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      The Biden Campaign Wants Democrats to Calm Down

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicElisa Gutierrez and Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOver the course of a few days this week, we got two pretty remarkable data points for the 2024 election. On Tuesday, Democrats had a very good night.Gov. Andy Beshear was re-elected in Kentucky. In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that established a right to abortion in the State Constitution. In Virginia, Democrats took control of the state legislature, flipping the House of Delegates and preserving control of the Senate.Just a few days earlier, though, The New York Times and Siena College released a new poll of battleground states. Former President Donald J. Trump was leading President Biden in five out of the six states where voters were surveyed. What to make of bad news for the president followed by good news for his party just a few days later?It could mean that while Democrats are doing better on the grass-roots level, the president has a unique weakness with the voters he needs — specifically regarding his age.And if that is the case, what is the Biden campaign doing about it?The first place to go for an answer is Wilmington, Del., and the Biden campaign headquarters to hear directly from Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, about how the campaign views challenging poll numbers — and the difficulties ahead.Beyond the view inside the campaign, we also hear from Jim Messina, a longtime Democratic strategist, who helped re-elect an incumbent president when he managed Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.About ‘The Run-Up’The 2024 presidential election will be one for the record books. If President Biden succeeds in his re-election bid, he will be the oldest person to occupy that office. On the Republican side, Mr. Trump is dominating the crowded primary field — despite four criminal indictments. To make sense of it all, and to understand how voters around the country are feeling, “The Run-Up” and its host, Astead W. Herndon, will be with you every step of the way. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Third Republican Debate: Key Takeaways

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      Nikki Haley staked out a clear, hawkish vision. Ron DeSantis avoided risks. And the night’s glaring absentee, Donald Trump, again emerged untouched.It was the undercard that underwhelmed.The third straight Republican presidential debate that former President Donald J. Trump has skipped — choosing instead to rally with supporters a few miles away — represented a critical and shrinking chance for his rivals to close his chasm of a polling advantage.And with only five candidates on the stage for the first time — Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — they all had far more time to speak.Yet they had precious little to say about Mr. Trump, even when given the chance just over two months before the Iowa caucuses.They sparred in a substantive debate that dissected disagreements over aid to Ukraine, Social Security, confronting China, banning TikTok and how to approach abortion less than 24 hours after Republicans suffered their latest electoral setbacks driven by the fall of Roe v. Wade.But there was something surreal about such detailed discussions unfolding among candidates who seem so far from the Oval Office — even Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who asserted themselves as the leaders of the non-Trump pack.Here are six takeaways from a debate in Miami that may best be remembered for Ms. Haley snapping at Mr. Ramaswamy, “You’re just scum.”Haley came out swinging.Ms. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that there would be no Hamas without Iran.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesNikki Haley emerged as a power center on the debate stage, giving a forceful performance that took advantage of the night’s focus on foreign policy to present a clear and hawkish vision of America’s role in the world.Leaning into her experience as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she staked out expansive, interventionist positions that cut against Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy vision.She backed Ukraine to the hilt. She said she would support military strikes against Iran. And she said the United States needed to support Israel with “whatever they need and whenever they need it.”Most of the other candidates gave versions of the same responses — but Ms. Haley had the edge of having represented the United States on the world stage.When the candidates were asked what they would urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to do at this moment, Mr. DeSantis said he “would be telling” him to eliminate Hamas. Ms. Haley said she did, in fact, tell Mr. Netanyahu to “finish them.”As Ms. Haley vies with Mr. DeSantis to establish herself as the field’s Trump alternative, some of the party’s biggest donors were closely watching her performance as they weighed whether to spend millions on her behalf in a desperate final effort to beat Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s competitors recognized her rising status by taking aim at her.DeSantis is still playing it safe in a game he’s losing.The Florida governor criticized Donald Trump’s absence from the debate stage.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIt seemed, for a moment, as if this would be a different kind of debate for Mr. DeSantis. His opening answer affirmatively outlined how he would be better than Mr. Trump.“He should explain why he didn’t have Mexico pay for the border wall,” Mr. DeSantis began. “He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn’t drain the swamp.” He went on to say that Mr. Trump promised “winning” only to have his party endure years of “losing,” including on Tuesday.“In Florida, I showed how it’s done,” Mr. DeSantis declared, trying to take hometown advantage of a debate held in Miami.But then he mostly left Mr. Trump untouched, satisfied to prosecute his own case and push back on rivals like Ms. Haley. It was the same strategy he used in the first two debates, with little traction gained.Mr. DeSantis is plainly more comfortable than in the first debate. Yet he surprisingly left unsaid a development that his campaign has advertised as a game changer: the endorsement this week of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa.You can’t debate someone who isn’t there.Chris Christie took the sharpest aim at Mr. Trump, but in his absence the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesThe candidates again did little to aggressively contrast themselves with Mr. Trump, who has made himself unavailable for direct sparring by refusing to stand onstage with his rivals or, for the most part, appear with them at multicandidate gatherings on the campaign trail.Without Mr. Trump present, the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.The first question to the candidates was the fundamental one most of them have struggled to answer to Republican voters: why they, and not Mr. Trump, should be the nominee.Mr. Christie, as expected, was the sharpest in his attack, arguing that someone who faces Mr. Trump’s criminal charges “cannot lead this party or this country.”But Mr. DeSantis took only a brief swipe. Ms. Haley praised Mr. Trump’s presidency, then criticized him, saying that he had gone “weak in the knees” on Ukraine and that his time had passed. Mr. Ramaswamy defended Mr. Trump in passing. And Mr. Scott talked about himself.Nikki Haley said that she doesn’t believe Trump is the “right president now.”NBC NewsThat was almost the extent of efforts to chip away at the runaway front-runner. Nearby, Mr. Trump held a rally in Hialeah, Fla., remarking at one point that his rivals were “not watchable.”For months, the candidates have struggled to find a way to force him into the ring with them, with Mr. Christie threatening to follow him on the campaign trail and Mr. DeSantis, in recent days, lobbing crass responses to Mr. Trump’s brutal taunts. In the third debate, none of them figured out how to make it work.This debate got personal.Vivek Ramaswamy fought with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter three debates, this much is clear: Some of the candidates onstage really don’t like one another.The most loathed appears to be Mr. Ramaswamy, who from the start fought not just with the rivals flanking him but also with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign in his opening statement.At times, Mr. Ramaswamy almost seemed to be doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, attacking NBC’s past coverage of the former president’s scandals.He made acidic attacks on Ms. Haley, mocking her foreign policy and calling her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” He slipped in a crack about Mr. DeSantis’s footwear, suggesting that the Florida governor, too, was wearing lifts. Mr. DeSantis ignored him. Ms. Haley said hers were five inches and “for ammunition.”When Mr. Ramaswamy later invoked her daughter’s use of TikTok, she demanded, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” and then added in almost disbelief about the exchange, “You’re just scum.”During a confrontation over TikTok, Nikki Haley snapped at Vivek Ramaswamy after he scolded Ms. Haley over her daughter’s use of the app.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAbortion remains a Republican quagmire.The crowd at Wednesday’s debate.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter Tuesday’s defeats, the Republican candidates knew they would face questions about the way forward on abortion. But they mostly seemed uncertain what to say.“We’re better off when we can promote a culture of life,” said Mr. DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in his state. He said little at all about what his party should do or what he would do as president. “At the same time, I understand that some of these states are doing it a little bit different.”Ms. Haley described herself as opposed to abortion, but said that passing national restrictions would be virtually impossible, arguing that it’s crucial to be “honest” with the public. At times, Ms. Haley seemed to be trying to appeal to general-election voters. “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” she said. It was the kind of line that makes Democratic strategists worry about her strength if she were to win the nomination — but also one that the G.O.P. base is unlikely to welcome.It all amounted to a reminder that Republicans, after decades of campaigning against abortion rights, have yet to figure out what to say after finally getting their wish through a Supreme Court that Mr. Trump — who also won’t say where he stands on a national ban — reshaped.Was this Tim Scott’s swan song?Tim Scott said “diplomacy only“ in the Israel-Hamas war was “a weak strategy.“Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Scott qualified for this debate by the narrowest of margins, with only a single poll — the legitimacy of which some of his rivals have privately disputed — ensuring his spot. But the thresholds will be higher for the next debate in December, and Mr. Scott’s allies acknowledge that he needs to something, anything, just to remain a factor.It’s hard to imagine that he did anything on Wednesday night to change his trajectory. He stuck to the same messages he has been hitting throughout the campaign. He described an America in need of spiritual healing and a return to Judeo-Christian values.He received more attention for what he did after the debate than for anything he said during it. Mr. Scott, 58, has never been married, and entire newspaper stories have been dedicated to a mysterious girlfriend who had never been seen with him in public.Until he brought her onstage.Michael Gold More

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      Tim Scott Appears With Girlfriend Onstage After Republican Debate

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      Senator Tim Scott’s most viral debate moment didn’t actually happen during the debate. It came shortly afterward.Mr. Scott, the affable yet awkward South Carolina lawmaker, has been pressed during his campaign with questions about his unmarried status, as he has focused on his faith and his commitment to conservative family values.He has repeatedly given vague answers about being in a relationship with a woman, but a significant other had not campaigned with him.On Wednesday night when the Republican presidential debate ended — a time when candidates are regularly greeted onstage by spouses and other relatives — Mr. Scott stunned observers when he appeared arm-in-arm with a longhaired blonde woman in a gray pantsuit who smiled widely as they posed for photos.She was later identified by a person close to the campaign as Mindy Noce, Mr. Scott’s girlfriend and a design and renovations manager for a real estate company in the Charleston, S.C., area. In the spin room after the debate, a tight-lipped Mr. Scott confirmed that the mystery woman was his girlfriend and that they had been seeing each other for “about a year or so.”The moment grabbed more attention than anything Mr. Scott said during the debate did, an unfortunate metaphor for his presidential run. Even the pictures taken at his debate lectern with his girlfriend had the feel of being the final souvenirs from a stalled campaign.Mr. Scott entered the race as an underdog, but had proven to be a strong fund-raiser with the party’s base of online, small-dollar donors. His Sunday-school style of conservatism has yet to resonate even with evangelicals in Iowa, home of the party’s first nominating contest. Still, Mr. Scott, who champions himself as a “happy warrior,” remains an optimist. When asked by NBC News if this was his last debate, he referred to the next debate in December in Alabama, saying, “Thirty days from now in Alabama, we’ll be hanging out having a conversation. I’ll be on the stage.”The emergence of Mr. Scott’s companion onstage, like her emergence in the campaign itself, took a while.Immediately after the debate concluded and other candidates were joined by their spouses, Mr. Scott put his arm around his mother, Frances Scott, and posed for a picture behind the lectern he had used during the debate.He walked along the edge of the stage and squatted for selfies with fans in the audience. He chatted with supporters. He stood and stared out into the crowd, seeming to take in the moment.He took more pictures with his nephew, Ben Scott.Finally, after most of his rivals and their families had left the stage, Mr. Scott was joined at his lectern by Ms. Noce.Mr. Scott pointed out a step, taking care that she did not trip. They stood side by side, wrapped their arms around one another’s back and smiled for pictures.Mr. Scott held onto her hand as she turned to walk offstage, as if he did not want to let go.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Ramaswamy Compares Republican Rivals to Dick Cheney ‘in Heels’

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      Forget tax-cut pledges and RINO accusations. Heels, of all things, are the new political cudgel in Republican politics.For weeks, the question of whether Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wears heel lifts in his cowboy boots has been the subject of attacks from former President Donald J. Trump and others.The bizarre meme found its way into the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, when Vivek Ramaswamy used it to go after both Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the only woman on the stage in Miami.Mr. Ramaswamy compared his two Republican rivals to “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.”The moment came during an exchange over the U.S. role in the war between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Ramaswamy, the youngest of five Republican presidential candidates at the debate, attempted to separate himself from Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, both of whom said they would urge Israel to completely eliminate Hamas.Mr. Ramaswamy said Israel had the right to defend itself, but he wanted to “be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the establishment of the past.”He asked: “Do you want a leader from a different generation who’s going to put this country first, or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels? In which case, we’ve got two of them onstage tonight.”Ms. Haley addressed the barb a few minutes later, saying that Mr. Ramaswamy was wrong about her footwear.“They’re five-inch heels,” she said. “And I don’t wear them unless you can run in them. The second thing I will say is, I wear heels. They’re not for a fashion statement. They’re for ammunition.”The debate was still going, but Mr. DeSantis had so far not discussed the particulars of his boots. More

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      Elizabeth Moynihan, Engine of the Senator’s Success, Dies at 94

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      She not only had an outsize role in New York and Washington politics as the wife of Daniel Patrick Moynihan; she also made a significant archaeological discovery in India.Elizabeth Moynihan, who was a vital political partner to her husband, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, during his four terms as a U.S. Senator from New York; played a consequential role in Washington herself; and, as an architectural historian, made a signal discovery in India, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 94.Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Maura Moynihan. Reticent in public but spirited, irreverent and combustible in private, Mrs. Moynihan was a formidable political strategist. “I don’t choose to be a public person,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “You know, the more public Pat has become, the more adamantly private I have felt.”But she was Senator Moynihan’s full partner on the legislation and policy they debated with his staff members and other advisers at the couple’s kitchen table in Washington, and she was his surrogate in overseeing his Senate staff and maintaining its loyalty.Mrs. Moynihan managed all four of her husband’s successful, no-frills campaigns, beginning in 1976, when she was photographed here.Chester Higgins, Jr./The New York TimesWhile her role was never publicly acknowledged, Mrs. Moynihan deserved credit for helping to enact what in 1993 was considered the most important legislative issue of Bill Clinton’s presidency: the budget and tax increases that undergirded the White House’s five-year economic program.It was her browbeating of Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, that provided what turned out to be the one-vote margin needed to pass the legislation, after her husband and the president, fellow Democrats, had failed to convince him. The bill was viewed at the White House as essential to Mr. Clinton’s ultimate success as president.On the morning of Aug. 6, Senator Kerrey met for an hour with Mr. Clinton but was apparently unpersuaded until Mrs. Moynihan telephoned hours later, around 6 p.m.As Mr. Moynihan later recalled the conversation in a memo, his wife emphatically told Mr. Kerrey, “I want to live to see you president,” but by voting against the bill, she said, “your future as a national Democrat is at risk.” To be sure, it was a bad bill, she said, agreeing with the senator, but her husband “feels we cannot have another president fail.”At 8:30 p.m., Mr. Kerrey, the last to announce which way he would vote, declared on the Senate floor that he would support Mr. Clinton. Vice President Al Gore went on to cast the tiebreaking vote.“She turned him around from a hard no to yes,” Tony Bullock, Mr. Moynihan’s last chief of staff, said of Senator Kerrey.Mr. Kerrey said in an email on Tuesday that while he did not remember the specific conversation, “I know for certain that she would have been disappointed with a ‘no’ vote, and I know for certain it would have been easier to disappoint the president than to disappoint Liz.”Mrs. Moynihan, here with Senator Moynihan, persuaded Senator Bob Kerrey to vote yes on a bill central to President Bill Clinton’s economic agenda. “She turned him around from a hard no to yes,” a former Moynihan aide said.Barry Thumma/Associated PressMrs. Moynihan managed all four of her husband’s successful, no-frills Senate campaigns, beginning in 1976. She called them “mom-and-pop” operations, but they were thoroughly professional.She also bolstered his commitment to improving the architecture of proposed federal public works, the rehabilitation of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and historic preservation in New York and elsewhere.“Every night over dinner the Senator told her everything — and I mean everything — that took place in the office that day,” said Richard Eaton, a former chief of staff to the senator. “Many mornings Liz would call me and tell me something that could have been handled better, or about some personnel concern that I was not aware of so that it could be fixed.”Mrs. Moynihan was especially effective in dissuading potential Democratic challengers to her husband’s re-election (like H. Carl McCall, the New York State comptroller) and those from the Republican Party (including Rudolph W. Giuliani, when he was a U.S. attorney), in part by supporting a TV advertising blitz lauding Mr. Moynihan early in the campaign.In the late 1970s, when her husband was the ambassador to India, Mrs. Moynihan developed an interest in Babur, the emperor who founded the Mughal dynasty almost 500 years ago.Analyzing a 1921 translation of Babur’s journal, she became convinced that the elegant pleasure garden he built 150 miles south of New Delhi still existed, even though most scholars believed it had probably vanished. She unearthed the garden in 1978 in what The Times called “an important archaeological discovery.”Babur’s garden became an integral part of her book, “Paradise as a Garden: In Persia and Mughal India” (1979). She also edited the volume “The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj Mahal” (2000), which documented a study of the Mehtab Bagh, a forgotten garden near the Taj Mahal. She led an American team that collaborated with Indian scholars on the project, work that spurred the garden’s restoration and that provided a new and spectacular view of the Taj Mahal.Mrs. Moynihan continued to support the preservation of ancient sites as a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation in New York.Elizabeth Therese Brennan was born on Sept. 19, 1929, in Norfolk County, Mass., on the outskirts of Boston. Her mother, Therese (Russell) Brennan, edited a local newspaper. Her father, Francis Brennan, was a chemical factory foreman who left the family during the Depression, when Liz was 5, a growing pain she shared with her future husband, whose father deserted his wife and children in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan when Pat Moynihan was 9.She attended Boston College but never finished because she ran out of money. After volunteering in the first Senate campaign of John F. Kennedy in 1952 and in Adlai Stevenson’s presidential race that year, she moved to New York, where she worked for Gov. W. Averell Harriman’s 1954 campaign and met Mr. Moynihan, who was writing speeches for the governor. They married in 1955.Elizabeth Brennan met Mr. Moynihan while they were both working on Gov. W. Averell Harriman’s 1954 campaign. They married in 1955.via Moynihan familyMr. Moynihan died in 2003. Their son Tim died in 2015, and another son, John, died in 2004. In addition to their daughter, Maura, Mrs. Moynihan is survived by two grandchildren.The family moved more than 16 times during Mr. Moynihan’s career, as he went from Harvard professor to presidential adviser to ambassador to India and the United Nations before reaching the Senate. But they found sanctuary in a 500-acre dairy farm near Oneonta, N.Y., which they bought in 1964. (It was the setting for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s announcement in 1999 that she would run for the Senate from New York.)If Mr. Moynihan played a singular role in public life, retiring from the Senate in 2001, Mrs. Moynihan’s province was also exceptional, in particular among Senate wives, for her hands-on involvement in politics. In “Irish Americans: The History and Culture of a People” (2015), Eugene J. Halus Jr. wrote that Mr. Moynihan was successful in government “in part because of his personality and efforts, but also because of his lifelong partner in politics.”Of his 1998 re-election victory, Mr. Moynihan wrote to a friend: “It is simply that when things got tough we were ready. Liz was ready.”Michael Geissinger, via Library of CongressPeter Galbraith, a former ambassador to Croatia and Senate staff member under Mr. Moynihan, described Mrs. Moynihan as “the architect” of the senator’s 1988 landslide re-election victory, in which he won by a record-breaking plurality of 2.2 million votes.Savoring his victory, Mr. Moynihan wrote to a friend: “It is simply that when things got tough we were ready. Liz was ready.”But he might never have joined the political fray in the first place had it not been for the encouragement and political instincts of Mrs. Moynihan, said Lawrence O’Donnell, another former Moynihan legislative aide and now an MSNBC host.“I don’t think Professor Moynihan could have become Senator Moynihan without Liz,” he said in an interview. “So Pat’s legacy is Liz’s legacy.” More

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      The Joe Biden Re-election Dilemma

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      Joe Biden should be far and away the favorite to win re-election in 2024.The American economy continues to gather strength. He has a solid string of policy victories. And his main Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is lost in a jungle of legal troubles.The Democratic Party continues to score electoral victories as voters coalesce on the issue of abortion rights, as we saw in Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky on Tuesday night. But it is not clear at this point whether Biden’s fate is linked to down-ballot candidates or issues.In Ohio, where abortion access and marijuana legalization won, and in Pennsylvania, where a Democratic State Supreme Court justice won, Trump appears to hold an edge in several polls. Biden is polling ahead in Virginia, where Democrats flipped control of the House of Delegates and maintained control of the Senate, but it’s also a state where Democrats have won the last several presidential elections.And while abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats, it’s not clear yet if it will be on the ballot next November in any swing states — Arizona is one where it might be — or if Biden will effectively capitalize on the issue.Taken together, this is why Biden’s continued struggles in the polls are so worrisome. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday found Biden trailing Trump in five of six swing states. We’re a year out from Election Day, but Biden’s relative weakness compared to Trump’s position is still shocking.The poll would be easier to dismiss if it were the only one showing Biden’s weakness against Trump, but it’s not. Recent polls from CBS News and ABC News/Ipsos also reveal troubling signs for Biden.David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, posted on social media on Sunday that if Biden continues to run, he will surely be the Democratic nominee in 2024. But, Axelrod said: “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” because “the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.”Some understandably thought that Axelrod was suggesting that Biden drop out of the race, but Axelrod himself insisted that was not what he was saying.I don’t view Axelrod’s comments as controversial. They’re not a dig at Biden for his performance. It is ridiculous to ask people to ignore the erosion of Biden’s support among demographic groups that he must secure to win re-election.The risk of a Biden loss is real, and no amount of political ego or posturing can disguise that.According to the Times/Siena poll, Biden is losing ground among younger, nonwhite and less engaged voters.At The Times’s Nate Cohn put it, “Long-festering vulnerabilities on his age, economic stewardship, and appeal to young, Black and Hispanic voters have grown severe enough to imperil his re-election chances.”The economic piece is a conundrum. The economy is improving, but many people don’t see it or feel it, and they blame Biden. There is a clear disconnect in the data. And it is possible that people are also injecting a more general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country into their feelings about the economy. Either way, this may be fixable.The age issue, which I view as largely a manufactured one, is one that has calcified. Unlike feelings about the economy, which change as conditions shift, Biden is only getting older.What is his campaign going to do? Put him in more jeans and rolled-up dress shirts? Have him jog up to the mic at rallies? Make sure that he appears tanned and rested? Every scenario designed to signal youth and virility has the downside potential of looking ridiculous.I still remember the cringe-worthy moment in 2019 when an Iowa voter raised questions about Biden’s age, and Biden responded by challenging the man to a push-up contest. No more of that, I beg you.Biden is an elderly man, yes. And he will look and behave in ways that demonstrate that. But he seems to me to be handling his job well now and capable of continuing. The irony is that Trump is also elderly, but the immaturity in his defiance, anger and petulance can read as young.Lastly, the minority outreach question is also more complicated than it might appear. I sense a growing dissatisfaction with Biden, particularly among young minorities, and the war in Gaza is only making it worse. The passions are so high now that I think this tension will remain even after the war ends.Also, both parties and all demographics have segments that are less engaged and informed, but those groups are also open to drift, even if in the end they would be voting against their own interests.Recently, the rising rapper Sexyy Red said in an interview that “the hood” started to love Trump once he started “getting Black people out of jail and giving people that free money” in the form of stimulus checks.Never mind that Trump and Republicans opposed those stimulus checks and Democrats pushed them — that “free money” is still associated in the minds of many with Trump.This just underscores how Biden has trouble on both ends of the engagement spectrum among some young voters: Some of the highly engaged ones criticize him for the U.S.’s actions in the war in Gaza, and some of those less engaged mythologize his predecessor.It is possible that more and better outreach and engagement could change some of these realities, but make no mistake: We are in a very risky situation where the one person likely standing between Trump — and Trump’s destructive impulses — and the White House is a president who is limping into a re-election bid.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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      Minnesota Justices Rebuff Attempt to Bar Trump From Ballot Under 14th Amendment

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      In rejecting a petition arguing that former President Donald J. Trump was ineligible, the Minnesota Supreme Court did not rule on the merits and said the claims could be filed again later.The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from holding office again under the 14th Amendment.Election officials and the courts did not have the authority to stop the Republican Party from offering Mr. Trump as a primary candidate, the justices found. They did not rule on the merits of the petitioners’ constitutional argument: that Mr. Trump’s actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to “engaging in insurrection” against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it.Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to keep former Confederates out of the government, says anyone who has done that is ineligible to hold office.Minnesota’s presidential primary, scheduled for March, is “an internal party election to serve internal party purposes, and winning the presidential nomination primary does not place the person on the general election ballot as a candidate for president of the United States,” the court wrote in an order signed by Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson, with no noted dissents.There is no law in Minnesota prohibiting a political party from putting a constitutionally ineligible candidate’s name on the ballot, it continued, and so “there is no error to correct here as to the presidential nomination primary.”The court emphasized that the petitioners were free to file the same claims again later, challenging Mr. Trump’s inclusion on the general-election ballot if he wins the Republican nomination. For now, it did not address the constitutional questions surrounding whether the 14th Amendment applies to Mr. Trump.Though the ruling was procedural, Mr. Trump’s campaign promoted it as a substantive victory. Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, called it “further validation of the Trump campaign’s consistent argument that the 14th Amendment ballot challenges are nothing more than strategic, unconstitutional attempts to interfere with the election by desperate Democrats who see the writing on the wall.”Ron Fein, the legal director at Free Speech for People, the left-leaning group that filed the case on behalf of a group of Minnesota voters and is also suing in other states, said: “We are disappointed by the court’s decision. However, the Minnesota Supreme Court explicitly recognized that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage.”The Minnesota petition is the second case challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility that has been dismissed on procedural grounds, after one in New Hampshire. No court has yet ruled on the merits of the 14th Amendment argument.A state district court judge in Colorado is expected to rule in a similar case in the coming weeks after a recent five-day hearing. More

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      Love Can Win Trump the Nomination. It Will Take Hate to Win Back the White House.

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      A few weeks ago, I was talking to a local pastor here in Tennessee, and he started the conversation by asking a question I hear all the time: “Can anybody beat Trump?” He was desperate for someone else, anyone else, to claim the Republican nomination. He ticked through the names — DeSantis, Haley, Scott, Pence (he was still in the race then) — and they were all better. Why can’t they gain traction? “It’s not a binary choice anymore,” he said. “It’s not Trump or Biden.”“But,” he quickly added, “if it is Trump or Biden, then I’m voting Trump. It’s just who I am.”It’s just who I am. I thought of that conversation when I saw last weekend’s headlines. Donald Trump is now leading President Biden in five swing states, and if the race goes the way the poll suggests, Trump could win the presidency with more than 300 electoral votes. At the same time, we know from previous Times/Siena College polling that the hard-core MAGA base is 37 percent of the Republican Party. Another 37 percent can be persuaded to oppose Trump, while 25 percent are completely opposed to his nomination.How is it possible that a person whose true base is only 37 percent of his party, who faces four separate criminal indictments and who already lost once to Biden might sit in the electoral driver’s seat?I’ve written quite a bit on the enduring bond between Trump and his base. There’s the strange combination of rage and joy that marks the MAGA community. They’re somehow both furious about the direction of the country and having the time of their lives supporting Trump. There’s also the power of prophecy. Millions of Christians are influenced by claims that Trump is divinely ordained to save the United States. But the MAGA millions aren’t enough to put him back in the White House.To understand his general election prospects, we have to go beyond Trump’s MAGA core. He needs millions more votes — including from my pastor friend, a man who’s desperate to see Trump leave American politics.Trump’s viability in the Republican Party depends on the loyalty of his base, but his viability in the general election depends on a dark combination of negative partisanship and civic ignorance. “Negative partisanship” is the term political scientists use to describe partisan loyalty that exists not because a voter loves his party or its ideas but because he loathes the opposing party and the people in it. And why do voters loathe the opposition so darn much? That’s where civic ignorance plays its diabolical role. Partisan Americans are wrong about each other in a particularly dangerous way: Each side thinks the other is more extreme than it really is.This hostility is what permits Trump to convert his primary plurality into a potential electoral majority. This hostility both predated Trump and powered his election. In previous American political generations, nominating a person perceived to be an extremist or a crank was the kiss of electoral death. You wouldn’t merely expect to lose. You would expect to lose in a landslide.When Republicans nominated far-right Barry Goldwater in 1964, for example, he won six states and lost the popular vote by 23 points. Eight years later, when Democrats nominated far-left George McGovern, they won one state and also lost the popular vote by 23 points. There was enough partisan mobility in the electorate to decisively reject two different candidates, from opposing edges of the political spectrum.But now? It is unthinkable for many millions of partisans — or even for those independents who lean right or left and maybe secretly don’t want to admit to themselves that they’re truly partisan — to either vote third party or cross the aisle and vote for a candidate of the opposing party. They simply hate the other side too much. The result is that virtually any Republican or Democratic nominee begins the race with both a high floor and a low ceiling and no one has much margin for error. Every nominee is going to be fragile, and every national presidential race is going to be close. The margin in the last two races has been agonizingly slim. A few thousand votes cast differently in key swing states, and Hillary Clinton wins, or Joe Biden loses.To understand the power of negative partisanship, it’s important to understand the sheer scale of the mutual partisan hatred. Dating back to June 2014 — a full year before Trump came down that escalator — the Pew Research Center reported an extraordinary increase in polarization. Between 1994 and 2014, the percentage of Democrats and Republicans who expressed “very unfavorable” views of their opponents more than doubled, to 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans. Overall, 82 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of Democrats had either unfavorable or very unfavorable views of their political opponents.During the Trump era, this mutual contempt and loathing only grew. A June 2019 report by More in Common found that 86 percent of Republicans believed Democrats were brainwashed, 84 percent believed Democrats were hateful and 71 percent believed Democrats were racist. Democrats also expressed withering disgust for Republicans: 88 percent believed Republicans were brainwashed, 87 percent believed Republicans were hateful and 89 percent believed Republicans were racist.There is an interesting additional wrinkle to the More in Common report. Yes, it found that the two sides hated each other, but it also discovered that both sides were wrong about their political opponents. Both Democrats and Republicans believed their opponents were more politically extreme than they really were. The findings are startling: “Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents … hold views they consider ‘extreme’ ” than is actually the case.The media compounds the problem. More in Common found that consuming news media (with the exception of broadcast news on ABC, NBC and CBS) actually increased the perception gap. As a practical matter, this means that parties are almost always defined by their ideological extremes and each party uses the existence of those extremes to generate fear and increase turnout. Even if a party does try to moderate to appeal to the middle, partisan media still highlights the radicals that remain, and the perception gap persists. The fear persists.We can start to see why Trump is viable beyond his base. When you ask right-leaning voters to abandon Trump, you’re asking them to empower a political party they view as brainwashed, hateful and racist. You’re asking them to empower a political party they view as extreme. That’s the source of Trump’s strength in a general election. He’s surfing on top of a huge wave of fear and animosity, a wave he did not create but one that he’s making bigger through his malignant, destructive influence.That’s not to say that we face a political stalemate. After all, we’ve seen MAGA candidates perform poorly in multiple swing state elections, but many of those elections — even against plainly incompetent or corrupt candidates — have been extraordinarily close. Trump’s loss in 2020 was extraordinarily close. In a narrowly divided country, it becomes difficult for one party to deliver the kind of decisive blows that Republicans suffered in 1964 or Democrats suffered in 1972.When the Trump Republican Party is forced to take three steps back, it often consoles itself with two steps forward. It lost the House in 2018, but it gained seats in the Senate. It lost the presidency and the Senate in 2020, but it gained seats in the House. It lost ground in the Senate in 2022, but it did (barely) win back control of the House. There weren’t many bright spots for Republicans in the 2023 elections, either, but there weren’t many races, and MAGA will still believe that Biden is weak even if other Democrats have proved stronger than expected.Already Trump and his allies are blaming electoral setbacks on the Republican establishment. The radio host Mark Levin claimed that the Republican nominee for governor in Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, lost to the Democrat, Andy Beshear, because Cameron is a “Mitch McConnell protégé.” Trump echoed the same theme, declaring on Truth Social that Cameron “couldn’t alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell.” MAGA’s solution to electoral setbacks is always the same: more MAGA.There are two potential paths past this Republican dynamic. One is slow, difficult and dangerous. That’s the path of the Democratic Party defeating Trump and other MAGA candidates, race by race, year by year, with the full knowledge that the margin of victory can be razor thin and that there’s always the risk of a close loss that brings catastrophic consequences for our Republic. One negative news cycle — like Anthony Weiner’s laptop surfacing in the closing days of the 2016 election — can be the difference between victory and defeat.The other path — the better path — requires the Republican Party to reform itself, to reject Trump now. A two-party nation needs two healthy parties. Any republic that depends on one party defeating the other to preserve democracy and the rule of law is a republic that teeters on the edge of destruction. A Nikki Haley nomination, for example, might make Biden’s defeat more likely, but farsighted Democrats should welcome a potential return to normalcy in the Republican Party. It would mean that politics will perhaps return to a world of manageable differences, rather than a series of existential threats to democracy itself.As of now, however, internal Republican reform is a pipe dream. Ron DeSantis is falling, and while Haley is rising, she hasn’t even hit 10 percent support in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Trump leads by a staggering spread of 43.7 points. Perhaps a criminal conviction could reverse Trump’s primary momentum, but after watching Trump’s Republican approval rating survive every single scandal of his presidency and political career, the idea that anything will shake his Republican support is far more of a hope than an expectation.Until that unlikely moment, we’re stuck with the current dynamic. Love for Trump fuels his support in the Republican primary contest. Hatred of Democrats makes him viable in the general election. American animosity gave Trump the White House once, and as long as that animosity remains, it threatens to give him the White House once again. More