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      Democrats Decried Dark Money in Politics, but Used It to Defeat Trump

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      A New York Times analysis reveals how the left outdid the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors to defeat Donald Trump and win power in Washington.For much of the last decade, Democrats complained — with a mix of indignation, frustration and envy — that Republicans and their allies were spending hundreds of millions of difficult-to-trace dollars to influence politics.“Dark money” became a dirty word, as the left warned of the threat of corruption posed by corporations and billionaires that were spending unlimited sums through loosely regulated nonprofits, which did not disclose their donors’ identities.Then came the 2020 election.Spurred by opposition to then-President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling even with and, by some measures, surpassing Republicans in 2020 spending, according to a New York Times analysis of tax filings and other data.The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 — compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the G.O.P.The findings reveal the growth and ascendancy of a shadow political infrastructure that is reshaping American politics, as megadonors to these nonprofits take advantage of loose disclosure laws to make multimillion-dollar outlays in total secrecy. Some good-government activists worry that the exploding role of undisclosed cash threatens to accelerate the erosion of trust in the country’s political system.Democrats’ newfound success in harnessing this funding also exposes the stark tension between their efforts to win elections and their commitment to curtail secretive political spending by the superrich.Spurred by opposition to President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal in 2020.Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesA single, cryptically named entity that has served as a clearinghouse of undisclosed cash for the left, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, received mystery donations as large as $50 million and disseminated grants to more than 200 groups, while spending a total of $410 million in 2020 — more than the Democratic National Committee itself.But nonprofits do not abide by the same transparency rules or donation limits as parties or campaigns — though they can underwrite many similar activities: advertising, polling, research, voter registration and mobilization and legal fights over voting rules.The scale of secret spending is such that, even as small donors have become a potent force in politics, undisclosed money dwarfed the 2020 campaign fund-raising of President Biden (who raised a record $1 billion) and Mr. Trump (who raised more than $810 million).Headed into the midterm elections, Democrats are warning major donors not to give in to the financial complacency that often afflicts the party in power, while Republicans are rushing to level the dark-money playing field to take advantage of what is expected to be a favorable political climate in 2022.At stake is not just control of Congress but also whether Republican donors will become more unified with Mr. Trump out of the White House. Two Republican secret-money groups focused on Congress said their combined fund-raising reached nearly $100 million in 2021 — far more than they raised in 2019. More

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      Republicans Relish Biden’s Troubles, Eyeing a Takeover of Congress

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      The president’s woes have delighted Republicans, who have been seeking to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of voters after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.WASHINGTON — Republicans on Capitol Hill are using President Biden’s failures to fuel their bid to retake control of Congress, focusing on his collapsing legislative agenda, his unfulfilled promise to “shut down” the coronavirus pandemic and rising voter anxieties over school closures and inflation as they seek a winning message for this year’s elections.Mr. Biden’s troubles have frustrated Democrats, prompting calls for a major course correction. At the same time, they have delighted Republicans, who have been intent on rehabilitating themselves in the eyes of voters after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year, which highlighted the party’s lurch toward extremism and its continuing rifts under the influence of former President Donald J. Trump.Now, after months of grappling with their party’s role in stoking the riot, the ongoing influence of Mr. Trump’s election lies and the rise of right-wing activists who risk alienating more mainstream conservative voters, Republicans believe they are finally in a position to capitalize on what they view as a historically advantageous environment.Many Republicans say they see no need for any course correction — or to put forward a positive agenda in an election year they say will boil down to a referendum on Mr. Biden.“I’ll let you know when we take it back,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said at a news conference this month when asked what his party’s agenda would look like if it won control of Congress. He added, “The election this fall is a referendum on this all-Democratic government.”With inflation at a 40-year high, Republicans have spotlighted so-called kitchen-table issues like rising gas and home heating costs. They have sought to undermine Mr. Biden’s most ambitious policy proposals by casting them as “reckless spending,” and they have gloated as Democrats have been unable to hold together to push them through. And they have highlighted the administration’s foreign policy setbacks, like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, in an effort to undercut Mr. Biden’s competence in the eyes of voters.Republicans have single-mindedly kept the focus on President Biden.Cheriss May for The New York Times“They’ve been like a bass drum in a band — it’s going on all the time,” Josh Holmes, a political adviser to Mr. McConnell, said of the Republicans and their stream of critiques. “Leadership has never gotten off on a tangent of talking about the 2020 election. They’ve been entirely forward-looking.”The message discipline could be foiled as the campaign season intensifies and Republican candidates seeking Mr. Trump’s endorsement embrace his false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. Mr. Trump has already denounced Republican lawmakers by name for voting to impeach him and to pass Mr. Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan.“They can try to hide and distract from Tump as much as they want, but the reality is you have a former president who is hitting the campaign trail twice a month,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for the Democratic National Committee. “He’s still out there, and he says crazy things and gets coverage.”A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.Chris Meagher, a White House spokesman, said Republicans were “rooting for inflation and don’t have a plan to address price increases for working families.” He added, “They don’t have a plan to beat back the pandemic or to grow jobs.”For Republicans, the biggest political fear is that they may be peaking too soon. In private meetings, some have raised the question of whether voters will still blame Mr. Biden for the prolonged pandemic in the fall if the Omicron wave subsides and supply chain issues dissipate.But for now, with Mr. Trump out of office and Mr. Biden struggling to energize the voters who elected him, Republicans are feeling optimistic.They have expressed glee over the decision by Democrats to take up voting rights legislation in a midterm election year, an ultimately losing legislative fight that left senators in the majority party struggling to explain arcane filibuster rules, while Republicans focused on more tangible topics like the price of a gallon of milk.“If I had one wish, it would be that the election would be today, because the political environment is so good for us,” said Richard Walters, the chief of staff for the Republican National Committee, pointing to Mr. Biden’s declining approval rating, which this month hit 41 percent in a Pew Research Center survey.Republican strategists note with optimism that no president in the past 70 years has ever improved his approval rating substantially after late January of a midterm election year. And while nominating a Supreme Court justice to succeed Justice Stephen G. Breyer offers Mr. Biden an opportunity to energize crucial Democratic constituencies, Republicans were quick to shrug it off given that it would not change the court’s conservative tilt.Republicans have single-mindedly kept the focus on Mr. Biden.In the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, has worked to keep his more incendiary members out of the news — with mixed success — and hammered away at the president.He has also tried to lay out what Republicans would do if they won control, releasing a “Parents Bill of Rights” that would give parents more say in their children’s curriculum and drawing up a list of investigations the House would open to scrutinize the Biden administration. He recently sought advice from former Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose “Contract With America” in 1994 encapsulated the Republican message as the party campaigned successfully to win control of the House that year.Mr. Gingrich, whose meeting with Mr. McCarthy was reported by The Washington Post, recently said on Fox News that if Republicans won this year, members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack could be jailed.In the Senate, Republican leaders have used regular news conferences, often attended by a majority of their members, as what they call “plug-and-play forums” to speak directly to voters at home about Mr. Biden and his party.Representative Kevin McCarthy has hammered away at the president while working to keep his more incendiary members out of the news.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“The role I see of the minority is to point out the fact that his administration is ignoring the needs of the American people,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, said in an interview.Mr. Barrasso said the concerns he had heard from constituents over this week’s recess had been left unaddressed in Washington.“Heating costs are up, grocery costs are up, and you have a president talking about spending all of this additional money and focusing on voting,” he said. “People asked me 23 different things, and voting ended up dead last.”Some lawmakers and top Republican strategists argue that with Mr. Biden’s numbers sagging and his policies floundering, he is doing their job for them.“When your opponents are hanging themselves, don’t cut the rope, and that’s what we see the Democrats doing here,” said Jeff Roe, the founder of Axiom Strategies, a political consulting firm that has worked for Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, both Republicans. “All we need to do is stay out of the way.”Republicans on Capitol Hill point to the withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer — a tumultuous period during which a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members — as the turning point for a once-popular administration. Internal Republican polls showed Mr. Biden losing six percentage points in his approval rating at that time, a decline that he has not managed to reverse.“Republicans have a lot of significant, deep problems, but Democrats have been so bad that it made it really easy to overlook them,” said Brendan Buck, a former adviser to the past two Republican speakers of the House, Paul D. Ryan and John A. Boehner. Republicans are still dealing with the culture wars and populism that may pose serious long-term demographic challenges, he said, but for now the Democrats have overshadowed those fissures.Mr. McCarthy, who is in line to be speaker if Republicans win the House, has been increasingly bullish about the prospect, predicting that 70 Democratic-held seats will be competitive.There are some bright spots for Mr. Biden. Democrats view his opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice as a chance for a change in focus and a moment for him to claim a high-profile victory. Mr. Biden has highlighted the 3.9 percent unemployment rate as part of the recovery he promised to Americans, and his top aides have underscored that he has overseen the strongest economic growth in decades.The Senate map for Democrats is also somewhat favorable; Mr. Biden won a majority of the battleground states with Senate races that are likely to decide control of the chamber.Ms. Hinojosa said Democrats must spend heavily in competitive states to tell voters the story of Mr. Biden’s accomplishments.“The White House realizes that and there’s a better-coordinated effort to do that than there has been in the past,” she said. “They’re just going to need to do it more aggressively.”But some Republicans believe it will be difficult for Mr. Biden to improve his standing.“The left is disappointed with him and the anti-Trump Republicans and independents thought they were going to get a moderate governing,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “I don’t know how resolving the pandemic is going to affect that fundamental reality that he is completely misplaying his hand.” More

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      Pennsylvania Court Says State’s Mail Voting Law Is Unconstitutional

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      The decision deals a temporary blow to voting access in a critical battleground state. Democrats pledged an appeal.A state court in Pennsylvania on Friday struck down the state’s landmark election law as unconstitutional, dealing a temporary blow to voting access in one of the nation’s most critical battleground states. The law, known as Act 77, was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, in 2019. It permitted no-excuse absentee voting, created a permanent mail-in voter list, reduced the voter registration deadline from 30 days to 15 and provided for $90 million in election infrastructure upgrades. It also eliminated straight ticket voting.The opinion from Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt, a Republican, sided with 14 Republican lawmakers who sued last year, arguing that the law was unconstitutional and that the legislature could not make alterations to voting laws without amending the constitution. The bipartisan law was praised by both sides when it was passed, but it became a target of conservatives during the 2020 election, as former President Donald J. Trump unspooled falsehoods and lies about mail-in voting. Eleven of the 14 lawmakers who sued to kill the law had voted for it in 2019.Democrats said they were not surprised that the Commonwealth Court, which they said leans Republican, ruled against the law, and they pledged an appeal to the state Supreme Court, which has sided with the state on voting issues both during and following the 2020 election. “This is just a continuation of attacking and undermining our electoral process,” said State Senator Jay Costa, the Democratic minority leader. He added that an appeal would be filed by the end of the day. “Act 77 will ultimately be deemed to be constitutional.” More

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      The Man at the Center of Arizona’s Primary Is Donald Trump

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      Spoiler alert: It’s Donald Trump.Senator Kyrsten Sinema has received so much attention recently that you might have forgotten that she’s not the Arizona Democrat up for re-election in 2022.That would be Senator Mark Kelly. As a freshman Democrat in a state that President Biden won by less than a percentage point in 2020, he’s one of four vulnerable incumbents whom Republicans are targeting as they seek to regain the majority in the U.S. Senate.If Republicans fail to knock off Kelly, a popular former astronaut with piles of campaign cash, it’ll be for one main reason, party strategists and pollsters tell us: A primary so consumed with winning Donald Trump’s blessing that the Republican Party sets itself up to lose the general election.“With the current electoral environment shaping up to be very pro-Republican, the only potential issue is that a hard-right candidate comes out of the primary and ends up losing in what should be a gimme Republican year,” said Mike Noble, an Arizona-based pollster.The obvious choice for a challenger to Kelly might have been Doug Ducey, Arizona’s Republican governor. He managed to win re-election in a brutal year for Republicans and is not allowed to run for a third term. But Ducey has steadfastly maintained he’s not interested in the Senate.That leaves a number of lesser-known Republicans to vie for the nomination. The best way to stand out? Obtaining the endorsement of Trump, which means making remarks or taking positions that could haunt them in November.First, there’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who’s worked in Arizona government for the last decade. But he faces intense pressure from Trump and from the Republican grass-roots to find fraud in his investigation of the 2020 election. At an Arizona rally earlier this month, Trump referred to his baseless claims that he actually won the state and told the crowd that he was “anxiously waiting” to see whether Brnovich would agree with him, and that they’d soon find out if the attorney general is a “good man.”Brnovich, apparently undeterred, posted on Twitter a photo of himself with Trump.Trump reserved a warmer reception for Blake Masters, calling him “a really terrific guy” at the rally. Masters — a venture capitalist backed by Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech mogul who’s close to Trump — has said that he believes Trump won in 2020 and that the country is being run by “psychopaths.”Then there’s Jim Lamon, a businessman whose campaign put $1 million behind a TV ad cheering “Let’s Go Brandon,” a far-right slogan that translates to an expletive directed at Biden. Lamon also helped facilitate Republicans’ post-mortem review of the 2020 election results in the state’s most populous county.All of these efforts to win the former president’s support could backfire in the fall if Democrats are able to anchor the eventual nominee to Trump.“Yes, it’s a big benefit and help during the primary due to Trump’s current influence over the electorate,” Noble said. “However, it is absolutely a weakness when they move into the all-important general election.”It’s ‘the Republicans’ to lose’Before we go any further, let’s make one thing clear: Given the national environment, Republicans should have a natural advantage in a state that Biden won so narrowly.It’s not just that the party in the White House tends to struggle in the first midterm election of a president’s term, or that the president’s approval ratings are hovering in the low 40s. It’s also that Biden inherited a pandemic and all the economic and social fallout that came with it. And that Arizona was ruby red only a few short years ago, suggesting that Kelly’s three-point margin in 2020 could be easy enough to erase.“It’s absolutely the Republicans’ to lose,” Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican consultant, said of the race.Republicans are confident that whoever becomes their nominee will enter the race against Kelly in a strong position to win.“​​Voters and persuadable swing voters will be inclined to want to vote for someone who’s going to be a check and a balance on the Biden administration,” said Daniel Scarpinato, a former chief of staff to Ducey.Proceeding with cautionArizona elected two Democratic senators during Trump’s term and ultimately voted to oust him in 2020. And even in a national environment that could lift Republicans to the majority, they could still find ways to lose.Scarpinato said he hasn’t seen candidates engage in behavior that would “tear the party apart or put people in a position where they’re perceived as being unelectable.”But he cautioned that Republicans can’t become so preoccupied with fighting one another in the primary — which is not until August — that they delay their attacks against Kelly.“They need to start now,” Scarpinato said.One Republican national strategist involved in Senate races told us that the top concern for many in his party is that the eventual nominee drains all their resources on the primary, leaving them cash-strapped against Kelly, who ended last year with nearly $20 million in his campaign account.And while others noted that while Republican-aligned outside groups such as the Club for Growth could make up any gaps in spending, money is likely one reason that many Republicans keep hoping Ducey changes his mind and decides to run, Noble said.Ducey was re-elected in 2018 even as Democrats won a Senate seat in Arizona for the first time in decades. He’s already proven he can put together a top-tier statewide campaign operation. But Ducey has said publicly and privately that he’s not running, and it’s easy to see why: He’d have to get through a Republican primary and general election without the support of Trump, who blames him for losing the state in 2020. Just a few weeks ago, Trump reiterated in a statement that Ducey would never have his “endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”One of the great unknowns in the 2022 election is the effect of the president’s approval rating. If it stays in the low 40s, Kelly could be ousted no matter how skilled a campaign he runs, or how bumbling an opponent he faces.“He has to carry around Joe Biden like a sack of potatoes wherever he goes,” said Stan Barnes, a Republican strategist based in Phoenix.What to readSome Democrats hope that nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court will help solidify support from Black voters in the midterms, Trip Gabriel reports.The confirmation process will test Senator Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.In his latest Congressional Memo, Carl Hulse asks if the Democrats’ new voting bill talks are for real — or for show.The economy is growing faster than it has in decades, so why aren’t voters rewarding Biden for it? Here’s what economists told Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman.This is more of a recommendation on what to do tonight: Try gerrymandering an imaginary state in this online game created by Ella Koeze, Denise Lu and Charlie Smart.Justice Thomas, left, has been mistakenly referred to as Chief Justice, the position John Roberts, right, holds.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOne more thing …A lighthearted moment accidentally illuminated some important dynamics on the Supreme Court — more consequential, perhaps, than the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.In oral arguments last week in a case about whether Boston can stop a private group from flying a Christian flag in front of its City Hall, a lawyer for the plaintiffs was addressing Clarence Thomas, a deeply conservative associate justice who joined the court in 1991.“Chief —” the lawyer, Mathew Staver, began, before correcting himself and continuing, “Justice Thomas.”The little-noticed hiccup came after a flood of recent commentary and reporting on Thomas’s growing influence after years on the margins of the court.Last year, Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, observed in an opinion essay that “what is remarkable is the extent to which the Supreme Court, with the addition of three Donald Trump nominees who create a 6-to-3 conservative majority, seems to be reshaping itself in Justice Thomas’s image.”This is the one thing that pundits of opposite political leanings seem to agree on: Liberals have lamented Thomas’s role as “the new chief justice,” while conservatives, including the influential Wall Street Journal editorial page, have hailed “the Thomas court.”It’s not the first time someone has made the same error. In March of last year, when a lawyer in another case mistakenly called Thomas “Mr. Chief Justice,” the actual chief justice — John Roberts — joked, “There’s no opening.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Some Democrats Search for New Message on Virus

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      Democrats were cheered for strict lockdowns and pandemic precautions. Now many weary voters want to hear the party’s plan for living with the coronavirus.When the coronavirus pandemic first swept Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf closed stores and schools and ordered millions of citizens to stay home. Even four months into the crisis in 2020, all but “life-sustaining” businesses in much of the state were locked down.Today, the virus is ravaging Pennsylvania again, like much of the country, with hospitalization numbers nearing or exceeding those during the worst months of the pandemic.Yet Mr. Wolf, a Democrat whose party desperately wants to keep control of his seat in the midterm elections, has no intention of returning to the strict measures of two years ago. There are no plans for mask mandates or more virtual schooling. Pennsylvanians, the governor said, crave a return to normalcy.“I think everybody’s angry,” said Mr. Wolf, who is ineligible to run again this year. “It’s been two years now. We’re fatigued and ready to move on. I think a lot of the political vectors are reflecting that.”Around the country, Democratic elected officials who in the pandemic’s early phase shut down cities and states more aggressively than most Republicans did — and saw their popularity soar — are using a different playbook today. Despite the deadly wave fueled by the Omicron variant, Democratic officials are largely skipping mask mandates and are fighting to keep schools open, sometimes in opposition to health care workers and their traditional allies in teachers’ unions.The shift reflects a potential change in the nature of the threat now that millions of Americans are vaccinated and Omicron appears to be causing less serious disease. But it is also a political pivot. Democrats are keenly aware that Americans — including even some of the party’s loyal liberal voters — have changed their attitudes about the virus and that it could be perilous to let Republicans brand the Democrats the party of lockdowns and mandates.“You’ll see more Democratic elected officials say that this is our forever now and we can’t live our lives sitting rocking in a corner,” said Brian Stryker, a partner at the polling firm ALG Research, whose work on Virginia’s elections last year indicated that school closures hurt Democrats. “We’ve just got to live with this virus.”The warning signs for Democrats are manifest. For the first year of the pandemic, Democratic governors in politically divided states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina responded aggressively to the pandemic and won high marks from voters of both parties. The issue was critical to President Biden’s victory in 2020.Today President Biden’s overall approval, which has fallen into dangerous territory for any party in a midterm election year, is being kept down in part because of disappointment over his performance on coronavirus. Fewer than half of Americans approved of his handling of the pandemic in a CBS News/YouGov survey last week, down from 66 percent who approved in July.Now that vaccines have been proven effective, Americans have lower tolerance for restrictions, strategists and elected officials said. While schools are largely open in the United States, many families are still dealing with the fallout of two years of classroom disruptions, including loss of learning, mental health problems and millions of parents who were driven out of the work force.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.A survey conducted this month by USA Today and Suffolk University found that while majorities of Democratic voters supported policies like vaccination mandates and masking, only 43 percent backed shifting schools to remote learning.Voters frequently complain of changing advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as on-again, off-again mask orders in many places.Lynn Saragosa said that the changing advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the on-again, off-again mask orders in many places were confusing.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“The rules are confusing,” said Lynn Saragosa, a resident of La Mirada, Calif., just along the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. “You go one place and see one thing, but it’s very different someplace else — it becomes very divided and we’re arguing over every single decision.”Ms. Saragosa, 58, a Democrat who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said she was unlikely to vote in the midterms, even though some of California’s most competitive congressional races will take place in Orange County.Ms. Saragosa represents one of Democrats’ biggest fears heading into the midterms, when control of Congress and key governors’ mansions are at stake. The Democrats already begin at a disadvantage, as the party that holds the White House often loses seats during the first midterm elections. If malaise over the pandemic further slackens turnout, it will add to Democrats’ headwinds.Some Democratic officeholders say they’re ready to defend their actions, noting that by closing businesses and schools they slowed the spread of the coronavirus and saved lives. But Republican candidates have vowed to make the shutdowns central in races from school board to governor to the Senate.“They will pay the price in the next election,” said Lou Barletta, a Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania who blames Democrats, rather than the virus, for damage to businesses and loss of learning. “Nobody’s going to forget businesses who couldn’t open again or people who lost their jobs. That doesn’t get erased from memory. Not to mention a year’s education was stolen away from our children.”In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory in November as a Republican was fueled in part by parents fed up with school closures and mask mandates for their children. Around the country, long-term school closures, which disproportionately occurred in Democratic-run states and cities, has turned off even some progressive voters.Kim McGair, a lawyer and a normally staunch Democrat in Portland, Ore., said she felt “utterly betrayed” by her party, which she believes abandoned parents and students. “I will not vote for a Democrat who was silent or complicit on school closures, which is the vast majority of them here,” Ms. McGair said. But she also cannot picture herself casting a ballot for a Republican, a situation she describes as being “politically homeless.”In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, imposed some of the nation’s strictest stay-at-home orders early in the pandemic. Angry protesters who waved Tea Party flags at the State Capitol in April 2020, while former President Donald J. Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan,” were one of the first signs of politicization of the pandemic.Ms. Whitmer, facing another deadly surge of the virus in her state and a tough re-election fight this fall, was pressed recently about why she hadn’t issued new statewide orders. Her response was defensive, but telling: “Like what?” she said to a Detroit TV interviewer. The existence of vaccines meant that the “blunt tools” used in 2020 to fight the pandemic were not needed, the governor said.Though broad shutdowns and mandates are off the table in many places — sometimes because of court decisions — Democrats have used other tools lately, including aggressively promoting vaccines, opening testing centers and deploying strike teams to beleaguered hospitals.One model of how Democrats might speak to the new mood of voters is in Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis has been unusually blunt in saying that it is time to treat the coronavirus as a manageable disruption, more like the flu. Last month he told Coloradans that if they were unvaccinated and wound up in the hospital, it was their “own darn fault.” Regarding masks, he said that state health authorities had no business telling people “what to wear.”The coronavirus was now something “we live with,” Mr. Polis said in an interview. “We will be living with it in three years. We’ll be living with it in five years. We have to learn how to empower people to protect themselves.”He looks forward to a time soon when the virus is “endemic,” meaning that it will circulate in the population, but people will carry on without major disruptions to their lives.Scientists say it’s possible that Omicron, because of its lightning spread, is setting the stage for that return to normalcy, although they also warn that more variants — and more upheaval — could be ahead.Still, “live with it” is hardly the message Mr. Biden delivered on July 4, when cases were low. At the time, the president declared that the country was “closer than ever to declaring our independence” from the virus.Asked recently if the coronavirus was “here to stay,” Mr. Biden acknowledged that it would never be wiped out but said he believed Americans could control it.To merely battle the virus to a truce, rather than to defeat it triumphantly, might strike some voters as less of a victory than the president promised. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Biden’s campaign, said that the president and his party were paying a political price for an unpredictable pandemic.“This up and down is really taking a toll, and it’s taking a toll on all elected officials,” she said. “Voters appreciate Biden’s style, they appreciate that he listens to the science, but people are just so frustrated that it’s always going to seem like too little too late.”“They wanted to believe if we all did the right thing we could make this better immediately,” she said. More

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      Joe Biden Would Like to Know What Your Problem Is

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      Doug Mills/The New York TimesBret Stephens: Gail, that was one long presidential news conference last week. If Joe Biden wanted to show he has stamina, I guess he proved it. Otherwise, how did you think it went?Gail Collins: Bret, I really, really wish I could give three cheers and a few fireworks here, but I have to admit it … could have been better.Bret: It reminded me of the scene in some old movie where the car takes the wrong turn on a foggy night. It could have used some background music, like the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” Let’s hope the next song won’t be “The End.”Gail: As you know, I try to steer clear of foreign policy, but I was shocked that the president didn’t seem to have a good answer on the Russia-Ukraine issue.Bret: It was exactly the kind of thing we might have expected of Donald Trump but that we elected Biden not to do — mindless verbal blundering leading to potentially catastrophic real-world consequences, like Dean Acheson’s infamous Korea gaffe, when he omitted South Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia in a speech just a few months before the North invaded in 1950. I hate to think of Vladimir Putin pondering just what kind of “minor” invasion of Ukraine will serve his interests best.My bigger beef with Biden’s presser is that he didn’t seem to grasp the need to reboot his presidency. Contrary to what the president is suggesting, his administration isn’t suffering from a failure to communicate, “Cool Hand Luke”-style. It’s suffering from a failure to execute, in part because it set unrealistic legislative goals, in part because it screwed up the delivery. It’s why the president needs a new team, starting with the chief of staff position.Your thoughts?Gail: You’re referring to Ron Klain — who is either a Biden old hand with the drive and connections to help muscle the infrastructure bill through Congress or the out-of-touch liberal who persuaded the president to go for a way-too-ambitious social agenda.Klain deserves sympathy for his goals — and plight. Still, I’m kinda heartless on this front. Biden needs a turnaround, and if a high-profile internal shake-up will make the country feel as if it’s opening a new chapter, let’s go for it — whether Klain is the real problem or not.Your nomination for a replacement would be …Bret: Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, who I think could be to a Biden White House what Leon Panetta was to Clinton’s or Howard Baker to Reagan’s. Another name that comes to mind would be Evan Bayh, the former senator from Indiana and another Midwestern Democrat with moderate instincts whose experience Biden would respect.Gail: You’ve mentioned Daschle before. But give me details on your thinking.Bret: Biden needs someone who is more of a peer than a subordinate. He needs someone who can check his worst impulses, above all his cocksureness. He needs someone who can do some Clintonian triangulation by picking a few popular fights with the far left while going to war with the Josh Hawleys of the far right. He needs someone who can help struggling Democratic incumbents in the midterms. Above all, Biden needs someone who can get clear legislative wins.Gail: Sounds good so far …Bret: Three yards and a cloud of dust moves the football a heck of a lot further than one missed Hail Mary pass after another, which is the way the administration has operated since the summer.Gail: Bret, this is generally the point where you tell the administration to stop thinking about universal early childhood education or clamping down on the prescription drug industry.Are we there now?Bret: Maybe the president should settle on one or two progressive policy goals, not a dozen of them. The alternative is a Republican Congress in a year and a Republican president in three years. How does President DeSantis sound to you?Gail: Well, you can guess. Totally apart from his right-wing agenda, we’re talking about a guy who’s crusaded against vaccine mandates while refusing to say whether he’s been boosted himself.But let me ask you the same question. I know you’d never vote for Donald Trump even if the Democrats nominated Felix the Cat. But what about Ron DeSantis? Is he on the Trump level for you? Slightly better? Even worse?Bret: The litmus test for me is whether a Republican will clearly denounce Trump for Jan. 6 and the whole big-lie election meshugas. DeSantis seems to have pressed the mute button on that score, which pretty much loses me at hello. The anti-vaccine-mandate attitude bothers me less: I have my own doubts about the wisdom and efficacy of a mandate.Gail: Always good to hear you say something I disagree with.Bret: People should be kindly encouraged to get vaccinated. Businesses and schools should also be able to require vaccines, on the “our house, our rules” principle. And I have no objection to regular testing. But government mandates are a different matter, especially considering the fact that fully vaccinated people can still transmit the virus. If the primary justification for a mandate is to make better health choices for people who won’t make the choices for themselves, I think that’s a basic infringement on individual freedom.Gail: Gonna argue with you there, but first, finish your thoughts.Bret: About the next election, if the fourth year of the Biden administration resembles the first, particularly when it comes to inflation, I’ll be hard-pressed to vote for him. And so, I suspect, will many of the people who supported him last time.Which brings me to my latest hobby horse, which is to get Biden to announce early that he won’t run again so other Democrats can start exploring a run. Critics of the idea think it turns him into a lame duck, but I think it would look statesmanlike and actually strengthen his hand. Am I wrong?Gail: I’ve been thinking about that, and at this point I’d say yeah, you’re wrong. If he officially announces he’s out this early in the game, it’ll kick off a two-and-a-half-year campaign for the nomination. In the age of the internet that’s just … too long.As far as strengthening Biden’s hand, I just don’t see it. We’re talking more than 35 months of lame duck.Bret: Isn’t every re-elected president an automatic lame duck, because they can’t run for a third term? Biden can still get a lot done in 35 months, without sitting on the rest of the Democratic Party like a wet blanket on a cold day. And we can all stop pretending that we’re totally OK with the idea of an 86-year-old president, which is what Biden would be at the end of a second term.Gail: Yeah, I see your point. But I don’t see why he should do an official announcement yet. If you don’t have to be a lame duck, why volunteer to hobble when you waddle?Bret: A line for the ages, Gail. But how much longer will voters put up with his twaddle?Gail: Back to the vaccine mandate for a minute: We have hospitals all around the country at crisis capacity. If a loved one has to have treatment for a serious condition or an all-out emergency, he or she’s going to be battling for attention and space with Covid cases. A large chunk of whom would not be sick if they had gotten their shots.Bret: Definitely a fair point. Though it works both ways: Vaccine mandates have led to thousands of health care workers being fired or walking off the job, which compounds the very problem you’re describing.Gail: I really think there’s enough of a public health issue to justify a mandate. It’s not like people are going to be rounded up and dragged to a clinic.Bret: True. But they might be let go from their jobs. I don’t think that helps persuade them to get vaccinated: It just angers, marginalizes and probably radicalizes them. It’s an invitation to further Trumpify the nation. Also, I think people have a basic right to make bad personal decisions about their own health, even knowing that their choices can have adverse effects on other people. Otherwise, we should also ban drinking, which didn’t work out so well, last time we tried it.It’s not a bad argument for drug legalization, either, though that may be a subject for another time.Gail: Putting down a marker to return to that subject, repeatedly.Meanwhile, I know it’s early in the game but I want to get back to your drawing the line at voting for a Biden re-election. Not that I think it’s a good idea for him to run — but we have to discuss my conviction that voting for some third-party candidate, or leaving a race blank on the ballot, is always a bad idea.Bret: I like having choices as a voter. I’d never vote for Trump or a Trumpian, but if the Democrats can’t get their act together and learn how to govern, Felix the Cat sounds like the right write-in candidate for me.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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      Arizona Democrats Censure Sinema After Filibuster Vote

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      Kyrsten Sinema, a first-term Arizona senator, was rebuked by fellow Democrats in her state after her vote on the filibuster helped sink the party’s voting-rights legislation.PHOENIX — A rift between Senator Kyrsten Sinema and fellow Democrats back home in Arizona deepened on Saturday as the state party formally rebuked Ms. Sinema for refusing to change the Senate’s filibuster rules to pass sweeping voting rights legislation.The censure from the party’s executive board was symbolic, but it crystallized a growing sense of anger and frustration among liberal activists and Democratic voters aimed at Ms. Sinema.They accuse Ms. Sinema, a first-term senator, of impeding key parts of President Biden’s agenda, and have vowed to withhold donations and search for a liberal primary challenger when she is up for re-election in two years. Activists have staged protests outside her office and begun a hunger strike to urge Ms. Sinema to support changing the Senate rules to allow voting-rights legislation to pass with a simple majority of the 100 senators rather than the 60 votes required under Senate rules.But she has steadfastly refused, and reiterated her opposition to scrapping the filibuster in a Jan. 13 speech on the Senate floor, arguing that the parliamentary tactic “has been used repeatedly to protect against wild swings in federal policy.”Ms. Sinema said that she supported the Democratic voting-rights legislation, but that she believed doing away with the filibuster would worsen America’s political divisions.The opposition from Ms. Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia to changing the 60-vote threshold required in the Senate to move major legislation forward has all but doomed the Democrats’ hopes of passing federal voting legislation.The Arizona Democratic chairwoman, Raquel Terán, said on Saturday that the party’s executive board had voted for the censure because of Ms. Sinema’s “failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of democracy.”State Representative Raquel Terán during a vote on the Arizona Budget in Phoenix last year.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressMs. Terán said voting rights were already being threatened in Arizona, and cited Republican proposals to limit mail-in voting and a widely criticized Republican-run audit of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and 60 percent of the state’s registered voters. Democrats nationally cite a barrage of Republican legislation aimed at the rules for voting, as well as counting and certifying votes as a fundamental threat to American democracy.“The ramifications of failing to pass federal legislation that protects their right to vote are too large and far-reaching,” Ms. Terán said in a statement.Hannah Hurley, a spokeswoman for Ms. Sinema, said in a statement that Ms. Sinema had been consistent about her opposition to changing the filibuster.“Kyrsten has always promised Arizonans she would be an independent voice for the state — not for either political party,” Ms. Hurley said. “She’s delivered for Arizonans and has always been honest about where she stands.”Arizona’s other senator, Mark Kelly, also a Democrat, said last week that he would support weakening the filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation.Ms. Sinema, a onetime Green Party-affiliated activist, has won praise from Republicans and infuriated Democrats by bucking her own party as a senator who represents a closely divided swing state.In being censured by her own party, she joins a club that includes former Senator John McCain, former Senator Jeff Flake and the state’s sitting Republican governor, Doug Ducey, who have all been censured by the Arizona State Republican Party.Barrett Marson, a Republican political strategist, said that those censures of prominent Arizona Republicans by their own party had little effect, and that he doubted the censure alone would hurt Ms. Sinema’s political fortunes. But, he said Ms. Sinema’s problems go far deeper than the censure vote.“The censure in and of itself means absolutely nothing,” Mr. Marson said. “It’s a feckless move. However, Senator Sinema certainly has a broader problem than just a censure from the party faithful.”Those problems include fierce discontent among Democratic voters, who have signaled that they might prefer a liberal alternative to Ms. Sinema, such as Representative Ruben Gallego, a Phoenix congressman some activists are hoping to draft into a primary.The fund-raising group Emily’s List, a major supporter of Ms. Sinema in her 2018 run for Senate, has also threatened to pull its support, and she has recorded flagging numbers among her Democratic base in recent polls.A new survey of Arizona voters, conducted this month, but not yet released, by OH Predictive Insights, a Phoenix polling and research firm, found a 30-point gulf in support for Arizona’s senators among Democrats. While 74 percent of Democrats said they had favorable views of Mr. Kelly, just 42 percent of Democrats felt the same about Ms. Sinema. At the same time, the survey also found some evidence that Ms. Sinema could be vulnerable among the wider electorate as well. On the whole, by a nine-point margin, voters said they viewed her unfavorably, while they were about evenly split on their opinions of Mr. Kelly. “To be under all this pressure for so long, and she hasn’t wavered — you’ve got to give a little credit for that,” said Mike Noble, the chief of research at OH Predictive Insights. “But she’s not going to be on a lot of people’s Christmas card lists next year.” More

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      What Mattered This Week

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      President Biden rebooted. Democrats feuded. And Republicans watched it all with glee.It was another difficult stretch for Democrats. Their voting rights bills ran into a wall in the Senate, provoking angry sniping within their own ranks. Things got so heated that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to remind her unruly caucus members to “be respectful” of their colleagues.Elsewhere, the contours of the 2022 midterms grew more clearly defined. Candidates in the year’s marquee races for governor flaunted big fund-raising numbers, while Democrats running in primaries for congressional seats edged away from Washington.And, perhaps most importantly, the White House overhauled its political strategy as the president marked his first year in office.Biden hits the reset buttonThere’s a ritual for unpopular presidents that goes something like this: Trudge out in front of the White House press corps and let reporters bat you around for a while. Tell them you’re aware of the discontent throughout the country. That you get it. That you aren’t satisfied with the way things are going either.Maybe you just need to explain your policies better. Maybe you’ve been consulting with outside advisers. Maybe you have a plan to turn things around, to get out of the Washington bubble.This week, President Biden, polling in the low 40s and stymied on Capitol Hill, followed the script more faithfully than most. During a two-hour news conference, he defended his record but also took repeated bites of humble pie:“I know there’s a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country.”“I call it a job not yet finished.”“Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.”“I understand the overwhelming frustration, fear and concern with regard to inflation and Covid. I get it.”A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.“I’ve made many mistakes, I’m sure.”Another way to read Biden’s remarks: a plea for patience.“Voters have this false sense of immediacy, and that has created this expectation that things can be solved in a very short period of time,” said Silas Lee, a Democratic pollster who worked on the Biden campaign in 2020. “You have to manage expectations.”As our colleagues noted in a White House memo this week, Biden is also planning another tried-and-true Washington tactic: distancing himself from Congress.And while it might be hard for “President Senator” to let go of a place he served for four decades, Democrats told us it’s a political necessity:“He has vast power in the regulatory, law enforcement and foreign policy realms,” Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said. “He can do a lot without Congress.”“Biden needs to grab control of the conversation by utilizing fully the latent powers of the executive branch,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project.“He’s a creature of the Senate and he needs to leave the Senate behind,” said John Morgan, a Florida trial lawyer and a top donor to Biden. “He should never go back.”Abortion rights groups shift on the filibusterIn June, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona published an Op-Ed in The Washington Post arguing that it would be a mistake for Democrats to ditch the filibuster. What if, she asked, Republicans defunded “women’s reproductive health services” — e.g., Planned Parenthood — once they took back the Senate?At the time, Sinema was speaking for many in the abortion rights community, which quietly opposed eliminating a tool that could stop federal laws restricting abortion from passing by 51-vote majorities.This week, in a striking shift, several powerful abortion rights groups loudly rejected Sinema’s argument. To varying degrees, Emily’s List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights all said they supported changing the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University who studies women’s movements, described the change in their stance as a recognition that these groups now see “abortion rights and the scaffolding of democracy to be intertwined.” It was no coincidence, she said, that “the states that have been most aggressive in limiting the right to vote are the very same states that have the most aggressive abortion laws.”Democrats turn on their ownProgressives in the House and Senate have long railed against Sinema and her fellow pro-filibuster Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. What’s new is that Democratic candidates in red states are following suit.A recent fund-raising email from Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat running for Senate in Ohio, read that “Joe Manchin killed Build Back Better” and blamed Sinema’s vote against filibuster reform for “killing our chance to pass voting rights.” And then it asked for campaign contributions to expand the Democratic majority.“Tim has always been clear that he’ll work with anyone, and stand up to anyone — including members of his own party — to make our government work better for working people here in Ohio,” Ryan’s spokesperson, Izzi Levy, told us.Ryan is the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination — he doesn’t need to prove his progressive bona fides to win a primary before launching into a more centrist statewide campaign.But it’s not just Ryan. In Iowa, former Representative Abby Finkenauer, a front-runner in the Democratic primary to take on Senator Chuck Grassley, called Sinema a “sellout.” And Stacey Abrams, who’s virtually guaranteed to win the Democratic nomination for governor in Georgia, lumped Manchin and Sinema with the Senate Republican conference: “52 Senators — two Democrats and all Republicans — failed their voters.”A Democratic ad takes on inflationThe subtext of an ad for Alex Lasry, running for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, seems to be that he can win over voters who have soured on Biden.Lasry for WisconsinAn ad from the crowded Democratic Senate primary in Wisconsin caught our attention this week for showing how candidates might distance themselves from an unpopular president.The spot, by Alex Lasry, a Milwaukee Bucks executive, doesn’t shy away from the economic problems pulling down Biden’s poll numbers: supply-chain shortages and surging inflation. Lasry calls for keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States, a proposal in keeping with the state’s long tradition of populism.“That’s exactly how we built the Bucks Arena,” he says in the ad, “by having 80 percent of the materials come from Wisconsin” and “paying higher wages.” For good measure, he adds that he’d “finally stand up to China,” too.Lasry is one of four Democrats leading the primary field, which also includes Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.The subtext of his pitch seems to be that he’s the one who can win over voters who have soured on Biden — a bold move since midterms tend to be a referendum on the party in power.What to readIn a first for the Biden administration’s new Election Threats Task Force, the Justice Department charged a Texas man with publicly calling for the assassination of Georgia’s election officials on the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Reid J. Epstein reports.Joe Biden is no F.D.R., Nate Cohn says. “The decision to prioritize the goals of his party’s activist base over the issues prioritized by voters is more reminiscent of the last half-century of politically unsuccessful Democratic presidents,” he writes.In Opinion, Ezra Klein spoke at length with Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff.At the March for Life in Washington, Kate Zernike and Madeleine Ngo found that the annual anti-abortion rally “took on the tone of a celebration” this year as protesters “anticipated the Supreme Court overturning the decision that established a constitutional right to abortion half a century ago.”The White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, gave interviews to discuss Biden’s first year in office.Doug Mills/The New York TimesKlain steps into the klieg lightsWe’ll regularly feature work by Doug Mills, The Times’s longtime White House photographer and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Here’s what Doug had to say about capturing the shot above:I stuck around last night outside the White House and took photos of Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, as he did a round of interviews on the anniversary of Biden taking office. Klain, a backstage operator so powerful that some aides jokingly refer to him as the “prime minister,” is someone we rarely see. He almost never goes to White House events, and if he does, he’s always wearing a mask.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More