Politics
Biden or not, Democrats face critical choices in squabble over presidential ticket
Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who worked for the Democratic National Committee and both Obama campaigns, wishes the party’s leaders would shut up about President Biden’s poll numbers.
“There’s too much talk about polling right now,” Belcher said. “As a pollster, it’s driving me out of my … mind that people are trying to drive whatever narrative they want by using polling.”
In recent days, Biden has faced mounting calls to drop out of the race from members of his own party. Many have pointed to worsening poll numbers for the 81-year-old incumbent since a disastrous debate performance last month. Some fear that questions about the president’s mental acuity will doom down-ballot candidates too.
But with Biden repeatedly insisting that he is not stepping aside, Belcher said, Democrats harping on his slipping support were hurting, not helping, their cause.
Cornell Belcher, president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies and senior fellow in Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, appears on “Meet the Press” on Oct. 23, 2022.
(William B. Plowman / Getty Images)
“Over the last three weeks, Democrats have done more damage to our ability to win in November than what Donald Trump and Republicans have been able to do,” Belcher said. “They have to stop [the] circular firing squad that they’re currently in, because it’s a death spiral.”
While calls from Congress members and major donors for Biden to step aside have dominated headlines in recent days, plenty of other Democratic loyalists have stood by the president and dismissed those calls as damaging and dangerous — posing challenging questions for the party.
How much longer should leaders push Biden to go? Will it be possible to refocus voters on the party’s accomplishments and core message — that former President Trump represents an existential threat to democracy? Is Vice President Kamala Harris a better candidate? Or anyone else?
Perhaps most important: What is the party’s plan for right now?
“That,” said one senior House Democratic aide, “is what we’re all trying to figure out.”
‘A test of how strong the party is’
During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, said Biden was “absolutely” running.
O’Malley Dillon said the campaign is “looking at polling” and acknowledged “some slippage in support” since the debate. But she said it was only “a small movement” in a “hardened” race where many Americans are already decided — meaning many were committed to Biden.
O’Malley Dillon said that internal data from door-knocking and other efforts in battleground states have shown that Biden is still a contender.
Many leading Democrats were making the opposite case.
“Simply put,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José) wrote in a letter to Biden released Friday, “your candidacy is on a trajectory to lose the White House and potentially impact crucial House and Senate races down ballot.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), center, speaks as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its final meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 19, 2022. From left, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
(Jim Lo Scalzo / Associated Press)
Earlier in the week, a polling memo by the Democratic firm BlueLabs Analytics found that alternative candidates outperformed Biden in a theoretical matchup with Trump in battleground states. An Associated Press poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats thought Biden should withdraw.
Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University history professor and author of “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party,” said the divide between Biden loyalists and dissenters presented a unique challenge.
“It’s a test of how strong the party is in many ways,” he said. “And not just how strong it is, but how united it is in believing that defeating Trump is really critical.”
Kazin said there is no doubt Democratic leaders can shift their support to a new candidate. They just need to decide if that’s what they are going to do — and before the party’s convention next month in Chicago.
A contested convention, Kazin said, would be “fraught with lots of perils” — stirring fresh divisions when the party can least afford them.
“They have to have a successful convention, one way or the other,” Kazin said. “Otherwise, they’re doomed.”
If it’s Biden
Whether Biden will drop out of the race is ultimately up to one person: Joe Biden. And if he stays the course, party officials would have no choice but to get on board, political analysts said.
Kerry L. Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, said a Biden win in November will require all of the dissenters to swiftly offer “a full-throated endorsement of the campaign,” and then to “work in lockstep” to turn out the vote and reframe the race once more as a choice between “competent, honest Joe” and a dangerous Donald Trump.
Democrats will have to articulate well the idea that Biden “has lost a step” with age, but is “still capable, he’s still doing the job,” Haynie said.
President Biden speaks at the 115th NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Democrats at the highest levels are making a critical push for Biden to reconsider his election bid. Former President Obama has privately expressed concerns to Democrats about Biden’s candidacy.
(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)
Democratic leaders also could emphasize that voting for Biden ensures a Democratic administration — one that will protect access to abortion, take a humane stance on immigration, appoint liberal judges and defend organized labor, LGBTQ+ people and other groups.
But Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, said Democrats have to be careful with that message given today’s political atmosphere and distrust in bureaucrats.
“There are some people who hear that and they think ‘deep state,’” she said. “It is compelling to some, but it is repelling to others.”
Belcher, the pollster, said that if poor poll numbers this early in a race were an acceptable reason for ousting a candidate, “most of the greatest candidates in history” would never have been elected — including the Black one-term senator “with a Muslim-sounding name” he once worked for.
Democrats need to drive home the idea that Biden has made people’s lives better in regular ways, he said. They have to contrast Biden’s plan with Project 2025, the ultraconservative playbook devised for Trump’s second term by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, he said, and “lean back into America’s fear and anxiety about the chaos and dangers of four more years of Donald Trump.”
Most of all, Belcher said, Democrats need to get behind Biden as surrogates and champion his campaign message in as many places as possible.
“The best arguments for Biden that I have heard in the last two weeks haven’t been from anyone on CNN or MSNBC,” Belcher said. “It’s been on TikTok and Instagram, from people doing it in their cars.”
If Biden steps aside
If Biden steps aside, the party could coalesce around another candidate, or hold a contested convention where candidates vie for delegates.
Several experts said early, unwavering support for Harris was clearly the best option.
Gillespie said if Harris were “somehow overlooked” without convincing evidence that her candidacy would fair dramatically worse than another candidate’s, the party would “risk alienating the most loyal Democratic constituency in Black women.”
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to attend the opening of a pop-up ice cream shop owned by Tyra Banks, left, in Washington, on Friday.
(Nathan Howard / Associated Press)
Haynie said Harris would bring new energy and important strengths to the ticket as a younger woman of color who has already been leading the Biden campaign’s message on abortion rights, and as the daughter of immigrants, given Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
But she also would have to defend the Biden administration’s record even as party insiders try to pull her in new policy directions, including on U.S. support of Israel in its war with Hamas. She would have to rebuff legitimate criticisms about her clumsy 2020 presidential campaign and how she’s performed as vice president.
Harris also would face racist, sexist challenges that other candidates, especially white men, would not.
“She is going to face unique challenges as a woman of color in terms of the tenor of the attacks,” Gillespie said. “She is going to have to be able to anticipate those attacks, and have a ready response to them.”
Amy K. Dacey, executive director of the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics at American University, was formerly CEO of the Democratic National Committee, and before that of Emily’s List, a national group that works to elect Democratic women.
Dacey said that despite Harris’s hurdles, she is a known entity to voters who has been tested on the national stage — unlike some other names that have been floated for the ticket.
Dacey said the party process is playing out as intended, and Democrats still have time to land on a final ticket. But the sooner they can do that — and refocus the race on policies over people — the better.
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Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, accusing federal health officials of illegally withholding $243 million in Medicaid payments from the state.
Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Minnesota Department of Human Services sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), arguing the funding freeze violates federal law.
The state is seeking a temporary restraining order to immediately block the action.
The dispute stems from a January notice in which the Trump administration said it would withhold more than $2 billion annually from Minnesota’s Medicaid program over what it described as “noncompliance” with federal regulations, specifically, alleged failures to “adequately identify, prevent, and address fraud in its Medicaid program.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. (Tom Brenner/AP)
State officials say they have not been told specifically how Minnesota is out of compliance or what changes the administration wants to see.
The lawsuit follows a Feb. 25 announcement from CMS that it was deferring roughly $260 million in quarterly federal Medicaid funding to Minnesota, including about $243 million tied to “unsupported or potentially fraudulent” claims.
CMS said the deferral is part of a broader fraud crackdown and cited unusually high spending and rapid growth in personal care services, home- and community-based services, and other practitioner services.
HEAVILY-REDACTED AUDIT FINDS MINNESOTA MEDICAID HAD WIDESPREAD VULNERABILITIES
Vice President JD Vance looks on as Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz speaks about combating fraud at the White House complex in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25, 2026. (Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images)
“For decades, Medicare fraud has drained billions from American taxpayers — that ends now,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “We are replacing the old ‘pay and chase’ model with a real-time ‘detect and deploy’ strategy, using advanced AI tools to identify fraud instantly and stop improper payments before they go out the door.”
Minnesota officials contend the move improperly uses a funding “deferral” mechanism and amounts to denying the state due process before any formal finding of noncompliance.
WALZ SLAMS TRUMP ADMIN FOR TEMPORARILY HALTING MEDICAID FUNDING TO MINNESOTA: ‘CAMPAIGN OF RETRIBUTION’
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The threatened cuts represent about 7% of Minnesota’s quarterly Medicaid funding and could force reductions in health care services for low-income residents, according to Ellison’s office.
“Trump’s M.O. is to cut first, no matter what the law says or who gets hurt, and ask questions later, if at all,” the attorney general said. “These cuts are the latest in a long series of efforts to go around the law to punish Minnesotans — but just as we fought back and won when they illegally tried to cut funding for childcare, hungry families, and our schools, we are suing them again today to make them follow the law.”
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Politics
Fearing GOP win, California’s Democratic leader urges unviable party candidates for governor to drop out
Fearing the prospect of a Republican winning California’s gubernatorial race, state Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks on Tuesday urged his party’s candidates who lack a viable path to victory to drop out.
“It is imperative that every candidate honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign,” Hicks wrote in an open letter to the politicians vying to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. “I recognize my suggestions are hard for many to contemplate and may be even viewed as overly harsh by some.”
Hicks did not name the Democrats he wants out of the race, but such a public admonishment by a party leader is a rarity in California politics.
Even though the odds are relatively low, California cannot risk having a Republican elected as the next governor at a time when President Trump is in the White House, Hicks said.
“[S]o much is at stake in our Nation and so many are counting on the leadership of California Democrats to stand up and speak out at this historic moment,” Hicks wrote. “California’s leadership on the world stage is significantly harder if a Democrat is not elected as our next Governor.”
Hicks urged Democrats languishing at the bottom of the field of candidates to drop out before the Friday deadline to officially file to run for governor — to ensure their names do not appear on the June primary ballot.
Under California’s top-two primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
With nine top Democrats running, the fear is that the candidates will splinter their party’s vote and allow the top two Republicans in the race to finish in first and second place. This is despite Democratic registered voters outnumbering Republicans in the state by almost 2 to 1, and no GOP candidate winning a statewide election since 2006.
Having two Republicans competing in the November election would be devastating to Democratic voter turnout and could hurt party candidates in pivotal down-ballot races.
“The result would present a real risk to winning the congressional seats required and imperil Democrats’ chances to retake the House, cut Donald Trump’s term in half, and spare our Nation from the pain many have endured since January 2025,” Hicks said in his letter. “We simply can’t let that happen.”
A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that five candidates lead the contest — former Rep. Katie Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell and hedge fund founder Tom Steyer among Democrats and conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, both Republicans. Hilton and Bianco have led all candidates in other polls over the last few months. No other candidate received the support of more than 5% of likely voters.
After Hicks issued his directive, two influential leaders in California Democratic politics said they shared his concerns.
Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said she worries that Democratic candidates who are drawing low single-digit support in the polls and remain in the race could tilt the election.
“You’re in a situation where a candidate who pulls 2 or 3% could make all the difference whether there’s two Republicans and anti-union folks in the runoff or if there’s not,” she said.
Gonzalez said that while she believes the legislature, where Democrats hold super majorities in both chambers, would be a check if a Republican was elected the state’s leader, that might not be enough protect Californians from Trump’s destructive policies.
“We are seeing with Trump how much damage an executive who wants to ignore normal rules of engagement or the Constitution can do,” she said. “We can’t afford that.”
The federation began its endorsement process last week, and there were difficult conversations with gubernatorial candidates not only about their political beliefs, but also about their viability. The umbrella group of unions is expected to make an announcement about any potential endorsement on March 16.
Jodi Hicks, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said it was imperative to block the “real possibility” of two Republicans advancing to the general election because of the deep cuts that the Trump administration has made to health care, including access to abortion.
“Given the severity of this moment, we urge candidates to consider how continuing their candidacy may put California’s values and reproductive freedom at risk,” Jodi Hicks said. “The stakes are too high for all of us, but especially for immigrant communities, transgender individuals, the over 15 million patients enrolled in Medi-Cal, and the over 25,000 patients a week who access essential health care at Planned Parenthood health centers.”
Discussions about the need for some Democrats to exit the race took place at last weekend’s California Democratic Party convention.
But a politically thorny issue is that nearly all of the Democrats lagging in the polls are people of color, as former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra noted at a candidate forum Monday evening.
“There are people who are calling for candidates to get out of the race,” he said at the gathering hosted by Equality California and the Los Angeles LGBT Center at the Renberg Theatre in Hollywood. “Isn’t it interesting that the candidates they are asking get out of the race are the candidates of color?”
Rusty Hicks, asked about the effect on minority candidates who have spent years or decades of their lives in public service, did not directly answer the question but lauded the field’s accomplishments.
“We have a number of strong candidates. They have incredible stories, and they are reflective of the diversity of our party. That being said, there are some political realities of where we are at at this particular moment,” he said in an interview. “I’m not calling on any specific candidates to move in one direction or the other. I’m just calling on them to assess their campaign and determine if they have a viable [path] and if they don’t, to not file.”
During Monday evening’s gubernatorial forum, Porter said she is concerned about the prospect of two Republicans making the top two.
“I hear people say to me, it could never happen, but everybody said that about Trump too,” she said at the forum. “And I look at how much harm we’re suffering, and I think about all the political risks that people are facing every day, the risk of an immigrant to leave their home and walk on our streets, the risk of a kid who’s trans to try to play sports even in this state. And I just don’t think we can take any more political risks.”
Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.
Since moving back in, President Trump has significantly altered the “People’s House.” East Wing: gone. Oval Office: maximalized. Rose Garden: Mar-a-lago-ified. And the art? Lots of Trump.
Over the last year, The New York Times has captured at least nine paintings, posters, memes, and even a mugshot outside the Oval Office, that Mr. Trump added throughout the historic space.
Many of the selections are gifts from his supporters that highlight his political stature and reinforce the idea that Mr. Trump is invincible.
All presidents or first ladies add to and shuffle the art in the White House.
Barack Obama brought in abstract paintings.
George W. Bush decorated with images from his Texas roots.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, Melania Trump added a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi to the Rose Garden.
But never before has a sitting president displayed so much of his own image on the White House walls.
There is an “assertion of symbolic power that he wants to be on view essentially everywhere in that space,” said Cara Finnegan, a communication professor at the University of Illinois and author of “Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital.”
Even outside his current residence, Mr. Trump’s visage has proliferated in unexpected places — on banners hanging from government buildings, on National Parks passes and on social media, where he has been likened to a king. There has also been talk of a U.S. Treasury-minted coin with Mr. Trump on both sides.
Break with tradition
In recent decades, each president’s official White House portrait has been unveiled in a ceremony hosted by his successor.
The Carters hosted the Fords:
The Clintons hosted the Bushes:
And the Bushes hosted the Clintons:
The mood has often been lighthearted, with political party tensions melting away.
“I am pleased that my portrait brings an interesting symmetry to the White House collection,” George W. Bush joked in a ceremony hosted by the Obamas. “It now starts and ends with a George W.”
In a break with tradition, Mr. Trump did not schedule a ceremony for the unveiling of the Obamas’ portraits during his first term. Joe Biden later did, in a ceremony with a “Welcome Home!” vibe.
Typically, the latest available presidential portrait — often a realistic oil painting — hangs in the main entrance hall, where heads of state are welcomed.
The Obama portrait was in the spot until April …
… when Mr. Trump replaced it with this painting by Marc Lipp, a Florida pop artist, last April.
It depicts a striking moment in 2024 when a bloodied Mr. Trump pumped his fist in defiance, soon after being shot at by a would-be assassin during a campaign event.
Presidential historians have criticized the departure from convention.
Though Mr. Trump had a portrait commissioned for the Smithsonian’s American Presidents collection after his first term, none was confirmed for the permanent White House collection, and the White House said that this is where that portrait would have hung.
It is not totally unprecedented for a president to hang a painting of himself in the White House during his term. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland all did, according to the White House Historical Association. But more often than not, paintings of presidents and first ladies are hung after they have left office, historians said.
Flags, fists and faith from fans
In what has become something of a muse for many of the president’s artistic supporters, there are at least three other depictions of the fist-pumping scene in the White House.
The image “is in people’s garages when I walk around my neighborhood,” said Leslie Hahner, a Texas resident and communication professor at Baylor University, who studies visual political culture. “People love that image.”
Behind the Oval Office, one is in a small room that houses Trump merchandise:
Another was seen in the West Wing next to a “Still Life with Fruit” painting from 1850:
A statue form was spotted in the Oval Office:
The sculptor, Stan Watts, told a Utah TV station last year that he believes the president was saved by God that day. Many of Mr. Trump’s Christian supporters have echoed that sentiment.
At least two works by a self-described “Christian worship artist,” Vanessa Horabuena, are among Mr. Trump’s White House collection. He has called Ms. Horabuena, who often paints live in front of an audience, “one of the greatest artists anywhere in the world.”
In 2022, she painted a portrait of Mr. Trump at a booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference. When he saw it, he asked to meet her, Ms. Horabuena’s representative said. She most recently painted Mr. Trump live at a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-A-Lago.
One of her portraits was spotted in the Cabinet room in January.
It shows Mr. Trump, his eyes closed, in front of a mountain with a small cross on the top:
Ms. Horabuena hand-delivered it to the White House, according to her website.
Her other painting shows the president walking through a phalanx of flags. It was seen hanging prominently in a hallway leading to the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office:
“He’s positioned as this embattled warrior in a lot of these images,” Dr. Hahner said.
Historical figures Mr. Trump adulates are co-stars in some of the art he has chosen.
In an image created by the team of White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump is pictured with William McKinley and Henry Clay, who, like the president, championed the use of tariffs:
Here, Mr. Trump is with two other Republican presidents, Abraham Lincoln (to whom he has compared himself) and Ronald Reagan (whom he is a fan of):
Titled “Great American Patriots,” the piece was painted by Dick Bobnick, an illustrator and Trump supporter from Minnesota. He said he mailed several prints to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but he had no idea his work was on the White House walls until a USA Today reporter called him about it.
“I could hardly believe it,” said Mr. Bobnick. (He said the print is now his best-seller.)
If not in portraits, Mr. Trump’s image is reflected on mirrors that he has added to the White House complex.
Two are in the Oval Office …
… making his image visible from the Resolute Desk.
The mirrors, the portraits and the gilding mimic the look of his properties, like Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.
“Trump is obsessed with his image,” Dr. Hahner said. “And he is so controlling of his image.”
Trump everywhere, all the time
One portrait seen in the White House has become a communication tool between Mr. Trump and his supporters in the real world.
This is his social media profile picture.
It was seen last October hanging between former first ladies Laura Bush and Barbara Bush in the now-demolished East Wing:
The portrait was painted by Lena Ruseva, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, who goes by the name MAGALANGELO. Mr. Trump invited her to his Bedminster golf club in 2022, and she gave it to him as a birthday gift.
“Every time social media or the news quotes the president and I see my artwork alongside it, I feel proud and grateful,” she said.
For a time, the same portrait hung next to Hillary Clinton, his political rival and a former first lady.
Supporters at that time lauded the placement on social media:
This example of a positive feedback loop demonstrates how Mr. Trump has used social media to redefine the presidency and presidential communication. Ms. Ruseva’s portrait was used on social media, hung up in the real world, then photographed and put back on social media by supporters who praised the president.
When Mr. Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, Dr. Hahner said that scholars referred to him as the first “meme president.”
Mr. Trump and his internet fans are used to a meme culture based on irony, and rehashing, repurposing and remixing existing images. The collection of White House artwork — much of it originating from his supporters — sits in an uncanny valley between realism and meme-ism, Dr. Hahner said.
Like memes that multiply, Mr. Trump’s image has been reproduced in other ways, outside the White House.
Last month, a huge banner with Mr. Trump’s face was draped outside the Justice Department headquarters …
Last year, similar signage was strung over the Labor Department building …
… and the Agriculture Department building (this one, alongside Lincoln).
At his request, Mr. Trump’s portrait was recently updated at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery:
Still, Mr. Trump wants more. The White House has suggested that the National Portrait Gallery add a separate section for Trump-related art.
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