Democrats’ Feared Red October Arrives Before the Midterms

Here’s the thing about elections: When they break, they usually break in one direction. And right now, all the indicators on my political dashboard are blinking red — as in, toward Republicans.

First, there’s inflation. It hasn’t gone away as the Biden administration had hoped, and the Federal Reserve likewise seems to be hamstrung in dealing with it. Americans are being squeezed between exorbitant prices for consumer goods — inflation is still at 40-year highs — and interest rates that the Fed has ratcheted up as it seeks to rein in those prices. Anyone trying to buy a home now faces 30-year mortgage rates that have soared past 6 percent.

The latest New York Times/Siena poll, my colleague Nate Cohn wrote this week, suggests that “the conditions that helped Democrats gain over the summer no longer seem to be in place,” with voters’ sour view of the economy driving the downturn in the party’s prospects.

As John Halpin, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote recently in his newsletter, “inflation is a political wrecking ball for incumbent governments” around the world. Why should the United States be different?

Then there’s crime, which has rapidly moved up the ladder of issues that matter to voters. In a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, 64 percent of voters said crime would play a “major role” in how they voted, versus 59 percent who said the same of abortion access.

Democrats have bet heavily that widespread anger over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade would drive voters away from the Republican Party — especially college-educated women in the suburbs. President Biden pledged on Tuesday to protect abortion rights in a clear attempt to bring the issue back to the forefront of public discussion.

Democrats’ strategy might have been a smart move in an otherwise brutal year for the party. But it has also come at a cost: All those abortion ads have taken resources away from whacking Republicans for opposing the policies Democrats passed in Congress this year.

Some of those policies are broadly popular, like the way that the Inflation Reduction Act allows the federal government to negotiate prices for certain prescription drugs.

But a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 36 percent of voters were aware of this development. That’s a huge communication failure — or a reflection that Democrats don’t think promoting their accomplishments would move or mobilize many votes.

And finally, there’s the historical pattern of midterm elections, which tend to be referendums on the party in power. Older voters, who broadly lean Republican, also usually turn out more reliably in nonpresidential years, while younger, more transient Democratic voters are more fickle.

So, as the polls move the G.O.P.’s way, this election is looking a lot more “normal” than it might have seemed over the summer. Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary under President Barack Obama, wrote in his newsletter today: “We’re still in a very weird election, but it looks like it’s going to be more normal as we get into these final 21 days.”

For Democrats hoping that this midterm election might be different from most others, normalcy is bad news.

Republicans go on offense

As the playing field tilts toward Republicans, conservative groups are pouring money into newly competitive races, especially on the more volatile House side.

This week’s Times/Siena poll showed Republicans leading Democrats by four percentage points in the generic congressional ballot, a widely monitored gauge of voter sentiment that asks respondents which party’s candidate they are most likely to vote for. It’s an especially meaningful indicator in races with no Democratic incumbent, because it takes time and money for little-known candidates to build up their personal brands. And the Democrats’ national brand is faring poorly right now.

A super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader, just bought $4 million in television ads targeting Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, whose new Hudson Valley district Biden won by five points in 2020. Maloney is the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and his defeat would be deeply embarrassing to House Democrats.

Republicans are also crowing about their chances of winning three open seats in Oregon that were previously held by Democrats, as well as a long-shot bid to unseat Representative Jahana Hayes in northwestern Connecticut. And even in wicked-blue Rhode Island, the Republican nominee in one of the state’s two congressional districts, Allan Fung, is leading Seth Magaziner, the state treasurer and a Democrat, in public polls.

The Senate, where Democrats have huge cash advantages in races that are driven much more by personality, still looks like a tossup.

But even there, Democrats are feeling some new heartburn. In Washington State, Senator Patty Murray’s lead over Tiffany Smiley, the Republican, has narrowed slightly since the summer. And as the polls have tightened, Smiley has outraised her Democratic opponent for the first time — by nearly a two-to-one margin.

A loss for Murray would be a major upset. And if Democrats now need to worry about a state like Washington, that’s a dire sign for their chances in November.

What to read

• Fewer debates, little retail politicking, scarce town halls: This year’s campaigns look far different from those in the past as traditional norms erode, Lisa Lerer and Jazmine Ulloa write.

• Senator Bernie Sanders is planning an eight-state blitz over the final two weekends before the midterm elections, looking to rally young voters and progressives.

• Newly released body camera footage shows how Gov. Ron DeSantis’s much-publicized crackdown on voter fraud caused confusion among those arrested.

• In a 2021 video, Donald Trump inquired about whether a documentary filmmaker recording an interview with him was a “good Jewish character,” described Persians as “very good salesmen” and complained that Israeli Jews favored him more than Jews in the United States, Maggie Haberman reports.

Capitol Hill notepad

McCarthy zigs while McConnell zags

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader at the time of the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, warned President Donald Trump that his infamous call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was “not perfect” — even as McConnell downplayed its importance in public.

At the same time, Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was scoffing behind closed doors about the nature of the offense, while leaning on wavering Republicans to reject Democrats’ calls for an impeachment inquiry.

The dueling anecdotes are revealed in a book out this week, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian. They encapsulate an important difference between the two Republican leaders as they seek a return to power.

Both men went along with many of Trump’s excesses. But while McCarthy usually told Trump what he wanted to hear, McConnell sometimes pushed back. It’s why Trump has railed against McConnell, calling him an “old crow,” and recently accused him of harboring a “death wish” — but has helped set McCarthy on a glide path to becoming speaker if Republicans retake the House next month.

“If this is the ‘launching point’ for House Democrats’ impeachment process, they’ve already overplayed their hand,” McConnell said after Trump released a transcript of the call, according to the book. “It’s clear there is no quid pro quo that the Democrats were desperately praying for.”

But earlier, McConnell’s chief counsel, Andrew Ferguson, zeroed in one remark: Trump’s request to “do us a favor, though,” which Ferguson told his boss was “the dynamite line.” Agreeing, McConnell told Trump privately that the call with Zelensky was a problem.

“This call is not perfect,” McConnell told Trump. “And you are going to get in deep trouble for it.”

McConnell also cautioned his fellow Republican senators not to take a side. “Don’t box yourself in until you know all the facts,” he told them.

McCarthy handled the Ukraine imbroglio rather differently. At a meeting with Trump’s aides to go over the transcript, he was unmoved by what he read, asking, “Is this everything?”

Then he dialed up Representative Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican who had expressed some support for an impeachment inquiry — and pressured him to walk back his remarks ASAP.

“Using government agencies to, if it’s proven, to put your finger on the scale of an election, I don’t think that’s right,” Amodei had said. The comments set off a media frenzy, leading some to conclude that impeachment might gain Republican support.

Bade and Demirjian write that McCarthy was worried Trump would “flip” when he saw the comments.

“Oh, man, I screwed up,” Amodei said when the two men spoke. McCarthy instructed him to put out a statement to repair any potential damage with Trump. He quickly did, clarifying, “In no way, shape, or form, did I indicate support for impeachment.”

David Frum, a conservative writer for The Atlantic and one of Trump’s leading critics, recently opined that McCarthy “thinks the job to be the speaker of the House is a little bit like being a concierge at some rock-star hotel, where people come downstairs at all hours and they make crazy demands, and you say, ‘Yes, sir, right away, sir. We’ll have the dim sum and cocaine to your room in 15 minutes, sir.’”

Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — Blake

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