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      A Rematch of Biden v. Trump, Two Years Early

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      Dispensing with his unity message, President Biden reached into the 2020 file cabinet and vowed to win “a battle for the soul of this nation,” the cornerstone of his successful election.WASHINGTON — By this point in his term, President Biden figured things would be different. His predecessor would have faded from the scene and the country would have restored at least some semblance of normalcy. But as he said on Thursday night, “too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.”And so the president who declared when he took office that “democracy has prevailed” declared in a prime-time televised speech that in fact democracy 19 months later remained “under assault.” Former President Donald J. Trump “and the MAGA Republicans,” as Mr. Biden termed his predecessor’s allies, still represent a clear and present danger to America.If it sounded like a repeat of the 2020 campaign cycle, in some ways it is, although the incumbent and likely challenger have changed places. A country torn apart by ideology, culture, economics, race, religion, party and grievance remains as polarized as ever. Mr. Biden has scored some bipartisan legislative successes, but he has been singularly unable to heal the broader societal rift that he inherited. It may be that no president could have.With an opposition party that has largely embraced the lie that the last election was stolen and remains in thrall to a twice-impeached and defeated former president who encouraged a mob that attacked the Capitol to stop the transfer of power, Mr. Biden’s appeals to national unity have found little traction. Some Republicans have argued that his efforts to build consensus were fainthearted at best, while some Democrats complain they were excessive.Either way, they have made little difference in the national conversation. And so with the midterm congressional campaign getting underway in earnest, Mr. Biden has dispensed with the unity message, at least for now, reaching into the 2020 file cabinet and bringing out the call to win “a battle for the soul of this nation” that was the cornerstone of his successful election.The immediate strategy is self-evident. Rather than a referendum on his own presidency, which has been hurt by high inflation and low public morale, Mr. Biden wants to make the election a choice between “normal” and an “extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” as he put it on Thursday.If he has his way, it would be a rerun of Biden vs. Trump without either man actually listed on the ballot. If Americans are asked whether they support Mr. Biden, they may say no. If they are asked whether they support him over Mr. Trump, they may say yes. At least, that is the theory in the White House.It is a view borne out by recent opinion surveys. In the wake of a string of legislative and policy victories, Mr. Biden’s anemic approval ratings have ticked upward, though they remain in the 40s. But when pitted against Mr. Trump in a new Wall Street Journal poll, Mr. Biden came out on top in a theoretical 2024 rematch, 50 percent to 44 percent.Mr. Trump has arguably helped Mr. Biden set the stage for such a political showdown with his highly visible efforts to maintain his grip on the Republican Party. But it means that Mr. Biden will take on a more confrontational posture for the next two months, undermining his desire to be a conciliator.That left him in the odd position of being accused on Thursday night of being divisive by allies of the most divisive president in modern times. Trump Republicans argued that Mr. Biden was the one tearing the country apart and threatening democracy, not the other way around. He had insulted, in their contention, the 74 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump. More

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      Takeaways From Biden’s Speech in Philadelphia

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      Just before the traditional Labor Day launch of the political season, President Biden inserted himself into the midterm elections on Thursday with a fierce speech castigating former President Donald J. Trump and his followers but ending with optimism for the nation’s democratic future.Here are four takeaways from the prime-time address from Independence Hall in Philadelphia:It’s still about Trump.Sure, Mr. Biden rattled off the accomplishments of his first year and a half in office — infrastructure, gun safety, prescription drug price controls and “the most important climate initiative ever.” But in his address to the nation, Mr. Biden tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor still looms over the politics of the moment, like it or not. And he took it to Mr. Trump directly, calling him out by name and seeking to differentiate between “the MAGA Republicans” loyal to Mr. Trump and what he deemed reasonable Republicans who still stand by the American democratic experiment.“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” he said. “And that is a threat to this country.”Midterm elections are usually a referendum on the party of the president in power, especially when that party also controls Congress. But Mr. Biden and the Democrats are betting that if they can make this November a choice between Democratic and Republican control, they can win, or at least keep their losses to a minimum. Mr. Biden’s speech was all about making the choice this Election Day between what he called “the light of truth” and “the shadow of lies.”Approval ratings be damned.Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have risen of late, buoyed by legislative successes as well as falling gas prices. Still, with a composite disapproval rate of 53 percent, and job approval still in the low 40s, the president is no one’s idea of Mr. Popularity.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence 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 one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.But on Thursday, the White House rolled the dice, apparently assuming that lying low would not help matters and hoping that a big, televised speech might remind voters why they chose Mr. Biden in 2020. Republicans have caricatured the president as a doddering old man, unable to assemble a string of coherent sentences. Rather than let such aspersions go unchallenged, the White House moved to dispel them with a forceful speech that would, if nothing else, rally the Democratic base, which was already energized by the Supreme Court’s decision to end the nearly 50-year-old right to an abortion.The president’s emphasis on the historic nature of the largest climate change measure ever enacted was aimed at young Democratic voters who are among the most disenchanted with him personally. But above all, Mr. Biden appealed to the fears that have gripped some of the most reliable Democratic voting groups — L.G.B.T.Q. voters, young voters and women — when he suggested the overturning of Roe v. Wade was just the beginning: “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”The two Americas, divided and suspicious.During the Trump administration, much was made of the former president’s willingness to castigate his political enemies on the left, to the delight of his supporters. He tried to roll back transgender rights across the government, attacked the rights of lesbian and gay Americans, told the women of color in the House Democrats’ “Squad” to “go back” to where they came from, and gleefully attacked cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Baltimore.In his speech, Mr. Biden took pains to say, “Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans; not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.” But a Republican Party still dominated by Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again ideology was not going to accept that distinction, not when the tribe of “Never Trump” Republicans has shriveled to a tiny cohort.On Thursday, it was the Republicans’ turn to denounce the divisiveness of a president who was scorning them. The Republican National Committee cast Mr. Biden as “the divider-in-chief” who “epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”But at times, the Republican response felt like an extended taunt of “I know you are, but what am I?” Before Mr. Biden’s speech, the man who hopes to be House speaker next year, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, also spoke in Pennsylvania, trying to pre-empt a presidential address previewed as an appeal for the soul of the nation by — with little factual basis — turning Mr. Biden’s themes against him.“In the past two years, Joe Biden has launched an assault on the soul of America,” Mr. McCarthy, the House minority leader, said, “on its people, on its laws, on its most sacred values. He has launched an assault on our democracy.”It’s not the economy: a possibly stupid position.The entreaty from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid,” has become a truism in American politics, in good times and in bad. Today, a majority of Americans still rate the economy as their No. 1 concern, and large numbers believe the nation is in a recession.Not Mr. Biden, who declared, “today, America’s economy is faster, stronger, than any other advanced nation in the world.” The word “inflation” did not pass his lips.In the 2010 campaign season, after President Barack Obama and his vice president, Mr. Biden, labored to bring the nation out of the global financial crisis, Mr. Obama barnstormed the country, insisting that Democrats had lifted the nation’s economy out of the ditch that the Republicans had driven it into. Voters delivered what Mr. Obama called a “shellacking” — huge losses in Congress that Democrats would not overcome for eight years.Mr. Biden, learning from that mistake, had been trying to show voters he understood their pain and anxiety over rising prices and lingering uncertainty. On Thursday night, he seemed to set that aside to make the election about an entirely different issue: the fate of democratic pluralism.“America is still the beacon to the world, an ideal to be realized, a promise to be kept,” he concluded. “There’s nothing more important, nothing more sacred, nothing more American. That’s our soul.” More

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      If an Alternative Candidate Is Needed in 2024, These Folks Will Be Ready

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      What happens if the 2024 election is between Donald Trump and somebody like Bernie Sanders? What happens if the Republicans nominate someone who is morally unacceptable to millions of Americans while the Democrats nominate someone who is ideologically unacceptable? Where do the millions of voters in the middle go? Does Trump end up winning as voters refuse to go that far left?The group No Labels has been working quietly over the past 10 months to give Americans a third viable option. The group calls its work an insurance policy. If one of the parties nominates a candidate acceptable to the center of the electorate, then the presidential operation shuts down. But if both parties go to the extremes, then there will be a unity ticket appealing to both Democrats and Republicans to combat this period of polarized dysfunction.The No Labels operation is a $70 million effort, of which $46 million has already been raised or pledged. It has four main prongs. The first is to gain ballot access for a prospective third candidate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The organization is working with lawyers, political strategists and petition firms to amass signatures and establish a No Labels slot on the 2024 ballots. The group already has over 100,000 signatures in Ohio, for example, and 47,000 signatures in Arizona.The second effort is to create a database on those Americans who would support a unity ticket. The group’s research suggests there are 64.5 million voters who would support such an effort, including roughly a third of the people who supported Donald Trump in 2020 and 20 percent of the Democrats who supported Joe Biden in that year, as well as a slew of independents.The group has identified 23 states where they believe a unity ticket could win a plurality of the vote, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Minnesota and Colorado. If the ticket gained a plurality in those 23 states, that would give its standard-bearer 279 electoral votes and the presidency.The third effort is to find a policy agenda that appeals to unity voters. The group has come up with a series of both/and positions on major issues: comprehensive immigration reform with stronger borders and a path to citizenship for DACA immigrants; American energy self-sufficiency while transitioning to cleaner sources; No guns for anyone under 21 and universal background checks; moderate abortion policies with abortion legal until about 15 weeks.The fourth effort is to create an infrastructure to nominate and support a potential candidate. There’s already a network of state co-chairs and local volunteers. Many of them are regular Americans, while others are notables like Mike Rawlings, a Democrat and the former mayor of Dallas, the civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis and Dennis Blair, the former director of national intelligence.The group has not figured out how the nominating process would work, though they want to use technology to create a transparent process that would generate public interest. There would be a nominating convention in Texas, shortly after it becomes clear who will be the Democratic and Republican nominees.The people who are volunteering for this emphasize that they are not leaving their parties. This is not an effort to create a third party, like Andrew Yang’s effort. This is a one-off move to create a third option if the two major parties abandon the middle in 2024.The big question is: Is this a good idea? To think this through I’ve imagined a 2024 campaign in which the Republicans nominate Trump, Biden retires and the Democrats nominate some progressive and the No Labels group nominates retired Adm. William McRaven and the former PepsiCo C.E.O. Indra Nooyi. (I’m just grabbing these latter two names off the top of my head as the sort of people who might be ideal for the No Labels ticket).The first danger is that the No Labels candidates would draw more support away from the Democrats and end up re-electing Trump. This strikes me as a real possibility, though the No Labels activist Jenny Hopkins from Colorado tells me, “I find it easier to find Republicans who want to pull away from Trump than it is to find Democrats who want to pull away from Biden.”The second danger is that the No Labels candidates fail to generate any excitement at all. Millions of Americans claim to dislike the two major parties, but come election time they hold their noses and support one in order to defeat the party they hate more.The last competitive third presidential option was Ross Perot in 1992. He ran as a clear populist outsider, not on the moderate “unity” theme that is at the heart of the No Labels effort. On the other hand, the gap between the two parties is much vaster today than when Perot ran against Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. There is much more running room up the middle. Plus, the country is much hungrier for change. Only 13 percent of American voters say the country is on the right track.This is one of those efforts that everybody looks at with skepticism at first. But if ever the country was ripe for something completely different, it’s now.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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      With Peltola’s Defeat of Palin, Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Has a Moment

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      Mary Peltola, whose victory in a special election on Wednesday makes her the first Democrat in nearly half a century to represent Alaska in the House, won the contest for the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term with an upbeat campaign that appealed to Alaskan interests and the electorate’s independent streak.But Alaska’s new voting system also played a big role in Ms. Peltola’s three-percentage-point victory over former Gov. Sarah Palin, her Republican opponent.Ms. Peltola, who will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat, won at least in part because voters had more choices. While more voters initially picked a Republican candidate, that didn’t matter. Given a second choice, many Republican voters opted for a Democrat — Ms. Peltola — over Ms. Palin.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday night, Ms. Palin criticized the new voting system as “weird.” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the system a “scam to rig elections” against Republicans.But proponents of systems like Alaska’s say this is how it is supposed to work. When voters have more choices, they’re less likely to vote along strict party lines, reducing polarization and giving independent-minded or more centrist candidates a better shot.The changes to how Alaskans choose their representatives in state and federal elections were decided on in 2020, when allies of Lisa Murkowski — the state’s senior senator, who ran in 2010 as a write-in candidate after losing that year’s Republican Party primary — promoted and bankrolled a ballot initiative that passed by a narrow margin — precisely 3,781 votes, out of more than 344,000.The consequences for Alaskan politics, and for the country, could be seismic. New York, Maine and Utah also have some form of ranked-choice voting, as do dozens of American cities. But the Alaska approach — which combines ranked-choice voting across party lines with an instant runoff between several top candidates — goes further in disrupting political parties’ influence.Second choices matterIn the first stage of the complex new system, voters in a primary pick from a list of candidates from all parties and ideological stripes.The top four finishers then make the ballot for the general election, when voters rank up to four choices in order of preference: first, second, third and fourth — or none at all.Over multiple rounds of what is known as instant runoff or ranked-choice voting, election officials first eliminate candidates with no chance of winning and then reallocate the second, third and fourth choices of their voters to others.Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska doing interviews at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage in July.Ash Adams for The New York TimesNicholas Begich III, a Republican, failed to meet the threshold, meaning his votes were reallocated based on their second choices. But 15,000 voters who preferred Mr. Begich crossed party lines to select Ms. Peltola as their backup pick instead of Ms. Palin. A further 11,000 Begich voters opted for no second choice or another candidate. In total, that meant that nearly half of Mr. Begich’s voters, presumably Republicans, did not vote for Ms. Palin.Scott Kendall, a leading proponent of the Alaska system, said in an interview on Thursday: “The campaign that Nick Begich ran was a clinic in how to have your party lose a ranked-choice election.” More

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      Biden to Address Threats to Democracy in Philadelphia Speech

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      The prime-time speech comes amid deep national divisions. According to a recent poll, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction.WASHINGTON — When President Biden travels to Philadelphia on Thursday, he will turn his attention to the threat to American democracy, the very issue he said drove him to run for the presidency in the first place.More than a year and a half after Mr. Biden pledged during his inauguration to “restore the soul and to secure the future of America,” he still believes democracy is in peril.White House officials said Mr. Biden is expected to use the prime-time speech to take direct aim at the Republican Party as Democrats fight to retain their hold on Congress in the midterm elections in November.In recent days, Mr. Biden has replaced his usual calls for unity with sharp condemnations of “MAGA extremists,” saying Republicans have embraced “semi-fascism” by staying loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.“The MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary. She said they present “an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights. They just don’t respect the rule of law.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence 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 one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Republicans have cited Mr. Biden’s rhetoric as evidence that he has fallen short of his promise to bring the nation together.“Biden has pitted neighbors against each other, labeled half of Americans as fascist, and tarnished any idea of his promise of ‘unity,’” Emma Vaughn, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said in a statement.Thursday will be Mr. Biden’s second visit to Pennsylvania in three days, and he is expected to make a third on Labor Day. Pennsylvania, a swing state, will hold crucial races for the House and Senate as well as a closely watched governor’s race.During Mr. Biden’s first year in office, he promised to bring a sense of normalcy to the White House and he largely ignored former President Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump is once again at the fore, with investigations into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and an F.B.I. search of his Florida home for classified documents, and Mr. Biden is trying to frame a vote for Republicans as a vote for extremism.The speech comes at a time of deep national divisions.According to an NBC News poll released last month, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction. The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have issued multiple warnings about false claims about election fraud motivating extremists attacks.“We are in a crisis in this country. There’s no doubt about it. Not just in terms of the sanctity of the vote or trusting our votes will be counted,” said Allida Black, a University of Virginia historian who had a private meeting with Mr. Biden to discuss the state of democracy last month. “We seem to attack rather than embrace responsibility and accountability.”It is not the first time Mr. Biden has delivered a speech that is not about policies or campaigns but rather the morality of the nation. He said he was inspired to run for office when white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He had a “soul of the nation” bus tour during the presidential campaign and committed to unifying the nation during his inauguration.Ms. Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that Mr. Biden was working with senior advisers on drafts of his speech for Thursday.“He sees the challenges increasing. He sees the threats increasing,” Ms. Black said, adding that the speech was a way for Mr. Biden to convey “I’m not backing down.” More

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      There Are Now F.E.C. Complaints Against Biden and Trump

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      A conservative group has filed a complaint against President Biden accusing him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the Federal Election Commission that he plans to run again in 2024.The complaint is unlikely to succeed or be resolved quickly — not only because the commission has been hobbled for years by partisan infighting, but also because of the high burden of proof required to show that Mr. Biden has in fact decided to pursue re-election.It nonetheless highlights the political bind the White House has found itself in while facing grumbling about the president from his fellow Democrats, as well as the gridlock that has crippled the nation’s top election agency and has led it to be mocked on late-night talk shows.The complaint was filed more than five months after a Democratic super PAC filed a similar complaint against former President Donald J. Trump, who has openly flirted with another White House bid.Complaint About Biden From Americans for Public Trust to the Federal Election CommissionA conservative group filed a complaint against President Biden that accuses him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the F.E.C. that he plans to run again in 2024.Read Document 6 pagesAmericans for Public Trust filed the complaint against Mr. Biden on Tuesday. The group is led by Caitlin Sutherland, a former research director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans.“It is very clear that President Biden meets the requirements of a candidate who needs to file with the F.E.C.,” Ms. Sutherland said in an interview.Her group is asking the commission to investigate whether Mr. Biden is running what she described as a “shadow campaign,” using taxpayer money to conduct what in essence are political activities under the guise of official travel to swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A potential punishment could include a hefty fine, as the F.E.C. has levied in the past.The complaint claims that Mr. Biden’s official campaign committee, Biden for President, has spent more than $5 million since Jan. 20, 2021. Most of that money has gone toward expenses related to the 2020 presidential election, but the complaint notes that Biden for President has reported spending $1 million on outreach to voters over email and text messages.Those messages, which are reviewed by Mr. Biden’s campaign lawyers for compliance with the law, promote his policy accomplishments, such as the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, and direct recipients to donate money to the Democratic National Committee.The Biden PresidencyWith midterm elections looming, here’s where President Biden stands.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.‘Dark Brandon’ Rises: White House officials recently began to embrace this repackaged internet meme. Here is the story behind it and what it tells us about the administration.Questions About 2024: Mr. Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but at 79, his age has become an uncomfortable issue.A Familiar Foreign Policy: So far, Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy is surprisingly consistent with the Trump administration, analysts say.But they also serve a tried-and-true function in political campaigns: keeping a valuable contact list warm in case Mr. Biden needs it for a future run.The complaint also details a litany of public statements made by White House officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, indicating that Mr. Biden plans to seek re-election.In late June, for instance, Ms. Harris told Dana Bash of CNN, “Joe Biden is running for re-election and I will be his ticketmate. Full stop.”She quickly walked back those comments, however, as aides apparently realized the legal implications of prematurely declaring Mr. Biden’s candidacy before he has officially decided to run again.Similarly, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on June 13 that Mr. Biden was “running for re-election.” She later tweeted that the president “intends to run in 2024,” only to clarify later that Mr. Biden had not yet decided.Those comments came in response to public reports, including in The New York Times, suggesting that many Democrats were not eager to see Mr. Biden become their party’s nominee again in 2024 given his advanced age and his relative unpopularity.White House officials and other surrogates for Mr. Biden leaned in hard against the emerging narrative, and, according to some accounts noted in the complaint, told reporters anonymously that they recognized that those comments had risked running afoul of legal restrictions on fund-raising.“Biden cannot hide behind the word ‘intend’, and it’s not the shield he thinks it is,” Ms. Sutherland said.The White House declined to comment, as did the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Biden himself has been coy about whether he has indeed decided to seek the Oval Office again, often couching his answers with a caveat: that he intends to do so if he remains in good health, but will not make that determination until sometime after the November midterms.In February, when a reporter asked if he was satisfied with Ms. Harris’s working on voting rights and whether she would be his running mate in 2024 “provided that you run again,” Mr. Biden replied, “yes and yes.”The complaint omits the reporter’s conditional phrase.Some campaign lawyers affiliated with the Democratic Party, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, argued that the White House press secretary and even the vice president could not speak for Biden for President, the campaign committee — and therefore the commission was likely to dismiss the complaint quickly.That would be unusual: The F.E.C. is notoriously lax about meeting its own statutory deadline of 120 days. A different election-law-related complaint filed by the same group, Americans for Public Trust, about the pre-candidacy activities of Jeb Bush, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, has been languishing for years.Complaint About Trump From American Bridge to the Federal Election CommissionA Democratic super PAC filed a complaint in March against former President Donald J. Trump that accused him of violating federal election law by not officially informing the F.E.C. that he planned to run again in 2024.Read Document 10 pagesAnn Ravel, a Democratic former commissioner at the F.E.C., said she found the complaint about Mr. Biden’s putative candidacy “persuasive.”Ms. Ravel, who has long been an outspoken critic of the commission, which consists of three members appointed by each of the two major political parties, added that “of all the government agencies, the F.E.C. is probably the most dysfunctional of all.”By law, a candidate is required to notify the commission within 15 days of deciding to run for federal office.Despite the F.E.C.’s dysfunction, the convention among presidents has been to obey the letter of the law while countermanding its spirit.Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden’s predecessor, exploded that convention through moves like holding his nominating convention on the White House grounds and failing to police violations of the Hatch Act, a law that governs political activities by presidential aides.In March, American Bridge, a group aligned with Democrats, lodged an F.E.C. complaint against Mr. Trump, accusing him of violating campaign finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 presidential bid without formally declaring himself a candidate. The group later sued the F.E.C. over the matter, claiming that the agency’s inaction gave Mr. Trump a competitive advantage.In a July interview with New York magazine, Mr. Trump said that “in my own mind, I’ve already made that decision, so nothing factors in anymore.” More

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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