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      A Surprise Senate Race in Colorado: Michael Bennet and Joe O’Dea

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      GRANBY, Colo. — It was a bit tense for a groundbreaking ceremony.Against the striking backdrop of the enveloping Rocky Mountains, Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat seeking a third full term, symbolically shoveled dirt to start a $30 million Colorado River restoration project for which he had helped secure nearly half the funding.Watching from a respectable distance was Joe O’Dea, a Republican political novice who is trying to come out of nowhere to upset Mr. Bennet — and whose Denver construction company is coincidentally the lead contractor on the job. Their confluence on a recent Tuesday at the Windy Gap Reservoir in the heart of rugged Grand County had the crowd of environmentalists, government officials, ranchers and outdoor enthusiasts buzzing.Mr. Bennet eschewed a hard hat, aware of the risk of being photographed in ill-fitting headwear during a political campaign, à la Michael Dukakis. Mr. O’Dea donned a well-worn round-brimmed version and an orange construction vest. The two did not interact, but each had something to say about the other.Mr. Bennet noted his rival’s usual distaste for government spending, which the Republican has blamed for inflation.“I hear he hates federal spending, except for the $14 million that built this thing,” said the incumbent, who was a surprise appointee to a Senate vacancy in 2009 before winning election for the first time in a difficult environment the next year.Mr. O’Dea, standing near the heavy equipment his workers will employ to return a stretch of the imperiled river to its natural flow, was not impressed by the praise heaped upon Mr. Bennet by the assembled backers of the project.“That’s what politicians do,” Mr. O’Dea said, making clear that he did not consider himself part of that cohort. “I’m into building things, and we will do our job here.”Joe O’Dea, the Republican candidate, owns a construction company and is running as a political outsider.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesColorado was not expected to be part of the Senate battleground landscape this year. While not yet in the solid blue column, the state has been trending Democratic, and Mr. Bennet seemed a good bet for another term as Republicans invested their resources in what they saw as riper opportunities elsewhere.Democrats sought to bolster Mr. Bennet’s chances through backdoor advertising on behalf of hard-right, MAGA-embracing candidates in the Republican primary who would most likely have been weaker adversaries with little chance of being embraced by the state’s unaffiliated voters, now the largest voting bloc in Colorado.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsEvidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is the latest example.Sensing a Shift: Democrats, once beaten down by the prospect of a brutal midterm election, are daring to dream that they can maintain control of Congress, but a daunting map may still cost them the House.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are signaling concern that the midterm sweep they anticipated is complicated by attention on former President Donald J. Trump’s legal exposure.Campaign Ads: In what critics say is a dangerous gamble, Democrats are elevating far-right candidates in G.O.P. primaries, believing they’ll be easier to defeat in November. We analyzed the ads they’re using to do it.But Mr. O’Dea won the primary anyway, and while Mr. Bennet remains the favorite, the Cook Political Report recently shifted the contest from “Likely Democrat” to “Lean Democrat.” The Republican is threatening to make a race of it if he can increase his fund-raising and land his message that he is not a typical partisan politician.“As far as I’m concerned, any politician who votes for the party line is part of the problem, not part of the solution,” Mr. O’Dea said after exchanging the orange vest for a sport coat for a speech before the Colorado Water Congress in Steamboat Springs. “The national parties have become vehicles to perpetuate power and promote discord. And I’m tired of it.”Mr. O’Dea has been a welcome relief for Senate Republicans who have seen their once-strong chances of retaking the Senate shrink with a field of problematic arch-conservatives struggling in what should a favorable midterm year. Mr. O’Dea has been willing to say that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 election and that President Donald J. Trump did not and should not run again. In this cycle, that is enough to qualify a Republican as moderate.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who hopes to become the majority leader next year, has said he is “all in” on Mr. O’Dea. To Democrats, that is a big liability. They frame Mr. O’Dea as another potential foot soldier for Mr. McConnell and a conservative agenda, particularly on abortion rights, which have become a major issue in this race as well as other Senate contests across the country after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. More

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      Democrats in Georgia, Buoyed by Recent Wins, Seek to Keep Up Momentum

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      COLUMBUS, Ga. — As President Biden and Democrats in Congress have notched some wins in Washington lately, Democrats in Georgia have been happily accepting the credit.“Georgia Democrats, we did the work,” Stacey Abrams, the party’s nominee for governor, told delegates at the state party’s convention this weekend. “We provided the voices and the votes that delivered these resources, and now we deserve a better life, a brighter future.”Georgia Democrats’ claim as the clutch players of the 2020 cycle is earned — the state’s Electoral College votes went to a Democrat for the first time since 1992, and it elected two Democratic senators, giving the party control of the Senate. But it has no doubt ramped up the pressure for 2022, raising expectations that the far-from-solidly-blue state might not meet in 2022.Behind Democrats’ boasts at the convention, there is considerable anxiety among party activists. Democrats’ success hinges on a mix of sky-high turnout from the base along with a strong showing from moderate and independent voters in conservative-leaning counties. Now, with a racially diverse statewide ticket and more funding and manpower than the state party has ever seen, the party threw its support behind both its current slate of candidates and its strategy from the past cycle.Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, said the slate of statewide candidates was “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”David Walter Banks for The New York TimesRiding a wave of recent legislative wins on climate and health care, along with a boost from President Biden’s student debt relief plan, politicians at Georgia’s Democratic State Convention this weekend played up the role of their voters in securing those victories in Washington.One of the two senators Georgians elected in 2020, Raphael Warnock, is vying this year for a full term against the former University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker. On Saturday, in a packed convention hall 100 miles southwest of Atlanta, Mr. Warnock joined the state’s top Democratic candidates and elected officials to pitch the party faithful on making the 2022 midterms a repeat of the last election cycle.Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and the first Black Democrat to represent Georgia in the Senate, focused his speech on the policies that Democrats passed with a razor-thin majority in the Senate and his effort to push Mr. Biden to take action on student loan debt. After those wins, he said, Democrats need time to accomplish even more.“I believe that we’ve started to shape the future that embraces all of our children. But that work is not yet done,” Mr. Warnock told the large crowd of delegates, elected officials and supporters that gathered on Saturday, imploring them to organize in their communities to turn out in the same large numbers that elected him and Jon Ossoff to the Senate in 2021. “I’m glad you’re in this room,” he said. “But the work happens outside of this room.”The convention kicked off a 10-week stretch of campaigning and voter mobilization efforts that will determine the party’s fate in the November midterm elections and prove whether the party’s wins during the 2020 presidential election and U.S. Senate runoffs were a one-off in the state or the beginning of a trend toward blue.Among those counting on big Democratic gains is Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., a 15-term incumbent whose district is a top target for Republicans under new lines that make it more competitive. His Republican challenger is Chris West, a lawyer and first-time candidate who has campaigned on a heavily conservative platform and painted Mr. Bishop as disconnected from voters in the heavily rural district, which stretches from the Florida-Georgia line through the center of the state.Mr. Bishop said he did not believe that voters in his district would think of him as “out of touch” nor would they deny that he’s been “up close and personal” with constituents. He pointed to his staff and called them his “eyes and ears” in the district. Asked if that would be enough to set him apart, he underlined his decades spent in both the Georgia state house and U.S. House of Representatives and criticized Mr. West as having “no legislative experience.”As Georgia’s Republican candidates pummel Democrats on the economy and tie them to Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats used Saturday’s convention to highlight the contrast between their policies and those of Republicans, especially on abortion access and preservation of democracy. Ms. Abrams exalted her running mates, calling Georgia’s slate of statewide candidates “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”She added: “It looks like Georgia and sounds like Georgia — it knows Georgia.” More

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      Did Biden Just School the Republicans or His Own Party?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Depending on whom you ask, Joe Biden’s decision to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans is either the Democrats’ political masterstroke or a major political gift to Republicans. What’s your take?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, allow me to take the middle road. Gee, I really do enjoy saying that. Makes me feel so … judicious.Politically, I think it’s more a winner than not. Tens of millions of people who have college debt in their family are going to be grateful; almost everybody else has other things to focus on. I doubt anybody who started last week liking Joe Biden’s agenda is suddenly going to turn on the Democrats.Bret: I wonder. This just seems to me like yet another case of Democrats getting on the wrong side of working-class America. Most Americans don’t have a bachelor’s degree, sometimes because they couldn’t afford it. Most Americans who did go to college either have paid their loans off or are paying them off. Now they have been turned into chumps for living within their means — while paying, through their taxes, for those who didn’t.Expect Republicans to run on this in the fall the way Democrats are running on abortion rights. What do you think of the decision on the merits?Gail: Policywise, I just wish it had been tied to some serious reforms of the current system that helped create all that debt in the first place.Bret: Agree. One-time student loan forgiveness isn’t going to get educational costs under control. If anything, it will create a moral hazard in which people take out student loans they may not be able to afford in the expectation of future loan forgiveness. What’s your reform proposal?Gail: First and foremost, a deep dive into for-profit schools. Many of them are total scams, and even the ones that aren’t often charge more for programs people can get elsewhere.Bret: I’d add that there are plenty of nonprofit schools also charging way too much for dubious degrees.Gail: After that, a serious look at overall price tags. The fact that loans are so easy to get has encouraged even very fine schools to charge too-high tuition in order to get money for programs that feed the ego of the administration more than the quality of the education.And then … well, hey. Your turn.Bret: It wouldn’t hurt, either, if colleges and universities started cutting down sharply on the army of administrators they’ve hired in recent years, who contribute a lot to fiscal and bureaucratic bloat and therefore to overall costs.Gail: Watch out, administrators — if Bret and I are in accord, you’ve probably got a problem.Bret: Longer term, we should help steer teenagers away from the idea that four-year college is their one and only ticket to prosperity, status and success. We should shift our funding toward community colleges, vocational schools and a wide range of adult-education programs. I’m also sympathetic to the idea of expanding opportunities for shorter enlistment times for young people who want to join any branch of the armed forces. It could help fund their future education, and it would make them more disciplined students when they do.Gail: While we’re being hard-nosed about what we want students to get out of college, I feel obliged to point out that some of the less practical aspects of higher education can be terrific experiences. I went to graduate school and got a master’s degree in government, which I don’t think has ever once convinced a potential employer I was a superior candidate. But I had a great time, met some fascinating people, including my future husband, and learned a lot.I paid for it through on-campus jobs, some of which you could argue amounted to a kind of public financing. Not saying this should be a universal goal. But when I’m cheerleading for the most practical possible approach to higher education, I feel obliged to toss it in.Bret: True and fair. Liberal-arts education is great when students are engaged and teaching quality is high. Wish that were more often the case.On another subject, Gail, any takeaways from the release of the redacted affidavit on the Mar-a-Lago search?Gail: Have to admit I was disappointed by all those redactions — I was hoping for something that looked a little larger. More dramatic. More specific. More … something. How about you?Bret: Here’s my hunch: Donald Trump has only a vague idea of what’s in all of these documents. The notion that he read through boxes and boxes containing hundreds of documents with classification markings and chose to take these particular items strikes me as … unlikely.Gail: Yeah, I hear he’s currently way too engrossed in rereading the collected works of Tolstoy.Bret: Right. He’s so upset by Anna Karenina’s suicide that he hasn’t been able to focus on anything.What is very much like Trump is that, as soon as the administration sought to recover the boxes, he saw an opportunity to set up a test of strength against Biden — one that would stoke the paranoia of his supporters, rally wavering Republicans to his side and set up the Justice Department to fall on its face barring some spectacular disclosure.So my bottom line is that the Justice Department had better come up with something very damning, not just a charge relating to mishandling classified documents. If it doesn’t, it will be the fourth or fifth time in six years that the F.B.I. has meddled in politics, only to cause irreparable damage to its own reputation.Gail: Congratulations, you’ve flung me into depression. I do agree with you that the story on Trump’s end is less likely a sinister plot than messy grabbiness, perhaps along with a reasonable paranoia that, given the number of things he’s done wrong, there’d be evidence of something bad somewhere.Bret: I’ve always maintained that with Trump, there are no deep, dark secrets: His absolute awfulness always stares you squarely in the face, like a baboon’s backside.Gail: Short term, this saga is just giving ammunition to the right. But I can’t envision a whole lot of people switching their allegiance to Trump because of it.Bret: Not among people who never voted for him. What worries me for now is that he’ll recapture wavering Republicans who were nearly done with him.Gail: Republicans who race to the polls because they’re outraged by the F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago adventure are going to be a fraction of the number of folks who’ll want to register their very strong feelings on behalf of abortion rights.Bret: We’ll see.Gail: But let me poke you on another federal agency that conservatives tend to find … problematic. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act includes about $80 billion to update the I.R.S. I think it’s a great idea, given its current pathetic state. Overworked agents sitting around stapling papers together aren’t going to be able to win a lot of battles with high-end accountants and lawyers protecting their rich clients from an audit.But as I’m sure you know, a lot of Republicans are howling about what the dreaded Ted Cruz calls a “shadow army” of I.R.S. agents. What’s your take?Bret: I recently read that the I.R.S. answers just 10 percent of calls. So if the money goes to making the agency more responsive to distressed taxpayers, I’m fine with it. My worry is that the agency will initiate lots of audits against people who don’t have the benefit of fancy accountants and lawyers and who are at the mercy of an agency that has almost limitless power and not much accountability.Gail, we’re getting to the end of summer, and some of our readers may be looking for a final book recommendation before Labor Day. I know you’re working on a memoir, but are there any books you’d suggest?Gail: The last time we talked books I said I was enjoying the novel “A Gentleman in Moscow.”Now you’re giving me a chance to share a letter I got from a reader, John Burgess, saying he’d put in a request for it at his local library, He continued: “The day I picked it up, my son tested positive for Covid. Now I am sequestered in my house (my son lives with me), reading about a Russian noble who was imprisoned in the Metropol hotel in Moscow in 1922. The setting could hardly be more perfect.”See, you never can tell when a novel you read is going to parachute into your real life.On the nonfiction front, I just happily finished “Thank You for Your Servitude” by our former colleague Mark Leibovich, one of the latest in what looks like a banner year for retrospectives on the Trump presidency.How about you?Bret: I spent part of the summer reading books by friends. I devoured Jamie Kirchick’s riveting “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” a landmark that deserves companion histories for London, Paris and other capitals. I was deeply moved by “When Magic Failed,” the posthumous memoir of Fouad Ajami, with its heartbreaking depictions of village and city life in his native Lebanon.I read an advance copy of Lionel Shriver’s forthcoming nonfiction collection, “Abominations,” appropriately subtitled “Selected Essays From a Career of Courting Self-Destruction,” which should be mandatory reading for college freshmen. And I finally got around, albeit 20 years late, to my old friend Mindy Lewis’s stunning memoir, “Life Inside,” centered on her institutionalization as a teenager in the late 1960s in a psychiatric hospital in New York. It deserves to be reissued in this new era of mental health crisis among younger people.Gail: I knew your summer list would be high quality and longer than mine. I like the idea that my excuse is that I’m writing a book, so there’s not much time for reading. But maybe if I stopped watching “Sopranos” reruns before bed …Bret: Can’t wait for your book. We’ve been revisiting some favorite French farces. Highly recommend “Le Dîner de Cons” and “Le Placard.”Gail: Next week we’ll be off, celebrating Labor Day with our readers, Bret. Then it’s on to September and the midterm election homestretch. Lord knows what’s going to happen, but it’s nice to know that whatever it is, I’ll get to talk about it with you.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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      Donald Trump’s Death Grip Has Upended the G.O.P. Senate Map

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      As today’s politicians go, Senator Michael Bennet is kind of boring. Ideologically moderate. Dispositionally low-key. Scandal-free. A sensible technocrat rather than a charismatic ideologue. Heck, when Mr. Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, ran for president in 2020, he joked that a perk of electing him would be that people could simply forget about him for days on end.It is a tribute to the weirdness of this political season, then, that Mr. Bennet’s re-election race is shaping up to be one of the midterms’ more interesting and illuminating contests. It isn’t considered a first-tier nail-biter like Georgia’s or Nevada’s, but it promises to be a more serious fight than many had anticipated in largely blue Colorado.Like Democratic candidates everywhere, Mr. Bennet had already been bracing for electoral headwinds having little to do with his job performance. Among the big-picture fundamentals working against his party are inflation, pandemic fatigue, President Biden’s unpopularity and a thermostatic electorate that, even in less surly times, tends to punish a first-term president’s team in the midterms.More recently, though, Mr. Bennet’s fortunes have been threatened because of trouble brewing on the Republican side. Specifically, this November’s Senate election map has grown more pear-shaped for the G.O.P. A mix of broad political developments (more on those in a minute) and weak nominees in key battlegrounds is making Republican leaders twitchy — they need a net gain of one seat to control the Senate — prompting them to look around for other places where they could flip Democratic-held seats. Colorado is one of those places. And so Mr. Bennet finds himself navigating the unpredictable crosscurrents roiling the national scene and making this election cycle unsettling for both parties.Things weren’t supposed to be this complicated. Cruising into the summer, Republicans were feeling feisty, their heads filled with visions of total congressional domination. But then the Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade, firing up many, many women voters. Gas prices started creeping down. Congressional Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act (which is more about tackling climate change and the price of prescription drugs than reducing inflation, but why quibble?). The next thing you know, Democratic voters are feeling more motivated to go to the polls, shrinking the so-called enthusiasm gap between the parties.Now layer onto this a G.O.P. roster of not-so-sparkling Senate nominees — for which Republicans overwhelmingly have a certain ex-president to thank.In some cases, Donald Trump’s death grip on his party hurt efforts to recruit broadly appealing candidates. The most notable failures were in New Hampshire and Arizona, where the states’ Republican governors declined to debase themselves in the manner required to woo the Trump-addled base in Senate runs.Worse, the primary process — in which Mr. Trump meddled heavily — served up multiple nominees of questionable experience, appeal or basic competence.Take Blake Masters, Mr. Trump’s man in Arizona. A darling of the hard right, Mr. Masters has a tendency to do things like blame Black people for America’s gun violence and accuse Democrats of trying to change “the demographics of our country” by flooding it with immigrants. (For a really wild ride, check out his online musings circa 2007.) Playing footsie with racists and replacement-theory nutters may delight many in the MAGAverse, but it feels a little edgy for a purple state like Arizona.In Pennsylvania, the Trump-approved Dr. Oz is getting pantsed pretty much every week for being a rich, out-of-touch celebrity carpetbagger. (Crudité, anyone?) In Ohio, J.D. Vance has so far run such a nothingburger of a campaign that one could be excused for forgetting that he is the nominee. And, lordy, what is there to say about Herschel Walker in Georgia? Come for the abuse allegations and incoherent babbling. Stay for the candidate’s fountain of fabrications about his academic achievements and business record.Recent polling shows Dr. Oz, Mr. Masters and Mr. Walker trailing their Democratic opponents. A couple of public polls show Mr. Vance with a strikingly narrow lead in solidly red Ohio, while FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has him one point behind. Also lagging is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who lost his soul — and his grip on reality — to Trumpism and has spent the past couple of years as the Senate’s foremost conspiracymonger.Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, sounds less smug than usual, recently noting that flipping the chamber could prove challenging, in part, because of “candidate quality.”It’s hard to think of a defeated president who has taken a more aggressive role in undermining his party’s electoral edge. Well played, sir.In the midst of this Trump-fueled chaos, Colorado has caught Republicans’ eye. In a departure from the cycle’s norm, Republicans there chose a Senate nominee who isn’t a MAGA wing nut: Joe O’Dea, a self-made construction magnate. By the standards of today’s G.O.P., his politics are moderate, and he has little patience for Mr. Trump’s shenanigans. Mr. O’Dea has rejected the election-denial insanity and said he hopes Mr. Trump does not run again in 2024. Mr. O’Dea is pitching himself as a political outsider above rank partisanship.This is precisely the kind of challenger that Democrats did not want to be facing — and fought to avoid. As they did in multiple states, Democrats tried to manipulate Colorado’s Republican primary, in this case spending millions to paint Mr. O’Dea as a wishy-washy RINO. The presumed aim was to drive conservative voters into the arms of a more MAGAfied candidate who, Democrats figured, would be easier to beat in a general election.Whatever your views on the overall strategy, it flopped in Colorado. And Mr. Bennet is now saddled with a Republican opponent whom members of his own party worked to brand as a reasonable moderate.Eager to redefine Mr. O’Dea, Team Bennet is turning to the hot topic of abortion, hitting the Republican as an enemy of reproductive rights. This brings its own challenges, since Mr. O’Dea says he supports abortion access up to 20 weeks and beyond that under extenuating circumstances. Team Bennet is stressing that Mr. O’Dea would have voted to confirm the conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and is clearly looking for the post-Roe energy to drive voters away from the G.O.P. in general.Suddenly, even the most cautious Democrats are aspiring culture warriors.Election Day is still a political eternity away, and it’s tough to know how seriously Republicans will wind up playing in Colorado. Last month at a Washington, D.C., fund-raiser for Mr. O’Dea, Mr. McConnell pledged to go “all in” on the Colorado race. In early August the National Republican Senatorial Committee threw a bit of money into advertising there — a modest quarter million but enough to serve as a warning shot. In mid-August the race got shifted from “likely Democrat” to “leans Democrat” by the handicappers at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.Colorado is still Colorado. And Mr. O’Dea is still the underdog. But Mr. Bennet and his party have been put on notice not to take this race for granted. In this highly fluid political moment, not even solid, inoffensive incumbents are safe.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden Becomes a Boon for Democrats

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      The coattail effect in politics is the theory that the popularity of a candidate at the top of the ticket redounds to the benefit of those in the same party down ballot.You vote Democratic for president, then you might vote Democratic for senator or mayor.But what do we call it when the person from whom the benefit flows is not actually on the ballot? What if the person isn’t even personally that popular?Let’s call it phantom coattails.That is what I believe is happening with President Biden at the moment. With a string of successes, he is building momentum and shaking off narratives of ineffectiveness.Last week he announced that the federal government would forgive billions of dollars of student loan debt. Republicans predictably squawked about it being an unfair giveaway. Progressives complained that the plan didn’t go far enough.But Biden did act. He did fulfill his campaign promise, to a degree. That is crucial. After some major losses — on liberal priorities like voter protections and police reform — voters needed more wins. It wasn’t Biden’s fault that his agenda was blocked. For that, the blame goes to obstructionist Republicans and demi-Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.There was, however, a sense setting in that electing an elderly institutionalist meant that he wasn’t filled with enough fight, that he was guided by a sort of geriatric gentility.Biden’s recent wins put a major dent in those perceptions and are changing how people feel about him. According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, his approval rating, while still underwater, has been trending up for the past month. This week it reached 44 percent, the highest it has been in a year.It is the direction of the line that is most important in politics. And I believe that Biden’s reversal will bode well for other Democrats.Some of what is helping Biden is not his success but that of Republicans. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was monumental and is still stuck in voters’ minds. Many feel they are stuck in a nightmare and Democrats hold the only possibility of salvation.This decision, this victory by the forced-birth zealots, wiped out the progress Republicans were making by pushing the anti-wokeness canard — this idea that they had to fight back against racial indoctrination, against people who would redefine what a woman is and against health regulation.The War Against Woke now looks silly in light of the escalated War Against Women.Also, Trump has resurfaced as a foil.The stench around him grows stronger as investigations intensify and damning revelations continue to emerge. They may not alter the fealty of his followers, but they remind the rest of us of the horror we escaped by ejecting him from office and how desperately we don’t want to return to it.In fact, the re-emergence of Trump as a constant, prominent feature of national news is probably one of the greatest assets Democrats have going into the midterms. Time has a way of softening the perception of ex-presidents.George W. Bush went from the man who led the charge on the Iraq war, established the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay and defended torture to the man who laughed a lot, painted portraits and passed Michelle Obama candy at funerals.Retrospection rehabilitates.But Trump refuses to exit the battle. And with every revelation of legal jeopardy and suspicious movement, he hinders any possibility of rehabilitation.None of this is to say that Democrats have a lock on the midterm elections or that they will not suffer losses, as the ruling party historically has. There are still headwinds. Violent crime and inflation loom large in voters’ minds because they have risen to rates that some areas haven’t seen in decades. People blame Biden for that. It’s not in his control, but it’s on his watch. That’s just the way politics works.However, Biden keeps adding other things to the other side of the ledger, and on balance, he and the Democrats keep looking stronger.There are some Democrats nervous about campaigning with Biden because of his poor approval numbers, particularly in competitive districts. But Biden and his successes are the best things Democrats have right now.They should probably take a note from Charlie Crist, who just won the Democratic primary in Florida to challenge the incumbent governor, Ron DeSantis.When Crist was asked last week on CNN if he wanted Biden to campaign with him, he responded in part by saying of Biden: “He’s a good man. He’s a great man. He’s a great president. I can’t wait for him to get down here. I need his help. I want his help.”Whether other Democrats want Biden’s help or not, I believe that they are going to need it. Running away from the leader of your party is never a good idea. It’s a particularly terrible idea when that leader is on a hot streak.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      In New Hampshire, Republicans Weigh Another Hard Right Candidate

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      Don Bolduc, a retired Army general, has played to the Republican base and is leading in polls to take on Senator Maggie Hassan, who is viewed as vulnerable in November.MANCHESTER, N.H. — He has said the state’s popular Republican governor is “a Chinese Communist sympathizer,” called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment allowing direct popular election of senators and raised the possibility of abolishing the F.B.I.The man behind these statements is Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who leads the Republican field in what should be a competitive race for the New Hampshire Senate seat held by Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat.In one primary after another this year, Republican voters have chosen hard-right candidates who party officials had warned would have trouble winning in November, and Mr. Bolduc could be on course to be the next. Like him, many embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election denial. “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Donald Trump won the election and, damn it, I stand by” it, Mr. Bolduc said at a recent debate.The suddenly fraught midterm landscape for Republicans caused Senator Mitch McConnell, the G.O.P. leader, to complain recently that poor “candidate quality” could cost his party a majority in the Senate that had long seemed the likely result.In the final competitive primary of the year, scheduled for Sept. 13, Republican officials in New Hampshire are echoing Mr. McConnell. They warn that grass-roots voters are poised to elect another problematic nominee, Mr. Bolduc, and jeopardize a winnable race against a vulnerable Democrat.This month, Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican moderate broadly popular in his purple state, said on New Hampshire talk radio that Mr. Bolduc was a “conspiracy theorist-type candidate.” He added: “If he were the nominee, I have no doubt we would have a much harder time trying to win that seat back.”Mr. Bolduc, who served 10 tours in Afghanistan, held a formidable lead with Republican voters in a poll this month, in large part because he has barnstormed continuously for more than two years, while his rivals joined the race later. The contest was effectively frozen for a year until November, when Mr. Sununu, a top recruiting target of national Republicans, declined to run for Senate, deciding instead to seek a fourth term as governor.Mr. Bolduc has built a following by offering red meat to the conservative base. But New Hampshire is a politically divided state where Republicans who win statewide traditionally appeal to independents and conservative Democrats. Its four-member congressional delegation is entirely Democratic; state government is firmly in the hands of Republicans.“We’re not a red state, we’re not a blue state, we’re a weird state,” said Greg Moore, a Republican operative not involved in the Senate primary. He was skeptical that Mr. Bolduc, after targeting only his party’s base, would be able to attract a broader coalition in November.In a debate on Wednesday outside Manchester, Mr. Bolduc denounced the provision in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act authorizing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, saying, “Anything the government’s involved in, it’s not good, it doesn’t work.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBiden on the Campaign Trail: Fresh off a series of legislative victories, President Biden is back campaigning. But his low approval ratings could complicate his efforts to help Democrats in the midterm elections.The Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.A rival of Mr. Bolduc’s, Kevin Smith, told him at an earlier debate, “You know, Don, your M.O. seems to be ‘Fire, ready, aim.’”Mr. Bolduc, 60, is a compact figure who still sports a military haircut close-cropped on the sides. In the minutes before the debate went live on Newsmax, while other candidates studied their notes, he spontaneously led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance and in singing “God Bless America.”Gov. Chris Sununu, a moderate Republican, said he felt that a Bolduc primary victory would weaken the G.O.P.’s chance to control the Senate.Jon Cherry/Getty Images For ConcordiaA poll this month by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics showed Mr. Bolduc with support from 32 percent of registered Republican voters, well ahead of his closest rival, Chuck Morse, the State Senate president, who was at 16 percent. Others in the poll, including Mr. Smith, a former Londonderry town manger, were in the low single digits.All of the candidates have struggled to raise money and draw voters’ attention — 39 percent of Republicans said in the poll they were still undecided.That gives Mr. Bolduc’s rivals hope, although time is running out: The primary is just one week after Labor Day, when most voters traditionally tune in.Ms. Hassan has long been seen as vulnerable. Just 39 percent of voters in the Institute of Politics survey said she deserved to be re-elected.At the debate outside Manchester, the candidates bashed Ms. Hassan, a former governor, linking her to rising gas prices and expected high prices for home heating oil this winter.Ms. Hassan, in response, defended voting for Democrats’ climate and prescription drug law. “While I’m fighting to get results for New Hampshire, my opponents are out on the campaign trail defending Big Oil and Big Pharma and bragging about their records of opposing a woman’s fundamental freedom,” she said in a statement.Mr. Trump has made no endorsement in New Hampshire, and he may not make one at all. He snubbed Mr. Bolduc in a 2020 Senate primary, endorsing a rival. Neither Mr. Bolduc nor Mr. Morse have spoken to Mr. Trump lately about the race, according to their campaigns.Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager, who is a New Hampshire resident, has publicly urged his former boss not to back Mr. Bolduc, calling him “not a serious candidate.”Mr. Bolduc declined to comment for this article. Rick Wiley, a senior adviser to Mr. Bolduc, said the criticisms of him — that he is unelectable, that independents won’t vote for him — were the same ones thrown at Mr. Trump in 2016.“The electorate wants an outsider, that is resoundingly clear,” Mr. Wiley said. Shrugging off Mr. Sununu’s criticisms, he added: “I expect we’re probably going to be sharing a ballot with the governor. There will be unity on the ticket in November and Republicans up and down the ballot will be successful because of the policies Biden and Maggie Hassan have put in place.”The biggest primary threat to Mr. Bolduc, and the preferred candidate of much of what remains of the G.O.P. establishment, is Mr. Morse, a low-key, self-made tree nursery owner with a strong Granite State accent, who appears in his TV ads riding a tractor at dawn at his operation in southern New Hampshire. Despite his prominent role in state government, a poll in April found that 54 percent of Republican voters didn’t know enough about Mr. Morse to have an opinion. Just 2 percent named him as their choice for the nomination. His ascent to 16 percent in the latest public poll this month is seen by supporters as a sign of momentum.Dave Carney, a strategist for Mr. Morse, agreed that Mr. Bolduc was the current race leader. But he said that Mr. Morse’s superior fund-raising, which allowed him to buy TV ads, was raising his profile, and predicted that he would continue to gain on Mr. Bolduc.Ms. Hassan has a considerable fund-raising lead over her Republican rivals.Adam Glanzman for The New York Times“Sixty-one percent of the voters are willing to replace Hassan,” Mr. Carney said, referring to the share of voters in the Institute of Politics survey who said that it was time to give someone new a chance to be senator or that they were undecided. “We need to nominate somebody who can do that.” He called Mr. Bolduc a “flawed candidate,” adding, “I don’t think there’s any way in hell he could get conservative Democrats or the vast majority of independents to go his way.”Mr. Morse had $975,000 in his campaign account as of July, compared with Mr. Bolduc, who had just $65,000. Ms. Hassan’s $7.3 million on hand has allowed her to aggressively spend on TV ads all year, including one promoting her work for people with disabilities that features her son, who was born with cerebral palsy.The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which this month slashed its planned spending in three battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin — has kept a commitment to spend $6.5 million on the New Hampshire race after the primary, reflecting its belief in Ms. Hassan’s vulnerability.With the Senate divided 50-50 between the parties and Democrats optimistic about flipping at least one seat, in Pennsylvania, Republicans need to take down two or more Democratic incumbents to win a majority. Their top targets are in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire.At the recent debate, the audience was mostly committed supporters of each of the candidates, with few appearing undecided. Bolduc fans dismissed out of hand Mr. Sununu’s view that their candidate would have a hard time in November.“Sununu is a globalist clown and is not a Republican,” said Kelley Potenza, a candidate for the state House of Representatives who is from Rochester. “He’s afraid because Don Bolduc is the only candidate that’s not going to be controlled.”In the audience before the lights went down, Bill Bowen, a recent transplant from California and a Morse supporter, said Mr. Bolduc had reached his ceiling in the polls. He said supporters of Mr. Bolduc who ignored doubts about his electability in November were misguided.“That’s all that matters,” he said, adding, “This is the 51st vote,” referring to a potential Republican majority in the Senate. More

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      Women’s Work Is Never Done

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      WASHINGTON — It’s nice to see that the Democrats are back on track.It only took an upheaval turning women into second-class citizens, the possibility that the Orange Menace could be re-elected, and an out-of-control Supreme Court.With all that, the Dems seem to be pulling even.There’s still a better than even chance that they could lose the House. If they’re lucky, they’ll hold onto the Senate; and for that they would have to thank the Republicans for putting forward horrible candidates.President Biden’s ratings have gone up, from very bad to not good, with the base cheering on Dark Brandon. But the really positive news is that most Democratic Senate candidates are more popular than he is.The Democrats have managed to come alive in the last few weeks, actually passing stuff in Congress. After watching the country drown and burn, Joe Manchin freaked out that he would be single-handedly blamed for climate change and made a deal with Chuck Schumer.But the Democrats are still barely keeping their heads above water.They just can’t match the Republican crazy. Unfortunately, a considerable chunk of this country is acting insane, believing that Democrats are all pedophiles who are drinking babies’ blood.Democrats have to stop fighting a conventional war. It’s just not a conventional time.Ironic that Friday was Women’s Equality Day, designated so by Congress in the ’70s. At a time when women all over the world should be blossoming, we’re seeing stunning setbacks. There’s a bizarre trend of punishing women, Saudi-style, for their sexuality.Sanna Marin, Finland’s 36-year-old prime minister, is under fire for dancing with her friends in a country that always gets named “the happiest country in the world” in the United Nations-sponsored World Happiness Report. What a grim, still-sexist world this is, when Marin is forced to tearfully apologize — and take a drug test — after video leaked of her letting loose.The Helsinki Times tut-tutted that she was the “Prom Minister” and dismissed the music she was dancing to as “plebeian.” But the amazing Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, defended her Finnish counterpart, asking, “How do we constantly make sure that we attract people to politics, rather than — perhaps as has been historically the case — put them off?”Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, tweeted about the double standard: The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was cheered for chugging beers at a public concert while Marin was under fire for dancing at a private party. “Everyone just back off!” Emanuel wrote.“She’s getting hit for being immature,” Emanuel told me. “But she’s mature enough to lead Finland into NATO. That’s a hard day’s work. I’d need a little party, too!”Joe Biden seemed to see how abnormal things were when, at a rally in suburban Washington the other night, he got bold enough to denounce the MAGA gang for a philosophy that is “almost like semi-fascism.”But, keening about Roe’s reversal, he oddly said of Mitch McConnell: “Even if he’s not as extreme as some,” he “was able to, quote, ‘pack the court’ legitimately.”It is wrong to say McConnell acted legitimately just because he didn’t break the law. McConnell bent and broke the rules; he held off an Obama nominee for a year and then, with a week to go before the 2020 election, jammed the religious zealot Amy Coney Barrett onto the court.Barrett was a “handmaid” in a Christian group called “People of Praise,” in which men are decision makers over their wives. Now, Barrett is making decisions for all the women in the country, and it’s an outrage. The Guardian reported on another leaked video of a recent get-together — far more scary than Marin’s. It shows the wife of the tyrannical leader of “People of Praise” saying that some women in the group cried so intensely because of their subservient roles, they had to wear sunglasses.Women who thought that Roe would never really get tossed out, or if it did, it wouldn’t have that much impact, are now realizing what an earthquake this is.Tudor Dixon, a Donald Trump acolyte who is the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, told a local Fox station that abortion should be illegal even in the case of minors who are raped. She suggested that having the baby could be “healing.”Many women are angry and many are registering to vote. Trump seems nervous, but he has wiggled out of a lot of jams. Democrats can’t rely on his spontaneous combustion. Just as women boosted Biden into the White House, now women have to rescue us again, from a bunch of crazy conservatives determining our health care — and how we live our lives. And maybe soon, whether we can be Dancing Queens.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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      Not the Win We Wanted, but a Win Nonetheless

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      The Biden administration has finally delivered on its long anticipated student loan cancellation plans. The timing is critical: Midterm elections are around the corner. Just a few weeks ago, the consensus was that the Democratic Party was in trouble. But a series of policy wins has changed that narrative.President Biden’s executive order on student loans is another win.The top-line debt cancellation numbers do not sound impressive at first: Ten thousand dollars will be forgiven for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 or households earning less than $250,000. But the policy has many layers. Taken together, it is a meaningful response that mostly gets the diagnosis for how we got here right.The Student Loan Law Initiative at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and the Higher Education, Race and the Economy Lab analyzed Biden’s executive order. They estimate that around 41 million debt holders will be eligible for some form of student loan forgiveness, and that 25 million of those people will be eligible for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. Twenty million people, including 3.8 million Black borrowers, could have their entire debts canceled.That isn’t full debt cancellation, but it will help a lot of people. And the people it will help most are those who got the rawest deal. That includes the millions of people who have debt but no degree — nearly one-third of all borrowers. It also includes people who took on student loans to pay for occupational degrees in blue-collar trades like cosmetology and mechanics. Republicans are criticizing the policy as giving handouts to the rich. They really want to implant the image of a Harvard liberal arts graduate getting a free pass. But cancellation is squarely targeted at the debt that working-class students have accrued to hold pretty working-class jobs. The G.O.P. will have a hard time telling those voters that this relief has not improved their lives.Other parts of the policy address underlying problems that created the student loan boondoggle. Millions of people have paid their loans as promised, following the official guidance of student loan servicers, only to owe more than when they started with because of interest. This negative amortization made it nearly impossible for some borrowers to pay off their loans. And documented problems with public student loan forgiveness programs meant that this burden often fell heaviest on people with public interest careers, such as public defenders, teachers and social workers. Now, income-driven repayments for undergraduate loans will be capped at 5 percent of the borrower’s take-home income. If you don’t have a lot of discretionary income, that payment could be low — too low to cover interest on the loan. Previously, this gap added up and increased the total amount owed. Under new guidelines, the government will cover that interest as long as the borrower is making payments. This does not get rid of the scourge of negative amortization for all borrowers. But it does two things: It effectively ends it for public interest workers. That lives up to the promise of public service loan forgiveness, which is that it becomes possible for people to do the work that society desperately needs done without living in eternal debt peonage. It also gives us a model for expanding that option for more borrowers in the future. It is a safe bet that student debt cancellation organizers are paying attention to that possibility.The other bit of good news in the details of this proposal is targeted relief for borrowers who were also Pell grant recipients. Pell grants are a bright spot in our higher education financing ecosystem. They help reduce the impact of one of the biggest drivers of inequality in higher education access, affordability and returns: family income. As tuition costs have dramatically increased, Pell has struggled to keep up. Earlier this year, the Biden administration increased the maximum amount of money attached to Pell grants. When you add that increase to this proposal’s targeted cancellation for anyone who currently or at any time in their undergraduate career qualified for Pell, it is a big help for poor families.Class — income and wealth — is how the Biden administration prefers to deal with racial inequalities that stem from student loan debt. Black borrowers come from poorer families who have less income and less wealth to pay their tuition. Those borrowers take on more student loan debt and their families take on more family loans, like the PLUS program, to help them pay for college. This is acute at lower levels of student loan debt, such as the millions of borrowers that will be included in the $10,000 and $20,000 forgiveness amounts. But these racial differences in debt also show up at the top of distributions. Black borrowers take on a lot of debt to be competitive in the labor market, from associate’s degrees to graduate programs. That debt then makes it hard for those borrowers to help their children pay for college. It’s a vicious cycle. This program won’t help those high-earning but negative wealth borrowers much.It also won’t reduce the cost of college, but it was not designed to. The executive branch does not have a lot of tools it can use to address that. What it does have is the big stick of federal student loan programs. It has used that stick in the past to make college more accessible, but at a cost that became too much for many borrowers to bear. The fight for affordability is primarily a state issue. Like abortion rights, public education and public health initiatives, the real battle for the future of higher education will happen at the state level.As for the federal fight, organizers will ask for more cancellations. I believe that they should. And while this recent policy is not total debt cancellation, it is far from where the Biden administration started. It accounts for research on how the student loan crisis became such a crisis in the first place. The administration has reformed target areas where abuses are the most egregious: bad student loan servicing companies and predatory for-profit colleges. The latest analysis from Goldman Sachs projects that inflationary pressures will be mild, at most. Restarting payments offsets a lot of the modeled risk. And this relief comes for poor and working-class families just as they start tuning in to midterm races. It is hard to argue that this is anything but good news for millions of people — and for the Democrats.Sometimes policy helps people, and sometimes those people remember it when it is time to vote. More