory Party drags Sunak’s ratings down, or Sunak drags the Tory Party’s ratings up.”Those are the same questions handicappers were asking about Mr. Biden in the anxious days leading up to the midterms. If both he and Mr. Sunak are in still office in 2025, it will be proof that boring is not only back, but political gold. More