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      American Voters Haven’t Been Afraid Like This in a Long Time

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      In a rare convergence, America’s voters are not merely unhappy with their political leadership, but awash in fears about economic security, border security, international security and even physical security. Without a U-turn by the Biden administration, this fear will generate a wave election like those in 1994 and 2010, setting off a chain reaction that could flip the House and the Senate to Republican control in November, and ultimately the presidency in 2024.Take the economy, so often the harbinger of election results. From late 2017 until the pandemic, a majority of Americans believed that the economy was strong, and from 2014 until the pandemic at least a plurality believed their personal economic situation was improving. Covid-19 cut sharply into that feeling of well-being; this was initially seen as temporary, though, and trillions of dollars flowed into keeping people afloat. But then near-double-digit inflation hit consumers for the first time in 40 years; 60 percent of voters now see the economy as weak and 48 percent say their financial situation is worsening, according to a Harris Poll conducted April 20-21. Many Americans under 60 have relatively little experience with anything but comparatively low fuel costs, negligible interest rates and stable prices. Virtually overnight these assumptions have been shaken. Only 35 percent approve of President Biden’s handling of inflation.These economic blows are just one element in a cascading set of problems all hitting at the same time. It combines the nuclear anxieties of the 1950s and ’60s with the inflation threat of the ’70s, the crime wave of the ’80s and ’90s and the tensions over illegal immigration in the 2000s and beyond. This electorate is not experiencing a malaise, as President Jimmy Carter was once apocryphally said to have proclaimed, but has instead formed into a deep national fissure ready to blow like a geyser in the next election if leadership does not move to relieve the pressure.The return of fear about crime is especially worrisome for Democrats, who spent years trying to take over Republican ground on the issue. In 1991, the homicide rate was 9.71 per hundred thousand. Mr. Biden, when he was a senator, penned the key federal bipartisan anti-crime bill widely credited then with reducing violence in America, but under criticism today by those who argue it led to inequitable rates of incarceration, particularly in communities of color. The homicide rate would decline to a low of 4.44 per 100,000 in 2014. Worries about walking the streets and riding the subway were less acute among new generations, and yet today those same streets and mass transit are once again hobbled by fear; even the head of the New York-area Metropolitan Transportation Authority argued that fear of crime and homelessness were behind a 36 percent drop in ridership between December 2021 and January 2022.Immigration was used effectively by President Donald Trump as a wedge issue to win working class voters. According to the April Harris poll, under Mr. Biden, 59 percent of voters believe that we have “effectively” open borders and, looking back, many even support some of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. Mr. Biden receives only 38 percent approval for his immigration policy, a troublingly low rating for a Democrat (President Barack Obama was at 29 percent approval on immigration policy before the 2010 midterm wipeout).Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., standing near the border fence while waiting to be processed after crossing the border from Mexico at Yuma, Arizona.Go Nakamura/ReutersNational security had become less salient for most Americans compared to the years of the Cold War and after 9/11. Foreign policy was barely discussed in the limited presidential debates of 2020. Today, fear of a great power conflict and nuclear weapons has emerged in ways not seen since the Cold War. With the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, fresh ballistic missile tests, and Mr. Putin’s explicit reference to the use of nuclear weapons and “unpredictable” consequences of opposing him, fear of nuclear weapons has been thrust front and center, as a recent focus group of Americans by Times Opinion found as well. Fear of nuclear weapons now ranks second in issues that worry voters, behind the effects of inflation.To combat the drag that fear has on the electorate — what I call a “fear index” — Mr. Biden will have to move in some big and bold ways. Faced with runaway spending in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton proposed a balanced budget, a policy still favored by 80 percent of the electorate, according to April’s Harris poll, but he did it in a way that still managed to finance entitlements like Social Security. Pushing a big, seven-year policy plan like that would mean finding budget cuts elsewhere to pay for a permanent child tax credit, rather than raising taxes, and deficit spending, which would most likely cause costs to fall on the average American through inflation. Balancing the budget would change the conversation about the economy and show Americans that Mr. Biden was serious about getting our fiscal house in order.Continuing to let gas prices surge will hurt Democrats on the ballot in the fall; the party needs a new, tempered energy policy that includes a more gradual transition to alternative fuels and an appreciation of energy independence. In the presidential debates, Mr. Biden promised a “transition” to “renewable energy over time,” though noting he would not attempt to ban fracking. But in his first flurry of executive orders, Biden gave the public the impression he was far more aggressive in favoring climate change policies, though he has since angered activists by reversing a promise to prevent new drilling on public lands. He will need to shift to an “all of the above” energy approach and green-light the Keystone pipeline, which is currently favored by nearly 80 percent of the electorate, according to the Harris Poll.The Biden administration is also losing in swing areas on immigration, as evidenced by the nine Senate Democrats and the House’s bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that have expressed reservations about its plan to lift Title 42, the Trump administration’s Covid-era policy of intercepting and returning migrants without due process. The answer is to keep in place the Covid-related border restrictions and revive trying to find a real compromise with at least 10 Republican senators on immigration that would adopt tougher barrier and enforcement measures to close the border, but also open up legal immigration and a path to citizenship for at least DACA recipients.With rising crime as an issue, the favorable rating of the Department of Justice has sunk to just 51 percent under Merrick Garland, according to the Harris Poll. Mr. Biden needs to shake up his top law-enforcement officials and back legislation that combines police reform with funding for hundreds of thousands of new community police officers, greater federal involvement in stopping violent crime syndicates and gangs, and wider discretion for judges to take violent criminals off the streets. The administration needs to consider interceding on behalf of victims in circumstances in which district attorneys are not prosecuting violent criminals to the full extent of the law, especially when they waive “enhancements” for gang-related crimes. One of our first campaign ads in 1996 established President Clinton as both against assault-weapons and for more cops and crime-fighting measures; he kept that message up during his re-election bid, and Republicans never effectively stoked fears about crime.Finally, Mr. Biden cannot let Mr. Putin win in Ukraine, and needs to continue to send whatever weapons are necessary, including jets, to prevent such a victory. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan precipitated a decline in his administration’s approval rates. Ukraine’s loss would compound the view among some voters that he is too weak.According to reports, Mr. Biden now says he is running for re-election in 2024. But he is facing limited enthusiasm in his own party for a second run and loses even to Mr. Trump in hypothetical matchups, according to the Harris Poll. Sticking to the high-priced Build Back Better legislation or variants of it on the basis of narrow party-line votes has not been successful.People are afraid of being walloped financially, being injured or menaced by criminals, being in a country without strong borders or Covid protections for immigrants, and being under threat of nuclear weapons. If Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders cannot effectively address these fears, the wave election will hit them in November, and the president will then face a sobering choice of either passing the baton to another candidate in 2024 or finding the bold leadership necessary to reconcile his drive for more progressive policies with the realities of economics, politics and a more dangerous world.Mark Penn was a pollster and adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton from 1995 to 2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and C.E.O. of Stagwell Inc.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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      Merrick Garland Finds His Footing as Attorney General

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      During a recent swing through the South, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland chatted up participants in a police program in Georgia aimed at redirecting youth who had sold bottled water on interstate highways into less dangerous work. He announced funding to address policing problems like the use of excessive force. He talked about mental health support, an issue he has thought about since he saw firsthand how officers who responded to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing struggled to process the horror.For all of the attention on the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, the trip was focused on the everyday work of being the attorney general, fighting crime and serving as a steward of law enforcement. Over two days in Georgia and Louisiana, Mr. Garland, in interviews with The New York Times on his plane and later in Baton Rouge, would say only that the assault on the Capitol “completely wiped out” any doubts he had about taking the post.“I felt that this was exactly why I had agreed to be attorney general in the first place,” he said. “Jan. 6 is a date that showed what happens if the rule of law breaks down.”By most accounts, becoming attorney general was a tough adjustment for a former appeals judge who had last worked at the Justice Department in the late 1990s. But more than a year into his tenure, colleagues say that a cautious leader has found some footing, more a prosecutor now than a deliberator.In interviews, a dozen administration officials and federal prosecutors, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Mr. Garland, 69, initially ran his office like a judge’s chambers, peppering even Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta with the kind of granular questions that clerks might expect while writing his opinions.But the slow pace that characterized Mr. Garland’s early months has somewhat quickened. Decisions that took weeks at the outset can now take a day. And with more top officials confirmed, he can be less directly involved in the department’s day-to-day work.Mr. Garland has said that the department must remain independent from improper influence if it is to deliver on its top priorities: to uphold the rule of law, keep the nation safe and protect civil rights.Mr. Garland and his chief of staff, Matt Klapper, in Atlanta. Career employees at the Justice Department say they no longer feel the political pressure they did during the Trump administration.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe has notched victories. Many career employees say they no longer feel pressure to satisfy blatantly political demands, as they did under the previous administration. The department created a unit dedicated to fighting domestic terrorism and charged important cybercrime cases. Prosecutors won high-profile convictions in the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, and George Floyd, a Black motorist.But in a significant setback, prosecutors failed to win convictions against four men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. The Bureau of Prisons remains plagued by violence, sexual abuse and corruption. And Democrats still castigate Mr. Garland for not moving more aggressively to indict former President Donald J. Trump for trying to undo his election loss. Republican critics accuse him of using the department to improperly wade into culture wars, including fights over school curriculums and the pandemic response.A Challenging First YearSeated on a sofa in the U.S. attorney’s office in Baton Rouge, Mr. Garland detailed the chaos he encountered when he took the reins in March 2021. Colleagues said that if the typical transition between parties is like relay racers passing a baton, this was a runner searching for a stick dropped on the track.Trump administration officials who expected to spend their final weeks preparing briefing binders for the incoming administration instead parried false cries of voter fraud and absorbed the horror of the Capitol attack. Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat shortened the transition process. The Biden team would not be up to speed on every issue that awaited them.The first order of business was the nine-week-old Jan. 6 investigation, which entailed a nationwide manhunt and hundreds of criminal cases.Mr. Garland and his top officials, Ms. Monaco and Ms. Gupta, issued policy memos, filed lawsuits and secured indictments related to federal executions, hate crimes, domestic extremism and voter suppression, among other concerns.Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general, speaking with Mr. Garland in Baton Rouge. Mr. Garland initially ran the Justice Department in a deliberative style, but the pace has quickened.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMs. Gupta scrutinized corporate mergers and initiated reviews of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky. Ms. Monaco’s office, which oversees the Jan. 6 inquiry, eased tensions between prosecutors and officials on the case. She closed the federal prison in Manhattan to address subpar conditions, and is pushing for more Bureau of Prisons reforms.Soft-spoken and slight, Mr. Garland has an understated manner that makes him easy to underestimate, associates said. But they insisted that his questions were always probing, and that he seemed to remember every answer.Some aides said he was slow to shift the department away from postures that had hardened during the Trump era. He took four months to reaffirm a longstanding policy that strictly limits the president’s contact with the department and to curb the seizure of reporters’ records. The department sued Georgia three months after the state passed a restrictive voting law, frustrating the White House.Prosecutors were told over a year ago to expect a new memo allowing them to forgo harsh mandatory minimum sentences, such as those for nonviolent drug dealers who had sold crack rather than cocaine. They are still waiting.In a move that some aides believe reflected the unusually high level of detail he needed to feel prepared, Mr. Garland often dispatched Ms. Monaco to attend White House meetings in his place. This year, he has attended nearly all of them.Ms. Monaco’s office overcame hiccups, too. It did not play its traditional management role under its predecessor, and she had to ease information bottlenecks. Exceedingly wary about cybercrime, she used a pseudonymous email address. That precaution, normally taken by attorneys general, gave those outside her staff the impression that she was difficult to reach.“I’m delegating more,” Mr. Garland said in the interview. “It’s easier to deal with crises every day, and new decisions, if you’re not still working on the old ones.” With Covid risks easing, he has held more meetings of the kind he attended in Georgia and Louisiana, and has met in person more frequently with his leadership team.Mr. Garland meeting with local law enforcement officers at the Justice Department’s office in Atlanta. Mr. Garland has held more in-person meetings as Covid risks have eased.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe will not say when he intends to step down, but administration officials believe that he would willingly serve beyond the midterm election.Protecting the Rule of LawFor most of a 90-minute flight to Atlanta on a 12-seat government plane, Mr. Garland sat near the front, editing speeches, conferring with his chief of staff and juggling updates from Washington. In a quiet moment in the interview, he spoke with seeming relish about his prior life as a prosecutor. He recalled uncovering a State Department record that proved a witness had lied, and shining a flashlight behind a document to show a judge and jury that a defendant had doctored it with correction fluid.As a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1979, Mr. Garland helped codify reforms that stemmed from President Nixon’s abuses of power. After a stint in private practice, he became a top department official under Attorney General Janet Reno. He supervised the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, that era’s most serious domestic terrorism attack, before joining the federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Garland, then an associate deputy attorney general, speaking to the news media in 1995 about the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressMr. Biden asked Mr. Garland to lead the department the day before Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed Congress. At home on Jan. 6 writing his acceptance speech, Mr. Garland watched the attack unfold on television.“Failure to make clear by words and deed that our law is not the instrument of partisan purpose” would imperil the country, Mr. Garland said the next day, when his nomination was announced.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Democrats and the 2022 Midterms: ‘It’s Going to Be a Terrible Cycle’

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      Strategists and pollsters are increasingly talking about limiting the party’s expected losses in November rather than how to gain new seats.The collective mood of Democratic insiders has darkened appreciably in recent weeks.Pollsters and prognosticators are forecasting increasingly dire results for their party in the November midterm elections. Inflation, the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters, is accelerating. And despite a booming job market, the president’s average approval rating hasn’t budged since January, when it settled into the low 40s.“Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?” one Democratic strategist quipped at the outset of a recent phone call.“The vibes just feel very off,” said Tré Easton, a progressive consultant.Others use words like “horrible” and “debacle” to describe a political environment that has gone from bad to worse over the last three months. Many fault the White House for steering President Biden too far to the left as he sought to pass social spending legislation stuffed with progressive priorities. Some see the president as a wounded figure who has failed to establish himself as the unequivocal leader of his fractious party.“It’s going to be a terrible cycle for Democrats,” said Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser to Bill Clinton. Democrats have only a matter of weeks, he said, to try to alter the contours of a race that will largely be determined by factors beyond their control.One sign of the alarm rippling through the party: Some Democratic politicians have begun creating distance between themselves and the president. Senate candidates are stampeding to break with the administration’s immigration policies, for instance. Other moves are more subtle, such as those of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who quietly removed the president’s name from news releases about federally funded infrastructure projects.“What you’re seeing is people feeling like it’s time to head for the lifeboats rather than trying to steer the ship,” said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary who worked under Barack Obama.A sense of fatalism is setting in among many, with discussions centering increasingly on how to limit the party’s expected losses rather than how to gain new seats. In Arizona, for example, some Democrats are losing confidence that they will be able to flip the State House, a major target for national party strategists this year.“We have to be cognizant and realistic about where and how we can win,” said Chad Campbell, a former state lawmaker and Democratic consultant in Phoenix. He added that it was more important for Democrats to position themselves for 2024.“Most of this is baked,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, the confidant of a number of Democratic megadonors, referring to the historical pattern of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms.Not everyone is so pessimistic. But for those charged with solving the Democrats’ midterms conundrum, the question, increasingly, is: How many seats can they save? Control of the Senate is deadlocked at 50-50, and Democrats are clinging to a five-seat majority in the House. Few Democratic strategists expect to keep the House, but many remain hopeful about the Senate, where there’s far more room for candidates to burnish their own independent brands.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.When Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank, recently reviewed past midterms for a presentation to Democratic strategists and Hill Democrats, he found that the party in power typically lost around 10 percentage points during off-cycle elections.That suggested two main takeaways, he said. First, the Democratic Party’s current struggles are utterly ordinary by historical standards. And second, even candidates in safely blue political areas need to brace themselves for difficult campaigns.“If you’re a district that is Biden plus 12 or less” — meaning the president won the House district in question by that many percentage points in 2020 — “you need to run like you’re losing,” Kessler said.Wealthy donors in Silicon Valley are turning their attention to offices they have traditionally ignored: attorneys general, governors and secretaries of state in parts of the country that could prove decisive to the outcome of the presidential election in 2024.In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates aligned with Donald Trump have disputed the 2020 election results, promoting dubious “audits” and conspiracy theories about voting machines. The widespread fear among donors is that, if those Trump allies are elected, they will find illegitimate ways to ensure his return to power in 2024.With Democrats’ prospects in Washington looking dim, Mehlhorn is advising donors to look for opportunities to forestall and disrupt full Republican control in those states.“Frankly,” he said, “the most important thing is to preserve the ability to have elections in the future.”‘You don’t have to outswim the shark’Democrats are still weighing, too, how much to emphasize their accomplishments versus how much to sharpen their points of contrast with Republicans.The White House has positioned President Biden as fighting to lower costs for Americans, holding events outside of Washington with vulnerable incumbents such as Representative Cindy Axne of Iowa. On these trips to tout his legislative program, he has invited lawmakers into the conference room on Air Force One to hear their concerns and help him hone his speeches to better reflect local input.But the president has expressed frustration at times that his administration isn’t getting enough credit for taming the coronavirus pandemic, resuscitating the economy and passing funding for infrastructure.“We have done one hell of a job, but the fact is that because things have moved so rapidly, so profoundly, it’s hard for people,” to appreciate Biden said on Thursday at a fund-raising event for the Democratic National Committee in Portland, Oregon, before rattling off a list of favorable statistics about the economy.One challenge for a White House that was slow to recognize the public’s growing anger over rising consumer prices is how to balance such boasts while also empathizing with voters’ anxieties about their personal finances.Inflation, a top voter concern, is reflected in higher gas prices.Gabby Jones for The New York Times“The difference about heading into 2022 is that we have tangible projects that have been accomplished because Democrats were able to get that done,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic consultant who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.McKenna said it was important to convey a double-barreled contrast message: that while Democrats are trying to solve working families’ most pressing problems, Republicans are focusing on distractions — be it feuding over Trump’s false claims of a stolen election or attempting to ban school textbooks.Democrats have made gleeful use of an 11-point plan pushed by Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm. Scott’s plan, which has irritated many of his fellow Republican senators, calls for subjecting all Americans to income taxes and proposes tinkering with government entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.Around Tax Day, for instance, the Democratic National Committee purchased Google text ads pointing late-filing Americans toward an ungenerous interpretation of Scott’s plan, which Democrats insists represents the Republican Party’s true policy agenda.But more drastic measures might be needed if Democrats are going to turn the fall elections into a choice between the two parties rather than a referendum on Biden, others argue.Gibbs is urging his fellow Democrats to pick a few issues that are important to voters, such as lowering prices for prescription drugs or insulin, and launch a disciplined, party-wide effort to blame Republicans for standing in the way.“It’s got to be a more coordinated fight than a presidential tweet,” Gibbs said.There’s an analogy some Democrats are drawn to that speaks to their need to shift the race into a head-to-head contest.In the first season of the HBO show “Billions,” a fictional hedge fund chief named Bobby Axelrod is confronting the threat of federal prosecution over his illegal trading practices. He decides his best bet is to distract the government by leaking damaging information about an easier target: a rival financier.As they draw up the plan, Axelrod’s shadowy fixer, a man known only as Hall, tells him: “Remember, you don’t have to outswim the shark. You just have to outswim the guy you’re scuba diving with.”What to readKatie Glueck examines how Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida’s fight with Disney signals an escalation of the Republican Party’s brawl with the business community.At an administrative law hearing in Atlanta on Friday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spouted debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election but denied that her support for the Jan. 6 protests made her an “insurrectionist,” Jonathan Weisman and Neil Vigdor report.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House’s top Republican, spent much of Friday containing the political fallout after The New York Times revealed his private criticism of Trump after Jan. 6, Annie Karni reports.ViewfinderSarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesA weather-beaten receiving lineOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Sarahbeth Maney told us about capturing the image above on Tuesday:On our way to New Hampshire, we had a bit of a bumpy ride. When we stepped outside, we were met with gusty winds so strong that I struggled to keep my balance.I shielded myself behind some print and TV reporters as we waited for President Biden to exit from Air Force One. I crouched low and noticed an interesting pattern in the way local officials stood in a line, all with a similar pose of locked hands.Everyone was ready to rush into a warm place, but the president appears unfazed by the weather.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you Monday.— Blake (Leah is on vacation)Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Midterm Election Years Are Tough for the Stock Market

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      These months are historically the weakest for the market in a presidential term. Aside from coincidence, there are several possible explanations.The stock market’s decline and the tightening of financial conditions that have accompanied it since the start of the year are unique to 2022.The effects of the coronavirus pandemic, roaring inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are emphatically different from anything that had come before.Yet for stock market mavens who have read up on the four-year presidential election cycle, what is occurring in the markets looks quite familiar. This is a midterm election year, after all, and numbers going back more than a century show that the second year has generally been the weakest for the stock market in a president’s term.“Investors may take solace in the fact that the market has been here many times before,” Ed Clissold and Than Nguyen, two analysts for Ned Davis Research, an independent financial research firm, wrote in a recent report on the presidential cycle.The NumbersThe market soared early in Donald J. Trump’s presidency, but it hit a wall in 2018 — the midterm year — and at one point gave up 18.8 percent of its gains, according to Ned Davis Research’s tabulation of Dow Jones industrial average data.Similarly, the Dow rose smartly early in President Biden’s term, only to decline more than 12 percent at its trough so far this year, again according to Dow data.This rough pattern isn’t a constant throughout history, but it has occurred quite frequently in presidencies going back to 1900. After a weak stretch in the midterm year, the stock market has usually rallied.Consider the numbers. These are the median annualized returns from 1900 through 2021, freshly tabulated by Ned Davis Research for the different years of a presidential term, using the Dow:12.7 percent for Year 1.3.1 percent for Year 2, the midterm year.14.8 percent for Year 3, the pre-election year.7.4 percent for Year 4, the election year.The market soared early in President Donald J. Trump’s presidency, but it hit a wall in 2018.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNed Davis Research ran the numbers a second time, for 1948 through 2021, using the S&P 500 and a predecessor index. The S&P 500 is a broader proxy for the overall U.S. stock market than the Dow, but it has a shorter history. While the details were different, the pattern remained the same:12.9 percent for Year 1.6.2 percent for Year 2.16.7 percent for Year 3.7.3 percent for Year 4.But Why?Why the midterm year — and, in particular, the first half of the year — is often a weak period for stocks is unclear. It could be a series of coincidences; establishing cause rather than correlation, especially over such a long period, is impossible.Yet many researchers in the academic world and on Wall Street have examined the numbers and concluded that the pattern of midterm year weakness, and greater strength for stocks later in the presidential cycle, is fascinating enough to merit further study. “The pattern is hard to ignore,” Roger D. Huang wrote in a 1985 paper in the Financial Analysts Journal.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.He noted another puzzling fact. Although Republicans tend to be portrayed as the party of business, the stock market generally prefers Democrats — an affinity sustained for a long time. From 1901 through February, for example, and adjusted for inflation, the Dow returned 3.8 percent annualized under Democratic presidents, versus 1.4 percent under Republicans, Ned Davis Research found.Furthermore, based on the historical data, the best political alignment for the stock market is one that could arise this November if the Democratic Party has a major setback. Since 1901, a Democratic president combined with Republican control of both houses of Congress has produced annualized real stock returns of 8 percent, using the Dow.Aside from sheer coincidence, there are several possible explanations for the presidential cycle and, specifically, for the typical midterm swoon and recovery in the last half of a presidential term.Presidents as PoliticiansIn an interview, Mr. Clissold, the chief U.S. strategist for Ned Davis Research, noted that the stock market abhors uncertainty. It is well understood that most often, the president’s party loses ground in midterm congressional elections. But that limited insight early in a president’s second year only makes it harder to make bets on the direction of policymaking in Washington.“That could all be weighing on the market in a cyclical pattern,” he said.There is another common theory, one that I find appealing because it does not flatter the political establishment. Yale Hirsch, who began describing the presidential cycle in the annual Stock Trader’s Almanac in 1968, explained it to me more than a decade ago.The theory starts with the premise that even the best presidents are, first and foremost, politicians. As such, they use all available levers to ensure that they — or their designated successors — are elected.The Dow gained 89.2 percent during the first half of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.Corbis, via Getty ImagesThese efforts often contribute to strong stock market returns leading up to presidential elections, when it is in presidents’ greatest interest to stimulate the economy.In the first half of a presidential term, however, when the White House and Congress get down to the mundane business of governing, there is frequently a compelling need to pare down government spending or to encourage (substitute “pressure,” if you prefer) the nominally independent Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and restrict economic growth. The best time to inflict pain is when a presidential election is still a few years away, or so the theory goes.As Mr. Hirsch told me back then, it’s good politics “to get rid of the dirty stuff in the economy as quickly as possible,” an exercise in fiscal and monetary restraint that tends to depress stock market returns in the second year of a presidential cycle.That would be where we are now.Where Biden StandsThrough March, despite the bad stretch in the market this year, stock returns have been comparatively good during the Biden presidency, with a cumulative gain in the Dow of 12.1 percent, well above the median of 8.1 percent since 1901. In the equivalent period, the Dow under Mr. Trump gained 22.2 percent.Both performances were vastly behind those of the leaders, according to Ned Davis Research. The top three, from inauguration through March 31 of their second year in office, were:Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first term, 89.2 percent.Ronald Reagan in his second term, 48.2 percent.Barack Obama in his first term, 31.1 percent.What are we to make of all this?Well, the pattern of the presidential cycle suggests that the market will begin to rebound late this year and rally next year — the best one, historically. That result is unlikely, though, if the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation plunges the economy into a recession, as some forecasters, including those at Deutsche Bank, are predicting.I wouldn’t count on any of these predictions or patterns. As an investor, I’m doing my usual thing, buying low-cost index funds that mirror the broad market and hanging on for the long term.But I’ll keep looking for patterns anyway. The pageantry of American politics and stock market returns is a compelling spectacle, even when none of the expected outcomes come true. More

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      US Braces for Potential French Election Shockwave

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      WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are anxiously watching the French presidential election, aware that the outcome of the vote on Sunday could scramble President Biden’s relations with Europe and reveal dangerous fissures in Western democracy.President Emmanuel Macron of France has been a crucial partner as Mr. Biden has rebuilt relations with Europe, promoted democracy and forged a coalition in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Mr. Macron is in a tight contest with Marine Le Pen, a far-right challenger.Ms. Le Pen is a populist agitator who, in the style of former President Donald J. Trump, scorns European Union “globalists,” criticizes NATO and views President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as an ally.Her victory could complicate Mr. Biden’s effort to isolate Russia and aid Ukraine. But the very real prospect of a nationalist leading France is also a reminder that the recent period of U.S.-European solidarity on political and security issues like Russia and democracy may be fragile. Poland and Hungary, both NATO members, have taken authoritarian turns. And Germany’s surprisingly strong response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is already drawing domestic criticism.“To have a right-wing government come to power in France would be a political earthquake,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown who was the Europe director of the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “It would send a troubling signal about the overall political health of the Western world.”He added: “This is a moment of quite remarkable European unity and resolve. But Le Pen’s election would certainly raise profound questions about the European project.”Mr. Macron was unable to command more than a small plurality of support against several opponents in the first round of voting on April 10. Ms. Le Pen, who finished second, is his opponent in the runoff election on Sunday. Polls show Mr. Macron with a clear lead, but analysts say a Le Pen victory is completely plausible.An immigration hard-liner and longtime leader of France’s populist right, Ms. Le Pen has campaigned mainly on domestic issues, including the rising cost of living. But her foreign policy views have unsettled U.S. officials. Last week, she renewed vows to scale back France’s leadership role in NATO and to pursue “a strategic rapprochement” with Russia after the war with Ukraine has concluded. Ms. Le Pen also expressed concern that sending arms to Ukraine risked drawing other nations into the war.Mr. Macron, right, has been a crucial partner as President Biden has rebuilt relations with Europe.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn a debate on Wednesday, Mr. Macron reminded voters that Ms. Le Pen’s party had taken a loan from a Russian bank. “You depend on Mr. Putin,” he told her.Ms. Le Pen insisted she was “an absolutely and totally free woman” and said she sought foreign cash after French banks refused to lend to her. She also sought to deflect charges that she was sympathetic to Russia’s war aims, declaring her “absolute solidarity” with the Ukrainian people.Ms. Le Pen has also pledged to curtail the influence of the European Union, which the Biden administration sees as a vital counterweight to Russia and China.One senior U.S. official noted that France has a recent history of right-wing candidates striking fear into the political establishment before falling short. That was the case five years ago, when Mr. Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen in a runoff.But recent elections in the West have been prone to upsets, and analysts warned against complacency in Washington, especially given the stakes for the United States.One sign of how much the Biden administration values its partnership with Mr. Macron was the minor sense of crisis after France withdrew its ambassador to Washington in September after the disclosure of a new initiative between the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear submarines.Mr. Macron’s government blamed the Biden administration for the loss of a lucrative submarine contract it had with Australia and was especially angry to learn about the arrangement through a leak to the news media. Biden officials expressed profuse support for France in a flurry of meetings and phone calls, and Mr. Biden called the episode clumsy. France was an “extremely, extremely valued” U.S. partner, he said.If Ms. Le Pen were to win, Mr. Biden’s national security team would be forced to reassess that relationship.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

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      Can Democrats Turn Their 2022 Around?

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      With the midterms just over six months away, the electoral prospects for Democrats are looking bleak. President Biden’s approval rating is at 42 percent, around where Donald Trump’s was at this point in his presidency. Recent polls asking whether Americans want Republicans or Democrats in Congress found that Republicans are leading by about 2 percentage points. And with inflation spiking to its highest point in decades, Covid cases rising and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continuing to send economic and humanitarian shock waves across the globe, things don’t look as if they are going to get better anytime soon.What will it take for Democrats to turn things around? What fights should they be picking with Republicans, and how should they be making the case that they deserve another chance at leading the country?[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Sean McElwee is a co-founder and the executive director of Data for Progress, a research organization that gathers polling data to strategize on behalf of progressive causes and policies. Anat Shenker-Osorio is a principal at ASO Communications, a political communications firm that conducts analytic and empirical research to help progressive political campaigns. McElwee and Shenker-Osorio have deeply influenced my thinking on how words work in American politics: how campaigns can meaningfully address what voters want and how they can persuade swing voters and motivate the party’s base.In this conversation, McElwee and Shenker-Osorio help me understand where Democrats stand with the electorate and what, if anything, they can do to improve their chances in 2022. We discuss why Biden’s approval rating is so low, given the popularity of his policies, why governing parties so often lose midterm elections, whether Democrats should focus more on persuading swing voters or on mobilizing their base, why it’s important for Democrats to get their base to sing from the same songbook, what Democrats can learn from Trump about winning voters’ attention, how Republicans are running politics on easy mode, whether it was wise politically for Biden to double down on the message to fund the police, what political fights Democrats should pick in the lead-up to the midterms, how the party should address spiking inflation 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.Warning: This episode contains explicit language.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Photo courtesy of Ahmad Ali“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Senator Elizabeth Warren: Democrats Can Win if We Keep Our Word

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      Democrats are the party of working people. Ahead of the 2020 election, we advanced ideas and plans that we believed would, in ways big and small, make our democracy and our economy work better for all Americans. Across this country, voters agreed with us — and gave us a majority in Washington so that we could deliver on those promises.Republican senators and broken institutions have blocked much of that promised progress. Now Republicans are betting that a stalled Biden agenda won’t give Democrats enough to run on in the midterm elections — and they might be right. Despite pandemic relief, infrastructure investments and the historic Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, we promised more — and voters remember those promises.Republicans want to frame the upcoming elections to be about “wokeness,” cancel culture and the “militant left wing.” Standing up for the inherent dignity of everyone is a core American value, and Democrats are proud to do that every day. While Republican politicians peddle lies, fear and division, we should use every single one of the next 200 days or so before the election to deliver meaningful improvements for working people.Democrats win elections when we show we understand the painful economic realities facing American families and convince voters we will deliver meaningful change. To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms.Time is running short. We need to finalize a budget reconciliation deal, making giant corporations pay their share to fund vital investments in combating climate change and lowering costs for families, which can advance with only 50 Senate votes. Other priorities can be done with the president’s executive authority. It’s no secret that I believe we should abolish the filibuster. But if Republicans want to use it to block policies that Americans broadly support, we should also force them to take those votes in plain view.Let’s begin with corruption. For years, Americans have identified corrupt government officials as a top concern. And they’re right: to tackle the urgent challenges we face — climate change, income inequality, systemic injustice — we must root out corruption. To start cleaning up government, members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks, which the vast majority of voters support banning, according to multiple polls. Whether you’re a Republican senator or the Democratic speaker of the House, it is obvious to the American people that they should not be allowed to trade individual stocks and then vote on laws that affect those companies. I have the strongest plan and the only bipartisan bill in the Senate to get it done.We can also act quickly to rein in costs for middle-class families. In the very short term, that means stopping companies from jacking up prices to boost their profits. Price increases are driven by many factors, including pandemic disruptions to global supply chains and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. But when the Kroger chief executive, Rodney McMullen, said “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” it’s no surprise that, by a margin of two-to-one, American voters don’t buy the explanation that companies are just passing along costs. Instead, they blame corporations for raising prices to boost their own profits. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a conservative Republican, acknowledged that giant corporations raise prices simply “because they can.”The president deserves enormous credit for advancing an ambitious agenda to promote competition and appointing effective regulators to enforce our antitrust laws, and it’s time for congressional Democrats to have his back. According to Data for Progress surveys, eight in 10 Americans believe Congress should pass laws to reinvigorate competition and three-quarters strongly believe that oil and gas companies should not make gobs of money off this energy crisis. Beefing up regulators’ authority to end price-gouging, breaking up monopolies, and passing a windfall profits tax is a good start. Only in Washington, where America’s biggest companies spend billions to drown out reality, are these controversial ideas. Across America, these are popular plans.We can stand up to the armies of lobbyists and P.R. flacks and tackle tax loopholes for the rich and powerful. About two-thirds of likely American voters — including a majority of Republicans — say it’s time for billionaires to pay more in taxes. Nearly three-quarters of Americans want to put an end to wildly profitable corporations paying nothing or little in federal income taxes (yes, Amazon, I’m looking at you) and put into place a global minimum corporate tax. And a majority of Americans would like to use some of those tax revenues to invest in clean energy, affordable child care, and universal pre-K.That’s a big legislative agenda, but it isn’t big enough. We also need to use every tool of the presidency to deliver for working people.For example, by a margin of more than two-to-one, Americans support providing some student loan debt cancellation — an action the president could take entirely on his own. Doing so would lift the economic outlook for too many borrowers who still weren’t able to get a college diploma, for the millions of female borrowers who shoulder about two-thirds of all student loan debt, and for Black and Hispanic borrowers, a higher percentage of whom take on debt to attend college compared to white students, and have a harder time paying it off after school. With the stroke of a pen, the president could make massive strides to close gender and racial wealth gaps.And he can do more. Decisive action on everything from lowering prescription drug prices to ensuring that more workers are eligible for overtime pay can be executed by the president alone, using the authority already given to him by existing laws, without rounding up 50 Senate votes.Like many Americans, I’m frustrated by our failure to get big things done — things that are both badly needed and very popular with all Americans. While Republican politicians obstruct many efforts to improve people’s lives and many swear loyalty to the Big Lie, the urgency of the next election bears down on us.Democrats cannot bow to the wisdom of out-of-touch consultants who recommend we simply tout our accomplishments. Instead, Democrats need to deliver more of the president’s agenda — or else we will not be in the majority much longer.Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) is a United States senator for Massachusetts.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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      A Biden Blood Bath?

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      A recent poll truly shocked me.Quinnipiac University found that President Biden’s approval rating had sunk to just 33 percent. You might argue that this was just one poll, but Biden’s approval is down in multiple surveys.As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out Friday, there were four major national polls released last week, and in three of them — including Quinnipiac — Biden had his lowest showing of his presidency. In the fourth, he was “one point off the lowest.”These are just devastating results on the heels of a historic Supreme Court confirmation and only seven months out from the midterms.When Politico’s Ryan Lizza last week asked Biden pollster John Anzalone how dire the situation had become for Democrats, Anzalone responded in blunt terms, saying that no Democratic consultant would say “that this is anything but a really sour environment for Democrats.”Anzalone, like many Democrats, seems to believe that a major part of the problem is messaging, saying in the interview, “We’re scared of our own shadow on taxes and it … makes no sense.”But what if the issue is not the messaging but the messenger?Poor messaging may contribute to the problem, but I think the problem is more on ground level, a gut level: How do people feel? They feel stuck and angry, they’re tired and overwhelmed, and that energy is being directed at Biden.Biden is a decent man. As a matter of course and tactic, he strikes me as not entirely built for hyperbole and hype, for beating his chest while he boasts. It’s not part of his character. He is sober and straightforward. Many Americans wanted him as an antidote to Donald Trump for precisely this reason.But America has changed its mind and its mood. It wants a show and a showman to distract from its misery. Biden is not that. And he is being punished for not being a huckster.There is an old saying that is some variation of, “People will forget what you said, but they won’t forget how you made them feel.” Biden isn’t constantly tweeting and hamming it up for the cameras — in fact, too often, he has shied away from interviews — and his reticence has left a void of emotional connection to him.I hate that emotional connection plays such an outsize role in our politics, but I also can’t deny that it does. If Americans can’t cheer you, they’ll chide you.Biden’s presidency is far from a failure, but it has been stymied on some big promises that Biden made during the campaign on issues like voting rights and police reform. Lately it feels like, on domestic policy, Biden has moved from the macro to the micro, taking steps that will indeed benefit many Americans, but are too narrowly focused to transform our society or fix the core problems that plague it — trying to recruit more American truckers, focusing on Black maternal health, announcing an emergency waiver to allow higher ethanol blend gasoline to be sold this summer.All the while, two major perennial issues are resurgent: crime and the economy. The fear of crime and the pinch of inflation aren’t abstractions, or complicated foreign policy, or perks for special interests. They creep into every door and lurk under every kitchen table.And on the other side, Republicans are playing heavily into culture war issues like challenging the teaching of Black history and the history of white supremacy in schools, as well as restricting discussions of L.G.B.T. issues and campaigning against trans women and girls competing in sports with other women and girls. And they are using parental rights as the Trojan horse to enact their agenda.Democrats, for their part, have almost ceded the parental rights argument, instead of fighting back and framing these efforts as oppressive and backward. They do not recognize that oppression by conservatives in this country is like an amoeba: simple, primitive, pervasive and highly adaptable. It simply shifts its shape to fit the environment and argument.Republicans are using white parental fear, particularly the fears of white moms, worried about harm coming to their children, to attract suburban white women and get them to the polls. The oppression is a bonus.There was another worrisome sign in the Quinnipiac poll: Biden’s approval rating among people identified as Hispanics was even lower than it was among those identified as white. Pundits have been discussing Biden’s declining numbers among Hispanics for months. In October, FiveThirtyEight pointed out that “there has been a drop in support for Biden among all three racial and ethnic groups we measured, but the drop among Hispanics — from the high 60s to slightly below 50 percent — marks Biden’s most precipitous decline.”The reasons for this drop appear to range from a response to the pandemic to the fact that Hispanics hew conservative on some social issues.But all this taken together — in addition to voter suppression and racial, political gerrymandering — may prove hugely problematic for Democrats and for the administration, unless they can turn things around before Election Day. If not, we could well be looking forward to a Biden blood bath.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More