Lisa Lerer

Gabbard had argued that the corporate news media and Democratic National Committee were working together to influence the event. On Monday, she offered little explanation of why she had dropped her objection to participating. “I just want to let you know that I will be attending the debate,” she wrote in an email to supporters.

While Gabbard had met the qualifying criteria to participate in Tuesday’s debate, she is among the lower-polling candidates and has struggled to gain traction, never breaking 3% in any major poll. She failed to qualify for the September debate and has not yet made the stage for the November faceoff. The New York Times is a co-sponsor of Tuesday’s debate with CNN.

Gabbard has disputed the polls selected by the national committee as “certifying” candidates for the debate, arguing that many of the noncertified surveys are more accurate. Those polls could also help Gabbard qualify for the November debate.

Her call won support from a fellow primary candidate, Marianne Williamson, who is also polling among the bottom tier of presidential hopefuls.

“I have great respect for Tulsi for saying such inconvenient truth,” Williamson posted on Twitter last week, after Gabbard first raised the idea of boycotting the debate.

Gabbard’s warnings of a rigged election are likely to resonate with her base, an unconventional mix of anti-interventionist progressives, libertarians, contrarian culture-war skeptics, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They like her isolationist foreign policy, her calling out of what she sees as censorship in the major technology platforms and her support for drug decriminalization.

Buoyed by frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, her quixotic, bare-bones campaign has also won praise from some surprising admirers, including Stephen K. Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist; former Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian star; and Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, who has said he finds her “refreshing.”

Gabbard has lobbed some of the toughest attacks on the debate stage. In July, she assailed Sen. Kamala Harris of California over her record as a prosecutor, becoming the most searched candidate on Google in the hours after the event.

Harris later shot back, calling Gabbard an “apologist” for Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, whom Gabbard controversially visited in Damascus in January 2017.

A telegenic military veteran, Gabbard, once a Democratic darling, began falling out of party favor during President Barack Obama’s administration, when she picked a series of high-profile fights over foreign policy, joining Republicans in demanding that Obama use the term “radical Islam.”

In 2016, she resigned her position as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. She has said that she believes that the primary was “rigged” by the party committee against Sanders.

This year’s qualifying criteria were designed by the national committee as a direct response to criticism leveled during the 2016 campaign by supporters of Sanders, who argued that the party committee organized the debate schedule to favor Clinton, the eventual party nominee.

While some lower-polling candidates have expressed frustration with the qualification rules, particularly the requirement that candidates amass at least 165,000 unique donors to make the November debate stage, there has been little outcry from Democratic voters.

In June, nearly 3 out of 4 voters who planned to attend the Iowa caucuses said that at least several of the candidates should drop out of the race, according to a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll. A little more than four months later, only four of the candidates have ended their bids, leaving 19 remaining in the race.

This article originally appeared in

Gabbard, After Threatening Boycott, Will Debate on Tuesday

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, one of 12 Democratic presidential candidates who have qualified for this week’s televised debate, said Monday that she would participate in the forum after raising the possibility of boycotting it to protest what she sees as a “rigging” of the election.

And far-right conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich see a certain MAGA sais quoi.

“She’s got a good energy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a serious person,” Cernovich said. “She seems very Trumpian.”

Among her fellow Democrats, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has struggled to make headway as a presidential candidate, barely cracking the 2% mark in the polls needed to qualify for Tuesday night’s debate. She is now injecting a bit of chaos into her own party’s primary race, threatening to boycott that debate to protest what she sees as a “rigging” of the 2020 election. That’s left some Democrats wondering what, exactly, she is up to in the race, while others worry about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media.

Perhaps strangest of all is the unusual array of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of her.

On podcasts and online videos, in interviews and Twitter feeds, alt-right internet stars, white nationalists, libertarian activists and some of the biggest boosters of Trump heap praise on Gabbard. They like the Hawaiian congresswoman’s isolationist foreign policy views. They like her support for drug decriminalization. They like what she sees as censorship by big technology platforms.

Then there is 4chan, the notoriously toxic online message board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semites fawn over Gabbard, calling her “Mommy” and praising her willingness to criticize Israel. In April, the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, took credit for Gabbard’s qualification for the first two Democratic primary debates.

Brian Levin, the head of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, said Gabbard had “the seal of approval” within white nationalist circles. “If people have that isolationist worldview, there is one candidate that could best express them on each side: Gabbard on the Democratic side and Trump on the Republican side,” Levin said.

Gabbard has disavowed some of her most hateful supporters, castigating the news media for giving “any oxygen at all” to the endorsement she won from the white nationalist leader David Duke. But her frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show have buoyed her support in right-wing circles.

Both Gabbard and her campaign refused requests for comment about her support in right-wing circles or threat to boycott the debate. Even some political strategists who have worked with her are at a loss to explain her approach to politics.

“She’s a very talented person but I’m not sure, I just don’t know what to say about the campaign exactly,” said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist who worked with Gabbard when she was campaigning for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016.

There is potential upside for Gabbard: Drawing more attention could energize her donors and perhaps attract more supporters, extending her candidacy’s life span.

Yet there is only confusion for several Democratic officials, activists and party officials, who privately say they have been a little spooked by Gabbard. Rival campaigns worry about her unpredictable attacks, if she participates in the debate, pointing to her sharp jabs against Sen. Kamala Harris of California in an earlier matchup.

“She’s taken a series of policy steps which signal to the right that she has deep areas of alignment,” said Neera Tanden, a longtime policy adviser to Hillary Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

The questions deepened Thursday after Gabbard threatened to boycott Tuesday’s debate, arguing that the corporate news media and the Democratic National Committee are working together to rig the event. (The New York Times is a co-sponsor of the debate with CNN.)

That message resonates with many of Gabbard’s supporters. In a moment marked by fractured politics, Gabbard’s nontraditional positions are a major part of her appeal for voters seeking to break out of polarized partisan divisions. Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, said he planned to vote for her. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, donated to her campaign.

But it’s also an argument that reminds some Democrats of the narrative pushed by Russian actors during the 2016 presidential contest, when an operation by internet trolls worked to manipulate U.S. public opinion: that the electoral system is broken and cannot be trusted.

Some of those who have worked with Gabbard say that, as an Iraq War veteran whose chief message is that America should stop trying to police the world, she is representing viewpoints that draw support from an array of people in the United States as well as abroad.

“In reality, Tulsi is really running on an anti-war message that’s consistent with where a lot of veterans are,” said Jon Soltz, chairman of the liberal veterans organization VoteVets.org, which worked closely with Gabbard during her first congressional campaign. “I know everyone thinks there’s a conspiracy theory here but that’s really what she’s doing.”

Still, Democrats are on high alert about foreign interference in the next election and the DNC is well aware of the frequent mentions of Gabbard in the Russian state news media.

An independent analysis of the Russian news media found that RT, the Kremlin-backed news agency, mentioned Gabbard frequently for a candidate polling in single digits, according to data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group that seeks to track and expose efforts by authoritarian regimes to undermine democratic elections.

Disinformation experts have also pointed to instances of suspicious activity surrounding Gabbard’s campaign — in particular, a Twitter hashtag, #KamalaHarrisDestroyed, that trended among Gabbard’s supporters after the first Democratic debate, and appeared to be amplified by a coordinated network of bot-like accounts — but there is no evidence of coordination between these networks and the campaign itself.

Laura Rosenberger, a former policy aide to Clinton’s campaign and director of the Alliance, sees Gabbard as a potentially useful vector for Russian efforts to sow division within the Democratic Party.

“The Russian activity could be part of a longer-term effort to drive a wedge among Democrats,” she said. “This messaging has echoes of 2016.”

That kind of speculation inflames Gabbard’s supporters online, who are known for swarming Gabbard’s critics on Twitter, for attacking the news media and the Democratic establishment for perceived bias against her and for compiling YouTube clips of her “destroying” and “shutting down” her Democratic rivals.

Gabbard’s fans are especially sensitive to claims that she is supported by Russian bots and amplified by the Russian state-funded news media outlets — a conspiracy theory, they say, that is designed to delegitimize her campaign and her foreign policy views.

“This whole thing the Democratic Party has done by putting forward this false idea that there was collusion between Russia and Trump has hurt our relations in a huge way with the Russians,” Graham said. “I can’t speak for Tulsi, but I think she feels kind of the same way on some of these things.”

While Democrats in Washington fret about Gabbard, her primary rivals have largely stayed silent, seeing little advantage in attacking a low-polling candidate.

She is likely to get harsher treatment back in Hawaii, where a cottage industry of researchers, former opponents and Democratic strategists has sprung up to track her connections and background — as well as her ties to the teachings of Chris Butler, the controversial guru who founded The Science of Identity Foundation, and whose work she said still guides her. Gabbard has said the focus on her relationship with Butler and her faith was fueled by anti-Hindu bigotry.

She already faces a serious primary challenge for her House seat from state Sen. Kai Kahele, a Democrat. Though his campaign is focused on economic issues, he sees Gabbard’s support from extremists as a potential liability.

“Clearly there’s something about her and her policies that attacks and appeals to these type of people who are white nationalists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers,” Kahele said. “To her credit she has denounced David Duke, rejected these endorsements. But it does beg the question why.”

Gabbard, once a Democratic darling as a telegenic newcomer and the first Hindu member of Congress, began falling out of party favor during the Obama administration, when she picked a series of fights over foreign policy, joining Republicans in demanding that President Barack Obama use the term “radical Islam.”

In 2016, she resigned her position as vice chair of the DNC to endorse Sanders over Clinton.

While Gabbard has opposed recent military interventions in the Middle East, she has developed relationships with leaders known for their authoritarian tendencies. She touts her support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has empowered Hindu fundamentalists at great cost to India’s minorities. Gabbard also met with Egypt’s strongman leader, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, during a 2015 trip to Paris with Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman known for his ties to Russians.

Most controversially, she has repeatedly defended the brutal Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, whom she met in January 2017.

Those positions confound even some of her former Republican supporters.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a pro-Israel activist who founded the World Values Network, said he first met Gabbard through Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who brought the congresswoman to dinner at a kosher restaurant in Washington.

His group, which is funded by the Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, awarded Gabbard their “Champion of Freedom Award” at their annual gala in 2016. A picture from the event shows a grinning Gabbard posing with Boteach and Miriam Adelson.

In the three years since, Gabbard has criticized Israel for its reaction to protests, met with Assad and made several statements defending his regime.

“To have a moral woman like Tulsi who is a military hero suddenly sit with a man who did that was inexplicable,” Boteach said. “I don’t understand it until today. I can’t figure her out.”

WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader, says he could vote for her. Former Rep. Ron Paul praises her “libertarian instincts,” while Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, finds her “refreshing.”

What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?

But in the hours before the chest pains that led to an emergency procedure in a Las Vegas hospital, Sanders, 78, uttered a different, perhaps more telling, series of six words.

“Get me a chair up here,” he said, turning to his deputy campaign manager Tuesday, before sitting down in front of the crowd of 250 gathered for a fundraiser in a Persian restaurant. “It’s been a long day here.”

For months, Democrats have watched as a trio of septuagenarians commanded the majority of support in their crowded primary field: Former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70, and Sanders have consistently led in the contest to face President Donald Trump, 73, next year.

Presidential campaigns always reflect the hopes and fears — or, as political strategists call them, the “kitchen table conversations” — of the voters who cast the ballots. And this year, along with health care costs and college affordability, stagnant wages and immigration, the contest also reflects of another issue, one that strikes at the heart of a country where the highest share of the electorate will be older than 65 since at least 1970: How old is too old?

Voters, who have watched candidates through debate stages and state party dinners, on sweaty stages and speed-walking across the state fair, corn dog in hand, do not generally want to say there is a ceiling. No one is too old to be doing this. They just are not sure they would want to be keeping up such a rigorous schedule in their 70s. Would you?

Gerontologists and other experts in aging say there is simply no way to definitively address the question of an upper age limit on the rigors of the presidency.

“There’s no answer. It’s unknowable,” said Dr. Mark Lachs, co-chief of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. “It’s true that rates of physical and cognitive impairment are age dependent but there’s all kind of variability.”

The averages paint a sobering picture: The average life expectancy in the United States is just under 79, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even as Americans live longer than ever before, about 85% of older adults have at least one chronic disease, and more than three-quarters have at least two.

But despite the statistics, one person’s 70 can be another’s 60, Lachs said. And being 70 years old, he added, is not at all what it used to be.

“The yardstick gets moved every decade because the country is aging and medical care becomes better,” he said. “Age should not be a disqualification for the presidency.”

That’s a message some voters happily believe, as they confront the realities of aging in their own lives. The number of Americans who plan to retire after age 66 has steadily ticked up over the past quarter century, with a quarter saying they do not plan to retire at all.

“Seventy is the new 50,” said Halliestine Zimmerman, a retired accountant from Greenville, South Carolina, who celebrated her 70th birthday in June, a week before Warren did. “You don’t really think I am at the end of my life span, you think more you are in the middle. I know what it is I want out of my life, and you know how to get it.”

Zimmerman’s husband, whose age she would only give as “70-plus,” had a triple bypass several years ago and today he regularly plays tennis.

“He’s doing fantastic, so a stent doesn’t bother me at all,” she said of Sanders. “I don’t think he will stop campaigning, I don’t think he should — remember a lot of people don’t make it to his age.”

But others worry that an older commander-in-chief would share the declines they have experienced in their own physical and mental abilities over the years.

Discussions of aging have been all-but-inescapable on the campaign trail. Since he entered the race, Biden has been dogged by questions about his physical fitness and condition — concerns he has tried to alleviate by bounding through parade routes and shaking dozens of hands in steamy summer weather. Sanders keeps a blistering campaign schedule that often includes multiple events in multiple cities each day. And supporters of Warren gush about her vitality, bragging about the hundreds of selfies she takes with supporters after each appearance.

“I was just amazed that when you first came out here, Sen. Warren, that you ran up those steps the way that you did, and all this energy and stamina that you have,” Nikita Jackson, a Rock Hill, South Carolina city councilwoman, said as she praised Warren to a crowd at a town hall event Saturday.

None of the Democratic candidates have been particularly eager to delve into the details of their health. Aides to Sanders released a brief statement noting that he “was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted,” a fairly common procedure in the United States. Like his rivals, Sanders has not yet released his medical records, though all three have vowed to do so before the Iowa caucuses in February.

With little actual medical information, even minor irregularities in how candidates appear have prompted a flurry of age-related speculation. When Sanders hit his head on the edge of a glass shower door, his campaign explained that he had received a cut requiring stitches but stressed that he did not fall. Biden appeared to be moving his mouth in a strange fashion during the last debate, which led to questions about whether he wore dentures. At Biden’s campaign events, voters question whether his verbal missteps can be attributed to his age.

“He’s not as sharp as he might be,” Carol Sobelson, 63, at a campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire, said. “He’s done a lot for our country, he was a great vice president. He’s probably not my first choice.”

Health, or the perception of a candidate’s health, is unlikely to be off the table in a campaign against Trump. In 2016, his supporters spliced together video footage of Hillary Clinton coughing and Trump often questioned her stamina, particularly after she abruptly left a ceremony in New York honoring the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Already, Trump has started questioning Biden’s energy levels, nicknaming him “Sleepy Joe.”

Nearly all Democrats prefer candidates in their 40s through 60s, according to surveys. When asked about the ideal age for a president, just 3% said the 70s, according to polling released by Pew Research Center in May. Other polls have shown that Americans express more discomfort with a candidate in their 70s than one who is gay, Muslim or an independent.

The two Democratic nominees who have won the White House since 1992 — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — made generational change a key part of their winning campaign message. Both were the youngest in their primary fields.

Age May Be Just a Number, but Will Chest Pains Give Voters Pause?

For months, Sen. Bernie Sanders brushed off questions about his age, offering a simple, six-word mantra to those who doubt he’s energetic enough to run for president: “Follow me around the campaign trail.”

Welcome to 21st-century fatherhood, presidential campaign style.

For decades, mothers running for office have faced skepticism: “Who’s taking care of the kids?” wondered voters. As American families evolve, a number of fathers of young children are slowly being forced to grapple with the same politically loaded question. That has left them making a calculation that women have made for decades: how to pursue public life and parenthood at the same time.

And at least a few of the 15 fathers who are running for president in 2020 are eager to talk about it, including the day-to-day caregiving tasks that most politician moms generally consider just, well, business as usual.

“This morning, I changed a diaper before I got on a plane,” said Swalwell, of California, who has a 2-year-old son and an 8-month-old daughter. “Last night, I came back for bath time. I generally do the wake-up, get them out of their pj’s, change the diaper and feed them.”

It is a shift that reflects changing American expectations around what, exactly, makes a good dad. While academic research and survey data show that female candidates still confront a steeper double standard when it comes to their family life, male politicians with young children suddenly find themselves facing something totally new — a standard.

“Bill Clinton had a youngish daughter but there was no discussion about what his life was like as a parent,” said Jill S. Greenlee, a political science professor at Brandeis University who studies attitudes toward parenthood. “Now these men need to acknowledge their role as fathers, in part, because to ignore it would be potentially harmful to their candidacy.”

It is not just a younger generation changing the script. New views toward family life mean that even Joe Biden, four years Clinton’s senior, is embracing an image that is less “Mad Men” and more “Modern Family.”

“One of my competitors criticized me for not going to Iowa to talk for five minutes,” he told donors at a fundraiser in Georgetown this past week. “My granddaughter was graduating. It was my daughter’s birthday. I would skip inauguration for that.”

The eight male candidates with school-age children see their balance of work and family as a political strength, a reflection of the political rise of women in the Democratic Party and the changing terms of the debate over the economics of American family life. Fathers today spend far more time on child care than their fathers ever did, and are far less likely to be their family’s sole breadwinner.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts announced his bid for the nomination when his daughter was 6 months old. When asked about his child-care situation, he offered a description of his week with the now 8-month-old, Emmy, that was detailed enough to get a fill-in babysitter up to speed.

“Sometimes I look at Emmy and I think, ‘What is she thinking?’, if she can tell I’m always in and out,” he said. That week, Emmy had been with her grandparents and Moulton in Massachusetts on Monday, with a babysitter on a train from Boston to New York, where her mother was working for a few days, on Tuesday, and back at home by Thursday. “Intellectually, it was the right decision to make. Emotionally, it’s tough.”

In 2016, fathers reported spending an average of eight hours a week on child care — about triple the time they provided in 1965, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. (Though that number remained lower than the 14 hours women reported spending caring for children each week on average in 2016.) Two-thirds of couples with children younger than 18 live in dual-income families, a significant jump from the nearly half who did so in 1970.

The new realities of American family life provide a political opportunity for candidates raising young children, said Swalwell, who has posted video clips of himself changing a diaper on social media, along with fundraising pleas for his White House bid.

“I understand the issues young families are facing because those are the issues that I’m facing,” he said, in an interview.

Swalwell said he tries to spend no more than five consecutive days away from his children. His family relies on his wife’s aunt, who lives with them, and an additional babysitter to help with child care. Like the candidate, his wife also frequently travels for her job. “It’s a day-to-day challenge to make the child care part of it work,” he said. “We just can’t afford to not have both of us work.”

Fathers are far from the only ones talking loudly about the emotional and financial struggles of balancing work and family responsibilities. Sen. Elizabeth Warren frequently tells the story of her 78-year-old Aunt Bee, who moved into her house after her divorce in 1978 to help care for her children, allowing her to keep working as a law professor.

Sen. Kamala Harris has written about the pain of missing her stepdaughter’s high school graduation to question former FBI director James B. Comey at a congressional hearing. And Sen. Amy Klobuchar attributes the start of her political career to getting kicked out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth to her daughter, who was born with a medical condition.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, whose two sons are 15 and 11, has placed the working mom juggle at the center of her pitch to voters, promising to “fight for your children as hard as I would fight for my own.” She has on occasion asked female reporters with young children who are covering the campaign if their husbands work. She understands the logistics challenge: Her husband is staying home in Washington with the children during the presidential campaign, though the entire family plans to spend much of the summer in upstate New York where her campaign is based.

Gillibrand is the only woman in history to run for American president with school-age children, a fact that reflects the reality that women have typically entered politics at a later age than men. Women waited until their kids were grown to run for office, like Hillary Clinton, or, if they did not wait, were urged to tamp down talk of their family lives.

That began to change with the 2018 midterms, when a new crop of younger female candidates publicly embraced their role as mothers, arguing that their family life made them more qualified — not less — for political office.

After many won, they set out changing the culture of Congress, creating an informal “mom caucus” to call for changes like shifting the scheduling of votes earlier to better accommodate child-care needs.

Melissa K. Miller, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University, said the visibility of mothers running for office in the midterms exposed the double standard when it comes to parenting and politics, forcing fathers in the 2020 presidential race to confront the kinds of questions that female candidates have faced for decades.

“For men, that’s really something new to be asked those kinds of questions about their children,” said Miller, who is studying mothers who ran for the House in 2018. “This used to only be a minefield for women. Now it’s a minefield for men, too.”

Already, some have stumbled. In the early days of his campaign, Beto O’Rourke joked about how his wife, Amy, had been caring for their three young children “sometimes with my help.”

His comments prompted a backlash from women who attributed the remarks to a type of parenting privilege that could be enjoyed only by a father, and he later apologized on “The View.”

“Amy has the lion’s share of the burden in this,” O’Rourke said after a campaign event, describing how his wife did a “masterful job” negotiating with their kids to keep up their responsibilities at home while both their parents campaigned in Iowa.

Research shows that the O’Rourke family arrangement is far more typical than a down-the-middle split. While the culture of parenting has changed, women still shoulder a majority of the actual work. Mothers do 65% of child-care labor, said Darcy Lockman, a clinical psychologist and the author of a book on equal parenting.

Being an involved parent can be a political asset for a male politician, making him appear more compassionate and understanding, but it is simply another expectation for a female politician.

“You can be a good dad without knowing your kids have to be at school a half an hour early every Thursday,” Lockman said. “You can’t be a good mom without knowing that. Men don’t realize fully what the burdens of family life are even when they are good fathers,” she added. “They’re blind to what their wives do.”

In previous presidential races, fathers have taken steps to manage the emotional impact of the presidential campaign on family life, like moving their families to Iowa during the campaign or setting aside at least one day a week to be home with family, though perhaps not much of the actual domestic workload. During his first campaign for president, Barack Obama did a decent amount of parenting over the phone, which had its limitations.

“Michelle won’t keep them up just to talk to their father,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president and a family friend, told The New York Times in 2007. “Bedtime is part of their normalcy. It isn’t going to be interrupted because he’s at a fundraiser.”

Rarely, though, did anyone discuss the details of their babysitting, feeding or bath schedules with the candidate. And whether the father-turned-candidate was playing a big enough role back home was simply not a question that anyone at a New Hampshire town hall or a meet-and-greet at an Iowa City brewery ever piped up to ask.

“It’s come up a couple of times,” said Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who said people at campaign events occasionally asked where his kids were and who was watching them. He is planning to bring his children, who are 10 and 4, to the first presidential debate at the end of the month.

Of course, in a historically crowded primary field, at least one candidate has a plan for dealing with those kinds of uniquely electoral parenting challenges.

“We should pool together for child care,” Swalwell joked. “Whoever comes up with the child-care option for the debate nights in Miami, we would pay anything to have that problem solved.”

'Who's taking care of the kids' is finally a question for dads on the trail, too

Rep. Eric Swalwell can rattle off the best places to pump breastmilk in an airport. Julián Castro broke from the campaign trail for the last day of preschool. And Gov. Steve Bullock postponed the announcement of his presidential campaign for a true test of personal endurance — the Advanced Placement exams his 17-year-old daughter had to take.

'Who's taking care of the kids?' is finally a question for dads on the trail, too

Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” O’Rourke said his decision to begin his bid for the Democratic nomination with a glossy photo shoot in Vanity Fair reinforced “the perception of privilege” that has dogged his campaign during its early weeks.

In the Vanity Fair profile, which appeared on the eve of his campaign announcement in March, O’Rourke made his ambition clear. “I want to be in it,” he told the magazine. “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

On Tuesday, O’Rourke sought to qualify that comment. “I have my work cut out for me to be a better person and ensure that I’m more mindful to the experiences that others have had,” he said. “I was attempting to say that I felt that my calling was in public service. No one is born to be president of the United States of America, least of all me.”

O’Rourke’s appearance was part of an effort by the former Texas congressman to reset his campaign, which has struggled to maintain the kind of energy that built a national following for his unsuccessful Senate run last year. Since former Vice President Joe Biden entered the race, O’Rourke’s polling has plummeted into the low single digits both in national surveys and in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Part of his shifting approach involves re-embracing the national media, an admission that this primary is taking place as much on television and social media as it is at the town halls and coffee shop visits that he livestreamed in his Senate campaign and that he assumed would translate in the presidential race. He appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Monday night and has plans to participate in a CNN televised town hall in Iowa this month.

During his appearance on “The View,” O’Rourke boasted about the pace of his campaign, touting the 150 town hall meetings he has attended in 15 states, before noting that perhaps those stops were not enough to get his message out to a national audience.

“I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to find a way to get on ‘The View’ at those town hall meetings,” he said.

O’Rourke has taken other steps to professionalize his operation. He has been boning up on policy before the first Democratic debate in June. Last month, he released his first policy plan, a $5 trillion proposal to combat climate change. On Monday, O’Rourke held his first major fundraiser of the campaign, appearing with supporters in New York City. The event was livestreamed, like all of his campaign events.

His campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, moved to his El Paso headquarters this month and has installed Jeff Berman to run O’Rourke’s delegate strategy. Both O’Malley Dillon and Berman are veterans of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns.

Two of the top advisers who worked on the staff of O’Rourke’s relatively small Senate campaign, Becky Bond and her deputy, Zack Malitz, left his presidential operation last month.

O’Rourke played down the changes to his operation, telling reporters in New Hampshire last week that he was simply building out a bigger team, rather than completely revamping the style of his Texas campaign.

“Nothing about the fundamentals of this, or my approach, or who I am has changed,” he said.

Some voters, however, see it differently. After listening to O’Rourke address two dozen supporters in a living room in Hooksett, New Hampshire, Sam Pepin, 21, said he had noticed a shift since the Senate race.

“As he’s been speechifying all over the universe, I noticed he’s gotten more practiced,” said Pepin, a recent college graduate. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it just seems a little bit less, ‘This is what I’m thinking in my head’ and more, ‘This is what my advisers are telling me to say.’”

This article originally appeared in <a id="0415a014-0739-3095-a5e9-53d167c52004" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/politics/beto-privilege.html">The New York Times</a>.

Beto O'Rourke Says Vanity Fair Cover Reinforced 'Perception of Privilege'

WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke attempted to revive his flagging presidential campaign Tuesday, saying his failure to acknowledge the advantages of running for president as a white man who has led a life of relative privilege was a mistake.

Beto O'Rourke says Vanity Fair cover reinforced 'perception of privilege'

What O’Rourke did not do, however, was steadily deliver a crisp, focused performance that generated excitement among voters. In response to their questions, he often seemed to be thinking out loud, in search of clear answers. His policy specifics came too rarely for some audiences. And his decision to avoid national television audiences — whether because of strategy or comfort — meant that many more people were not even hearing him.

Now, as he builds his campaign operation in El Paso, he has been working to sharpen his answers, receiving regular briefings and boning up on policy details as he seeks to raise his television profile and prepares for the first primary debate next month, according to people close to his campaign.

“I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to find a way to get on ‘The View’ at those town hall meetings,” O’Rourke said in a Tuesday appearance on “The View.” “I want to make sure that I have a chance to answer your questions here today so they can see who I am.”

O’Rourke’s appearance was part of an effort to rejuvenate his candidacy, which has struggled to maintain the kind of energy that built a national following for his unsuccessful Senate run last year. After entering the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as a political celebrity, O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, has watched as his press entourage shrank, the spotlight faded and his poll numbers fell into the low single digits.

In ways subtle and obvious, O’Rourke is now trying a new approach, a tacit admission that the shoestring style he deployed in his star-making Senate run in Texas may not hold up to the demands of a crowded presidential race.

While O’Rourke used to start his responses by diagnosing the problem, he now opens with crisp solutions. He grudgingly agreed to participate in national cable television town halls and big-dollar fundraisers, events that take time away from the retail campaigning he most enjoys. And he may even hire a pollster, some of his allies say, a role he frequently boasted that he refused to fill during his Texas campaign out of fear that it would compromise the authenticity of his message.

Some of those efforts were on display in back-to-back media appearances this week, intended to help O’Rourke deal with baggage that has trailed his campaign: the idea that he failed to recognize the advantages he enjoyed as a white man who has led a life of relative privilege.

In a Vanity Fair profile that appeared on the eve of his campaign announcement in March, O’Rourke made his ambition clear. “I want to be in it,” he told the magazine. “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

But in his appearance on “The View” on Tuesday, O’Rourke said the magazine profile had reinforced “the perception of privilege” surrounding his campaign.

“I have my work cut out for me to be a better person and ensure that I’m more mindful to the experiences that others have had,” he said. “I was attempting to say that I felt that my calling was in public service. No one is born to be president of the United States of America, least of all me.”

He also acknowledged that he had made “ham-handed” statements about his wife, Amy O’Rourke, like when he joked that she was raising their children, “sometimes with my help.” He recounted that his wife had offered some gentle criticism, telling him that his comments “sounded flip.”

The discussion on “The View” followed an appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Monday night. O’Rourke also has plans to participate in a CNN televised town hall in Iowa this month.

After he raised $6.1 million online during his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, O’Rourke’s fundraising has sagged, leading him to embrace the power of both cable news and big donors. His appearance with Maddow brought in $50,000 in contributions, according to people close to the campaign.

Though O’Rourke initially said he had no plans to hold fundraisers, he hosted his first event on Monday evening in New York. Ticket prices started at $250 and hosts were asked to raise $2,500. Supporters are planning additional fundraisers in Texas and Chicago in the coming weeks.

“He’s very good at growing his base, and his base is very good at giving him money,” said Eliot Shapleigh, a former Texas state senator.

O’Rourke and his advisers have stressed in conversations with donors that they have been focused on building an aggressive field operation in the early primary states. If O’Rourke has had a relatively muted presence in the news media, they argue that his efforts on the ground have been underestimated.

Last month, O’Rourke’s campaign announced a 16-person Iowa staff, including a state director who is a former executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party. In New Hampshire, he has tapped strategists who helped Rep. Chris Pappas navigate an 11-person primary.

But O’Rourke has plenty of competition in the ground game, from the volunteer army Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., built in 2016 to the muscular teams already deploying in Iowa for candidates like Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

O’Rourke has taken other steps to professionalize his operation. Last month, he released his first policy plan, a $5 trillion proposal to combat climate change. In the coming weeks, the campaign is expected to release policies tackling health care and income inequality, some allies say.

That policy focus has seeped into his campaign events, where O’Rourke offers more specific proposals in response to questions on issues like climate change and health care. He has stopped jumping atop counters and chairs at events, gestures that inspired gentle ribbing, and has scaled back livestreaming everything on social media.

The man who could be his general election rival, President Donald Trump, took a less-than-charitable view of the changes to O’Rourke’s strategy.

“Beto’s falling fast,” the president told a crowd in Louisiana on Tuesday. “What happened to him? But he’s tried to restart his campaign. That generally doesn’t work out too well.”

Refitting Texas Campaign for a Bigger, Bruising Run

WASHINGTON — For the first eight weeks of his presidential bid, Beto O’Rourke did what a presidential candidate is expected to do: He campaigned. Driving more than 6,150 miles across 14 states, as logged by his campaign, he held more than 152 town hall meetings and visited 32 college campuses, answering more than 1,000 questions.

Refitting Texas campaign for a bigger, bruising run

Appearing on Fox News on Wednesday evening for a town hall event in Milwaukee, Klobuchar described herself as “Heartland Amy,” an experienced pragmatist who could win over independent voters and, if elected, work with Republicans to break the gridlock in Washington.

But when asked whether the Democratic Party’s liberal wing should support her candidacy, Klobuchar insisted it should — while offering, perhaps, a subtle dig at some of the more far-reaching policies being backed by her rivals on the left.

“Progressives should support me,” she said. “The last time I checked, if you want to be a progressive and support progressives then you’re supposed to make progress.”

While she is hardly a conservative, Klobuchar has distinguished herself in the campaign by breaking from the new liberal orthodoxy that has dominated the primary.

She does not favor a “Medicare for All” health care system, preferring a more graduated approach; she has called the Green New Deal “aspirational”; and she has said the country cannot afford to fund free tuition for students at public colleges and universities. During her Fox News appearance, Klobuchar said she backed legal marijuana but unlike many of her rivals would leave the decision to states rather than endorsing federal legalization.

When asked about Attorney General William Barr, Klobuchar backed the recommendation by the House Judiciary Committee to hold him in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Robert Mueller’s unredacted report about whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to undermine the 2016 presidential election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice. She declined to answer whether Barr should face jail time.

“He should come before the House,” she said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of pushback and subpoenas, and I think that this administration has to take this seriously. They have to answer the people’s call.”

For Klobuchar, the event was an opportunity to reach a broader audience and build support beyond the Democratic base. Since she started her campaign in February, Klobuchar has struggled to break 5 percent in polling of early primary states. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s entrance into the race further complicates her path, as he travels the country offering a similar appeal — that he could win back the Rust Belt voters who cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election.

Klobuchar said there was plenty of time for her to build support and dismissed concerns raised by some Democratic voters that electing a female nominee would be too risky in a general election.

“This is going to be a long campaign and we’re all going to be able to make our cases,” she said, adding, “May the best woman win, that’s what I think.”

Several Democratic candidates have agreed to appear on Fox News, even as the Democratic National Committee refused to allow the network to host an officially sanctioned debate.

Nearly 2.6 million viewers tuned in for a Fox News town hall last month with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, making it the highest-rated television appearance of the election cycle. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, will appear on the network this month at a televised town hall in Claremont, New Hampshire. Former housing secretary Julián Castro and Reps. Eric Swalwell of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio have also indicated that they are open to working with Fox News.

This article originally appeared in <a id="a56c2b90-65c6-357e-a4f2-14c2e0d58f6d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/klobuchar-town-hall.html">The New York Times</a>.

On Fox News, Amy Klobuchar makes her case to the left and the right

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., defended her presidential candidacy as one that could appeal to both moderate and liberal voters, calling herself a “proven progressive” and casting her record as one of bipartisan accomplishment.

Even so, the opening days of Joe Biden’s third presidential campaign are giving some Democrats flashbacks to another presidential front-runner: Hillary Clinton.

Biden’s first fundraiser? Hosted by a Philadelphia-area donor who did the same for Clinton four years ago. His early policies? Embraced by Democrats, including Clinton, for years. A decadeslong record in Washington? Clinton had a similarly lengthy resume. And a tortured, drawn-out apology as the first controversy of his campaign? Remember her private email account, former Clinton aides shudder.

As he ramps up his presidential campaign, Biden appears to have taken some lessons from Clinton’s defeat — but paid no heed to others. Even as he structures his campaign around an implicit critique of her general election effort, offering a full-throated appeal to working-class voters at his opening event in a Pittsburgh union hall, Biden has embraced the kind of incumbent-like, establishment campaign that left Clinton open to a fierce primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Like her, he touts his decades of government experience, intimate knowledge of world leaders and close relationship with former President Barack Obama.

But unlike Clinton, who faced attacks from just one opponent, Biden is running against a historically large and diverse field of candidates, some of whom have already spent months scrutinizing parts of his long political record.

“It’s a very different moment,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a progressive civil rights advocacy group that has consulted with 2020 candidates. “At the end of the day, Hillary was a historic figure and Biden will have to explain, in a moment when there are many historic figures running, why him?”

Since Clinton’s loss, Biden has criticized her campaign for failing to sufficiently address the economic concerns faced by working-class voters and focusing too heavily on Donald Trump. Now, in his own stump speech, Biden has adopted a version of her general election rhetoric in his primary campaign, centering his effort on a moral call for returning to the values of a pre-Trump America.

“Everybody knows who Donald Trump is, but we’ve got to let him know who we are,” Biden told a crowd of voters gathered at a brewery in Iowa City. “We’ve got to start by making it clear we choose hope over fear, we choose unity over division.”

Some former Clinton aides say that after two years of Trump’s administration, voters may now find a character argument more compelling.

“Normally, in a Democratic primary, going back to the way it was is not the kind of forward-looking message that will win primaries, but this time could be different,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s campaign communications director. “There are people who want to put a lot of faith in the idea that Biden is like a tonic that can wash away the Trump years.”

Biden’s allies say the fervent Democratic desire to defeat Trump will prompt primary voters to overlook any issues they may have with Biden’s age or previous positions.

“No. 1 is who can beat Trump,” said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s former chief of staff in the Senate and his appointed successor as senator after the 2008 election. “That will be the determining issue when we actually start voting.”

The Clintonian echoes began before Biden even kicked off his campaign, with his drawn-out apology to Anita Hill for how she was treated during the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings over the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas. It’s an issue he’s been publicly expressing regret over since 2017.

After several interviews, Biden settled on some phrasing: “I take responsibility,” a sentence that echoed the words Clinton landed on after months of declining to apologize for her use of a private email system while she was secretary of state.

Biden’s entrance into the race prompted a fight with Trump over age and energy levels, a dust-up that recalled the president’s attacks on Clinton’s “stamina.” A conservative news aggregator later spliced together clips from Biden’s first campaign appearance where he appeared to slur his words and posted a video on YouTube with the title “Old Man Joe.”

A link to the video on the Drudge Report sent shivers down the spines of some Democrats, who recalled the steady drumbeat of conservative attacks on Clinton’s health. So did calls by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the business activities of Biden’s son, Hunter, during the Obama administration.

Supporters say Biden, who frequently highlights his working-class background, has a far deeper connection with voters than Clinton, whose struggles to connect left her vulnerable to Trump’s attacks.

“He’s running the way he’s run for 40-some years and that is focusing on the middle class,” said Kaufman. “That is the way he views himself and the people he identifies with.”

His gender may also help Biden appear more relatable than Clinton: Research has found that it is much harder for female candidates to be rated as “likable” than it is for male candidates — and that they are disproportionately punished for traits like ambition that voters accept in male politicians.

“He’s a strong candidate in support of the little guy,” said Dan Buser, 56, a lieutenant in the Iowa City Fire Department. “You didn’t know what to believe there at the end with Hillary Clinton.”

Biden and his supporters haven’t exactly been shy about calling out what they see as the failings of Clinton’s campaign.

Lisa Lerer

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