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      Cheri Bustos Has Some Advice for Swing-District Democrats

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      Message discipline. Focus on local issues. Find ways to work with Republicans. And show up. Everywhere.That is some of the advice offered to swing-district Democrats for winning in conservative areas in a new report written by Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, a former leader of the House Democrats’ campaign arm.The report comes as Democrats in competitive districts are growing increasingly anxious about holding onto their seats. Many point to falling polling numbers and argue that the party must sharpen its economic and public health messaging around the pandemic.Ms. Bustos interviewed 25 national and local Democratic lawmakers who won areas carried by former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. She had help from a longtime adviser — Robin Johnson, a political scientist at Monmouth College, which is in Ms. Bustos’s district.Democrats who won districts where Mr. Trump got a majority of votes are a distinct minority in Congress: There are only seven in the House.Most of the advice in the report revolves around an intense focus on local issues, as a way of aggressively differentiating the political profile of members representing redder areas from the Democrats’ national brand, which Ms. Bustos argues can be “toxic” among rural and working-class voters.Representative Cindy Axne became the first Democrat to win her seat in southwestern Iowa in 2018, beating out David Young, and then she won a rematch last year.“Even when every ounce of you wants to stray from the messaging, especially when you’re in a safe Democratic room, DON’T,” Ms. Axne advised. “Everything is on the record and can be used against you by the other side.”Some of the advice is based on the Democrats’ experiences in 2020, an election that started with confident predictions of increasing their ranks but ended with the loss of 13 House seats and the slimmest majority in decades.Ms. Bustos blames the losses on the constraints of the pandemic, which prompted most Democrats to abstain from door-to-door campaigning out of concern about public safety. That hampered the ability of swing-district Democrats to counter messaging from the progressive wing of the party — slogans like “defund the police” — that remain unpopular in conservative areas, Ms. Bustos argues.“We were responsible from a health perspective but from a political perspective it hurt us,” she said. “Some of these attacks that were thrown up there, they took hold and we were not able to fight back.”The defeats were an embarrassment for Ms. Bustos, who had been considered particularly skilled at devising strategies for Democrats running in conservative-leaning districts, and kicked off a round of recrimination between the moderates and progressives in the party.“Take any of us away and the majority is shot,” said Ms. Bustos. “I do not want to pick an intraparty fight but it has to be a whole party approach to serving in the majority.” More

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      Democrats Call for Cuomo's Resignation, but Who Will Replace Him?

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      Potential successors are in the wings. But the longer it takes for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s fate to be resolved, the greater the headache for Democrats.When an independent report declared last week that one of the nation’s most prominent Democratic leaders had sexually harassed 11 women, even some of his closest friends and oldest allies had finally run out of patience with Andrew M. Cuomo.One by one, they dropped him. President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the highest-ranking members of Congress from New York issued a message that left no room for interpretation: The governor had to go.The rapidity with which Mr. Cuomo has been cast out reflects not only how completely he alienated virtually every ally he once had, but also the possibility of political peril for a party that yoked its brand to the #MeToo movement during the Trump era, staking its reputation on a commitment to social equality and female empowerment.Already, New York Democratic officials, activists and strategists have begun privately discussing around a half-dozen politicians capable of succeeding Mr. Cuomo, with some potential candidates or their allies starting to gauge interest and identify possible sources of support. They include several who national Democrats believe would easily win a general election in the lopsidedly Democratic state — among them women and people of color whose ascension to the governor’s office in Albany could burnish the party’s image for inclusiveness.The turnabout in a few days’ time was whipsawing. Only a year ago a pillar of his party and the star of daily pandemic briefings, and still presumed by many to be the front-runner for a fourth term in 2022, Mr. Cuomo suddenly seemed eminently beatable, should he survive and persist with a campaign. And the political conversation crackled with the excitement and guesswork of an open race — with the guessing largely focused for the moment on whether Attorney General Letitia James, whose office released the independent report substantiating Mr. Cuomo’s misdeeds, would run for governor herself.The longer it takes for Mr. Cuomo’s fate to be resolved, the greater the headache for Democrats.Some Republicans have already used Mr. Cuomo’s situation to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy: In Virginia, the state G.O.P. called on Gov. Ralph Northam and the Democratic nominee to succeed him, Terry McAuliffe, to renounce Mr. Cuomo, saying “their silence is complicity.” In Congress, Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, introduced a “Cuomo amendment” to prohibit federal infrastructure funding from being allocated to states led by governors who have sexually harassed their employees.And Representative Lee Zeldin of Long Island, a prominent Republican contender for governor and an avid Trump supporter, has been able to focus his early campaigning on Mr. Cuomo rather than having to defend his fealty to the former president, an enormous liability in a state that Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden by 20 percentage points.Representative Grace Meng of Queens, who served until January as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, suggested that party leaders had no patience for allowing the situation to fester, particularly as they continue to grapple with the challenges of the pandemic.“We have midterm elections coming up, and we need to make sure that we are focused on maintaining the House and the Senate,” Ms. Meng said. “There’s just no room for distractions right now.”Although Mr. Cuomo has given no indication that he plans to resign, dispatching his lawyers to mount an aggressive televised defense of his conduct, the State Assembly is moving quickly through an impeachment inquiry, raising hopes within the party that the governor’s future will be determined long before the midterm elections. Prosecutors from Long Island to Albany are pursuing criminal investigations into the allegations of sexual harassment, raising the pressure on Mr. Cuomo to step down.His top aide, Melissa DeRosa, said late Sunday that she had resigned, leaving Mr. Cuomo facing the impeachment process without one of his most trusted strategists. And Brittany Commisso, the executive assistant who accused Mr. Cuomo of groping her and filed a criminal complaint against him, gave a televised interview forcefully pushing back on claims made by the governor and his lawyers questioning her recollection of events.The Rev. Al Sharpton, whom Mr. Cuomo featured in a video montage as he sought to defend himself last week, offered an unsparing assessment of the governor’s political hopes. “I don’t see how he does survive this,” he said.But Mr. Cuomo, who has come back from less challenging predicaments before, may not go quickly or quietly. An impeachment proceeding would be uncharted territory for the State Assembly in the modern era, and many Democrats expect Mr. Cuomo to mount an aggressive defense, which could draw out the proceedings, fuel Republican attacks and keep potential challengers in political limbo.A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo did not respond to questions about his future or his standing in the Democratic Party.With little public polling yet available, it also remains unclear whether early signs that Democratic voters want Mr. Cuomo to resign will harden. Earlier this year, after allegations of groping and sexual harassment by Mr. Cuomo first became public, many Democratic voters expressed reluctance to insist on his resignation, worrying that the party was imposing damaging purity tests on its leaders. Aside from Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, who resigned after being accused of groping and forcibly kissing women, only a handful of prominent Democratic politicians have lost their jobs because of allegations of sexual harassment or assault.Yet, by initially backing the independent investigation himself, which was spearheaded by two outside investigators, Mr. Cuomo ultimately armed Democrats with well-documented evidence of his alleged misdeeds, creating a process that many Democrats hope will be perceived as fairer by the public.“With Franken, there was so much pressure for him to resign before there was even a process, and that was wrong,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and another longtime Cuomo ally who now believes he should resign. “But there’s a difference between an accusation that should be seriously treated versus a report that basically corroborates the accusations.”Attorney General Letitia James has yet to give any indication that she is planning a run for governor in 2022, though she is seen by some inside the Democratic Party as having potential to excite a broad array of voters.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe handicapping of the potential Democratic field to succeed Mr. Cuomo begins with Ms. James, who is viewed by many as the most formidable contender, capable of appealing to both Black voters across the ideological spectrum and white progressives who see her as having held Mr. Cuomo to account.Ms. James has yet to give any indication that she is planning a run for anything but re-election as attorney general, and she is often described as risk-averse. But the possibility of a vacancy has set off intense speculation about whether she would turn her sights to the governor’s office.Whatever Ms. James decides, if Mr. Cuomo exits before the end of his term, New York will immediately get its first female governor: Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a former congresswoman from Buffalo, would succeed him, and would very likely seek a full term in 2022.An official close to Ms. Hochul said her team was already thinking through how to balance bringing the state together and moving forward with what they expect could be a prolonged period of recrimination toward the Cuomo administration. The official also said Ms. Hochul is having conversations about personnel should she assume the governorship. And multiple lawmakers have met with her in recent weeks and gotten the impression that she is preparing for the chief executive position.Ms. Hochul would enjoy not only the advantages of incumbency in a governor’s race, but also a considerable head start: She has not had a close working relationship with Mr. Cuomo, but that has freed her to spend much of her six-year tenure traipsing across the state, holding economic-development events, championing Democratic candidates and quietly building a statewide network of political donors.Mr. Sharpton, whose Harlem headquarters is a mandatory way station for Democratic aspirants, said that political associates of Ms. James, Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island and Mayor Bill de Blasio had all approached him to sound him out about the 2022 governor’s race.“It’s going to be very difficult for the governor to stay in, and I think it’s going to open up the primary season early,” Mr. Sharpton said.Others said to be considering a run include Jumaane D. Williams, the left-wing New York City public advocate, who lost to Ms. Hochul in the 2018 primary for lieutenant governor, and Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive.Mr. de Blasio has declined to rule out a bid. Similarly, a campaign adviser to Mr. DiNapoli, Doug Forand, said Mr. DiNapoli was happy in his current job but acknowledged “the unpredictable nature of the governor’s situation.”The list of possible Democratic contenders will almost certainly increase, and could include other members of Congress, depending on the results of the redistricting process. It also could include the names of more prominent women: Some in party circles have expressed hope that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand or even Hillary Clinton might become interested in the job.Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would assume the governorship should Mr. Cuomo resign or be impeached.Caitlin Ochs/ReutersCelinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, said this was to be expected.“When something this visible happens,” she said of the Cuomo scandal, “and then it continues to happen after people thought it had been dealt with, it really gives you an appetite for women candidates.” More

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      Biden, Congress and the Eroding Separation of Powers

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      A curious constitutional drama unfolded in the nation’s capital last week. Having failed to pass a moratorium on evictions, members of Congress took to the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demand that President Biden impose one.For his part, Mr. Biden strode into the White House briefing room and suggested that the prerogative to make policy on the issue lay with Congress.Soon enough, though, Mr. Biden relented, and Democrats celebrated. As policy, it was a progressive victory. Constitutionally, it was both troubling and bizarre.The issue was not simply whether the moratorium was constitutional, though the federal courts have questioned the statutory authority the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed. The underlying constitutional derangement pertained to the way members of Congress and the president were eager to endorse each other’s authority without exercising their own.Democrats might protest that they had no choice but to turn to the White House because Republicans would not support a legislative moratorium. That may be, but the framers would have expected the defense of legislative power to take precedence over a policy dispute.The framers assumed that each branch of government would maintain the separation of powers by jealously guarding its authority from encroachments by the others. The evictions episode was less tug of war than hot potato: Congress wanted the president to use executive authority, and the president wanted the legislature to legislate.Democrats are not the only ones refusing to defend legislative authority. Republicans denigrating the House investigation into the insurrection of Jan. 6 — a physical assault on one branch of government incited by another — are unwilling even to defend the institution bodily.The acid test of separation of powers is whether members of Congress are willing to assert their authority against a president of their own party. Democrats failed that on evictions, just as Republicans did by handing off authority to Donald Trump. Given this bipartisan consensus for presidential authority, it may be time to acknowledge reality: The concept of the separation of powers — which depends on members of Congress unifying to protect legislative power — has collapsed in the United States. We have become a de facto parliamentary system in which competing parties battle for executive power. The problem is that we have acquired all the vices of such a system but none of its virtues.A parliamentary system typically has the effects of discouraging demagogues and ensuring competence, by seasoning leaders on the journey from the backbenches to the ones at the front. By contrast, three presidents who served before Joe Biden — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Mr. Trump — arrived in the White House as either newcomers or latecomers to national office. Parliamentary systems also feature vigorous debates with real consequences. Governments rise and fall on the basis of their legislative agendas. Debates in Congress are largely stagecraft, with actual governing being relegated to a vast executive branch empowered to turn vague laws into detailed policy.The primary vice of parliamentary systems is their incompatibility with the separation of powers. James Madison felt this separation was so important that the lack of it was “the very definition of tyranny,” even if concentrated powers were exercised benignly. Montesquieu warned that when executive and legislative power are mixed, “there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically.”The separation of powers should not be romanticized. The only president to rise fully above party was the first one, and George Washington took office before parties solidified. But even after that, the fact that presidents and members of Congress were elected by different means, with different institutional loyalties, still enabled them to curb each other’s abuses.There are almost no curbs now. One might say elections control presidents, but Mr. Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential contest, which culminated in Jan. 6, showed that check is fragile. In addition, a single official who can marshal the direct power of his or supporters may be particularly dangerous, as Mr. Trump’s incitement leading up to and on Jan. 6 also demonstrated.These are palpable risks today. Between elections, presidents essentially run American government. Republicans and Democrats in Congress play the auxiliary part of either supporting or opposing whoever occupies the White House. Congress generally cedes the initiative on legislation to the executive branch, reserving for itself the role of merely reacting to the president.This obsession with the presidency also crowds out other advantages the separation of powers should provide. Legislators are chosen geographically in the United States, which ought to mean they reflect not only local interests but also the nuances of diverse views about national politics. Instead, many elections at all levels are proxies for national issues that are increasingly seen as civilizational battles. When Americans vote for members of Congress today, they are largely voting for parties that increasingly operate in lock step. In 2020, 16 out of 435 congressional districts voted for different parties for the White House and House of Representatives. That is less than 4 percent of congressional districts, down from as much as 40 percent in the 1970s and 1980s.Also lost in the collapse of geographic representation is Madison’s definition of the representative’s role: to “refine and enlarge the public views.” That presumes both acquaintance with those views and the judgment required to align them with the public’s true interest.Legislative debates now rotate around the president, often because the presidency is seen as an instrument for defending or capturing a legislative majority. That is characteristic of a parliamentary system. But because one is either for or against the president, a system that orbits the White House strips legislators of their ability to exercise independent judgment from issue to issue.If legislative issues are simply symbols of presidential fortunes, we should expect partisan gridlock: Alliances will solidify around the presidency or the majority rather than shifting from issue to issue. Democrats and Republicans may be able to push a president slightly in one direction or another, or block him or her altogether, but the presidency remains the center of attention. The bipartisan infrastructure deal, for example, originated in negotiations not between members of Congress but between them and the White House.Finally, by empowering all three branches of government to check one another, the separation of powers forces the nation to look at issues from different angles: the immediate and parochial perspectives of representatives, the national view of presidents and the constitutional outlook of the courts.The problems with abandoning the separation of powers may be difficult to see if one supports the current president, but it should not take much imagination to contemplate why you wouldn’t like having the bulk of national powers being exercised by a president with whom you disagree. Presidents now sit atop vast administrative apparatuses. They could easily abuse this power, such as by rewarding friends and punishing adversaries. The point for Montesquieu and Madison was not whether they actually did, but whether they could. And the ability to abuse power often leads to the abuse itself.The deliberate adoption of a parliamentary system would still entail these risks. But it might at least have conferred some of that system’s benefits. As it stands — with Congress unwilling to unite against even a physical assault incited by the president — we have maintained the empty shell of the separation of powers around the core of a partisan system. The result is a system capable of abusing citizens but not governing them. It would be difficult to conjure a worse combination.Greg Weiner (@GregWeiner1) is a political scientist at Assumption University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Political Constitution: The Case Against Judicial Supremacy.”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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      Don’t Be Fooled By Mitch McConnell’s Sudden Bout of Bipartisanship

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      Are we entering a new era of bipartisanship? On the surface, the news from Washington seems remarkably encouraging. The Senate is close to passing a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, with $550 billion in new spending on everything from transit to highways to broadband to climate change mitigation. Political insiders are hailing the bill as a breakthrough, with the Senate poised, at last, to overcome the partisan gridlock that has ground its legislative machinery to a halt. Many thought that President Biden’s belief that he could get Republican votes was naïve, but he delivered. In a surprise, even the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, voted to move the compromise to a vote.Of course, this is the same Mitch McConnell who said of Mr. Biden, “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.” The same Mr. McConnell who made sure Donald Trump’s impeachment did not result in conviction, who filibustered the bipartisan plan for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 violent insurrection until it died, who kept all of his Republican senators in line against the American Rescue Plan early in the Biden presidency. And the same Mr. McConnell who said that he would not confirm a Biden nominee to the Supreme Court if Republicans recaptured the Senate in 2022.So why the reversal on infrastructure? Why dare the brickbats of Donald Trump after the former president bashed the effort and tried to kill it? Mr. McConnell has one overriding goal: regaining a majority in the Senate in 2022. Republicans must defend 20 of the 34 Senate seats up for grabs next year; there are open seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina; and Senator Ron Johnson, if he runs again, could easily lose his seat in Wisconsin. Attempting to block a popular infrastructure bill that later gets enacted by Democrats alone would give them all the credit. Republicans would be left with the lame defense of crowing about projects they had voted against and tried to block, something that did not work at all with the popular American Rescue Plan.You don’t have to be a Machiavellian to understand another reason Mr. McConnell was willing to hand Mr. Biden a victory on infrastructure: By looking reasonable on this popular plan, claiming a mantle of the kind of bipartisanship that pleases Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and that mollifies suburban moderate Republicans in key states, Mr. McConnell can more easily rally his troops behind their goal of obstruction and delay for every other important Democratic priority, including the blockbuster reconciliation bill, as well as voting rights and election reform.For Mr. Biden, this bill is a political victory; the fact that he worked across party lines distinguishes him from his Republican predecessor, which should give the president a powerful appeal among independents and moderate Republicans. But for congressional Democrats, despite the true achievement of persuading 10 Republicans to sign on to an ambitious infrastructure plan, the road ahead is bumpy, winding and complicated.If this bill is signed into law, the Democrats will still need to face hard reality: This will be their last major bipartisan piece of legislation.Of course, there may be other issues below the partisan radar, like criminal justice reform and mental health reform, that can secure significant Republican support. But thanks to Mr. McConnell, everything else will face a wall of obstruction. Since the midterms will take all the focus off policymaking in Congress, the Democrats need to achieve democracy reforms and move on with the rest of their agenda using reconciliation. (The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, will also be navigating another confrontation over the debt ceiling, but he might be able to include eliminating the ceiling within reconciliation, taking it off the table as a hostage once and for all.)The two key words are discipline and filibuster. Overcoming Mr. McConnell’s obstruction will require all 50 Senate Democrats to stick together, to swallow hard with necessary compromises — and of course, the same is true for House Democrats, who cannot afford to lose the votes of even four of their members. To achieve anything else will require a change in the Senate rules. It does not have to be elimination of the filibuster, or what Senator Manchin would define as a “weakening” of the rule. It will require a way to put the burden on Mr. McConnell and the minority instead of where it is now, entirely on Mr. Schumer and the majority.Norman J. Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) is an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, which he wrote with E.J. Dionne and Thomas E. Mann, is “One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet Deported.”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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      Conor Lamb Enters 2022 Pennsylvania Senate Race

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      Democrats sense their best chance to expand their slim hold on the Senate. Republican contenders are outdoing one another courting the “Super-MAGA-Trumpy” right wing.PITTSBURGH — Representative Conor Lamb thinks he knows what it takes for Democrats to win statewide in Pennsylvania.He looks to President Biden, whose narrow victory in the state — called four days after Election Day — put him over the top and in the White House.“People will use the word moderate,’’ Mr. Lamb said at his home in Pittsburgh’s South Hills on Thursday. “We’re a swing state. I don’t think we’re too far ideologically one way or the other.’’On Friday, at a union hall on Pittsburgh’s Hot Metal Street, Mr. Lamb announced his long-expected entry into Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race, vowing to “fight for every single vote across our state on every single square inch of ground,” and presenting himself as just middle-of-the-road enough to get elected statewide. The question is whether he is liberal enough to win the Democratic primary.A Marine veteran and former prosecutor, Mr. Lamb, 37, is likely the last major candidate to enter what are expected to be competitive, knockdown primary battles in both parties for the seat now held by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who is retiring.It is the only open seat now in Republican hands in a state that Mr. Biden carried, and Democrats see it as their best opportunity to expand their hairbreadth control of the Senate, where the 50-50 partisan split leaves Vice President Kamala Harris to cast deciding votes. A single additional seat would mean a simple Democratic majority in the Senate, and at least a sliver of insulation for the White House from the whims of individual senators who now hold enormous sway, like the moderates Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.Mr. Lamb rose to prominence in 2018 when he won a special House election in a district that Mr. Trump had carried by double digits. He won twice more in a redrawn but still politically mixed district, staking out independent positions that included voting against Representative Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker. But while he bills himself as the strongest potential Democratic nominee precisely because of what he calls his Bidenesque, centrist approach, aspects of his record, including on guns and marijuana, are out of step with many primary voters.“Progressives are the most active in the party, and that makes it tough for Lamb,’’ said Brendan McPhillips, who ran Mr. Biden’s 2020 Pennsylvania campaign and is not working for a Senate candidate.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, center, hopes to appeal to some working-class white voters who drifted over to support Mr. Trump.Jacqueline Dormer/Republican-Herald, via Associated PressThe early favorite of progressives and presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination is Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, something of a folk hero to the national left, with some 400,000 Twitter followers who relish his posts in favor of “legal weed” and his frequent swipes at Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema for not “voting like Democrats.” As the 14-year mayor of Braddock, a poor community outside Pittsburgh, Mr. Fetterman tattooed the dates of local homicides on his arm. As lieutenant governor, he has fought to pardon longtime nonviolent inmates.Known for a casual working wardrobe of untucked tradesmen’s shirts and jeans, or even shorts, and for his imposing presence — he is 6-foot-8 with a shaved head — Mr. Fetterman, 51, hopes to appeal to some working-class white voters who drifted over to support Mr. Trump. He has lapped the field in fund-raising, pulling in $6.5 million this year.Still, Mr. Fetterman’s challenge is the flip side of Mr. Lamb’s: He could win the May primary but be seen as too liberal for Pennsylvania’s general-election voters. “He’s the candidate I think many Republicans would love to face,’’ said Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.A potential liability in the primary also looms for Mr. Fetterman in a 2013 incident, when he was mayor of Braddock. After hearing what he took to be gunshots, Mr. Fetterman stopped a Black jogger and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The man turned out to be unarmed and was released. Mr. Fetterman addressed the episode in February, explaining he had made “split-second decisions” when he believed a nearby school might be in danger.Still, with police and vigilante violence against Black men a highly charged issue for Democratic voters, some party officials and strategists expressed fears that, if nominated, Mr. Fetterman could depress Black turnout. An outside group that supports the election of Black candidates has already run a radio ad in Philadelphia attacking Mr. Fetterman over the incident.“It’s most certainly an issue,” said Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. “It hasn’t gone away and it keeps resurfacing. It raises red flags.”In a statement, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign noted that he had been “overwhelmingly re-elected” four months after the incident in Braddock, “a town that is 80 percent Black,” because voters there “know John, and they know this had nothing to do with race.” It added that he had gone on to “run and win statewide, and he is the only candidate running for this Senate seat who has done so.”Malcolm Kenyatta would be the first Black and first openly gay nominee if he wins the primary.Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressIf Democratic voters balk at Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Lamb, a path could open for alternative candidates, including Val Arkoosh, a county official in the electorally key Philadelphia suburbs and the only woman in the race, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a telegenic young state lawmaker from North Philadelphia.Mr. Kenyatta, who would be the state’s first Black and first openly gay Senate nominee if he won, has traveled extensively seeking local endorsements but lags behind his rivals in fund-raising.Ms. Arkoosh, a physician and the chair of the Board of Commissioners in Montgomery County, the state’s third largest county, has the endorsement of Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. Together, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Lamb and Ms. Arkoosh significantly out-raised their Republican counterparts in the quarter ending in June.While Democrats see a model in Mr. Biden’s 81,000-vote victory in the state last year, which swept up suburban swing voters appalled by Mr. Trump, Republicans are currently playing almost exclusively to the Make America Great Again base, retelling the fable of a stolen 2020 election.There is a proven path to statewide victories for Republicans in Pennsylvania, one taken by two G.O.P. candidates last year who were elected treasurer and auditor general. They did so by running ahead of Mr. Trump in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, where many college-educated voters had traditionally supported Republicans but were repelled by the bullying, divisive former president.Val Arkoosh, a county official in the Philadelphia suburbs, is the only woman in the Democratic primary.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressMr. Toomey, the retiring Republican senator, warned recently, “Candidates will have to run on ideas and principles, not on allegiance to a man.’’But few of the Republicans vying to succeed him seem to have listened.Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger who lost a House race last year to Mr. Lamb, sued to throw out all 2.6 million Pennsylvania mail-in votes, a case the U.S. Supreme Court rejected, and has said he supports an Arizona-style audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 ballots. Donald Trump Jr. has endorsed his Senate bid. And Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer and major party donor from the Philadelphia area who was expected to appeal to suburban voters, has similarly courted the Trump base, calling for a “full forensic audit” of Pennsylvania’s election, though multiple courts threw out suits claiming fraud or official misconduct.Neither Mr. Parnell nor Mr. Bartos raised as much money in the recent quarter as a dark-horse candidate, Kathy Barnette, a former financial executive who lost a congressional race in Philadelphia’s Main Line last year. Ms. Barnette has pushed claims of voter fraud on the far-right cable outlets Newsmax and OAN. A longtime Republican consultant in the state, Christopher Nicholas, said there were three lanes available to G.O.P. candidates: “Super-MAGA-Trumpy, Trump-adjacent, and not-so-much-Trump.”Lately, he said, almost everyone has elbowed into the “Super-MAGA-Trumpy” lane.“As a Republican, you have to watch how far to the right you go to win the primary, that it doesn’t do irreparable harm to them in the general election,’’ Mr. Nicholas said.Mr. Lamb faces a similar challenge as a moderate in the Democratic primary.He is sure to be hit hard over some past positions, including his opposition to an assault weapons ban in 2019 and his vote the previous year to extend permanently the Trump administration’s individual tax cuts.More recently, Mr. Lamb has stayed more in step with his party: In April, he endorsed Mr. Biden’s call to ban future assault weapons sales; in May, he endorsed ending the filibuster.Mr. Lamb said in an interview that the assault on the Capitol had been a turning point for him, particularly in how Republican leaders had come around to embrace Mr. Trump’s false charge that the 2020 vote had been rigged.He alluded to that again in his announcement speech on Friday: “If they will take such a big lie and place it at the center of the party,” he said of G.O.P. leaders, “you cannot expect them to tell the truth about anything else.” More

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      In String of Wins, ‘Biden Democrats’ See a Reality Check for the Left

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      Progressives are holding their own with moderates in fights over policy. But off-year elections suggest they need a new strategy for critiquing President Biden without seeming disloyal.Nina Turner, the hard-punching Bernie Sanders ally who lost a special election for Congress in Ohio this week, had unique political flaws from the start. A far-left former state legislator, Ms. Turner declined to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in 2016. Last year, she described voting for President Biden as a grossly unpalatable option.There were obvious reasons Democratic voters might view her with distrust.Yet Ms. Turner’s unexpectedly wide defeat on Tuesday marked more than the demise of a social-media flamethrower who had hurled one belittling insult too many. Instead, it was an exclamation mark in a season of electoral setbacks for the left and victories for traditional Democratic Party leaders.In the most important elections of 2021, the center-left Democratic establishment has enjoyed an unbroken string of triumphs, besting the party’s activist wing from New York to New Orleans and from the Virginia coastline to the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. It is a winning streak that has shown the institutional Democratic Party to be more united than at any other point since the end of the Obama administration — and bonded tightly with the bulk of its electoral base.These more moderate Democrats have mobilized an increasingly confident alliance of senior Black and Hispanic politicians, moderate older voters, white centrists and labor unions, in many ways mirroring the coalition Mr. Biden assembled in 2020.In Ohio, it was a coalition strong enough to fell Ms. Turner, who entered the race to succeed Marcia Fudge, the federal housing secretary, in Congress as a well-known, well-funded favorite with a huge lead in the polls. She drew ferocious opposition from local and national Democrats, including leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus who campaigned for her opponent, Shontel Brown, and a pro-Israel super PAC that ran advertisements reminding voters about Ms. Turner’s hostility toward Mr. Biden.Ms. Brown, a Cuyahoga County official, surged to win by nearly six percentage points.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a top member of House leadership, said in an interview Wednesday that Democratic voters were clearly rejecting candidates from the party’s most strident and ideological flank.Where some primary voters welcomed an angrier message during the Trump years, Mr. Jeffries said, there is less appetite now for revolutionary rhetoric casting the Democratic Party as a broken institution.“The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter, when the majority of the electorate constitute mainstream Democrats at the polls,” Mr. Jeffries said. “In the post-Trump era, the anti-establishment line of attack is lame — when President Biden and Democratic legislators are delivering millions of good-paying jobs, the fastest-growing economy in 40 years and a massive child tax cut.”Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe won every city and county of Virginia in the Democratic primary to seek a new term in office.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIn Washington, Democrats have worked to keep a delicate peace between the party’s centrist and left-wing factions, viewing collaboration as vital to enacting any kind of ambitious legislative agenda. The tense give-and-take has yielded victories for both sides: This week, a group of insurgent House progressives, led by Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, pressured Mr. Biden into issuing a revised eviction moratorium even after he had questioned his power to do so.But moderate party leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House are greeting the results from the off-year elections with undisguised glee, viewing them as a long-awaited reality check on the progressive wing’s claims to ascendancy. Mr. Biden’s advisers have regarded the off-year results as a validation of his success in 2020 — further proof, they believe, that the Democratic Party is defined by his diverse, middle-of-the-road supporters.Top lawmakers have also grown more willing to wade into contested races after the Democrats’ unexpected losses in the House in 2020, which many of them blamed on a proliferation of hard-left language around policing and socialism.Earlier this year, Representative James E. Clyburn, the majority whip, and Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, rallied behind a centrist Democrat, Troy Carter, in a special election for Congress in Louisiana, helping him defeat a more liberal candidate. Both endorsed Ms. Brown and campaigned for her in Ohio, with Mr. Clyburn accusing the far left of intemperate sloganeering that “cuts the party’s throat.”The Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, too, yielded a moderate winner this summer: The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, who campaigned on an anti-crime message, rolled up endorsements from organized labor and won immense support from working-class voters of color. Visiting the White House, Mr. Adams branded himself “the Biden of Brooklyn.”In Virginia, Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond said the trend in Democratic politics this year was unmistakable. A former aide to former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Mr. Stoney endorsed his old boss’s comeback bid this year, backing him over several candidates running to the left. Mr. McAuliffe, a white centrist who used to lead the Democratic National Committee, won the primary in a landslide, carrying every city and county in the state.“When you look at Ohio, New York City and Virginia — voters, and particularly Democratic voters, are looking for effective problem solvers,” Mr. Stoney said. “I know Democrats want to win, but more than anything they want to elect people who are going to get things done.”Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist who advised Ms. Brown in Ohio and Mr. Carter in Louisiana, said both candidates had won majority support in their races from demographic groups that also make up the core of Mr. Biden’s base. Those voters, he said, represent a strong electoral bloc for a candidate seen as “a Biden Democrat.”“You had older African American voters, suburban voters; there was a significant turnout of Jewish voters in Ohio,” Mr. Thornell said. “These tend to be more moderate voters, on issues. They’re a bit more practical.”Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, campaigned on an anti-crime message to win the Democratic primary for mayor of New York.Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesThe left has not gone without its own modest electoral victories this year, and progressive strategists are quick to dispute the notion that 2021 has been a wholesale shutout. Activists scored upsets in several lower-profile mayoral primaries, in midsize cities like Buffalo and Pittsburgh. They have also helped a few prized progressive incumbents, like Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, stave off challenges from other Democrats.Nelini Stamp, the national organizing director of the progressive Working Families Party, predicted the 2022 elections would be more representative of the overall trajectory of Democratic politics. She acknowledged that Ms. Turner’s defeat was a significant disappointment.“There have been some tough losses, and this is one,” she said, “but I also believe there have been a lot more wins, from where we’ve come from, in the last five years.”Yet the off-year elections suggest that the Democratic left urgently needs to update its political playbook before the 2022 midterm campaign, refining a clearer strategy for winning over moderate voters of color and for critiquing Mr. Biden without being seen as disloyal. Progressive groups are already mobilizing primary challenges against Democratic House incumbents in New York, Nashville and Chicago, among other cities, in a renewed test of their intraparty clout.Waleed Shahid, a strategist for Justice Democrats, a key group that organizes primary challenges from the left, said it was clear that the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party had changed with Mr. Biden in the White House. Intraparty conflict, he said, is “harder when you have an incumbent president.”“There is a tension between presenting yourself as a yes-man or a yes-woman for Biden, versus pushing the administration like what Cori Bush just did,” Mr. Shahid said, suggesting centrist Democrats might now have a lower bar to clear. “It’s a much easier argument to make: ‘I’m for the status quo and I’m with the president.’”Democratic Party leaders counter that for the past few election cycles, it is left-wing candidates who have had a comparatively easy run, feasting on older or complacent incumbents who simply did not take their re-election campaigns seriously. They vow that is not going to happen again in 2022, and point to the races this year as proof.Mainstream Democrats, Mr. Jeffries said, are not “going to act like punching bags for the extreme left.”“Let me put it this way: The majority of Democratic voters recognize that Trumpism and the radical right is the real enemy, not us,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Apparently the extreme left hasn’t figured that out.” More

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      Biden’s Honeymoon Is Over, and He Knows It

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      The first seven months of the Biden presidency have been easy compared with what’s coming down the pike.Key provisions of Covid relief legislation came to an end on Aug. 1, with more set to follow — including a cessation of moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures, termination of extended unemployment benefits (which carried $300-a-week supplemental payments) and a stop to enhanced food stamp subsidies and student loan forbearance.The prospect of millions of families forced from their homes as Covid variants infect growing numbers of people provoked frenzied attempts by the White House and congressional Democrats to take emergency steps to halt or ameliorate the potential chaos and a possible tragedy of national proportions.On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a 60-day freeze on evictions — although the order faces possible rejection by the courts.“Any call for a moratorium, based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision, is likely to face obstacles,” Biden told reporters, adding that the “bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”In a June report, the Census Bureau found that 1,401,801 people 18 and older living in rental housing were “very likely” to be evicted and 2,248,120 were “somewhat likely.” In addition, 345,556 people were “very likely” to lose their homes through mortgage foreclosure, and 746,030 were “somewhat likely” to face foreclosure and the loss of their homes. The combined total was 4.7 million adults.The eviction crisis has come at a time when an additional series of potentially damaging developments have come to the fore.The rate of inflation has been rising at its fastest pace in over a decade — to 5.4 percent in June, from 1.4 percent in January when Biden took office, with no end in sight. The number of homicides grew by 25 percent from 2019 to 2020, and the 2021 rate, 6.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, is on track to become, according to The Washington Post, “the highest recorded in the United States in more than 20 years.”The number of illegal border crossings has more than doubled during Biden’s seven months in office, raising the potential for immigration to become a central campaign issue once again, both next year and in 2024.U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that in June of this year the enforcement agency “encountered 188,829 persons attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” a 142 percent increase from the 78,000 in January 2021 when Biden assumed the presidency.As the 2022 and 2024 elections get closer, Biden is in a race to keep public attention on policies and initiatives favorable to the Democratic Party and its candidates against the continuing threat that inflation, crime, urban disorder and illegal immigration — all issues that favor the Republican Party — take center stage.The danger for Biden if crime and immigration become a primary focus of public attention is clear in polling data. The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent polls shows Biden’s favorability at plus 7.5 points (51.1 positive and 43.6 negative) and that the public generally approves of his handling of the Covid pandemic, of jobs, of the economy and of the environment.Regarding Biden’s handling of crime and immigration, however, the numbers go negative. In the July 17-20 Economist/YouGov Poll, 38 percent of voters approved of his handling of crime, and 45 percent disapproved. In the Economist/YouGov poll taken a week later, Biden’s numbers on immigration were worse: 35 approving, 50 disapproving.The Biden administration has initiated a set of programs designed to “stem the flow of guns into the hands of those responsible for violence” — the centerpiece of its anti-crime program — but the Economist/YouGov poll found in its July 24-27 survey that 30 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of gun issues while 48 percent disapproveWhat does this all portend? Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my inquiry:The Biden administration has done a good job so far avoiding hard-to-defend, controversial positions on Republican hot button issues. That is really all they need to do. It is more likely that Covid and economic conditions will matter more in determining the Democratic Party’s fate in November.Cain argues thatthe best defense for the Democrats is to go on the offense in 2022 and remind voters about who Trump is and what the Republican Party has become. The resistance to supporting vaccination among Trumpist Republican officials could hurt the party’s national image substantially in 2022 if the unvaccinated are to blame for our inability to put this issue behind us.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, has a very different take. In an email he wrote:The Democrats have lost a great deal of credibility when it comes to crime and policing by thoughtlessly adopting slogans like ‘defund the police’ without considering what the phrase means, how policies based on the idea might lead to surges in crime, or how the slogan might backfire in the face of rising crime and lawlessness.Biden, Westwood continued,was smart to distance himself from these factions, but many of those he needs in Congress and in state houses have been much less careful. Without a serious repositioning on criminal justice policies, the Democrats face the midterms with a gaping self-inflicted wound.Biden received a lift last week in keeping a bread-and-butter agenda front and center from an unexpected source, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. McConnell abandoned his Dr. No stance toward all things Democratic and joined 16 fellow Republicans in support of a key motion to take up a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill. If enacted into law, the measure would legitimize Biden’s claim that he is capable of restoring a semblance of bipartisanship in the nation’s capital.McConnell has not fully explained his political reasoning, but his tactical shift suggests that he thinks the wind remains at Biden’s back, making the Republican strategy of destruction a much riskier proposition, at least for the moment.Early indicators suggest that in some ways Biden has yet to face the kind of voter opposition that characterized the administrations of his predecessors from both parties at this stage in their presidencies.Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, tweeted on Aug. 2:Still no sign of strong grassroots or conservative media opposition focused on Biden or congressional agenda At this point in Obama admin, it was clear August congressional recess would be full of boisterous town halls. Infrastructure doesn’t get base animated.Similarly, G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist, wrote on Aug. 1 that there is a long-term “trend by which the people react in a thermostatic manner against the party in power,” with the public mood shifting to the right during Democratic presidencies and to the left during Republican presidencies.So far during the Biden presidency, Morris wrote, the expected tilt toward conservatism has not materialized:Where we go from here is a big question. As stated, the thermostatic model would predict a reversion in 2021 in the conservative direction. But the issue remains open; the public has not appeared very thermostatic on, say, immigration policy over the last year, and their demand for public spending is still very high.The trickiest issues facing the Biden administration are crime and urban disorder because these are issues that play to the advantage of conservatives, who have demonstrated expertise in weaponizing them.The June 29-July 6 USA Today/Ipsos poll found that “concerns about crime and gun violence have surged to the top of issues that worry Americans” and, in an ominous note for the Biden administration,Crime and public safety is the issue on which the Republican Party now holds its strongest advantage. By 32 percent to 24 percent, those polled said the G.O.P. was better at handling crime.There is considerable disagreement over the optimal strategy for Democrats to adopt when addressing crime — along with widespread concern over the party’s credibility on the issue itself.Rebecca Goldstein, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, emailed to say that she believes “the Biden Administration has correctly read the political winds by doubling the amount they are requesting for police hiring grants in 2022 compared to the 2021 appropriation, and also requesting eight-figure sums for police training and body-worn cameras.”These initiatives, Goldstein continued, are “not the outcome that any of last summer’s activists would have wanted. But the Biden Administration has realized that some of those proposals, particularly defunding or abolishing police agencies, were politically dead on arrival.”The crucial question, in Goldstein’s view, iswhether the administration will be able to convincingly advertise its support for police, and for police oversight and reform, while neither alienating some of the activists who mobilized to help Biden win in 2020 and might be put off from putting in the same sweat equity in 2022 or 2024, nor succumbing to the longstanding critique from the right that Democrats are “soft on crime.” This is a tightrope that even the most skilled politician might not be able to walk.Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, argued in an email that trying to engage voters on crime and other issues that have worked to the advantage of the Republican Party in the past is a fool’s errand:The Democratic Party has been losing voters who want economic benefits from the federal government but who are supporting Republican candidates because of their conservative positions on social and cultural issues. Biden can’t win back voters by engaging on these issues. Any positions he takes will raise the salience of these issues and that’s not helpful for him.Crime and policing, Feldman noted,are largely local concerns. Immigration is a potential minefield so the best he can do is to try to keep it from becoming a major media story. Given his limited options, any attempt to address these concerns would just give Republicans an opportunity to portray him in an unfavorable light. Providing concrete economic benefits to people while reducing the volume on social/cultural issues is the best way forward in 2022 and 2024.Aaron Chalfin, a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees that engaging the debate over crime is inherently risky for Democrats:In my view, the political liabilities for the Democrats are probably fairly substantial. The surge in violence is rapid and has reversed 20 years of progress in just 18 short months. While I think the cause of the violence has little to do with Democratic political priorities at the national level, it seems likely that the Democrats will be held to account given the rhetoric around “Defund” that is associated with the left wing of the party.Lawrence Sherman, director of the Cambridge Center for Evidence-Based Policing at the University of Cambridge, agrees that “the greatest threat to Biden on policing and disorder comes from the left,” but he differs from some of his colleagues in arguing that Biden should take the issues of crime and urban dysfunction head on.Sherman contends that public anxieties over crime are just one part of a larger, more comprehensive “fear of chaos.” In that more expansive context, Sherman continued, Biden has strengthened his credentials as an adversary of disorder through his workon Covid and the economy, for which his competence grows more impressive daily in comparison to Trump’s. Climate change will also become a bigger issue (favoring Biden) for the swing vote, with smoke, heat and floods proving more scary than an unprecedented spike in murders. In a politics of fear, the targets of fear become identified with different candidates, and Biden’s fears now seem paramount: Covid, Climate and Chaos.Trump’s actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump loyalists seeking to disrupt the vote count have opened the door for Biden to take the initiative on law and order and, in doing so, to counter the image of the Democratic Party as soft on crime, Sherman argued:“After what Trump did on Jan. 6, Biden has been able to stress his own historic support for the police as emblematic of his opposition to chaos,” Sherman wrote in an email:The “defund the police” movement probably did help to lose Dem seats in the House in 2020, and may increasingly be blamed for the huge spike in violent crime. But as long as Biden remains strong in his position that policing “works” to prevent crime, and that it is essential to saving Black lives, he will attract the suburban swing vote.Biden should take the initiative, Sherman argues, with “a major policing initiative,” and that initiative should stress “hot spots policing,” the focusing of police resources on small sections of urban areas, “under 5 percent of land in most cities,” while “pulling way back on stop and frisk everywhere else, especially suburban traffic stops, like the late Sandra Bland.”Biden goes into battle with one crucial advantage: He, his appointees and his advisers have more experience in the trenches of elections, legislative fights and bureaucratic maneuvering than the top personnel of any recent administration.On the other hand, if what his voters need is equality — that is, resource redistribution — experienced advisers may not be enough.Mart Trasberg and Hector Bahamonde, of Wake Forest University and the Universidad de O’Higgins in Chile, authors of “Inclusive institutions, unequal outcomes: Democracy, state capacity, and income inequality,” pointed out in an email that redistribution is exceptionally hard to achieve in an advanced democracy like the one in operation in the United States:The increase in inequality through market processes puts pressure on fiscal policy, making it difficult to increase redistribution via taxes and transfers. With increasing foreign investment flows and more developed financial sectors, domestic and international corporate and financial elites become stronger actors in domestic politics. Given that these changes are slow-moving and incremental, disorganized voters are not able to vote for a higher taxation of income-concentrating elites. Of course, other mechanisms are likely at play: political elites trick voters to vote on identity issues that do not concern socio-economic redistribution.In the end, much of the dynamism that powers today’s political competition comes back to — or down to — racial and cultural conflict. Can Biden find a redistributive workaround — and protect voting rights at the same time? The fate of the Democratic Party depends on it.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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      Ohio Special Primary Election Results

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      The special election to replace Marcia Fudge, who joined President Biden’s cabinet as housing secretary, is a contest largely between two Black women who represent divergent views of the future of the Democratic Party. It will pit the establishment favorite, Shontel Brown, who has the endorsement of Hillary Clinton, against the left’s favored candidate, Nina Turner, who has the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders. More