It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

THE POLITICAL FAULT LINES OF THE GAZA PROTESTS
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

We have written about the complexity of the Middle East from a policy perspective. Now we want to highlight the potential political implications inside the United States as anti-war protests erupt on college campuses ([link removed]) .

Here are five ways campus protests could have a larger effect on U.S. politics.

The youth vote and Biden

Young voters are a key piece of the Democratic base. Some two-thirds of voters under 30 ([link removed]) backed Barack Obama in 2008. Seven in 10 voters under 30 backed Democratic candidates in 2022 ([link removed]) , according to Pew Research Center, support that helped Democrats regain the upper hand in the Senate that year. But Biden is losing support ([link removed]) among voters aged 18 to 29, according to a Harvard Youth Poll ([link removed]) released earlier this month. And his policy is at odds with young protesters’ demands.

(Non-Trump) Republicans seeking purpose

Speaker Mike Johnson has so far survived in the job ([link removed]) . But to keep a House majority, he and his fellow House Republicans need to tell voters not just what they oppose (Biden/Democrats) but what they stand for.

Enter this issue.

Today, the speaker announced that he has directed all major House committees to investigate antisemitism ([link removed]) , pointing to campus protests and places where Jewish students have been threatened and warned to stay away from campuses. Johnson’s trip to Columbia University last week did not succeed ([link removed]) in setting up the image he wants: Conservatives defying what they see as “out-of-control” and “dangerous” liberals. But he is now ramping up efforts.

Trump, and a possible page from Ronald Reagan

Trump is facing felony changes ([link removed]) for trying to overthrow the U.S. government and condone the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has campaigned on being a “disrupter” but he also is expert at presenting the image of a strong leader who will quell chaos. Campus unrest has been a conservative springboard since Ronald Reagan used protests at the University of California, Berkeley to galvanize his campaign for governor — something some conservatives are pointing to ([link removed]) at this moment.

The media

Protesters have pointed to how they’ve been covered by media outlets, urging American journalists to shift their coverage.

“Western media has a responsibility to report the truth, to report what is happening on the ground,” protester Miranda Dube told me outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this past weekend. She added that she wants more transparency about Biden’s policies, and feels that he’s sending billions of dollars to the Israeli government.

It goes without saying that the media is both influential and also in the center of many political bullseyes right now. A focus on the media on this issue could have a wide range of effects, from improving coverage to raising hostility toward journalists who already face unprecedented political backlash.

The mood of the country

There are many people, paid large sums of money, to analyze what motivates American voters in election years. But it does not take much expertise to recognize that the mood of the country is a key predictor of whether an incumbent president stays or goes.

Despite many positive economic indicators, we know Americans are uneasy ([link removed]) . (Inflation being an indicator that is still an issue.) And angry protests, especially unresolved protests, do not add to a sense that the country is in good shape.
More on the war on Gaza from our coverage:
* Watch: Fraught negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release continue nearly seven months into the war in Gaza ([link removed]) .
* One Big Question: Should President Joe Biden be more concerned about the ongoing anti-war protests on college campuses? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss ([link removed]) .
* A Closer Look: The challenge colleges face with student demands for Israeli divestment ([link removed]) .
* Perspectives: How college protests against war in Gaza compare to demonstrations of the past ([link removed]) .

WHY U.S. ELECTIONS ARE SO LONG
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Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
By Kenichi Serino, @KenichiSerino ([link removed])
Deputy News Editor, Digital

President Joe Biden has now been campaigning for reelection for a year, and former President Donald Trump has been running at least since he announced his new presidential campaign shortly after the 2022 midterms.

Election Day, Nov. 5, is still more than six months away. Most Americans say the recent presidential campaigns have not focused on the right issues and have “lasted too long,” ([link removed]) according to a 2023 poll by Pew Research Center survey.

It can feel like U.S. presidential election cycles stretch on forever, but are they actually longer than other countries?

You can measure that in a few ways.

The calendar. While it’s difficult to compare the length of campaigns between democracies, some do have short, official election periods:
* Great Britain’s campaign lasts 25 days ([link removed]) .
* Mexico’s election season formally began March 1 ([link removed]) and will end three months later (Though there can be a lengthy period of lobbying parties and stakeholders to get a party nomination, political consultant Salvador Vázquez del Mercado told us.)
* Trump, in contrast, announced his second run for the White House a week after the 2022 midterms, about 720 days — just shy of two years — before the 2024 presidential election.

The fundraising factor. Official announcements are the start of public campaigns. But when you think about a U.S. presidential campaign, there’s also a set of “sub-campaigns,” said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University.

“There's the public campaign where you seek votes,” he said, “but any candidate is also going to engage in a fundraising campaign where they're raising money, they're going to try to campaign for support of party leaders and activists, and also, frankly, the support of journalists to get as favorable coverage as possible.”

Was it always this way? Geer said that in the early 19th century, travel made it difficult to campaign across the country and so local surrogates were more important. For President William McKinley, that meant running a “front-porch campaign” ([link removed]) in 1896. As in, he sat on his front porch in Ohio and let surrogates speak for him, Geer said.

The main goal was getting the approval of party elites. Primaries were not as important, he added.

That began to change after World War II, most notoriously at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey was controversially selected as the nominee ([link removed]) although he did not compete in the primaries and won a minority of the delegates.

Presidential campaigns since then have included lengthy primary campaigns that play out in public, rather than behind closed doors, Geer said.

Election load. The omnipresence of campaigning isn’t only connected to the length of election seasons. It’s also due to the sheer volume of elections, said Pippa Norris, a Yale comparative politics lecturer.

This includes House and Senate races, presidential primaries and elections, as well as state and local offices, and ballot measures.

“In many countries the norm is that general elections are held every four years — sometimes longer, occasionally less,” she said. “But the frequency of elections in the U.S. is excessive, leading to constant campaigning and fundraising rather than governing, and exhaustion and low turnout among voters.”

This has led to something experts call “the permanent campaign,” ([link removed]) where elected officials never stop thinking about the next election, including during time that might have been devoted to governance.

This casts everything in terms of the short-term win, said Darren Lilleker, Bournemouth University professor of political communication.

“Where does long-term planning come in, say, for things like the greener economy for those who think it's a good idea?” he said. “That can’t happen overnight.”

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

Beyond the U.S. presidential race, 2024 will be a record-breaking ([link removed]) year for elections ([link removed]) .

About half of the world’s population, more than 4 billion people, are expected to go to the polls this year for national and local races, in countries with varying degrees of free and fair elections — if at all.

The first election of the year occurred in Bangladesh in early January. The following month, Indonesia held the world's biggest single-day election. And India, considered the world’s largest democracy, started its six-week election ([link removed]) earlier this month.

Our question: Which continent will hold the most elections this historic year?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Who was the only person to serve both as House speaker and U.S. president?

The answer: James Polk ([link removed]) . Before he became the 11th U.S. president, Polk served four years as speaker of the House, from 1835 to 1839.

Congratulations to our winners: Brenda Radford and Susan Springer!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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