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      A Way Forward for Biden and the Democrats in 2022 and 2024

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      Swing voters in two blue-leaning states just sent a resounding wake-up call to the Biden administration: If Democrats remain on their current course and keep coddling and catering to progressives, they could lose as many as 50 seats and control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections. There is a way forward now for President Biden and the Democratic Party: Friday’s passage of the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill is a first step, but only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022 and to hold on to the presidency in 2024.The history of the 2020 election is undisputed: Joe Biden was nominated for president because he was the moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders and then elected president as the antidote to the division engendered by Donald J. Trump. He got off to a good start, especially meeting the early challenge of Covid-19 vaccine distribution. But polling on key issues show that voters have been turning against the Biden administration, and rejecting its embrace of parts of the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playbook.According to our October Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, only 35 percent of registered voters approve of the administration’s immigration policies (which a majority view as an open-borders approach); 64 percent oppose eliminating cash bail (a progressive proposal the administration has backed); and most reject even popular expansions of entitlements if they are bundled in a $1.5 to $2 trillion bill based on higher taxes and deficits (the pending Build Back Better initiative). Nearly nine in 10 voters express concern about inflation. And 61 percent of voters blame the Biden administration for the increase in gasoline prices, with most also preferring to maintain energy independence over reducing carbon emissions right now.Progressives might be able to win the arguments for an all-out commitment to climate change and popular entitlements — but they haven’t because they’ve allowed themselves to be drawn into a debate about the size of Build Back Better, not its content. Moderate Democrats have always favored expanded entitlements, but only if they meet the tests of fiscal responsibility — and most voters don’t believe Build Back Better does so, even though the president has promised it would be fully paid for. Putting restraints on these entitlements so that they don’t lead to government that is too big, and to ballooning deficits, is at the core of the moderate pushback on the bill that has caused a schism in the party.Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema are not outliers in the Democratic Party — they are in fact the very heart of the Democratic Party, given that 53 percent of Democrats classify themselves as moderates or conservative. While Democrats support the Build Back Better initiative, 60 percent of Democrats (and 65 percent of the country) support the efforts of these moderates to rein it in. It’s Mr. Sanders from Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez from New York who represent areas ideologically far from the mainstream of America.The economy and jobs are now the top national issues, and 57 percent see it on the wrong track, up from 42 percent a few months ago, generating new basic kitchen-table worries. After the economy and jobs, the coronavirus, immigration and health care are the next top issues, but Afghanistan, crime, school choice and education are also serious areas of concern for voters.To understand the urgency for future Democratic candidates, it’s important to be cleareyed about those election results. Some progressives and other Democrats argue that the loss in the Virginia governor’s race, where culture war issues were a factor, should not be extrapolated to generalize about the administration. The problem with that argument is that last week’s governor’s race in New Jersey also showed a double-digit percentage point swing toward Republicans — and in that election, taxes mattered far more than cultural issues. The swing is in line with the drop in President Biden’s approval rating and the broader shift in the mood of the country.Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee in Virginia, ran for governor in 2013 and won by offering himself as a relative moderate. This time, he deliberately nationalized his campaign by bringing in President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, and he closed out the race with the head of the teacher’s union, an icon on the left. He may not have brought in the progressive Squad, but he did hug a range of left-of-center Democratic politicians rather than push off the left and try to win swing voters.It’s hard to imagine Democratic candidates further to the left of Mr. McAuliffe, and of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, doing any better with swing voters, especially when the math of elections requires two new voters to turn out to equal a single voter who switches from Democrat to Republican. It’s easy to dismiss individual polls that may or may not be accurate — but you can’t dismiss a clear electoral trend: the flight from the Democrats was disproportionately in the suburbs, and the idea that these home-owning, child-rearing, taxpaying voters just want more progressive candidates is not a sustainable one.After the 1994 congressional elections, Bill Clinton reoriented his administration to the center and saved his presidency. Mr. Biden should follow his lead, listen to centrists, push back on the left and reorient his policies to address the mounting economic issues people are facing. As a senator, he was a master at building coalitions; that is the leadership needed now.This would mean meeting the voters head on with stronger borders, a slower transition from fossil fuels, a focus on bread-and-butter economic issues (such as the price of gas and groceries), fixes to the supply chain fiasco that is impacting the cost of goods and the pursuit of more moderate social spending bills. Nearly three in four voters see the border as a crisis that needs immediate attention. Moving to the center does not mean budging from core social issues like abortion rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights that are at the heart of what the party believes in and are largely in sync with suburban voters. But it does mean connecting to voters’ immediate needs and anxieties. As Democrats found in the late ’90s, the success of the administration begets enthusiasm from the base, and we actually gained seats in the 1998 midterms under the theme of “progress not partisanship.”Mr. Biden’s ratings since the Afghanistan withdrawal have fallen from nearly 60 percent approval to just above 40 percent in most polls. By getting the physical infrastructure bill passed with Republican votes, Mr. Biden has taken a crucial step to the center (79 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans supported it in the Harris Poll). Follow that infrastructure success by digging into the pending congressional budget office analysis of Build Back Better and then look closely at bringing in more of the popular benefits for people (such as expansion of Medicare benefits for dental and vision and family leave) and cutting out some of the interest group giveaways like creating environmental justice warriors.Of course, this may require some Houdini-like leadership to get votes from the Progressive Caucus for a revised Build Back Better bill. But this is the best strategy to protect Democratic candidates in 2022.Yelling “Trump, Trump, Trump” when Mr. Trump is not on the ballot or in office is no longer a viable campaign strategy. Soccer moms, who largely despised Mr. Trump, want a better education for their kids and safer streets; they don’t see the ghost of Trump or Jan. 6 behind Republican candidates like now Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. Remember that only about one quarter of the country classifies itself as liberal, and while that is about half of the Democratic Party, the rest of the electorate nationally is moderate or conservative. While many rural and working-class voters are staying Republican, the message from last Tuesday is that the Democrats have gone too far to the left on key issues for educated suburban voters. Even Bergen County in New Jersey, a socially liberal bedroom community outside New York City, almost swung into the Republican column.While Mr. Youngkin waded directly into racially divisive issues, he also based his campaign on positive messages of striving for excellence in the schools and for re-establishing the American dream as a worthy goal. Those messages tapped into the aspirations of voters in ways that in the past were at the heart of the Democratic message. These are enduring values, as is reaffirming the First Amendment and the power of free speech.Demographics is not destiny. We live in a 40-40-20 country in which 40 percent are hard-wired to either party and 20 percent are swing voters, primarily located in the suburbs. After losing a game-changing slice of Midwestern working-class voters, who had voted for Mr. Obama, over trade, immigration and cultural policies, Democrats were steadily gaining in the suburbs, expanding their leads in places like New Jersey and Virginia. Without voters in these places, the party will be left with only too small of a base of urban voters and coastal elites. Unless it re-centers itself, the risk is that the Democratic Party, like the Labor Party in Britain, will follow its greatest success with an extended period in the desert.Mark Penn served as adviser and pollster to President Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton from 1996 to 2008. Andrew Stein is a former president of the New York City Council.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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      F.B.I. Searches James O’Keefe’s Home in Ashley Biden Diary Theft Inquiry

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      Authorities carried out a court-ordered search at the New York apartment of the Project Veritas founder two days after searching the homes of his associates.Federal authorities on Saturday searched the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of the conservative group Project Veritas, according to witnesses and people briefed on the matter, a day after Mr. O’Keefe acknowledged that the group was under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with a diary reported to have been stolen from Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter.The F.B.I. carried out a court-ordered search of Mr. O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, N.Y., early on Saturday morning, after having searched the homes of two associates of Mr. O’Keefe on Thursday as part of the investigation.An F.B.I. spokesman on Saturday said that agents had “performed law enforcement activity” at the building, but would not discuss the investigation.Mr. O’Keefe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. But in a video statement on Friday, he said that his group had recently received a grand jury subpoena and acknowledged that Project Veritas had been involved in discussions with sources last year about the diary.Jimmy Maynes, who lives next to Mr. O’Keefe at an apartment complex in Mamaroneck, said a handful of F.B.I. agents arrived early Saturday morning.“They asked for James,” Mr. Mayne, an entertainment manager, said. “I thought they were banging on my door. I opened the door.”“They told me to close the door and I closed the door,” he added. “That’s exactly what happened. It was still dark.”Brent Mickol, a teacher who lives across the hall from Mr. O’Keefe, said it was about 6 a.m. when agents arrived. Mr. Mickol said the agents said “something along the lines of ‘F.B.I. Warrant. Open up.’”“I ran to the door and looked out the peep hole and clearly saw an F.B.I. raid,” he said. “You saw the jackets. Literally, it was just out of a movie.”Mr. Maynes and Mr. Mickol said the F.B.I. agents were at the apartment for several hours.In his video statement on Friday, Mr. O’Keefe offered a lengthy defense of his group’s handling of the diary, saying that he and his colleagues had been operating as ethical journalists, had turned the diary over to the law enforcement authorities last year and had sought to return it to a lawyer for Ms. Biden.“It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed crime of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly,” Mr. O’Keefe said in the video statement. “Our efforts were the stuff of responsible, ethical journalism and we are in no doubt that Project Veritas acted properly at each and every step.”Project Veritas did not publish Ms. Biden’s diary, but dozens of handwritten pages from it were posted on a right-wing website last year a week and a half before Election Day, at a time when President Donald J. Trump was seeking to undermine Mr. Biden’s credibility by portraying his son Hunter as engaging in corrupt business dealings. The posting was largely ignored by other conservative outlets and the mainstream media.The website said it had obtained the diary from a whistle-blower who worked for a media organization that refused to publish a story about it before the election. It claimed to know where the actual diary was located and that the whistle-blower had an audio recording of Ms. Biden admitting it was hers.Ms. Biden, 40, is Mr. Biden’s youngest child. She has maintained a low profile and attracted far less attention than Hunter Biden, her half brother.The Trump administration’s Justice Department, then led by Attorney General William P. Barr, opened an investigation into the matter shortly after a representative of the Biden family reported to federal authorities in October 2020 that several of Ms. Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. O’Keefe said in the video that “tipsters” had reached out to Project Veritas in 2020 to alert them to the existence of the diary, saying that they had stayed in a room that Ms. Biden had recently been in. But Mr. O’Keefe said that his group could not authenticate the diary and made an “ethical” decision to not publish it.He said that Project Veritas gave the diary to “law enforcement” and attempted to return it to a lawyer representing Ms. Biden, who he said “refused to authenticate it.” Mr. O’Keefe portrayed the investigation as politically motivated, questioning why the Justice Department under Ms. Biden’s father was pursuing the case.In recent weeks, federal investigators have reached out to at least one person who worked for Project Veritas to question that person about the diary, one of the people briefed on the case said.On Thursday, federal authorities searched the residence in Manhattan of Spencer Meads, a longtime Project Veritas operative and confidant of Mr. O’Keefe, and an apartment in Mamaroneck linked to another O’Keefe associate.Project Veritas has a history of targeting Democratic congressional campaigns, labor groups, news media organizations and others. The group conducts sting operations using hidden cameras and fake identities. At one point, Project Veritas relied on a former British spy named Richard Seddon to help train its operatives, teaching them espionage tactics such as using deception to secure information from potential targets.Flyover Media, the company that owns the website that published the pages from the diary, is registered to the same Sheridan, Wyo., address as Mr. Seddon’s company, Branch Six Consulting International. Mr. O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, was once the president of a company that later registered at the same address. More

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      Trapped in a Pandemic Funk: Millions of Americans Can’t Shake a Gloomy Outlook

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      Despite signals that the economy is improving and the virus is waning, many Americans said they were frustrated by polarized politics and a sense of stagnancy.A year ago, Michael Macey, a barber who lives in the suburbs outside Atlanta, was thrilled to help propel President Biden to victory, hopeful that Democrats would move swiftly to tackle policing laws and other big issues. But then he watched his hopes for sweeping changes wither in Washington.Now, Mr. Macey’s sense of optimism — like that of millions of Americans — has been dashed. By the pain of an unending pandemic. By rising prices. By nationwide bickering that stretches from school board meetings to the United States Capitol.“I don’t like the division,” Mr. Macey, 63, said. “I don’t like the standstill. We need something to get accomplished.”For so many voters in this November of discontent, the state of the union is just … blech.Despite many signals that things are improving — the stock market is hitting record highs, hiring is accelerating sharply with 531,000 jobs added in October, workers are earning more, and Covid hospitalizations and deaths are dropping from their autumn peaks — many Americans seem stuck in a pandemic hangover of pessimism.More than 60 percent of voters in opinion surveys say that the country is heading in the wrong direction — a national funk that has pummeled Mr. Biden’s approval ratings and fueled a backlash against Democrats that could cost them control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.More than 60 percent of voters in opinion surveys say that the country is heading in the wrong direction — a national funk that has pummeled Mr. Biden’s approval ratings.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn more than two dozen interviews across the country, voters ticked off a snowballing list of grievances that had undercut their faith in a president who ran on a pledge of normalcy and competence: The chaotic, deadly pullout from Afghanistan. A spike in migrants crossing the southern border. A legislative agenda stymied by Republican opposition and Democratic infighting.The complaints are not just coming from conservatives. Voters who supported Mr. Biden said they had grown dispirited about his ability to muscle through campaign pledges to address climate change, voting rights and economic fairness while also confronting rising prices and other disruptions to daily life exacerbated by the pandemic.“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Daniel Sanchez, who lost his teaching contract at a community college in suburban Phoenix when enrollment plunged during the pandemic. Now, he is making minimum wage at an organic market and searching for full-time teaching work.Mr. Sanchez, 36, said he still supported Mr. Biden, echoing many Democratic voters who said they believed the president was being unfairly blamed by Republicans and the news media for problems beyond his control, such as the price of gasoline or Covid spikes among Americans who refuse to get vaccinated.But Mr. Sanchez has grown exasperated with the endless melodrama in Washington as a Democratic effort to confront climate change and strengthen the social safety net has stalled amid intraparty disputes. He is particularly frustrated with two moderate Democratic senators — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Mr. Sanchez’s own senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.“It seems like the answers are right in front of them, and people are willing to do nothing about it,” he said.Daniel Sanchez has grown exasperated with the endless melodrama in Washington as a Democratic effort to confront climate change and strengthen the social safety net has stalled. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMr. Biden came into office vowing to “build back better.” But voters said little was getting built as Democrats fight over multitrillion-dollar measures to strengthen the country’s social safety net and improve physical infrastructure. Normal life was not back, and might never be. And voters said so many things just felt worse.It is not just the federal government they blame. Trash is piling up on city streets because of a dearth of garbage haulers. School bus services are being canceled and delayed for want of drivers. Americans who have been hurt economically by the pandemic are still struggling to get rental assistance and unemployment benefits, sometimes months after applying.“Our political system — it’s almost completely a failure,” said Carla Haney, a 65-year-old swimming instructor who has yet to receive about 14 weeks of unemployment benefits from the State of Florida that she applied for in May 2020. “I don’t see it getting better at all.”With the global supply chain gummed up, voters around the Phoenix metro area said they were paying the price in lost money and wasted time. A restaurant chef in Phoenix is once again struggling to buy paper plates and napkins. A plumbing supplier in Tempe is losing commissions because he cannot fill orders.And at gas stations across the country, drivers cringe at paying an average of $3.40 a gallon — prices that have risen by more than $1 a gallon from a year ago.“Everything goes up, and pay pretty much stays the same,” said Brandon Hendrix, 39, of Athens, Ga., who works in security for an auto plant.Even with the unemployment rate at 4.6 percent, falling but still above its prepandemic levels, Mr. Hendrix, said job security is not his top concern. Instead, it is the rising of prices for “gas, grocery stores, rent — just about everything you can think of” that worry him. Still, he blames much of the country’s grim state on the pandemic, Republicans’ obstruction and relentless criticism of the Biden administration.“They instigated too much division,” Mr. Hendrix said of Republicans. “Basically, they’ve kind of boiled it down to politics and power play. They’re not really solving issues. They’re just keeping you divided so they can do whatever they want.”A gas station in Queens. The rising of prices for “gas, grocery stores, rent — just about everything you can think of,” worry Brandon Hendrix, 39, of Athens, Ga.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWorries around trash piling up, flights canceled because of staff shortages and rising grocery prices may be small compared with a global pandemic that has killed five million people, or a fast-warming climate that has contributed to floods inundating towns and wildfires burning the American West. But they are stuck like pebbles in voters’ shoes: Tiny, but impossible to ignore.“Every day or so, my younger one will say, ‘Dad, there’s no bus. Can you come get me?’” said John Radanovich, 58, the father of an eighth-grader and an 11th-grader in Lake Worth, Fla., near West Palm Beach.Mr. Radanovich, a Democrat, said he believed the increasingly vocal dissatisfaction in the country — on vivid displays as Republicans won the governorship in Virginia, flipped a Democratic State House seat in San Antonio and routed Democrats in New York’s suburbs — were likely to doom Democrats in 2022.“There’s so much hatred,” Mr. Radanovich said, adding that he hoped to leave the country once his younger son finished high school. “You can see it in the schools, the diet, our lifestyle, the stress. How expensive things are. It’s a mystery that life has become so much worse in the U.S. It’s just worse and worse and worse.”In Colorado, where hospitals are being overwhelmed by a new surge of largely unvaccinated patients, some communities have reimposed mask mandates. Amanda Rumsey said she was losing patience with the shifting requirements that she worried were now simply antagonizing a divided electorate.Ms. Rumsey, a crisis therapist who has seen a spike in young and teenage patients with suicidal thoughts during the pandemic, voted for Mr. Biden, but now found herself unhappy with his leadership.“It doesn’t seem like he is doing anything to help us be more unified,” she said as she stood outside a Walmart in the fast-growing suburban community of Lafayette, north of Denver.Protesting against a proposed mask mandate in Anchorage in September.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAs the world slumps toward a third year of the pandemic, through more mask fights and breakthrough infections and grim new death milestones, some mental health experts said the country’s sour political mood reflected a condition called languishing. Different from depression or hopelessness, it is a sense of stagnant drift.Even if the pandemic does ease, many Americans said they were resigned to another year of polarized politics. One example they cited was the prospect of Republicans making schools the heart of their midterm-election strategy, seizing on divisions over how students should learn about race and how teachers should confront the pandemic in the classroom.“It’s just not a civilized country,” said Ted Laarkamp, 76, a retired businessman from Media, Penn., just outside Philadelphia. “It’s just a bunch of people that think they can go it alone — like a bunch of lone rangers. Nobody trusts anybody; everything is a conspiracy.”The atmosphere was gray as Mr. Laarkamp and other shoppers shared their views outside a supermarket in downtown Media.“It’s unfortunate because we have serious tasks ahead of us, and we need all hands on deck,” said Eve Miari, 44, who voted for Mr. Biden but faulted him for publicly criticizing Americans who resisted mask and vaccine mandates. “We are talking about getting out of a global pandemic and resolving big issues like climate change. You can’t have everybody divided.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Republicans Are Going to Use Dog Whistles. Democrats Can’t Just Ignore Them.

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      The Virginia election results should shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics. No candidate would think of entering an election without a winning message on the economy or health care. Yet by failing to counter his opponent’s racial dog whistles, Terry McAuliffe did the equivalent, finding himself defenseless against a strategy Republicans have used to win elections for decades.Crucially, the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, was able to use racially coded attacks to motivate sky-high white turnout without paying a penalty among minority voters. This appears to solve the problem bedeviling Republicans in the Trump era: how to generate high turnout for a candidate who keeps Donald Trump at arm’s length, as Mr. Youngkin did.Before Tuesday night, conventional wisdom held that racially coded attacks could well spur higher white turnout but that those gains would be offset by losses among minority voters. Mr. Youngkin proved this assumption false. He significantly outperformed other Republicans among white voters, especially women: In 2020, Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump among white women in Virginia by 50 percent to 49 percent, but according to exit polls, Mr. Youngkin beat Mr. McAuliffe among them by 57 percent to 43 percent. At the same time, Mr. Youngkin suffered no major drop-off among minority voters — if anything, he appeared to slightly outperform expectations.This should terrify Democrats. With our democracy on the line, we have to forge an effective counterattack on race while rethinking the false choice between mobilizing base voters or persuading swing voters.It will not work to ignore race and talk about popular issues instead. Mr. McAuliffe’s closing message was a generic appeal on infrastructure and other issues that poll well. He was following the strategy known as popularism, which has gained in influence since the 2020 election, when Democrats’ disappointing down-ballot performance was attributed to rhetoric like “defund the police.”In the heat of a campaign, popularism fails because Republicans will not let Democrats ignore race. Mr. Youngkin dragged race into the election, making his vow to “ban critical race theory” a centerpiece of his stump speech and repeating it over the closing weekend — even though in Virginia the prominence of C.R.T., which teaches that racism is woven into the structures of American society, was vastly exaggerated.Some Democrats may resist accepting the centrality of race, pointing to the bearish national political environment and cyclical patterns. This would be a mistake for two reasons. First, C.R.T. helped create the rough national environment, with Fox News hammering it relentlessly; and cyclical explanations, like thermostatic public opinion (a longstanding tendency for voters to drift toward the views of the party out of power on some issues), do not explain Democrats’ loss of support in the suburbs or the strong turnout. Voters in New Jersey, where a stronger-than-expected Republican performance caught Democrats off guard, have been inundated with C.R.T. hype by Fox News, too.Second, the past half-century of American political history shows that racially coded attacks are how Republicans have been winning elections for decades, from Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” and George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton ad. Many of these campaigns were masterminded by the strategist Lee Atwater, who in 1981 offered a blunt explanation: Being overtly racist backfires, he noted, “so you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.” C.R.T. is straight out of the Atwater playbook.In recent years, it has become commonplace in Democratic circles to think that our diversifying population has relegated such attacks to the past. The theory goes that Democrats can counteract racist appeals by encouraging high turnout among people of color. This interpretation took a ding in 2016 and a bigger hit in 2020, when Mr. Trump shocked many people by making major inroads with Latinos. Latinos recently became the largest population of color, and Democrats cannot win on the national level without winning them by large margins. Yet from 2016 to 2020, Democrats saw a seven-point drop in support among Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.How did the most racist president of our lifetime outperform a more generic Republican like Mitt Romney with Latinos? Research by Equis Labs suggests that Latinos found Mr. Trump’s populist message on the economy appealing.And as Mr. Trump showed — and Mr. Youngkin confirmed — racially coded attacks do not necessarily repel Latino voters. They may even attract them. One of us, Ms. Gavito, was among the first to flag this disturbing trend. In focus groups in battleground states during the lead-up to the 2020 election, pollsters with Lake Research tested a message that denounced “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” Both whites and Latinos found this message persuasive, but Latinos found it appealing at significantly higher rates than whites.This, then, is the Democrats’ problem: The fact that Republicans can drag race into the conversation with ease kicks the legs out from under the idea that Democrats can succeed by simply talking about more popular things. And the fact that racially coded attacks spur turnout among white voters without necessarily prompting a backlash among minority voters undermines the idea that mobilizing a diverse electorate can win elections for Democrats.That’s the bad news. The good news is, we know what a path forward looks like.First, Democrats must separate our (accurate and necessary) analysis of structural racism from our political strategy in a country where the electorate remains nearly 70 percent white — and as much as or more than 80 percent white in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Instead of ignoring race while Republicans beat us silly with it, Democrats must confront it and explain that powerful elites and special interests use race as a tool of division to distract hard-working people of all races while they get robbed blind. Then pivot back to shared interests. The pivot is critical: Without it, Democrats are simply talking past voters, while Republicans play on their racial fears.This strategy is known as the “race-class narrative,” pioneered by Prof. Ian Haney López of Berkeley, the author Heather McGhee and the messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio (whom we have worked with). To be clear, Democrats should not seek to impose a racial-justice frame; to the contrary, research found a focus on racial justice to be less persuasive than the race-class narrative. The strategy we suggest here is a middle way: It is more powerful than a racial-justice-only frame but also more powerful than a strategy that ignores race altogether. Race is the elephant in the room, and Democrats must stop fooling themselves into thinking that they can prevent it from becoming an issue.Second, Democrats must put aside the false choice between the tactics of persuasion and mobilization and embrace them both. By confronting race as a tool of division, and then pivoting to shared interests, Democrats can offer an optimistic, inspiring and even patriotic vision. This is the approach that rocketed Barack Obama to the White House. As an African-American, Mr. Obama was never allowed to ignore race. Forced to confront it, Mr. Obama offered Americans a vision that mobilized a broad, diverse coalition — while also persuading white voters. In 2008, Mr. Obama won the highest share of the white vote since Bill Clinton in 1996.Race has infused American history and politics since our founding. It threads through most aspects of daily life, and stirs up complicated feelings that Americans of all backgrounds find difficult to discuss. But Virginia showed that race is impossible to ignore.The simple fact is that Republicans have long used race to achieve victory, and Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they can avoid it. Democrats have to get real about race, and forge a way to win.Tory Gavito (@torygavito) is president of Way to Win, a donor network focused on expanding Democrats’ power in the Sun Belt, and lead of the Latinx Justice Fund. Adam Jentleson is the executive director of Battle Born Collective, a progressive strategy organization, a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and the author of “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.”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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      Youngkin’s Victory in Virginia's Election Is a Warning for Democrats

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      In the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s defeat, Republicans appear to have won the governor’s race in Virginia, as well as coming closer than expected in New Jersey. While this is surprising — Republicans had not won a statewide race in Virginia in 12 years — Virginia voters have swung against whichever party holds the White House in 10 of the last 11 gubernatorial races. Perhaps reinforcing this penchant for split governance, Democrats appear to have held the historic gains they made four years ago in the House of Delegates, despite running within district lines heavily gerrymandered toward Republican advantage.The clearest message for Democrats nationally is that the fear of Trump 2.0 is not enough to win elections. Congressional Democrats, especially those in tough races, should be sprinting to immediately pass the boldest possible version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Democrats need to look like the party that knows how to govern and produces results that benefit Americans of every race and region.I learned this lesson as part of the congressional class that lost the 2010 midterms. While some suggest my vote for the Affordable Care Act cost me my seat, I was sure that the real political cost was incurred by watering down the original proposal and taking far too long to pass it. Right now, the fight is not just immediately to pass Build Back Better but whether new benefits like child-care subsidies for the working and middle class kick in next year or down the road. Prescription drug reform should be strong enough that voters can see cheaper prices by next year’s election. Democrats need to run on results that families have felt.Democratic delegates ran ahead of the statewide ticket, protecting most of the gains made four years ago. As State Senator Jennifer McClellan noted: “Since taking the majority in 2019, Virginia Democrats have made generational progress on a wide range of issues voters care about. We’ve raised the minimum wage, expanded paid sick leave, passed a 100 percent clean energy law, expanded voting, civil, worker and reproductive rights, implemented criminal justice reform and taken major actions on gun safety and community college affordability.” Democratic incumbents running as “reformers with results” may be a winning formula. Voters are angry, exhausted after nearly two years of lockdowns, economic insecurity, and general disruptions of normal life. They are eager to blame whoever is in charge, which Republicans translated into enormous gains in the suburbs and sweeping wins in rural areas. Glenn Youngkin, like Mr. Trump in 2016, ran as an outsider ready to shake up the status quo. Historically, Democrats tend to win with younger “change” candidates, like John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. While Mr. Biden was seen as a break from that trend, he may have represented “change” in the immediate contrast to Trump in ways that have been harder to maintain as president.Anachronistic efforts to blame the left have fallen flat, given that neither Terry McAuliffe, Philip Murphy or Mr. Biden represent the most progressive wing of the party. The old center-left divide obscures new divides. The fault lines of American politics today are partisan, but the ideologies on either side are surprisingly fluid, as Mr. Trump proved. For the past two weeks, the Youngkin campaign flooded my digital feed with ads attacking Mr. McAuliffe for his corporate PAC donations from Dominion Energy. Banning corporate contributions was a major part of the reform platform that propelled Democratic delegates to office in 2017. This issue has grass-roots energy across the aisle. Anti-corruption advocates, namely Clean Virginia, have built broad political support while sometimes butting heads with leaders of both parties. This is a trend traditional pundits seem to miss — that winning issues are emerging less from the old bipartisan consensus than anti-establishment comparisons. This is true about antitrust enforcement and accountability for Big Tech, limiting presidential war powers, and eliminating dark money and corporate power in politics. Any course correction should focus on steering Democrats to prioritize benefits popular with moderates, like paid family leave and strong prescription drug reform, ahead of protecting corporate lobbyists.The issues gaining bipartisan support today are rarely emerge from established institutions. Republicans can win by running up numbers in vast expanses of low-population rural areas, and Democrats ignore those areas at their peril. The two groups in Virginia most likely to benefit from debt-free community college, for instance, are white rural families and recent immigrants or their children. We will not rebuild a common American dream when the establishment cares more about the price of the bill than the price Americans are paying to have a future. We do not need to win back all the old Johnny Cash Democrats, but authentic reformers with roots in these communities can level the score.The culture wars clearly profit Republicans at the polls and Facebook’s bottom line. By leaning into red-hot school board fights, Youngkin became the first major Republican candidate in years to rally the MAGA base while keeping Donald Trump out of state. The Democratic Party does not support defunding the police or teaching critical race theory in public schools, so it is not surprising they are losing a battle they have no desire to wage. They lack the ability to declare a unilateral détente in the culture wars, and fear of Trump’s shadow failed to scare suburban voters with the same intensity as the images Republicans conjured of public schools running out of control.Finally, Republicans can win fair elections. Their win in Virginia came despite Democrats passing the kind of voting rights reforms that have been stymied at the federal level. When Republicans focus more on winning over voters than making it harder to vote, they can win in areas thought to be blue. Voting reform was and should be a bipartisan issue. Early and easier voting helps historically marginalized communities. While this has been and remains primarily African-American voters, it also applies to rural voters working a double shift, younger families that may be moving frequently to find work, and seniors still navigating health threats. Let’s put the lies about rigged elections to rest, and see whose agenda most voters endorse. That may not bridge our partisan divides, but could get us back to agreeing on the right rules of the game in our shared democracy.Tom Perriello represented the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia in the House from 2009 to 2011, and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2017 race for governor.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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      Biden Is Hopeful for a Democratic Win in Virginia Governor’s Race

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      Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. More

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      What the Virginia Election Result Will Mean for Democrats and Republicans

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      Republicans hope to hit on a recipe for renewal, while Democrats worry that a loss could force them to defend seats in blue states next year.ALEXANDRIA, Va. — During one of the most hectic weeks of her speakership — as she sought to unite her fractious party and corral two sweeping pieces of legislation — Nancy Pelosi made time for a meeting in her Capitol suite with a group of Democratic lawmakers from New Jersey and Virginia bearing an urgent message of their own.They warned Ms. Pelosi that if the candidates for governor in those two states, particularly former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in liberal-leaning Virginia, were to lose on Tuesday, it could have a cascading effect on the party, prompting Democrats to pull back from President Biden and his ambitious agenda, and perhaps even drive some to retirement.Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia said he used the meeting last Tuesday to urge Ms. Pelosi to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which had already cleared the Senate, and to share his alarm about the party’s fortunes. “You don’t have to be a front-liner to be worried,” he said, invoking the word House Democrats use to describe their most politically at-risk incumbents.Unable to overcome mutual mistrust between a group of House progressives and Senate moderates, however, Ms. Pelosi pulled the public works legislation from consideration hours after Mr. Biden visited the Capitol on Thursday, dashing the group’s hopes of delivering Mr. McAuliffe and other Democrats on the ballot a win after a two-month drumbeat of bad news.The former Virginia governor and his top aides, who have been pushing congressional and White House officials to pass the bill for over a month, were both stunned and infuriated, according to Democrats. They were amazed Ms. Pelosi had been forced to delay the vote for the second time in a month, baffled why the president didn’t make a more aggressive push and despairing about the impact of yet another round of negative stories from Washington.“The last two-and-a-half months makes it look like Democrats are in disarray,” said Representative Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat who has raised money for Mr. McAuliffe.The races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey that occur a year after the presidential election have long been the first political temperature checks on the new White House and Congress, particularly among the election-deciding suburbanites so abundant in both states. But rarely have contests traditionally fought over decidedly local issues been so interwoven with the national political debate and, in the case of Virginia, loomed as so large a portent for the future of both parties.Glenn Younkin, Republican nominee for Virginia governor, spoke at a farmer’s market in Alexandria, Va., on Saturday.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. McAuliffe’s strategy of relentlessly linking his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin, to Donald J. Trump represents the best test yet of how much of a drag the former president still exerts on his party in blue and purple states. At the same time, Mr. Youngkin’s fancy footwork regarding Mr. Trump — avoiding his embrace without alienating him or his base — and his attacks on Mr. McAuliffe over the role of parents in schools will indicate if G.O.P. candidates can sidestep Trumpism by drawing attention to what they argue is Democratic extremism on issues of race and gender.Far from such old standbys of statewide races as property taxes and teacher pay, the issues in Virginia reflect the country’s canyonlike polarization and what each party portrays as the dire threat posed by the other.To Republicans, Virginia represents the promise of renewal, the chance to rebuild their party in a fairly forbidding state — and without having to make the difficult choice of fully embracing or rejecting Mr. Trump. Addressing supporters near a farmer’s market in Old Town Alexandria Saturday morning, Mr. Youngkin said his victory would send “a shock wave across this country.”Suffering yet another loss here, though, would make it clear to Republicans that they cannot continue to delay their internal reckoning over the former president and that, even in exile, his unpopularity remains the party’s biggest impediment.Because Mr. Biden carried the state by 10 points last year, and Mr. McAuliffe began the race with an advantage befitting the former governor he is, the most significant implications in Virginia are for Democrats. The party is also haunted by recent history: Their loss in the 2009 Virginia governor’s race — the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress — foreshadowed the party’s electoral wipeout the following year.Mr. McAuliffe spoke with Virginia Beach Councilman Aaron Rouse, Gov. Ralph Northam and Bruce Smith, the former football star who is now a developer, during a visit to Virginia Beach on Saturday.Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesShould Mr. McAuliffe lose or barely win, moderates will demand immediate passage of the infrastructure bill. Liberals will argue that the Democratic Party, and democracy itself, are in such a parlous state that they must push through new voting laws. And strategists across the party’s ideological spectrum will be made to contend with a political playing field in the midterm elections that stretches deeper into blue America.“We’re going to have to change our calculation of what’s a race and look at the districts Trump lost,” said Rebecca Pearcey, a Democratic consultant. “Even if he wins,” she added, referring to Mr. McAuliffe, “we’re going to have to reassess what the map looks like on Wednesday, because Tuesday is not going to be a pretty night.”With Mr. Biden’s approval ratings tumbling among independents thanks to Covid-19’s summer resurgence, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and rising inflation, Democrats are also bracing for additional retirements among lawmakers who would rather not run in a newly redrawn district or risk ending their careers in defeat.Already, three House Democrats announced their departures earlier this month. Mr. McAuliffe’s defeat in a state Mr. Biden so easily won would likely accelerate that exodus because lawmakers will chalk it up to the president’s unpopularity. “We’re going to see a lot more by the end of the year,” predicted Ms. Pearcey.Ms. Pelosi is acutely aware of these flight risks — she herself is one — and has privately expressed concern about the fallout from Mr. McAuliffe’s race. Last week, she told a Democratic colleague that the House’s failure to pass the infrastructure bill could imperil Mr. McAuliffe, according to a lawmaker familiar with the exchange.Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the House’s failure to pass the infrastructure bill could imperil Mr. McAuliffe.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesA longtime friend of Mr. McAuliffe’s, Ms. Pelosi headlined a fund-raiser for him last week and has personally given him $250,000 and raised over three times as much. She has also spoken with him by telephone repeatedly about negotiations over the infrastructure bill.A backlash next year may be inevitable in part because, as one longtime Democratic lawmaker noted, the party often suffers at the polls after it pushes an expansive agenda of the sort that congressional Democrats are painstakingly negotiating.“Somebody reminded me: In ’66, after all we did in ’65, we got beat,” Representative Robert C. Scott of Virginia said, referring to the losses Democrats incurred after passing much of the Great Society. “We passed Obamacare and we got beat.”Much as the protracted debate over the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010 overshadowed their economic-recovery legislation then, Democrats this year have been more focused on negotiating their towering twin bills than on promoting their earlier Covid relief legislation.While Democratic lawmakers have dwelled almost exclusively on the infrastructure bill and their broader social welfare and climate proposal — matters on which they have not reached consensus — Americans outside of Washington have grown impatient with the lingering virus and the soaring prices of goods.“If you listen to the Democratic speaking points, it’s all what we haven’t done,” said Mr. Scott, pointing out that the child tax credit enacted in the Covid rescue plan earlier this year was often left unmentioned.Mr. Vela, a moderate who has demanded an infrastructure vote since August, said a McAuliffe defeat should prompt quick passage of that bill, which passed the Senate with 69 votes. “Progressives should wake up and realize that linking the two processes together was a huge mistake,” he said, adding: “That’s from somebody who supports both bills.”But many on the left believe that the party’s vulnerabilities, laid bare by the prospect of defeat in Virginia, where they have not lost a statewide race since 2009, only underscore the need to scrap the Senate filibuster and push through sweeping voting laws that could stave off a disastrous 2022 and long-term loss of power.“A close race in Virginia would signal just how hard the midterms will be for Democrats and the urgency of passing democracy reform,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for the left-wing Justice Democrats who grew up in Virginia.Progressives were already unenthusiastic about Mr. McAuliffe, a fixture of the party establishment and a former national Democratic chairman, and they have been irritated that he did not do more this year to help the party’s state lawmakers hold onto the majority they won in the House of Delegates in 2019.Mr. McAuliffe spoke to supporters in Norfolk, Va., on Saturday.Kristen Zeis for The New York Times“Whatever happens Tuesday, one lesson we already know from Virginia is that we better prioritize winning state legislatures like our democracy depends on it — because it does,” said Daniel Squadron, who runs the States Project, which is dedicated to electing Democrats in statehouses.To Democrats in Northern Virginia, who prospered in the Trump years, there is an especially close connection between what takes place in the nation’s capital and their seats.Mr. Connolly recalled that at the Halloween parade last week in Vienna, Va., a handful of people yelled at him to pass the infrastructure bill, a major quality-of-life issue in his traffic-choked district. “It really got my attention,” he said.Now, he said, he hopes it will not take another high-profile loss in his home state to get his party’s attention.“If past is prologue,” he said, “we cannot have a repeat of what happened in 2009.” More