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      Buttigieg defends Biden’s age: ‘What matters is the age of a leader’s ideas’

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      Top Democrats came to Joe Biden’s defense on Sunday, emphasizing the president’s viability for re-election amid his colleagues’ worries that voters see him as too old – concerns compounded by Donald Trump’s lead over him in recent polls.On ABC This Week, host George Stephanopoulos pointedly asked Biden’s transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg: “How can an 81-year-old incumbent be the candidate of change? It’s so critical in presidential elections.”Buttigieg replied that Biden’s administration had focused on “issues that matter most to newer generations”, including addressing the climate crisis, supporting LGBTQ+ rights and pushing to restore the federal abortion rights that Roe v Wade had established before the conservative-dominated US supreme court eliminated them in 2022.“What matters most is the age of a leaders’ ideas,” Buttigieg said.Buttigieg’s comments came as voters’ views on Biden’s age continue being a growing liability for his re-election campaign. A recent ABC/Ipsos poll found that 86% of Americans thought him too old to serve another term. Sixty-two percent thought the same about Trump, who is 77 – and 59% of voters think both are too old.Those numbers prompted Biden’s camp to kick off a $30m ad campaign in swing states with a spot directly addressing the president’s age. “Look, I’m not a young guy,” he says in the spot. “But I understand how to get things done for the American people.”Georgia’s Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock also defended Biden’s chances in the swing state despite signs that many voters there have turned away from him, saying, “It’s still early in this election season.”Warnock’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union referred to a Fox News poll showing Trump leading by eight percentage points in Georgia. The poll also showed that a quarter of Black voters there now favor the former president.“I can tell you, as somebody whose name has been on the ballot five times in three years, I know a little something about Georgia voters,” Warnock said. “We’ve seen both of these men serve in the White House. Their choice is clearly Joe Biden and Georgians get it right for Joe Biden, just as they got it right for me.”CNN host Jake Tapper suggested third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr could be a spoiler after he claims to have gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot in Georgia in November. Tapper said Biden defeated Trump in Georgia in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes. But Warnock argued there was still time for Biden to secure the state again.The Democratic House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also addressed Black voters’ seemingly fading support of Biden. During Jeffries’s appearance on Face The Nation, host Margaret Brennan noted that Biden’s support among Black voters had fallen from 90% in 2020 to 76%.Nonetheless, Jeffries said Black voters would understand that Biden “has delivered over and over and over again on issues of concern”, including by helping bring on the lowest Black unemployment rate in decades as well as making historic investments in Black colleges and universities.“I’m confident at the end of the day … the overwhelming majority of African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Black voters throughout the country, will support president Biden,” Jeffries said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBrennan separately asked Senator Bernie Sanders whether he could good “in good conscience” ask fellow progressives who oppose Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Gaza to support the president.The US has provided billions of dollars in financial aid to Israel’s military as Biden has exalted the country’s right to defend itself after the 7 October attack by Hamas that reportedly killed more than 1,200 Israelis. But the president has condemned the humanitarian crisis set off by Israel’s subsequent military strikes in Gaza, which have reportedly killed more than 30,000.Sanders said the US “cannot be complicit in this mass slaughter” and called on Biden to withhold funds from Israel’s military if the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, continued exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But Sanders said voters must pick Biden if they favored protecting the climate, preserving bodily autonomy and eliminating income inequality.“So you’re asking voters to put [Gaza] aside?” Brennan said.Sanders responded: “Not put this aside – but fight continuously to change Biden’s policy on Gaza.” More

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      Biden says he regrets using term ‘illegal’ to describe Laken Riley murder suspect

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      Joe Biden said Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Meanwhile, the Democratic president’s all-but-certain 2024 Republican rival, Donald Trump, blasted Biden’s immigration policies and blamed them for Riley’s death while at a rally attended by her family and friends.Biden expressed remorse after facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the US illegally.“I shouldn’t have used illegal – it’s undocumented,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart taped in Atlanta, where he was meeting with small business owners and holding a campaign rally.Trump, campaigning in Rome, Georgia, at the same time, assailed Biden for the comments.“Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to loud jeers and boos. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s murder has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who have seized on frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border during a record surge of migrants entering the country. A person from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.The former president was joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, her sister and friends and met with them before he took the stage.In a speech that lasted nearly two hours, Trump hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week.Trump alleged that Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country”.Trump, who had made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, has repeatedly vowed to mount the largest deportation in the nation’s history if he wins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe contrasted his rhetoric with Biden’s, remarking: “I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant.”He also accused Biden of having “no intention of stopping the deadly invasion that stole precious Laken’s beautiful American life”.Yet Biden earlier this year bucked activists within his party by agreeing to make changes to US immigration law that would have limited some migration. The deal that emerged would have overhauled the asylum system to provide faster and tougher enforcement, as well as given presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed. It also would have added $20bn in funding, a huge influx of cash.The changes became part of a short-lived bipartisan compromise that Republican lawmakers quickly killed after Trump made his opposition known.After the deal’s collapse, Biden has been considering taking executive action to try to curtail migration. But he’s expressed frustration that his lawyers have yet to devise options that they believe can pass muster with federal courts. Biden, instead, has insisted that Congress take up the measure again, trying to flip the script on Republicans and arguing they are more interested in being able to talk about the issue in an election year than taking action to fix it. More

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      Biden hits out at Trump in Georgia rally: ‘He’s been sucking up to dictators all over the world’

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      The question isn’t whether Democrats in Georgia will vote for President Joe Biden, either on Tuesday or in November. It’s how many.Biden swung through Georgia on Saturday to collect the endorsements of political action committees representing Asian, Black and Latino voters, another stop on the march to the Democratic nomination.Biden opened with a swing at Donald Trump, using Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene as the bat, noting how he had kicked off his campaign here in her company, along with that of dictatorial Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán.“He called him a fantastic leader. Seriously,” Biden said. “He’s been sucking up to dictators all over the world.”Biden’s only meaningful competition in Georgia for the nomination is ennui and “no preference”. But Biden is likely to clinch the nomination not in Georgia, which holds its primary on Tuesday, but in states voting on 19 March. Nonetheless, the pivot to the general election has already begun.“He’s building on the momentum from the Thursday speech, which was a grand slam home run,” said David Brand, a Democratic operative and Atlanta political figure. “Republicans are in a pure panic. They can’t attack him on issues. So, they’re now making up lunacy about him being, you know, on Red Bull or something. That’s their best attack line: because he drinks a Red Bull. That puts him in line with every law school student in the country.”Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill and both of Georgia’s Democratic senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, held the rally at the trendy Pullman Yards facility on Atlanta’s east side before a crowd of about 500 people. The assembly was composed mostly of party insiders and Democratic elected officials. The location of the rally was closely held before the event, ostensibly to avoid disruptions by protesters. One man was escorted from the room as he shouted pro-Palestinian slogans.The president’s address continued themes raised in the State of the Union address, calling for reinstating Roe v Wade as the law of the land on abortion, increasing taxes on billionaires and a call for civic values.“We see a future where we define democracy and defend it, not diminish it,” Biden said. “We must remain the beacon of the world.”Biden said nothing about the war in Gaza, nor did he raise the question about funding for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia.His supporters and endorsers regularly juxtaposed the consequences of a Trump win in 2024, trying to evoke the political intensity that led to surprise wins in Georgia in 2020 and 2022.Ossoff regularly name-checked DeKalb County, the location of Pullman Yards and the locus for the political changes that swept him, Warnock and Biden into power. “The stakes could not be higher,” Ossoff said. “The future of voting rights, and civil rights and women’s rights is on the line.”Three political action committees offered their endorsement to Biden on Saturday: Collective PAC, which backs Black candidates; the Latino Victory Fund; and the AAPI Victory Fund, a political action committee for empowering Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.“They must be re-elected. Failure is not an option,” said Shekar Narasimhan, chairman and founder of the AAPI Victory Fund. “We will do everything in our power to make this happen.” More

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      Democrats are angry over media coverage of Biden. Is it a distraction?

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      When an opinion poll in the New York Times found that a majority of Joe Biden’s voters believe he is too old to be an effective US president, the call to action was swift. But it was not aimed at Joe Biden.“Amplifying flawed presidential polls, refusing to report on [Donald] Trump’s cognitive issues, the NYT is biased for Trump,” was a sample response on social media. “If you have a subscription to NYT, cancel it.”The irate chorus aimed at one of America’s most storied media institutions followed finger-pointing at the legal system for failing to stop Trump in his tracks. Despite much wishful thinking, primary election results this week made clear that the nation is hurtling towards a Biden v Trump rematch in November.That polling and media coverage are imperfect, and the wheels of justice of turn slowly, is beyond dispute. But whatever the merits of the arguments, critics argue that Democrats are at risk of playing a blame game that distracts them from the central mission: defeating Trump at the ballot box.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Commiseration is not a strategy and Democrats need to stop throwing political temper tantrums and do the work to unify and get Joe Biden re-elected. The courts, the media, late-night comedians are not going to save us. So this whining and complaining about these aspects being unfair is not a strategy for victory.”View image in fullscreenAmong some Democrats, there has long been a yearning for a saviour who will stop Trump in his tracks. Hopes were pinned on the special counsel Robert Mueller, but his Russia investigation lacked teeth and failed to bring the president down. Two impeachments came and went and the Senate missed a historic opportunity to bar from Trump running again.Now resentment is focused on the supreme court and the attorney general, Merrick Garland, for dragging their feet on holding Trump accountable for his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The court issued a unanimous decision that Colorado and other states do not have the power to remove Trump from the ballot for engaging in an insurrection.A justice department case alleging that he sought to overturn the 2020 election, which had been due to begin this week, was postponed until the supreme court rules on whether he is immune from prosecution. And an election interference case in Georgia is also on hold because the prosecutor Fani Willis is dealing with allegations of a conflict of interest over a romantic relationship.In Florida, where Trump is charged over his mishandling of classified government documents, he managed to draw a friendly judge who has indicated the trial will not start soon. That means the case likely to start first is one in New York relating to Trump paying hush money to an adult film star during the 2016 election campaign, widely portrayed in the media as the weakest of the four.Yet such a case would have been devastating to any other candidate at any other moment in history. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “He’s going to be on trial for 34 felony counts in less than three weeks and the mainstream media has barely indicated the importance of this.“‘Oh, it’s just a hush money trial.’ No it’s not. He’s not on trial for hush money. He’s on trial for election fraud, not just paying the hush money but deceiving the American people by concealing it as a business expense.”Lichtman added: “If this was anybody but Trump, any other presidential candidate on trial, it would be the trial of the century and the mainstream media would be screaming that, if the candidate got convicted, he should be bounced from from the campaign. Instead they’ve misrepresented and trivialised this case.”Trump has long challenged media orthodoxies. During the 2016 campaign, the New York Times used the word “lie” in a headline – a move that would have been seen as judgmental and editorialising in the pre-Trump era. In 2019, the paper changed a headline, “Trump urges unity vs racism”, after an outcry from readers and progressive politicians.Television has also struggled to find the right approach. There was much introspection over how saturation coverage of Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies and tweets gave him $5bn in free advertising, according to the media tracking firm mediaQuant. Cable news networks have drastically reduced their live coverage of Trump’s speeches, although some commentators warn that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, contending that voters need to see his unhinged antics, verbal gaffes and extremist agenda.With Super Tuesday’s primary elections clearing the way for another Biden v Trump clash, some accuse the media of focusing too much on polls and not enough on the stakes, treating Trump as just another political candidate rather than an existential threat. They say the intense focus on Biden’s age – he is 81 – is wildly disproportionate when set against Trump’s authoritarianism and 91 criminal charges.Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “The media has clearly not learned its lesson from 2016 or 2020 on how to cover Donald Trump. This is not a conventional horse race election. There’s nothing normal about any of this so, by covering Biden and Trump equally, it minimises Trump’s considerably disturbing behaviour, comments and plans for the future.“The Democrats do have a legitimate complaint with the way the media is bothsides-ing this. The media should not be under any obligation to tell both sides of a lie or conspiracy theory or leading presidential candidate’s desire to tear up the constitution and become a dictator on day one. All things Donald Trump has said he would do.”The New York Times/Siena College poll was made up of 980 registered voters across the country and conducted on mobile and landline phones. It found that 61% of people who supported Biden in 2020 thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. An accompanying article in the Times was headlined: “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective.”Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, thinks it was a fair question. “The media’s not in this to help any candidate and Joe Biden is the incumbent and there are legitimate questions about an 81-year-old repeatedly struggling in public. To do a poll that asks questions about that is entirely fair.”View image in fullscreenOthers take a very different view. Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, said: “The choice to ask the question and the way the question is asked and who the question is asked of and then how the result is played are agenda-filled. Polls become a self-fulfilling prophecy of: we’re going to set an agenda and say it all and then we’re going to do a poll and act as if that’s news when it’s just a reaction to what we’ve already done. This is the case with the age.”Jarvis added: “The New York Times – which has been our best and which I criticise because I want it to be better – is horribly frustrating because it does not know how to cover the rise of fascism, and that’s what this story really is. Neither does it know how to cover the essence of why this is happening, which is race.”Defenders of the New York Times point out that it has done extensive reporting on Trump’s plans for a second term and what it would mean for America and the world. Some commentators warn that Democrats’ attacks on the media are likely to backfire and lead to accusations that they are shooting the messenger.Not even comedians are immune. When Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and skewered Biden and Trump as the two oldest presidential candidates in history, Mary Trump, a niece and fierce critic of the former president, wrote on X: “Not only is Stewart’s ‘both sides are the same’ rhetoric not funny, it’s a potential disaster for democracy.”Stewart responded on his next show: “I guess as the famous saying goes, ‘Democracy dies in discussion’ … It was never my intention to say out loud what I saw with my eyes and then brain. I can do better.”If history is any guide, there is no knight in shining armour coming to Democrats’ rescue. They have to win on the merits on 5 November. Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, observed: “The Democrats have wanted to use every trick in the book to defeat or unseat or stop Trump since 2016 and nothing has changed in that respect.“The fact is he is a leading candidate. He is supported by almost half the country. The idea that he poses a threat to democracy is not unfounded but is also wildly overblown. If the media did what many Democrats want, they would effectively be acting like media in Orbán’s Hungary, so the irony might be telling.” More

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      Journalist says Katie Britt’s story about child sex abuse ‘out-and-out lie’

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      Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of a story about horrific child sex abuse told by the Republican senator Katie Britt in her widely ridiculed speech delivered in rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.The journalist and author Jonathan Katz has accused Britt of being “fundamentally dishonest” for invoking the case of a woman who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times to illustrate the supposed failure of the Biden administration’s border control policies.The controversy further intensifies the spotlight on Britt – a rising Republican star – after she came under fire from members of her own party for delivering a rejoinder to Biden on Thursday from the setting of a kitchen.In that speech, Britt described travelling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and cited the case of an unidentified woman, whom Britt said confided harrowing experiences. The senator implied these were a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the border, which Republicans have sought to exploit as a campaign issue.“I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said. “She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.”The senator did not say where or when the events occurred, but in outraged tones she implied that they had happened in the US on Biden’s watch: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America. And it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable and it’s almost entirely preventable.”However, in a seven-minute video posted on TikTok, Katz – a former AP reporter who has written on drug wars in Mexico – cited details that appeared to show the story Britt was describing had happened not just outside the US, but many years before Biden became president.He concluded that Britt had deliberately misrepresented the tale of Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who has publicly recounted her experiences on numerous occasions at the hands of sex traffickers in her native Mexico.Now 31, Romero testified to a US Congressional subcommittee in May 2015 describing her experiences at the hands of a trafficker who held her captive between the ages of 12 and 16, before she was eventually rescued. She has also spoken before the Mexican house of representatives and the Vatican.Britt met Jacinto Romero on a visit to the border with two other Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Cindy-Hyde Smith, in January 2023.The visit was described on Blackburn’s senatorial webpage, which included photos of the three senators sharing a platform with Romero at a news conference.In his video, Katz dissected what he said was Britt’s attempt to conflate Romero’s story with the US-Mexico border imbroglio, where the build-up of asylum seekers promises to become a central issue in the 2024 presidential election, before lambasting her for “dishonesty”.Katz said that Britt, by not giving a location or a timeframe for the story, had deliberately tried to create a “beyond misleading” impression that the events had taken place recently and on US soil.“All I had to do was key in Karla Jacinto Romero’s name … and it took me to [her] testimony to Congress from 2015 about her experiences in Mexico,” he said.“It took place between 2004 and 2008. I don’t know what they put in the textbooks of Alabama these days, but Joe Biden was not the president of the United States in 2004 or 2008. In 2004 and 2008, the president of the United States was George W Bush, a Republican. [But] none of this really matters because none of these events took place in the United States – or even near the border.”Katz added: “It seems very clear to me that she is trying to create an association in people’s minds between Joe Biden, the border, Mexicans, you know, Latins – people of Latin descent – and sexual violence. That’s what she’s going for and she is doing it on the basis of something that you can only say is an out-and-out lie.“It must have been obvious to her, at the very least, that she was not talking to somebody who had recently been 12 years old.”Katz said he had sought a comment from Britt’s spokesperson but had received no reply. “For now, it just looks as if she got up on national television and lied about something really horrific and important – and for her own personal and her party’s political gain,” he said.In a statement to media outlets, Britt’s spokesperson Sean Ross sidestepped commenting on whether the senator had been alluding to Romero in Thursday’s speech but insisted her account was “100% correct”.“The Biden administration’s policies – the policies in this country that the president falsely claims are humane – have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border,” he said. “Along that journey, children, women and men are being subjected to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking horrors in our own backyard.”Following Britt’s speech, the gun control advocate Shannon Watts noted that the senator had used stories of sexual abuse in an effort to elect Donald Trump, who has been accused of rape in an allegation a judge called “substantially true”, and of assault or misconduct by more than 20 other women. “Senator Katie Britt says sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman while encouraging Americans to vote for a convicted sexual predator,” Watts said. 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      ‘Young and handsome’: Biden kicks off $30m ad blitz with spot addressing age

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      Joe Biden’s campaign kicked off a $30m TV and digital ad blitz in key swing states on Saturday with an ad in which the president directly addresses concerns about his age.Set to run for six weeks on stations including Black- and Hispanic-owned outlets, and released shortly after his fiery State of the Union address, the 60-second spot does not shy away from what many voters say is growing concern with the president’s age. The ad, titled For You, opens with Biden in light-hearted form. “Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” the 81-year old president says. “But I understand how to get things done for the American people.”The Biden campaign said the ad will appear on networks including ESPN and TNT throughout March Madness, during which NCAA college basketball tournaments are held across the country. It is also set to appear on Comedy Central and FX, Bloomberg reports.“I led the country through the Covid crisis,” Biden says in the ad. “Today, we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed a law that lowers prescription drug prices, caps insulin at $35 a month for seniors.”Biden then changes tack from the state of the union and addresses who in that speech he only called “my predecessor” by name. “For four years, Donald Trump tried to pass an infrastructure law and he failed. I got it done. Now we’re rebuilding America. I’ve passed the biggest law in history to combat climate change because our future depends on it,” he says.Echoing his pledge from his Thursday State of the Union speech, Biden promises to make Roe v Wade “the law of the land again”, saying Trump “took away the freedom of women to choose.”“Donald Trump believes the job of the president is to take care of Donald Trump,” Biden says. “I believe the job of the president is to fight for you, the American people, and that’s what I’m doing.”The end of the ad features an outtake as a producer off-camera asks Biden for one more take, to which Biden jokes: “Look, I’m very young, energetic and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?”Since his address to the nation, praised by Democratic observers as a return to form and the occasion for his highest fundraising totals in recent memory, Biden has embarked on a tour of multiple states. He visits Pennsylvania and Georgia this weekend before heading to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week.As the country gears up for a Biden-Trump rematch, a poll released last week by the New York Times and Siena College showed that 73% of all registered voters in the US believe Biden is too old to be an effective president.Among those who voted for Biden in 2020, 26% said they strongly agree his age will make him an ineffective president for a second term.At 81, Biden is the oldest president ever to seek re-election, though Trump, at 77, is just four years younger. More

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      ‘Like choosing between a hedgehog and a porcupine’: US braces for presidential election no one wants

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      In past years, the first phase of the general election has involved at least one of the presidential nominees introducing themselves to the broader public and presenting their case for taking the country in a new direction. But that has been rendered unnecessary this year: former president Donald Trump and president Joe Biden are very familiar to the American electorate – and they are broadly unpopular.“I think this is the worst election in my lifetime,” said George Argodale, a Nikki Haley supporter from Gainesville, Virginia. “It’s just terrible that we don’t have better candidates.”“That’s a sad state of affairs for our country that those are the two best candidates that we can come up with,” agreed Peggy Hudson, a primary voter in Charleston, South Carolina.Judith Smith, from Moncks Corner, South Carolina, said of Biden and Trump: “That’s like choosing between a hedgehog and a porcupine.”As the primary season sputters to an expected ending, following Haley’s withdrawal from the Republican primary on Wednesday, voters’ frustration with their general election options is palpable.According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, Biden’s approval rating now stands at 38.1%, and Trump’s rating rests at a nominally stronger 42.6%, meaning both men are disliked by a majority of Americans.Those low opinions have carried into voters’ views on the general election. A YouGov-University of Massachusetts Amherst poll conducted in January found that 45% of Americans believe a Biden-Trump rematch is bad for the country. Another 26% say the rematch is neither good nor bad, while just 29% view it as good for the nation.It’s not all for the same reason; the many voters lamenting their general election options represent a diverse array of ideological perspectives, ranging from anti-Trump Republicans to progressives outraged over Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.“On the whole, there’s a lot of ambivalence and disappointment about the prospects of a rematch,” said Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “There’s a widespread perception among those individuals that the candidates are too old and that they tend to focus on issues that are issues of yesterday.”Conversations on the campaign trail reflect those commonly held beliefs, as a number of primary voters across multiple states said that they wished they had another option for November. Among anti-Trump Republicans, many of whom voted for Haley in their primaries, the potential re-election of the former president represents a return to the chaos that defined his first term. Echoing concerns shared by most Democrats, they predict that Trump would undermine the foundation of the US government if elected.Vincent DiMaro, an 80-year-old voter in Charleston who voted for Haley in the primary last month, cited Trump’s temperament and Biden’s age of 81 as significant liabilities for the nation’s future (Trump is 77).“I want to see the country survive, and I don’t think it will under Trump,” he said. But, he added: “I don’t think Biden is a particularly good president right now. I can’t be president. I know what my limitations are, and I’m in better shape than Biden.”Argodale voted early in the Virginia primary to cast a ballot for Haley, but he said he would have to support Biden in the general election if Trump won the Republican nomination.“I am on the conservative side of things, and [Haley] is the only viable candidate in my opinion,” he said. “[Trump] is just a terrible human being and doesn’t deserve any votes.”Although Democrats broadly agree with that assessment, some carry concerns about Biden, particularly regarding his age. Hudson acknowledged her politics lean to the left, as she previously worked for the late Democratic senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, but she cast a primary ballot for Haley in Charleston because she is “disgusted” by Trump. Hudson indicated she would support Biden in November, but she lamented the options available to voters in the general election.“Not that Joe Biden has not done a good job. He has done some very good things for this country,” Hudson said. “But I do think it is time for a new generation of leaders.”View image in fullscreenAn enthusiasm problemThe war in Gaza has presented a significant electoral vulnerability for Biden, as the president has faced intense criticism from progressives within his own party over his response to Israel’s airstrike campaign that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.Progressive leaders in multiple states have organized campaigns to urge supporters to vote “uncommitted” or “leave it blank” instead of casting a ballot for Biden as a means of protesting his handling of the war. In Michigan, uncommitted won 13% of the vote in last month’s primary, and uncommitted captured 19% of votes in the Minnesota Democratic primary on Tuesday.Hassan Jama, an imam in Minneapolis, Minnesota, campaigned for Biden in 2020 but has joined the uncommitted campaign. When asked about his options for November, he suggested he may vote for a candidate other than Biden or Trump. Voters can cast ballots for the independent presidential candidate, Cornel West, or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, both of whom have condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, or they could leave the top of the ticket blank.“We’re not voting for Trump, definitely no,” Jama said. “We have more than two choices.”Ruth Schultz, a Minnesota primary voter who has organized with MN Families for Palestine, similarly ruled out voting for Trump, but she would not yet commit to supporting Biden in the general election.“I know that I will never vote for Trump. That is a given,” Schultz said. “I want to see President Biden take a stronger stance for peace and how to get a ceasefire and to use all the tools at his disposal in order to do that. I am watching that as a voter in the general election.”The uproar among many left-leaning voters has created an enthusiasm gap between the two political parties that could pose a problem for Biden. Although many people who backed Biden in 2020 express concern about his re-election, Trump’s most loyal supporters remain as fervent as ever. According to the YouGov-UMass poll, 45% of Republicans believe the Biden-Trump rematch is good for the country, but only 21% of Democrats say the same.When speaking to Trump voters on the campaign trail, many are quick to praise him as the best president of their lifetimes, and they display no hesitation about supporting him again this fall.“I’ve been supporting him since he ran [in 2016], came down the escalator [at Trump Tower], ever since that,” said Chris Pennington, a voter from Johns Island, South Carolina. “I think he’s the best one to take on all the problems that we have.”Argodale does not support Trump, but he has seen firsthand how much devotion he can inspire. “In my social circle, there are Trumpers, so they’re diehard,” he said. “If he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, they’d still vote for him.”If Biden wants to win in November, he will have to work to narrow that enthusiasm gap or bring enough reluctant independents into his camp – or, most likely, do both.View image in fullscreenDire predictionsThe widespread disappointment among voters regarding the Biden-Trump rematch will have sweeping political consequences this fall, but their opinions on the election also offer startling revelations about Americans’ fears for the country’s future.The YouGov-UMass survey included open-ended questions that asked respondents what they believed would happen if the opposing party won the White House. The answers were both dire and specific, Rhodes said, with respondents predicting the end of democracy and a sharp rise in political persecution if their party were to lose.“The perception that victory by the other candidate would be dangerous and threatening has been rising pretty consistently for some time,” Rhodes said. “I think what’s distinctive in this election cycle is just how intense those feelings are and how personal they are.”Biden and Trump have both spoken in severe terms about what would happen if their opponent were to win, and those arguments appear to be sinking in for many voters.Nathan Richter, who voted for Biden in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday, was concise when asked about the possibility of Trump’s return to the White House. “Please, God, no,” he said. “I question our country’s ability to withstand another four years of Trump.”John Schuster said he plans to vote for Biden in November, but he cast a primary ballot for Haley because of his overwhelming concern about a Trump victory.“There’s no greater imperative in the world than stopping Donald Trump,” Schuster said. “It’ll be the end of democracy and the world order if he becomes president.”Biden supporters tend to frame the stakes of the election in terms of democracy and political violence, Rhodes noted, while Trump supporters’ concerns are more often shaped around a perceived threat that Democrats pose to American values. Douglas Benton, a Trump supporter from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, warned that the US would become a “third-world country” if Biden were to win reelection.“Our business is broken,” Benton said. “That’s how we became the most profitable country on the planet, is through capitalism and democracy and laws. Right now all three of those are gone.”Past elections have proven just how motivating negative emotions can be in turning out voters, which is why Rhodes believes that participation will still be high in November despite the nominees’ unpopularity.“It’s not an election that is going to inspire people on the basis of positive sentiments,” Rhodes said. “But it is an election that I strongly suspect is going to ultimately mobilize a lot of people because they believe that their vote is important for protecting themselves.”The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino contributed reporting from Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis, Minnesota More

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      The Lie Detectives: Trump, US politics and the disinformation damage done

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      Most of Joe Biden’s past supporters see him as too old. An 81-year-old president with an unsteady step is a turn-off. But Donald Trump, Biden’s malignant, 77-year-old predecessor, vows to be a dictator for “a day”, calls for suspending the constitution and threatens Nato. “Russia, if you’re listening”, his infamous 2016 shout-out to Vladimir Putin, still haunts us eight years on. Democracy is on the ballot again.Against this bleak backdrop, Sasha Issenberg delivers The Lie Detectives, an examination of disinformation in politics. It is a fitting follow-up to The Victory Lab, his look at GOTV (“getting out the vote”) which was published weeks before the 2012 US election.Issenberg lectures at UCLA and writes for Monocle. He has covered presidential campaigns for the Boston Globe and he co-founded Votecastr, a private venture designed to track, project and publish real-time results. Voting science, though, is nothing if not tricky. A little after 4pm on election day 2016, hours before polls closed, Votecastr calculations led Slate to pronounce: Hillary Clinton Has to Like Where She Stands in Florida.The Victory Lab and The Lie Detectives are of a piece, focused on the secret sauce of winning campaigns. More than a decade ago, Issenberg gave props to Karl Rove, the architect of George W Bush’s successful election drives, and posited that micro-targeting voters had become key to finishing first. He also observed that ideological conflicts had become marbled through American politics. On that front, there has been an acceleration. These days, January 6 and its aftermath linger but much of the country has moved on, averting its gaze or embracing alternative facts.In 2016, Issenberg and Joshua Green of Businessweek spoke to Trump campaign digital gurus who bragged of using the internet to discourage prospective Clinton supporters.“We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” Issenberg and Green quote a senior official as saying. “They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women and African Americans.”It was micro-targeting on steroids.The exchange stuck with Issenberg. “I thought back often to that conversation with the Trump officials in the years that followed,” he writes now. “I observed so much else online that was manufactured and perpetuated with a similarly brazen impunity.”In The Lie Detectives, Issenberg pays particular attention and respect to Jiore Craig and her former colleagues at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a leading Democratic polling and strategy firm founded by Stan Greenberg, Bill Clinton’s pollster. Issenberg also examines the broader liberal ecosystem and its members, including the billionaire Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn and PayPal. The far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his “office of hate” come under the microscope too.Craig’s experience included more than a dozen elections across six continents. But until Trump’s triumph, she had not worked on a domestic race. To her, to quote Issenberg, US politics was essentially “a foreign country”. Nonetheless, Craig emerged as the Democrats’ go-to for countering disinformation.“It was a unique moment in time where everybody who had looked for an answer up until that point had been abundantly wrong,” Craig says. “The fact that I had to start every race in a new country with the building blocks allowed me to see things that you couldn’t.”No party holds a monopoly on disinformation. In a 2017 special election for US Senate in Alabama, Democratic-aligned consultants launched Project Birmingham, a $100,000 disinformation campaign under which Republicans were urged to cast write-in ballots instead of voting for Roy Moore, the controversial GOP candidate.The project posed as a conservative operation. Eventually, Hoffman acknowledged funding it, but disavowed knowledge of disinformation and said sorry. Doug Jones, the Democrat, won by fewer than 22,000 votes. The write-in total was 22,819.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore recently, Steve Kramer, a campaign veteran working for Dean Phillips, a long-shot candidate for the Democratic nomination against Biden, launched an AI-generated robocall that impersonated the president.Comparing himself to Paul Revere and Thomas Paine, patriots who challenged the mother country, Kramer, who also commissioned a deepfake impersonation of Senator Lindsey Graham, said Phillips was not in on the effort. If the sorry little episode showed anything, it showed disinformation is here to stay.Under the headline Disinformation on steroids: is the US prepared for AI’s influence on the election?, a recent Guardian story said: “Without clear safeguards, the impact of AI on the election might come down to what voters can discern as real and not real.”Free speech is on the line. Last fall, the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit – “the Trumpiest court in America”, as Vox put it – unanimously held that Biden, the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FBI violated the first amendment by seeking to tamp down on Covid-related misinformation.In the court’s view, social media platforms were impermissibly “coerced” or “significantly encouraged” to suppress speech government officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading. The matter remains on appeal, oral argument before the supreme court set for later this month.Issenberg reminds us that Trump’s current presidential campaign has pledged that a second Trump administration will bar government agencies from assisting any effort to “label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information”. A commitment to free speech? Not exactly. More like Putinism, US-style.According to Kash Patel, a Trump administration veteran and true believer, a second Trump administration will target journalists for prosecution.“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel told Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”Welcome to the Trump Vengeance tour.
      The Lie Detectives is published in the US by Columbia University’s Columbia Global Reports More