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      You Cannot Be Too Cynical About Trump (or His Imitators)

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Any plans to hop a flight to Martha’s Vineyard?Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, I think the Vineyard folks have had enough unexpected guests for a while. But I really was impressed by how gracious they were to the immigrant families that Gov. Ron DeSantis shipped there.Bret: It’s a shame for the Venezuelan migrants that they weren’t on the Vineyard for long, because the community there is extraordinarily generous.Gail: As opposed to DeSantis and his slimy attempt to score political points with the right wing.Bret: It was definitely a stunt, but it was a politically effective one.Gail: Are you still open to the idea of him as a possible president?Bret: All depends on the opponent. If you were a Republican primary voter and your choice was between Donald Trump and DeSantis, who would choose? No fair to answer “Canada” or “euthanasia.”Gail: Exactly why I’m never going to be a Republican primary voter. And I don’t believe there’s a Democrat with an infinitesimal possibility of nomination I wouldn’t prefer to DeSantis.Bret: No fair avoiding the question! I’m no longer a registered Republican, but I’d root for DeSantis over Trump in a primary, and I’d vote for DeSantis over, say, Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom in a general election, though I hope that’s not the choice I would have to make. I’d also love to see a candidate who believes we need more immigrants in this country and is serious about effective border enforcement.Gail: About immigration. The Republicans are clearly planning to make that a big issue — certainly Trump loves to howl about it. But let me begin with one bottom line: The United States has an aging population that can’t possibly fill all the job openings it already has. The hospitality sector has been, on average, half a million people short every month for months; the food services industry alone is around 1.4 million people short.Bret: Total agreement on this one. We don’t just need immigrants to fill jobs — we also need their ambition, entrepreneurialism, work ethic, cultural creativity, strong family values and non-entitled attitudes. Unfortunately the Biden administration is screwing this up by pretending that we aren’t seeing a tidal wave of border migrants, and that it’s not a massive burden on the social services of border states.Mystifying to me why the administration can’t get this one right. Democrats are even losing Hispanic voters over the issue. What gives?Gail: No modern president has been able to get a real grip on the border immigration crisis — don’t even know if you can call it a crisis since it’s been going on for so long.Bret: There’s never been perfect border control, but there’s been better and worse. What we now have is unmistakably worse and a lot of liberals are deluding themselves if they think there’s nothing amiss when U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports a 250 percent increase in migrant encounters around Yuma.Gail: You have waves of folks fleeing from disaster back home — these days, particularly Venezuelans.Bret: Ah yes, Venezuela. Chesa Boudin’s idea of a workers’ paradise. Sorry, go on ….Gail: Many of them have endured terrible treks by foot, sometimes with children. If they present themselves at the border, their claims have to be processed, which can take a lot of time. The procedure is really a mess, and meanwhile there’s the choice between letting them live miserably in makeshift camps or providing them, and especially their children, with the services they need.Like his predecessors, Biden’s has been trying to get the system improved, but the legal issues plus the politics make it almost impossible.If these folks make their way into the country illegally, with luck they’ll get settled and work out their immigration problems later. But of course they can also wind up homeless and drift into crime. The border state residents have to bear most of the burden just because of their location, so you can see why they’d resent that.Bret: We obviously should be compassionate to refugees fleeing persecution, kids especially. But Biden has also turned the United States into a magnet for migration in a way that communities are simply unprepared to handle. Our compassion as a country has to be proportionate to our means, not our wishes.Gail: One thing we clearly need is revised immigration law that takes all this into consideration and provides economic support to the communities where these folks wind up. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm among congressional Republicans for that idea.Bret: There used to be Republicans — Ronald Reagan, both Presidents Bush, and John McCain among them — who were eager to pass comprehensive immigration reform and were stymied by restrictionists on both sides of the aisle, including Bernie Sanders. Now we’ve got an immigration debate in Congress that might as well be described as the heartless against the clueless.Switching subjects, Gail, our colleague David Brooks had a terrific column last week on why all the attempts to defeat Trump thus far have failed. Any theories of your own?Gail: Trump’s recent triumphs have been pretty much within his own party. Let’s see what happens when the candidates he endorsed for Senate, like that crazy guy in Arizona, actually have to run in an election against a non-crazy Democrat like Mark Kelly.Bret: Don’t be shocked if the crazy guy wins. Last poll I checked had him within two points.Gail: But in the bigger picture, we’re living in a new internet-oriented world where old political virtues like making reasonable deals with the other side have been wiped away. Too boring.Bret: Trump intuitively understands entertainment the way no other politician has since maybe Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was a romantic whereas Trump is a cynic, which makes him particularly potent in a cynical age.Gail: It’s scary how well Trump fits into that new world. No real ideas maybe, but he’s colorful, a good ranter and not constrained by any sense of obligation to be rational. Have to admit my greatest hope for the total scuttling of Trump’s political career is the New York attorney general’s attempt to pull the cover off his finances.How about you?Bret: I tend to think that all of these legal attacks on Trump do more to help than hurt him. He’s a Nietzschean figure in that sense: that which does not kill him makes him stronger. Unless he is tried in a courtroom somewhere in the West Village, there is no jury in the United States that is going to hand down a unanimous verdict against him. What these potential prosecutions mainly do is keep him in the spotlight, which is right where he likes to be, with something like the color of martyrdom, at least to his supporters.Gail: My dream has never been Trump in behind bars — you’re right, he’d become a triple martyr — but Trump in bankruptcy court and then sending out Truth Social memes from a motel in New Jersey? That speaks to me.But go on …Bret: Trump is what a friend of mine calls a “rage funnel.” It’s a funnel for a very specific type of rage — the rage of feeling looked down upon. And I don’t think that ends until the culture of liberal condescension that people like Hillary Clinton typified turns into a culture of understanding and empathy for his voters.Gail: Hillary was over-blamed on that front, thanks to one dumb comment. But you’ve got a very important point and from now on when I see The Donald I’m going to see him as a funnel-head.Bret: Coneheads!Gail: On a totally different subject — you’re my trusted interpreter of sane Republicanism. Can you interpret what Lindsey Graham is up to with his bill creating a national ban on abortion? At a time when many of the G.O.P. Senate candidates seem to be scrubbing all abortion references off their websites?Bret: You can’t interpret stupid, Gail.The bill isn’t just dead on arrival with every single Democrat. It’s D.O.A. for many Republicans, too. The whole point of overturning Roe v. Wade was to let the states decide for themselves what limits to set on abortion. So much for federalism. And, as you point out, the proposal just plays into Democratic hands at a time when pro-choice voters are exceptionally motivated to go to the polls.Gail: Yippee!Bret: That being said, it isn’t such a bad thing that the G.O.P. keep fumbling the politics of the midterm, because the last thing the country needs is yet another crop of Trumpy Republicans in Congress. So I say, go Lindsey!Gail: Wow, so you’re hoping for a Democratic-controlled Congress as well as a Democratic-controlled White House?Bret: Which Bolshevik was the one who said “the worse, the better”? That’s kind of my attitude here. It’s not that I relish the idea of continued Democratic control. Far from it. But then I look at the alternative.Gail, we’ve dwelled on a lot of negatives, which I guess is what you get these days when you talk about politics. Can I end with a brief tribute to the greatness of Roger Federer, who announced last week that he was retiring from the professional tennis circuit? There are some athletes who personify everything that’s perfect not just about a sport but about sportsmanship itself: Jesse Owens, Ted Williams, Althea Gibson, Pelé, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Roger was that for 24 years on the court and off.Gail: That’s what I’ve come to appreciate about sports. They do bring us all together, even when we’re rooting for different players.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Majority of Latino Voters Out of G.O.P.’s Reach, New Poll Shows

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      A New York Times/Siena College poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. But overall, the party has maintained a hold on the Latino electorate.It has been nearly two years since Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters. But Republican dreams of a major realignment of Latino voters drawn to G.O.P. stances on crime and social issues have failed to materialize, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.The poll — one of the largest nonpartisan surveys of Latino voters since the 2020 election — found that Democrats had maintained a grip on the majority of Latino voters, driven in part by women and the belief that Democrats remained the party of the working class. Overall, Hispanic voters are more likely to agree with Democrats on many issues — immigration, gun policy, climate. They are also more likely to see Republicans as the party of the elite and as holding extreme views. And a majority of Hispanic voters, 56 percent, plan to vote for Democrats this fall, compared with 32 percent for Republicans.But the survey also shows worrying signs for the future of the Democratic message. Despite that comfortable lead, the poll finds Democrats faring far worse than they did in the years before the 2020 election. Younger male Hispanic voters, especially those in the South, appear to be drifting away from the party, a shift that is propelled by deep economic concerns. Weaknesses in the South and among rural voters could stand in the way of crucial wins in Texas and Florida in this year’s midterms.Anthony Saiz, 24, who reviews content for a social media platform in Tucson, Ariz., said he had to take on a second job baking pizzas at a beer garden to make ends meet. Mr. Saiz voted for President Biden in 2020 and considers himself a Democrat because he grew up in a Democratic household. But under Mr. Biden, he said, the cost of living seemed to have doubled for him even as he moved into a smaller apartment.“The choices he has been making for the country have been putting me in a bad spot,” he said of Mr. Biden.How Latinos will vote is a crucial question in the November elections and for the future of American politics. Hispanic voters are playing a pivotal role in the battle over control of Congress, making up a significant slice of voters — as high as 20 percent — in two of the states likeliest to determine control of the Senate, Arizona and Nevada. Latinos also make up more than 20 percent of registered voters in more than a dozen highly competitive House races in California, Colorado, Florida and Texas, among other states.Democrats have long assumed that the growing Latino electorate would doom Republicans, and the prospect of an increasingly diverse electorate has fueled anxieties among conservatives. The 2020 election results — in which Mr. Trump gained an estimated eight percentage points among Hispanic voters compared to 2016 — began changing both parties’ outlooks. The Times/Siena poll shows that historic allegiances and beliefs on core issues remain entrenched, though some shifts are striking.While majorities of Hispanic voters side with Democrats on social and cultural issues, sizable shares hold beliefs aligned with Republicans: More than a third of Hispanic voters say they agree more with the G.O.P. on crime and policing, and four out of 10 Hispanic voters have concerns that the Democratic Party has gone too far on race and gender. Hispanic voters view economic issues as the most important factor determining their vote this year and are evenly split on which party they agree with more on the economy.Who Do You Agree More With on the Following Issues?Among Hispanic voters

      Based on responses from 522 Hispanic voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,399 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 6 to 14, 2022. Does not include a small percentage of respondents who said they agreed with both parties, who said they didn’t know or who refused to answer.By The New York TimesHispanic voters in America have never been a unified voting bloc and have frequently puzzled political strategists who try to understand their behavior. The 32 million Latinos eligible to vote are recent immigrants and fourth-generation citizens, city dwellers and rural ranchers, Catholics and atheists.Both parties have been full of bluster and soaring expectations for Latino voters, raising and spending millions of dollars to attract their support, but there has been little concrete nonpartisan data to back up their speculation. The survey offers insights into a portion of the electorate that many strategists have called the new swing vote and whose views are often complicated by contradictions among subgroups.For Dani Bernal, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, economic issues loom large in her decisions.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesDani Bernal, 35, a digital marketer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles, said she switched back and forth between candidates from both parties, in large part based on their economic policies. Her mother, she said, had arrived in Florida from Bolivia with only a bag of clothes and $500 to her name, and had been able to thrive there because taxes were low and the cost of living had been affordable. Economic issues loom large in her decisions, Ms. Bernal said.“I am registered as a Republican, but I am exactly like Florida: I swing back and forth,” she said.Republicans are performing best with Hispanic voters who live in the South, a region that includes Florida and Texas, where Republicans have notched significant wins with Latino voters in recent elections. In the South, 46 percent of Latino voters say they plan to vote for Democrats, while 45 percent say they plan to vote for Republicans. By contrast, Democrats lead 62 to 24 among Hispanic voters in other parts of the country.How this poll captured Latino sentiment on election issues. We spoke with 522 Hispanic voters, more than four times as many as in our last survey — a method pollsters call an oversample. Here’s how that works.A generation gap could also lead to more Republican gains. Democrats, the poll found, were benefiting from particularly high support among older Latino voters. But voters under 30 favor Republicans’ handling of the economy by 46 percent, compared with 43 percent who favor Democrats.Republicans also have strength among Latino men, who favor Democrats in the midterm election but who say, by a five-point margin, that they would vote for Mr. Trump if he were to run again in 2024. Young men in particular appear to be shifting toward Republicans. They are a key vulnerability for Democrats, who maintain just a four-point edge in the midterms among men younger than 45.The Times/Siena poll provides a glimpse of Latino voters who have traditionally supported Democrats in the past but plan to vote for Republicans this fall: They are disproportionately voters without college degrees who are focused on the economy, and they are more likely to be young, male and born in the United States but living in heavily Hispanic areas.Immigration remains a key issue for Hispanic voters, and both parties have a particular appeal. While Democrats have pushed for overhauling the legal immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, Republicans have focused on cracking down on illegal immigration and using border politics to galvanize their base.Democrats maintain a significant advantage on the issue of legal immigration, with 55 percent of Hispanic voters saying they agree with the party, compared with 29 percent who say they agree with Republicans. But the G.O.P. has made inroads as it has stepped up anti-immigration rhetoric and policy: 37 percent of Latino voters favor Republicans’ views on illegal immigration. And roughly a third support a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.Amelia Alonso Tarancon, 69, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago and now lives outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., wants Congress to offer legal status to undocumented workers who have been in the country for decades. But she agrees with Republicans on their hard-line views against illegal immigration. The issue motivated her to vote for Mr. Trump, though she is a registered Democrat.Amelia Alonso Tarancon, who lives near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., does not consider herself a Democrat or a Republican.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“I know this country is a country of immigrants, but they should immigrate in a legal way,” she said. But Ms. Alonso Tarancon said she no longer supported the former president after he refused to hand over the presidency, fueled the attack on the U.S. Capitol and “took all those documents” to Mar-a-Lago.“I don’t consider myself a Democrat or Republican — I am on standby right now until the next election,” she said.In their effort to attract new voters, Republicans have frequently criticized Democrats as being too “woke.” The accusation resonates with many Hispanic voters, with 40 percent saying that the party has gone too far in pushing a “woke” ideology on race and gender. But there is a clear split: 37 percent take the opposite view and say the party has not gone far enough. And nearly one in five Hispanic voters surveyed said they didn’t know whether Democrats were too woke — a term that cannot be easily translated into Spanish.On many social and cultural issues, Hispanic voters remain aligned with the Democratic Party.The majority, 58 percent, have a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, while 45 percent say the same about the Blue Lives Matter movement, which defends law enforcement personnel. A majority believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; even among Republican Hispanics, four in 10 oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Support for Black Lives Matter and abortion rights is propelled largely by young people. When asked whom they agreed with more on gun policy, 49 percent said Democrats, while 34 percent said Republicans.Republicans attempting to court Latino voters have repeatedly painted Democrats as elitist and out of touch, but the poll suggests that strategy is having limited success.Nearly six in 10 Hispanic voters continue to see the Democrats as the party of the working class. While white Republicans uniformly see themselves as the working-class party, even some Hispanic Republicans believe that mantle belongs to Democrats. And there was no evidence in the poll that Republicans were performing any stronger among non-college-educated Latinos or among Hispanics who lived in rural areas, two key demographic groups they have focused on for outreach. One in four Hispanic voters in rural areas remain undecided about who they will vote for in November.Democrats have been roundly criticized for their embrace of the term Latinx, which is meant to be more inclusive than the gendered words Latino and Latina. Previous surveys have shown only a small minority of Hispanic voters prefer the term. But the poll suggests that Latinx is hardly the most polarizing issue; just 18 percent said they found the term offensive.The Times/Siena survey of 1,399 registered voters nationwide, including an oversample of 522 Hispanic voters, was conducted by telephone using live operators from Sept. 6 to Sept. 14, 2022. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for the full sample and 5.9 percentage points among Hispanic voters. Cross-tabs and methodology are available for all registered voters and for Hispanic voters.Nate Cohn More

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      Democrats Buoyed by Abortion and Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds

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      Even as they struggle to persuade voters that they should be trusted on the economy, Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress as the sprint to November’s midterm election begins, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.The surprising Democratic strength has been bolstered by falling gas prices and President Biden’s success at breaking through legislative gridlock in Washington to pass his agenda. That shift in political momentum has helped boost, in just two months, the president’s approval rating by nine percentage points and doubled the share of Americans who believe the country is on the right track.But Democrats are also benefiting from factors over which they had little control: the public outcry in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of federal abortion rights and the return of former President Donald J. Trump to an attention-commanding presence on the national stage.Changes in Voter Sentiment More

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      Why Is There Still No Strategy to Defeat Donald Trump?

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      One of the stunning facts of the age is the continued prominence of Donald Trump. His candidates did well in the G.O.P. primaries this year. He won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. His favorability ratings within his party have been high and basically unchanged since late 2016. In a range of polls, some have actually shown Trump leading President Biden in a race for re-election in 2024.His prominence is astounding because over the past seven years the American establishment has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to discredit him.Those of us in this establishment correctly identified Trump as a grave threat to American democracy. The task before us was clear. We were never going to shake the hard-core MAGA folks. The job was to peel away independents and those Republicans offended by and exhausted by his antics.Many strategies were deployed in order to discredit Trump. There was the immorality strategy: Thousands of articles were written detailing his lies and peccadilloes. There was the impeachment strategy: Investigations were launched into his various scandals and outrages. There was the exposure strategy: Scores of books were written exposing how shambolic and ineffective the Trump White House really was.The net effect of these strategies has been to sell a lot of books and subscriptions and to make anti-Trumpists feel good. But this entire barrage of invective has not discredited Trump among the people who will very likely play the most determinant role. It has probably pulled some college-educated Republicans into the Democratic ranks and pushed some working-class voters over to the Republican side.The barrage has probably solidified Trump’s hold on his party. Republicans see themselves at war with the progressive coastal elites. If those elites are dumping on Trump, he must be their guy.A couple weeks ago, Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia, declaring the MAGA movement a threat to democracy. The speech said a lot of true things about that movement, but there was an implied confession: We have no strategy. Denouncing Trump and discrediting Trump are two different tasks. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, denunciation may be morally necessary, but it doesn’t achieve the goal the denouncers think it does.Some commentators argued that Biden’s strategy in the speech was to make Trump the central issue of the 2022 midterms; both Biden and Trump have an interest in making sure that Trump is the sun around which all of American politics revolves.This week, I talked with a Republican who was incensed by Biden’s approach. He is an 82-year-old émigré from Russia who is thinking of supporting Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries because he has less baggage. His parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. “And now Biden’s calling me a fascist?!” he fumed.You would think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would have at one point stepped back and asked some elemental questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is the core audience here? Which strategies have worked, and which have not?If those questions were asked, the straightforward conclusion would be that most of what we are doing is not working. The next conclusion might be that there’s a lot of self-indulgence here. We’re doing things that help those of us in the anti-Trump world bond with one another and that help people in the Trump world bond with one another. We’re locking in the political structures that benefit Trump.My core conclusion is that attacking Trump personally doesn’t work. You have to rearrange the underlying situation. We are in the middle of a cultural/economic/partisan/identity war between more progressive people in the metro areas and more conservative people everywhere else. To lead the right in this war, Trump doesn’t have to be honest, moral or competent; he just has to be seen taking the fight to the “elites.”The proper strategy in this situation is to scramble the identity war narrative. That’s what Biden did in 2020. He ran as a middle-class moderate from Scranton. He dodged the culture war issues. That’s what the Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman is trying to do in Pennsylvania.A Democratic candidate who steps outside the culture/identity war narrative is going to have access to the voters who need to be moved. Public voices who don’t seem locked in the insular educated elite worldview are going to be able to reach the people who need to be reached.Trumpists tell themselves that America is being threatened by a radical left putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration.Can Trump win again? Absolutely. I’m a DeSantis doubter. I doubt someone so emotionally flat and charmless can win a nomination in the age of intensive media. And then once Trump is nominated, he has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him.If that happens, we can at least console ourselves with that Taylor Swift lyric: “I had a marvelous time ruinin’ everything.”What’s at stake for you on Election Day?In the final weeks before the midterm elections, Times Opinion is asking for your help to better understand what motivates each generation to vote. We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why. We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before Election Day.

      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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Previewing the Next NYT/Siena Poll

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      In our July survey, the president’s approval rating was 33 percent. A lot has changed in the last two months, so will it show up in this week’s survey?It’s a busy week in New York Times election-land — we’re wrapping up our second national poll of the cycle.The last interviews will be complete by the time you read this — the poll is still in the field as I write this — and it should be interesting to see how it contrasts (or doesn’t) with our last poll. In July, in our last survey, President Biden’s approval rating was 33 percent, one of his worst results of the cycle.But a lot has changed in the last few months. Gas prices have plummeted. Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda was suddenly revived. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have gained around a net three percentage points in the generic ballot, while Mr. Biden’s approval rating has risen by five percentage points.This Times/Siena poll also has a twist: a Hispanic “oversample,” which is a fancy way of saying that we surveyed a lot more Hispanic voters than we normally do. We’ll have more on this in coming days.If you’re subscribed to this newsletter — and you should be! — we’ll send you an email with our findings as soon as we get them. We’re probably still a few days from publishing the results, so no need to refresh your inbox just yet.A good analogy to Roe?On Tuesday, I asked whether anyone had a good historical analogy for the way the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had shaken up this year’s midterm elections — an example in which the party out of power achieved the biggest policy success of a president’s first term.It’s not an exact analogy, but here’s a good answer from Matt Grossmann, a professor at Michigan State University who often has great insights into the dynamics of American electoral politics.His comparison: the backlash against the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.No, it’s not exactly a policy triumph like the court’s overturning of Roe. But if we think of the impeachment through Congress as something like a legislative initiative, you can see the similarity: Republicans were making a major push to change the status quo in Washington, and a backlash against a Republican-favored initiative became a key point in the election.For Democrats, it’s a pretty favorable analogy: Democrats picked up five seats in 1998, making it the first time the president’s party gained House seats in a midterm since 1934.Is a good poll for Republicans in Wisconsin good news for polls?Yesterday, the venerable Marquette Law School poll found the incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson leading the Democrat Mandela Barnes by one percentage point among likely voters.Key Findings From the Times/Siena College PollCard 1 of 7The first poll of the midterm cycle. More

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      Why Things May Really Be Different for This Midterm Election

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      This cycle, the arguments for Democratic strength cut against the conventional wisdom that the party in power struggles in midterms.Just about every election cycle, there’s an argument for why, this time, things might be different — different from expectations based on historical trends and key factors like the state of the economy or the president’s approval rating.The arguments are often pretty plausible. After all, every cycle is different. There’s almost always something unprecedented about a given election year — in just the last few cycles, the pandemic, the first female presidential major party nominee and the first Black president were all truly novel. There’s always a way to spin up a rationale for why old rules won’t apply.In the end, history usually prevails. That’s a good thing to keep in mind right now as Democrats show strength that seems entirely at odds with the long history of the struggles of the president’s party in midterm elections.But this cycle, there really is something different — or at the very least, there is something different about the reasons “this cycle might be different.”This cycle, the arguments for Democratic strength cut at the heart of the underlying theories for why the party in power struggles in midterms.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Intraparty G.O.P. Fight: Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, mainstream Republicans have been vying to stop a Trump-style 2020 election denier running for Senate.Abortion Ballot Measures: First came Kansas. Now, Michigan voters will decide whether abortion will remain legal in their state. Democrats are hoping referendums like these will drive voter turnout.Oz Sharpens Attacks: As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, Dr. Mehmet Oz is trying to reboot his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a pair of pointed attack lines.And that gives me a little more pause about blowing them off.A choice, not a referendumIf there’s a saying that captures why midterms go so poorly for the president’s party, it’s the idea that “midterms are a referendum, not a choice.” If it’s a referendum, the Democrats are in trouble. After all, President Biden’s approval rating is in the low 40s.But this year, there’s a pretty good reason to think this won’t just be a referendum: Donald J. Trump.Consider this: “Donald Trump” still earns more Google search interest than “Joe Biden.” It’s nothing like prior midterms, when the attention was focused all but exclusively on the president. These midterms certainly are different. More

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      Democrats’ Midterm Dilemma: How to Back Biden, Yet Shun Him, Too

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      When President Biden appeared in central Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of a semiconductor manufacturing facility, he was joined by Tim Ryan, the Democrat running for Senate. The party’s candidate for governor, however, did not attend, saying from afar that she appreciated Mr. Biden’s visit to her state.Five days earlier, in Wisconsin, another crucial midterm battleground, the situation was reversed: Gov. Tony Evers shared a stage with the president at a Labor Day speech, while the state’s Democratic candidate for the Senate stayed away, marching in a parade beforehand but skipping Mr. Biden’s address.As they move into the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democratic candidates find themselves performing a complicated dance with an unpopular president, whose approval rating is rising but still remains stubbornly underwater. In ways big and small, Democrats have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, without alienating their base or distancing themselves from key parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda.It’s a dynamic that presidents often confront in midterm cycles. What has been especially striking this year is the degree to which Democrats have outperformed the president. Even those who say they somewhat disapprove of Mr. Biden were more inclined to vote for Democrats than Republicans in a Pew Research Center survey last month. Private polling conducted for the House Democratic campaign committee found that the net job approval of their most vulnerable incumbents, on average, was more than 20 points ahead of Mr. Biden’s, a dynamic that emerged as early as April and remained consistent at least through late August, according to a committee official.The distance between Mr. Biden and his party has forced Democrats to chart a particularly treacherous course in these midterms, in which success means defying nearly a half century of political history. The last time a party maintained control of Congress with a relatively unpopular president was in 1978. That November, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating hovered around 50 percent and Mr. Biden won re-election to a second Senate term.Those races are ancient history now to most in his party, who must navigate an intricate set of political decisions about how to deploy their leader in the midterms as the president accelerates his fall campaign schedule. The tensions are most acute in Senate races, where Democrats see a stronger opportunity to retain control than in the House. Candidates in both House and Senate contests have said pointedly, when asked about the president, that they are focused on their own races.“We’ve been very clear that I disagree with the president on things,” said Mr. Ryan, the Ohio congressman and Senate candidate whose contest in recent weeks has become more competitive than originally expected in a fairly Republican state. “People recognize that I am going to be for Ohio.”Tim Ryan, holding his son Brady, met voters at an Ohio State football game earlier in September.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Biden has joked that he will campaign for or against a candidate, “whichever will help the most” — a lighthearted acknowledgment from a political veteran that each candidate must make their own political calculations about their ties to the White House. Party leaders, candidates and the president have sought to recast the election as a choice between two radically different visions for the country, rather than the traditional midterm referendum on the president and his agenda.But the president’s advisers say they believe that Mr. Biden — who was a highly sought-after surrogate in 2018 — remains one of his party’s strongest messengers.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Democrats’ Dilemma: The party’s candidates have been trying to signal their independence from the White House, while not distancing themselves from President Biden’s base or agenda.Intraparty G.O.P. Fight: Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, mainstream Republicans have been vying to stop a Trump-style 2020 election denier running for Senate.Abortion Ballot Measures: First came Kansas. Now, Michigan voters will decide whether abortion will remain legal in their state. Democrats are hoping referendums like these will drive voter turnout.Oz Sharpens Attacks: As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, Dr. Mehmet Oz is trying to reboot his campaign against his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with a pair of pointed attack lines.In recent weeks, he has traveled to Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for events, appearing with a number of Democrats in challenging races. This week, he plans to appear with Maura Healey, the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts, and is expected to headline a fund-raiser for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Biden adviser said.At a summer gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Maryland, where Mr. Biden spoke on Thursday, a number of party officials argued that the president should be embraced across the country, emphasizing the burst of legislative achievements enacted under his watch in recent weeks. His allies argue that, unlike in 2010 and 2014, when vulnerable Democrats ran away from signature accomplishments of the Obama administration like the Affordable Care Act, many candidates are running on Mr. Biden’s agenda this year.“He has so many bold and broad accomplishments that he can go a bunch of places and talk to people about what he was able to accomplish,” said Cedric Richmond, a close Biden adviser who was dispatched to the D.N.C. ahead of the midterm campaigns.That balancing act between supporting Mr. Biden’s agenda and keeping the president at arm’s length will only become more difficult this fall, as Republicans plan to unleash tens of millions of dollars of advertising tying Mr. Biden to candidates.Mr. Biden’s recent visits to key swing states have prompted grumbling from strategists who fear the visits distract from their efforts to localize their races and keep the focus on missteps by their Republican opponents.Some candidates, like Mandela Barnes, the Senate nominee in Wisconsin, have skipped stops with the president. Former Representative Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina Democrat now running for governor in that largely conservative state, has gone further than many in his party by openly calling on Mr. Biden to forgo re-election to make way for a younger generation.“I’m not running against him, and I’m not running with him — I’m running against McMaster,” Mr. Cunningham said, referring to his Republican opponent, Gov. Henry McMaster.Another group of candidates has highlighted policy disagreements on issues like Mr. Biden’s student loan proposal and his plans to lift Covid-era border restrictions, in an effort to appeal to the independent voters who helped power Mr. Biden’s victory.Many try to reference the president only in passing, if at all. Just three Democrats have run ads that even mention Mr. Biden in their general election campaigns, all of which stress their independence from the president, according to AdImpact, the media tracking firm.Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, has aired an ad highlighting her political independence, featuring both a Republican and a Democratic mayor and emphasizing her work on bills passed under both Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Earlier this summer, she aired an ad that highlighted “taking on the Biden administration to suspend the gas tax.”“I will work with anybody for the benefit of the district,” she said in an interview. “I will also hold either president accountable” when it comes to constituent interests, she said.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said that, overall, candidates in tight races are “making some version of the same argument, which is, ‘I know you have doubts about my party, but I’m getting the job done.’”A number of candidates have appeared with Mr. Biden in their capacities as government officials when he has visited their states to tout legislative achievements. It has been a way to suggest that they are fighting at the highest levels for local priorities, without necessarily rallying with him.When the president appeared in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in late August to discuss public safety, touting the federal money going to bolster community policing in the area, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee running for governor, was in attendance — in his government role as state attorney general, his office indicated.Mr. Biden in West Mifflin, Pa., at a Labor Day event attended by the Senate candidate John Fetterman, right.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhether voters draw such distinctions is another matter, especially because Mr. Biden has discussed the midterm elections at some of these events. In Pennsylvania, he praised Mr. Shapiro as well as John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Mr. Fetterman did not attend that event but later appeared with Mr. Biden in Pittsburgh on Labor Day. At one point in Wilkes-Barre, Mr. Biden reversed the offices for which they were running, saying of the roughly 6-foot-8 Mr. Fetterman, “Elect that big ol’ boy to be governor.”Mr. Biden, too, has a lot at stake in these elections. Midterm victories could provide a powerful counterpoint to those in the party arguing that he should not run for re-election in 2024. The president has already positioned the midterm races as a proxy war with his former rival, Mr. Trump, who harbors his own ambitions for a second presidential term.Representative Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat running in a highly competitive seat, said he felt “​​much better about things than I did three or four months ago.” He said the political landscape seemed to be changing because of the spurt of legislative achievements Democrats had landed and concern over abortion rights, while Republicans “seem increasingly stuck in the mud of Mar-a-Lago.”Asked if it would be helpful for the president to campaign with him, Mr. Malinowski replied, “I’d be happy for Biden or any president to come to my district to help me deliver for my constituents as he has.”“Donald Trump,” he added, “came to my district to play golf.” More

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      Must We Discuss the Queen and the Donald in the Same Breath?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we should begin with the queen. Hey, that’s a change of pace, right?Bret Stephens: I’m trying to process the fact that I found myself tearing up while listening to the story of her life put together for the paper by Alan Cowell.Gail: Alan’s piece was perfect, but I have to admit I haven’t been tempted to break into tears over the queen’s passing. Possibly because my household has Irish roots. You can appreciate what she achieved without romanticizing the whole British Empire thing.Bret: At the risk of digital defenestration, I will say that I tend to think the British Empire wasn’t an entirely bad thing for the world.Gail: [Here Gail bops Bret on the head, hard, with a bottle of Jameson.]Bret: Ouch, Gail! OK, before I get into even deeper trouble with some of our readers, she did preside gracefully over said empire’s demise and, as Maureen Dowd pointed out in her lovely column over the weekend, won over quite a few Irish hearts.The queen also made you realize that there is nothing as compelling as something that is supposed to be anachronistic — because it endures against fashion, resistance, indifference, decay, contradiction and time. Just like Joe Biden, apparently.Gail: Heh. Let’s let domestic politics sit for a minute and stay on the queen. I love the way you put that compelling-anachronism line, but my response is that things tend to get anachronistic because they’re just out of date.Bret: Well, true.Gail: But as I said, it’s easy to appreciate the queen’s achievement in just chugging on and smiling at strangers for so very, very long. Guess one of the messages of the moment is that nobody lives forever.Bret: The Atlantic magazine sent its subscribers an email on the day she died with the accidentally funny headline, “Queen Elizabeth’s Unthinkable Death.”Gail: We’ll see what happens next with the royal family. Will tourists still be clustering around to get a glimpse of that golden coach if the person waving from inside is Charles? Who, by the way, has always seemed like a dork.Bret: I feel for him, and not just because he’s lost both his parents in less than two years. Christopher Hitchens once had a memorable take on the royals, saying the love the British have for them “takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.”Gail: Do the unexceptional people include their actual elected officials?Bret: Many of them are exceptional, although some are just exceptionally bad.Gail: I always did think the queen could have retired early so Charles would have had a chance to be the sovereign before he hit his 70s. But so it goes.On the home front, I’m getting sort of fascinated by the big Senate races coming into the homestretch. Any favorites for you?Bret: I’m trying to wrap my head around the possibility of Senator Herschel Walker, who would be to Georgia what, er, Marjorie Taylor Greene is to Georgia.The Arizona Senate race between Mark Kelly and Blake Masters is a little too close for comfort, given that every week seems to bring a new disclosure about Masters’ deep unsuitability for high office — most recently his “9/11 Truther-curious” stand in college. I try not to hold people accountable for whatever they believed in college, but I’d make an exception in this case.How about you? What races are you looking at?Gail: Well, as an Ohio native I have to be riveted by the battle between Tim Ryan, a perfectly rational Democratic congressman, and the Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, who sorta peaked when he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.”Bret: And when he was a fervent Never-Trumper.Gail: And then there’s Wisconsin, where Mandela Barnes, the Democratic lieutenant governor, is running a very strong race against Senator Ron Johnson. A campaign high point came when Johnson told conservatives he’d only taken a moderate position on same-sex marriage to get the media “off my back.”Bret: That’s the worst of both worlds, isn’t it? His principles are lousy, and he’s not a man of principle.Gail: I have to commend you on rising above partisanship and refusing to support truly terrible Republican candidates in places like Georgia and Arizona. Would you hold firm to that even if it meant a difference in which party controlled the Senate?Bret: In some pre-2016 universe, I’d be rooting for a Republican sweep. And I’d be rooting for Republicans to take at least one chamber in this election, except that so many of the Republicans on the ballot are so unmitigatedly awful that, as the kids say, “I can’t even.”Gail: Yippee!Bret: On the other hand, I think it’s pretty hypocritical that pro-Democratic groups are spending tens of millions of dollars helping MAGA types win Republican nominations, on the theory that they’ll be easier to beat in the general election. That’s what’s happening with the G.O.P. Senate primary in New Hampshire, where the Democrats are none too subtly helping a conspiracy theorist named Don Bolduc against his more mainstream rival, Chuck Morse.I guess I’d find it a lot less loathsome if it were just a cynical electoral strategy. But it’s pretty rich coming from a party that is otherwise attacking “MAGA Republicans” as an existential threat to democracy.Gail: Totally agree about those political action committees that were plotting to get the worst possible Republicans nominated just to increase Democratic chances.But there’s a difference between that kind of scheme and simply criticizing the most likely Republican nominee just to get a start on the final campaign.Bret: In some of these cases, they aren’t the likeliest nominees. And the lesson of 2016 is: Sometimes the bad guy wins.Gail: Speaking of MAGA Republicans, you wrote a very powerful piece attacking Joe Biden for his anti-MAGA address in Philadelphia. Let’s revisit.Bret: Well, here is where I trot out that old French quote about something being “worse than a crime, a mistake.” If Biden had wanted to denounce “election-denying Republicans” or “Jan. 6 Republicans” that would have been fine by me. But calling out “MAGA Republicans” is painting with way too broad a brush, especially when he suggested that anyone who was anti-abortion or opposed to gay marriage automatically belonged in that group. The whole speech reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s deadly “basket of deplorables” remark, which might have cost her the 2016 election: It did more to alienate a lot of voters than it did to persuade them.What’s your take?Gail: We’re talking about a Joe Biden speech, and I suspect that some of the responsible citizens who tuned in because they want to keep up on current events nodded off or switched to a “Simpsons” rerun before he wandered off into the Democratic agenda.Bret: One day I’ll give you my theory on why “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Family Guy” represent the last best hope of mankind. Sorry …Gail: But the Democratic agenda is a winner, even when Biden’s selling it. Middle-of-the-road voters are eager to hear about ways they might get more help with medical bills, especially for drugs.And abortion! Don’t know if I’m amused or angry about all the Republican candidates who’ve suddenly scrubbed all mention of the subject off their websites.Both, I guess.Bret: It’s good to see voters energized to defend abortion rights at the state level. Not sure how winning the Democratic agenda is, except among Democrats themselves or their media allies who seem to think that inflation has been bested and the student-loan forgiveness plan is universally popular.I know Democrats are now feeling confident about the midterms, at least when it comes to holding the Senate. But if I were on your team I’d curb the enthusiasm.Gail: I do love the way you sneak references to TV shows into your comments. Tell me — just to stop talking about politics for a minute — what are your all-time favorite shows?Bret: I probably should say “Seinfeld” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but I really do love my cartoons. My all-time favorite South Park episode is the one about the underpants gnomes, who go around stealing people’s underwear in the middle of the night in order to bring it to their underground lair. They have a three-phased approach to making money: Phase One, collect underpants. Phase Two, ? Phase Three, Profit.That pretty much explains most government policies, plus a big part of the start-up economy. And you?Gail: Hey, haven’t watched “South Park” for years. You’re inspiring me.My all-time favorite is “The Sopranos,” the greatest series ever made. We’ve been watching it every night lately. When it’s over I’m ready for a comedy, and my No. 1 pick is “30 Rock.” Tina Fey is a genius. And despite not being a sports enthusiast, I have a strong attachment to “Friday Night Lights.”I so hope our politics evolves again into something people want to gab about. Definitely worrisome that even at the most liberal dinner parties in town, people always wind up back at Donald Trump.Except us, of course, Bret.Bret: Us? Trump? Who?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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More