Elections

Ask Americans their outlook on the country — its future, its economy, its president — and their mood has risen and fallen in surveys this year in striking sync with the price of gas. Gas prices go up, and fear that the country is on the wrong track often does, too. Gas prices go down, and so does unhappiness with the president.It’s of course not the case that fuel prices alone dictate the optimism (or surliness) of the nation. But these patterns suggest that gas, distinct from other things we buy, wields real power over how Americans think about their personal circumstances, the wider economy and even the state of the nation. Yes, this year has been marked by economic uncertainty, Supreme Court shock waves, Jan. 6 revelations and enduring pandemic divides. But lurking in the background of it all has been the whipsawing price of gas.And it is, by the way, now trending down again with two weeks to go to the election.Gas Prices Spike; Confidence DipsConfidence in the economy and in the direction of the country fell as gas prices rose earlier this year. Then those patterns reversed as gas prices dropped. More

As Republicans seize on crime as one of their leading issues in the final weeks of the midterm elections, they have deployed a series of attack lines, terms and imagery that have injected race into contests across the country.In states as disparate as Wisconsin and New Mexico, ads have labeled a Black candidate as “different” and “dangerous” and darkened a white man’s hands as they portrayed him as a criminal.Nowhere have these tactics risen to overtake the debate in a major campaign, but a survey of competitive contests, particularly those involving Black candidates, shows they are so widespread as to have become an important weapon in the 2022 Republican arsenal.In Wisconsin, where Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, is the Democratic nominee for Senate, a National Republican Senatorial Committee ad targeting him ends by juxtaposing his face with those of three Democratic House members, all of them women of color, and the words “different” and “dangerous.”In a mailer sent to several state House districts in New Mexico, the state Republican Party darkened the hands of a barber shown giving a white child a haircut, next to the question, “Do you want a sex offender cutting your child’s hair?”And in North Carolina, an ad against Cheri Beasley, the Democratic candidate for Senate, who is Black, features the anguished brother of a white state trooper killed a quarter-century ago by a Black man whom Ms. Beasley, then a public defender, represented in court. The brother incredulously says that Ms. Beasley, pleading for the killer’s life, said “he was actually a good person.”Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for “quotas.”If the intervening decades saw such tactics become harder to defend, the rise of Donald J. Trump shattered taboos, as he spoke of “rapist” immigrants and “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean. But while Republicans quietly stood by advertising that Democrats called racist in 2018, this year, they have responded with defiance, saying they see nothing untoward in their imagery and nothing to apologize for.“This is stupid, but not surprising,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican Senatorial Committee, whose ads in North Carolina and Wisconsin have prompted accusations of racism. “We’re using their own words and their own records. If they don’t like it, they should invent a time machine, go back in time and not embrace dumb-ass ideas that voters are rejecting.”Amid pandemic-era crime increases, legitimate policy differences have emerged between the two parties over gun violence, easing access to bail and funding police budgets.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Florida Governor’s Debate: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger,  had a rowdy exchange on Oct. 24. Here are the main takeaways from their debate.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Last Dance?: As she races to raise money to hand on to her embattled House majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat, much less her legacy.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.But some of the Republican arguments could scarcely be called serious policy critiques.This month, a Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, said Democrats favored reparations “for the people that do the crime,” suggesting the movement to compensate the descendants of slavery was about paying criminals. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans, saying, “Joe Biden’s five million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.”Such language, as well as ads portraying chaos by depicting Black rioters and Hispanic immigrants illegally racing across the border, have prompted Democrats and their allies to accuse Republicans of resorting to racist fear tactics.“I think that white people should be speaking out. I think that Black people should be speaking out,” said Chris Larson, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin who is white and has denounced Republican ads against Mr. Barnes. “I think that all people should be speaking out when there is vile racism at work.”When former President Donald J. Trump rallied for Representative Ted Budd in Wilmington, N.C., last month, he made a joke about “the N-word,” saying it meant “nuclear.”Jonathan Ernst/ReutersDemocrats themselves are dealing with intraparty racial strife in Los Angeles caused by a leaked recording in which Latino leaders are heard using racist terms and disparaging words toward their Black constituents.But it is Republicans’ nationwide focus on crime that is fueling many of the attacks that Democrats say cross a line into racism.The conservative group Club for Growth Action, backed by the billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Diane Hendricks and Jeff Yass, pointed with pride to the crime ads it has run against Ms. Beasley. “Democrats across the country are getting called out for their soft-on-crime policies,” said the group’s president, former Representative David McIntosh. “Now that their poor decisions have caught up with them, they’re relying on the liberal media to call criticisms of their politically inconvenient record racist, and it won’t work.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The 2022 midterms include the most diverse slate of Republican congressional candidates ever, competing against Democratic candidates who would add to the House’s representatives of color and improve on the Senate’s lack of diversity. But it is also the first cycle since Mr. Trump’s presidency, when he set a sharply different tone for his party on race.It was at a rally with Mr. Trump in Arizona this month that Mr. Tuberville and Ms. Greene made their incendiary comments. At another rally in Wilmington, N.C., late last month with a Senate Republican candidate, Representative Ted Budd, Mr. Trump told the audience that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had mentioned “the N-word. You know what the N-word is?” When the audience hooted, he corrected them, “No, no, no, it’s the nuclear word.”Representative Alma Adams, Democrat of North Carolina, who is Black, said, “Donald Trump is fueling this fire.”Still, a rise in violence recently has given openings to both parties.Cheri Beasley, a Democratic candidate for Senate in North Carolina, addressed supporters and patrons during a campaign stop in Charlotte last month.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn North Florida, a flier distributed by a Democratic group depicts the face of a Black Republican, Corey Simon, who is challenging a white state senator, on what Republicans have called a shooting target and Democrats call a school easel, with bullets shown strewn underneath. The message was about gun control and school shootings, staples of Democratic campaigns, and identical mailers targeted two other Republican candidates, who are white and Latino.Republicans say their attacks are capturing voters’ anxieties, not feeding them. Defending Mr. Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn University, Byron Donalds of Florida said crime had become a leading issue because of “soft-on-crime policies and progressive prosecutors in liberal cities.” Mr. Donalds, one of two Black Republicans in the House, added, “As a coach and mentor to countless Black men, Tommy Tuberville has done more to advance Black lives than most people, especially in the Democratic Party.”Ms. Greene and Mr. Tuberville did not respond to requests for comment.Then there is the Republican mailer in Wisconsin that clearly darkened the face of Mr. Barnes.“If you can’t hear it when they pick up the bullhorn that used to be a dog whistle, you can see it with your own eyes,” said Mr. Larson, the Wisconsin state senator.The darkening of white hands in a stock photo of a barber on a Republican mailer in New Mexico prompted outrage there. The New Mexico Republican Party said that Democrats were trying to divert attention from their record on crime. A Republican leader in the state House of Representatives, Rod Montoya, told The Albuquerque Journal that the hands were darkened to make the fliers “gloomy.”Some liberal groups do seem intent on discerning racism in any message on crime. After Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who is white, ran an ad opening with a clip of Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who is Black, calling for defunding the police, Iowa Democrats called it racist because Ms. Reynolds’s Democratic challenger, Deidre DeJear, is also Black, and, as she has said, bears a resemblance to Ms. Bush.Progressive groups say their concern is merited.“Crime in America has always, at least in modern times, been racially charged,” said Christopher Scott, chief political officer at the liberal group Democracy for America. “The ads aren’t getting to policy points. They are images playing on their base’s fears.”But the policy differences between the two parties are real. Democrats have pushed for cashless bail, saying the current system that requires money to free a defendant before trial is unfair to poor people. Republicans say cash bail is meant to get criminals off the streets. Democrats have expressed solidarity with racial justice protesters and helped bail out some who were arrested after demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd turned destructive. Republicans have said those actions condoned and encouraged lawlessness.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made explicit reference to “replacement theory,” the racist notion that nonwhite, undocumented immigrants are “replacing” white Americans.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSkin color is beside the point, said Jonathan Felts, a spokesman for Mr. Budd’s campaign in North Carolina, as he defended the blitz of crime advertising against Ms. Beasley. One ad toggles between images of white children — victims of brutal crimes — and the face of Ms. Beasley, her expression haughty or bemused.“The images used in the ad match up to the victims of the criminals she went easy on,” Mr. Felts said. “Are you suggesting the ad makers should make up fake victims, or are you suggesting she shouldn’t be held accountable for her judicial and legal record?”In fact, the judicial and legal records portrayed in at least one of the ads have been determined to be distorted, at best. The first version of the Republican Senatorial Committee’s ad, which portrayed child crime victims from different races, was pulled down by North Carolina television stations in June after they agreed that some of the assertions were false. In a later version, the committee made slight word changes to satisfy the channels but added a more overt racial contrast.“All communities are concerned about public safety,” said State Representative Brandon Lofton, a Democratic Black lawmaker whose South Charlotte district is largely white. “There is a way to talk about it that is truthful” and does not cross racial lines, he said.The campaigns themselves have steered clear of charging racism.Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for Ms. Beasley, said, “Our race remains a dead heat, despite Congressman Budd and his allies’ spending millions of dollars to distort Cheri’s record of public service.”In Wisconsin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Barnes, Maddy McDaniel, similarly declined to go further than to say that “the G.O.P.’s fear-mongering playbook failed them last cycle, and it will fail again.”Mr. Barnes, for his part, seemed to make playful use of his portrayal in one of the Republican attack ads as “different” during his first debate with Senator Ron Johnson, the two-term incumbent. He was, indeed, different, Mr. Barnes said, “We don’t have enough working-class people in the United States Senate.” More

For months, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has trusted that the state’s strong Democratic majority would keep her in office largely on the strength of a simple message: Her Republican opponent was too close to Donald J. Trump and would roll back abortion rights.But just two weeks before Election Day, a rapidly tightening contest has Ms. Hochul racing to expand her closing argument as Democrats warily concede they may have misjudged powerful fears driving the electorate, particularly around crime.In just the last few days, Ms. Hochul stood with Mayor Eric Adams to announce a new flood of police officers into New York City subways; she visited five Harlem churches to assure stalwart Black voters she was “laser-focused” on safety; and she highlighted new statistics showing that authorities were seizing more guns under her watch.“We believe in justice, the justice that Jesus teaches us, but it’s also about safety,” Ms. Hochul said at one of her stops in Harlem. “We are laser-focused on keeping you, your children and your grandchildren safe.”Her campaign has begun recalibrating its paid message, too, shifting the focus of millions of dollars in ad spending to highlight the governor’s efforts to stoke the economy and improve public safety, notably including a package of modest changes to the state’s bail laws that has divided her party. The spots trumpeting her record will run alongside a new ad tying Mr. Zeldin to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Anxious Democrats are hopeful that the changes can stabilize the governor’s campaign after weeks of increasingly shaky polls that show Ms. Hochul’s lead dwindling to single digits over Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican.The narrowing margin tracks closely with recent surveys showing that fears about public safety and inflation have eclipsed abortion and the former president as make-or-break issues for voters, eroding Democrats’ support even in liberal enclaves like New York City and its suburbs, while rewarding candidates like Mr. Zeldin who have made crime the visceral centerpiece of their campaign.“Maybe it was the right thing to do at the time,” David A. Paterson, the former Democratic governor, said of the decision by Democrats to spend precious time and money messaging on abortion rights this summer.“But these times, meaning September and October,” he continued, “really call for more conversation about what we do with convicted felons, what we do with the judges’ capacity to assess dangerousness, and obviously what we do with a significant number of people with mental illness walking the streets right now.”Ms. Hochul has used appearances with Mayor Eric Adams of New York City to highlight anti-crime initiatives.Yuki Iwamura/Associated PressThose issues are all but certain to figure prominently in the first and only televised debate between Ms. Hochul, 64, and Mr. Zeldin, 42, on Tuesday night.Certainly, Ms. Hochul remains the favorite in the race, and her campaign has tried to calm jittery allies. She has a vast fund-raising advantage, passable approval ratings and a two-to-one registration advantage statewide for Democrats over Republicans. While several polls last week showed a tight race, a Siena College survey from that period showed the governor still up by 11 points.“There is no question that the national environment has gotten tougher for Democrats in the last few weeks,” said Jefrey Pollock, Ms. Hochul’s pollster. “We are focused on making sure that every Democrat understands the stakes and votes. When Democrats vote in New York, we win.”But for Democrats who are not accustomed to close statewide races in New York, some level of panic appears to be setting in — that Mr. Zeldin could flip Black, Latino and Asian voters worried about public safety, but also that other rank-and-file Democratic voters may simply sit the race out because of apathy about Ms. Hochul and her low-key campaign.“It doesn’t feel like there’s a ton of groundswell from the bottom up,” Crystal Hudson, a left-leaning Brooklyn City Council member. “Perhaps Democrats are taking for granted that New York state is bluer than we think it might be.”In Manhattan, the borough president, Mark D. Levine, said he, too, had grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks that Democratic voters were missing the warning signs. On Sunday, he put together a rally with more than a dozen elected Democrats on the ultraliberal Upper West Side to “wake up Dems.” The event turned raucous when hecklers, some wearing Zeldin garb, tried to derail the speakers.“There hasn’t been a seriously competitive statewide election in 20 years and Democrats certainly in Manhattan and elsewhere have been taking November on autopilot,” Mr. Levine said afterward. “It’s not an exaggeration to say we can’t win statewide unless we get Democrats in Manhattan excited to vote.”The stakes have only grown in recent weeks amid a massive outside spending campaign by a handful of ultrawealthy conservative donors seeking to capitalize on the public safety debate to damage Ms. Hochul.Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir, put more than $9 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs at the start of September, almost single-handedly bankrolling statewide television ads that savage Ms. Hochul’s record on public safety. Just on Friday, one of the PACs reported new contributions totaling $750,000 — a sum that would take even Ms. Hochul, a prolific fund-raiser, days to raise from scores of donors — from a shell company that appears to be tied to Thomas Tisch, an investor from one of New York’s richest families.New York is not the only state dealing with increases in certain crimes since the onset of the pandemic, and the reality is more nuanced than Republicans would suggest. As Ms. Hochul likes to point out, the state remains safer than some far smaller, many run by Republicans.But a rash of highly visible, violent episodes on the subways and on well-to-do street corners around the state in recent months have left many New Yorkers with at least the perception that parts of the state are growing markedly less safe.In Ms. Hochul’s 14 months as governor, she has taken a nuanced approach to public safety issues. She has meaningfully tightened the state’s gun laws. She and Mr. Adams have pledged more money for mental health services for disturbed people who commit crimes. And she has initiated plans to put cameras in every subway car. Under pressure from Mr. Adams, a former police captain, Ms. Hochul used the state’s annual budget to strengthen bail restrictions and tighten rules for repeat offenders, over the objections of some more left-leaning colleagues.“He doesn’t own the crime issue,” Ms. Hochul said in an interview on Sunday about Mr. Zeldin. “Saying that more people should have guns on our streets and in our subways and in our churches as a strategy to deal with public safety — that’s absurd.”But until very recently, she had relatively little to say about it in the general election campaign, outside of criticizing Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to many gun control measures, and a single Spanish-language ad focused on Ms. Hochul’s gun policies.That omission has left some moderate Democrats fearing that the party has ceded the terms of the debate to Republicans like Mr. Zeldin, who have decried legislative attempts by the Democrats to make the system fairer as “pro-criminal” laws.After Ms. Hochul and Mr. Adams announced on Saturday that the state would pay for more police officers in the subways, Mr. Zeldin pilloried the plan as little more than a political gimmick.His own campaign platform calls for firing the Manhattan district attorney and declaring a state of emergency to temporarily repeal the state’s cashless bail laws, and other criminal justice laws enacted by the Democrat-run Legislature.“For Kathy Hochul, it wasn’t the nine subway deaths that drove her to action. It wasn’t a 25-year-high in subway crime. It wasn’t New Yorkers feeling unsafe on our streets, on our subways and in their homes,” he said on Sunday. “For Kathy Hochul, all it took for her to announce a half-ass, day-late, dollar-short plan was a bad poll.”Lee Zeldin, right, has received endorsements from numerous law enforcement unions, including the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThe challenge for Ms. Hochul in shifting that narrative was on clear display on Sunday, as she shuttled up and down Harlem to speak at five different Black churches, usually a hotbed of Democratic support.At the first stop, Mount Neboh Baptist Church, the Rev. Johnnie Melvin Green Jr. gave a full-throated, personal endorsement of the governor from the pulpit, but he sounded alarmed about low turnout and the state of the race.Without naming Mr. Zeldin, the reverend warned that certain people had “hijacked” the public’s understanding of what was happening in the city, leading to “a race that shouldn’t be tight.”“I want to make something crystal clear because they aren’t going to explain it to you in the media,” he said, adding: “They want to make us afraid.”Jeffery C. Mays More

I write frequently about the Reconstruction period after the Civil War not to make predictions or analogies but to show how a previous generation of Americans grappled with their own set of questions about the scope and reach of our Constitution, our government and our democracy.The scholarship on Reconstruction is vast and comprehensive. But my touchstone for thinking about the period continues to be W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Black Reconstruction,” published in 1935 after years of painstaking research, often inhibited by segregation and the racism of Southern institutions of higher education.I return to Du Bois, even as I read more recent work, because he offers a framework that is useful, I think, for analyzing the struggle for democracy in our own time.The central conceit of Du Bois’s landmark study — whose full title is “Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880” — is that the period was a grand struggle between “two theories of the future of America,” rooted in the relationship of American labor to American democracy.“What were to be the limits of democratic control in the United States?” Du Bois asks. “Was the rule of the mass of Americans to be unlimited, and the right to rule extended to all men regardless of race and color?” And if not, he continues, “How would property and privilege be protected?”On one side in the conflict over these questions was “an autocracy determined at any price to amass wealth and power”; on the other was an “abolition-democracy based on freedom, intelligence and power for all men.”The term “abolition-democracy” began with Du Bois and is worth further exploration.Abolition-democracy, Du Bois writes, was the “liberal movement among both laborers and small capitalists” who saw “the danger of slavery to both capital and labor.” Its standard-bearers were abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and radical antislavery politicians like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stephens, and in its eyes, “the only real object” of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery and “it was convinced that this could be thoroughly accomplished only if the emancipated Negroes became free citizens and voters.”It was also clear, to some within abolition-democracy, that “freedom in order to be free required a minimum of capital in addition to political rights.” In this way, abolition-democracy was an anticipation of social democratic ideology, although few of its proponents, in Du Bois’s view, grasped the full significance of their analysis of the relationship between political freedom, civil rights and economic security.Opposing abolition-democracy, in Du Bois’s telling, were the reactionaries of the former Confederate South who sought to “reestablish slavery by force.” The South, he writes, “opposed Negro education, opposed land and capital for Negroes, and violently and bitterly opposed any political power. It fought every conception inch by inch: no real emancipation, limited civil rights, no Negro schools, no votes for Negroes.”Between these two sides lay Northern industry and capital. It wanted profits and it would join whichever force enabled it to expand its power and reach. Initially, this meant abolition-democracy, as Northern industry feared the return of a South that might threaten its political and economic dominance. It “swung inevitably toward democracy” rather than allow the “continuation of Southern oligarchy,” Du Bois writes.It’s here that we see the contradiction inherent in the alliance between Northern industry and abolition-democracy. The machinery of democracy in the South “put such power in the hands of Southern labor that, with intelligent and unselfish leadership and a clarifying ideal, it could have rebuilt the economic foundations of Southern society, confiscated and redistributed wealth, and built a real democracy of industry for the masses of men.”This — the extent to which democracy in the South threatened to undermine the imperatives of capital — was simply too much for Northern industry to bear. And so it turned against the abolition-democracy, already faltering as it was in the face of Southern reaction. “Brute force was allowed to use its unchecked power,” Du Bois writes, “to destroy the possibility of democracy in the South, and thereby make the transition from democracy to plutocracy all the easier and more inevitable.”In the end, “it was not race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own.” What killed Reconstruction — beyond the ideological limitations of its champions and the vehemence of its opponents — was a “counterrevolution of property,” North and South.Why is this still a useful framework for understanding the United States, close to a century after Du Bois conceived and developed this argument? As a concept, abolition-democracy captures something vital and important: that democratic life cannot flourish as long as it is bound by and shaped around hierarchies of status. The fight for political equality cannot be separated from the fight for equality more broadly.In other words, the reason I keep coming back to “Black Reconstruction” is that Du Bois’s mode of analysis can help us (or, at least, me) look past so much of the ephemera of our politics to focus on what matters most: the roles of power, privilege and, most important, capital in shaping our political order and structuring our conflicts with one another.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The Pennsylvania Senate debate on Tuesday between Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, is likely to be among the most widely viewed of all midterm debates. It is a clash of two large personalities, who have by turns mocked and scathingly attacked one another, over matters trivial (fresh vegetables) and deeply serious (violent crime).Interest in the debate, for a contest that is critical to control of the Senate, is sky-high as polls show the race tightening two weeks before Election Day, and because of Mr. Fetterman’s recovery from a stroke two days before the May primary.The 60-minute debate will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Eastern time from a TV studio in Harrisburg, Pa. There will be no live audience. Here is what to watch for:How Fetterman soundsMr. Fetterman still has difficulty processing spoken words, and he will read the two moderators’ questions and Dr. Oz’s responses on large monitors with closed captions. The Fetterman campaign warns that the accommodation could slow down his responses, and it worries that Republicans will try to make snippets of the debate go viral with Mr. Fetterman’s pauses and dropped or slurred words. The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Florida Governor’s Debate: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist, his Democratic challenger,  had a rowdy exchange on Oct. 24. Here are the main takeaways from their debate.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.Last Dance?: As she races to raise money to hand on to her embattled House majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat, much less her legacy.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.Major style differencesDon’t expect quick-witted repartee. The candidates have big differences in style. Dr. Oz spent 13 years as a TV host and has transitioned from an empathetic broadcast persona into a political candidate with sharp, succinct attack lines. Mr. Fetterman, even before his stroke, was a so-so debater with a meandering, regular-guy speaking style.Oz’s shift away from Fetterman’s healthA month ago, the Oz campaign was mockingly calling attention to Mr. Fetterman’s refusal to commit to a series of debates (a spokeswoman said he might not have had a stroke if he’d eaten his vegetables). But after the intense focus on the Democrat’s health appeared to produce a backlash, Dr. Oz’s camp now says it will stick to the candidates’ policy differences and to highlight what it calls Mr. Fetterman’s “extremism.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Who’s the real Pennsylvanian?Mr. Fetterman will likely attack his opponent as a “Hollywood doctor” who owns several houses, only moved to the state in 2020 and has poured $23 million of his fortune into the race. Dr. Oz may come back with the defense that he earned his fortune, while Mr. Fetterman received an allowance from his family until he was nearly 50. (He collected only a token salary as mayor of Braddock, Pa., for 13 years.)Attacks over abortionPerhaps Mr. Fetterman’s strongest issue against Dr. Oz, and one crucial in the battle for suburban voters, is Dr. Oz’s right-wing tack on abortion since he entered politics. Look for Mr. Fetterman to call attention to a statement Dr. Oz made that life begins at conception and terminating a pregnancy any time is “still murder.” A focus on crimeThis is the issue that Dr. Oz has leaned into most aggressively, accusing Mr. Fetterman of coddling criminals because of his advocacy for clemency for long-incarcerated men convicted of murder. Dr. Oz calls him “the most pro-murderer candidate” in the country. Viewers may hear Dr. Oz name individuals and their crimes for whom Mr. Fetterman advocated clemency. The focus on crime, especially homicides and street violence in Philadelphia, is meant to stir fears by voters outside the city. How will Mr. Fetterman defend his leadership of the state pardons board and his support for criminal justice reform?Energy and frackingWestern Pennsylvania has major reserves of natural gas. Because Mr. Fetterman cultivates an appeal to blue-collar union voters, especially in the Pittsburgh region, Dr. Oz will most likely seek to undermine him by attacking his past opposition to fracking, which provides thousands of jobs. Mr. Fetterman supports fracking now, but as recently as 2018 he opposed it. More

At least six Palestinians were killed in a night of violence in the West Bank, raising tensions further ahead of elections in Israel next week.JERUSALEM — Israeli forces carried out a major raid against a Palestinian militia in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, killing a leader of the group and four other men, according to members of the militia and Palestinian officials.The predawn raid targeted the Nablus-based militia known as the Lions’ Den, which emerged this year and does not answer to any of the established Palestinian factions. Many Palestinians have championed the group’s fighters as popular heroes, in part because Israel’s occupation of the territory has dragged on for more than a half-century and become increasingly entrenched.Israel has blamed the Lions’ Den for a rise in shootings that it says are aimed at its troops and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including one that killed a soldier this month. It said that it had killed the group’s leader, Wadie al-Houh, in an exchange of gunfire, adding that he was the main target of the raid and was responsible for producing bombs and obtaining weapons for the group.This year has already been the deadliest in the West Bank since 2015 for Palestinians in the conflict with Israel. And the raid, along with the threat of revenge attacks, raised tensions further in an already volatile atmosphere ahead of Israel’s general election, which is set to take place next week.The Israeli army has kept Nablus under a tight siege for about two weeks, severely restricting movement in and out of the city in an effort to contain attacks. Palestinians have decried the closure as a collective punishment.On Tuesday, the Israeli military said that its troops and special forces had raided a “hide-out apartment” in the Old City of Nablus that the Lions’ Den used as a headquarters and explosives manufacturing site. The troops blew up the explosives lab, the military added.It said that its troops hit multiple armed men and fired back at gunmen who were shooting at them, while dozens of Palestinians burned tires and hurled rocks at the forces.Palestinian militants firing into the air during the funeral of those killed in the predawn Israeli raid in Nablus on Tuesday.Majdi Mohammed/Associated PressThe Lions’ Den confirmed that Mr. al-Houh was killed and that he was a leader of the group.The militia has won the admiration of many young Palestinians by posting videos on social media of its attacks on Israelis in real time. These young Palestinians are as frustrated with the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited authority over parts of the West Bank, as they are with Israel.Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced the Israeli raid as a war crime, while Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates the Gaza Strip, warned that Israel’s “crimes would plunge Palestine into escalation.”The dead were carried in a funeral procession in Nablus, wrapped in flags with the Lions’ Den insignia. Along with the five who were killed in the Nablus raid, the Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 20 Palestinians were injured.Another Lions’ Den operative was killed in Nablus on Sunday when a motorcycle exploded as he passed by. The group blamed Israel for what it described as an assassination and swore to avenge it.Israel did not claim responsibility. But if it was behind the killing, Israeli experts said, it would be the first time that Israel has carried out a targeted killing in the West Bank in more than 20 years.In addition to blaming the Lions’ Den for a rise in shootings at troops and in West Bank settlements, the Israeli authorities say that in the past few weeks, the group also sent an operative to carry out an attack in Tel Aviv, which was thwarted by the police, and that it planted an explosive device in a gas station near a West Bank settlement.Separately on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said that a sixth Palestinian was killed overnight in the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh near the city of Ramallah. The Israeli military said its soldiers spotted a man hurling an explosive device at them near Nabi Saleh and responded with live fire.No casualties were reported on the Israeli side in either episode.Much of the violence between Israelis and Palestinians this year has focused on the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin. Unrest has spread to Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 in a move that most countries have not recognized.And there has been a noted rise in violence against Palestinians and their property by extremist Jewish settlers, who frequently set out to confront Palestinians and their supporters during the fall olive harvest.Right-wing opponents of Israel’s centrist prime minister, Yair Lapid, have criticized his government during the election campaign for not acting more aggressively against Palestinian militants. But Mr. Lapid vowed on Tuesday to keep pursuing Palestinians who attack Israelis.“We will reach every place,” he said. “Israel will never be deterred against operating for its own security.”Gabby Sobelman More

Which version of the Republican Party will win out?For years, pundits and political strategists have speculated about Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party. It is an essential question for the party and, as a result, the country: Could there be Trumpism without Trump? And what, exactly, would that look like?Two weeks before the first midterm elections since Trump left office, the answer to the first question seems clear. Trumpism is embedded in the DNA of the party. Most of those who refused to pledge fealty to the former president lost their primaries or retired to avoid defeat. With only a handful of exceptions, the Republicans running for office are strongly in Trump’s camp, embracing some version of his denials of his 2020 election loss.Candidates from Arizona to Pennsylvania have adopted his views, bombastic style and anti-establishment attitude and made them their own. Today, I will examine three Republicans who are putting forward their own versions of Trumpism — some of which might help Trump win if he were to run for president again, and others that might someday defeat him.Kari Lake.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesTrump with polishKari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, is the Trumpism queen of the midterms. Lake, a former news anchor who had never run for office, transformed from a nonpartisan presence on a Fox affiliate in Phoenix into an anti-establishment Republican insurgent.Lake is running as a political outsider, bashing the media and promising to be “the fake news’s worst nightmare.” She has called the 2020 election “stolen” and “corrupt,” and said she would not have certified President Biden’s victory. Last week, in an interview with CNN, she refused to say that she would accept the results of her election if she lost.But unlike Trump, who is easily sidetracked — recall his digressions on topics like flushing toilets — Lake is a polished speaker, the result of a quarter century in television news. She’s quick with a viral zinger and rarely says anything to upset her base. One interviewer asked her this past weekend whether she would run as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee in 2024. (Lake insisted she would remain governor if she won.)If she wins her tightly contested race, Lake will have shown that her smoother version of Trumpism can work even in places where Trump lost.Trump in overdriveRon DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has tried to out-Trump Trump, adopting inflammatory stances that excite core conservative supporters and that position him as a 2024 front-runner.In March, he signed legislation prohibiting classroom instruction and discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades, a law that opponents derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It also placed DeSantis squarely in the culture-war debate over transgender rights, a theme he has continued to address. In a debate last night against his Democratic challenger, former Gov. Charlie Crist, DeSantis gave a graphic and inaccurate description of gender-affirming care for transgender children, suggesting falsely that doctors were “mutilating” minors.Last month, DeSantis prompted liberal condemnation and conservative applause when he sent two chartered planeloads of undocumented migrants from Texas — hundreds of miles from the Florida state line — to Martha’s Vineyard, the moneyed Massachusetts vacation spot frequented by celebrities and former Democratic presidents. It was an idea that Stephen Miller, a Trump policy adviser, had pursued while working in the White House, but that others in the administration rejected.And unlike Lake, who has remained loyal to Trump, DeSantis has criticized him from the right, saying that he regretted not speaking out against Trump’s early Covid shutdowns. While Lake has fielded questions about running with Trump, DeSantis seems more likely to run against him in 2024. DeSantis refused to say in last night’s debate whether he would serve a full, four-year term if re-elected. (Here are four takeaways from the debate.)The Never Trumpers’ TrumpGlenn Youngkin is not running for office now — he won Virginia’s governor’s race last year — but he has emerged as an in-demand surrogate for candidates at all levels of the Trump spectrum.Youngkin presents what some strategists think is the most politically viable national model for Republicans in a post-Trump era. He does not share Trump’s fiery style, packaging himself as a fleece-vest-wearing suburbanite who can keep Trump’s coalition intact while picking up a significant share of the suburban voters that determine elections in his home state. While he was campaigning, Youngkin liked to say he could bring together “forever Trumpers and never Trumpers.”But on policy, he has embraced many of the issues that rally the base. He has called for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, prohibited the teaching of critical race theory, restricted transgender students’ rights and expressed anger over pandemic lockdowns. He acknowledges that Biden won the 2020 election, but has campaigned for election deniers, including Lake.Youngkin has insisted that he is not yet thinking about a presidential run in 2024. But his carefully crafted national profile — as well as his meetings with megadonors in New York City — hints otherwise.More midterms newsFearing significant election losses, Democrats are rushing to craft a new message that acknowledges the pain of rising prices.Detroit, which is 77 percent Black, may not have a Black representative in Congress for the first time since 1955.On “The Ezra Klein Show,” the reporter Mark Leibovich talked about how the Republican Party fell under Trump’s influence, the subject of his new book.THE LATEST NEWSSupreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas temporarily shielded Senator Lindsey Graham from having to answer a grand jury’s questions about efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, assured Senator Ted Kennedy in 2005 of his respect for it, according to diary excerpts in a new book.BritainKing Charles III welcomed Rishi Sunak to Buckingham Palace this morning.Pool photo by Aaron ChownRishi Sunak is Britain’s prime minister. He’s the first person of color to lead the country and at 42, the youngest British prime minister in two centuries. Follow our updates.Sunak and his wife are extremely wealthy — by one estimate, they are worth more than $800 million.His ascent has inspired some members of Britain’s Indian diaspora, though some question his ability to relate to them.Other Big StoriesA gunman killed a 16-year-old girl and a 61-year-old woman at a St. Louis high school. He died in a shootout with the police.Officials at New York State’s largest Hasidic school admitted they illegally diverted millions of dollars, including from food aid for children that they spent on parties.Ukrainians returning to towns that Russia had occupied are finding destruction and a lack of vital services.The fashion industry is distancing itself from Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after his antisemitic outbursts. His talent agency also dropped him.#MeToo led to more diversity in the entertainment industry. But Hollywood has started to regress in subtle ways.WhatsApp, the messaging platform, went down in several countries this morning.OpinionsCrime in the U.S. rose substantially in 2020. The perception that it was all in big cities run by Democrats is false, Paul Krugman writes.Frustrated with polling? Pollsters are, too, Quoctrung Bui argues.Detached from the working class, Rishi Sunak won’t save Britain, Kimi Chaddah says.MORNING READSSabrina Brokenborough, a fashion school graduate, in knitwear of her own design.Mary Inhea Kang for The New York TimesNew York wool festival: A decades-old fair is drawing young knitters.Icy-white hair: Would you go “Targaryen blond”?Rebrand: Restoration Hardware was known for selling furniture. Why is it opening restaurants?Pickleball is expanding: Tennis is mad.Well: It’s the time of year when you may notice symptoms of seasonal depression.Advice from Wirecutter: A good air purifier can improve your life.Lives Lived: The comic actor Leslie Jordan became a familiar face on shows like “Will & Grace,” then found new fame with his pandemic videos. He died at 67.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICBears beat Patriots: Led by the quarterback Justin Fields, the Chicago Bears dominated New England 33-14 on the road last night, a surprising result in the N.F.L. landscape.The Lakers’ problem: Los Angeles is 0-3 and its point guard, Russell Westbrook, is shooting poorly. Darvin Ham, in his first year as Lakers head coach, indicated Westbrook’s role could change.Jets trade: New York acquired the Jaguars running back James Robinson yesterday, a clear sign that the team intends to capitalize on a promising 5-2 start. The move comes after the star rookie running back Breece Hall tore his A.C.L.ARTS AND IDEAS Climate protesters in front of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”Just Stop Oil, via Associated PressTargeting art for climate changeIn recent months, climate activists in Europe have glued themselves to paintings by Picasso and Botticelli, thrown mashed potatoes on a Monet and tossed tomato soup on a van Gogh. In a video, Phoebe Plummer, 21, who threw the soup, asked: “What is worth more: art or life?”The activists didn’t damage the paintings (they were protected by glass) but targeted world-famous art to garner publicity for their cause. The stunts have started a conversation online. Some people are asking how defacing famous artworks helps address climate change, and Plummer has an answer: It’s to direct attention “to the questions that matter.”For more: In The Guardian, the art historian Katy Hessel explains how the protests build on a history of using art for activism.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookKate Sears for The New York TimesMiso and butter create a simple yet flavorful pasta.TheaterThe novel “A Little Life” comes to the stage, raising the question: How much suffering can the protagonist (and the audience) endure?What to ReadIn “The Women of Rothschild,” Natalie Livingstone focuses on generations of the banking family’s wives and daughters.Late NightJames Corden addressed his restaurant ban.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was infantry. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Polluted air (four letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. The word “forshmak” — chopped herring — appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday in a story about a new food market.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the European energy crisis. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

​​“What would you do for your relevance?” the political journalist Mark Leibovich asks in his new book, “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission.” “How badly did you want into the clubhouse, no matter how wretched it became inside?” For Leibovich, you can’t truly understand the current Republican Party without taking stock of the almost Shakespearean drama that unfolded during the Trump presidency — in which Republican after Republican bowed to the will of their ascendant party leader.Through his extensive — and often quite colorful — reporting with Trump’s inner circle of enablers, Leibovich tries to understand the motivations that fueled Trump’s takeover of the G.O.P. But this conversation isn’t only important in retrospect. With the Republican Party poised to possibly recapture at least one house of Congress in November, many of Trump’s core enablers could soon hold considerable political power. Who are they? What do they believe? How will they act if given power?[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]We discuss why the stakes in 2022 midterms feel higher than ever, why the Republican Party has changed so profoundly since the days of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, how the governing structure of the G.O.P. fell apart as Trump rose in influence, the many reasons politicians from Lindsey Graham to Elise Stefanik converted from Trump skeptics to staunch Trump defenders, the political motivations of Kevin McCarthy — who may become the next speaker of the House — and how he might wield power, how the persistence of Trumpism could profoundly alter American democracy, why Leibovich believes figures like J.D. Vance prostrated themselves to a man who insulted them, what options Democrats have for countering election denialism and more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Ralph Answang“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More