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      Just How Bad Is It Out There for Democrats?

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      Democratic support has plunged nationally in recent months. Exactly how far it has fallen is hotly debated in both parties.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.In the heady aftermath of Republicans winning the Virginia governorship this month, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who hopes to become speaker after the 2022 midterm elections, made a bold claim at the Capitol.“If you’re a Democrat and President Biden won your seat by 16 points, you’re in a competitive race next year,” McCarthy declared. “You are no longer safe.”It was, by most measures, more bullish hyperbole than sincere prognostication. There are 276 House seats that Biden won by less than that — far more than Republicans have held in nearly a century. (As of now, Democrats hold a narrow 221-213 majority.)But there was also an undisputed truth undergirding McCarthy’s braggadocio: Democratic support has plunged nationally in recent months. The party’s loss in Virginia was just the most consequential example.Exactly how far and fast Democratic popularity has fallen is hotly debated in both parties.Virginia was one key data point: The election showed a Republican improvement of 12 percentage points, from Biden’s win in the state a year ago by 10 points to Democrats’ loss of the governorship this month by two points. The governor’s race in New Jersey swung toward Republicans by a similar margin.Still, few strategists, Democrat or Republican, believe the Democratic brand’s collapse nationally has been quite that complete and widespread.Among campaign insiders, one popular measurement that is closely tracked to gauge the mood of the electorate is the “generic ballot test.” That is when pollsters ask voters whom they would prefer to serve in Congress — a Democrat or a Republican, with no names attached.For years, Democrats continuously have held an edge in this metric.Until now.For the first time since January 2016, Republicans are now preferred, according to the FiveThirtyEight public polling average. FiveThirtyEight’s average has swung 4.6 points in the last six months toward the G.O.P.Just how bad is it out there for the Democrats? A Washington Post/ABC News poll last weekend showed Republicans in the strongest position on this measure in the poll’s four-decade history. On Thursday, a poll from Quinnipiac University of registered voters said 46 percent wanted G.O.P. control of the House, compared with 41 percent for Democrats.The same trend is showing up in private surveys. The National Republican Congressional Committee’s internal polling this month showed that Republicans in battleground districts had improved by seven percentage points since the beginning of the year. So-called generic Republicans began the year three points behind Democrats; now they are ahead by four points.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s generic ballot testing this month also shows Democrats trailing — albeit by two points. Party officials said that actually was an improvement from some other recent months. The D.C.C.C. declined to say what its polling showed at the start of the year.Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who is chairman of the House Republican campaign arm, said in an interview that the N.R.C.C.’s private polling at the start of the year measured Biden’s approval rating as 10 percentage points higher than his disapproval rating. Now, Emmer said, it’s the reverse: Biden’s disapproval is 10 points higher.Emmer offered a less hyperbolic version of McCarthy’s prediction of exactly how many Democrats are at risk in 2022. “The experts are telling me that any Democrat who sits in a seat Joe Biden won by 10 points or less a year ago is vulnerable,” Emmer said.That is still roughly 250 seats. “We will win the majority,” Emmer said flatly, “but we’re going to let the voters tell us how big that’s going to be.”The indicators for Democrats are not quite as sour everywhere.My colleague Nate Cohn wrote earlier this week in the newsletter about two House special elections in Ohio, where Democrats finished only about three percentage points behind Biden’s performance.That is erosion, but it’s not as politically catastrophic.And in Pennsylvania, a Supreme Court vacancy was contested with millions of dollars in spending. In some ways, the contest functionally pitted a generic Democrat against a generic Republican, because even the most engaged voters know little to nothing about candidates for the judiciary.The Republican candidate won by 2.6 percentage points — in a state Biden carried by 1.2 points in 2020. That represented a nearly four-point improvement for Republicans.To summarize, various data points show a range of possibility for Democratic decline: somewhere between three to 12 percentage points. None of the possible outcomes bode well for holding the House in 2022 or maintaining control of a Senate now equally divided between 50 Democratic-aligned senators and 50 Republicans.Perhaps what is giving Democrats the most solace is the calendar. It is 2021 still and not 2022.Democrats also hope they will have more to sell in the coming year — Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure package on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, and a $1.85 trillion social policy and climate change bill is winding its way through Congress — and more time to sell it.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the D.C.C.C., has pushed for both the president and Democratic members of Congress to more forcefully pitch what they have already passed this year. As he told my colleague Trip Gabriel this month: “My message is ‘free Joe Biden.’ That campaign needs to start now before the next crisis takes over the news cycle.”Maloney said it was understandable that voters hadn’t given Democrats credit for the large economic recovery measure that passed earlier in the year or for the new infrastructure spending.“We don’t expect them to know if we don’t tell them,” he said this week on Capitol Hill. “So we’re going to tell them.”Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.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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      The N.Y. Governor’s Race Is Wide Open, and Democrats Are Rushing In

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      Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, became the latest Democrat to enter the 2022 race for governor.On a weekend swing through Southern California, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, wooed corporate donors to join a new fund-raising initiative aimed at helping her become the nation’s first Black female governor.Closer to home, Gov. Kathy Hochul — her campaign accounts already swelling with more than $11 million — waded into Ms. James’s political backyard on Sunday, preaching from the pulpits of Black churches in vote-rich Brooklyn and Queens about the scourges of the coronavirus and gun violence.Two days later, Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, New York City’s public advocate, formalized his bid for governor, using a campaign launch video to position himself as an activist with the most authoritative claim to the race’s increasingly crowded left lane.“Without courageous progressive leadership, the way things have always been will stand in the way of what they can be,” he said in the video.Three months after Ms. Hochul’s unexpected ascension as the state’s first female governor, next year’s Democratic primary contest is now veering toward something New York has not seen in decades: a freewheeling intraparty battle among some of the state’s best-known political figures.The race, which has played out in recent weeks from the beaches of Puerto Rico to West Hollywood, Calif., and will culminate in June, will test traditional racial, geographic and ideological coalitions in a liberal stronghold, setting up one of the most high-profile Democratic primary battles in the nation as a midterm election year arrives.“Like me, so many people are going to grapple with this really, really hard,” said Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president.The melee in the making has already inspired a mix of anticipation and wariness among party leaders.For some left-wing officials and activists, the profusion of possible nominees has stirred memories of this year’s mayoral primary, when they struggled to coalesce around one candidate, and Eric Adams, a relative moderate, triumphed. This time around there is a real commitment, officials say, to unite behind one contender early — most likely Ms. James or Mr. Williams — though that may be easier said than done.Mr. Williams, the New York City public advocate, lost to Ms. Hochul in 2018 in a race for lieutenant governor.Anna Watts for The New York TimesMore moderate leaders are voicing worries, too, warning that after this month’s stinging electoral losses for Democrats in New York and across the country, nominating someone seen as too far to the left could put the party’s hold on Albany at risk. Some have pointed to the losses to argue for their own brands of politics.Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive who is thought to be considering a number of statewide offices, said the drubbing his party took on Long Island “was a message to the Democratic Party.” He added: “If our party is not sounding the alarm now, in advance of the midterms, I think we’re in for a very tough time ahead.”The tensions were on vivid display just after Election Day as New York’s political elite — including every potential candidate but Mr. Williams — decamped to the humid, booze-filled beaches of Puerto Rico for an annual postelection junket of lobbying, politicking and partying.After months of shadowboxing, it proved to be a surreal campaign in miniature, as Ms. Hochul, Ms. James, and Mr. Bellone schmoozed under palm trees alongside two more potential Democratic candidates: Mayor Bill de Blasio and Representative Thomas Suozzi. Contenders met surreptitiously with City Council members, party activists and union leaders in what amounted to high-powered focus groups fueled by piña coladas.Ms. James, for her part, offered fresh indications in Puerto Rico that she intends to run to the left of Ms. Hochul while building a base that, her allies hope, will be broader than that of Mr. Williams.She referred to herself as “the face of the Working Families Party,” New York’s leftist alternative to the Democratic line. She literally dropped a mic after a stem-winding campaign appeal to Bronx Democrats gathered in a makeshift club, who roared their approval. And the next morning, Ms. James turned a breakfast hosted by labor unions into a de facto campaign rally.“Join the O.G. team,” Ms. James said at a Working Families Party gathering. “Her name is Tish James.”Ms. Hochul showed her political power in other ways. She threw a lavish soiree in a ballroom overlooking the ocean, where labor leaders and business lobbyists fought for the governor’s ear between bites of passed hors d’oeuvres, and Mr. Adams showed up, a few days after Ms. Hochul made a cameo at his victory party.In an interview in a private room at a beachfront hotel — which was briefly interrupted when Ms. James walked in — Ms. Hochul warned that the general election in the governor’s race could be competitive; Representative Lee Zeldin of Long Island is considered the leading Republican candidate. She urged her party to focus on matters of public safety and economic growth, among other priorities, after Democrats lost badly across New York.Governor Hochul announced that her campaign had raised $11 million in her bid for a full four-year term. Stephanie Keith for The New York Times“They have concerns about where our party’s headed,” she said. “They want to make sure that the mainstream principles of our party prevail.”For now, though, it is the left-leaning and Brooklyn-area lanes of the primary that appear most crowded. As many as three candidates — Ms. James, Mr. Williams and Mr. de Blasio — could ultimately run: all boasting of deep ties to the progressive-left movement, and all from that borough.“I’m supporting Jumaane because I think he has real potential to fire people up,” said Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller-elect. Calling both Mr. Williams and Ms. James “really compelling leaders,” he also emphasized that “it’s important for progressives to get on the same page in the governor’s race and to rally around one candidate.” Allies of Ms. James had hoped that Mr. Williams, who garnered 47 percent of the vote running against Ms. Hochul as lieutenant governor in 2018, would skip the race, wary that the two candidates would siphon votes from one another.An in-person meeting between Ms. James and Mr. Williams to discuss the race last month, before either had formally entered, ended with both still moving toward a run, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meeting. Representatives for both candidates declined to comment on the meeting, which was first reported by City and State.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      What the Steele Dossier Reveals About the FBI

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      This month’s bombshell indictment of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who is charged with lying to the F.B.I. and whose work turns out to have been the main source for Christopher Steele’s notorious dossier, is being treated as a major embarrassment for much of the news media — and, if the charges stick, that’s exactly what it is.Put media criticism aside for a bit. What this indictment further exposes is that James Comey’s F.B.I. became a Bureau of Dirty Tricks, mitigated only by its own incompetence — like a mash-up of Inspector Javert and Inspector Clouseau. Donald Trump’s best move as president (about which I was dead wrong at the time) may have been to fire him.If you haven’t followed the drip-drip-drip of revelations, late in 2019 Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, published a damning report detailing “many basic and fundamental errors” by the F.B.I. in seeking Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to surveil Carter Page, the American businessman fingered in the dossier as a potential link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.Shortly afterward, Rosemary Collyer, the court’s presiding judge, issued her own stinging rebuke of the bureau: “The frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable,” she wrote.Here a question emerged: Were the F.B.I.’s errors a matter of general incompetence or of bias? There appears to be a broad pattern of F.B.I. agents overstating evidence that corroborates their suspicions. That led to travesties such as the bureau hounding the wrong man in the 2001 anthrax attacks.But it turns out the bureau can be both incompetent and biased. When the F.B.I. applied for warrants to continue wiretapping Page, it already knew Page was helping the C.I.A., not the Russians. We know this because in August 2020 a former F.B.I. lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to rewriting an email to hide Page’s C.I.A. ties.And why would Clinesmith do that? It certainly helped the bureau renew its wiretap warrants on Page, and, as he once put it in a text message to a colleague, “viva la resistance.” When the purpose of government service is to stop “the crazies” (one of Clinesmith’s descriptions of the elected administration) then the ends soon find a way of justifying the means.Which brings us to the grand jury indictment of Danchenko in the investigation being conducted by the special counsel John Durham. Danchenko was Steele’s main source for the most attention-grabbing claims in the dossier, including the existence of a likely mythical “pee tape.” Steele, in turn, wrote his report for Fusion GPS, an opposition-research outfit that had been hired by a Washington law firm close to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.Translation: The Steele dossier was Democratic Party-funded opposition research that had been sub-sub-sub-sub contracted to Danchenko, who now stands accused of repeatedly lying to the F.B.I. about his own sources while also having been investigated a decade ago for possible ties to Russian intelligence. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty and adamantly denies Russian intelligence ties, and he deserves his day in court. He describes the raw intelligence he collected for Steele as little more than a collection of rumors and innuendo and alleges that Steele dressed them up for Fusion GPS.Of such dross was spun years of high-level federal investigations, ponderous congressional hearings, pompous Adam Schiff soliloquies, and nonstop public furor. But none of that would likely have happened if the F.B.I. had treated the dossier as the garbage that it was, while stressing the ways in which Russia had sought to influence the election on Trump’s behalf, or the ways in which the Trump campaign (particularly through its onetime manager, Paul Manafort) was vulnerable to Russian blackmail.Instead, Comey used it as a political weapon by privately briefing President-elect Trump about it, despite ample warnings about the dossier’s credibility. In doing so, Comey made the existence of the “salacious and unverified” dossier news in its own right. And, as the University of Chicago’s Charles Lipson astutely notes, Comey’s briefing “could be seen as a kind of blackmail threat, the kind that marked J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure.”If you are a certain kind of reader — probably conservative — who has closely followed the Durham investigation, none of the above will come as news. But I’m writing this column for those who haven’t followed it closely, or who may have taken a keener interest in tales about Trump being Russia’s puppet than in evidence that, for all of his many and grave sins, he was the victim of a gigantic slander abetted by the F.B.I.Democrats who don’t want the vast power wielded by the bureau ever used against one of their own — as, after all, it was against Hillary Clinton — ought to use the Durham investigation as an opportunity to clean up, or clean out, the F.B.I. once and for all.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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      For a Clue About the 2022 Midterm Elections, Look at 2 Ohio Races

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      Neither race received much national attention, but there’s a long history of special election results foreshadowing the next general election.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.A lot seems to be going poorly for Democrats right now, including President Biden’s sinking approval ratings and the results of this month’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey.But two obscure special elections in Ohio’s 11th and 15th congressional districts, where Democrats and Republicans each retained long-held seats, revealed a possible bright spot for Democrats and faintly signaled that political conditions may not be as dire for Democrats as they seem.Neither race received much national attention. Neither race was especially competitive. And neither had a high turnout. But unlike in the flashier races for Virginia and New Jersey governor, the two Democratic candidates in the Ohio congressional races ran about as well as Democrats usually do. They ran far closer to the party’s recent benchmarks, including Mr. Biden’s showing in the last presidential election, than Democrats did in Virginia, where Terry McAuliffe lost to the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, and in New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, won by a slim margin.While it would be a mistake to read too much into these two low-profile affairs, it would also be a mistake to ignore them. The two House races didn’t receive much attention for a simple reason: Neither party had any reason to contest them. Ohio’s 11th District is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the 15th is firmly Republican.Yet in both races, the Democratic House candidates ran only three percentage points behind Biden’s showing against former President Donald Trump in last year’s election. The margin is nothing for Democrats to brag about, but it’s simply not the same as what they experienced in Virginia and New Jersey, where the Republican candidates ran 12 and 13 points ahead of Mr. Trump.Of the two districts, Ohio’s 15th is more competitive — and the most representative of next year’s battlegrounds. It stretches from the suburbs around Columbus to the conservative working-class countryside of south-central Ohio. Unlike the House battlegrounds, this is not a district where Democrats have a chance to prevail, even under favorable circumstances: Mr. Trump won the district by 14 points while the incumbent Republican, Steve Stivers, won it by 27 points last November.But despite a more favorable national political environment, Mike Carey, a Trump-endorsed Republican and coal lobbyist, defeated Allison Russo, a Democratic state representative, by a fairly typical 17-point margin — a bit better than Trump, and quite a bit worse than Mr. Stivers.While the results of the Virginia election spurred talk that the Democratic Party’s leftward lurch on race and cultural issues might be hurting the Democrats in the suburbs, Ms. Russo won 55 percent of the vote in the Franklin County portion of the district, home to the Columbus suburbs, nearly matching the 56 percent won by Mr. Biden.Ohio’s 11th District is even less competitive. The majority-Black district, which snakes from Cleveland to Akron, favored Mr. Biden by a whopping 61 points last November. The previous Democratic representative, Marcia Fudge, who is now the secretary of housing and urban development, won by 60 points. The result was similar this time: Shontel Brown, the establishment-backed Democrat who narrowly defeated the progressive favorite Nina Turner in an August primary, won by 58 points.It might seem odd to draw attention to the results of uncompetitive races, but special congressional election results often do a decent job of foreshadowing the outcome of the next midterm elections. Four years ago, special elections were one of the first signs of Democratic strength after Mr. Trump was elected president. So far this cycle, other special election results have tended to resemble the modest Republican gains in Ohio more than the significant G.O.P. swings in Virginia and New Jersey.Another reason to pay attention is that the special congressional elections are contests for federal office, not state or local government.While politics has become increasingly nationalized in recent years, it remains quite common for voters to split their tickets and back the other party in down-ballot races for governor or other local offices. Maryland and Massachusetts elected Republican governors in 2018, despite the so-called blue wave that year. Local issues, like education or property taxes, naturally play a much bigger role than they do in federal contests. And it is much easier for a relatively moderate candidate for local office to shed the baggage of the national party. After all, a vote for Youngkin as governor of Virginia is not a vote to make Kevin McCarthy the House speaker or Mitch McConnell the Senate majority leader.Democrats and Republicans were deadlocked on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking whether voters would back a Democrat or Republican for Congress. Historically, the measure tracks well with the eventual House national vote. On average, Republicans lead by less than a percentage point, according to FiveThirtyEight — they took the lead while I wrote this newsletter.A roughly tied House national vote would most likely mean clear Republican control of the chamber, thanks to partisan gerrymandering and the tendency for Democrats to win lopsided margins in reliably Democratic areas. But it would be a much closer race than one might guess based on Virginia and New Jersey.And it would be roughly in line with the results in Ohio: a four-point shift to the Republicans, compared to Biden’s four-point win in the national vote.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.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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      Democratic Socialists Have a Long Road to Electoral Victory

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      In my political circles, the socialist and activist left, the recent defeat of India Walton, a democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, seemed all too familiar, even if she lost in an unusual way to the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron Brown. Ms. Walton prevailed against Mr. Brown in the Democratic primary, but for the general election, he ran a write-in campaign to retain his position.That outcome saddens and disappoints me. Like many admirers of Ms. Walton, I believe she was terribly mistreated by the New York Democratic Party, which largely fell in line behind Mr. Brown, even though he was not running as a Democrat. It’s not fair that Ms. Walton had to run against him twice, with the weight of a lot of centrist Democrats and Republicans behind him in the general election, and that he enjoyed the support of several prominent labor unions and much of the city’s and state’s larger party infrastructure. (Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand did endorse Ms. Walton.)Nevertheless, I am willing to say something far too few leftists seem willing to: Not only did Mr. Brown win, but he won resoundingly (the race is not officially over but stands at roughly 59 percent for Mr. Brown to 41 percent for Ms. Walton); it’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular.They frequently claim that Americans want socialist policies and socialist politicians but are prevented from voting for them by the system. Or they argue that most American voters have no deeply held economic beliefs at all and are ready to be rallied to the socialist cause by a charismatic candidate.This attitude toward Ms. Walton’s defeat specifically and toward the political landscape more broadly is part and parcel of a problem that has deepened in the past five years: So many on the radical left whom I know have convinced themselves that their politics and policies are in fact quite popular on a national level, despite the mounting evidence otherwise.As New York magazine’s Sarah Jones put it over the summer, “Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, they’ll meet many Americans where they are.” We are held back, the thinking frequently goes, not by the popularity of our ideas but by the forces of reaction marshaled against us.But the only way for the left to overcome our institutional disadvantages is to compel more voters to vote for us. Bernie Sanders’s two noble failures in Democratic presidential primaries galvanized young progressives and helped create political structures that have pulled the party left. They also helped convince many of a socialist bent that only dirty tricks can defeat us. In the 2016 primary, the superdelegate system demonstrated how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be. Mr. Sanders won every county in West Virginia, for example, but the system at the time ensured that Mr. Sanders did not receive superdelegates in proportion to his vote totals (many superdelegates defied the wishes of the voters and supported Mrs. Clinton). In 2020, it was widely reported that after Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada, former President Barack Obama had an indirect role as the minor candidates in the primary rallied behind Joe Biden to defeat the socialist threat. There is little doubt that the establishment worked overtime to prevent a Sanders nomination.But the inconvenient fact is that Mr. Sanders received far fewer primary votes than Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020. He failed to make major inroads among the moderate Black voters whom many see as the heart of the Democratic Party. What’s more, he failed to turn out the youth vote in the way that his supporters insisted he would.Whatever else we may want to say about the system, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the voters of the liberal party in American politics twice had the opportunity to nominate Mr. Sanders as their candidate for president and twice declined to do so. If we don’t allow this to inform our understanding of the popularity of our politics, we’ll never move forward and start winning elections to gain more power in our system.This may be seen as a betrayal of the socialist principles I stand for, which are at heart an insistence on the absolute moral equality of every person and a fierce commitment to fighting for the worst-off with whatever social and governmental means are necessary. But I am writing this precisely because I believe so deeply in those principles. I want socialism to win, and to do that, socialists must be ruthless with ourselves.The idea that most Americans quietly agree with our positions is dangerous, because it leads to the kind of complacency that has dogged Democrats since the “emerging Democratic majority” myth became mainstream. Socialists can take some heart in public polling that shows Americans warming to the abstract idea of socialism. But “socialism” is an abstraction that means little without a winning candidate. And too much of this energy seems to stem from the echo-chamber quality of social media, as young socialists look at the world through Twitter and TikTok and see only the smiling faces of their own beliefs reflected back at them.Socialist victory will require taking a long, hard road to spread our message, to convince a skeptical public that socialist policies and values are good for them and the country. Which is to say, it will take decades.Americans have lived in a capitalist system for generations; that will not be an easy obstacle for socialists to overcome. If you want socialist policies in the United States, there is no alternative to the slow and steady work of changing minds. My fellow travelers are in the habit of saying that justice can’t wait. But justice has waited for thousands of years, and we all must eventually come to terms with the fact that we don’t get to simply choose when it arrives.Fredrik deBoer is the author of “The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice” and publishes a daily newsletter.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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      Beto O’Rourke Announces Run for Texas Governor, Testing Democrats’ Strength

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      Mr. O’Rourke’s announcement on Monday sets the stage for a pitched political showdown over the future of the country’s largest Republican-led state.HOUSTON — Beto O’Rourke entered the race for Texas governor on Monday, challenging an ultraconservative and well-financed two-term Republican incumbent in a long-shot bid to win an office Democrats last occupied in 1995.The arrival of Mr. O’Rourke immediately set the stage for a pitched political showdown next November over the future of Texas at a time when the state — with its expanding cities and diversifying population — has appeared increasingly up for grabs.Mr. O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has been a darling of Texas Democrats and party activists since his run against Senator Ted Cruz in 2018. Though he lost the Senate race by nearly three percentage points, the fact that he came close to unseating the incumbent Republican senator transformed Mr. O’Rourke into a national figure and convinced many Democrats that the state was on the cusp of turning blue.His campaign hopes to rekindle that enthusiasm as it tries to unseat Greg Abbott, the Republican governor seeking re-election to a third term. One recent public poll found Mr. O’Rourke nearly tied with Mr. Abbott in a hypothetical match up, and another showed him losing by nine percentage points.“Those in positions of public trust have stopped listening to, serving and paying attention to — and trusting — the people of Texas,” Mr. O’Rourke said in a video announcing his campaign that was released on Monday. He contrasted the “extremist policies” of Texas Republicans that have limited abortion and expanded gun rights with positions that he said he would support, including expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana.And the video sought to recapture the anger felt by Texans when the state’s power grid failed in February. “It’s a symptom of a much larger problem that we have in Texas right now,” he said.But Democrats have also seen their story of political change in Texas complicated by the results of the 2020 election.Former President Donald J. Trump carried the state by nearly six points and gained ground for Republicans among Hispanic voters in the Democratic stronghold of the Rio Grande Valley. Republicans also held the State House of Representatives despite a concerted effort by Democrats to flip control. And Republicans have had an electoral lock on the governor’s mansion that has stretched for nearly three decades. The last Democrat to serve as governor was Ann Richards, who won election in November 1990 and was in office from January 1991 to January 1995.The 2022 race will take place against a national backdrop that favors Republicans, including an economy still struggling to rebound from the pandemic and a Democratic president whose popularity has been sinking. And after his own failed presidential run, Mr. O’Rourke faces the challenge of demonstrating to Texas voters that he is focused on the state’s issues and not on the national spotlight.His advisers appeared to be aware of the need to remind voters of the actions Mr. O’Rourke has taken in Texas, particularly after the winter storm that led to the devastating blackout in February. Mr. O’Rourke solicited donations for storm victims, organized wellness checks for seniors and delivered water from his pickup truck.His organization, Powered by People, has also helped to register voters — nearly 200,000 since late 2019, according to the campaign — and Mr. O’Rourke raised around $700,000 to support Democrats in the Texas House after many fled to Washington to block a restrictive new voting measure that ultimately passed.He has also used his platform to push for pandemic-related public health measures like those backed by local Democratic leaders in Texas, a contrast to Mr. Abbott, who has banned mandates for masks or vaccines.The message of the campaign, his advisers said, is that Mr. O’Rourke has been there for Texans while Mr. Abbott has put his own political ambition and the demands of Republican primary voters over the needs of ordinary people.In the video, Mr. O’Rourke, who speaks fluent Spanish, made his announcement from the majority-Hispanic border city of El Paso, where he grew up and now lives.Democrats had been urging Mr. O’Rourke to jump into the race for months, and he had begun to strongly consider doing so by late summer as he called around to Democratic leaders in the state. Apart from giving them a shot at the governor’s mansion, Democrats are hoping that Mr. O’Rourke’s presence at the top of the ticket will increase turnout and help Democratic candidates in down-ballot races across Texas.With the election a little less than a year away, no other major Democrat has entered the race, leaving Mr. Abbott’s advisers to consider a range of messages to attack Mr. O’Rourke as too extreme for Texas. They are likely to focus on comments he made about guns and the border wall during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.“Republicans didn’t need a lot of reason to turn out and have intensity, but this is going to juice it,” said Matt Mackowiak, an Austin political consultant who is the chairman of the Republican Party in Travis County, referring to Mr. O’Rourke’s entering the race. “It’s going to be kryptonite for Democrats in suburban areas, and it’s going to be rocket fuel for Republicans in rural areas.”Well before Mr. O’Rourke’s announcement, the governor’s campaign began releasing digital ads featuring montages of those statements, including one from a 2019 debate that has come to define what some Texas political observers see as Mr. O’Rourke’s uphill battle in the state.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      How Republicans Have an Edge in the Emerging 2022 Congressional Maps

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      On a highly distorted congressional map that is still taking shape, the party has added enough safe House districts to capture control of the chamber based on its redistricting edge alone.WASHINGTON — A year before the polls open in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are already poised to flip at least five seats in the closely divided House thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.The rapidly forming congressional map, a quarter of which has taken shape as districts are redrawn this year, represents an even more extreme warping of American political architecture, with state legislators in many places moving aggressively to cement their partisan dominance.The flood of gerrymandering, carried out by both parties but predominantly by Republicans, is likely to leave the country ever more divided by further eroding competitive elections and making representatives more beholden to their party’s base.At the same time, Republicans’ upper hand in the redistricting process, combined with plunging approval ratings for President Biden and the Democratic Party, provides the party with what could be a nearly insurmountable advantage in the 2022 midterm elections and the next decade of House races.“The floor for Republicans has been raised,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of House Republicans’ campaign committee, said in an interview. “Our incumbents actually are getting stronger districts.”Congressional maps serve, perhaps more than ever before, as a predictor of which party will control the House of Representatives, where Democrats now hold 221 seats to Republicans’ 213. In the 12 states that have completed the mapping process, Republicans have gained an advantage for seats in Iowa, North Carolina, Texas and Montana, and Democrats have lost the advantage in districts in North Carolina and Iowa.All told, Republicans have added a net of five seats that the party can expect to hold while Democrats are down one. Republicans need to flip just five Democratic-held seats next year to seize a House majority.“They’re really taking a whack at competition,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The path back to a majority for Democrats if they lose in 2022 has to run through states like Texas, and they’re just taking that off the table.”Competition in House races has decreased for years. In 2020, The New York Times considered just 61 of the 435 House elections to be “battleground” contests. The trend is starkest in places like Texas, where 14 congressional districts in 2020 had a presidential vote that was separated by 10 percentage points or less. With the state’s new maps, only three are projected to be decided by a similar margin.Redistricting, which happens every 10 years, began late this summer after states received the much-delayed results of the 2020 census. The process will continue, state by state, through the winter and spring and is to be completed before the primary contests for next year’s midterm elections.How Maps Reshape American PoliticsWe answer your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.In most states, the map drawing is controlled by state legislators, who often resort to far-reaching gerrymanders. Republicans have control over the redistricting process in states that represent 187 congressional seats, compared with just 84 for Democrats. The rest are to be drawn by outside panels or are in states where the two parties must agree on maps or have them decided by the courts.Gerrymandering is carried out in many ways, but the two most common forms are “cracking” and “packing.” Cracking is when mapmakers spread a cluster of a certain type of voters — for example, those affiliated with the opposing party — among several districts to dilute their vote. Packing is when members of a demographic group, like Black voters, or voters in the opposing political party, are crammed into as few districts as possible.The Republican gains this year build on what was already a significant cartographic advantage. The existing maps were heavily gerrymandered by statehouse Republicans after the G.O.P.’s wave election in 2010, in a rapid escalation of the congressional map-drawing wars. This year, both parties are starting from a highly contorted map amid a zero-sum political environment. With advancements in both voter data and software, they have been able to take a more surgical approach to the process.Republicans are cautious about doing a premature victory lap in case the country’s political mood shifts again over the next year. Democrats believe that while keeping their House majority will be an uphill battle, they have a stronger chance of maintaining control in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris currently breaks a 50-50 tie.Republicans also argue that there could in fact be many newly competitive House districts if Mr. Biden’s approval ratings remain in the doldrums and voters replicate the G.O.P.’s successes in elections this month.Democrats, without much to brag about, accuse Republicans of being afraid of competitive elections.“Fear is driving all of this,” David Pepper, a former Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said on Wednesday at a hearing to discuss a proposed map that would give Republicans 13 of the state’s 15 congressional seats. “Fear of what would happen if we actually had a real democracy.”More districts are certain to shift from Democratic to Republican in the coming weeks. Republican lawmakers in Georgia and Florida will soon begin debating new maps..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Several other states have completed maps for the 2020s that entrench existing Republican advantages. Republicans in Alabama and Indiana shored up G.O.P.-held congressional districts while packing their state’s pockets of Democrats into uncompetitive enclaves. In Utah, a new map eliminates a competitive district in Salt Lake City that Democrats won in 2018. Republicans have made an Oklahoma City seat much safer, while Colorado’s independent redistricting commission shored up the district of Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican and Trump ally, so much that her leading Democratic opponent, who had raised $1.9 million, dropped out of the contest to defeat her.And in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a map that protects the state’s 23 Republican incumbents while adding two safely red seats, a year after the party spent $22 million to protect vulnerable House members.“The competitive Republican seats are off the board,” said Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s clearinghouse for designing new maps.Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, at an event on redistricting this month. Democrats in the state may draw its lone Republican congressman out of a district.Brian Witte/Associated PressIn one of the few states where Democrats are on offense, Illinois will eliminate two Republican seats from its delegation and add one Democratic one when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs the map that the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature approved last month. New York is likely to add seats to the Democratic column once the party’s lawmakers complete maps next year, and Maryland Democrats may draw their state’s lone Republican congressman out of a district. Democrats in Nebraska also managed to preserve a competitive district that includes Omaha after initial Republican proposals sought to split the city in two.Calling the Republican moves an “unprecedented power grab,” Kelly Burton, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said that the G.O.P. was “not successfully taking over the battleground” but instead “proactively and intentionally trying to remove competitive seats.”Several other states where Republicans drew advantageous districts for themselves a decade ago will now have outside commissions or courts determining their maps.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Is Brooklyn in the House? Its Politicians Certainly Are.

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      Brooklyn’s influence over New York City politics grew with Eric Adams’s mayoral win, and it could grow further if a candidate from the borough is elected governor.When she took the stage at a recent reception for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, Gov. Kathy Hochul could not ignore the evidence gathered before her.“Anyone on the stage not from Brooklyn?” Ms. Hochul joked at the event, held at the Somos conference in Puerto Rico. “Can we spread the love around a little bit?”As Brooklyn politicians, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor-elect, looked on, the response from the crowd was a resounding “no.”Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, is unquestionably enjoying a moment.With Mr. Adams’s victory, the city will now have its second consecutive mayor from Brooklyn. Brad Lander, the next comptroller, and Jumaane D. Williams, who was re-elected as public advocate, also hail from Brooklyn — giving the borough ownership of all three citywide elected officials next year.Letitia James, the state attorney general and a candidate for governor, is also from Brooklyn. Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, is thought to be a leading candidate to replace Ms. James as state attorney general. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a potential candidate for governor, is from the borough; Mr. Williams is also considering a run.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the state’s highest ranking House Democrat, represents Brooklyn and is often mentioned as a future candidate for speaker (he is also fond of quoting the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. on the House floor).“Brooklyn has never had this much clout,” Mr. Lander said jokingly.For many years, Manhattan has been the traditional power center of New York, with local leaders from other boroughs grousing that Manhattan received preferential treatment on everything from snow removal to economic development projects.“There was no question that over the years that Manhattan was the center of the universe,” said Marty Markowitz, the former Brooklyn borough president.That has changed in recent years as more young people of the professional and creative class moved to Brooklyn, gentrifying certain neighborhoods there. People who were priced out of parts of Brooklyn moved to Manhattan. If Brooklyn were a stand-alone city, it would be the fourth largest in the country.“A win for Brooklyn is a win for everyone who has been left behind or feels invisible in the halls of power,” said Justin Brannan, a councilman who represents Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and is a leading candidate for City Council speaker. “But we’re done fighting over crumbs just because we may live far from City Hall. Now we’re inside the building, doing the thing.”Brooklyn also began leading the city out of the pandemic. Private sector jobs increased faster there than in Manhattan, which was devastated by the loss of tourism, hotel closures and empty office buildings as international travel was restricted and companies moved to remote work at the height of the pandemic.“We are hitting our stride politically but also economically,” said Randy Peers, president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve got the right leadership at the right time.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Adams, the outgoing Brooklyn borough president, owns a home in Bedford-Stuyvesant that he famously opened to reporters during the Democratic primary to prove that he lived there. Mr. de Blasio, who owns two homes in Park Slope, was so steadfast in his loyalty to Brooklyn that he endured years of criticism for being driven to his old neighborhood from Gracie Mansion to work out at the local Y.M.C.A.Even though Mr. Adams plans to move into Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side, he said he will also spend time at his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.“I love Brooklyn,” Mr. Adams told WPIX-TV the day after easily beating the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa. “I’m going to be an outer-borough mayor, not just a Manhattan-centered mayor.”Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist, said Mr. Adams’s attitude is important. Previous Manhattan-centric mayors like Michael R. Bloomberg ran into problems when other boroughs felt left out of the city’s growth. Mr. de Blasio leaned on the idea of New York being a “tale of two cities” to win election in 2013 after Mr. Bloomberg had served three terms.Brooklyn’s size and diversity has allowed politicians there to use the borough as a solid base for launching citywide and statewide campaigns, Mr. Gyory added.Black, Caribbean and Latino voters there have long represented a solid base and Asian communities are gaining more political power. The borough has the most registered Democrats of any county in the state and the share of Democratic votes cast there increased in the Democratic primary.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More