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NEWTON, Iowa Democrats had a certain vision for this.

There would be boundless throngs braving the Iowa slush, aghast at the incumbent and roused by his prospective successors. There would be a presidential field that looked like the country. There would be unity, or something like it, burying intraparty squabbles beneath a heap of agreed-upon progressive policies or maybe even articles of impeachment to complete the job early.

And now, well.

From an event space in Newton, where a hand-countable crowd whispered anxieties about Joseph R. Biden Jr., to a union hall in Ottumwa, where the filmmaker Michael Moore filled in for a Washington-bound Bernie Sanders with talk of democratic socialism and Icelandic gender parity, the restless final Iowa days of this endless pre-primary campaign have less resembled a resistance fantasy than a kind of rolling low-grade panic attack for Democrats.

It is an angst both long in coming and amplified by recent events, coaxed by the ghosts of caucuses past and the specter of another unbearable failure, three years and three months after the one they swore they would be prepared to redeem this time.

Impeachment? President Trumps Senate trial has served only to sideline several would-be opponents tethered to the Capitol and overshadow the rest, while the president, buoyed by a likely acquittal, stormed into Iowa on Thursday to savage them all as the totally sick left before an audience that outnumbered any Democrats.

Unity? Supporters of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders have found themselves relitigating the quarrels of 2016, a feud revived by Mrs. Clintons recent assertion that nobody likes Mr. Sanders and exacerbated when a top Sanders surrogate, Representative Rashida Tlaib, joined some Iowans in booing the partys last nominee on Friday night.

And that diverse and talented field? The top remaining Democratic contenders are all white, mostly male and mostly old, encapsulated by Mr. Biden, the former vice president and long-assumed front-runner, who is wrapping up an Iowa campaign premised often on delivering somber addresses to small rooms about the soul of the nation and the relative strength of his swing-state polling. Some allies would consider Monday night a success if, even in defeat, he finishes ahead of Pete Buttigieg, the millennial former mayor of a small city in Indiana.

Theres two ways people get inspired, in my experience, Mr. Biden told voters in Newton during a wandering answer about climate change. One, by really inspirational people like the John Kennedys of the world or the Abraham Lincolns of the world. And others by really lousy leaders.

The lousy leader in this formulation seemed intuitive enough. Less clear was whether Mr. Biden had just conceded that the Democrats on offer were no Kennedys or Lincolns.

Seated in back, David Moseley, 72, said he had traveled to Iowa from Seattle to assess his options in person. He took his place in a gathering heavy on gentle applause and precarious digression as Mr. Biden moved through his remarks with a signature medley of not a joke interjection and Barack and I reminiscences.

We dont have a candidate that fits the entire coalition that we need, Mr. Moseley ruled.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, the play is going great.

Of course, much of the campaign strain has been born of healthy political combat, an ongoing debate over the partys direction and purpose. Mr. Biden and Mr. Buttigieg have argued that a big-tent enterprise requires consensus and restraint. Lets not choose between boldness and unity, Mr. Buttigieg told voters in Ottumwa on Tuesday, suggesting that he was offering both. Lets not choose between the right way to govern and the best way to win.

Mr. Sanders, the leader in recent Iowa polls, and Senator Elizabeth Warren have spoken with more urgency, insisting that the scale of the countrys ills demands significant intervention, a zeal that has informed the electricity of their rallies.

Kickass women win, Ms. Warren said to cheers late Friday evening, thanking her female surrogates after arriving in Des Moines during a break from impeachment duties.

Our campaign, Mr. Sanders thundered in Indianola on Saturday, is the campaign of energy.

In a state with a quadrennial tradition of nebulous energy metrics crowd size, lawn signs, the willingness of volunteers to slog through snow to reach one last door this years contest has been especially difficult to gauge.

There is still conspicuous passion, measured by the odometers of canvassers in Im a Warren Democrat apparel; the BOOT-A-TRUMP shirt at a Buttigieg rally; the blotted tears of a grateful, cane-shuffling Biden supporter after a hug from the candidate. Thats real, the man, Brian Peters, 59, said, nodding firmly.

But where the final Iowa stretch typically monopolizes national media attention and all but guarantees a major boost for successful candidates, recent days have passed under the cloud cover of impeachment and a global health crisis. The states eventual winner, who could generally expect days of momentum-sustaining news coverage, will instead run up against the State of the Union on Tuesday.

It is a fate somewhat difficult to fathom after over a year of Democratic obsession with getting this moment just right, with an all-consuming search for possible party saviors Oprah! Beto! Kamala! and debates so overstuffed that even two nights of 10-candidate forums could not accommodate the full slate.

I have Steve Bullock shirts! said Martha Viner, 71, from Albia, recalling the ill-fated campaign of the Montana governor. Im the only person.

The prospect of a muddled outcome on Monday has only encouraged a yearlong tendency toward punditry among both voters and candidates.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, addressing a group at a bike shop on Saturday in Bettendorf, appeared to set off on a cycling-based electability argument, recalling a trip on wheels once from Minnesota to Wyoming. That just shows you the grit I bring to this stage, she said.

Andrew Yang, the former technology executive, focused his case on a digital data point. Im the only candidate in the field that Donald Trump has not tweeted about, he told reporters at a session hosted by Bloomberg News, because he knows Im better at the internet than he is.

The top contenders have been no more subtle. Ms. Warrens team recently debuted signs reading, UNITE THE PARTY, implying that she is the only candidate who can connect its disparate factions.

And the campaigns of Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders have continued a running dialogue over voter risk tolerance.

This is no time to take a risk, one Biden ad narrated.

This isnt the time to play it safe, Mr. Moore, the filmmaker, advised in Ottumwa, speaking to Sanders supporters alongside two other Vermont celebrities: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, of ice cream fame.

Perhaps most striking, at events across the state last week, was the sense that any Democratic nominee might be left to manage an unwieldy coalition moderates, socialists, Trump-repelled independents.

Asked what it means to be a Democrat in 2020, caucusgoers drifted toward differing, if not always contradictory, definitions.

Looking out for people instead of corporations, said Lauren Strathman, 37, a Sanders supporter from Bloomfield.

Sanity, Mr. Peters, the Biden supporter, said.

It means we need to get out and vote, said Maureen OConnor, 61, from Waterloo, and get Trump the hell out of there.

And as Mr. Moore prepared to leave the union hall he had commanded with Mr. Sanders away in Washington, swaddled in a hoodie and a Hawkeyes baseball cap as Ben and Jerry scooped ice cream for guests, he wondered what a party tent should even look like in these volatile political times.

Democrats might well nominate someone who has long resisted calling himself a member of their tribe. In fact, Mr. Moore hopes they do.

Were going to elect somebody whos not officially a Democrat, he said, smiling a little. The flaps are off the tent.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Waterloo, Iowa, Nick Corasaniti from Bettendorf, and Astead W. Herndon from Urbandale.

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Democrats Had a 2020 Vision. This Isnt Quite What They Expected. - The New York Times

She can actually address things in a way that people can comprehend it, said Mayor Sheldon Neeley of Flint, a Democrat who said the governor was skilled in speaking to voters who had lost faith in government. She can reach and she can touch and she can articulate a message for those individuals to be able to re-engage.

But where liberals described a leader tough enough to not back down to Republican demands, conservatives complained about an unwilling negotiator whose actions as governor have veered to the left of her campaign rhetoric.

Governor Whitmer ran as a moderate who would fix the roads and build bridges, said Tori Sachs, a former aide to Ms. Whitmers Republican predecessor who is now the executive director of Michigan Rising Action, a conservative advocacy group. But so far, Ms. Sachs said, Ms. Whitmers tenure has been defined by failure on the road issue and budget vetoes that she said displayed a level of political vindictiveness unfamiliar in Lansing.

Ms. Whitmers roughly 10-minute rebuttal to the president, to be delivered from East Lansing High School, carries both potential pitfalls and the opportunity to elevate her national profile.

Members of Congress frequently give the responses including Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, who will give a Spanish-language rebuttal to the president on Tuesday. But both parties have at times tapped state-level politicians for the role, which is seen as an annual proving ground for up-and-coming politicians.

Nikki Haley, then the governor of South Carolina, gave the Republican response to President Barack Obamas speech in 2016, a year before she became Mr. Trumps ambassador to the United Nations. Kathleen Sebelius, who once gave the Democratic response to President George W. Bush when she was governor of Kansas, was later named to Mr. Obamas cabinet. And Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia state legislator who narrowly lost the 2018 race for governor, gave the Democratic response last year.

But missteps in the speech can become a punchline for years, as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida learned when he reached for a sip of water during his 2013 response. And Ms. Whitmers speech comes at an especially fraught time, with an election looming, an impeachment trial fresh in mind and a president known for riffing. Ms. Whitmer said she was still considering having different pieces of material prepared for her speech, with the option of adding or subtracting based on what Mr. Trump says.

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Democrats Turn to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan for Trump State of the Union Response - The New York Times

I have chosen not to dignify Trumps parade of lies about health care, his persistent exaggeration, and his personal attacks with my attendance at this years State of the Union Address. His appalling performances each day continue to justify that decision, and I have no doubt tomorrow night will be more of the same even possibly worse," Blumenauer said in a statement.

It will be the third year in a row that Blumenauer, Cohen and Wilson have decided to opt out of attending Trump's State of the Union address.

"I will not be a witness to puffery and prevarication flowing while our Constitution and our laws are disrespectfully and dangerously flouted," Cohen added in a statement Monday.

Wilson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, drew Trump's ire in 2017 after she criticized his handling of a call to a widow of a fallen soldier. Trump tweeted that she was "wacky" and "killing the Democrat Party."

Green, another longtime impeachment proponent who has not attended any of Trump's joint addresses to Congress, told The Hill late last week that he was undecided about whether to go this year. As of Monday evening,he had not made his plans public.

Tuesday won't be the first time that a president delivers a State of the Union address under the shadow of impeachment. Nor will it be the first time that members of the opposition party boycott the State of the Union address over it.

Several GOP lawmakers boycotted Clinton's address that year, arguing that he should have postponed the speech until after the Senate impeachment trial concluded.

One of the House Republicans serving as one of the 13prosecutors in Clinton's impeachment trial, then-Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), was among those who did not attend.

The Senate voted 51-49 on Friday to not call any witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial.

The vote paved the way for an expected Wednesday acquittal on the two articles of impeachment passed by the House in December that accused Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress over his efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents.

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Third House Democrat announces plans to boycott State of the Union | TheHill - The Hill

WASHINGTON Nothing would please President Trump more than to wrap up his impeachment trial with support from a handful of Democrats. He might get his wish.

As the Senate nears a vote on Mr. Trumps fate, possibly as early as Friday, attention has focused on the few moderate Republicans who might break ranks by voting to hear from witnesses or perhaps even to convict. But Democrats have their own list of possible defectors who could vote to acquit.

They are focusing on four Democrats from states won by Mr. Trump: Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Doug Jones of Alabama and Gary Peters of Michigan. Should one or more vote to clear the president on either of the charges he faces, it would hand him a coveted talking point during an election year and deliver a blow to Democrats, who lost two votes in the House when Mr. Trump was impeached in December.

Every one of us knows and if our leadership didnt know, we would tell them that this is an individual decision every senator has got to make, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said in an interview, adding that Democrats closed-door meetings did not include discussions of how members would vote. So I dont know how that plays out, or what the numbers will be.

Mr. Jones suggested Wednesday morning that he was open to acquitting Mr. Trump on one of the charges, obstruction of Congress, though he said the presidents behavior was strengthening the case against him. Mr. Trump is accused of abusing his oath of office and obstructing Congress in connection with his decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine while pressuring that countrys leader to investigate his political rivals, and concealing his conduct from lawmakers.

Im still looking at that very closely, Mr. Jones said, without elaborating. There are some things that trouble me about it. But I will tell you this about the obstruction charge: The more I see the president of the United States attacking witnesses, the stronger that case gets.

Later, after a spate of news articles about him, Mr. Jones backtracked: Dont go putting some damn headline in there, Still open to acquit. Im open to acquit. Im open to convict. I want to hear all the evidence. I want to hear witnesses.

On Thursday night, as the Senate neared the end of its two-day question-and-answer period, Mr. Jones joined with Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema in a query that suggested skepticism of the obstruction charge: Should the House have initiated a formal accommodations process with the Trump White House that might have yielded the documents Democrats sought?

Weve been trying that route for 9 months now, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, replied, adding, What weve seen was there was no desire on the part of the president to reach any accommodation.

Mr. Jones won a special election in 2017 in deeply conservative Alabama after defeating a Republican, Roy S. Moore, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers when he was in his 30s. Now Mr. Jones faces re-election and a crowded Republican primary race that includes Mr. Moore and Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trumps former attorney general.

His voting record is largely with his party he has sided with Mr. Trump only 37 percent of the time, according to the website FiveThirtyEight and he has been vocal in his demand for witnesses, including in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that raised questions about whether his colleagues would commit to finding the whole truth.

But there will be a backlash against Mr. Jones at the ballot box in November if he votes to convict the president, said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

I know that if Im the senator from Alabama and I vote to throw Donald Trump out of office and off the ballot, Mr. Jennings said, my chances drop from whatever they were to zero.

For his part, Mr. Manchin said on Wednesday that he was frustrated with what he called the hypocrisy of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and Mr. McConnell. Both have reversed positions they took in 1999 during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, when Mr. McConnell was for impeachment and Mr. Schumer was against it.

The West Virginia senator has spoken strongly in favor of having witnesses testify. But he has irked fellow Democrats by saying that Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose work for a Ukrainian energy company has been an issue in the trial, might be considered a relevant witness. Asked about that on Wednesday, Mr. Schumer grew testy.

We have had total unity on the issue that will be before us, he said. Its not up to Joe Manchin whether to call Hunter Biden.

Mr. Manchin is hard to predict. At the outset of the administration, Mr. Trump courted him and tried to persuade him to become a Republican. But Mr. Manchin stuck with Democrats in voting against repeal of the Affordable Care Act and against Mr. Trumps tax bill. Then he crossed party lines to become the lone Democratic vote in favor of confirming Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

He has been using his Twitter feed to encourage his constituents to call or email a new address his office has created: impeachment@manchin.senate.gov.

Its not as simple as saying, Its a red state, hes a conservative Democratic senator, therefore hell do X or Y, said Mike Plante, a Democratic strategist in West Virginia. This is history. Its not simply politics.

Ms. Sinemas intentions are even more difficult to determine. She issued a statement at the outset of the trial saying she would treat this process with the gravity and impartiality that our oaths demand and has refused to talk to reporters ever since. She has been virtually silent on social media about impeachment.

But after Mr. Trumps defense team wrapped up its opening statements on Tuesday, Ms. Sinema remained in the Senate chamber for more than 10 minutes, deep in conversation with Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a close ally of Mr. McConnell. On Wednesday, during the question-and-answer portion of the trial, she asked a question that seemed intended to undercut the presidents defense: Why was the aid to Ukraine withheld in secret?

Kyrsten is in an interesting spot because she ran in her campaign as a moderate but also really stayed away from the partisan politics she always referred to what Arizonans want, making it very local, said Mike Noble, a Republican strategist in Arizona. So shes kind of doing this balancing act.

Then there is Mr. Peters, who has cut a low profile in the Senate and at home, which is one reason he faces a tough race. I am in the undecided category, he told reporters in the Capitol. Im going to listen, give it a fair hearing.

Mr. Trump already promotes the Houses vote to impeach him as bipartisan vindication, citing the two Democrats (Representatives Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who has since become a Republican, and Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota) who voted against. The presidents allies caution that he does not expect a repeat in the Senate, though he would be pleased to see it.

While it would be ideal to have a Democrat or two cross over and oppose impeachment like we saw in the House vote, I dont think it matters in the grand scheme of things, said Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Mr. Trump, adding, Most Americans outside of the Beltway have tuned this entire impeachment circus out of their minds.

Mr. Schumer has said he is not counting votes and is instead encouraging each senator to follow his or her conscience. On Thursday, he brushed aside a question about possible Democratic defections, saying he was solely focused on getting the four Republican votes he needed to force the Senate to subpoena witnesses.

Thats where the focus will be, he said. Our caucus is totally united on that issue, which will determine where we go from there.

Democrats do appear largely unified on the question of whether to have witnesses, and they may get some Republican support. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, has said he will vote to have witnesses, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, has said she is very likely to do so.

Mr. Jennings said at least one thing was nearly certain: Trump is going to claim exoneration no matter what.

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Spotlight Falls on Democrats From Trump-Friendly States - The New York Times

Everyones talking about suburban female voters because theyre deciding elections, said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Winning for Women Action Fund, a political group dedicated to electing Republican women. Theyre a coveted demographic in elections, and policies like paid family leave are important to them.

Paid leave, in general, is an easy sell with voters. Families need it 72 percent of mothers and 93 percent of fathers with children at home are in the labor force and a large majority of voters support it. But Americans, like their elected representatives, disagree on the details, particularly how to pay for it.

In the State of the Union, Mr. Trump called paid parental leave for federal workers, a Democratic initiative he signed into law in December, a model for the rest of the country. But it has almost nothing in common with any of the paid leave bills in Congress, including the one he endorsed. The leave for federal workers, which will start in October, is financed by the government, and workers pay nothing (this is similar to companies that voluntarily give employees paid leave).

There is one model of government-run paid leave that has already been successfully adopted in the United States. In eight states and the District of Columbia, paid leave has been financed by a small payroll tax increase, paid by employees and employers. This is also the model that Democrats have proposed for all Americans, in a bill called the Family Act.

The child tax credit is worth up to $2,000 per child. If the Trump-backed bill passed, the average worker with a new child could receive $5,000, and then collect $500 less in child tax credits each year for 10 years. Workers earning less than $11,000 a year, who dont qualify for the full child tax credit, could also get up to $5,000, and pay it back over 15 years.

Under the Democrat-backed Family Act, average workers would pay an additional $120 in annual payroll taxes, according to analysis by Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow on paid leave policy and strategy at New America, a left-leaning policy group. If they took leave, they would receive $9,920 for 12 weeks. Those with income of less than $11,000 a year would receive two-thirds of their pay, roughly $1,840, and their payroll taxes would increase around $22 a year, according to the analysis.

So far, the Family Act has minimal Republican support, and the deal breaker is the tax increase. A payroll tax increase is not going to be passed into law anytime soon, Ivanka Trump said on Face the Nation on CBS in December.

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Trump Called for Paid Family Leave. Heres Why Few Democrats Clapped. - The New York Times