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Pelosi and Sanders Press Democrats’ Case, and More News From the Sunday Talk Shows
Democratic Party leaders turned toward inflation and the economy after a summer focus on abortion. Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican, said the G.O.P. would seek spending cuts.With less than three weeks to go before Election Day and polls showing Republicans gaining ground, Democrats dispatched surrogates to the Sunday morning talk shows to make their case for control of Congress. They focused on inflation and wages, a notable shift after months in which they leaned on abortion rights.Widespread anger at the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade fueled Democrats through the summer, lifting them in special House races and raising their hopes of defying the historical pattern of midterm elections, in which the party in power usually loses seats. But polls suggest voters are prioritizing other issues.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont emphasized Social Security and Medicare on Sunday, pointing to Republicans’ calls for spending cuts, while adding that they still considered abortion an important issue that would motivate many voters.“The Republicans have said that if they win, they want to subject Medicare, Social Security — health blackmail — to lifting the debt ceiling,” Ms. Pelosi said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They have said they would like to review Medicare and Social Security every five years. They have said that they would like to make it a discretionary spending that Congress could decide to do it or not, rather than mandatory. So Social Security and Medicare are on the line.”Mr. Sanders, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” rejected the argument that Democrats were to blame for inflation, noting that the inflation rate was also very high in Britain and the European Union. He argued that Republicans had put forward no workable plans to combat it.“They want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at a time when millions of seniors are struggling to pay their bills,” he said. “Do you think that’s what we should be doing? Democrats should take that to them.” More
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The Three Blunders of Joe Biden
If the Democrats end up losing both the House and the Senate, an outcome that looks more likely than it did a month ago, there will be nothing particularly shocking about the result. The incumbent president’s party almost always suffers losses in the midterms, the Democrats entered 2022 with thin majorities and a not-that-favorable Senate map, and the Western world is dealing with a war-driven energy crunch that’s generally rough on incumbent parties, both liberal and conservative. (Just ask poor Liz Truss.)But as an exculpating narrative for the Biden administration, this goes only so far. Some races will inevitably be settled on the margins, control of the Senate may be as well, and on the margins there’s always something a president could have done differently to yield a better political result.President Biden’s case is no exception: The burdens of the midterms have been heavier for Democrats than they needed to be because of three notable failures, three specific courses that his White House set.The first fateful course began, as Matthew Continetti noted recently in The Washington Free Beacon, in the initial days of the administration, when Biden made critical decisions on energy and immigration that his party’s activists demanded: for environmentalists, a moratorium on new oil-and-gas leases on public lands and, for immigration advocates, a partial rollback of key Trump administration border policies.What followed, in both arenas, was a crisis: first a surge of migration to the southern border, then the surge in gas prices driven by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.There is endless debate about how much the initial Biden policy shifts contributed to the twin crises; a reasonable bet is that his immigration moves did help inspire the migration surge, while his oil-lease policy will affect the price of gas in 2024 but didn’t change much in the current crunch.But crucially, both policy shifts framed these crises, however unintentionally, as things the Biden administration sought — more illegal immigration and higher gas prices, just what liberals always want! And then instead of a dramatic attempt at reframing, prioritizing domestic energy and border enforcement, the Biden White House fiddled with optics and looked for temporary fixes: handing Kamala Harris the border portfolio, turning the dials on the strategic petroleum reserve and generally confirming the public’s existing bias that if you want a party to take immigration enforcement and oil production seriously, you should vote Republican.The second key failure also belongs to the administration’s early days. In February 2021, when congressional Democrats were preparing a $1.9 trillion stimulus, a group of Republican senators counteroffered with a roughly $600 billion proposal. Flush with overconfidence, the White House spurned the offer and pushed three times as much money into the economy on a party-line vote.What followed was what a few dissenting center-left economists, led by Larry Summers, had predicted: the worst acceleration of inflation in decades, almost certainly exacerbated by the sheer scale of the relief bill. Whereas had Biden taken the Republicans up on their proposal or even simply counteroffered and begun negotiations, he could have started his administration off on the bipartisan footing his campaign had promised while hedging against the inflationary dangers that ultimately arrived.The third failure is likewise a failure to hedge and triangulate, but this time on culture rather than economic policy. Part of Biden’s appeal as a candidate was his longstanding record as a social moderate — an old-school, center-left Catholic rather than a zealous progressive.His presidency has offered multiple opportunities to actually inhabit the moderate persona. On transgender issues, for instance, the increasing qualms of European countries about puberty blockers offered potential cover for Biden to call for greater caution around the use of medical interventions for gender-dysphoric teenagers. Instead, his White House has chosen to effectively deny that any real debate exists, positioning the administration to the left of Sweden.Then there is the Dobbs decision, whose unpopularity turned abortion into a likely political winner for Democrats — provided, that is, that they could cast themselves as moderates and Republicans as zealots.Biden could have led that effort, presenting positions he himself held in the past — support for Roe v. Wade but also for late-term restrictions and the Hyde Amendment — as the natural national consensus, against the pro-life absolutism of first-trimester bans. Instead, he’s receded and left Democratic candidates carrying the activist line that absolutely no restrictions are permissible, an unpopular position perfectly designed to squander the party’s post-Roe advantage.The question in the last case, and to some extent with all these issues, is whether a more moderate or triangulating Biden could have held his coalition together.But this question too often becomes an excuse for taking polarization and 50-50 politics for granted. A strong president, by definition, should be able to pull his party toward the center when politics demands it. So if Biden feels he can’t do that, it suggests that he’s internalized his own weakness and accepted in advance what probably awaits the Democrats next month: defeat.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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Interview: Kathy Hochul Talks to the New York Times Editorial Board
Kathy Hochul is the governor of New York. She served as the state’s lieutenant governor.This interview with Ms. Hochul was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on Oct. 17.Read the board’s endorsement for the governor’s race in New York here.Brent Staples: Give us some insight into why this race is so close.Why it’s so close? Well, first of all, thanks for having me back again. There’s something going on nationally. If you track all the races, the Democratic races, the congressional races, the gubernatorial races, and we’re outperforming in a lot of those.But you’re basically — again, you’re referencing that on polls, and polls don’t make a difference to Election Day. And I will tell you, as someone who’s run in 14 elections, they go up and down like this, depending on all kinds of factors outside the control of the person running — the cost of gas and inflation rate. So I think that’s what’s happening.People are just looking at what’s happening all over the country, feeling some unease. And take a look at it, but all I need to do is get my message out, and to be able to point to the fact. And I think this is going to widen the race very substantially.Because of your excellent reporting, people will now find out that Lee Zeldin was not this innocent bystander that he’s trying to present himself as, but was actually giving direction to President Trump’s chief of staff on how to subvert the electoral process. And when that gets out there, that is a disqualifying fact that people will need to know about him.[In the days after the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Zeldin texted Mark Meadows “ideas” for how to use unsubstantiated allegations about voting irregularities.]So we just got to build our case, talk about what we’re going to do, but also expose Lee Zeldin for who he truly is. And he does not deserve to be the governor of New York.Kathleen Kingsbury: Obviously, crime is down from its historic highs, but it is still up about a third here in the city. Your opponent has made quite a big deal about the issue of public safety. How do you — how will you get voters to trust that you’re going to make the city safer?They know what I’m doing already. We have worked very hard to get guns off the streets, and I understand people know, from me, my words directly, that public safety is my top priority, always has been. And what we’ve done to focus on something — Lee Zeldin thinks that we need more guns on the streets, we need more guns in the subways.I was in a synagogue Saturday, and I was in churches on Sundays, and I’ll tell you, none of those individuals want to sit next to someone that might be carrying a weapon. And that is the Lee Zeldin world that he’s trying to present to us. So I’m focusing on guns.We had over 7,000 guns off the streets in the last year — actually, since January, when I convened a first-ever task force — nine states, plus N.Y.P.D. … and New York police are actually working together. Extraordinary. No one’s ever done that.I was called out by President Biden for doing that. He says no one’s ever done this. So we now have — we’re getting more guns off the streets. And the crime rate, overall, I dissect — I look at the numbers every day.Statewide, our shootings are down about 13 percent — statewide, about 12 percent; New York City, down 13 percent since I’ve been in office. Nationwide, it’s down 2 percent. And that’s all the states.So we’re making more progress on illegal guns, banning ghost guns, my assault weapon ban for teenagers — all the things we’ve had to do. And despite our best efforts — and since we last met, I had to deal with the Supreme Court that overturned the right of a governor to protect her citizens from people carrying guns anywhere they want. The concealed carry law worked for 108 years.And so I pulled back the Legislature, literally, by June 30, had a plan in place. I knew this was coming or could come. And we got them — this is how cooperation really leads to quick results.The Legislature was willing to come back, pass legislation, and we made those changes. And again, we’re in court — every time the governor does something on guns, there’s always litigation. We knew it. Bring it on.But I believe that we have a right to protect our citizens on the streets, get the guns off the streets. And that is my focus. With any crime plan that Lee Zeldin puts forward, that does not talk about guns, is a joke.Nick Fox: Do you think concerns about crime are real or exaggerated?They’re real, because people feel it. I understand the sense of insecurity that’s out there. I do spend a lot of time in the communities. I was at a diner yesterday. I talked to people just randomly, and people are concerned.Now, convincing people that this is still the safest big city in America, that our crime rates are down — our subways have had some recent problems, but we have more law enforcement down there, and putting cameras in the subways. We’re making progress, but it’s a difficult — that’s the challenge.I can talk about data all day long. But how people feel — and in this hyper-politicized environment, being told how they feel — it was fascinating to see a Bloomberg study that showed that incidences of crime over the last decade, and the news coverage of it — about parallel.They both go up absolutely across the nation. And since the pandemic, the media coverage of crimes is up four times in relation to the actual number of instances. And I’m not saying this paper — there’s another paper.So I just want to say that that feeds into people’s perceptions and anxieties, but I deal with people’s feelings. That’s what I have to deal with. I can’t just say the numbers are better. I need to let them know that I am focused on this 100 percent, because that is the reason that we’re being held back from our full recovery. And we have to overcome that.Eleanor Randolph: So Zeldin talks about — if he gets elected, he’s going to declare a state of emergency about crime. And he also says he’s going to — I don’t know — fail to enforce the bail law. What do you think about that? What do you think about whether he can actually do that?Right out of the Trump playbook. Sounds like a dictator to me. He’s going to just undermine laws and forget laws that were passed — duly passed by the Legislature? You can’t do that. You can’t do that.And it’s absurd to try to use that as a panacea to tell everybody, I’ll just magically wave a wand and ignore the will of the Legislature, which has a supermajority. You can’t do that. So he’s just feeding people a whole lot of lies, misperceptions, and trying to create this image of himself to be able to do more than I can on crime.I will put my record on fighting crime out there with anybody’s. We have made real progress. And we’ve made targeted changes to the bail laws. We spoke before at our previous meetings — the underlying premise behind them.We make some targeted changes to make sure that repeat offenders, cases where there’s guns involved, orders of protection and hate crimes are now covered. But we’re not turning our backs on criminal justice reform either. So we’ve found the right balance, but you know what’s not working? The system itself.I need all the components to work — starting with our backlog in the court system. This has been exposed as a real driver for two straight years — no jury trials. When I got elected, I said, “Why aren’t there jury trials?” Because the Office of Court Administration, court appeals judge, was firm that they not have jury trials, because people had to sit six feet apart.This is a time — kids are back in school. People are back at work. Closer than six feet, but the jury system, they said you couldn’t put anybody within six feet. So, you know the size of our courthouses. There’s not enough room.So we did not have the administration of justice for two years. People that had their day in court, who should have their day in court — either proven innocent, go back home, or you’re guilty of a crime — deal with the consequences. So that’s a problem. I’m working toward getting a new court appeals judge.My responsibility, after recommendations come, I’m going to be focused on someone where their No. 1 top assistant has the capacity to deal with what has become an administrative nightmare. We have to fix that.We also need the support for the policing. We also need to support the violence disrupter programs, which I’ve supported financially three times more than we have before, and also the district attorneys to properly charge and for judges to do the right thing. Then the system works. Because simply saying it’s bail when all across the country, our crime rate is lower — I mean, there’s just a disconnect between reality and the representation that he is making in his campaign. It’s absurd.Mara Gay: Governor, thank you. Inflation, and especially in New York, the cost of housing, is a serious constituent issue for many voters in the state. What specifically will you commit to doing about those issues, especially on housing?Thank you. I mean, I talked about what I’m leaning into. We spoke about how I’ve had to be a crisis manager since I took office — the shooting in Buffalo, Omicron, hurricanes, and even since we last met, the Supreme Court decisions, what I had to deal with on abortion and guns.But when I think about my vision for going forward, top priorities are creating a New York where people want to live and want to move here. And within that is how do we make it affordable so they can?No. 1 cost for a family or an individual is their housing. So we will not be able to be this place that meets all the needs of bringing people here if we don’t get more affordability. So I know that the governor sets the agenda. I’m fully aware of that. I plan on unleashing the power that I have, working together with the Legislature, advocacy groups, the industry, and pulling together a plan that’s going to be transformative.And I say that because, since the last day the Legislature left session, I directed my top-notch policy team to go out there and find the answers from other states, think tanks, convene meetings with industry. So my policy team has been working on ideas.Part of it’s going to have to be incentives for developers. Because as we saw, when you shut down 421a, permits dried up. I said this was going to happen. Now, I put together something that was better than 421a — 485w, which allowed for far more affordable housing in the context.And that was actually an agreement with the industry and labor to do that. The Legislature wasn’t supportive, and I had spent a lot of my political capital on public safety initiatives, where I said, “All right, we’ll visit again next year.” Then we’ll see the data, which shows, despite the fact that people said that so-called giveaways to billionaires, they’ll still build affordable housing because of the goodness of their heart. We know that didn’t work.And so now I have the data to show the stoppage of permits. So the crisis I have, the state has — over the next 10 years, we have to build over 500,000, possibly up to 1.2 million, new units.My plan last year was $25 billion toward affordable housing. It sounds like a big number, right? To do something? That gets me one-tenth of that goal. It’s 100,000 units. One hundred thousand units of affordable housing and supportive housing.So, it’s about looking at all the regulations. I said I want to see a list of every single city and state barrier to be able to have more density, grant-oriented development, and take another look at A.D.U.s [accessory dwelling units]. We talked — tried hotel conversions, but as it turned out, there wasn’t as much inventory as there had been when this was first proposed, so that wasn’t successful.So now we look at offices as well. Office conversions — classy office space — a lot of little buildings won’t lend themselves to it. But we have a plan to focus on that as well.So I will also look to other thought leaders to help me build the support behind this. Newspapers, like The New York Times — because you have that. But I need to change the mind-set of the elected officials, who have been — with one decision, be able to stop a project that could help literally hundreds of families in the Bronx, in Queens, elsewhere.These projects have to be unleashed with — we need market rate. We need affordable housing. We need supportive housing. This has been jammed up for too darn long. And I plan on unleashing this with an aggressive approach, because failure is not an option.That is the barrier we have to people being able to live here. Places on Long Island, where I was at the diner yesterday — families saying to me, “My kids can’t grow up in the same community they were raised in.” That’s a tragedy. That’s a tragedy. That’s nothing to do with them. It’s not education. Love the state. And if we drive them out because of affordability, then we fail.Same thing with the city — more young people want to come here than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And the energy behind the tech jobs — they’re just booming, especially on the West Side. It’s exciting. But if they can’t afford a house, an apartment, co-op, condo, it’s not going to work.So that is where I’m going to spend my political capital, because it fits into my larger framework. The vision of New York over the next five years is creating a place where people not just want to live but can live, and get a good job, and start a business if they want, and raise their families.When I focus on my policies — and I really do love policies, as much as I’ve had to deal with crises — I love getting my hands into policies and asking: Why? Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t we do it this way?So I’ll be taking a very, very engaged approach. Already have been, and put forth our plan. So that’s — we have to have that.Alex Kingsbury: You answered Mara’s question on housing. I’m curious about inflation as the biggest political headwind the Democrats are facing nationwide, and probably here in New York. Your opponent’s running against it. Is there anything you can do?Well, we’ve focused on areas we can put more money back in the pockets of New Yorkers. Inflation’s about 8.2, 8.3 percent right now. It is this record high. I understand that. And this is one of those challenges that we have across this country, not just New York.But in our budget, we addressed the gas tax. We waited for the duration of the year. We want to take a look at that again. We got $2.1 billion in property tax rebates for people — middle-class tax cuts.The one area where we haven’t really spent as much time as I’d like is on the affordability of child care — one of the reasons so many moms are not back to work and couldn’t get back to work. So our plan was $7.7 billion. We’re starting to see the benefits now, as we’re able to tell New Yorkers that half of all children in the state of New York are eligible for subsidies, plus subsidies and increases for the workers.It’s important to organizations. You know, whether it’s in a church and it’s in a synagogue, or whether it’s the Y.W.C.A., all the places are getting more support from us than they ever have before. But I also tell you what — I’m using a different approach.When I talk to developers and people who want economic development support from the state of New York, I say bring it on. Come on, we’re all excited. Tell me about your child care plan. Tell me what you’re doing for your employees, whether it’s a consortium of other businesses in a small downtown, you’ve got to work together, whether it’s you’re rebuilding a new office — can you dedicate one floor to this?I said, “This will be the biggest driver for women to want to work at your facility.” They’ll get you at a competitive advantage. I’ve said this all over the state to tech companies as well. So I’m excited about blending the needs of families with our economic development dollars. And I think we’ll have a real key for success. We’re putting that in our next budget as well.Jyoti Thottam: So, Governor, just back to your power to set the agenda. As you know, the governor has more than $900 million in your budget that can be used without real oversight or transparency. You’ve accepted tens of millions of dollars in campaign funds from donors with business before the state.You’ve also decided that you’re accepting campaign donations from state board and commission appointees. I know they weren’t people that you originally appointed. But you’ve come under some criticism for that. What do you say about voters who are concerned about ethics and expecting you, again, to set the agenda on ethics?Brent Staples: I’ll piggyback on that question, too. I just want to emphasize, do you realize how bad the optics of that were, in accepting the contributions from the people on boards, from these people on the commission?We are very clear that we weren’t. I was not putting anyone on a board for making a contribution —Brent Staples: My question is, do you realize how bad the optics of that was? It looked really bad from there.Well, I appreciate the commentary on that, but here’s what I’m doing. I’m following all the rules, making sure that there is no connection between any contributions and any policies with state government. I’ve been in office for 30 years. I’m very careful about this — making sure that everyone around me follows the rules.But what you’re proposing, in a sense, is creating an environment where it’s very difficult for people who don’t have millions of their own dollars to run for office. I come out of public service. I follow the rules. Always have, always will. And raising money is part of being able to remain as governor when I took office a year ago.So what I don’t do is have billionaires, like Trump-supporting billionaires, like Ron Lauder, dumping nearly $10 million in dark money against me. That’s what someone in my position has to counter, you know? That’s the reality. No matter what I raise, and they’re still not done, more money can come in at the end and give them the firepower. That is the challenge we all face.I will support reforms. I helped write campaign finance reform when I was a young staffer for Senator Moynihan. I’ve worked on this my whole life. And I’ve stood up to the campaign finance office. I have 14 employees. I unlocked this. And it’s been talked about — these reforms. And those will come. That’s what we’re putting in motion now.But what I don’t do — and predecessors have done this — is, at a fund-raiser, where there’s people — all different individuals have interests, yes? I don’t bring government staff. It’s pretty shocking to realize that, before, you could go to a fund-raiser and talk to the chief of staff to the governor, the budget director, head of an agency. I said, “No, think about the perception of that, the access.”I only have a couple of young campaign staffers at events with me. We do it very differently. But I will always, because of the responsibility I have, to let people know that I’m going to make sure that we have the highest ethics.I changed JCOPE [the Joint Commission on Public Ethics] completely. I said I was going to blow it up because it wasn’t working. I don’t even know who my appointees are on that board. I said, “I want distance.” We had set up a system where independents — I have — law school professors, law school deans are the ones who are selecting who determines ethics investigations in our state. And I think that’s appropriate, instead of having my own appointees. You talked about the optics of appointees. How about appointing your former staffers and friends to the ethics board? So —Eleanor Randolph: Well, you changed a lot of things.I understand perception is important. But the reality is, we follow all the rules. Full disclosure. Everybody knows where our money comes from. And unlike the dark, sinister money that’s going to super PACs, there actually are limits.Eleanor Randolph: But to Jyoti’s point, the Citizens Budget Commission identified almost $1 billion that they called — that has been called a slush fund — and said there was very little transparency about where this money went and questions about whether it went to different areas for political purposes for this campaign. How can you promise that there’ll be more transparency upfront about this? And I know that slush fund has been there forever. It’s not new. But still, the transparency is the hard part, really.Right, and the transparency comes from — this has to be approved by the Legislature. I don’t just go find a billion dollars and put it in a fund. The Legislature is involved in this.Eleanor Randolph: Yes, but you and I know there are all these private meetings before you come up with a budget. And this particular fund is the one that Citizens Budget Commission is concerned about, because it’s just there like a slush fund that you can use to hand out to different areas.No, these all come through different agencies. If it’s economic development funds, it comes through our Regional Economic Development Councils. The decisions made, for example, for money dedicated for Long Island — I didn’t make the decisions that we do $10 million for Feinstein Institute. That went through a process.That went through a process where the Regional Economic Development Council makes recommendations. And they recommend it to us. And money that’s for any economic development project. There’s no situation where I sit there and say where it’s going to go. I take the recommendations of — these are fellow citizens. These are citizens and business people who make those determinations.So, I know there’s cynicism associated with all of this. I understand that. And my job is to restore equal space in government once again. And I’ll continue doing that every single day, following all the rules, making sure we have the highest ethics. And that’s what I committed to from the first day, when I knew I had to do a lot of cleanup and rehabilitation of the state’s reputation at the time. And I’m still committed to that.Nick Fox: You recently got a very good look at some of the worst of the M.T.A. and how East Side Access went billions of dollars over budget. Do you think enough has been done to change the way the M.T.A. operates? And given the decline of the revenue, how do you improve ridership, and how do you get the repairs that need to be done?Important question, something I deal with regularly. First of all, the history you talked about was long and sordid. And I’m glad that Janno Lieber, who I elevated, was part of the solution, not the problem. So we don’t have the same actors that were involved in what has happened in the past. So I’m looking forward. How do we continue to make these investments?First of all, operationally. I’ve already asked Janno for a report on internal savings that can be found that — we also know that increase in ridership — people have to feel secure, safe. And it’s interesting how it works. Look, the more riders there are, the safer the subway is. We’re still down about 61 to 63 percent of prepandemic ridership on weekdays, depending on which day. Seventy-three percent on weekends. But as long as there’s trains that are not full, then people don’t feel secure, and they’re not as secure.So driving more people back by giving them quality service, on-time trains — there’s no changing our trains, our system, our services. If we cut services, then people have a disincentive to come. So we have to maintain high-quality service, find areas we can cut, find new revenue sources. And I push them to find new revenue sources for us.Look, that’s on the operations side. On the capital side, we’re going to continue making the investments. And East Side Access will finish under my watch. When I first became governor — I still have regular meetings with the Port Authority, Rick Cotton, Janno Lieber, tell me all the products that are outstanding. What’s the timetable, and how can we shave off time? Shave off a year, six months, whatever you do, because now, rising cost inflation, time is money. I cannot afford another day.So I bring this sense of urgency of just getting the job done. Finished Long Island Rail Road Third Track. Critically important. Finishing East Side Access literally by the end of this year. We’re starting Penn Station before the costs get any higher, because I don’t want there to be any excuse why we can’t have a world-class, spectacular facility there. We’ve already made some progress in one of the terminals, or one of the wings there.So the operations side and capital side. Capital side is going to be assisted by congestion pricing. Right now we have the Traffic Mobility Review Board coming up with recommendations to give to the M.T.A. That process will probably go on for two more months. I think they’re doing all the public comments that came in. And a lot of issues arose. We’re listening to them. They’re listening to them. They’ll make recommendations.So that’s how we have the money dedicated for future capital investments to make up for years of neglect. And then we also have challenges on the operational side. Because of federal money, we’re good through 2024 with the budget. But I said, “Let’s start making the changes now.” I’m not waiting until then. Let’s start making the changes internally now so we don’t go off a cliff in 2024, 2025.Mara Gay: What’s the most significant change that you’ve made that you can point to with the M.T.A. versus the way former Governor Cuomo was involved?I’m letting them run it. I’m letting them run it because they are the transit experts, not us. My own agenda does not come into play when I have brilliant experts running the operations and have worked on finding public safety.We’ve put cameras in the trains now. That gives people a strong sense of security. We’ve been focusing on our M.T.A. transit police that watch the trains all along Metro-North. The City of New York is responsible for policing the subway itself. So I think it’s more of a collaborative approach — letting the experts drive the decisions as opposed to political interference.Jyoti Thottam: Congestion pricing, though — that’s a policy that transit experts really love. But how do you sell it to New Yorkers whose commutes will immediately get more expensive — the ones who are still driving — that this is good for you and good for the city?And this was a major change. What people will learn about me is, I’m not afraid of major challenges. Yes, the easier thing is to walk away and say, “Let someone else handle this a decade from now.” That’s not who I am. We need to get this done. And the operative word in congestion pricing is “congestion.” That’s why I had to walk here today, because there’s delivery trucks. Delivery trucks are jamming up 39th.Listen, all over, we’re becoming paralyzed. And there’s a huge economic cost to that. And it becomes a deterrent. Why would you even want to drive in the city? It’s like, they’re going to get stuck trying to find a parking lot. They’re not going to get within a block of where they want to go for 40 minutes.So then there’s the environment. We have only this time on Earth to make a huge difference and reverse what has happened to our planet under our watch. And I’m committed to this. And so the efforts to get more vehicles off the streets is going to have a better outcome with asthma rates.We’re transitioning to electric buses, electric public buses, but also vehicles, and also enhancing our public transit. We have — have you guys seen Long Island Rail Road? It is spectacular. If you’ve not been on it lately, you need to take a ride on this. The cars are clean. The stations are gorgeous. You can plug in and charge your phone.So what we’re offering people to help overcome the hesitation is more connectability, a better experience, more reliable, so we can encourage more people to take public transportation, which is the whole origin, the whole premise behind congestion pricing overall. We’re looking for the recommendations on communities that will be hit, industries that will be hit. So this is not set in stone yet. So obviously those conversations are still ongoing.Eleanor Randolph: You mentioned climate change and the environment. What do you think about fracking? I gather that Mr. Zeldin, Congressman Zeldin, is interested in opening that back up again. How do you feel about this?Donald Trump told him that’s what he should do. I’m sure that’s what he’s proposing. I don’t support that. No, we have a vision. And it has an executable plan behind it. It’s not just a pipe dream. We actually have a strategy on how to bring in more renewable power from Hydro-Québec coming down from Champlain Trail, bringing in more wind and solar from places like Sullivan County. I did this one year ago.And people suggested that one of these two energy sources — one might be better than the other. I said, “Do them both.” P.S.C. [the New York Public Service Commission] had to make a decision, but I recommended we do both. Then we can really, really stop our reliance on renewable — on fossil-fuel-generated power — and just start getting into this future and reducing the cost of electricity so no one thinks twice about their next vehicle being an electric vehicle, and as we electrify buildings.So if you don’t just take the leap and say, “Now is the time” — I’ve said this before, growing up in a very polluted community in Buffalo. I thought the skies were supposed to be orange, because that’s all I saw in Lackawanna with the steel plant, where my dad worked, grandpa worked. So I come out of [inaudible]. I am by nature an environmentalist, and know that we’ve lost too much time. So we are the —Eleanor Randolph: No fracking.Last generation that can really do anything about climate change. We’re the first to really feel the effects, the last [inaudible].Eleanor Randolph: No fracking.Kathleen Kingsbury: We only have a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to return to the M.T.A. for one second. One of the biggest drivers of the perception that taking the train is unsafe right now is the clear number of people with mental illness who are often on the trains now. Is there anything that you can do, as the governor, on that issue specifically, or any way that you can work with the mayor to improve that question?Working very close with the mayor on this. Our teams have been embedded since he was on the job two weeks. And we went down to the subway together and proposed a joining of his forces and state resources for people that are part of these S.O.S. teams, because just moving someone along is a guarantee they’re just going to be back the next day. Just dealing realities.Again, it ties into a question about this housing crisis. This is a driver because there’s not enough places to take people to give them a safe experience. But safety is important. And we worked on Kendra’s Law. We made some improvements to Kendra’s Law.And also, what I found is a lot of people really do need to be hospitalized for a time being to get on a path toward a real recovery program, as opposed to just cycling back into the community. And I said, “Why aren’t there more psychiatric beds out there?” And I was always pressing. I’m always asking questions. Why aren’t there more psychiatric beds?It turns out that there’s a differential in reimbursement for Medicaid for the hospitals and whether or not it’s a psychiatric bed, which is more costly than a nonpsychiatric bed. So there was a financial disincentive for hospitals to have psychiatric beds.So I said, “OK, compress that.” The state will pick up the cost of making it fairer for hospitals, because it’s a public-policy imperative that we have more places for them to get genuine treatment that’s going to help them get on a different path. And we’ll do that. Last I saw, there was another 1,000 beds that had come online as a result of just that decision.That’s how I operate. I see a problem. I know where I want to get. And I’ll press all the levers to make that happen. We did that with affordable housing. We’re going to do that with trying to help the cost-of-living challenges, because it’s energy costs as well. It’s almost $500, on average, for people’s monthly energy bill. These are real challenges.But dealing with the probably 700 to 1,000 people who have severe mental health problems that are either on the subways, in the subways, on the streets or in the stations is something that we’re focused on. More resources. I mean, a lot of people say we need more money. I put more money and I’ll continue to put more money to support the mayor’s efforts to deal with this crisis.Mara Gay: Governor, we have just two minutes more. Can we talk a little bit about your path to victory in this surprisingly competitive race?The more people know about Lee Zeldin and how extremely dangerous he is, and now his direct connection to the attempted overturn of our government and the democratic process, I think, is going to be jaw-droppingly shocking to people.Mara Gay: But who are your voters, and where are your voters? And how are you turning them out?We are. I was in the Bronx all day Saturday. People are excited. They’re excited. I think there’s an energy around the historic nature of the first woman elected. I’m proud of that. It’s not the reason I should be governor, but a lot of people are energized by that. Also, I’ve walked these streets. I’ve been in the communities, I spent last week in Brooklyn. That’s not my first time walking the streets of Brooklyn. It’s probably my 700th.And so the communities where I show up — the churches and the places of gathering in Black and brown communities — they have seen me before. Their leaders know me. Their elected officials know me. And they know that I have the heart and the passion to lead, and also the toughness. This is not a job for the faint of heart. And I’ve always believed, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. There is no one stronger in the state of New York than I am. I am ready for this now.Eleanor Randolph: Do you think the women’s vote will be energized by abortion? Do you still see that? It seems to be fading in the polls.It’s still an issue. You only need to win by a small amount. You just have to win. You have to have the majority to win. So I do believe that there will be women in — suburban, Republican women. We’re seeing that there is more interest — independent women.Democratic women are with us. That’s great. And they’re excited about the historic nature, as well as knowing that they have someone who will protect abortion rights, as opposed to someone who actually literally cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and now to try to back-walk this? That was just a couple months ago.Seriously, give the voters of New York a little more credit. They do not have amnesia. They’ve not forgotten your history in overturning the election and your resistance to any common sense gun —Brent Staples: Are you relying on ads for that? Are you relying on television ads for that? You keep saying about people learning how bad Lee Zeldin is. When are they going to learn that? How are they going to learn about it?We’ve been on the air since August on that message.Brent Staples: So you’ve — right now, you mean?Oh, yeah. We have been saying that to you. They’re all over the air. Our first one starts out with the insurrection, pictures of the overturning of the Capitol —Brent Staples: So you shot your shot on that already.Yeah, yeah.Brent Staples: So I’m asking what’s coming, because —Well, just stay tuned. I’m not going to tell you everything right now.Bent Staples: I will tell you, I think that the shot you shot is not working.Well —Brent Staples: Just a citizen’s observation.I’ll tell you another thing people don’t know is how aggressive I am on economic development. One thing that’s going to get people very energized … Micron. Micron — the rest of the nation, every governor wanted to attract Micron. They came to New York. We had a partnership with Chuck Schumer. We had to work at the federal level with President Biden.I got the deal done, overcoming a lot of hesitation. But because of relationships I have with the Legislature, they trusted me. I said, “If we can put together a green CHIPS bill, meaning there has to be intense sustainability standards in this, I can attract them.” And they were not coming here. In fact, after we won Micron, there was reporting in Texas, very disappointed community. They were sure they had landed it. So now what I had done is had a breakthrough. I could say that this is a state that welcomes business.And what that means, more importantly to me, is that 50,000 jobs, partially upstate. But [inaudible] walked in the Bronx. And he says, “Do you think we could use, possibly, the abandoned armory?” I’ve been sitting down with a lot of people saying, “What can we do with this armory?” It has to have new life. And it could be a work force training center. He says, “Can we think about getting semiconductor training, manufacturing,” which has now come to New York because I insisted that we have a policy —[A spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul told The Times that the governor has discussed with local officials the possibility of opening a work force training center in the Bronx for jobs expected to come to the state with Micron.]Brent Staples: It’s mainly robotic.Pardon me?Brent Staples: Semiconductor making is mainly robotic now.We need all kinds of skills. Fifty thousand jobs. And those aren’t the construction jobs. That’s not the construction. That’s 50,000 jobs for the supply chain, all the component parts. But he says, “Will we be teaching people in the Bronx about these jobs, getting that training done?”So that’s, to me, I see the connection of upstate and downstate. Continue creating jobs. And there’s a whole supply chain opportunity and training opportunity because we delivered — we promised we’d get people the jobs they needed. We came to New York. We will get you the people with the skills you need. This is a game changer. This is the most historic investment in our state’s history from the private sector. That happened because I wouldn’t let go of that deal.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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Voters Stick to Pandemic-Era Habits, As Early Turnout Surges
More than 5.5 million people have cast ballots in person or by mail. Experts predict high turnout in the midterm elections.Days into early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, states across the country have seen a surge of voters casting ballots at in-person voting sites and by mail, the latest sign that the 2020 election ushered in a transformation in the way Americans vote.Through the first five days of early voting in Georgia, in-person turnout is up 70 percent compared with turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the secretary of state’s office. In North Carolina, absentee ballot requests are up 114 percent compared with requests in 2018, according to the board of elections. And in Florida, the total early vote is up 50 percent compared with the early vote in 2018.Election experts say the signs suggest overall turnout will be strong. But they are quick to caution that it is still early in the voting calendar — many states are less than a week in and some have not started. With voters’ behaviors so clearly changed by pandemic-era rules, it is unclear whether this rush to vote will lead to record-breaking totals after Election Day on Nov. 8.Still, one significant shift in how American elections are conducted has become clear: Election Day has become, and will most likely always be, election month.“There has been a sea change of voter attitudes that has not abated,” said John Couvillon, a pollster who has worked with Republican candidates. “When you do a culture shift like that, you never go 100 percent back to the way things were for the simple reason that people, who out of habit may have been happy voting on Election Day, said, ‘Wait a minute, I can vote from the convenience of my kitchen table? This is so much simpler.’”States across the country have seen a surge in both early in-person voting and absentee voting this midterm election season.Hannah Beier, Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesNationally, 5.5 million voters had cast ballots as of Thursday, according to Mr. Couvillon’s count. Democrats make up 51 percent of those voters and Republicans 30 percent. Mr. Couvillon and other analysts did not have data to compare those numbers to 2018. But he noted it was a slight dip from Democrats’ advantage at this point in 2020 — a presidential election year, which always draws a much higher turnout. Then, 17.3 million votes had been cast and the partisan split was 55 percent Democrat and 26 percent Republican. Some states, such as Arizona, were following a similar trend, he said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.But the tailing off for Democrats is only marginal, and many election experts view the energy in both parties as another sign of a high-turnout election.“We’re seeing both sides being really energized this time around, which is pretty unique to a midterm cycle,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster. “Normally, the out party is just far more energized and enthused about voting.” More
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There’s Been a ‘Regime Change’ in How Democrats Think About Elections
According to the conventional rules of politics, Democrats should be on track for electoral disaster this November. Joe Biden’s approval rating is stuck around 42 percent, inflation is still sky-high and midterms usually swing against the incumbent president’s party — a recipe for the kind of political wipeouts we saw in 2018, 2010 and 1994.But that’s not what the polls show. Currently, Democrats are on track to hold the Senate and lose narrowly in the House, which raises all kinds of questions: Why are Republicans failing to capitalize on such a favorable set of circumstances? How did Democrats get themselves into this situation — and can they get out of it? And should we even trust the polls giving us this information in the first place?[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Matt Yglesias is a veteran journalist who writes the newsletter “Slow Boring” and co-hosts the podcast “Bad Takes.” And in recent years he’s become an outspoken critic of the Democratic Party’s political strategy: how Democrats communicate with the public, what they choose as their governing priorities and whom they ultimately listen to. In Yglesias’s view, Democrats have lost touch with the very voters they need to win close elections like this one, and should embrace a very different approach to politics if they want to defeat an increasingly anti-democratic G.O.P.We discuss why Yglesias thinks the 2022 polls are likely biased toward Democrats, how Republicans’ bizarre nominee choices are giving Democrats a fighting chance of winning the Senate, why Biden’s popular legislative agenda hasn’t translated into greater public support, the Biden administration’s “grab bag” approach to policymaking, why Yglesias thinks there’s been a “regime change” in how Democrats think about elections, how social media has transformed both parties’ political incentives, what the Democratic agenda should look like if the party retains both houses of Congress and more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode is available here.)The New York Times“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More
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Can Tim Ryan Pull Off the Biggest Upset of the Midterms in Ohio?
ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Tim Ryan is a “crazy, lying fraud.” That’s how J.D. Vance, the best-selling memoirist turned Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, opened his remarks at his September rally alongside Donald Trump in the middle of the congressional district Mr. Ryan has represented for two decades.Mr. Ryan seems like an unlikely object of such caustic rhetoric. A 49-year-old former college-football quarterback, he is the paragon of affability, a genial Everyman whose introductory campaign video is so innocuous that it might easily be mistaken for an insurance commercial. His great passion, outside of politics, is yoga and mindfulness practice.“We have to love each other, we have to care about each other, we have to see the best in each other, we have to forgive each other,” he declared when he won the Democratic Senate primary in May.He isn’t just preaching kindness and forgiveness. For years, he has warned his fellow Democrats that their embrace of free trade and globalization would cost them districts like the one he represents in the Mahoning River Valley — and lobbied them to prioritize domestic manufacturing, which, he argued, could repair some of the damage.His efforts went nowhere. Mr. Ryan failed in his bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader in 2016. His presidential run in 2020 ended with barely a trace. And his opponent, Mr. Vance, was expected to coast to victory this year in a state that Mr. Trump carried twice by eight points.But things haven’t gone as predicted. Mr. Ryan is running close enough in the polls that a political action committee aligned with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, has had to commit $28 million to keep the seat (now held by Rob Portman, who is retiring), and Mr. Vance has had to ratchet up his rhetorical attacks against this “weak, fake congressman.”After years of being overlooked, Tim Ryan is pointing his party toward a path to recovery in the Midwest. On the campaign trail, he has embraced a unifying tone that stands out from the crassness and divisiveness that Mr. Trump and his imitators have wrought. A significant number of what he calls the “exhausted majority” of voters have responded gratefully.And his core message — a demand for more aggressive government intervention to arrest regional decline — is not only resonating with voters but, crucially, breaking through with the Democratic leaders who presided over that decline for years. The Democrats have passed a burst of legislation that will pave the way for two new Intel chip plants in the Columbus exurbs, spur investment in new electric vehicle ventures in Mr. Ryan’s district, and benefit solar-panel factories around Toledo, giving him, at long last, concrete examples to cite of his party rebuilding the manufacturing base in which the region took such pride.In short, the party is doing much more of what Mr. Ryan has long said would save its political fortunes in the Midwest. The problem for him — and also for them — is that it may have come too late.Mr. Ryan is a genial Everyman who says, “We have to see the best in each other, we have to forgive each other.”Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesTim Ryan was not always so alone in Congress. Manufacturing regions of the Northeast and Midwest used to produce many other Democrats like him, often with white-ethnic Catholic, working-class backgrounds and strong ties to organized labor. (Mr. Ryan’s family is Irish and Italian, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather worked in the steel mills.) One particularly notorious example of the type was James Traficant, who represented the Mahoning Valley in highly eccentric fashion and served seven years in prison after a 2002 conviction on charges that included soliciting bribes and racketeering. That left his young former staff member — Tim Ryan — to win the seat at age 29.A few stalwarts remain: Marcy Kaptur, whose mother was a union organizer at a sparkplug plant, will likely hold her Toledo-area House seat after her MAGA opponent lied about his military record. And Sherrod Brown, whose upbringing in hard-hit Mansfield and generally disheveled affect has lent authenticity to his own progressive populism (never mind the fact that he’s a doctor’s son and has a Yale degree), has survived two Senate re-elections thanks to his personal appeal and weak opponents.But nearly all the rest have vanished. Many of them fell victim to the Democratic wipeout in 2010. Others succumbed to the extreme Republican gerrymandering that followed. But central to their disappearance was the economic decline of the communities they represented, which was on a scale that remains hard for many in more prosperous pockets of the country to grasp.In the first decade of this century, after Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993 and ushered China into the World Trade Organization in 2000, so many manufacturing businesses closed in Ohio — about 3,500, nearly a fifth of the total — that its industrial electricity consumption fell by more than a quarter. Mr. Ryan’s district was among the most ravaged. By 2010, the population of Youngstown had fallen 60 percent from its 1930 peak and it ranked among the poorest cities in the country.For the Democrats representing these devastated areas, the fallout was enormous. “We were always supposed to be the party of working people, and so those rank-and-file union members kept getting crushed, and jobs kept leaving, and their unions and the Democrats weren’t able to do anything for them,” said Mr. Ryan, when I met with him in August, after an event he held at a substance abuse treatment program in Zanesville. Democratic candidates were also putting their attention elsewhere, on social issues, and voters noticed.Mr. Ryan is determined not to make the same mistake. “You want culture wars?” he asks in one TV ad, while throwing darts in a bar. “I’m not your guy. You want a fighter for Ohio? I’m all in.”In the 2000s, as Mr. Ryan saw his band of like-minded Democrats dwindle, he started looking for answers, and he found some of them at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a small advocacy group founded in 2007 to promote American manufacturing and agriculture.The group’s theory is fairly straightforward: The “free trade” that has been so ruinous to manufacturing regions like the Mahoning Valley has been anything but free, given all the various forms of support that other nations provide their own industries. The group has been lobbying members of both parties to consider explicit support for U.S. producers, whether in the form of tariffs or subsidies, even if it means brushing up against World Trade Organization rules.For years, the Coalition for a Prosperous America and its allies in Congress ran up against free-trade orthodoxy. But growing alarm over climate change, the breakdown of global supply chains during the pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have brought a stunning turnaround. The Inflation Reduction Act includes many of the kinds of policies that Mr. Ryan and C.P.A. have championed, including refundable tax credits for solar-panel production, a 15 percent alternative minimum tax for corporations, and requirements that electric vehicles have North American-made parts to qualify for consumer tax credits. This month, the Biden administration announced major new tech-export controls aimed at China, with the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, declaring that free trade “cannot come at the cost of further weakening our supply chains.”It’s a vindication for Mr. Ryan and his former House allies, such as Tom Perriello, who represented south-central Virginia between 2009 and 2011.Megan Jelinger for The New York Times“The elite echo chamber assumed away all the human costs” of globalization, said Mr. Perriello, instead of realizing industries needed to be helped to save middle-class jobs.Still, the shift has come only after tremendous economic losses for places like the Mahoning Valley and political losses for the Democrats. In the 2020 presidential election, Democrats lost white voters without college degrees by 26 percentage points nationwide, and their margins among working-class Black and Hispanic voters shrank, too. They lost Mahoning County, once a Democratic stronghold, for the first time since 1972.“For the most part, people lost jobs here and Washington wasn’t doing anything for them,” said David Betras, the former chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party. “And then Trump came along and he said, ‘Hey, they screwed you.’ People thought, ‘At least he sees me. He’s giving me water.’” It might be contaminated water, as Mr. Betras noted, “but at least it’s water.”Mr. Ryan’s attempt to point his party in a different direction in the Midwest is still running up against resistance, even as he has drawn close to Mr. Vance in the polls. The first ad released by Mr. Ryan’s campaign, in April, is Exhibit A.Wearing an untucked shirt, he delivers a barrage against the threat presented by China: “It is us versus China and instead of taking them on, Washington’s wasting our time on stupid fights … China is out-manufacturing us left and right … America can never be dependent on Communist China … It is time for us to fight back … We need to build things in Ohio by Ohio workers.”By the standards of the Ohio Senate race of 2022, it was pretty mild stuff. At an April rally with Mr. Trump, after completing his extreme pivot from Trump critic to acolyte, Mr. Vance lashed out at “corrupt scumbags who take their marching orders from the Communist Chinese.” But the Ryan ad nonetheless got opprobrium from Asian Americans, who said it risked fueling anti-Asian sentiment.Irene Lin, a Democratic strategist based in Ohio, found that remarkable. “It’s so weird that he runs an ad attacking China, and people say, ‘You sound like Trump.’ Tim’s been attacking China for decades! Trump co-opted it from us and we need to take it back, because Trump is a complete fraud on this.”Still, the episode underscored Mr. Ryan’s conundrum: how to match Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance when it comes to the decline of Ohio manufacturing without offending allies within the liberal Democratic coalition.When I asked Mr. Ryan in Zanesville how he would distinguish his own views from those of Mr. Vance, he insisted it would not be difficult. For one thing, he noted, Mr. Vance has attacked a core element of the industrial policy that Mr. Ryan sees as key to reviving Ohio: electric vehicle subsidies. At the Mahoning rallies, Mr. Vance denounced them as giveaways for the elites, which, as Mr. Ryan sees it, overlooks the hundreds of workers who now have jobs at the old Lordstown General Motors plant in the Mahoning Valley, building electric cars, trucks and tractors as part of a new venture led by the Taiwanese company Foxconn, and at a large battery plant across the street.“He’s worried about losing the internal-combustion auto jobs — dude, where’ve you been?” Mr. Ryan asked. “Those jobs are going. That factory was empty.”Mr. Ryan, left, at a debate with his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan says his focus on economic issues will resonate with the “exhausted majority” of voters.Gaelen Morse for The New York TimesLess than two months after Mr. Ryan’s anti-culture war ad, the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs ruling on abortion, bolstering Democrats’ prospects with moderate voters of the sort who help decide elections in places like suburban Columbus — and making it harder for Mr. Ryan to avoid hot-button social issues. He calls the ruling “the largest governmental overreach into personal lives in my lifetime,” but his continued focus on economic issues shows that he believes that’s not enough to win an election. Recent polls suggest he may be right.Mr. Ryan was in the Columbus suburbs on the evening after we spoke in Zanesville, but he was there to discuss the China ad, not abortion. At an event hosted by local Asian American associations, a few women told Mr. Ryan how hurtful they had found the ad. He answered in a conciliatory tone, but did not apologize.The ad, he said, was directed at the Chinese government, not Asian or Asian American people, and the things in it needed saying. “I got nothing but love in my heart. I have no hate in my heart,” he said, but the United States needed to rise to meet China’s aggressive trade policies. In Youngstown, Chinese “steel would land on our shore so subsidized, that it was the same price as the raw material cost for an American company before they even turn the lights on. That is what they have been doing.”“That is not in your ad,” said one of the women. “You need to put those things in your ad.”“I just want to make a point,” Mr. Ryan said. “One is, I love you. Two is, I will always defend you and never let anyone try to hurt you, never. Not on my watch. But we have got to absolutely and decisively defeat China economically. And if we don’t do that, you’re going to have these countries dictating the rules of the road for the entire world and continuing to try to displace and weaken the United States.”Watching Mr. Ryan, I was struck by what a delicate balancing act he was trying to pull off. He was, on the one hand, the last of a breed, a son of steel country with two public college degrees (Bowling Green State University and the University of New Hampshire) in a party increasingly dominated by professionals with elite degrees.But he was trying to adapt to today’s liberal coalition, too, with his soft-edged rhetoric and, yes, the mindfulness stuff, which Mr. Vance has lampooned. (“You know Tim Ryan has not one but two books on yoga and meditation?” he said at the September rally with Mr. Trump.)There were other models on the ballot this fall for how Democrats might seek to win in the Midwest: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan running for re-election on abortion rights, John Fetterman running for Senate in Pennsylvania on his unique brand of postindustrial authenticity, Mandela Barnes running for Senate in Wisconsin as an avatar of youthful diversity.But Mr. Ryan’s bid may have the most riding on it, because it is based on substantive disagreements within the party about how to rebuild the middle class and the middle of the country. For years, too many leading Democrats stood by as the wrenching transformation of the economy devastated communities, while accruing benefits to a small set of highly prosperous cities, mostly on the coasts, that became the party’s gravitational center. It was so easy to disregard far-off desolation — or to take only passing note of it, counting the dollar stores as one happened to traverse areas of decline — until Mr. Trump’s victory brought it to the fore.With its belated embrace of the industrial policy advocated by Mr. Ryan, the Democratic Party seems finally to be reckoning with this failure. It means grappling with regional decline, because not everyone can relocate to prosperous hubs, and even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily help the Democrats in a political system that favors the geographic dispersal of party voters.It means recognizing the emotional power of made-in-America patriotism, which can serve to neuter the uglier aspects of the opposition’s anti-immigrant appeals. And it means transcending the culture-war incitements offered up by the likes of Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.The approach may well fall short this time in Ohio, because Mr. Ryan’s party has let so much terrain slip out of its hands. But even so, it showed what might have been, all along, and might yet be again, if a region can begin to recover, and the resentment can begin to recede.Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) is a reporter for ProPublica, an editor at large for The Baltimore Banner, and the author, most recently, of “Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of Amazon.”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
