Elections

Arizona has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 24 years, and the state has not been represented by two Democratic senators in over 65 years. So we find ourselves in a historically strange place: Joe Biden holds a small but consistent edge over the president, and Mark Kelly, the Democratic Senate candidate, holds a lead in his race against his Republican opponent, Martha McSally.Why is Arizona suddenly a swing state?The answer is frequently attributed to changes in the demographics of our electorate. It is true that Arizona’s population is increasingly urban, college-educated and Latino — trends that favor the Democratic Party.But this influx of Democratic-leaning groups doesn’t explain the change. After all, the proportions of registered Republicans and Democrats in Arizona have remained remarkably stable: Registered Republicans solidly outnumber registered Democrats.What has changed is that more Republicans aren’t voting for the party’s candidate in elections for national office.That gets to the heart of why Arizona has become a swing state. What partisans want is no longer necessarily reflected in what their parties have to offer — Arizonans, often moderate Democrats and Republicans, have been left up for grabs in the middle while major-party candidates have often moved to opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.And that is an overlooked but essential factor to explain our swinging state: The Arizona Democratic Party is more effectively targeting its messages to align with the moderate voters of the state.That is what we found when in recent weeks and in collaboration with the Arizona Policy Lab, we asked over 1,100 Arizonans about their views toward the candidates, parties and key issues. Arizona Democrats are disproportionately moderate, as are self-identified independents. Even nearly two-thirds of Republicans, typically the most ideological group in the state, describe themselves as either moderate or just leaning conservative.We asked Arizonans to rate the state parties relative to the national parties on an ideological scale. Large proportions of both Democrats and Republicans view their own party in Arizona as more moderate than what they see in Washington. In other words, there is bipartisan agreement among Arizonans: Washington elites are farther out on the ideological extremes than the people who live here in our state.Arizonans’ moderate perceptions are largely backed up by what they say about the issues. A fifth of Arizona Democrats, for example, support the construction of a border wall, which Mr. Biden has pledged to immediately halt. A majority of Republicans in Arizona support a pathway toward citizenship for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children — a program that President Trump has repeatedly tried to eliminate. Over a third of Republicans say that immigrants help Arizona’s culture, and 42 percent say that immigrants help our state economy.When it comes to the coronavirus, over 80 percent of Republicans in Arizona report that they are often wearing a mask, and a majority support a mask mandate — something that Mr. Trump has refused to endorse.Scholars have found that Americans generally misperceive members of the opposing party to be more ideologically extreme than they truly are. But remarkably, more than a fifth of Republicans say that Arizona Democrats are more conservative than the national Democratic Party. State-level Republicans, on the other hand, are seen as ideologically extreme, with 43 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of Republicans viewing state-level Republicans as more conservative than the national party.The campaigns provide examples. Ms. McSally’s campaign is persistently trying to cast Mr. Kelly as a radical leftist: In the race’s only senatorial debate, Ms. McSally repeatedly referred to her opponent as “Counterfeit Kelly,” as she tried to portray him as a covert radical leftist. But Ms. McSally herself has struggled to convey a moderate stance: When asked during the debate, she would not say whether she was “proud” of her support for the president. Mr. Kelly is actually running a centrist campaign as he tries to appeal to Arizona’s moderate mind-set — just as Kyrsten Sinema did successfully against Ms. McSally in 2018.We find that both Mr. Biden and Mr. Kelly are especially popular among those who rate Democrats in Arizona as more conservative than the national party. A recent Arizona Daily Star report suggests that nearly a fifth of Republicans in deep-blue Pima County are supporting Mr. Biden. Our statewide analysis shows 10 percent of Republicans supporting Mr. Biden — which, in a neck-and-neck contest, could make a lot of difference.Demographic trends suggest that Arizona is moving to the left ideologically. But a better explanation might be that the state is moving toward the ideological center — and that’s where winning candidates place themselves.Dr. Samara Klar and Dr. Christopher Weber are associate professors at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy and co-coordinators of the Arizona Policy Lab.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

What, in the Trump era, does the face of complicity look like?Sometimes the answer is obvious. Mitch McConnell. William Barr. Lindsey Graham.But sometimes it’s someone who’s less well known. The face might register, but the name escapes you. It’s just a man in rimless glasses and a dark suit.I’m talking about Rod J. Rosenstein. Years from now, I think we should remember the men and women like him, and the role they played in this administration’s vilest deeds.Last week, The Times reported that the inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael E. Horowitz, has prepared a draft report based on an investigation of his agency’s role in the Trump administration’s family separation policy of 2018.Before discussing his findings, let’s start by calling this policy what it really was: A state-directed effort to intern immigrant children, some exceptionally young — so young that they were still breastfeeding, so young that they were preverbal, so young that they were not yet aware of their parents’ names. To wrench these children from their mothers and fathers and detain them for months on end required a bureaucracy, with cruel architects at the top — specifically, the former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy adviser — and a dedicated pyramid of helpers directly below.Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, was close to the peak of that structure. That’s what the reporting by my colleagues Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt made clear, as did reporting this summer in The Guardian.On a conference call with the Justice Department in the spring of 2018, five U.S. attorneys from our border states — three of them Trump appointees — expressed their alarm about the “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all undocumented immigrants, even if it meant separating them from their sons and daughters. One, John Bash, specifically said he’d declined to prosecute two such cases, because they involved children under the age of 5.Rosenstein was the one who told him he was wrong to do so. (“Those two cases should not have been declined,” Bash wrote to his staff immediately following the phone call.) There was no categorical exemption based on age. Even parents with babies could be prosecuted. The headline from The Guardian’s own investigation made this point rather bluntly: “Revealed: Rod Rosenstein advised there was no age limit on child separations.”“I think this is the structural question that’ll last the longest,” Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who in June of 2018 made a successful argument for ending family separation in federal court, told me. “We know the political people at the top who wanted a policy of family separation, and it’s horrific. But where were the career people? How many pushed back?”How many indeed?Rosenstein’s complicity in this machine was ugly, but it was by no means unique. Top officials at the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services all played a role. They were all sowing chaos, inflicting cruelty and causing unfathomable trauma at the behest of a small, vicious cadre up top.Gelernt told me that he had to make a hard strategic decision when arguing his case against the Trump Justice Department. In order to get families reunited quickly, he was not going to challenge the administration’s right to prosecute these immigrants. He accepted that they broke the law. And like any American parent who breaks the law, he accepted that they typically had to be separated from their children while in jail.Instead, his argument was this: The jail time for these misdemeanors was usually a matter of days. So why were these parents not being reunited with their children afterward? “What became clear,” he told me, “is that they never had any intention of reuniting them until the parent gave up and was deported, if ever.”The federal judge in San Diego agreed, saying the government’s behavior “shocks the conscience,” that the separation policy violated due process and that all separated families had to be reunited within 30 days.But what galls Gelernt now, after seeing the Times report about the inspector general’s investigation, is that his suspicions were right all along: Separating families was the objective of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, not a byproduct. The children were the targets of the policy, not collateral damage. “We need to take away children,” Sessions reportedly told the local U.S. attorneys.No president before Trump had ever dared go that far. Which is not to say that Trump’s predecessors handled immigration gingerly: When the number of immigrants surged at the border in 2014, President Barack Obama responded by building more detention facilities and holding families indefinitely — though still together — and faced a legal backlash.But Trump’s policy was something altogether different. It was child abuse, plain and simple. “That’s why it’s so chilling,” Gelernt told me. “D.O.J. officials apparently declined to exempt even cases with a baby.”In response to the inspector general’s report, Rosenstein’s former office offered a 64-page response, according to the Times report.In a separate letter to The New York Times, Rosenstein took care to note that he was not responsible for developing the “zero tolerance” policy; he merely clarified what it meant. “I correctly told U.S. Attorneys that the Attorney General did not want them to decline cases for categorical reasons,” he wrote, “but I expressly advised U.S. Attorneys that they were NOT required to prosecute every immigration defendant arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.”It’s a very cautious, lawyerly statement. But note what Rosenstein did not deny: That he refused his U.S. attorneys permission to automatically exempt undocumented immigrants with young children from prosecution. In his letter, Rosenstein also said that any claims that “I did not care how young the children were, or that I ignored concerns about the children’s welfare are unequivocally not true.”But if Rosenstein really harbored concerns about the family separation policy, why wasn’t he noisier about them in public? He could have registered his objections and left. He did have other options. He has a degree from Harvard Law. He had a distinguished record of public service that long preceded his association with Donald Trump. He served in both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s Justice Departments; in 2005, he became the U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland, and he was one of only three U.S. attorneys retained by Obama.But what we have lately learned about Rosenstein is that he is a very canny political operator. He has a gift for threading needles that even a tailor would envy.While serving in the Trump Justice Department, for instance, he wrote a memo recommending the removal of James Comey as the head of the F.B.I., and he later defended his boss, William Barr, after he misled the public about the results of the Mueller investigation. But he also had the presence of mind to appoint Robert S. Mueller in the first place — and, though he has denied it, to question Trump’s own presence of mind. (It has been reported that he suggested secretly recording Trump’s ravings in order to expose him as unfit to lead.)So Rosenstein is not a caricature of a villain, necessarily. You might even say he’s a man of a rather banal morality. But when push came to shove, he seems to have done exactly what it took to survive in the Trump Justice Department — which was to tell U.S. Attorneys that they should not decline to prosecute undocumented immigrants just because those immigrants had very young children.Last week, the Trump Justice Department made it possible to investigate specious claims of election fraud, a move that not only departs from precedent but also undermines confidence in democracy itself. Who can be relied upon to stop such a thing?Courageous civil servants. They’re our best defense against tyranny, against autocracy, against government-perpetrated crimes.Yet when it was Rosenstein’s turn, he did nothing to stop government-orchestrated cruelty. Instead, he simply did his job.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

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Joe Biden won the nomination for president on the shoulders of older Black voters in the US south. But how do younger, progressive people of color feel about his candidacy in the southern state of Georgia, in play for the first time in decades? And will a dangerous campaign of QAnon disinformation have any bearing on the outcome of the election? Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone try to find out
Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video
Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video

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Thousands of members of Georgia’s black community have come out to vote early in the US election, enduring long lines and hours of waiting. Many acknowledged they could have voted by mail or returned to a polling place at a different time, but with no expectation of voting becoming easier in the weeks to come, they saw waiting as a necessary step. ‘I wanted to make sure that my vote was counted,’ Wilbart McCoy said as he queued to cast his ballot. ‘The suspicions, or the alleged suspicions around mail-in voting, we never had those before but it pushed me to come out early’
More than 10-hour wait and long lines as early voting starts in Georgia

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Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to the US
Amy Coney Barrett pledges ‘open mind’ and plays down conservative record

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Less than three weeks until the election and I know you’re obsessed about those Senate races.Seriously. You’ve gone as far as you can go with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. You now know more about them than about many members of your family. You sure see a hell of a lot more of them than you see housebound friends and co-workers.Controlling the Senate would be crucial for a President Biden. And imagine about-to-be minority leader Mitch McConnell this holiday season, carving a turkey and muttering, “Give thanks for what?”Obviously, that’s impetus enough. Let’s take a look.For Democrats, things are pretty rosy. Places that were seen as knee-jerk Republican until about five minutes ago are now full of fascinating, desperate fights.Take Georgia. Georgians get to vote in two Senate races. The most riveting involves Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat by great Republican minds who figured what the nation needed most was another really rich person making policy in Washington.Loeffler is the kind of rich person who lives in a mansion that has a name. In her most famous campaign ad, she boasts that she’s more conservative than Attila the Hun. She’s a co-owner of a WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream, whose players are encouraging fans to vote against her.Loeffler’s fellow Georgians have so much respect for her talents that 21 are running against her. Chances are the top two vote-getters will wind up in a runoff.This G.O.P. chaos is really all about Donald Trump, of course. Like everything else. Even some normally conservative states are awash in anti-Trump sentiment that fuels antipathy toward his allies in the Senate. The Donald is the captain of his personal political Titanic, and the Republican nominees for other offices are scrambling for their own little lifeboats.Recently, Senator Martha McSally of Arizona was asked in a debate whether she was proud to be a Trump supporter.“I’m proud that I’m fighting for Arizonans on things like cutting your taxes,” McSally responded. I believe we can write that down as a no.There are so many Senate dramas, you can’t help feeling sorry for voters stuck with races so unexciting it’s hard to remember they’re going on. In Maine you can’t turn on a TV without being blasted with an ad for Senator Susan Collins or her opponent, Sara Gideon. They’re fighting one of the most competitive contests in the nation. In New Jersey, you’ll get far more information about the search for a new “Bachelorette” than Cory Booker’s re-election campaign, which is not bothering to run broadcast ads at all.But at least Booker’s opponent, Rik Mehta, is still in the race. (Mehta bills himself as “a biotech entrepreneur, innovator, health care policy expert and a licensed pharmacist and attorney,” which guarantees he’ll at least win the one-sentence biography competition.) In Arkansas, Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s Democratic competitor was supposed to be Joshua Mahony, but about two hours after the final filing deadline Mahony announced that he needed to spend more time with his family and disappeared.In Nebraska, Republican Senator Ben Sasse was supposed to be running against Democrat Chris Janicek in what would have been a tough one for Sasse to lose — even if Janicek had not sent his staff a group text naming one employee and asking if he should use campaign funds “getting her laid.” State Democrats are now urging voters to wipe Janicek out of their minds and support a write-in candidate.Sex scandals are sort of a required subplot in national elections — if there aren’t a few you worry people aren’t looking. Perhaps you heard about the Democrat in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham, who appeared to be making a great run against Senator Thom Tillis until reports came out that Cunningham, whose campaign had stressed his military background and good character, had been having an affair with the wife of an Army veteran.After news of the scandal swept through North Carolina, polls showed Cunningham was, um — widening his lead.Remember this lesson, campaign-watchers. In voters’ checklist of things they require in a candidate, marital fidelity generally comes in somewhere below “wears nice shoes.” Why do you think that is?Political footwear is always underestimated.Adultery is more fun to talk about than infrastructure.Remember how good the Clinton economy was?Yeah, I’d go with Clinton.Besides illicit sex, another theme that’s been cropping up here and there is age. In Oklahoma, Democrat Abby Broyles has been running ads against Jim Inhofe, the long-running Republican senator, pointing out that Inhofe, 85, has been in office since 1967 and “misses so many votes. So many meetings.”Now those of you who are familiar with Inhofe may remember him as the guy who once brought a snowball to the Senate floor to demonstrate that global warming wasn’t a problem. And perhaps conclude the more meetings he missed, the better.But Broyles seems more focused on the age issue — her campaign adviser made headlines by referring to Inhofe as “too damn old.” I think we can all agree that 85 is a tad past most people’s prime, but this is really not the year for the party of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to be going down that road.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 line was familiar. The follow up was not.Senator Kamala Harris came ready to press her case against Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the second day of this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, asking if she had been aware of President Trump’s promise to nominate judges who would repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.The question concluded with one of Ms. Harris’s characteristic refrains, one she memorably leveled against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh two years ago: “I’d appreciate a yes-or-no answer, please.”Like Justice Kavanaugh, Judge Barrett seemed briefly perplexed by Ms. Harris. “I want to be very, very careful,” Judge Barrett said. “I’m under oath.”But unlike then, Ms. Harris let Judge Barrett’s tentative answer slide, hinting at what could become her new professional reality as a No. 2 to the most powerful man in politics.Before joining the Democratic ticket as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s running mate, Ms. Harris was known as a politician with a withering prosecutorial style and a skill for crafting viral clips. She built her national brand on high-stakes moments — judiciary hearings, the Democratic primary debate stage — that she molded to her advantage, her years as a district attorney on display as she grilled adversaries.Now she is trying to balance her penchant for forceful exchanges with her duties as the vice-presidential nominee. After all, being vice president means checking your ego at the Oval Office door.From her opening remarks to her questioning on Wednesday, she cut a more restrained profile, using her platform at the confirmation hearings to amplify Mr. Biden’s message while studiously avoiding any maneuvers that could jeopardize his lead in the polls. Even her decision to monitor the proceedings from her Senate office rather than in person because of the dangers posed by the coronavirus reinforced Mr. Biden’s case that his administration would be a more responsible steward of public health than Mr. Trump’s. More

After receiving a heavy infusion of monoclonal antibodies to treat his bout of Covid-19, President Trump has declared that he is immune to the virus that causes it and talked privately about wearing a Superman T-shirt under his dress shirt when he left the hospital. Even as the president has exulted in his supposed imperviousness to the coronavirus that is resurging across parts of the country, he has delighted in portraying former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as vulnerable and cloistered, wearing masks “every time you see him.”But even if the president were now immune to the coronavirus, he may not remain so, scientists warn. The president’s unique treatment may have prevented his body from making the antibodies necessary for long-term protection.The monoclonal antibodies he received were produced by the drug company Regeneron and will wane in a matter of weeks, as the synthetic molecules are known to do. Without replenishment, this decline may leave Mr. Trump even more susceptible to the virus than most patients who have recovered from Covid-19, several experts warned.Moreover, the steroid treatment the president received early in the course of his illness suppresses the body’s natural immune response, including its propensity to make antibodies of its own.“He may be not protected the second time around, especially because he didn’t develop his own antibodies,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.Most people who are infected with the coronavirus produce antibodies to the virus that should protect them from a second infection. It’s unclear how long this immunity lasts; based on research into other coronaviruses, immunity may persist for up to a year, experts have said. More