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      Biden Helped Democrats Avert a ’22 Disaster. What About ’24?

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      A stronger-than-expected midterm showing has quieted the party’s public hand-wringing about a re-election campaign for President Biden. But it hasn’t put those worries to rest.Expecting a cataclysmic midterm election, many Democrats had been bracing for an end-of-year reckoning with whether President Biden, who once declared himself a “bridge” to a new generation, should give way to a new 2024 standard-bearer.But the stronger-than-expected Democratic showing has taken the pressure off.And Donald J. Trump’s decision to announce a run for president again, and the Republican backlash against him, have abruptly quieted Democrats’ public expressions of anxiety over Mr. Biden’s poor approval ratings, while reminding them of Mr. Biden’s past success over Mr. Trump.Now, as Mr. Biden mulls a decision over whether to seek a second term, interviews with more than two dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists suggest that, whatever misgivings some Democrats may harbor about another Biden candidacy, his party is more inclined for now to defer to him than to try to force a frontal clash with a sitting president.In recent days, officials ranging from Representative Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative House Democrats, to Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have said they would support another Biden bid.In private conversations, younger Democratic operatives have shifted from discussing potential job opportunities in a competitive presidential primary to gaming out what a Biden re-election campaign might look like. And a variety of lawmakers have lauded Mr. Biden for the party’s history-defying midterm performance, crediting him with the major legislative accomplishments they were able to run on and with pressing a message that cast Republican candidates as extremists who threatened democracy.Supporters at a Nov. 1 speech by Mr. Biden in Miami Gardens, Fla. Some Democrats say that challenges facing the president and his party should not be glossed over just because of the election results.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAlready, Mr. Biden appears to be improving Democrats’ confidence in him: A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 71 percent of Democrats surveyed believe he could win in 2024, up from 60 percent who said the same in August, though they were evenly divided on whether he should be the 2024 nominee.The concerns about Mr. Biden’s overall weak standing in public opinion polls — which was a burden for many Democratic candidates — have not dissipated entirely. And some Democrats say that the challenges confronting the 80-year-old president and his party should not be glossed over in the party’s relief over the outcome of the elections.Stanley B. Greenberg, the veteran Democratic pollster, pointed to a postelection survey that highlighted Democratic vulnerabilities. The poll, conducted by the organization Mr. Greenberg helped found, warned of “the continuing risk of a Republican challenge centered on borders and crime.” It determined that “Trump may have been weakened in this election, but another leader with that message” poses “an accelerated risk.”In an interview, Mr. Greenberg said he came away from the survey “believing Democrats have huge issues to address.” While “President Biden has done remarkable things,” he added, “I think we need a new voice to address huge challenges but also huge opportunities.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.Beating the Odds: President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The ‘Trump Project’: With Donald J. Trump’s announcement that he is officially running for president again, Mr. Biden and his advisers are planning to go on the offensive.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Surveys of voters leaving the polls found that two-thirds, including nearly a third of Democrats, said they did not want Mr. Biden to run for president again — though Mr. Biden’s allies have noted those numbers are not predictive of how voters would respond when presented with a choice between the president and a Republican candidate. At a postelection news conference, Mr. Biden insisted that those poll ratings would not affect his decision. He has said that he intends to run but planned to discuss the race with his family over the holidays and could announce a decision early next year.David Axelrod, who served as chief strategist for President Barack Obama, said the midterm elections had given Mr. Biden “a little giddyup in his step.” As for a run for a second term, Mr. Axelrod said, “If he were 60 and not 80, there would be absolutely no doubt.”Democrats eager for Mr. Biden to make way for a new cohort of presidential aspirants pointed to the decision by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82, to step down as the House Democratic leader.Former President Donald J. Trump announced he would seek the presidency again in 2024. Jonathan Ernst/ReutersShelia Huggins of North Carolina, a member of the Democratic National Committee, said the country was “looking at what the future looks like, especially with the speaker deciding that now is the time for her to step away and to give other people an opportunity.”Ms. Huggins, who has been open about her reservations regarding Mr. Biden, praised the president’s record but added, “I just still have some concerns about him running again. Part of it does have to do with his age.”Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Mo., said he wanted Mr. Biden to run again and was unbothered by his age. But he also said that the next Democratic nominee should be ready to run against candidates other than Mr. Trump, who is 76, as Republicans weigh an array of younger potential contenders.“The party needs to be prepared for a Ron DeSantis, next-generation Republican,” Mr. Lucas said. “President Biden, in his record of experience, and really his more recent successes, is able to handle that. But I think that’s what the American people will be looking at.”Republicans have long made issues of Mr. Biden’s age and verbal missteps, and polls show that plenty of Democrats, too, have reservations about Mr. Biden’s age.“Most people in this country don’t know many 80-year-olds that can run the entire country,” said Tyler Jones, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina. “That’s not to say that they don’t exist, and it’s not to say that he can’t do it, but it is a very rare thing. And so the burden, unlike most presidents, the burden is on Biden to show the country that he can not just win in ’24, but lead for the next four years.”Mr. Jones said it would be “foolish and counterproductive” not to have a serious conversation in the party about the strengths and weaknesses of a Biden candidacy.But there is no doubt that Mr. Biden would have a significant edge should he run again, the kind of advantage that a man who sought the presidency for decades might resist giving up. It is rare for an incumbent president to lose re-election — or, in recent years, to face a major primary threat — and the Democratic National Committee has already laid groundwork to support Mr. Biden in 2024, preparing to take on a variety of Republican candidates. Mr. Biden’s political advisers have also been ramping up outreach to his early backers, and his team has scheduled a gathering for major supporters and key party figures to discuss the administration’s agenda on Dec. 15 at the White House.Asked about concerns some Americans have about Mr. Biden’s age, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden had the “most successful legislative record of any president since Lyndon Johnson,” citing achievements on infrastructure and gun policy. He extolled Mr. Biden’s record on the world stage and his political strengths.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, at a rally in Hialeah, is widely seen as the strongest Republican alternative to Mr. Trump so far. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“The same coalition President Biden built to expand the map for Democrats in 2020 powered our historic midterm wins, including unprecedented youth turnout,” Mr. Bates said. “The president galvanized independent voters with a message widely adopted across the party, highlighting the differences between his values and ultra-MAGA Republicans’ agenda.”Regardless of the next Republican nominee’s age, some Democrats suggest the G.O.P. is vulnerable to the same challenges that drove major defeats this year.“Republicans failed in a year when they should have been hugely successful,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. “People have rejected the anti-little ‘d’ democratic values that they have run on.”Others argue that it would be possible to support Mr. Biden if he runs while also backing generational change in the party.Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, stressed her hope that, overall, “batons are beginning to be passed.” But she also said she would support another Biden campaign.“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” she said.While a left-leaning advocacy group has already launched a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign to urge Mr. Biden to step aside, few Democrats expect, at this point, that he would draw a major primary challenge. But if he does not run, some Democrats think the size of the field could resemble that of 2020, which swelled to nearly 30 candidates.Some of them, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are often mentioned in political circles as potential contenders if Mr. Biden does not run. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 81, who maintains a devoted following on the left, has not ruled out a bid if Mr. Biden opts out. Several of them campaigned for candidates in battleground states this year, fostering relationships that could prove useful in the future.California Gov. Gavin Newsom touring the U.S. Capitol in July.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThere is also a crop of Democratic governors, many of whom have stressed their support for Mr. Biden, who have raised their national profiles this year, including Mr. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom of California and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the National Governors Association. Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina has also attracted attention as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.Other Democratic governors, including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Jared Polis of Colorado, earned national notice as they won re-election by commanding margins.“There are some great prospects who are considering running in the next election in which there is not an incumbent,” said Mr. Pritzker, a longtime Democratic donor who has supported many Democratic governors. “I think the president is running for re-election. So I think you’ll see Democrats supporting the president.”Mr. Newsom recently made precisely that commitment to the White House, Politico reported, and said that he would not run even if Mr. Biden did not seek a second term.Mr. Biden at a rally in Philadelphia before the elections. Several Democratic governors have raised their profiles recently while also stressing their support for the president.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesMr. Pritzker, for his part, said he intended to support Mr. Biden. He also noted that Chicago was vying to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention and said that he had “every intention of being governor of Illinois for the next four years.”Other Democrats, including Representative Ro Khanna of California, have worked to introduce themselves around the country. And some who won challenging races are already being discussed in “future of the party” conversations, a list that Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia could join if he wins re-election in his runoff next month.“There’s too much talent and too much ambition in our party to think it’s going to be a coronation,” Mr. Jones said of the 2024 presidential election.Still, he added, “Ultimately, they’re waiting to see what the president is going to do.” More

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      Meet the Voters Who Fueled New York’s Seismic Tilt Toward the G.O.P.

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      Republicans used doomsday-style ads to prey on suburban voters’ fear of crime in New York, helping to flip enough seats to capture the House.GREAT NECK PLAZA, N.Y. — Lynn Frankel still has bouts of nostalgia for her old life, the one before the coronavirus pandemic brought New York City to a standstill and fears about crime began to bubble across this well-to-do suburb. There were dinners in the city with friends, Broadway shows, outings with her children — all an easy train ride away.But these days if she can help it, Ms. Frankel, 58, does not set foot in the city. She’s seen too many headlines about “a lot of crazy stuff”: flagrant shoplifting, seemingly random acts of violence and hate crimes, which triggered concern about the safety of her daughters, who are Asian American.Something else has changed, too. Ms. Frankel, a political independent who reviled Donald J. Trump, gladly voted Republican in this month’s midterm elections to endorse the party’s tough-on-crime platform, and punish the “seeming indifference” she ascribes to Democrats like Gov. Kathy Hochul.“If you don’t feel safe, than it doesn’t matter what all the other issues are,” she said the other day in Great Neck Plaza’s tidy commercial area.New York and its suburbs may remain among the safest large communities in the country. Yet amid a torrent of doomsday-style advertising and constant media headlines about rising crime and deteriorating public safety, suburban swing voters like Ms. Frankel helped drive a Republican rout that played a decisive role in tipping control of the House.The attempt to capitalize on upticks in crime may have fallen short for Republicans elsewhere across the nation. But from Long Island to the Lower Hudson Valley, Republicans running predominantly on crime swept five of six suburban congressional seats, including three that President Biden won handily that encompass some of the nation’s most affluent, well-educated commuter towns.Even in places like Westchester County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans, Mr. Zeldin and other Republican candidates found pockets of support.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesThe numbers were stark. New York’s major suburban counties around the city — Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland — all shifted between 14 and 20 points to the right, thanks to a surge in Republican turnout and crucial crossover votes from independents and Democrats. Even parts of the city followed the trend, though it remained overwhelmingly blue.Take the Third Congressional District, a predominately white and Asian American seat connecting northeast Queens with the North Shore of Long Island that flipped to a Republican, George Santos. Turnout data suggests that Republican enthusiasm almost completely erased Democrats’ large voter registration advantage and flipped some voters, helping Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, turn a long-shot bid into the state’s closest race for governor in 30 years.Other factors accounted for Democrats’ suburban struggles here. Threats to abortion access drove some liberal voters to the polls, but many reliably Democratic Black, Latino and white voters stayed home. Swing voters blamed the party for painful increases in gas and grocery bills. Orthodox Jews furious over local education issues voted for Republicans at unusually high rates. Tactical decisions by Ms. Hochul appear to have hurt her party, too.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.But in interviews with strategists from both parties, candidates, and more than three dozen voters across Long Island and Westchester County, it appeared that New York was uniquely primed over the last two years for a suburban revolt over crime and quality of life.“Elections move dramatically when they become about a singular topic, and the election in New York was not about extremism on the left or right, about abortion or about Kathy Hochul,” said Isaac Goldberg, a Democratic political strategist on the losing side of several marquee races. “The election in New York was about crime.”Long Island and Rockland County in particular have large populations of active and retired law enforcement, and a history of sensitivity to crime and costs. Growing Asian American and Orthodox Jewish populations were especially motivated this year by a string of high-profile hate crimes.Many Orthodox Jews who voted for Republican candidates like Mr. Zeldin were especially motivated by a string of high-profile hate crimes.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThen there is the coronavirus pandemic. Arguably no metropolitan area was hit harder than New York, where the economy and old patterns of life have also been slower to return. Remote work remains popular here, leaving Midtown office towers, commuter trains and subways below capacity — and many suburbanites increasingly reliant on media accounts saturated with images and videos of brutal acts of violence to shape their perceptions.Commuters recently boarding trains into Manhattan from Nassau and Westchester said they were uneasy navigating Pennsylvania Station, some of which has been under construction; unnerved by the apparent proliferation of homeless encampments and open drug usage in Midtown; and now looked over their shoulder on the subway for people who appear to be mentally disturbed.Several, including Ms. Frankel, said they frequently read The New York Post, which made Mr. Zeldin’s candidacy for governor and the repeal of the state’s 2019 bail law a crusade for more than a year, splashing violent crimes across its front page, however rare they may still be. Many asked not to be identified by their full names out of fear of backlash from friends, colleagues or even strangers who could identify them online.“I wouldn’t go into the city even if they paid me,” a retired dental hygienist said as she mailed a letter in Oyster Bay. A 41-year-old lawyer from Rockville Centre said she sometimes wondered if she would make it home at night alive. A financial adviser from North Salem in Westchester County said it felt like the worst days of the 1980s and 1990s had returned, despite the fact that crime rates remain a fraction of what they were then.“I have kids who live in Manhattan, and I am every day scared,” Lisa Greco, an empty nester who voted all Republican, said as she waited at a nail salon in Pleasantville, in Westchester.“I don’t want them taking the subways but of course they do,” she continued. “I actually track them because I have to know every day that they’re back home. Like, I don’t want to keep texting them like, ‘Are you at work? Are you here?’”Republicans, led by Mr. Zeldin, a Long Islander himself, relentlessly fanned those fears, blaming Democrats for the small rises in crime while accusing them of coddling criminals. A deluge of conservative advertising only amplified the approach, which blamed the new bail law and a Democratic Party that has complete control over both New York City and Albany.Crime statistics tell a more complicated story. Incidents of major crimes are higher in New York City and Nassau County than before the pandemic, though they remain well below levels seen in recent decades. In Westchester, Suffolk and Rockland counties, major crime has been flatter, though in the first six months of this year, property and violent crimes were up compared with the same period in 2021.Despite the Republican Party narrative, major crime has not increased in most suburban areas like Suffolk County, where Mr. Zeldin greeted voters from his district on Election Day. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesMs. Hochul had taken actions as governor to help combat crime and address the mental health crisis among the city’s homeless. And in the race’s final weeks, she pivoted to stress that she would do more. But voters and Democratic officials alike agreed the more nuanced approach was too little, too late.“She’s not wrong, but it came across to a lot of the people I spoke to on Long Island as dismissive and tone deaf,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was swept out of office last fall by similar currents. “I don’t think it can be overstated how visceral people on Long Island feel about it.”Ms. Hochul and other Democratic candidates spent more of the campaign focused on economic issues and protecting abortion rights. But unlike other states, some voters in New York said they were satisfied that abortion was already safely protected under state law.“The mayor of New York City got elected last year running on this issue. Nothing got better; it got worse,” said Mike Lawler, a Republican who unseated Representative Sean Patrick Maloney in a district that Mr. Biden won by 10 points in Westchester and Rockland Counties. “So I don’t know why any of them are so surprised that this was top of mind to voters.”Representative-elect Mike Lawler, left, was able to upset Sean Patrick Maloney, a powerful Democrat, in a district that President Biden won easily two years ago.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMany New York City residents are baffled by what they view as the irrational fear of those in communities that are objectively far safer. But so are some suburbanites.Back on the South Shore of Long Island, a woman waiting for the Long Island Railroad one morning last week said that since relocating from Brooklyn earlier this year, she had noticed a “hypersensitivity to strangeness” and “hysteria” around crime. It included fliers claiming only Republicans could keep the area safe and a drumbeat of messages in a neighborhood watch group about suspicious looking strangers wandering through well-appointed streets.“There’s a lot of community fear around this town and Nassau becoming more unsafe or changing,” said the woman, a Black lawyer in her mid-40s who only agreed to be identified by her initials K.V. “Maybe it has to do with a wave of people moving from urban communities since the pandemic.”Commuting into the city two to three times a week for work from Rockville Centre, she said she felt no less safe than before, recalling stories of people getting pushed onto subway tracks when she was a child. She voted for Democrats to ensure the protection of abortion access.Republican George Santos won an upset victory in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressOther voters who supported Democrats said they did have concerns about increases in crime, but could not justify backing any Republican associated with Mr. Trump and opposed to abortion rights.“Abortion was definitely the biggest reason I voted Democrat,” said Susie Park, 41, who recently moved to Nassau County from Manhattan. “I don’t feel like a party should ever tell you what you should or should not do.”At the ballot box, though, they were clearly outnumbered on Long Island this year by voters like Gregory Gatti, a 61-year-old insurance broker.A political independent, he said he and most of his friends had voted for Republicans “because they want something done” about crime, inflation and illegal immigration.As he read a fresh New York Post — its front-page headline, “Children of War,” once again devoted to New York City crime — Mr. Gatti said changes to the state’s bail law were “definitely” driving increases in crime, and he was now worried about possible upticks in the suburbs. But he had noted other reasons for concern, as well, as he commutes a couple of days each week through Penn Station to Lower Manhattan.“I have noticed more homeless encampments. We never used to have those,” he said. “You have encampments, then you have drugs, you have crime.”Timmy Facciola contributed reporting from Pleasantville, N.Y. More

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      It’s Time, Again, for My Brother Kevin

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      This Thanksgiving, for the first time in years, my brother Kevin and I could both say we’ve had enough of Donald Trump. But that’s not to say he and I agree on much else. Once again, here’s Kevin with his annual view from the starboard side of the Dowd family:The midterms are over, and the results are disappointing. A red wave did not materialize, and the Democrats and President Biden were not made to pay for their actions of the past 22 months.These include the Afghanistan debacle; cashless bail, which favors criminals over victims; 40-year-high inflation; a two-year invasion at our southern border; record gas prices; a dangerous drawdown of the strategic petroleum reserve; the further decline of our education system; the weakening of our military; and the total embrace of wokeness to divide the country. All of that, with the president’s approval rating deep underwater and 81 percent of Americans believing that the country is headed in the wrong direction, should have produced the anticipated Republican surge. But the president emerged from the elections thinking that Democrats’ relatively good fortune was due to his policies, not in spite of them.Republicans must take a large share of the blame. Their messaging was late or nonexistent, letting Democrats persuade swing voters to believe the only issues that mattered were Trump, abortion and the supposed threat to our democracy.Candidates must fit their district. Don’t pick a conservative for a moderate district. Intrusions by Rick Scott and Lindsey Graham on hot-button issues hurt. The Republicans must persuade supporters to vote early, not wait for Election Day. Democrats often amass large leads from early voting, forcing Republicans to come from behind.Donald Trump is radioactive. His insistence on picking candidates based on their loyalty to him cost Republicans control of the Senate in consecutive elections, and his attacks on other Republicans are despicable. Historians will judge his presidency in more generous terms than the media does now, and we will be forever in his debt for saving the country and the Supreme Court from Hillary Clinton, but his effectiveness has passed.His announcement that he will run again was greeted with resounding silence from Republicans the next day. Rupert Murdoch stripped Trump of the formidable Fox defenses. Trump’s isolation was made plain at his announcement party, where the only member of Congress in sight was Madison Cawthorn, who lost his own primary.A third Trump run will simply settle old scores with political enemies and the press and ignore the repair work that the G.O.P. needs to be done.The Democrats’ better-than-expected results emboldened Mr. Biden, to the nation’s detriment. He will likely run again (he’d be 82 at his second inauguration) and said after the midterms that he intends to change “nothing.” “The more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is,” he said, as if his policies were a luscious bœuf bourguignon simmering over the heat of roiling inflation.There are some bright spots. Republicans have won the House and ended the torturous reign of Nancy Pelosi. With that victory come the purse strings, which should put Democratic profligacy on the skids.Republicans’ first order of business should be impeaching the odious Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, who has presided over the disgraceful situation at the border, wearing incompetence like a badge of honor. In just the last fiscal year under his watch, over 2.4 million migrants have been encountered at the border, over 500,000 have evaded capture, and over 850 deaths have occurred.Republican hopes for 2024 must rest with their new superstar, Ron DeSantis, who won almost 60 percent of the vote in his race to be re-elected governor of Florida, paving the way for four new G.O.P. House members. His handling of Hurricane Ian was only his latest feat, building on his popular defense of parental rights in education, his support of the police and his fight against wokeism.The pandemic lockdowns, spurred by teachers’ unions, resulted in a disastrous drop in the nation’s test scores and pulled back the curtain to what children were being taught. I do not want my elementary school grandchildren hearing about sexuality from a stranger or being labeled an “oppressor.” Stick to math and reading; there is enormous room for improvement.Republicans must now wait two more years for redemption. The Senate field in 2024 has Democrats defending 23 seats. With two more years of Biden’s mistaken policies, rising crime in our major cities, bone-crushing inflation and an impending recession, Republicans should have another golden opportunity. Carpe diem.Here’s hoping for the new year,Kevin.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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      College Athletes and Ideals for Women’s Body Image

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      More from our inbox:Elizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We DisagreeEric Adams and the MidtermsSue Republican LiarsA Matter of SpaceAudra Koopman, who ran track and field at Penn State, said she felt pressured to avoid sweets and to trim down. But even as she did, she didn’t feel like she performed better.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Women in College Sports Feel Pressure to Be Lean at Any Cost” (Sports, Nov. 14):Thank you for raising awareness about the risks of scrutinizing body composition in college athletes. I am a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders, and the highlighted profiles echo stories I have heard many times over.No evidence suggests that participating in a sport causes eating disorders, but rates of these illnesses among athletes are higher than the national average. Athletes who participate in endurance, weight-class or aesthetic-based sports are at heightened risk.A focus on metrics like body fat percentage and body weight may breed an unhelpful hypervigilance on restrictive eating, body size and burning calories. College-age men and women are often still maturing physically, and by taking drastic measures to change their bodies risk their physical and psychological well-being.They also risk missing out on the greatest pleasures of sports: being a good teammate and finding joy in competition even while competing at a high personal level.Deborah R. GlasoferNew YorkThe writer is an associate professor of clinical medical psychology, Columbia Center for Eating Disorders, New York State Psychiatric Institute.To the Editor:Women in college sports are simply the tip of the spear when it comes to our affluent culture’s widely promoted ideal of thinness for women. I lived in Nigeria for many years, and there plumpness in a woman is seen as a desirable signifier of affluence. So this ideal for women’s bodies is anything but universal or timeless.Athletes and dancers perform in public, and the moves that make up their routines are easier when there is less body fat to contend with.This fact extends into other areas of daily life. But though men perform these activities too, and can also have eating disorders, the fact that women are the focal point of this discussion, as they were when I was a professor of women’s studies at Rutgers, says something about the larger issue of gender ideals in our culture.Katherine EllisNew YorkElizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We Disagree Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:In “Democrats, Let’s Seize This Moment” (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 14), Senator Elizabeth Warren claims, “The so-called experts who called Democrats’ messaging incoherent were just plain wrong — and candidates who ignored their advice won.”I beg to differ. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans favor most Democratic policies — legal access to abortion, a fair and progressive tax structure, strong environmental regulations and worker protection, a reasonable minimum wage, not cutting Social Security or Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. Yet many Democratic candidates barely squeaked by, and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives.It’s easy to know what Republicans stand for — even if it’s based on lies. It’s all over the media. I’m not sure that most Americans can say what Democrats stand for, although a large minority of Americans seem to think that we steal elections, and want to curtail the police, open the borders and hand out large sums of money to people who refuse to work. Why? Because the Republican message (often lies) is getting through.Democratic politicians may have great ideas, but they’re terrible at communicating them. Otherwise they’d have a much bigger majority in government.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.To the Editor:Democrats squeaking by in the midterms is not an overwhelming endorsement of President Biden’s spending and other policies. In many cases it’s voting for the least worst candidate.Has Elizabeth Warren not seen the polls about dissatisfaction with both former President Donald Trump and President Biden? If “none of the above” were a choice, it would likely have won on many ballots.As a centrist, I want elected officials to stop talking and writing about how great they are and how bad their opposition is. Rather, focus on what you will accomplish, bipartisan cooperation and problem solving.Many of my moderate Democratic friends would vote for Liz Cheney if she were a presidential candidate. Sure, she is more conservative, but she has demonstrated integrity, bipartisanship and intelligence. That would be a refreshing change.Gail MacLeodLexington, Va.Eric Adams and the MidtermsMayor Eric Adams views the Democrats’ poor performance in New York as validation of his messaging about crime and his brand of moderate politics.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats See Adams at Root of State Losses” (front page, Nov. 18):Mayor Eric Adams did not lose four New York congressional seats. Asserting that he is to blame says, in essence, that the majority of voters who elected Republicans in swing districts chose poorly and that if voters had not been told crime was a problem, the Democratic candidates in those districts would have won.Mr. Adams has identified crime as a priority for his administration. By virtue of winning election, he is entitled to set his agenda. Whether the current increase in crime is a surge or a blip can be debated, certainly, but the idea that he should soft-pedal concerns about public safety to help other Democratic candidates is inappropriate.On the other hand, the fact that Republicans exploited perceptions about crime for electoral gain may be deplorable, but it is well within the rules of the game.The Democrats’ loss of New York congressional seats resulted from hubris around redistricting and willful ignorance about public perception of issues like bail reform. Eric Adams had nothing to do with either.Rob AbbotCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.Sue Republican LiarsTo the Editor:Re “Misinformation on Pelosi Attack Spread by G.O.P.” (front page, Nov. 6):The notion seems firmly rooted among Democratic political leaders that since politics is rough and tumble, they should rise above it when the G.O.P.’s fabrication machine spews ominous conspiracy theories and baseless slurs to obscure reality.But since Republican politicians aren’t restrained by shame, common decency or respect for the truth, tolerating their falsehoods only encourages the right wing to wallow in fact-free filth. Instead, the victims of right-wing slanders owe it to themselves — and to us — to seek money damages for defamation from reckless Republican liars.First Amendment law protects scorching invective. But there’s a limit. Under the constitutional principles that govern defamation law, a political speaker is not free to knowingly utter falsehoods or to speak with reckless indifference to truth or falsity.That principle plainly applies to unfounded Republican claims about Paul Pelosi. It likewise applies to Newt Gingrich’s assertion that John Fetterman has “ties to the crips gang,” and to Donald Trump’s lies about a voting machine maker.Multimillion-dollar damage awards might deter Republicans from fouling the political landscape with lies designed to conceal their lack of answers to America’s problems.Mitchell ZimmermanPalo Alto, Calif.The writer is an attorney.A Matter of Space Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Dimming Hope Office Buildings Will Ever Refill” (front page, Nov. 18):Not enough housing? Too much office space? Go figure.Deborah BayerRichmond, Calif. More

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      Is Donald Trump Ineligible to Be President?

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      How does a democracy protect itself against a political leader who is openly hostile to democratic self-rule? This is the dilemma the nation faces once again as it confronts a third presidential run by Donald Trump, even as he still refuses to admit he lost his second.Of course, we shouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. The facts are well known but necessary to repeat, if only because we must never become inured to them: Abetted by a posse of low-rent lawyers, craven lawmakers and associated crackpots, Mr. Trump schemed to overturn the 2020 election by illegal and unconstitutional means. When those efforts failed, he incited a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol, causing widespread destruction, leading to multiple deaths and — for the first time in American history — interfering with the peaceful transfer of power. Almost two years later, he continues to claim, without any evidence, that he was cheated out of victory, and millions of Americans continue to believe him.The best solution to behavior like this is the one that’s been available from the start: impeachment. The founders put it in the Constitution because they were well acquainted with the risks of corruption and abuse that come with vesting great power in a single person. Congress rightly used this tool, impeaching Mr. Trump in 2021 to hold him accountable for his central role in the Jan. 6 siege. Had the Senate convicted him as it should have, he could have been disqualified from holding public office again. But nearly all Senate Republicans came to his defense, leaving him free to run another day.There is another, less-known solution in our Constitution to protect the country from Mr. Trump: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who, “having previously taken an oath” to support the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to America’s enemies.On its face, this seems like an eminently sensible rule to put in a nation’s governing document. That’s how Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who has drafted a resolution in Congress enabling the use of Section 3 against Mr. Trump, framed it. “This is America. We basically allow anyone to be president,” Mr. Cicilline told me. “We set limited disqualifications. One is, you can’t incite an insurrection against the United States. You shouldn’t get to lead a government that you tried to destroy.”This was also the reasoning of the 14th Amendment’s framers, who intended it to serve as an aggressive response to the existential threat to the Republic posed by the losing side of the Civil War. Section 3 was Congress’s way of ensuring that unrepentant former Confederate officials — “enemies to the Union” — were not allowed to hold federal or state office again. As Representative John Bingham, one of the amendment’s lead drafters, put it in 1866, rebel leaders “surely have no right to complain if this is all the punishment the American people shall see fit to impose upon them.”And yet despite its clarity and good sense, the provision has rarely been invoked. The first time, in the aftermath of the Civil War, it was used to disqualify thousands of Southern rebels, but within four years, Congress voted to extend amnesty to most of them. It was used again in 1919 when the House refused to seat a socialist member accused of giving aid and comfort to Germany in World War I.In September, for the first time in more than a century, a New Mexico judge invoked Section 3, to remove from office a county commissioner, Couy Griffin, who had been convicted of entering the Capitol grounds as part of the Jan. 6 mob. This raised hopes among those looking for a way to bulletproof the White House against Mr. Trump that Section 3 might be the answer.I count myself among this crowd. As Jan. 6 showed the world, Mr. Trump poses a unique and profound threat to the Republic: He is an authoritarian who disregards the Constitution and the rule of law and who delights in abusing his power to harm his perceived opponents and benefit himself, his family and his friends. For that reason, I am open to using any constitutional means of preventing him from even attempting to return to the White House.At the same time, I’m torn about using this specific tool. Section 3 is extraordinarily strong medicine. Like an impeachment followed by conviction, it denies the voters their free choice of those who seek to represent them. That’s not the way democracy is designed to work.And yet it is true, as certain conservatives never tire of reminding us, that democracy in the United States is not absolute. There are multiple checks built into our system that interfere with the expression of direct majority rule: the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Electoral College, for example. The 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause is another example — in this case, a peaceful and transparent mechanism to neutralize an existential threat to the Republic.Nor is it antidemocratic to impose conditions of eligibility for public office. For instance, Article II of the Constitution puts the presidency off limits to anyone younger than 35. If we have decided that a 34-year-old is, by definition, not mature or reliable enough to hold such immense power, then surely we can decide the same about a 76-year-old who incited an insurrection in an attempt to keep that power.So could Section 3 really be used to prevent Mr. Trump from running for or becoming president again? As a legal matter, it seems beyond doubt. The Capitol attack was an insurrection by any meaningful definition — a concerted, violent attempt to block Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated job of counting electoral votes. He engaged in that insurrection, even if he did not physically join the crowd as he promised he would. As top Democrats and Republicans in Congress said during and after his impeachment trial, the former president was practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of Jan. 6. The overwhelming evidence gathered and presented by the House’s Jan. 6 committee has only made clearer the extent of the plot by Mr. Trump and his associates to overturn the election — and how his actions and his failures to act led directly to the assault and allowed it to continue as long as it did. In the words of Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, Mr. Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”A few legal scholars have argued that Section 3 does not apply to the presidency because it does not explicitly list that position. It is hard to square that claim with the provision’s fundamental purpose, which is to prevent insurrectionists from participating in American government. It would be bizarre in the extreme if Mr. Griffin’s behavior can disqualify him from serving as a county commissioner but not from serving as president.It’s not the legal questions that give me pause, though; it’s the political ones.First is the matter of how Republicans would react to Mr. Trump’s disqualification. An alarmingly large faction of the party is unwilling to accept the legitimacy of an election that its candidate didn’t win. Imagine the reaction if their standard-bearer were kept off the ballot altogether. They would thunder about a “rigged election” — and unlike all the times Mr. Trump has baselessly invoked that phrase, it would carry a measure of truth. Combine this with the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from right-wing media figures and politicians, including top Republicans, and you have the recipe for something far worse than Jan. 6. On the other hand, if partisan outrage were a barrier to invoking the law, many laws would be dead letters.The more serious problem with Section 3 is that it is easy to see how it could morph into a caricature of what it is trying to prevent. Keeping specific candidates off the ballot is a classic move of autocrats, from Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela to Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus to Vladimir Putin. It sends the message that voters cannot be trusted to choose their leaders wisely — if at all. And didn’t we just witness Americans around the country using their voting power to repudiate Mr. Trump’s Big Lie and reject the most dangerous election deniers? Shouldn’t we let elections take their course and give the people the chance to (again) reject Mr. Trump at the ballot box?To help me resolve my ambivalence, I called Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who sits on the Jan. 6 committee and taught constitutional law before joining Congress. He acknowledged what he called an understandable “queasiness” about invoking Section 3 to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. But Mr. Raskin argued that this queasiness is built into the provision. “What was the constitutional bargain struck in Section 3?” he asked. “There would be a very minor incursion into the right of the people to elect exactly who they want, in order to obtain much greater security for the constitutional order against those who have demonstrated a propensity to want to overthrow it when it is to their advantage.”The contours of the case for Mr. Trump’s disqualification might get stronger yet, as the Justice Department and state prosecutors continue to pursue multiple criminal investigations into him and his associates and as the Jan. 6 committee prepares to release its final report. While he would not be prohibited from running for office even if he was under criminal indictment, it would be more politically palatable to invoke Section 3 in that case and even more so if he was convicted.I still believe that the ideal way for Mr. Trump to be banished for good would be via the voters. This scenario is democracy’s happy ending. After all, self-government is not a place; it is a choice, and an ongoing one. If Americans are going to keep making that choice — in favor of fair and equal representation, in favor of institutions that venerate the rule of law and against the threats of authoritarian strongmen — they do it best by themselves. That is why electoral victory is the ultimate political solution to the ultimate political problem. It worked that way in 2020, when an outright majority of voters rejected Mr. Trump and replaced him with Joe Biden.But it’s essential to remember that not all democracies have happy endings. Which brings us to the most unsettling answer to the question I began with: Sometimes a democracy doesn’t protect itself. There is no rule that says democracies will perpetuate themselves indefinitely. Many countries, notably Hungary and Turkey, have democratically undone themselves by electing leaders who then dismantled most of the rights and privileges people tend to expect from democratic government. Section 3 is in the Constitution precisely to help ensure that America does not fall into that trap.Whether or not invoking Section 3 succeeds, the best argument for it is to take the Constitution at its word. “We undermine the importance of the Constitution if we pick and choose what rules apply,” Mr. Cicilline told me. “One of the ways we rebuild confidence in American democracy is to remind people we have a Constitution and that it has in it provisions that say who can run for public office. You don’t get to apply the Constitution sometimes or only if you feel like it. We take an oath. We swear to uphold it. We don’t swear to uphold most of it. If Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s about protecting the Constitution of the United States.”Surely the remedy of Section 3 is worth pursuing only in the most extraordinary circumstances. Just as surely, the events surrounding Jan. 6 clear that bar. If inciting a violent insurrection to keep oneself in office against the will of the voters isn’t such a circumstance, what is?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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      Mary Peltola Wins Bid to Serve Full Term in the House for Alaska

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      Ms. Peltola became the first Alaska Native woman elected to Congress earlier this year when she won a special election in the state.Representative Mary Peltola, Democrat of Alaska and the first Alaska Native woman to serve in Congress, on Wednesday won a full term in the House, according to The Associated Press, holding back three conservative challengers.Ms. Peltola first won the seat in an August special election to finish the term of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March. Her victory, which flipped the seat for Democrats for the first time in 50 years, was considered an upset against Sarah Palin, the former governor and vice-presidential candidate. With her latest success, Ms. Peltola has secured a full two-year term as the lone representative for the state of Alaska. The loss for Republicans in the state ensures that they will hold 220 seats in the House — a razor-thin margin with just two races yet to be called — when leaders had hoped to pad that majority with as many additional seats as possible.“WE DID IT,” Ms. Peltola exulted on social media, posting a video of a dancing crab. With 136,893 votes after two rounds of tabulation, Ms. Peltola secured 54.9 percent of the vote, The Alaska Division of Elections said. Ms. Peltola defeated two of her Republican rivals from the special election — Ms. Palin and Nick Begich III, who is part of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska — as well as Chris Bye, a libertarian.Ms. Palin received 45.1 percent support, with a total of 112,255 votes. Mr. Begich received a total of 64,392 votes before being eliminated in the second round, while Mr. Bye was eliminated in the first round with 4,986 votes.State law allows absentee ballots to be counted up to 15 days after Election Day if postmarked by then and sent from outside the United States. Election officials decided to wait to tabulate rounds of ranked-choice voting until all ballots were counted.Because none of the candidates appeared to have secured more than 50 percent of the votes by Nov. 23 — 15 days after Election Day — Alaskan election officials tabulated the next round of votes once all ballots were counted.With the establishment of an open primary system ahead of Mr. Young’s death in which the top four candidates could advance regardless of party, four dozen candidates jumped into the race to replace him. Ms. Peltola was able to secure a spot in the general election, along with Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich.While Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich split the conservative vote, Ms. Peltola assembled a coalition of Democrats, centrists and Alaska Natives behind her “pro-family, pro-fish” platform. A Democrat had not held the seat in half a century, since Mr. Young had replaced Mr. Begich’s grandfather, a Democrat.“Our nation faces a number of challenges in the coming years, and our representatives will need wisdom and discernment as they work to put America on a more sound path,” Mr. Begich said in a statement congratulating Ms. Peltola on her victory. While the majority of his supporters voted for Ms. Palin, 7,460 of them ranked Ms. Peltola and helped push her over the majority threshold.Ms. Peltola worked to highlight her bipartisan credentials, often speaking openly about her friendship with Ms. Palin on the campaign trail. With just a couple of seats determining which party controls the House, she could potentially play a critical role should Republicans seek to win over Democratic votes for must-pass legislation and any effort to approve bipartisan measures.While Ms. Peltola took office only in September, shortly before the midterm elections, she quickly took over pushing for legislation Mr. Young had introduced and hired multiple Republican aides on his staff.Ms. Peltola has also allied herself with her state’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, to pressure the Biden administration to reconsider a key drilling project in Alaska and ensure more federal support was granted to the state after the remnants of a typhoon damaged some communities.She received an emotional and warm reception at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention last month, where attendees waved cutouts of her face and endorsed her candidacy. Mr. Young’s family also endorsed her and filmed an ad for her, bestowing her with one of his signature bolo ties. More

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      Why House Democrats Have Fallen in Line and Republicans Haven’t

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      We spoke with Julie Hirschfeld Davis, the congressional editor at The Times, about the latest maneuvering and drama in Washington.In the expectations game that is American politics, losing is the new winning.Republicans are putting their would-be House speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, through a grueling series of public tests, with his ultimate fate uncertain. So far, at least five Republicans have said they will oppose McCarthy’s bid when it comes up for a vote of the full House in January. He needs 218 votes.By contrast, House Democrats have all but anointed their new leaders, a triumvirate of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California.By the end of a process that took place largely in private, over the course of months, the three lawmakers quietly secured overwhelming support and boxed out possible rivals, like Representatives Adam Schiff of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington. If the election or the leadership transition exposed any major ideological cracks in the Democratic firmament of the House, they are not evident yet.Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped aside, as did her lieutenants, Steny Hoyer of Maryland and James Clyburn of South Carolina. Assuming all goes as planned, the average age of the Democrats’ House leadership trio will plummet from 82 to 51 years old.To unpack why Democrats have fallen in line while Republicans have not, I chatted with Julie Hirschfeld Davis, the congressional editor at The New York Times. Here is what she said:Democrats seem to have stage-managed their transition to new House leaders with as little drama as possible, while Republicans may be in for a rocky few weeks. What explains the difference?You have to look at how different the personalities and political situations of the two parties are right now.Republicans are coming off a historically disappointing midterm election that delivered them a very slim majority and only one chamber of Congress, so they are in finger-pointing and recrimination mode, and that always exacerbates divisions.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Trump Was a Gift That Might Not Keep Giving

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      The 2022 midterm election revealed dangerous cracks in the Democratic coalition, despite the fact that the party held the Senate and kept House losses to a minimum.Turnout fell in a number of key Democratic cities. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city’s “vote count dropped 33 percent from 2020, more than any other county and the statewide average of 22 percent. It’s not just a 2020 comparison: This year saw a stark divergence between Philly turnout and the rest of the state compared to every federal election since at least 2000.”The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners reported that turnout of registered voters in 2022 was 46.1 percent, down from 60.67 percent in the previous 2018 midterm.According to the Board of Elections in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, turnout fell from 54.5 percent in 2018 to 46.1 percent in 2022.The Gotham Gazette reported that from 2018 to 2022, turnout fell from 41 to 33 percent in New York City.The drop in turnout was disturbing to Democratic strategists, but so too was the change in sentiment of many of the voters who did show up, as support for the party’s nominees continued to erode among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. As The Washington Post reported:While more than 8 in 10 Black voters supported Democrats for Congress, their level of support fell between four and seven percentage points during the 2022 midterms compared with 2018, according to network exit polling and the AP VoteCast poll, respectively. Among Latinos, support for Democrats declined between nine and 10 percentage points, with between 56 percent and 60 percent backing Democrats.In the 2018 midterms, 77 percent of Asians voted for House Democratic candidates, according to network exit polls, compared with 58 percent this year — although data from AP VoteCast showed a smaller decline in Asian American support for Democrats from 2018 to 2022: 71 percent to 64 percent.Perhaps most important, the 2022 results revealed that voters did not fully turn against the Republican Party; in fact, Republican House candidates got 3.5 million more votes nationwide than Democrats did, 53.9 million, or 51.7 percent of the two-party vote to the Democrats’ 50.4 million, or 48.3 percent. This represents just over a six-point swing in favor of Republicans this year compared with the 2020 House results.Instead, voters, in the main, turned against the specific candidates endorsed by Donald Trump — candidates who in competitive races backed Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.“Candidate quality and the toxicity of former President Trump and the MAGA movement hurt certain Republicans where it mattered most,” wrote Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, in “GOP Won the Votes, but Not the Seats,” a Nov. 17 analysis. “Some of these ‘nontraditional’ candidates managed to win over the support of G.O.P. primary voters but were unable to appeal to that narrow slice of voters in the middle of the broader November electorate.”Two days after the election, Karl Rove, who was the chief political strategist during the administration of George W. Bush, wrote in The Wall Street Journal:The losers Tuesday were often the candidates who closely followed the former president’s rally-speech scripts — campaigning on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump by fraud on a massive scale. Of the Republican candidates for secretary of state or attorney general who based their campaign on this falsehood, only one has pulled through, and he was in deep red territory.What then are the odds that Republican voters will still nominate Trump?If they do, Democrats’ chances of keeping the presidency, retaking the House and holding losses in the Senate to a minimum all improve. If the Republicans nominate Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley or a dark horse, chances are Democrats will face a tough fight on all fronts in 2024.While there is general agreement that midterm returns are not reliable predictors of the next presidential election, the 2022 results do not uniformly suggest a weakened national Republican Party.“Overall, it’s a strange election,” wrote Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, in “What Happened.” “Had you showed any major analyst these results, along with exit poll findings that Biden would be at 44 percent job approval, no one would have expected this outcome.”Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, noted in an email:The negative Trump effect seems even more clear now. Trump-endorsed candidates fared worse, often on the same ballot with Republicans who separated themselves from Trump and performed better. So I see it as more of the same warning to Republicans: tying themselves to Trump is not a winning general election strategy.Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, made a similar case by email. “Swing voters in swing states and districts didn’t marry the Democrats; they just dumped the Republicans,” he wrote. “In the post-Dobbs environment, extremism is not a theoretical concern anymore. The two most valuable players of this cycle for the Democrats are Sam Alito and Donald Trump. Democrats should send them each a fruit basket.”“I cannot think of a worse way for the House G.O.P. to introduce themselves as a governing party than braying about investigations into Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci,” Begala argued. “Their candidates won by promising action on inflation, crime and borders.”To counter the House Republican agenda, Begala wrote,Biden needs to say, “They’re obsessed with my family’s past; I’m obsessed with your family’s future.” At every hearing in which the Republicans are tormenting Hunter Biden or Dr. Fauci, I would have Democratic members ask, “How will this hearing lower the price of gas at the pump? How will it reduce crime? How will it secure the border?”Data pointing to the vulnerability of the Trump-endorsed Republicans running for federal and state offices raises an interesting question: Should Democrats repeat a tactic used successfully this year to lift the chances that Republicans nominate their weakest general election candidate?Last September, Annie Linskey reported in The Washington Post that Democratic candidates and committees “have spent nearly $19 million across eight states in primaries this year amplifying far-right Republican candidates.” A postelection analysis by Ellen Ioanes of Vox concluded that the strategy “appears to have paid off in the midterm. Six Democratic challengers in races where Democratic organizations donated to extremist Republican candidates have so far won their contests.”A number of Democratic strategists and scholars, however, firmly rejected continuing the strategy of purposely investing during the Republican primaries in advertising promoting Trump to Republican voters premised on the calculation that Trump would be the easiest to beat of the most likely Republican nominees in the general election.Both Begala and Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, stood firmly opposed. “We should leave this to Republicans to nominate their own Trump,” Lake said by email.Begala gave three reasons for his opposition. First, “it undermines President Biden’s powerful message that Trump leads a mega-MAGA fanatical fringe that is a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Second, “Trump is still a massive, major force in American politics — especially in the Republican Party. I don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.” Third, “while I respect the political success of governors like DeSantis, Youngkin, Hogan and Christie, if the Democrats can’t beat them, we don’t deserve the White House.”Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, was adamant in his opposition to the tactic:If Democrats truly worry about the fragility of American democracy, they should not take any steps that would facilitate Trump’s return to office, even if that means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. The slightly higher probability of holding the presidency with Trump as the G.O.P. nominee is surely outweighed by concerns about the threats to democracy should he win election.In an email, Hopkins suggested that Democrats should not view the outcome of the 2022 election as a clear victory:Republicans are likely to have won significantly more votes for their U.S. House candidates than Democrats, but the Democrats benefited from the geographic distribution of their support and the strength of several of their House incumbents in hard-fought races. Turnout in cities like Philadelphia was down relative to elsewhere, and the Democrats have not returned their strong showings with Latino voters from 2012 and 2016. The Republicans’ strength in Florida as well as New York was remarkable — and those are two of the largest states in the country. So absolutely, both parties have outcomes to celebrate and liabilities to watch.One of Hopkins’s political science colleagues, Matthew Levendusky, noted in an email:There is not one narrative to come out of this election. While we usually think about nationalization, in this election, we saw quite significant differences across states. Pennsylvania and Michigan — and even Wisconsin and Arizona — ended up somewhat better than the pre-election polls suggested (in some cases, quite a bit better). From this perspective, Democrats should be happy. But they did much worse than expected in Florida and New York. So which lesson is the right one?Levendusky pointed out that there “seem to be two trends that might be working against Republicans’ recent advantage in translating votes into seats”:If Republicans are doing better (at least in some areas) with Black and Latino voters, that erodes Democrats’ edge in urban districts, but not nearly enough to put those seats into jeopardy. But if they’re also strengthening their support with rural white voters, then that means they’re “wasting” more votes in those districts (shifting heavily rural parts of the country from R+20 to R+30 does not help them win more seats). So shifting demographic and geographic patterns might now make Republicans (just like Democrats) somewhat less well distributed.Sean Trende makes essentially the same point, writing that “Republicans made gains among African Americans, and significant gains among Hispanics” but, with a few exceptions, “these extra votes did not translate to seats. Because the Voting Rights Act requires that these voters be placed into heavily Hispanic/Black districts, which become overwhelmingly Democratic districts, it takes huge shifts in vote performance among these voters to win a district outright, and Republicans aren’t there right now.”Conversely, “Republicans may be suffering a representational penalty in rural areas similar to the penalty Democrats have suffered in urban districts,” Trende wrote, noting thatthe G.O.P. puts up stunning vote percentages in rural America, margins that would not have been deemed possible a decade ago, to say nothing of three decades ago. But this means that a large number of those votes are effectively wasted. As the suburbs become more competitive for Democrats and the cities become somewhat less competitive (but not enough to lose seats) as the minority vote percentage moves, Democrats lose the penalty they’ve suffered for running up overwhelming vote shares in urban districts in the past.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, wrote by email that the election in many respectsmoved in ways predicted by the fundamentals — a Republican shift with a Democratic president who has low approval ratings and governs during poor economic indicators. However, in a few keys states and races Democratic candidates outperformed those indicators. The story seems like Republicans defeated themselves relative to the fundamentals by running low-quality candidates in some key races.For Republicans, Wronski wrote, “appealing to Trump voters without Trump on the ballot may not be a winning strategy. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”In other words, it isn’t just that moderates and independents were scared off by extremist candidates; MAGA voters themselves were not fully animated by their own candidates. The candidate they want is Trump, not a Don Bolduc or a Kari Lake or a Mehmet Oz.In addition, Wronski argued:Not all Republicans want or positively respond to Trump’s preferences or persona. Trump endorsees trying to follow this playbook were not as successful as more mainstream Republican candidates. A prime example of this is the difference between the Georgia Senate and governor races.Neither party, in Wronski’s view,should take comfort in their prospects or feel in good shape nationally. The national electorate is polarized with close elections. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.Chris Tausanovitch, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., downplayed the success of the Democrats:This was in many ways an expected result. The polls and models performed well. The Democrats overperformed expectations slightly, but as others have pointed out, their performance is better in seats than in votes.The parties, Tausanovitch continued, “are very evenly matched and this doesn’t look like it is on a path to change quickly. This election was close. I expect the next presidential election to be close as well.” Trump-endorsed candidates, he acknowledged,did poorly, but this does not mean that a Trump-centric Republican Party cannot win or that Trump himself cannot win. He almost did in 2020. If he is the nominee, I still expect the election to be close in 2024.Republican Party elites are, in turn, increasingly voicing their concerns over the prospect of a 2024 Trump bid. I asked Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, what would happen if Trump is the nominee, and he replied by email: “Assuming that the economy is out of the ditch by the end of ’23, I would have to believe a Trump nomination would be devastating.”In a clear slap at Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — the Republican who handily won re-election while Maggie Hassan, the Democratic senator, beat the Trump protégé Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger — told a Nov. 18 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I have a great policy for the Republican Party. Let’s stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.”At the same gathering, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared: “It is time to stop whispering. It is time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on and this country on.”For two successive presidential elections, Trump has stymied the most ambitious members of his party, and now this group is becoming increasingly assertive. DeSantis, Youngkin, Haley, Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Mike Pence are engaged in the process of challenging the current occupant of the throne — making national appearances, courting donors, wooing party loyalists and generating media coverage, all with an eye on drawing blood. The question is, how vulnerable is Trump?Earlier this month, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer reported in The Washington Post, “In private conversations among donors, operatives and other 2024 presidential hopefuls, a growing number of Republicans are trying to seize what they believe may be their best opportunity to sideline Trump and usher in a new generation of party leaders.”Republicans might be playing with fire.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told The Washington Post that there are now three key constituencies in the Republican electorate:A small group, roughly 10 percent, are “Never Trumpers,” Republicans who have long and vocally opposed Trump. A far larger group, about 40 percent, are “Always Trumpers,” his hard-core base that will be reluctant to abandon him. The remaining 50 percent or so are “Maybe Trumpers” — Republicans who voted for him twice, who generally like his policies but who are now eager to escape the chaos that accompanies him.If Trump faces two or more serious challengers in the primaries, his 40 percent core support plus whatever he can pick up from the “Maybe Trumpers” would prove to be a major asset, especially in the early contests, which often provide crucial momentum to the front-runner, setting up the scenario sought by Democrats: a Republican presidential nominee whom they believe may have some chance of prevailing in the primaries, but who has little chance of winning in November.“One of the reasons Trump’s base adores him is that he overcame overwhelming odds — including both party establishments — to win,” Nate Hochman, a staff writer for National Review, tweeted on Nov. 19. “The more Republican elites consolidate against him, the more otherwise persuadable Trump voters are going to remember why they loved him in the first place.”Democrats could not hope for more.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