Jonathan Martin

Addressing supporters at his second rally in two weeks in heavily Republican north Louisiana, and his first since Democrats began public impeachment hearings, Trump dutifully read from his prepared text in an effort to rouse conservatives before Saturday’s election.“You will deliver a powerful rebuke to the socialists trying to demolish our democracy,” he told an arena full of enthusiasts here along the Red River. But he also let slip his more personal interest in the Louisiana election, where Gov. John Bel Edwards is seeking reelection, by recalling the negative headlines he received this month in another race. Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky, a Republican, lost his reelection a day after Trump rallied supporters in the state. “You got to give me a big win, please, OK,” the president pleaded with his supporters.

Trump was hoping to break open a deadlocked race between Rispone and Edwards, a moderate Democrat who has carefully avoided criticizing the president in a state where he remains fairly popular.

With House Democrats accelerating their investigation into Trump’s conduct with Ukraine, the White House is eager to show that his core supporters remain loyal and that he can deliver a victory in a state he carried by 20 points. Calling Democrats “crazed lunatics,” he repeatedly insisted he did nothing wrong in his efforts to urge the Ukranians to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. And, by way of professing his innocence, he noted that he dethroned the Bush, Clinton and Obama “dynasties” in 2016 and hardly required foreign interference to win reelection.“We need help to beat Sleepy Joe Biden? I don’t think so.” Trump also claimed with no evidence that congressional Republicans find the impeachment proceedings politically beneficial and have urged him to “keep this sucker going for a while.” But the president made clear he was not much enjoying his status as the fourth American president to face impeachment, and in a rare moment of reflection he allowed that the process was “very hard on my family.”

“What a life I lead,” he said. “You think this is fun, don’t you.” Trump’s introspection was fleeting, however, and he soon returned to his familiar repertoire of hits, belittling his Democratic antagonists on Capitol Hill and at one point venturing that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, did not have what it takes to suit up for Louisiana State University’s top-ranked football team.As for Biden, the president said he’d gladly face off with him in the general election but warned the crowd that they would witness “the lowest ratings in the history of debates” because the Democratic front-runner “is a very sleepy person.” The president delivered the sound-bite-ready lines he came armed with against Edwards, calling the pro-gun rights and anti-abortion rights Democrat a tool of Washington liberals.

“A vote for John Bel Edwards is a vote for radical leftists,” Trump said.At another point, he offered an even more demagogic line in a part of Louisiana that bears the scars of an ugly racial history.

“John Bel Edwards supports illegal aliens not American citizens,” the president said. He eventually broke character — “that was a long harangue,” he observed of his own prepared remarks — and turned to other interests, such as trumpeting the Oxford University credentials of Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., to a decidedly working-class audience. Trump brought an array of Louisiana Republicans to the stage, including Rispone, who echoed the president about how this election could “send a message.”

What nobody said explicitly is that the president is under more pressure to deliver after the Kentucky race. Bevin conceded defeat Thursday as a recanvass of the state’s votes made clear that Andy Beshear, the attorney general, won.

Trump’s task here is not much easier. Edwards is relatively popular and Rispone, a business executive and donor, is a first-time candidate who is not well known in the state.

But with two appearances in the closing weeks of the race, the president has put his political capital on the line for Rispone.

And the Republican nominee here has done his part to increase the stakes for the White House, linking himself to Trump at every turn. Rispone began the race with an ad depicting the “Trump” bumper sticker he placed on his pickup truck. He has also echoed the president’s outsider appeals and pet issue, arguing that a state government needs a businessman while assailing Edwards over immigration.

The governor, while refusing to criticize Trump, has portrayed Rispone as one who is grasping the president’s coattails and attempting to “nationalize this race.”

“He cannot win this race based on Louisiana issues because he hasn’t demonstrated any knowledge about how state government works,” Edwards told supporters in nearby Shreveport on Thursday afternoon. “He doesn’t have any vision for the state of Louisiana.”

A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Edwards has expanded Medicaid and has raised teachers pay and also some taxes in an effort to balance the state’s budget.

This is the president’s third visit to the state in just over a month. He appeared last month in Lake Charles, Louisiana, as part of an effort to boost Republican turnout in Louisiana’s all-party primary. Rispone narrowly edged out Rep. Ralph Abraham, a Republican, to claim a spot in the runoff against Edwards and not all the wounds have healed from the Rispone-Abraham contest.

That is why the president has returned to the same part of the state — it is Abraham’s home base — in an effort to rally Republicans in what is the last election of 2019. Bringing Abraham to the stage, Trump acknowledged their bitter primary, calling it “nasty.” But the president offered little balm, instead reminding Abraham that Rispone had self-financed his own victory, noting that Abraham had “a little less money to spend than Eddie.”

This article originally appeared in

Trump, Again, Links His National Clout to Outcome in State-Level Race

BOSSIER CITY, La. — President Donald Trump urged Louisiana voters on Thursday to “send a message to the corrupt Democrats in Washington” by electing Republican nominee Eddie Rispone as governor, directly linking the impeachment inquiry to a state election that will test his clout in the Deep South.

Making his second visit in two weeks to heavily Republican north Louisiana, Trump was hoping to break open a deadlocked race between Rispone and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a moderate Democrat who has carefully avoided criticizing the president in a state where he remains fairly popular.

With House Democrats beginning public hearings as part of their impeachment proceedings over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine, Republicans are eager to show that his core supporters remain loyal and that he can deliver a victory in the conservative Deep South.

And Trump is under more pressure to deliver after he appeared on the day before Election Day this month in Kentucky but failed to lift the unpopular incumbent, Gov. Matt Bevin, to victory. Bevin conceded defeat Thursday as a recanvass of the state’s votes made clear that Democrat Andy Beshear won.

Trump’s task here is not much easier. Edwards, who supports gun rights and opposes abortion rights, is relatively popular, and Rispone, a business executive and donor, is a first-time candidate who is not well known in the state.

But with two appearances in the closing weeks of the race, the president has put his political capital on the line for Rispone as part of an effort to rebuff any speculation about his declining clout.

And the Republican nominee has done his part to increase the stakes for the White House, linking himself to Trump at every turn. Rispone began the race with an ad depicting the “Trump” bumper sticker he placed on his pickup truck. He has also echoed the president’s outsider appeals and pet issue, arguing that a state government needs a businessman while assailing Edwards over immigration.

The governor, while refusing to take on Trump, has portrayed Rispone as one who is grasping the president’s coattails and attempting to “nationalize this race.”

A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Edwards has expanded Medicaid and has raised teachers’ pay and also some taxes in an effort to balance the state’s budget.

This is the president’s third visit to the state in just over a month. He appeared last month in Lake Charles as part of an effort to boost Republican turnout in Louisiana’s all-party primary. Rispone narrowly edged out Rep. Ralph Abraham, a Republican, to claim a spot in the runoff against Edwards, and not all the wounds have healed from the Rispone-Abraham contest. That is why the president has returned to the same part of the state — it is Abraham’s home base — in an effort to rally Republicans.

The Louisiana race is the last contest of the off-year 2019 election cycle. While Republicans retained the governorship in Mississippi, where Trump appeared on behalf of Gov.-elect Tate Reeves, Republicans lost the Kentucky race and the Virginia legislature after a surge of support for Democrats in cities and suburbs.

Trump, in 3rd Visit This Month, Tries to Boost Republican in Louisiana Governor's Race

BOSSIER CITY, La. — President Donald Trump touched down in Louisiana on Thursday, two days before the election for governor here, in an effort to push Eddie Rispone, the Republican nominee, to victory and flex his own political muscle at a moment Democrats are accelerating their impeachment inquiry.

Joining the campaign less than three months before the first votes are cast in Iowa, at a moment when candidates are usually dropping out and not jumping in, Patrick will face long odds. Yet his decision to run reflects the fractured nature of the Democratic race at a moment when Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, has also taken steps to enter the primary.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has proved more durable than dominant, at or near the top of most early nominating states, according to polls, but unable to seize control of the race against such unexpected moderate alternatives as Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana. And the two leading progressives, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have shown fundraising strength but have not yet broadened their appeal enough in the party to emerge as consensus candidates.

In his conversations with Democrats this week, Patrick acknowledged the scale of the challenge he faces by getting in this late. But he has received encouragement from some in the party who believe the race remains unsettled — and that he could prove a formidable candidate. Patrick hopes to bridge the divisions that have shaped the contest so far, appealing to centrists and liberals, white and nonwhite voters and across generational and economic lines in a way none of the candidates have been able to do. A close friend of former President Barack Obama, he has told advisers that he envisions a campaign similar to that Obama’s 2008 race, focusing more on bringing people together and healing the country than making a particular ideological case.

Patrick traveled to some early nominating states in 2018 before deciding against a campaign this time last year. While his explanation then owed in part to the “cruelty of our elections process,” as he put it, he also initially decided against a run because his wife, Diane, had recently been given a cancer diagnosis. She is now healthy.

Patrick is likely to train his initial focus on New Hampshire, where he is known by some voters for serving two terms as governor across the state line. And as the second elected black governor in the country’s history, he is hoping for a strong showing in South Carolina, where African American voters could decide the primary.His task won’t be easy. Patrick enters the race with little organization, no campaign cash and an imperative to gather both as he also tries to appeal to voters in a contest where Super Tuesday takes place in early March, immediately after the first four nominating states. It’s also unclear when, or if, he’ll qualify for a debate.

He has missed the filing deadlines in two states, Alabama and Arkansas, so he begins at a disadvantage should the primary evolve into a marathon where every delegate is crucial. And he’s already started to draw fire from liberal critics for his current post at Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Democrats assailed Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah for once having worked at when he ran for president in 2012.

There is also the more fundamental question of whether there’s even an opening for a new candidate. Polls of Democratic voters indicate that they’re mostly satisfied with what’s still an unusually large field of contenders.

Yet while even Patrick’s most ardent admirers allow that he is a long-shot candidate, they believe that the splintered nature of this race calls out for an upbeat and consensus-oriented candidate.

“If anybody is capable of catching lighting in a bottle, it’s him,” said Tim Murray, a former mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts, who served as Patrick’s lieutenant governor.

Deval Patrick Tells Democrats He Will Run in 2020 Presidential Race

NEW ORLEANS — Former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts told senior Democrats on Wednesday that he will enter the presidential race, according to two party officials, reversing his decision last year to forgo a run and adding yet more volatility to an unusually fluid Democratic primary.Patrick was calling a list of Democrats to inform them of his decision and is expected to begin his campaign with a video before appearing in person in New Hampshire to file his paperwork to be on the primary ...

Patrick told Biden in a phone conversation last week that he was weighing a bid, according to a Democrat directly familiar with the call, but did not indicate that he had fully decided to run. Patrick’s conversations with other party officials was confirmed by two other Democrats with knowledge of those talks.

Patrick has told party leaders that he doesn’t think any of the candidates running have established political momentum and that he thinks there is an opening for somebody who can unite both liberals and moderate Democrats, according to Democrats who have spoken to him.

At the same time, Massachusetts Democrats close to Patrick have started to reach out to prominent party leaders in early nominating states to alert them that he may run, according to one Democrat who has received an inquiry.

Patrick’s eleventh-hour consideration comes as former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York moves toward his own late entry into a Democratic primary that appears increasingly fractured.

A pair of moderate candidates — Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — and two progressives — Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — are now dividing the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to recent polls. But none of them has been able to pull away.

Patrick’s candidacy could reshape the already-fluid primary field. A two-term Massachusetts governor, he is well known in next-door New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary in February. And as one of the first black governors in the country’s history, he could also prove a formidable candidate in South Carolina, where black voters are expected to make up more than half the Democratic electorate.

If he is to compete in New Hampshire, Patrick would have to file there this week: The deadline to appear on the state’s ballot is Friday.

A Quinnipiac poll released Monday showed four candidates bunched together at the top in New Hampshire, with Biden at 20% among likely primary voters, Warren at 16%, Buttigieg at 15% and Sanders at 14%. (The margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.) Sen. Kamala Harris, once in the top tier of the Democratic field, was at 1%, her worst result in a debate-qualifying poll all year.

A possible Patrick candidacy could complicate the strategic assumptions for a number of candidates, including the two leaders in most polls, Biden and Warren. Patrick could threaten the former vice president’s support from black voters and also make inroads in New Hampshire, where Warren is counting on a strong performance in the southern part of the state that borders Massachusetts.

He and Warren have had an amicable, if not personally close relationship; when she was asked at an event last week to name African Americans she’d have in her Cabinet, she included Patrick.

Were he to run, the former governor may find it difficult to create a full-fledged campaign organization so late in the process. Two of his longtime Massachusetts aides are already committed in 2020: Doug Rubin is working for businessman Tom Steyer’s presidential campaign and John Walsh is overseeing the reelection of Sen. Ed Markey, who is being challenged by Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III.

According to Massachusetts Democrats, though, Patrick has lined up at least one former adviser: Jennifer Liu, who worked for his political arm when he was governor and was recently laid off from Harris’ campaign, where she had been finance director.

Patrick traveled to some early nominating states last year but decided against a presidential bid last November, saying at the time that he did not want the “cruelty of our elections process” to adversely impact his family.

The governor did not immediately reply to a text message seeking comment on Monday. Last month, when he was asked to fully rule out the prospect of a last-minute entry, Patrick said: “Don’t ask me that question.”

Ex-Governor of Massachusetts Ponders Presidential Bid

Former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has told Joe Biden and other Democratic officials that he is considering making a last-minute entry into the presidential race, the latest evidence of how unsettled the party’s primary is less than three months before the Iowa caucuses.

Few candidates inspire as much enthusiasm as she does among party voters, too, from the thousands who turned out for her speech at the Iowa State Fair last weekend to the supporters in this western Iowa city who repeat her catchphrases, wear her buttons and describe themselves as dazzled by her intellect and liberal ideas.

Yet few candidates also inspire as much worry among these voters as Warren does.

Even as she demonstrates why she is a leading candidate for the party’s nomination, Warren is facing persistent questions and doubts about whether she would be able to defeat President Donald Trump in the general election. The concerns, including from her admirers, reflect the head-versus-heart debate shaping a Democratic contest increasingly being fought over the meaning of electability and how to take on Trump.

Interviews with more than three dozen Democratic voters and activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina this summer, at events for Warren as well as other 2020 hopefuls, yield a similar array of concerns about her candidacy.

These Democrats worry that her uncompromising liberalism would alienate moderates in battleground states who are otherwise willing to oppose the president. Many fear Warren’s past claims of Native American ancestry would allow Trump to drown out her policy message with his attacks and slurs against her. They cite her professorial style and Harvard background to argue that she might struggle to connect with voters from more modest circumstances than hers, even though she grew up in a financially strained home in Oklahoma.

And there are Democrats who, chastened by Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, believe that a woman cannot win in 2020.

“I think she’s terrific but my questions about her are, can she get elected with the negativity, with all the stuff that’s thrown at her?” asked Rick Morris, a New Hampshire carpenter who attended a house party for Warren there last month. “Usually in the primary I vote for whoever I like the most, but this one I will put in electability.”

The concerns about Warren partly reflect ingrained assumptions that women or candidates of color would have a harder time winning the presidency than white men. This view has been repeatedly expressed on the campaign trail by some Democrats who believe Trump’s unlikely victory, after two terms of the nation’s first black president, amounted to a warning sign about the American electorate’s openness to change.

Many moderate Democrats see the field’s current front-runner, Joe Biden, the 76-year-old former vice president, as a safer option than Warren and other candidates. But Biden’s lead in the polls is partly based on strong name recognition, and his recent gaffes and middling debate performances have raised questions about whether he has the agility to defeat Trump.

Many voters interviewed are now wrestling with whether to elevate a candidate who captures their imaginations, and progressive ambitions, or to rally more cautiously behind a Democrat who they perceive as having a better chance of building a broad coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to fulfill their most urgent goal: ejecting Trump from the White House.

The Massachusetts senator’s top campaign aides are acutely aware of their challenge on questions about Warren’s viability. They are taking a series of steps to allay the concerns, perhaps most notably arming her in the last debate with the talking point that conventional wisdom also suggested that both Trump and former President Barack Obama were risky nominees because they broke from the traditional commander-in-chief mold. After the debate, Warren aides blasted clips of that remark from her social media accounts.

But even after Warren turned in two well-received debate performances, a Quinnipiac survey showed she had not made gains on the question of who has the best chance to beat Trump: Just 9% said she did, while 49% pointed to Biden.

In an interview before a town hall meeting in western Iowa last week, Warren, acknowledging the questions about her candidacy, said there was only one overarching way to quiet the skeptics.

“Nothing will overcome people’s worries more than success,” she said.

But Warren also demonstrated that she was still uncertain about how to address Trump’s taunts about the Native American heritage she once claimed. Her attempt to prove that ancestry with a DNA test last year drew fierce criticism from the right and left as well as some Native American groups; she stood by the DNA test for months, then apologized for it and the claims.

Having been told by advisers to generally avoid engaging on the issue, Warren struggled in the interview to articulate an answer about whether she would respond to Trump head-on when he uses his frequent slur for her, “Pocahontas,” or pivot to a more policy-centered rebuttal.

“My job is not to be drawn off into that,” she said.

And she had little to say about why, after pledging to a Native American group last year that she would always highlight their issues when her heritage is raised, she has quietly backed away from the commitment by typically remaining silent when Trump makes his attacks.

“I still, I am working on being a good partner,” Warren said, haltingly. “And the best way to be a good partner is to walk the walk.”

She was more sure-footed on an issue that has prompted alarm among elected Democratic officials and operatives: her refusal to hold fundraisers or seek four-figure checks from the party’s wealthy donors.

While she has made this commitment central to her primary campaign, implicitly scorning her rivals who are raising money in the traditional fashion, Warren said she would not shun big money if she becomes her party’s nominee.

“I don’t believe in unilateral disarmament,” she said, making clear that her policy only applies in the primary and not in the general election, when Trump is expected to lean on a range of well-heeled individuals and interests.

But as Warren increasingly becomes a top contender for the nomination, Democrats are thinking harder about what that would mean for their prospects.

In Iowa, a former chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, Sue Dvorsky, endorsed Sen. Kamala Harris last weekend after confiding to friends that she felt Warren’s liberalism would be a liability in a general election, according to a Democratic official who spoke to Dvorsky.

It’s a sentiment that many voters expressed at Warren events.

Some of these Democrats prefer Biden, viewing him as an acceptable option to a cross-section of voters, but others are eager to find a middle ground between the consensus-oriented former vice president and progressive firebrands like Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“If it were completely up to me, I’d vote for her,” said Jessie Sagona, who also came to see Warren last month in New Hampshire. “But I kind of feel like, do we need somebody in the middle like Kamala or Pete,” referring to Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Sagona said she had not fully made up her mind but was weighing the importance of “thinking strategically.”

Jan Phelps, who came to see Senator Cory Booker at a house party of his own in New Hampshire last month, articulated a similar calculation.

“I love her enthusiasm. She’s smart, she’s very smart. I think she would make an amazing president,” said Phelps, before quickly adding: “I’m worried about whether she can win. I worry that she’s being pulled even further to the left and that concerns me. Because we need to win, we just need to win.”

Warren is moving aggressively to address such concerns. Her aides are distributing “Win With Warren” signs at events to implicitly address the electability question. Her campaign also used a town hall meeting she held in Oakland to interview attendees, in the fashion of an on-the-scene local TV news reporter, about whether they thought she could win. (The verdict in the video: a resounding yes.)

And in addition to her debate remark on skepticism about Trump and Obama’s candidacies — which reflects a theory of her top adviser, Dan Geldon, that most modern presidents were seen as vulnerable nominees — Warren is also making comparisons between this race and her 2012 defeat of then-Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

“People told me you can’t win,” she recalled to attendees at her town hall in Council Bluffs. “And you can’t win because Massachusetts is not going to elect a woman to the Senate or the governor’s office.”

Yet a few minutes before the Warren event here got underway, one of her admirers made this very point about Warren’s White House hopes. Gail Houghton, a retiree, said flatly that she did not think Warren could win the presidency because of her gender.

“They’re just not ready yet,” Houghton said of the American electorate, adding that Trump’s divisive conduct has normalized prejudices. “It’s getting worse because we’re getting permission to behave this way from the top.”

But, Houghton was quick to add, she believed Warren would “make a wonderful vice president.”

Democratic activists in other states say much the same. Approaching a reporter in June at Rep. James Clyburn’s annual fish fry in South Carolina, Ed Nelson waxed nostalgic about the Obama years before proffering his preferred pairing.

“I hope it’s a Biden-Warren ticket,” Nelson said. “That’s what I want, that’s what I want.”

Warren’s supporters bridle at what they believe is the condescending nature of projecting her as a running mate, as do supporters of Harris, who is also often mentioned as a possible No. 2.

Several Democrats voluntarily mentioned both women as candidates they are eyeing in the primaries — and assessed them through the prism of electability. Some said they viewed Harris as a stronger choice, for reasons that they explain by pointing to 2016.

“I think one thing that happened with Hillary last time, people were like ‘ehhhh,’ they didn’t like the personality,” said Jackie Williams who attended an event for Harris last month near New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee. Williams said Harris had the edge with her, pointing to her easy “interaction with the crowd.”

At a Democratic picnic outside Des Moines a few weeks earlier, Marnie Lloyd said of Harris, “I don’t think we’ll hear the ‘she’s not likable’ we heard with Hillary.” Lloyd said she was less confident about Warren avoiding such a critique.

Judging personality and likability is subjective, of course, and those characteristics tend to be part of a double standard faced by female candidates. Many Democrats like Warren — some wait for an hour to take pictures with her — and she continues to gain supporters. But even among some of her enthusiasts, the questions about her vulnerabilities linger.

In Council Bluffs, waiting to see Warren take the stage, Herb Christensen was succinct about why he liked her — and why he worried about her as the nominee.

“My god, she’s smart,” he said. “Pocahontas, that’s the only thing.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020-campaign.html" id="076f1cb4-c4fc-371b-a28c-c15196d7b776">The New York Times</a>.

Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Sen. Elizabeth Warren has built the most formidable campaign organization of any Democratic presidential candidate in the first nominating states, raised an impressive $25 million without holding high-dollar fundraisers, and has risen steadily in Iowa and New Hampshire polls.

It was Warren’s first trip to New Hampshire since Robert Mueller, the special counsel, testified before Congress last week about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and she told the crowd that she would “start with dreaming big.” But what she had in mind was “a constitutional amendment to protect the right of every American citizen to vote and get that vote counted” — not impeaching President Donald Trump.

Support among Democratic voters for opening an impeachment inquiry is growing, and at least 100 members of Congress are now in favor. But even in the aftermath of Mueller’s nationally televised testimony, voters bring up impeachment far less than they do policy issues, and few of the 2020 hopefuls make it central, or mention it at all, in their appeals.

Interviews with Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and at the NAACP and Urban League conferences this week, yielded an unwavering belief that Trump is a lawless demagogue who must be turned out of office — but also a sense that efforts to impeach him will inevitably run aground in the Republican-controlled Senate.

“I think they should do an inquiry,” said Mary Ann Lakevicius, a Concord, New Hampshire, resident who came to see Warren on Saturday. “But I think Nancy Pelosi is right: If they can’t get it through the Senate, what’s the point?”

Some in the party reject this sort of fatalist shrug, and believe pursuing impeachment will further erode Trump’s already-weakened political standing by reminding voters of the scandals engulfing his presidency. Moreover, these Democrats say, lawmakers have a constitutional obligation to hold the president accountable.

“The way the administration keeps stonewalling, they have to do something,” said Mark Seymour, a lawyer from Concord.

Yet even as the debate intensifies among House Democrats over whether to go forward with a vote, which may prove difficult for vulnerable incumbents in districts where impeachment is unpopular, it has not been a contentious issue in the Democratic presidential primary.

Warren, who enjoyed a fundraising and polling surge after calling for impeachment following the release of Mueller’s report in April, does not routinely raise the topic, much less use it as a cudgel. And candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker are feuding more over their records and issues such as health care and criminal justice.

Biden has stuck close to Pelosi, the House speaker, who has been deliberate in her approach and has irritated some on the left because of it. Yet the former vice president said in a radio interview this week that if Trump administration officials “continue to stonewall” Congress’ efforts to conduct oversight, the lawmakers will “have no choice but to file articles of impeachment.”

Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic donor, may have been able to nudge impeachment more to the center of the primary had he directed his money into advertisements pressuring Democrats to speak out, as he had hinted he might. But Steyer decided to enter the race himself instead and has so far used his ample resources on mailers that say little about impeachment and instead sound the same populist and progressive notes as others in the campaign (“Tom knows how to beat corporate power”).

And while a Politico/Morning Consult poll following Mueller’s appearance before Congress revealed that 64% of Democrats back impeachment and only 18% oppose it, there’s a difference between support and intensity.

“Most Democrats are more animated by the racism, the policy differences and the behavior than they are by the possibility of impeachment,” said Mark Mellman, a longtime Democratic pollster.

At two major gatherings held this week by African American advocacy groups — the NAACP convention in Detroit and the Urban League’s conclave in Indianapolis — Trump’s unpopularity was universally understood. But there was little clamor from attendees about impeachment and panel discussions centered more on policy issues important to the black community.

The topic was not completely absent from the conferences: The NAACP members voted unanimously to support a resolution in favor of impeaching Trump, and Warren used her speech there, on the same day as Mueller’s testimony, to reassert her support for an inquiry.

But conversations with individual voters indicated that they were mostly eager to remove the president via the ballot box. Many, in fact, said defeating Trump in 2020 was their top voting issue.

Debbie White, a Cincinnati resident who attended the Urban League conference, made clear it was her highest priority.

“The operative word is electability,” White said. “The stakes are so high right now. Just beat him.”

In Wisconsin, a state that proved pivotal to Trump’s election, it was not difficult to find the same drift among Democrats toward 2020.

“I think if they don’t do something very soon, just forget about it and beat him next November,” said Jeff Loken, a retiree who lives in the Racine area and watched the entirety of Mueller’s testimony. “I think they would waste too much energy going through the whole impeachment process where they would lose their advantage with the American public.”

Sarah Beck, a Racine title company employee who also watched the hearing, criticized Trump, saying he “tried to interfere with the investigation, for one thing, and he didn’t put a stop to the Russians interfering with the election.” But she expressed doubt that an impeachment effort would be successful.

“I would love to see him impeached,” she said, “but don’t think they have enough evidence against him yet to impeach him.”

In the eyes of New Hampshire’s two House members, both Democrats, there is now sufficient evidence to at least move forward with an impeachment inquiry. Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas on Friday came out for beginning the process, using Mueller’s testimony as an opportunity to go public in support of an inquiry at the outset of the House’s summer recess, and Saturday morning the Concord Monitor splashed the announcement across the top of its front page.

In Bow, however, no voters raised the topic during a midday question-and-answer session with Warren. Later Saturday, at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, she again left the gathering without being asked about impeachment.

“People are realistic, and they know it can’t get done before the election,” explained Terry Shoemaker, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic activist.

In Derry, it was not until after the town hall with voters, when a reporter asked Warren about “running on impeachment,” that she shared her stance on the issue.

“It is time for us to begin impeachment proceedings,” she said, adding that lawmakers should be on the record and be made to “live with those votes for the rest of their lives.”

But Warren also wanted to clarify one matter. “I’m not running on impeachment,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/us/politics/impeachment-democrats.html" id="62287001-e5db-35b2-ad9b-7afbf72003a6">The New York Times</a>.

Why the 2020 Democrats Still Aren't Talking About Impeachment

BOW, N.H. — As Sen. Elizabeth Warren neared the conclusion of her remarks Saturday to a few hundred activists at a house party in this small town just south of the state capital, she made a solemn vow to “protect our democracy.”

But there was as much anxiety as optimism when the governors gathered for their annual fundraising retreat on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts last weekend and grappled with why a party that won with a pragmatic message in 2018 is now veering sharply to the left.

Some governors are alarmed that their party’s presidential candidates are embracing policies they see as unrealistic and politically risky. And they are especially concerned about proposals that would eliminate private health insurance.

“I don’t think that’s good policy or good politics,” said Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

“I think it scares people,” added Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico.

The comments represent a striking rebuke of the direction the Democratic primary race is headed, as progressive candidates have pulled the field to the left at a moment when President Donald Trump and Republicans are eager to paint them as extreme.

“We cannot become the party of the checklist,” said Raimondo, alluding to litmus tests on cultural flash points. She urged the 2020 hopefuls to resist proving their liberal credentials on every issue and instead focus on “economic security for everyday Americans.”

The governors’ angst offers cautionary signs for the party. They are often the best-known elected officials in their states and usually are the de facto head of their state parties, which means they wield considerable political clout. And with many of the governors having been on the ballot last year, they also possess a grasp of what the general electorate wants from Democrats.

Most of the officials have yet to support any White House contender and have largely avoided intervening in their party’s primary. But in the aftermath of last month’s debates, when a number of candidates, for instance, favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings and offering federal benefits for unauthorized migrants, the governors are taking their pleas public.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who won last year with a mantra of “fix the damn roads,” recalled the show-of-hands moments in the first presidential debates, which she said illustrated the party’s shift left but were so terse as to offer no context or explanation about the candidates’ positions.

“Raising hands and not really talking about the fundamentals is counterproductive to the average voter who really wants solutions,” she said.

Whitmer noted that at one event on Nantucket, Democratic strategist James Carville said the candidates should have responded to the raise-your-hand questions with a middle finger. “The American people deserve more, they deserve better,” Whitmer said.

The governors’ discomfort illustrates a larger tension among Democrats. Many party elites view 2018 as the obvious model for 2020 success. Democrats won governorships and claimed 40 House seats last year by emphasizing poll-tested, broadly popular issues and averting their gaze from Trump’s provocations. Why hand an unpopular, deeply vulnerable incumbent the fodder he craves? they ask.

Invoking the midterm elections, Raimondo said the party carried “a message that resounded throughout the country, and we think that’s a blueprint for next year.”

But to progressive activists and some leaders in the party’s liberal wing, vowing to protect the health care of individuals with preexisting conditions and other incremental proposals are vastly insufficient at a time of soaring economic inequality and racial divisiveness emanating from the White House.

No issue may better illustrate the Democratic schism than health care, which was central to their gains last year but which has cleaved the presidential primary field.

Progressive candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have called for “Medicare for All,” in which private health insurance would be eliminated and taxes would have to be raised; others, such as Joe Biden, want to build on the Affordable Care Act, and Sen. Kamala Harris has signed on to Medicare for All but voiced opposition to its tax increases.

While some Democratic governors have at least rhetorically backed single-payer systems, most have used their political capital to put in place and protect the expansions in the ACA while also enacting measures aimed at controlling insurance costs.

And they warn that openly pledging to end private health insurance will only hand ammunition to the Republicans.

Noting that many voters were already uneasy about losing their coverage, Whitmer said, “I don’t think feeding into that is a good idea.”

The three governors urged the presidential candidates to focus on immediate ways to improve health care access and lower costs.

They were just as emphatic about immigration, warning 2020 candidates that their support for decriminalizing illegal migration would allow Republicans to cast Democrats as the party of open borders. At the last debate, many of the leading candidates — including Warren and Sanders — raised their hands when asked if they would make unauthorized border crossing a civil rather than a criminal offense.

“That just scares too many people who don’t know anything about immigration,” said Lujan Grisham, who worked on the issue as a local official and in Congress before being elected governor. She said Democrats should lash Trump for “closing the border,” because it only prompts asylum-seeking migrants “to sneak around” instead of coming to points of entry.

Raimondo was similarly unequivocal on the issue. She argued that Democrats had to both enforce current immigration law and pursue an overhaul that would offer a path to citizenship for those living in the country illegally but not breaking any other laws.

“Come on, secure the borders, people need to be safe, people need to feel safe,” she said, while noting that she had taken steps to protect the “Dreamers” in her state, those children brought to the country illegally by their parents.

The broader risk for the party, they say, is that too many of the candidates are courting only a segment of the liberal base rather than the entirety of the more moderate Democratic coalition.

Raimondo and Lujan Grisham both urged the candidates not to become consumed by the affirmation or opprobrium of Twitter.

“A month or two before my primary I was getting crushed on social media,” Raimondo said, recalling the challenge she had from the left last year. “My friends were calling me, saying, ‘Gina you’re going down’ and then we won by 20 points.”

Lujan Grisham said she faced similar criticism online and still does today.

“If you looked at my social media right now you’d think, ‘She’d never win reelection,’” she said.

On Nantucket, where new governors like Whitmer, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Janet Mills of Maine circulated through a series of shellfish-laden brunches, dinners and receptions, it was not hard to encounter nervous Democrats, according to multiple attendees. But there were different levels of alarm, with the most angst-ridden attendees largely hailing from the party’s Clinton wing.

Keith Mason, a past treasurer of the Democratic Governors Association and a Georgia-based Democratic donor, said “the subtext” of the event was: “How can we get our presidential candidates back on track and do the things governors do?”

Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor and one-time Democratic National Committee chairman, said that what is most jarring for the governors and their advisers is the dissonance between the issues that consume them daily (job creation, infrastructure and workforce development) and what they hear in the primary.

“If we’re all about this rhetoric of big ideas and not focused on getting results and building the biggest tent possible for the Democratic Party, we’re going to pay consequences for that,” said McAuliffe, who spoke at the opening night of the retreat.

Whitmer put it more diplomatically, but pointedly reminded the presidential contenders that “the road to the White House comes through the Midwest.” She said they should be mindful of how she and other governors in the region won last year.

“It’s important to have positions on a variety of issues,” she said. “But you’ve got to have solutions for things that matter.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/politics/election-2020-democrats.html" id="7bb8b3f8-25df-3c38-a7b7-3c371f5e246c">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — After claiming governorships from Republicans in seven states last year, including in crucial presidential battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Michigan, Democratic governors should have good reason to celebrate.

Anxious Democratic Governors Urge 2020 Field Not to Veer Too Far Left

LOS ANGELES — The mayor of Los Angeles was attempting to praise Joe Biden to the press, but Biden’s aides were more focused on shooing the press away.

At the end of a made-for-cameras lunch he shared with Biden at a taco stand last week, Mayor Eric Garcetti had to raise his voice over a phalanx of Biden staff members, who were attempting to end the question-and-answer session between the former vice president and about 40 reporters and photographers swarming their table.

“I want to say one last thing,” the mayor twice said over the din, before offering his homage: “Los Angeles loves Joe Biden and Joe Biden loves Los Angeles.”

The tape recorders and cameras were soon shut off, and Biden exited King Taco without having veered off message.

As the famously voluble Biden makes his first retail campaign stops in the Democratic primary, and grows accustomed to the front-runner status he never enjoyed in his two previous White House bids, his campaign is grappling with how to showcase Biden’s never-met-a-stranger persona without exposing him to an environment where he may commit a gaffe.

So far, they have struck a safe, if precarious, balance.

Just over two weeks into Biden’s candidacy, the most notable feature of his campaign may be what hasn’t happened: He has not blurted anything out that delights his rivals, horrifies his aides and reinforces his image as “Uncle Joe,” America’s there-he-goes-again relative who makes you smile and wince in equal measure.

It is early yet — which even Biden’s friends allow as they hold their breath — and precedent offers good reason to question whether his streak of mostly error-free days can last.

But his staff has sought to mitigate the risk by effectively recreating the trappings of the vice presidency: guarding question-and-answer sessions, selecting safe interview settings and remaining all but glued to his hip when he greets voters on rope lines, dips into ice cream shops and steps out of the black Chevy Suburbans that are indistinguishable from the Secret Service models he once rode in.

There are notes on his lectern to remind him of key policy points, depending on the locale, and his schedule has been carefully planned: He has appeared at nearly as many fundraisers (five) as he has rallies (six).

Biden is not dodging the news media. He has taken questions from national reporters and spoken even more frequently to local print and television outlets.And he has opened his fundraisers to press coverage.

Yet that step toward transparency also doubles as a means of nudging him to stay on script. After courting danger by taking questions from donors at an appearance in South Carolina — Biden said his nickname for President Donald Trump would be “clown” — he did not ask for audience questions at subsequent fundraisers.

Biden is hardly the only candidate to travel with an entourage and tread carefully around the news media — Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for example, rarely takes press questions. And Biden’s aides feel they need to manage his appearances in part because of the sheer demand for access to a famous former vice president and the logistics of, say, moving TV cameras and boom microphones into a taco joint.

Some Democrats wonder whether such a cosseted approach is sustainable for a 76-year-old candidate facing questions about his age — especially in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the famously demanding activists famously demand accessibility to presidential hopefuls. (Biden delivered speeches but did not take questions during his first trip to Iowa, though he’s expected to do so in New Hampshire this week.)

After a speech he has planned for Philadelphia this Saturday, aides say Biden will turn to delivering some policy proposals, including a foreign policy blueprint.

And some of his longtime friends are urging him not to don a rhetorical straitjacket.

“Handlers can ruin you,” said former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, adding fondly, “I had the best in the world.”

Shortly before Biden stopped in to see him last week at his office in Las Vegas’s Bellagio casino, Reid, who is also given to malapropisms, recalled how his advisers relentlessly sought to steer his debates and news conferences — and how he was better off being his unvarnished self.

“I just think that Joe Biden just needs to be himself,” Reid said in an interview. “Everybody likes him, he’s a nice guy.”

(Reid, the former Senate Democratic leader, is not endorsing a candidate, but he said Biden was “in really a good position” because “people are looking for some stability.”)

Biden has not been completely without Bidenisms, including two that drew attention to his age: referring to the British prime minister as Margaret Thatcher rather than Theresa May and boasting that he knew even more about foreign policy than Henry Kissinger does.

In the early stages of his candidacy, though, the most powerful check on Biden has been Biden himself. To the pleasant surprise of his supporters, he has demonstrated uncharacteristic restraint in the face of temptation.

When a woman yelled out, “You can hug and kiss me anytime!” at a rally near Las Vegas last week, Biden smiled, made the sign of the cross and, after a pause, simply said, “That’s nice, thank you very much.” It was a markedly different response than before he got in the race, when, in the wake of claims from women that his physical contact made them uneasy, he twice joked about hugging people during a speech to union members.

And when a Biden supporter at the Taco King yelled out his encouragement across the restaurant — “kick that orange ape out of office!” a reference to the well-tanned incumbent — the former vice president not only declined to pile on, he even voiced his restraint. “I didn’t say that,” he made clear to the press scrum.

He has also not taken the bait from his closest Democratic rival in the polls, Sanders, refusing to return fire when the senator has criticized him. “I will not speak ill of any of the Democratic candidates, I will not do it,” Biden said in Los Angeles.

His aides believe that the intensely personal criticism he received from women last month, and the subsequent coverage about his longtime penchant for physical contact, was eye-opening for Biden. It made clear that, as front-runner, he would be under a microscope and face unrelenting scrutiny, two of his advisers said.

It’s not that Biden wasn’t already aware of the hot lights of the presidential stage. His first White House bid flamed out after he was found to be borrowing from the speeches of others, and his second campaign began with self-created turmoil when he called Barack Obama the first African-American candidate for president who was “clean” and “articulate.”

This time, though, Biden plainly feels chastened. He reaches for the phones of supporters when he greets them, offering selfies as often as embraces. And when he does hug a supporter, it is usually when he is asked for one or after he asks permission.

Jonathan Martin

Articles written by the author

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