According to new aggregate polls from the LA Times, Harris’s unfavorable rating is higher than at any point since she became vice president and her popularity is as low as or lower than every previous vice president of the last 30 years during similar stages of their terms — including Dick Cheney (R) and Al Gore (D), both of whom struggled with popular opinion throughout their terms. 

This ignoble distinction raises important questions as the election season heats up: Is Harris really doing such a terrible job, so out of touch with the American people that she deserves this historic disapproval? Or as the first female vice president of color, is she on the receiving end of well-documented and deeply ingrained bias? 

The vice presidency is a notoriously difficult and vague job. John Adams called it "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." But for Harris, insignificance is not an option. Like all high-profile firsts, she carries not only the weight of her job but the expectations, hopes and dreams of those who will follow her. She must forge new norms and standards for women leading at the highest levels and redefine the role, while also succeeding in it. She must be both a loyal cheerleader and supporter of the president, while also serving as a role model and mentor to future women leaders everywhere.

Vice President Harris is not perfect — and she has sometimes been her own worst enemy, struggling to keep good staff and appearing stiff and scripted at public appearances. But it’s hard to square the outsized negative attention she receives with any rational critique, and impossible not to see parallels to the only other woman ever to come so close to our nation’s highest office — Hillary Clinton. She, too, endured years of disinformation and gendered attacks that affected the outcome of the 2016 election.

The parallels are hard to miss. Impossible expectations and double standards for women — sometimes called the double bind — have dogged the vice president from the start. Just as they did with Clinton. President Biden did her no favors in trying to shape her agenda in his image, giving her a bound-to-fail portfolio at the outset, including immigration reform, which has been stalled for decades. 

But for those of us who work to support women advancing to elected leadership, the challenges facing the vice president are very familiar. Women in positions of power, especially Black women, face ingrained bias at every turn — they are routinely labeled as unlikeable, angry, aggressive and more likely to be subject to online hate. In fact, recent studies have shown that women of color are twice as likely to be the subject of harassment and disinformation. Many female candidates of color feel the abuse and mis- and disinformation they face is specifically meant to push them out of politics.

The problem is so severe that in 2021 researchers at Brookings labeled gendered disinformation a national security threat and called on the Biden-Harris administration to prioritize combatting it. In the high-stakes world of presidential politics, disinformation and distrust can quickly metastasize into a political liability.

Attacks on the vice president from the right are not especially new but they are increasingly misinformation laden. In 2020, President Donald Trump pushed a racist conspiracy about her eligibility to be president — as he did with President Obama. But recently, there has been a coalescing among other Republicans who are pushing the false narrative that Harris is actually the president and running some kind of puppet regime. On Fox News, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called her “President Harris” and has referred to her and President Biden as “co-Presidents.”  

Obviously in an election year, exploiting weaknesses in the opposition is fair game, but the gendered conspiracy-laden misinformation can be especially damaging. It’s easy to see how that kind of rhetoric creates a double bind for the vice president and may be weighing down her consistently poor polling. 

The outcomes here are not inevitable, and both Harris and the president need a real strategy to bolster the vice president heading into the 2024 election to help the president’s own prospects. In the last year, she seems to have zeroed in on a better, more comfortable portfolio of abortion rights in the post-Dobbs world, serving as an ambassador to world leaders and, of course, as a surrogate to the legions of Black voters who helped assure the Biden/Harris victory. But more focus is required. Harris already broke the mold once by winning in 2020, and she can use that experience and key learnings from the first term to win again in 2024.

Here, the experiences of other women of color who have successfully won races despite relentless attacks serve as a template for turning around the vice president’s prospects.

First,  she and her supporters must actively and vocally fight back against negative, biased and simply wrong narratives. That means calling it out regularly and publicly on social and traditional media. The administration has been very effective in pointing out Republican hypocrisy on infrastructure and student debt. They should deploy the same tactics to combat attacks on the vice president. They will be getting help from Emily’s List, which has pledged millions to support the vice president’s reelection bid. 

Second, the vice president needs to be a more visible and active campaigner heading into 2024 — her low poll numbers are not a reason to sideline her. On the contrary, getting her off the sidelines has the potential to bolster her numbers as she defines herself to the public rather than allowing her to be defined by others. 

Finally, Kamala needs to be Kamala; when she’s free to be herself — to connect with people around her and be human and real — she is at her best. Authenticity both makes better leaders and winning campaigns. When Harris shattered the second-highest glass ceiling in 2020, she inherited the traditional norms of the role, which were defined by all of the straight white men who preceded her. Breaking free from the ghosts of vice presidents past and leading as she truly is is the strategy for success. 

If Harris can turn around her polls, and she must, she not only helps the Biden ticket and her own political future but paves the way for the generation of women leaders who will follow her. For their sake let’s hope she succeeds.

Lauren Leader is co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a nonprofit women’s civic education and leadership organization. She tweets @laurenleaderAIT.

 It’s one of the oldest, strongest and most consistent poll findings on record.   

Americans are happy to cut government spending in general, but adamantly oppose cuts in most all specific areas.    

 A few months ago, the Associated Press (AP) and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) examined spending issues and found 60 percent of Americans saying the U.S. government was spending “too much.”   

 Presumably, that majority wants to pare federal outlays.  

 But which spending?  

 Just 29 percent say we are spending too much on the military. Little support for reductions there.   

Social Security and Medicare? Just 7 percent and 10 percent, respectively, believe too much is being spent on those programs.  

 “OK,” you say, “we’re hitting third rails.” True perhaps, but those three third rails, plus interest on the debt, account for over half of federal expenditures.    

 “What about some of President Biden’s favorites,” Republicans might argue. “Should be easy pickings there.”  

 But only 11 percent want reductions in infrastructure spending. Just 25 percent see too much spending on the environment and 20 percent on scientific research. Even fewer, 16 percent, say the same about assistance with child care.  

 “Surely,” GOPers say, “we can demagogue welfare.” But only 18 percent would curtail “aid to the poor” in the AP/NORC survey. In YouGov polling earlier this year, just 15 percent favored cutting Medicaid, 17 percent would cut SNAP, only 16 percent supported cuts to Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the same small number favored cutting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.   

 So, no, voters don’t want to scale down those safety net programs.   

Only 12 percent would countenance cuts to education spending and, GOP efforts to demonize law enforcement notwithstanding, just 23 percent favor reductions there.    

My apologies for the long recitation of numbers, but I hope the point is clear. While voters want to cut government spending generally, large majorities oppose cuts in almost every specific category.   

 Yet, catering to the demands of the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy will force every House Republican to vote for massive spending cuts in each and every one of these programs, alienating the vast majority of Americans.  

 Republican appropriators already proposed cutting education by over $22 billion, which would mean firing 220,000 teachers across the country, increasing class sizes. In addition, they’re cutting over a billion dollars from STEM education.   

 To say voters will be angry about such reductions puts it mildly.  

 Unlike Democrats, Republicans are actually defunding the police, eliminating $1 billion from the FBI, which means fewer agents and federal prosecutors, which means fewer criminals brought to justice.   

 The GOP is backing a nearly 40 percent, $4 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, which translates into fewer resources to clean up the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, as well as less assistance for clean drinking water across the country.   

 Republicans are cutting cancer research, mental health support and preschool.    

GOP House members will end up voting for these or similar cuts because McCarthy first surrendered to the Freedom Caucus on the debt limit negotiations and then gave them license to cut even more, after the deal was complete.   

 But Republicans are unlikely to stop with votes to slash crowd-pleasing spending. At the insistence of the far right, the GOP will likely shut down the government to force these unpopular cuts.   

 That’s what happened in 1996, and Democrats won races as a result.   

 That year we campaigned against the GOP shutdown and for preventing Republican cuts to Medicare, education and the environment. The result: 18 Republicans lost their seats to Democratic challengers, while only three Democrats were defeated.   

Far fewer would flip the House in 2024.  

 Circumstances and context have changed, but Republicans seem intent on following the far right down the same path toward defeat in response to their effort to slash popular spending.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.       

Donald Trump has one path to winning the 2024 presidential election — that is, of course, if he wins the GOP nomination and avoids a federal criminal conviction. It’s the same path that helped him win in 2016. Ironically, he has virtually no control over that path, because it depends on someone else — a viable third-party candidate.

Neither Trump nor President Joe Biden is popular with voters. A recent Morning Consult poll found that in a Biden-Trump rematch, 43 percent of registered voters say they would support Biden, while 42 percent would support Trump. Importantly, 10 percent said they would support someone else and 5 percent didn’t know.

Of course, it’s not the popular vote that wins presidential elections. It’s the Electoral College.

Trump won in 2016 primarily because he added three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) to the Republican column that had voted Democratic in presidential elections for decades. But rather than saying Trump “won” those three states, it’s probably more accurate to say third-party candidates cost Clinton those states.

Trump won Pennsylvania by 47,292 votes, Michigan by 10,704 votes, and Wisconsin by 22,748 — the slimmest of margins. He did not reach 50 percent in any of them. This is because both the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, and the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, attracted many more votes than third (or fourth) parties usually do.

Johnson garnered 3.3% of the vote nationwide. He received 172,136 votes (3.6%) in Michigan, 146,715 votes (2.4%) in Pennsylvania, and 106,674 votes in Wisconsin (3.6%). While Johnson may have siphoned off some anti-Trump Republicans, his more liberal-leaning positions on social issues may have attracted a number of Democratic-leaning voters.

Moreover, though Stein’s vote tally was low, she received more votes than Trump’s margin of victory in the three states: 51,463 for Stein in Michigan vs. Trump’s margin of 10,704; 31,072 for Stein in Wisconsin vs. Trump’s 22,748, and 49,941 for Stein in Pennsylvania vs. Trump’s 47,292.

Without credible third-party candidates in 2016, Clinton likely would have won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and thus the presidency.

The 2020 presidential contest was different. Third-party candidates played a smaller role. Only 1.8 percent voted for someone other than Trump or Biden. That fact —plus Trump’s penchant for turning off independents, suburban women, and many Republicans — cost him the election.

The 2024 campaign is gearing up and it’s possible, even probable, that the country could see a Biden-Trump rematch — something most voters dread.

There are lots of GOP challengers for the presidential nomination, but so far they haven’t gained much traction. Trump remains by far the preferred candidate among Republicans, though not the public.

Trump’s support is an inch wide and a mile deep. His supporters are dedicated, but there aren’t that many of them. By contrast, Biden’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Millions of Americans voted for him because he wasn’t Trump. And many of them could be persuaded to vote for someone else, such as a reasonable third-party candidate, who also isn’t Trump.

How likely is it a third-party candidate will enter the race?

A bipartisan group called “No Labels” is meeting this week to consider the current situation and discuss whether to support a third-party challenge. The group includes some prominent political figures and financial backers.

Democrats are doing their best to dissuade the group from backing a third-party challenge, claiming it would likely siphon votes from the Democratic candidate and give Trump the win — just like 2016.

But while the No Labels crowd doesn’t like Trump, they are also concerned about Biden’s age and dramatic shift to the left. They would rather see a reasonable, and more politically moderate, third option.

In addition, leftist philosophy professor Cornel West is considering running as the Green Party candidate for president. If that occurs, he would only attract far-left voters who might otherwise vote for Biden. 

Without a viable third-party candidate, most voters would likely hold their nose and vote for Biden again.

So, we may be back to a Biden-Trump rematch, with one or more third-party candidates on the ballot. It’s hard to know how voters would respond to that development, considering how little enthusiasm there is for such a rematch. But if Trump has a chance of winning, the emergence of a viable third-party candidate is likely his only path to victory.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.

The first was in Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won two local elections. The Soufan Center, an independent group that monitors global security challenges, reported that “Although both posts may not hold significant national political weight — one being a district administrator seat comparable to the mayorship of a mid-sized town, the other a mayoral post in a small town — the victories have resonated throughout the country and are indicative of the party’s resurgent strength in Germany.”

AfD has consistently stoked nationalist sentiments, perpetuated xenophobia and flirted with the most dangerous fringes of Nazi-era extremist ideology. It has embraced an alarming revisionist attitude toward Germany’s dark past. The party is reportedly under surveillance by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Its youth wing, Young Alternative, has been classified as an extremist group. In December, a former AfD lawmaker and judge was arrested as part of an alleged plot to overthrow the German government.

Why do two seemingly inconsequential local elections of a fringe element in Germany matter? Soufan notes recent polls projecting that if German elections were held today, AfD would claim 20 percent of the vote, equal to that of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party. Last week, the Economist reported that nationally the AfD is six points behind the right-of-center Christian Democrats, but first in the former East Germany.

When neo-Nazi ideology seems on the rise and western liberalism wanes in Germany, the whole world should pay attention.

The second event, almost unnoticed, occurred closer to home. On July 2, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson addressed the backlash faced by a chapter of the conservative parents’ group Moms for Liberty that quoted Adolf Hitler in a pamphlet. They apologized for the quote, but instead of supporting the apology, Robinson condemned the condemnation.

His desperation for the adoration of the far right led him to suggest, clumsily, that the use of a quote by Hitler in a promotional pamphlet was no different than reading Hitler’s quotes in a history book. At best, his statement was bungling, offensive and pandered to the worst impulses of the far right. At worst, it was a continued pattern in the far right’s weird new tactic of normalizing elements of Hitler’s fanaticism, including Candace Owens’s 2019 statement that “If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well — OK, fine.” (Note to elected officials and commentators: it’s never a good idea to leave people confused as to which side of the Hitler debate you’re on. Call me overcautious, but talking points that border on “as Hitler once said” are going to be, well, poorly received by normal people.)

Worse than Robinson’s intellectually bereft argument was the sound of crickets from the right in response. When someone on the left whispers an insensitive or offensive comment, the right demands instant, thunderous repudiation by Democrats. But a GOP state elected official’s disturbing comments defending the use of Hitler quotes in a Mom’s for Liberty pamphlet? Little to no moral outrage from the GOP. A roll of the eyes, a shrug of the shoulders, a willful ignorance, as in “ignore.” (By the way, this isn’t Robinson’s first foray into borderline anti-Semitic invective. The newsletter Jewish Insider reports that Robinson has a history of invoking antisemitic stereotypes and flirting with Holocaust denialism.)

In contrast, when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said last weekend that Israel is a racist country, the House Democratic leadership issued a quick rebuke. Several influential Democrats — including Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Greg Landsman, Jared Moskowitz, Brad Schneider, Kathy Manning and Dean Phillips — circulated a statement criticizing Jayapal’s comments.

The irony of course is the group at the center of the Hitler controversy: Moms for Liberty. Nothing says liberty more than a group that advocates government telling you what you can and can’t read, the banning of certain books, the removal of certain flags, the prohibiting of certain words in certain classrooms. And the moms? Throwbacks to “Mommie Dearest,” the chilling 1981 biopic of Joan Crawford’s abusive treatment of her daughter. Only instead of demanding “no more wire hangers” in a closet, these moms demand no more “I Am Billy Jean King” in a middle school library.

We’re in a new world, where neo-Nazis win local elections in Germany, and a statewide elected official has come not to condemn Hitler but to praise those who quote him. I’m not Chicken Little squawking that the sky is falling, but there were ominous clouds in July, sneaking right past us.

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now director of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael. 

Which is exactly like the 2024 Republican presidential primary. There are 10 candidates so far in their own demolition party, each apparently bent on a mission to destroy themselves, but only after destroying the Republican Party in the process.  

In their zeal to capture the nomination by appealing to the most extreme elements of their base, Republicans are upending much of what the traditional Republican Party once stood for.  

Take last weekend’s cattle call in Iowa. Sponsored by the evangelical organization Family Leader as an opportunity for Republican candidates to show off their conservative credentials, host Tucker Carlson instead turned the forum into a test on Ukraine — pressuring each candidate in turn to stand up against U.S. support for Ukraine.  

It's hard enough to understand why evangelicals would take sides with Russia against the United States, NATO and Ukraine, but is this really what the Republican Party wants to run on in 2024? If so, when did the party of Ronald Reagan become the party of Vladimir Putin?  

Of course, that’s not the only example of Republicans turning on the Pentagon. For months, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has maintained a one-man blockade against military promotions — more than 250 so far — unless the Pentagon drops its policy of providing time off and travel costs to servicewomen, no matter where they are stationed, to seek an abortion.  

The demand was added by Republicans to the House version of this year’s proposed Pentagon budget. Because, in their view, overturning Roe v. Wade did not go far enough.  

In an open letter, seven former Defense secretaries warned that Tuberville’s antics threaten national security and undermine our military readiness. But Republicans have refused to budge. When did the traditional pro-Armed Forces Republican Party become the anti-Pentagon Republican Party?  

It’s not just the military that’s targeted by many Republicans. On several fronts, they’ve gone after law enforcement in general. They hail those who stormed the Capitol and assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 as patriots. If reelected, the Republican frontrunner has suggested he’d issue many of them presidential pardons. Twenty-one House Republicans voted against awarding police officers who defended them on Jan. 6 the Congressional Gold Medal.  

And last week, Washington witnessed an eye-popping spectacle as the Republican-controlled House held a special Judicial Committee aimed at FBI Director Christopher Wray — a lifelong Republican, appointed by Donald Trump — whom Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has accused of “weaponizing” the FBI against Trump and other GOP leaders.  

One by one, Republicans attacked Wray, with some of them supporting legislation to defund the FBI by $1 billion. It’s enough to make J. Edgar Hoover roll over in his grave. When did the law and order party of Richard Nixon become the anti-law enforcement party?  

Admittedly, it’s early in the 2024 sweepstakes. But based on the issues they’ve focused on so far, the Republican Party seems to be telling American voters: We’re the party who doesn’t think overturning Roe v. Wade went far enough. We’re the party that supports Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We’re the party that’s injecting culture war politics into the military. And we’re the party willing to attack law enforcement officers for doing their job.  

Welcome to the 2024 GOP demolition derby.  

Press hosts “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”    

But what if Trump loses in Iowa?   

That is not beyond the realm of plausibility.   

He lost Iowa in 2016 to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (although he complained that the election was stolen) and there is ample evidence that he could lose there again. 

He has improbably picked a fight with Kim Reynolds, The Hawkeye State’s extremely popular governor who hasn’t endorsed in the race yet and was recently seen sharing a stage with Casey DeSantis, the wife of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Trump also refused to participate in a forum hosted by the Family Leadership Summit. Tucker Carlson did the honors, interviewing the participants and providing a nice platform for Gov. DeSantis, who did a good job of threading the needle between appealing to the hard, isolationist right and not upsetting his big donors. 

Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa conservative, was the brains behind the summit, and he is decidedly not on team Trump. He endorsed former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in 2012 and Cruz in 2016, so he has a pretty good track record of picking winners in his home state. 

Radio host Steve Deace is another conservative who would rather see DeSantis than Trump be the Republican standard bearer in 2024. Deace wrote the best-selling book “The Faucian Bargain” about the role of Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during the COVID-19 shutdowns and in the federal jab requirements. Deace believes DeSantis handled the pandemic much more professionally than Trump. Deace supported Trump for the bulk of his presidency, but also supported Cruz over the former president in 2016. 

The Iowa caucuses typically go to the candidate who has the best ground game and who has captured the hearts and minds of hard-core conservatives. That’s why candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and televangelist Pat Robertson can win, while more establishment types like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) typically don’t. (Although Romney was initially declared the winner in 2012, Santorum was officially declared the winner after a recount.)  

The rap on Iowa is that as Iowa goes, so goes Iowa. It can knock candidates out of the race, but it rarely crowns the winner, unless it is an incumbent who has no serious opposition.   

But this year, Iowa could play a more significant role if Trump falls and DeSantis prevails.    

Here are a couple reasons. 

First, politics is a game of expectations. In 2016, nobody really expected Trump to win the nomination. By almost beating Cruz, Trump showed the world that his campaign was for real and that he was a force to be reckoned with. In 2024, if Trump doesn’t win, it will be a massive upset. And if DeSantis does beat him, the pundits and donors will see that he has a message that resonates with conservatives. He will no longer be dull Ron but instead the guy who beat the Donald. 

Second, if DeSantis wins, that could inspire the rest to step aside and let him be the sole Trump alternative. The Republican field doesn’t need several candidates to run against 45. It needs one. In 2016, Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) all thought they had enough juice to beat Trump, but clearly they didn’t. The former president polls around 40 to 45 percent of the Republican field, about the same amount that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) got among Democrats against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. My guess is that if DeSantis is able to win Iowa, he will soon get Trump all to himself.   

Third, a DeSantis victory in Iowa will be a victory for conservative policy, and especially a victory over Trump’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic. The coronavirus shutdowns, the mask mandates, the school closures, the vaccine regime, all of which started under Trump, was the starkest abuse of our collective constitutional rights in our nation’s history.  

Of the current candidates in the field, only DeSantis can run against the COVID regime, and I believe that this is where Trump is most vulnerable. A victory in Iowa would allow that campaign to move forward and I think will catch fire in the rest of the country.  

 Is a DeSantis victory in Iowa plausible? Yes. If he does win, will it make a difference? I think it will. 

Feehery, a partner at EFB Advocacy, blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.). 

The Republican Party is ramping up its focus on far-right culture war fights, setting the stage for these hot-button social issues to be the centerpiece of their platform in 2024, which will invariably cost them winnable races next year. 

In addition to lacking popular support, the Republican Party’s extreme moral crusades come at the expense of focusing on the core issues Americans care most about, and undermine the GOP’s ability to draw a legitimate and compelling contrast with Democratic policies at a time when Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and far-right House Republicans are now using the annual U.S. military budget as an opportunity to spar with Democrats over abortion and other social issues, jeopardizing the critical bill’s passage and bucking the trend of bipartisan backing for the Pentagon’s budget. Under the guise of combatting “wokeness” in the military, the House GOP caucus voted on Thursday to end abortion services for military members and ban transgender health care.  

The House GOP’s latest effort comes on the heels of a controversial video circulated by the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) The spot touts DeSantis’s record opposing LGBTQ rights as governor and attacks frontrunner Donald Trump for allegedly supporting gay rights in the past. In an effort to outflank Trump on the right, DeSantis has advanced an extremely conservative agenda in Florida this year, which included signing a six-week abortion ban and his “Don’t Say Gay” school policies. 

We cannot separate DeSantis’s rhetoric from House Republicans stalling essential government business to air their cultural grievances. Both represent an effort to appeal to the most radical Republican primary voters who — by way of a plurality-rules electoral system — wield outsized influence over their party, yet represent just a small fraction of the national electorate. 

To be sure, any effort by Republicans to restrict abortion is a political loser nationally if polling and recent election history are any indication. Polls consistently find around 70 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and in last year’s midterms, Republican candidates’ extreme anti-abortion rights positions bolstered their Democratic opponents. 

The majority of the country also supports rights for same-sex couples, putting Republicans like DeSantis well outside of the mainstream. There are some nuances when it comes to transgender rights, as there is a sense among many voters that the left has moved too far on this issue, specifically in its support for teaching gender ideology in grade school and allowing transgender women to compete against biological women in sports.  

Some political operatives see the transgender issue as a way for Republicans to reach independent voters who are uncomfortable with the left’s prescriptions for new gender norms. But given that the most extreme Republican voices are dominating the dialogue, the commonsense center-right argument surrounding these issues is largely absent from the conversation. As such, it is more likely that Americans will perceive Republicans’ preoccupation with LGBTQ matters as yet another effort by the party to take away individual freedoms — as with abortion rights — and as an unwelcome distraction from addressing the “kitchen table” issues they want their leaders to address, such as the cost of living. 

By putting quality-of-life concerns on the back burner to their culture wars, Republicans are undermining their inherent advantage over President Biden, a profoundly vulnerable incumbent whose approval rating generally hovers at or below 40 percent in public polls, largely as a result of Americans’ dissatisfaction with his handling of issues that impact their daily lives. 

In 2021, now-Virginia Governor, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, defeated a well-known Democrat in a state that Biden won by 10 points just one year prior by running on a center-right platform focused on the economy, public safety, education and personal freedoms. Republicans would be wise to ditch their far-right culture war crusade and emulate Youngkin’s strategy at the national level — as polling finds that Americans broadly favor strengthening parental rights in education, are dissatisfied with the nation’s crime policies and favor limiting government spending. 

That being said, if recent events are any indication, the Republican Party is more likely to continue waging its electorally costly culture war, moving further and further out of the mainstream of American politics with each battle. 

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an advisor to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is: “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.” 

Here's just one small example, based on a publicly measurable statistic: Gallup released new data this week showing nearly 70 percent of Americans believe “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.” This marks an increase from the 62 percent who had said the same in 2021.

“Likewise,” Gallup noted, “fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26 percent, down from 34 percent.”

But following the midterm elections, NBC News disinformation reporter Ben Collins, in spite of data available even then, suggested that Republicans underperformed because they sided with the popular position opposing trans-integrated sports. Or, as he put it, in his very biased formulation, "being cruel to children for no reason whatsoever."

So we have wild speculation, contrary to available evidence, helping to create a narrative unmoored from reality. I'm pretty sure there's a word for this sort of thing. 

There’s much more where this comes from. Collins tends to work hand-in-hand with another NBC News disinformation reporter named Brandy Zadrozny. Together, they have produced an impressive body of misinformation and disinformation in their capacity as the internet’s hall monitors.

Elsewhere, MSNBC legal analyst and self-described disinformation expert Barb McQuade has authored a book titled, “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” McQuade, by the way, is one of the many Trump-era cable news "experts" who spent years hyping stories that went nowhere, most of which were based on likely falsehoods, and making major predictions that never came true.

She promised, for example, that the so-called Steele Dossier — a deeply flawed, error-riddled work of Democratic opposition research alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin to steal the 2016 campaign — would prove "correct as facts emerge over time.”

The Steele Dossier was hopelessly sloppy and possibly itself the product of a Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign.

“Hey, Mueller,” McQuade said elsewhere, referring to the former FBI director then investigating the matter as special counsel. “Look over here. [Rachel Maddow] has found the collusion. Follow the sanctions. If this whole cable news thing doesn’t work out for you, Rachel, you have a real future in the FBI.”

Mueller's investigation, which included 40 agents, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants and 500 witness interviews, could not “establish that the members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Anyway, we will know more about how “disinformation is sabotaging America” when McQuade’s book is published, since it will surely represent a solid example.

Another genre of "disinformation" reporting is the ironically incorrect disinformation “fact-check.” Here, the bungling doesn’t always come from the self-appointed saviors of truth on the internet. Sometimes, it comes in the middle of an innocuous news report.

In its coverage of U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty’s injunction barring federal officials from coordinating with social media companies to censor online speech, the New York Times spread disinformation in a rather crude attempt to discredit the judge. The story’s eighth paragraph stated that Doughty "has previously expressed little skepticism about debunked claims from vaccine skeptics,” and that in “one previous case, Judge Doughty accepted as fact the claim that 'COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of the disease.'"

As I write, it is mid-2023. Surely, someone at the New York Times is aware by now that the COVID-19 vaccines do not, in fact, prevent transmission of the disease. Isn't the paper of record spreading disinformation or misinformation by suggesting otherwise?

The disinformation, it turns out, really is coming from inside the house.

Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.

Lindsay Lewis, opinion contributor

You can’t easily reduce America’s flagging faith in government to any single factor. But if there’s any one thing that surely contributes to the electorate’s frustration with Washington, it’s the seemingly endless litany of examples demonstrating how government gets in its own way. 

That’s about to happen, once again, with the forthcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight of the nation’s airline industry. Unless those interested in the greater good prevail, a handful of self-serving companies may undermine the public interest. And if that happens, those who regularly trumpet the notion that government is always the problem — those who, as President Trump likes to argue, believe the public is constantly getting a “bad deal” — will have yet another sorry episode to burnish their indictment.

In this case, the underlying circumstances provide important context. Several of the nation’s busiest metropolitan hubs — New York and Washington, D.C. among them — are so inundated with airline traffic that no single airport can meet the demand. As a result, both cities are served by several facilities, some of which are more congested than others. In New York, LaGuardia is much closer to Manhattan and more convenient for many than JFK. In Washington, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, located minutes from the District of Columbia but constrained by its geography and proximity to federal buildings, is more congested than Dulles International, which sits several dozen miles away. 

To modulate the flow of air traffic, Congress, under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) law now up for reauthorization, gave the FAA the power to impose a slot system to limit the number of flights in and out of the more congested airports.

Because the nation’s airline system is just that — a system — a small tweak in one part can have ripple effects throughout. Recognizing that Washington’s more congested National Airport was already oversubscribed — it has the third-worst cancellation rate among the nation’s 30 busiest airports — those who coordinate the national capital region’s transportation networks have long worked to make it easier and more convenient to fly out of Dulles. 

Just six months ago, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority opened a new Silver Line extension to Dulles, giving residents of the District and nearby neighborhoods direct access to the airport via the Metro subway system. The project took years to plan and build, cost $6.8 billion, and covered 11.4 miles. Anticipating the Silver Line’s opening, airlines began to invest in the facilities that would allow them to begin adding service from Dulles, at considerable cost.

These investments were made with the understanding that National Airport, increasingly prone to overuse and delays, would continue to be subjected to a slotted cap — that, however much demand there might be for additional flights to additional destinations from the facility closest to D.C., the government would maintain the limit. If, on the other hand, the government had intimated that it might lift the cap at National, there might not have been nearly so much of the impetus to spend taxpayer dollars on the new Metro extension. Moreover, the airlines looking to add new flights to new destinations from the nation’s capital might not have invested in expanding their footprints at Dulles, thinking it wiser to invest in National.

It appeared, for years, that the federal government would hold fast. But now, at the last minute, some airlines have begun to push Congress to permit more flights out of National. The airlines that might win those additional slots stand to benefit from the shift, of course. But the public would lose. One study suggests that adding 20 roundtrips would worsen delays by nearly 25 percent and that 25 additional roundtrips would exacerbate the problem by more than 33 percent. Less obvious, but perhaps more invidious, the sudden shift would undermine the investments both the public and private parties have made in expanding and enhancing Dulles.

Over the next several months, a battle is poised to play out between those intent on staying the course for the good of the flying public, and those who would whistle past the downside of making National even more congested. If the fight is sufficiently contentious, the FAA reauthorization could be delayed, denying desperately needed funds for hiring additional air traffic controllers and making airport improvements at facilities across the country. 

In short, unnecessary delays could ensure another year of record flight delays and cancellations in communities well beyond Washington. Washington need not give the public any additional reason to believe that the government is falling short. And, without a doubt, America’s weary travelers deserve better.

Lindsay Lewis is executive director of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Donald Trump just reminded Republican voters — even many who voted for him twice before — why they might want someone else to top the party’s ticket in 2024. Moreover, he may have singlehandedly breathed new life into Ron DeSantis’s struggling campaign.

The former president has picked a fight with Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s popular GOP governor, apparently because she dared get too cozy with DeSantis, Trump’s nearest rival for the 2024 nomination. Reynolds has appeared at several DeSantis events in her state and recently teamed up with his wife in rolling out Mamas for DeSantis, a grassroots effort to bolster the Florida governor’s standing with women.

Reynolds has said she will remain neutral in the Iowa GOP race; she has offered to attend events hosted by front-runner Donald Trump and has appeared with candidate Nikki Haley. Apparently, this is not good enough for Trump, however, who takes credit for her becoming governor because he appointed her predecessor ambassador to China, opening the seat, and also campaigned for her.

This is classic Trumpian behavior — self-centered and imprudent. The Iowa caucuses will not determine who wins the nomination (in 2016 Trump came in second, behind Ted Cruz), but lashing out at the GOP leader in the state, who won reelection by 20 points last year and enjoys high approval ratings, seems foolish.

And, typical. During his four years in office and in the time since, the former president has alienated scores of former allies. While in the Oval Office he churned through staff at historic rates, with one blowup after another sending talented colleagues packing.

Trump’s most ardent followers excuse him for his disgraceful behavior on Jan. 6, because many are convinced that he actually won the 2020 election, and they ignore his mounting legal problems as politically motivated.

But they cannot escape this: Trump is disliked by a majority of Americans and is a lightning rod for the left; his “unfavorables,” according to 538 averages, are worse than those of Kamala Harris. His presence on a ballot or connection with a candidate energizes Democrat turnout. That makes it very unlikely he could win a national election.

Trump, along with a fervent pro-choice movement, helped torpedo what should have been a barn-burner midterm win for the GOP last year. He backed candidates largely on their obeisance to his claims of election fraud and then turned on them when they lost. It was, as ever, all about him.

Today, Republicans are desperate to boot Joe Biden (or whomever Democrats may pick to replace him) from the White House. They want Trump’s policies without the drama. They want, above all else, someone who can win — and DeSantis is the obvious choice. He has a stellar resume: middle-class roots, Navy service, Yale undergrad, Harvard Law, a stint in Congress. And he has a beautiful, engaging and whip-smart wife and a photogenic family.

Moreover, DeSantis’s term as Florida’s governor has been wildly successful; his economic achievements and performance during COVID should easily translate into a convincing campaign pitch.  

It has not.

Polling shows the governor peaked in late January, when Trump had a 13-point lead with 47 percent of the would-be voters and the Florida governor trailed with 34 percent. It was the closest he has come; today Trump has an even more commanding lead, of 39 points.

How did that happen?

First, DeSantis has been targeted by both Democrats and Donald Trump for months. Like many Republicans, Democrats saw him as the most likely successor to Trump, but with less baggage. So, they went on attack.

As did Trump. DeSantis allowed the former president to get the jump on negative advertising, allowing his rival to define him just as he was becoming known to voters. In March, Trump’s PAC began running devastating ads accusing DeSantis of having voted to cut Social Security and Medicare when he was in Congress and ominously asking, “Think you know Ron DeSantis?”  

DeSantis answered by running ads in early primary states that reminded voters of Trump’s legal problems, telling The Donald he should “Fight Democrats, not Republicans”.

This was a misjudgment. The numerous lawsuits against Donald Trump are viewed by many Republicans (and independents) as politically motivated. Democrats have accused Trump of so many misdeeds since he was first elected that it is hard to keep the charges straight. But Republicans are sure that Russiagate was a complete hoax; they’re pretty sure that Alvin Bragg’s charges of falsifying business records is a stretch; and that his conviction on sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll more than 20 years earlier would likely not have happened if the case had been heard anywhere but New York.

DeSantis also goofed by announcing his campaign via an online conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, which experienced technical glitches, adding to Trump’s narrative that the governor was not “ready” to be president. Instead of the public focusing on DeSantis’ strong argument for his candidacy, the next-day conversation was all about the underwhelming launch.

In recent months, DeSantis has spent too much time on “woke” issues like gender and race, as opposed to highlighting the economic policies that have helped Florida attract so many new residents and that he would take national as president.

And, he has faced criticism for not being a great retail politician — he’s not a natural backslapper.

DeSantis needs a strong performance in Iowa and New Hampshire to undermine Trump’s seemingly invincible lead. His polling in the Buckeye State is better than it is nationally; he trails Trump by 23 points. In New Hampshire, it’s 28 points.   

The contest is not over. The Reynolds dispute could sway Iowans, giving Florida’s governor a boost, the debates could have an impact, and DeSantis’ campaign may become more sophisticated.

Most important: voters may decide they want to pick a winner. Putting nostalgia aside, they may conclude that is not Donald Trump.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.

The day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won reelection by a shocking 19-point margin, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post screamed a one-word front page headline: “DeFuture.”

The celebratory photo showed a Kennedy-esque, central-casting-worthy family. Casey DeSantis, holding hands with her two small children, looked like a future first lady in her stunning gold designer gown on her way to the inaugural ball. The victorious governor held their third child with one arm, waving to the crowd with the other.

At that moment on Nov. 8, 2022, Ron and Casey DeSantis’s White House dreams merged with positive political reality.

But this reelection blowout was merely a preview for the ambitious couple, who married at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Their ultimate happy-ending Disney movie seemed only two years away, with the soundtrack “Hail to the Chief.”

Of course, all Disney movies have a villain aiming to destroy and derail the main characters' goals and dreams. You know his name, as he is currently “DeFeating” “DeFuture” with a 32-point lead among Republican primary voters. 

Looking back at that eight-month-old New York Post front page, not only have the powerful Murdochs reportedly soured on DeSantis, but seemingly then-unimaginable questions are being raised. Is the DeSantis presidential campaign already in a death spiral? Will the Florida governor seek an early exit to save his national political future? Will he rebrand for 2028 — presumably a non-Trump-dominated political cycle? Or could DeSantis yet star as the “comeback kid” of 2024? If not, will his 2024 failure blossom into 2028 hope?

Before discussing possible answers and scenarios, consider recent Florida history, where (full disclosure) I voted for Gov. DeSantis in 2022. After his victorious reelection, I heard legions of Trump-supporting Florida Republican voters, activists, party leaders and insiders insist that DeSantis “should wait until 2028.”

Singing the same song, they warned how Trump, with his rock-solid, loyal MAGA base, would “destroy” Florida's rising political star. They also feared that the Republican Party — which is to say Donald Trump — “would eat their young,” which is to say DeSantis.

Should DeSantis have listened to the folks who supported his reelection but wanted him to stay on the sidelines in 2024? In retrospect, yes. For MAGA land, which will dominate the Republican primaries in 2024, everything Trump “Truths” out becomes gospel. On July 8, the former president proclaimed: “Ron DeSanctimonious is desperately trying to get out of the Presidential race, while at the same time saving face for 2028, where he has been greatly damaged.” Trump ended his “Truth” rant with the further dig, “Ron is just wasting time!”

That “truth” could be the rare case when Trump offered wise political advice to his closest rival, beneficial to both. There is no evidence that DeSantis plans to withdraw from the primary race he officially entered on May 24. However, his campaign’s early performance seems destined for a political science case study, or perhaps even a future Searchlight Pictures comedy, “How to Lose a Presidential Primary in Two Months.”

The RCP poll average showed DeSantis at peak popularity in late February. At that point, he trailed Trump by a manageable 12.8-point margin. Thus, DeSantis was always the underdog in a fight against a powerful, vengeful former president, who in the time since has only gained support among his devoted followers as a result of the two indictments brought against him.

Trump repeatedly bragged that he “made” DeSantis’s career. He warned the governor against entering the 2024 race and boasted about destroying DeSantis for the “disloyalty” of daring to become his primary rival. Trump has since spent ample time, perhaps even excessive time, savaging his “DeSanctimonious” target — no surprise to Floridians who had urged he wait until 2028. At this point, Trump is walloping Florida’s governor by 20 percentage points in Florida itself. Whence the talk of a death spiral.

To DeSantis’s credit, he is the only primary candidate who consistently polls in second place and earns double digits. Both Trump and DeSantis are statistically tied with President Biden in general election match-ups.

Thus, DeSantis has a dilemma; although he is flush with millions in campaign cash, major donors are nervous. The governor has been losing traction ever since Feb. 24, falling from 30 to 20 percent support among national GOP primary voters. DeSantis has never lost an election, but how will he continue that streak?

If, by the end of 2023, he fails to compete with Trump because he is not Trump, DeSantis should drop out of the primary race and save himself the embarrassment of losing in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He trails Trump in each of those early states by at least 20 points. This will let him save his future and face for 2028.

But DeSantis will require a major rebranding if he underperforms badly against this cycle's high expectations as Trump-slayer, national rising star, Republican Party future and White House winner. The “Top Gov” also committed numerous self-inflicted wounds and rookie mistakes, such as making the culture war his only war and trying to turn America into the “free state of Florida.” He hid from the mainstream media and has refused to engage in full frontal attacks against Trump.

Until January 2027, DeSantis has a day job governing the third most populous state. This will provide him with a national platform until it is time to run for president again. In the meantime, for the 2026 midterm election, DeSantis could serve as a star fundraiser, sought-after party leader, and national speaker, earning IOUs for 2028 when he turns 50 — a prime presidential age.

Suppose DeSantis were to drop out before 2024 voting began and learn from his primary run. He might fulfill his presidential dreams while repositioning himself as more human, less fighting machine — a compassionate leader, a “new DeSantis” who aims to unify Americans and not divide them.

After Richard Nixon lost the1960 presidential election, a “new Nixon” emerged, “tanned, rested, and ready” to win in 1968. And what about Joe Biden, who flopped in the 1988 and 2008 primaries before winning the 2020 Democratic nomination?

History shows that winning the White House is a super marathon for some presidential aspirants. They just need to keep their eyes on “DeFuture.”

Myra Adams writes about politics and religion. She served on the creative team of two GOP presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008. Follow her on Twitter @MyraKAdams

One day later Nixon resigned. And one day after that he left office. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering if there’s anyone like Barry Goldwater — in either party — who would tell Joe Biden or Donald Trump that for the sake of the country they should not run again. 

In Biden’s case, it’s about what at least looks like his declining mental abilities. A few examples: He has said Russia is at war with Iraq. He told environmentalists that “We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.” In 2022, during his State of the Union address, he said that, “Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.” At another event, he asked where Rep. Jackie Walorski was. It’s not only that she was dead — but Biden himself had commemorated her death just weeks earlier. And then, of course, there was his closing statement after a speech at the University of Hartford in Connecticut when he said — for no known reason — “God save the Queen, man.”

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 62 percent of Americans believe that Biden’s mental fitness is a problem that would affect his ability to be president. At 80, he’s already the oldest U.S. president. He’d be 82 on Election Day and 86 at the end of a second four-year term. Who thinks he’ll get sharper as he gets older?

As for Donald Trump: He was impeached twice while in office and indicted twice since he left office — and there’s a good chance he’ll be indicted again, maybe more than once. He’s chronically dishonest and is responsible for one GOP loss after another. And some polls tell us that as weak as Joe Biden is, his best shot at winning in 2024 is if he runs against Donald Trump.

Who in the Republican Party has the gravitas to go to Mar-a-Lago and tell the former president that most Americans don’t want him to run again, that he has lost the confidence of independent voters that any candidate would need to win and, most of all, that he lacks the character to be president of the United States? Who could look him in the eye and say, for everybody’s well-being, he should drop out?

The few Republicans with the guts to tell Donald Trump he’s not fit for office — former Gov. Chris Christie, former Rep. Liz Cheney and Sen. Mitt Romney immediately come to mind — couldn’t get past the front gate at Mar-a-Lago.

A June Economist/YouGov poll found that only 33 percent of voters want Trump to run again and only 26 percent want Biden to run. An NBC poll from April found 70 percent of Americans believe Biden “should not run for president” and 60 percent don’t want Trump to run. And yet there’s not the slightest indication that either man cares what the American people are saying — such is their ego and some might say their selfishness. 

Not only don’t we have an elder statesman like Barry Goldwater around who has the courage to tell hard truths to the president of the United States — we don’t even have a president, or a man who wants to be president again, who would do what Richard Nixon did: Step aside for his own good, for the good of his party and, most of all, for the good of the country.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

The House Elections Committee in Lansing recently approved House Bill 156, legislation which would enroll Michigan in the so-called “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” which could soon be taken up on the House Floor. 

It may sound innocent, but National Popular Vote is a left-wing scheme to take over states’ elections and fundamentally transform our constitutional system for electing presidents. If implemented, it would surrender Michigan’s considerable influence in this process to large population centers of the East and West coasts of the country.

In other words, Michiganders would be relegated from decisive swing state voters to mere bystanders in presidential elections. 

No longer would Michigan’s fifteen electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins support from a majority of the state’s voters. Rather, they would be assigned to whichever candidate gets the most total votes across all the nation's various state election systems. 

So the loser of presidential elections in Michigan would often receive all of Michigan’s electoral votes, with the outcome decided instead by the voters in California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Illinois. 

New York has 19 million residents, California 39 million, Texas 32 million, Florida 22 million. Michigan has a population of only about 10 million — not much more than metropolitan Chicago, which one can travel through by car in less than an hour.

This doesn’t just dilute the vote of Michiganders — it obliterates it. The Founding Fathers were careful to devise a system where smaller states and less urban populations had a fair say in electing the president.

Incidentally, the Electoral College is also fair to the larger states. Their influence in choosing presidents is preserved even when they have relatively low rates of voter turnout, as California, New York and Texas all do. 

But Michigan especially has a lot to lose. Under the current system, Michigan has a magnetic effect on candidates because it has continually swung back and forth between the parties. It has thus long welcomed presidential hopefuls as a campaign-trail “must.” This is the kind of engagement that voters of all types can appreciate.

National Popular Vote’s brazen proponents deceptively argue that their scheme would force candidates to campaign in every state, but this simply isn't true.

I remember the excitement of George H. W. Bush’s 1992 “Spirit of America” rail tour in Michigan. After stopping in Plymouth, it traveled through my hometown no more than a quarter mile from where I attended elementary school. 

"[O]n a pleasant September afternoon, the long 21-car Union Pacific passenger train sporting two new CSX Transportation’s locomotives, decked out with a patriotic red, white, blue and yellow scheme, having two American flags flying on its flanks with number ‘1992,’ on the lead engine, pulled into the Plymouth railroad station, between Starkweather and Mill, with full pomp and fanfare," Don Howard of Plymouth Voice recalled in 2018. 

“As the slow-moving train came to a halt, Bush stepped out on the rear platform of a last car ‘Baltimore,’ one reserved by the railroad for Presidents, with his sleeves rolled-up he waved to the fans that had spent hours waiting,” he added. 

In contrast, the National Popular Vote scheme would render Michigan politically insignificant. Every presidential candidate, in coordination with their brain trust of strategists, consultants and advisers, would allocate their limited time and resources to regions that matter more. The incentive would be to campaign in areas that maximize some combination of population density and partisan uniformity. Michigan, only the 18th densest state and one of the most closely divided from a partisan perspective, loses out on both of those metrics.

Why would candidates bother campaigning in Michigan if they could earn the state’s fifteen electoral votes by campaigning in the right parts of California, Texas, or Florida? Would they take the priorities of Michigan voters to heart if a campaign platform built on the needs of California or Texas voters could still yield victory in Michigan, perhaps even at our expense locally? Of course they wouldn’t. 

Michigan is an industrial state. Do you think local concerns about trade with China is the same in California as in Michigan? How about Texas? Not a chance. 

In 2016, Hillary Clinton did not even set foot in “blue” Wisconsin. She presumed herself the victor in a state that ultimately swung for Donald Trump. In 2020, Joe Biden’s own political calculus kept him out of “red” Ohio until October, when the state, long thought to be out of reach, was suddenly viewed as a potential pick up.

Like other schemes designed to increase the power of the political left, including ranked-choice voting, the corrupt private financing of local election offices (known colloquially as “Zuckerbucks”), Washington Democrats' failed H.R. 1 national election takeover, and attempts to abolish the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, National Popular Vote should be rejected. 

The integrity of our elections now rests in the hands of Michigan’s legislature. Free and fair elections should represent the will of the state's voters, not a handful of big cities that determine a way of life for the entire nation.

Michael Bars is executive director of the Election Transparency Initiative and a Michigan native. He is a former White House Senior Communications Advisor and spokesman, National Security Council Director of Strategic Communications, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Whether it was intended or not, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has rigged the rules of the game by instituting a set of criteria that is so onerous and poorly designed that only establishment-backed and billionaire candidates are guaranteed to be on stage.

That’s not what our party is about: We are the party of free speech, debate and the exchange of ideas. With 16 months until the general election, Republicans should have as many voices as the stage will accommodate. Anything short of that is elitism.

Currently, the RNC is requiring each candidate to have 40,000 donors to qualify for the debate. Candidates are then required to hand over their donors’ information to the RNC. The situation is so ridiculous that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is now offering $20 gift cards to donors who give his presidential campaign as little as $1, just to clear the RNC's artificial, arbitrary threshold.

I am running for president to give back to the country that has given so much to me and my family, not to serve as a piggy bank for a political party.

Given the current rules in place, and with Trump unlikely to appear at the first debates, Republicans may very well not have a single America-first, pro-MAGA candidate on the stage, leaving the vast majority of GOP primary voters unrepresented. Without someone like me, the debate would be filled with anti-Trump politicians taking shot after shot at the MAGA movement, with no one to defend it.

With a field as deep as this one, the rule of thumb is to expand public discourse, not restrict it. Republicans should invite all of the most credible challengers for the White House to the debate stage. Restricting speech is the way of the regressive left, obsessed with censorship on college campuses and in corporate boardrooms. Republicans have long championed free speech, and expanding the debate stage is yet another show of commitment to the U.S. Constitution.

I am not Trump. I am not Ron DeSantis. While I respect my primary opponents and we agree on many issues, it is far too early in the process to artificially narrow the field. I know that I have something to contribute to our national discourse, and once I’m on that debate stage, I know that GOP primary voters will agree.

I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, so I know what doesn’t work from a public policy perspective. I’ve seen firsthand how decades of Democrat rule have turned California into an unaffordable dystopia. I have seen our communities destroyed by criminality and lawlessness, a problem exacerbated by the lack of fathers in the home. Fatherlessness continues to ravage the Black community and other parts of America. Millions of kids — and not just Black kids — are entering the world without a father in the home married to a mother, and Democrats act like the welfare state will somehow fix that.

In Joe Biden’s America, Republicans need strong candidates who will call out left-wing Democrats and draw attention to our most pressing problems. I simply cannot ignore the George Soros-funded district attorneys who refuse to prosecute violent criminals and empty our jail cells. I am on a mission to expose the Soros DAs who are downgrading felony charges, even for drug dealers and armed robbers. I cannot sit idly by as cities like Chicago become war zones in 2023.

Nor can I ignore the cynical, detached politicians driving America into fiscal ruin. The national debt currently hovers around $32 trillion. The U.S. budget deficit is expected to exceed $1 trillion this year, and that doesn’t even include unfunded liabilities that amount to borrowing more and more from countries like China. We are in the red because of outrageous federal spending, which surpasses $6 trillion per year.

The problems are endless, and Americans need to hear concrete, conservative solutions from a wide range of experts. Expanding the debate stage would allow the candidates to bring their respective policy fixes to the table, thereby empowering primary voters to choose the best ones.

To combat crime, I have proposed model legislation that states can implement to prevent Soros DAs from coming into power — and holding them accountable if they’re already in place. Recognizing that not all states are the same, my legislation can be tailored on a case-by-case basis to vet district attorney and solicitor-general candidates, based on each state’s unique constitution and a wide range of qualifications for office.

To rein in the welfare state, my proposal is to cap government spending at 10 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), and then attach real consequences to surpassing it. The way I see it, ignoring the hard cap should result in the president and all sitting members of Congress losing their right to run for reelection in the next cycle. Fiscal irresponsibility must be punished, or there will never be accountability in Washington, D.C.

These are just two examples of policy solutions to America’s problems. I would be honored to explain them in more detail on the debate stage, just like I would be honored to listen to the other proposals set forth by my fellow debate participants.

Let’s place no artificial and arbitrary limits on the Republican Party, or the conservative ideas that can help the American people. Come the 23^rd of August, Republicans need more debate, not less.

Larry Elder is a Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2024. He is the author of “As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation.”

The reality is simple: President Joe Biden has presided over a uniquely successful economic recovery.  Whether by comparison to American presidents past, or other world leaders present, Bidenomics has proven an extraordinary boon.

Under Biden’s leadership, 13.2 million jobs have been created — more in two and a half years than any previous president created in a four-year term.    

Unemployment has been under 4 percent for 17 consecutive months, a feat unmatched since the 1960s.    

Biden comes out on top not just compared to previous presidents, but also compared to other world leaders confronting the same post-pandemic circumstances. Economic growth in the U.S. since the pandemic has been faster than in any other major developed economy.   

Not only have jobs increased but inflation has receded, cut by more than half.  

The U.S. has also fared better in the fight against inflation than other developed countries. Inflation over the last year has been lower here than in any other advanced industrial economy.   

New business formation also increased to levels well above the pre-COVID trend.  

So, what White House aides Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon wrote recently is surely true: “This progress wasn’t inevitable or an accident — it has been a direct result of Bidenomics.”   

Americans recognize some of the progress made. For example, when Joe Biden took office, Gallup found just 28 percent saying it was a good time to find a quality job. Today 63 percent hold that view — a huge increase.  

Yet, in a broader sense, Americans remain negative about the economy. When Bill Clinton left the White House in January 2001, 82 percent gave the economy positive marks in CNN polling, and it’s never been that good since. It got close at the end of 2019, before COVID shut the world down, and never recovered. Today just 24 percent give the economy positive grades.  

But it’s worth noting that the surveys seem inconsistent.  

While CNN shows almost no improvement over the last year, the Conference Board found, “Consumer confidence improved in June to its highest level since January 2022” according to their chief economist, Dana Peterson.   

Similarly, the University of Michigan recorded a “striking upswing” in economic assessments.   

But public opinion remains out of sync with economic reality.  Why?  

Here are a couple of possibilities.   

One we might call "COVID hangover." The pandemic dramatically and fundamentally altered views of the economy in short order. In December 2019, 76 percent thought the economy was in good shape, a number that fell precipitously to 39 percent in less than four months. Between March and April alone, the number dropped 30 points.   

That suggests trauma, and trauma can have lasting effects, making it difficult for people to see a silver lining in an economy, especially one still struggling.  

That struggle is a second possibility. Most people don’t live in a job-seeking economy — namely, the 161 million Americans who have jobs. The 13.2 million jobs created under President Biden pale in comparison to those already extant.   

Moreover, if your neighbor starts a drywall business and asks you to come work for her, you don’t necessarily look to Joe Biden as the creator of your job.   

The economy most people live in, most of the time, is about wages and prices. It’s about what they can and cannot afford as they walk through the store, be it brick-and-mortar or online.  

The reality is that because of COVID related payments, which ended, real disposable income was higher in 2021 than in 2022.   

Inflation outpaced income gains, so the lived economy of most Americans was worse. But that seems to be changing as wage gains persist and inflation continues to abate.   

Add to that the increasingly partisan nature of the public’s economic assessments, and we might find that the public’s broad economic evaluations have been rendered less meaningful.   

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.