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.

Escalating his language in an effort to rebut Trump’s unfounded claims about his actions with Ukraine, Biden set aside months of restraint to demand Congress move against the president.

“To preserve our Constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached,” the former vice president told supporters here, accusing Trump of having “betrayed this nation.”

Biden even linked Trump’s false claims to the so-called Big Lie idea promulgated by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. “You say it long enough, often enough, people may believe it,” he said, invoking Goebbels by name.

While Biden stopped short of calling for Trump’s removal from office, his new aggressiveness marked an acknowledgment that he must do more to both confront a president who is attacking him daily and to halt his slide in the polls in the Democratic primary.

The former vice president has openly wrestled with how forceful to be with Trump, lamenting last week that the president wants to drag opponents into “a mud fight.” But Biden is increasingly sharpening his rhetoric under pressure from allies to embrace the head-to-head race.

Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House because of his request to the Ukrainian government that it look into what Biden did with the country when his son, Hunter Biden, was working for a gas company there. On Wednesday, Biden again denied that he did anything improper as vice president. And he accused Trump, who has accused Biden of corruption and whose campaign is airing ads repeating the same claim, of acting entirely out of a desire to undermine his candidacy.

“We’re not going to let Donald Trump pick the Democratic nominee for president, period,” said Biden, who has fallen behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in a series of national and early nominating state polls. “He’s picked a fight with the wrong guy.”

The president apparently watched the speech, or was told of it, because even before it was over he noted on Twitter that Biden had called for his impeachment and claimed the Bidens had “ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars.”

“Joe’s Failing Campaign gave him no other choice!” wrote Trump.

There is no evidence that Hunter Biden made millions of dollars from his overseas work or that his father intervened inappropriately with Ukraine or China, the other country Trump was alluding to in his tweet. The president has also urged China to look into the Bidens.

Biden again denied that he did anything improper as vice president. He noted that his 2016 call to fire Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was part of U.S. government policy under President Barack Obama. It also reflected the wishes of a group of Republican senators at the time, who sought Shokin’s ouster because he was seen as unwilling to target corruption, Biden said.

A longtime senator before he became vice president, Biden is deferential to congressional prerogatives and has resisted calling for impeachment, even as Warren and many of his other Democratic rivals have been outspoken in demanding it.

Last month, when House Democrats began moving toward an impeachment inquiry, he said they should only do so if Trump did not cooperate with their investigation. Then last week he said he would let Congress “do its job on impeachment.” And at a later event on Wednesday, in Manchester, New Hampshire, he nodded to his longstanding discomfort with impeachment, calling it “a God-awful thing for a nation to go through.”

But as Trump and his allies wage near-daily political warfare against Biden, he has sought to mount a counteroffensive.

He began his rebuttal in a speech last week in Reno, Nevada, but on Wednesday he went even further. Speaking from a teleprompter and dressed formally in suit and tie, he used his first trip back to New Hampshire since the impeachment investigation got underway to both taunt and condemn Trump in remarkably stark language.

“He’s afraid about just how badly I will beat him next November,” said Biden, attempting to frame the general election as a contest between him and the president, and appealing to Democratic voters here and elsewhere who are consumed with finding a nominee who can oust Trump.

But he also used his speech, which lasted just under 30 minutes, to warn of the damage he claimed Trump was doing to the country.

“We all laughed when he said could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it,” Biden said. “It’s no joke. He’s shooting holes in the Constitution, and we cannot let him get away with it.”

He argued that impeachment was crucial not just because of what the president had done but also in trying to curb Trump from committing additional abuses in office.

For Biden, the question now is how to balance countering Trump’s onslaught with articulating his own policy vision and contrasting himself with his Democratic opponents. He sought to do all three in his appearance in Manchester, reciting many of his same lines about Trump at the outset of his speech before turning to his record on gun control and domestic violence prevention.

“It takes a proven ability to get things done,” he said.

And, he reminded the audience in an unmistakable reference to Warren’s raft of policy plans, “We’re not electing a planner.”

Biden Voices Support for Impeaching Trump, Ending Long Restraint

ROCHESTER, N.H. — Joe Biden on Wednesday called for President Donald Trump’s impeachment for the first time, blistering Trump as a threat to American democracy and accusing him of “shooting holes in the Constitution.”

“Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts,” Biden said. “He should be impeached.”

ROCHESTER, N.H. — Joe Biden said Wednesday that President Donald Trump should be impeached, the first time he has moved past his position of supporting a congressional inquiry but not full impeachment.

Joe Biden Calls for Trump's Impeachment

Markey praised John, Robert and Edward Kennedy as “inspirational figures.” He said he gets along with Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, the 38-year-old leader of the next generation of Massachusetts Kennedys. And he did his best to avoid antagonizing Kennedy, who is considering a Senate primary against Markey — a possibility that has jolted this state and threatened to end Markey’s career.

But Markey, 73, whose Massachusetts accent vanquishes “r’s” at the end of words as well as any Kennedy, had an unmistakable message for those who think he could become the latest victim of Trump-era upheaval within the Democratic Party.

“Oh, I’m running,” he said in an interview Wednesday before a town hall meeting, hoping to dispel chatter that Kennedy could drive him into unsought retirement. “This is the most energized I’ve ever been in my entire career. Donald Trump is assaulting everything that Massachusetts stands for.”

While Markey had the president’s incendiary politics in mind, he was also hoping to signal to restless liberal voters that he grasps their outrage at the state of leadership and politics in the country today — a fury that has veteran lawmakers in this state and elsewhere feeling under siege with competitive Democratic primaries increasingly on the rise.

In some cases, the matchup would feature two liberal and relatively well-known figures, like Markey and Kennedy. In other cases, the intraparty challenges are coming from progressive Democrats, people of color or both as they run against incumbents, such as with the 2018 victories of Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

What’s new in both instances is that younger politicians are willing to challenge longtime leaders, normalizing primaries against incumbents and harnessing support from voters hungry for confrontation, unbound to convention and craving generational change.

While Massachusetts has been a progressive beacon dating to the abolitionist movement, the state has also long prized seniority and clout in its elected officials, treasuring politicians who were both nationally prominent and unapologetically devoted to delivering largesse for public works programs like Boston’s Big Dig.

But the power of incumbency is being tested here after a century-long record of sending three House speakers to Washington, as well as perhaps the most influential senator in history — Edward Kennedy — and a steady line of powerful committee chairs.

“It’s a different political world today,” said Mayor Martin Walsh of Boston. “This idea of being elected and thinking it’s your seat until you leave, that game has changed.”

In addition to the prospect of a titanic clash between Markey and Kennedy, Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and all nine incumbent House Democrats in the state are facing primary challenges.

While the threats are of varying degrees of seriousness, no lawmaker is breathing easy a year after Pressley trounced Michael Capuano, the longtime Boston-area congressman who few thought was vulnerable to defeat.

“Ayanna really sent a signal to the political establishment that, at this moment, that the old wait-your-turn days are over,” said Setti Warren, the former mayor of Newton, Massachusetts.

Yet at a moment when the Red Sox are fading from playoff contention and the Patriots are a few weeks away from the NFL’s regular season, nothing is gripping Massachusetts like the possibility of another Kennedy running for the Senate. In a state where politics is both entertainment and blood sport, the newspapers are full of articles and columns handicapping the prospective race while Kennedy weighs his decision from vacation on Nantucket.

And some of the state’s politicians are already thinking ahead.

Should Markey end up deciding not to seek reelection, 2020 could grow even more chaotic here. In an interview, Walsh suggested that he would consider entering the Senate race were the seat to become open.

“I’m not going to run against Ed Markey,” the mayor said.

Pressley is also seen as a potential Senate candidate, although Democrats close to her signal that she may wait to run for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s seat should Warren be elected president or choose to retire in 2024. Then there’s Maura Healey, the Harvard basketball star turned state attorney general, who is widely thought to be eying the governor’s corner office on Beacon Hill but who has also been encouraged to consider taking on Markey.

The tumult has anguished some longtime Massachusetts politicians, who recall that past primaries here were fought on momentous issues, as when the Rev. Robert Drinan ousted a sitting House Democrat in 1970 over Vietnam.

“I am distressed by it,” said former Rep. Barney Frank, calling the primaries “a luxury we should not be indulging in” when Democratic donors and activists could be helping in the presidential race and competitive Senate contests in nearby Maine and New Hampshire.

Frank, whose seat is now held by Kennedy, was characteristically blunt when asked about his successor taking on Markey, his longtime colleague in the House. “I was shocked Joe would do that. I think it’s a mistake,” he said, speculating that Kennedy was considering a run now because he does not “want the seat to eventually go to anybody else.”

Many Democrats here say they find the plotting by the genial Kennedy to be out of character. Yet these assumptions also ignore the cutthroat side of the Kennedy family: The congressman’s grandfather, Robert, and his great-uncle, Edward, both challenged sitting Democratic presidents. (Kennedy declined an interview request.)

And not every Democratic leader here is unsettled by the outbreak of primaries.

“I may be in the minority, but I like the idea of competitive primaries,” said former Gov. Deval Patrick, who claimed the Democratic nomination for the state’s top job as a political outsider. “Every member of our delegation knows that nobody is entitled to these jobs. Competition for office is the way it’s supposed to work.”

Patrick, who, like many other Democratic officials here, has been lobbied for support by Markey, said he would stay out of a Kennedy-Markey race. But in an ominous sign for Markey, other Massachusetts Democrats who have announced their support for him sounded less committed when asked what they would do were Kennedy to run.

“I go way back with the two of them,” Neal said, calling them “both very good legislators.”

Walsh was even more equivocal about his preference. “I’m not going to speculate. Let’s see what happens,” he said.

Of the primary battles for House seats, none may prove to be as competitive as the one between Neal, 70, and Alex Morse, the 30-year-old mayor of Holyoke.

“There’s an urgency to this moment that isn’t matched by the current representative in Congress,” Morse said, criticizing Neal for opposing the Green New Deal and Medicare for All and for taking PAC money.

But Neal argued that most of his constituents were happy to be represented by the chairman of perhaps the most influential House panel, and he reeled off the millions of dollars he had brought back home to Western Massachusetts while highlighting the legislation he has helped steer to passage this year.

And demonstrating that he would not be caught unprepared, Neal lashed back at Morse, noting that the Holyoke schools had been placed in state receivership on his watch. “If he’s going to run against me on my record, I’m going to run against him on his,” Neal said.

What might help Neal avoid Capuano’s fate is the difference in their districts: While Capuano represented a majority-minority district that also included gentrifying precincts in cities like Cambridge, Neal’s district is anchored by working-class Springfield and is filled with old mill towns like Wilbraham and Monson.

It is the potential of a Kennedy race, though, that could resound the loudest.

“People really want to stop Trump and Trumpism in its tracks,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Democratic National Committee member from Massachusetts, describing a Kennedy bid as an effort at marrying the Trump moment with a call for generational change — a hybrid of moral clarity and raw ambition.

The young congressman, who would enter the race at the same age as his grandfather was when he ran for the Senate in 1964, is being encouraged to run by some in his family, according to Democrats familiar with the conversations.

And some prominent Massachusetts progressives are also nudging him forward.

“Joe would bring a type of leadership that we need in the Senate that I don’t see in Senator Markey,” said Val Frias, executive director of Greater Boston PFLAG, who has worked with him on LGBT issues.

“He could harken back to an earlier time for the older generation and provide hope for the younger generation,” added Andrea Cabral, who served in Patrick’s Cabinet.

Yet Markey, who introduced the Green New Deal resolution along with Ocasio-Cortez and has made environmentalism a centerpiece of his career, is hardly without liberal allies.

He has the support of Warren, whose likeness he’s using in digital advertising, and on Thursday in Boston he unveiled an endorsement from the Sunrise Movement, the group of young activists calling for climate action.

“He has more credibility to his name on an issue like climate than somebody like Joe Kennedy,” said Varshini Prakash, a co-founder of Sunrise.

In Framingham, where Markey received a standing ovation upon being introduced at his town hall this week, it was easy to find Democrats uneasy about a possible primary.

“I’m very concerned that someone feels that because they have a name and they’re a decent person they can challenge someone who is doing his best to save the planet,” complained Norma Shulman, a local party activist.

Markey made no mention of Kennedy during his remarks, staying focused on the urgency of global warming and doing his best to localize it. “The cod need cold water,” he said of Massachusetts’s favorite fish.

But in the interview, he repeatedly returned to his modest roots, noting that his father grew up “in a triple-decker in Lawrence” and leaving little doubt how he’d target a to-the-manner-born rival in a class-conscious state.

As for his predicament, Markey smiled and said, “You know the old saying: You either run scared or you run unopposed.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/politics/kennedy-markey-senate-2020.html" id="1ec7336a-98ec-3e70-adf0-48ff9b17d0be">The New York Times</a>.

A Kennedy-Markey Primary? Massachusetts Is Jolted

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — Sitting on a plastic chair in a high school music room, far from the marble corridors of Washington he has prowled for nearly 43 years as a congressman and senator, Edward Markey was clearly not looking to pick a fight with the Kennedy family. At least not yet.

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.”

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.”

Jonathan Martin

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