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      The Left-Right Divide Might Help Democrats Avoid a Total Wipeout

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      With the midterm election less than two weeks away, polling has turned bleak for the Democrats, not only increasing the likelihood that the party will lose control of the House, but also dimming the prospects that it will hold the Senate.The key question is whether Republicans will wipe out Democratic incumbents in a wave election.In a 2021 article, “The presidential and congressional elections of 2020: A national referendum on the Trump presidency,” Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego, described how the Trump administration and its 2020 campaign set the stage for the 2022 midterms:Reacting to the [Black Lives Matter] protests, Trump doubled down on race‐baiting rhetoric, posing as defender of the confederate flag and the statues of rebel generals erected as markers of white dominance in the post‐Reconstruction South, retweeting a video of a supporter shouting “white power” at demonstrators in Florida, and vowing to protect suburbanites from low-income housing that could attract minorities to their neighborhoods.The headline and display copy on my news-side colleague Jonathan Weisman’s Oct. 25 story about the campaign sums up the party’s current strategy:With Ads, Imagery and Words, Republicans Inject Race Into Campaigns: Running ads portraying Black candidates as soft on crime — or as “different” or “dangerous” — Republicans have shed quiet defenses of such tactics for unabashed defiance.Republican strategies that emphasize racially freighted issues are certainly not the only factor moving the electorate. Republican skill in weaponizing inflation is crucial, as is inflation itself. Polarization and the nationalization of elections also matter, particularly in states and districts with otherwise weak Republican candidates.Jacobson is one of a number of political analysts who argue that the calcification of the electorate into two mutually adversarial blocs limits the potential for significant gains for either party. In a recent essay, “The 2022 U.S. Midterm Election: A Conventional Referendum or Something Different?” Jacobson writes:Statistical models using as predictors the president’s most recent job approval ratings and real income growth during the election year, along with the president’s party’s current strength in Congress, can account for midterm seat swings with considerable accuracy. For example, applying such a model to 2018, when President Donald Trump’s approval stood at 40 percent and real income growth at 2.1 percent, Republicans should have ended up with 41 fewer House seats than they held after the 2016 election — improbably, the precise outcome.Applying those same models to the current contests, Jacobson continued,the Democrats stand to lose about 45 House seats, giving the Republicans a 258-177 majority, their largest since the 1920s. For multiple reasons (e.g., inflation, the broken immigration system, the humiliating exit from Afghanistan) Biden’s approval ratings have been in the low 40s for the entire year. High inflation has led to negative real income growth.No wonder then, Jacobson writes, that “the consensus expectation at the beginning of the year was an electoral tsunami that would put Republicans in solid control of both chambers.” Now, however, “this consensus no longer prevails.”Why?Partisans of both parties report extremely high levels of party loyalty in recent surveys, with more than 96 percent opting for their own party’s candidate. Most self-identified independents also lean toward one of the parties, and those who do are just as loyal as self-identified partisans. Party line voting has been increasing for several decades, reaching the 96 percent mark in 2020. This upward trend reflects a rise in negative partisanship — growing dislike for the other party — rather than increasing regard for the voter’s own side. Partisan antipathies keep the vast majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents from voting for Republican candidates regardless of their opinions of Biden and the economy.Jacobson noted in an email that over the past weekthe numbers have moved against the Democrats, and they should definitely be worried. The latest inflation figures were very bad news for them. But I still doubt that their House losses will approach the 45 predicted by the models and I think they still have some hope of retaining the Senate — or at least, their tie.Jacobson points out that in the current lead-up to the midterms, there is an exceptionally “wide gap between presidential approval and voting intentions, with the Democrats’ support on average 9.2 percentage points higher than Biden’s approval ratings.” He also notes that in previous wave elections, the spread between presidential approval and vote intention was much closer, 5 points in 1994, 4.9 in 2006, 0.3 in 2010 and 4.1 in 2018.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, argued in an email that polarization has in very recent years changed the way voters evaluate presidents and, in turn, how they cast their ballots in midterm contests. “There is a higher floor and lower ceiling in presidential approval,” she said:If anything, approval is fairly resistant to external shocks in ways that look very different from either George W. Bush or Obama. An approval rating below 50 percent seems to be the new norm. But if we think about this from a partisan lens, an overwhelming percent of Democrats will always support the Democratic president, while an overwhelming percent of Republicans will oppose him.Put another way, Wronski said, “it wouldn’t matter what Biden does or doesn’t do to curb inflation, Democrats will largely support, and Republicans will largely oppose.”In this context, “partisanship serves as lens through which economic conditions are evaluated. The stronger partisanship exists as a social identity, the more likely it will be used as the motivation to view and accept information about economic conditions, like inflation.”Negative partisanship, Wronski wrote, “has emerged in recent elections as a driver of voting turnout and vote choice,” with the resultthat partisan antipathies keep Democrats from voting for Republican candidates. No matter how bad economic conditions may be under Biden, the alternative is seen as much worse. The threat to abortion rights and democracy should Republicans take control of Congress may be a more powerful driver of voting behavior.While polls show growing public fear that adherence to the principles of democracy have declined, Wronski pointed out thatthose concerns do not trump more immediate needs like being able to afford food, housing, and gas. To be fair, people cannot fight for lofty ideals like democracy when their basic needs are not being met. People need to be secure in their food and housing situation before they can advocate for bigger ideas.There is another factor limiting the number of House seats that the Republican Party is likely to gain: gerrymandering.Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, makes the case that in state legislatures both parties “hoped to avoid creating districts that were uncertain for their party and/or winnable for the other party. One upshot of this is that in a neutral or close-to-neutral environment, there aren’t many winnable seats for either party.”Trende elaborates: “In the swingiest of swing seats where Biden won between 51 percent and 53 percent, there are just 19 seats. Of those seats, 10 are held by Democrats, seven are held by Republicans, and one is a newly created district.” In a neutral year when neither party has an advantage in the congressional vote, Trende writes, if “Republicans won all the districts where Joe Biden received 52 percent of the vote or less and lost all of the districts where he did better, they would win 224 seats.Gerrymandering has created what Trende calls “levees” — bulwarks — that limit gains and losses for both parties. The danger for Democrats is the possibility that these levees may be breached, which then turns 2022 into a Republican wave election, as was the case in 1994 and 2010: “In a universe where Republicans win the popular vote by four points, sweeping all of the districts that Biden won with 54 percent of the vote or less, the levee would break and the Republican majority would jump from 232 seats to 245 seats.”When Trende published his analysis on Sept. 29, the generic congressional vote was almost tied, 45.9 Republican to 44.9 Democratic, close to a “neutral” election. Since then, however, Republicans have pulled ahead to a 47.8 to 44.8 advantage on Oct. 22, according to RealClearPolitics. FiveThirtyEight’s measure of the generic vote shows a much closer contest as of Oct. 25, with Republicans ahead 45.2 to 44.7 percent.In 2010, the Republican Party’s generic advantage in late October was 9.4 points, a clear signal that a wave election was building.Educational polarization — with college-educated voters shifting decisively to the Democratic Party and non-college voters, mostly white, shifting to the Republican Party — in recent elections has worked to the advantage of the right because there are substantially more non-college voters than those with degrees.This year, the education divide may work to some extent to the benefit of Democrats.James L. Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, pointed out in an email that not only do “polarization and party loyalty make the election outcomes less likely to depend on immediate economic circumstances,” but also “educational polarization, combined with the fact that better-educated voters tend to turn out at higher rates in midterm elections than do less-educated voters, may help the Democrats despite voter concerns about Biden or the economy.”Even with inflation as one of the Democratic Party’s major liabilities, the intensification of polarization appears to be muting its adverse impact.In their 2019 paper, “Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval,” Kathleen Donovan, Paul M. Kellstedt, Ellen M. Key and Matthew J. Lebo, of St. John Fisher University, Texas A&M University, Appalachian State University and Western University, wrote that “Polarization has increased partisan motivated reasoning when it comes to evaluations of the president,” as the choices made by voters are “increasingly detached from economic assessments.”As partisanship intensifies, voters are less likely to punish incumbents of the same party for failures to improve standards of living or to live up to other campaign promises.Yphtach Lelkes, a professor of communication and a co-director of the polarization lab at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote by email that “people (particularly partisans) are far less likely to, for instance, rely on retrospective voting — that is, they won’t throw the bums out for poor economic conditions or problematic policies.”In the early 1970s, Lelkes wrote, “partisanship explained less than 30 percent of the variance in vote choice. Today, partisanship explains more than 70 percent of the variance in vote choice.”This trend grows out of both identity-based partisanship and closely related patterns of media and information usage.As Lelkes put it:There are various explanations for this. There is an identity/motivated reasoning perspective, where people think better us than them and would prefer a lampshade to an out partisan. Another possibility is that people get skewed information. If I watch lots of Fox News or pay even marginal attention to Republican candidates, I’ll hear lots about the economy. If I watch MSNBC and pay attention to Democratic candidates, I’ll hear a lot about abortion, but less about the economy.Not everyone agrees that polarization will limit Democratic losses this year.John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, wrote by email that “it is absolutely true that party loyalty in congressional elections has increased. But this does not stop large seat swings from occurring.”There is, Sides continued, “some evidence that midterm seat swings can be driven by people actually switching their votes from the previous presidential election,” suggesting that “clearly not every voter is a die-hard partisan.”Sides remained cautious, however, about his expectations for the results on Nov. 8: “The recent poll trends are pushing toward larger G.O.P. gains but I am not sure those trends suggest the 40+ House seat gains that the national environment would forecast.” A narrow win, he wrote, would mean that Republican leaders in the House will face “a very delicate task. On the one hand, they have to appease Freedom Caucus types. But they also have to protect potentially vulnerable G.O.P. members in swing districts. I do not know how you manage that task, and so I do not envy Kevin McCarthy.”Dritan Nesho, a co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, was distinctly pessimistic concerning Democratic prospects:An empirical analysis of the 2022 midterm polls in the final stretch suggests that this election will tip both the House and the Senate toward Republicans, and it’s no exception to historical trends suggesting the incumbent party tends to lose an average of 28 seats in the House and 3 or so seats in the Senate. Key numbers around lack of confidence in the economy, the pervasive impact of inflation, and a worsening personal financial situation among a majority of voters today, actually suggest a stronger loss than the average.The two best predictive variables for election outcomes, Nesho writes,are presidential approval and the direction of personal finances. Both are severely underwater for Democrats. In our October Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, Biden has plateaued at 42 percent job approval and 54 percent of voters report their personal financial situation as getting worse. 55 percent blame the Biden administration for inflation rather than other factors (including 42 percent of Democratic respondents), and 73 percent expect prices to further increase rather than come down. 84 percent of voters think the U.S. is in a recession now or will be in one by next year.If that were not enough, Nesho continued,at the same time Democrats are seen as disconnected from the key issues of concern for the median voter. Republicans are connecting better with general voters on inflation and the economy, crime, and immigration; Democrats are seen as preoccupied with Jan. 6, women’s rights/abortion, and the environment, which are further down the list of concerns.Republicans, in turn, have pulled out all the stops in activating racially divisive wedge issues, relentlessly pressing immigration, crime and the specter of generalized disorder.In Missouri, for example, Brian Seitz, a state representative, is determined to “shut down” critical race theory, declaring, “There is a huge red wave coming.” Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, ran a Facebook ad that read: “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION. Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” In Ohio, J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate, contends that Democrats are recruiting immigrants and “have decided that they can’t win re-election in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.” Blake Masters, the Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, warns that Democrats want to increase immigration “to change the demographics of our country.”Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, observed in an email: “By all rights this should be a debacle for the incumbent party based on the fundamentals — the relative bad news about the economy — inflation — crime, the southern border, and the lingering Afghanistan fiasco.”But, Shapiro added:There are mitigating factors: a very important one is that the Republicans picked up many seats in the House in 2020 so those seats are not at risk now for the Democrats, thanks to around 11 million more Republican voters in 2020 than in 2016. The other factor is the Dobbs abortion decision that led to a surge in Democratic voter registration, very likely significantly women and younger voters. This at best has just helped the Democrats to catch up to Republicans.The crucial question in these circumstances, in Shapiro’s view, “will be relative partisan turnout — will this be more like 2010 or 2018? I sense the enthusiasm and anger here is at least a bit greater among Republicans than Democrats for House voting.”Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, emailed me to say that he agrees “with those who think the Democrats will lose the House,” but with Republicans seeing “a below historical average seat gain, i.e. under the 40-45 seats that some models are predicting.”Cain argued that a Democratic setback will not be as consequential as many on both the left and right argue: “It’s not like either party needs to worry about being locked out of power for very long. The electoral winds will shift, and the window to power and policy will open again soon enough.” Polarization, Cain noted, “has made it clear to both parties that you have to grab the policy prizes while you have trifecta control” — as both Trump and Biden have done during their first two years in office.One difference between the current election and the wave election of 1994 is that this time around Republicans have no attention-getting, mobilizing agenda comparable to Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. They have contented themselves with hammering away on the economy, race and immigration.Republicans are fixated on an ethnically and racially freighted agenda of gridlock and revenge. They propose to reduce immigration and to roll back as much as they can of the civil rights revolution, the women’s rights revolution and the gay rights revolution. They threaten to hound Biden appointees, not to mention the president’s son Hunter, with endless hearings and inquiries. The party has also signaled its refusal to raise the debt ceiling and promised to shut down the government in order to force major concessions on spending.While this agenda may win Republicans the House and perhaps the Senate this year, it contains too many contradictions to achieve a durable Republican realignment.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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      Pelosi’s Last Dance? Speaker Sprints Across U.S. as Republicans Close In.

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      The speaker, busy raising millions, is in no mood to contemplate a Democratic defeat in November, much less discuss her legacy.DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. — It has long been known that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to hold the post second in line to the presidency, does not sleep much. These days, as she races in and out of cities across the nation in a grueling, nonstop push for campaign money to hang on to her embattled House majority, even her bedtime hours are consumed with thoughts of how to win.“I don’t count sheep at night; I count districts,” Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat and longtime party leader, said during a closing blitz across the Midwest on behalf of battleground House candidates crucial to any remaining hope that Democrats have of surviving a Republican onslaught. “I go one by one by one.”The big question is whether she can count to 218, the number required to maintain control of the House — and one that a growing number of independent handicappers believe is out of reach for Democrats.Even as she follows every twist and turn on the House map, the reality is that this could well be Ms. Pelosi’s final trip around the track as party leader. The majority she has built and carefully nurtured — not once, but twice — is in jeopardy of falling under the weight of public fears about crime and inflation along with heavy Republican campaign spending and the traditional midterm drag on a president’s party in Congress.But if this is her final race, Ms. Pelosi is running through the tape, trying to ensure her candidates have the resources to compete as Republicans pour on the cash. Ms. Pelosi is an 82-year-old juggernaut in Armani, behaving as if holding the House rests in her hands alone. In some ways it does; she is not only the well-established national face of the House majority, but is also by far its most prolific fund-raiser.“My time is money,” Ms. Pelosi said as she lamented the opportunity cost of talking to a reporter when she could be working her cellphone instead.The lifetime returns on Ms. Pelosi’s investment of time and energy are staggering. Since assuming the party’s House leadership in 2002, she has brought in $1.25 billion for Democrats, according to a party tally, including $42.7 million in the third quarter of this year alone. Her haul so far this election cycle is $276 million, reaped at more than 400 events. Just this month, she has visited more than 20 cities. (After a three-day, four-state Midwestern swing last week, she departed on Sunday for a quick trip to Croatia for meetings on Ukraine.)The tour that touched down last week in Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota and Illinois generated $380,000 that went directly into the accounts of Democrats in some of the toughest races in the nation, must-wins that could benefit from a final burst of cash. Ms. Pelosi — sometimes better known for the legislative acrobatics she has often performed to keep her party’s agenda on track and Democrats united behind it — is now in constant campaign mode, regularly holding Zoom calls with candidates and briefings for thousands of volunteers.Her energy level amazes and inspires her troops.“When I wake up in the morning and feel a little bit tired, I think of Nancy Pelosi,” said Representative Brenda Lawrence, 68, a retiring Michigan Democrat who introduced the speaker at a private fund-raising reception with labor and civic leaders along Detroit’s riverfront. “I put the lipstick on and say, ‘We’ve got to go.’”To Republicans, the speaker remains a favored weapon to deploy against vulnerable candidates, although they have done so with mixed results. They lace their campaign ads and fund-raising appeals with calls to “fire Pelosi” as they try to link the liberal congresswoman from San Francisco to targeted Democrats in conservative-leaning districts, such as Representative Abigail Spanberger in north-central Virginia.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.A G.O.P. Advantage: Republicans appear to be gaining an edge in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains why the mood of the electorate has shifted.Ohio Senate Race: Tim Ryan, the Democrat who is challenging J.D. Vance, has turned the state into perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground.Losing Faith in the System: As democracy erodes in Wisconsin, many of the state’s citizens feel powerless. But Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.“Abigail Spanberger votes 100 percent with Pelosi,” said a recent attack ad from a Republican group with ties to Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who hopes to succeed Ms. Pelosi next year. “It is like having our very own Pelosi mini-me.”Among Americans at large, Ms. Pelosi remains a polarizing figure who can provoke a sharp backlash, one Republicans constantly try to capitalize on. She is not the most charismatic speaker and can be abrupt and impatient with the media. But on the campaign trail, she exhibits a single-mindedness that has won her the deep allegiance of most of her colleagues.On the ground, Democrats enthusiastically embrace the speaker during her visits, welcoming not only the financial help but also the attention she can bring to local projects and the benefits of party policies. Her folk-hero status among Democrats was only elevated by a recently revealed behind-the-scenes video from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol showing her pressing for more help from the military to put down the attack, threatening to punch out Donald J. Trump, and checking on the well-being of Vice President Mike Pence — all while opening a sausage snack with her teeth.As she campaigned last week, she carried in her purse a sausage wrapped with a bow presented to her by a fan.“She is masterful,” said Representative Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat who appeared with Ms. Pelosi to promote the benefits of Democratic climate change legislation for an electric vehicle battery start-up in her district just outside Detroit. The new company is providing well-paying jobs now and the possibility of American-produced batteries later..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I don’t think we should run away from accomplishments, and I also don’t think we should run away from Democratic leaders,” Ms. Stevens said.As she hopscotches the states with an entourage of staff members and security, Ms. Pelosi rejects the suggestion that late-breaking trends seem to favor Republicans, even though polls and election analysts clearly show that Democrats are in increasing trouble. She has zero patience for reminders that history shows the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, and she levels a steely stare at the mere mention that her time as speaker may be drawing to a close.“Forget that,” she said in an interview, dismissing the dark talk of Democratic defeat as ill-informed punditry. “We are talking about the future. I don’t care about what happened in 1946.”Ms. Pelosi joined Representative Haley Stevens, Democrat of Michigan, on a tour of an energy company focused on electric vehicle batteries in Novi, Mich., last week.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times“I don’t think we should run away from accomplishments, and I also don’t think we should run away from Democratic leaders,’’ Ms. Stevens said.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesData aside, Ms. Pelosi said she simply finds it hard to fathom that Republicans could actually win.“Part of it is, I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people,” she said, describing Republicans’ midterm campaign strategy as “endless lying and endless money.”In Illinois, Ms. Pelosi flew in for a handful of candidates she needed to get over the finish line, including Representatives Sean Casten of Illinois and Frank Mrvan from a nearby Indiana district, and candidates Nikki Budzinski and Eric Sorensen, both running for open seats in Illinois.Posing for cellphone pictures with anyone who sought one, Ms. Pelosi used the venue of a sleek work space in a downtown skyscraper to make the case for her contenders and warn of the threat posed by a Republican takeover.“The urgency of saving our democracy is real,” Ms. Pelosi said, adding that she hated to be a “fearmonger,” but that the moment required it.Ms. Pelosi signing a book during a round table with reproductive rights supporters in Downers Grove, Ill.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMs. Pelosi listening to Representative Sean Casten speak. Mr. Casten is among a handful of Illinois Democrats running in tight elections.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThen she traveled to this western suburb represented by Mr. Casten to meet with health care professionals at a sprawling medical complex and hear about the dangers posed by new restrictions on abortion, even in a state where the procedure is still allowed. Ms. Pelosi frequently emphasizes that Republican goals go beyond limiting access to abortion to restrictions on contraception, noting that just a handful of House Republicans supported a Democratic measure this summer guaranteeing access to birth control.“What right does a judge or a member of Congress have to come to the kitchen table of America’s families and weigh in on size and timing of the family?” she asked during her appearance at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital, portraying women as the key to the election.“Your right to choose is on the ballot,” she told the group of doctors, medical workers and abortion rights advocates. “If women vote, women will win.”In an interview, Ms. Pelosi disputed the idea that abortion was fading as a driving issue after giving Democrats a lift following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. But she hopes that view lulls Republicans into complacency.“You think that. You go think that,” she said of Republicans. “I can tell you, it is not in the rearview mirror.”What is to become of Ms. Pelosi should Democrats fall short? Will she step aside and conclude an iconic 35-year career in office, sparking an internal power struggle? In securing the speakership in 2019, she pledged she would not pursue that post after her term ending in January, but she has recently balked at questions on the subject, saying she is focused first on the midterms.“Do you think I would respond to that question?” the speaker asked when pressed about whether she harbored any feeling that she was on a valedictory tour.For Ms. Pelosi, the frenzied journey to Nov. 8 is not a last hurrah — it’s just her latest sprint to the finish.“Conventional wisdom says we might want to go to the beach,” she said. “No, you go to the fight.”“There is one answer,” she added. “Win.” More

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      How a Democrat in Suburban Minneapolis Made His District Blue

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      Dean Phillips, a congressman in suburban Minneapolis, has made his seat safely Democratic thanks in part to his unconventional style and in part to the shifting political landscape.BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — It’s a little after 2 p.m., and beads of sweat are forming on the brow of Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota. He’s wielding a two-foot crowbar to yank up rotten floorboards in the kitchen of a century-old home along Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis, and working fast.“How can you not love this?” Phillips, now upstairs, exclaims as he prepares to saw a hole in the wall of the house’s newly redesigned master bedroom. Despite his staff’s efforts to warn him, he steps on a nail. It’s a short one, thankfully, that doesn’t pierce the sole of his sneaker, and he gets right back to it.Welcome to “On the Job With Dean” — unconventional politicking for an unconventional politician, a suburban Democratic lawmaker whose fortunes say a lot about American politics in 2022. On this particular autumn day, Phillips is moonlighting with a demolition crew for a local contractor, part of a series of odd jobs he takes on, he told me, to feel grounded.In an age when political outsiders are often held up as breaths of fresh air and career politicians are widely reviled, Phillips, a 53-year-old liquor and ice cream entrepreneur whose grandmother was “Dear Abby” and whose mother was a clothier for Prince, labors hard not to look like a traditional pol. Campaign rallies are not his thing. On any given day, you might find him mixing drinks at an ax-throwing bar inside the Mall of America, dipping “witches’ fingers” at a candy factory or driving a 20-ton snowplow through a serpentine training course.In 2018, he flipped this district, a mostly upper-middle-class area of single-family homes and shopping malls that hugs the western border of Minneapolis, to Democratic control for the first time since 1960. His Republican opponent, Erik Paulsen, had won the district by 14 percentage points just two years earlier.Phillips working in a house in Minneapolis during one of his “On the Job With Dean” outings, in which he takes on various types of odd jobs so that, he says, he feels grounded in his district.Blake Hounshell/The New York TimesPhillips ran a nostalgia-infused campaign calling for civility and “conversation,” while ruthlessly defining Paulsen as a no-show with a memorable, documentary-style ad featuring a man dressed in a Bigfoot suit.“I thought I was good at hiding,” Bigfoot muses. “Then Erik Paulsen comes along.”Phillips won by 12 points in 2018, then again by the same margin in 2020. Since then, Republicans have essentially given up on the seat — a silent tribute due in part to his astute political instincts, in part to widespread aversion to Donald Trump in Minnesota and in part to the deeper demographic shifts that presaged Phillips’s 2018 win.“It was a Mitt Romney district,” said Abou Amara, a Democratic strategist in Minneapolis. “Most of those Republicans aren’t coming back.”A tale of two suburbsRepublican operatives are focusing instead on winning back what is proving to be more fertile territory this year: the nearby Second Congressional District, held by Representative Angie Craig.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.A G.O.P. Advantage: Republicans appear to be gaining an edge in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains why the mood of the electorate has shifted.Ohio Senate Race: Tim Ryan, the Democrat who is challenging J.D. Vance, has turned the state into perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground.Losing Faith in the System: As democracy erodes in Wisconsin, many of the state’s citizens feel powerless. But Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.Secretary of State Races: Facing G.O.P. candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election, Democrats are outspending them 57-to-1 on TV ads for their secretary of state candidates. It still may not be enough.Also a former business executive, Craig holds positions that are almost identical to Phillips’s. But she is much more conventional in style, which might help explain her plight.While Phillips seems almost driven to prove that “No Labels”-style centrism does not have to be boring and poll-tested, Craig appears determined to hunker down and play by the old rules. That caution has made her more vulnerable to the gale-force national winds bearing down on generic Democrats in swing districts across the country.But the deeper differences between their two districts are more important, which says a lot about how America’s two major political parties see their shifting fortunes in suburbia in these midterms — often, but wrongly, described as an undifferentiated campaign battleground.On the surface, the two districts look similar, with income levels that are roughly the same. But Craig’s, which stretches to the Wisconsin border, is larger and less dense. It includes more blue-collar and rural voters, and has long been the more culturally conservative of the two.The biggest gap may be in education levels: Nearly 52 percent of residents in Phillips’s district have at least a college degree, while only 42 percent of those in Craig’s do, a figure more comparable to other swing districts nationally. Phillips’s district is slightly more diverse, too: Nearly 13 percent of residents there were born abroad, versus just over 9 percent in Craig’s district.Those subtle distinctions are enough to give Republicans an opening. So while both seats have swung toward Democrats in the Trump era, Craig’s race has become one of the most hotly contested and most expensive campaigns in the country, with more than $10 million pouring in from outside Republican groups. By contrast, Phillips and his opponent have spent about $200,000 combined — essentially nothing.This year, in a freakish reprise of what happened in 2020, one of Craig’s opponents, the candidate of the Legal Marijuana Now party, died in early October. So not only must she contend with a Republican adversary, Tyler Kistner, who is well-funded and has decent name recognition after coming up just 2.2 percentage points short of Craig in 2020, but the deceased marijuana candidate also remains on the ballot and threatens to siphon votes from her left.Phillips’s “Government Repair Truck” offers “coffee and conversation” to would-be constituents.Blake Hounshell/The New York TimesCan Democrats rebrand?An heir to a local liquor company who co-founded the gelato business Talenti, then sold it to Unilever in 2014 for a tidy profit, Phillips approaches politics like a branding exercise. And in his mind, Democrats have a branding problem.From Talenti, he learned to appreciate the power of nostalgia for a simpler time in America, he told me — but not, he stressed, of the exclusionary Make America Great Again variety.In 2018, he began traveling around the district in a vintage 1960s delivery van called the “Government Repair Truck,” offering “coffee and conversation” to would-be constituents. It became a campaign signature, and “everyone’s invited” became his tagline and unofficial motto. (There was also, briefly, the barely seaworthy “Government Repair Pontoon Boat.” And soon, the “Government Repair Ice Shed” will be hauled onto the frozen surface of Lake Minnetonka for ice fishing.)When Phillips was growing up, his stepfather made him work in the warehouse of their alcohol business, and he learned the art of retail politics, he said, while going on sales calls to liquor stores.“My dad always said that selling starts with listening,” Phillips told me as we ate French fries and Juicy Lucy cheeseburgers, a Minneapolis delicacy that, judging from his slim frame, he rarely eats. On sales calls, he made sure to ask what varieties of liquor were hot and adjust his pitch accordingly.“On the Job With Dean” is just one of several branded “series,” as his team calls them, in Phillips’s political arsenal.There’s also “Surprise and Delight,” where Phillips drops off doughnuts and hoovers up scraps of intel from police and fire units, such as the latest local trends in recruitment of new officers and firefighters, car theft and ambulance calls; “Civics 101,” in which he delivers a guest lecture on democracy at high schools; and “Common Ground,” a two-hour event moderated by a licensed marriage counselor and featuring four liberals and four conservatives who are paired together, then told to come up with solutions to thorny public policy problems.Phillips seems to recognize, however, that merely changing the packaging of run-of-the-mill Democratic positions is not enough. He co-sponsored a bill this year to fund the police, and his House office in Washington made sure I knew about it. This summer, he became the first Democrat in Congress to call for President Biden not to run in 2024, a position he took, he told me, because it’s “what I believe.”Some in the Minnesota Democratic Party are urging Phillips to run for Senate, in the much-rumored event that one of the state’s two incumbent Democrats retires soon. As many as 10 candidates are likely to run, local Democrats said, given how rarely those seats open up.At our lunch, Phillips confessed his worry that running for Senate would pull him away from the kind of local engagement “I find joy in most.” It would also force him to raise millions of dollars, a task he abhors, and to travel constantly. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a close Phillips ally, once promised to visit all of Minnesota’s 87 counties every year, an exhausting vow that has become the new statewide campaign standard. But Phillips didn’t rule it out entirely.For the moment, he is running for a House leadership position — co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, a sleepy group whose influence is hard to identify, positive or otherwise. He is campaigning for the job in typical Phillips fashion, most recently by handing out custom-branded packets of wildflower seeds on the House floor that say “Let’s Grow!” on the packaging.Earlier, as we pulled up to the snowplow course, Phillips showed me a years-old photograph of him sitting at the desk of Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, for whom he interned in 1989. It took him years to screw up the courage to tell Leahy, who is now retiring, that he had sneaked into the senator’s office while he was out of town.“That’s the first time I sat in a place of power,” he recalled. “And I liked the feeling.”What to readDemocratic candidates are struggling to find a closing message on the economy that both acknowledges voters’ troubles while making the case that the party in power, not Republicans, holds the solutions, Jonathan Weisman and Neil Vigdor report.“Most political races are about authenticity on some level: who tries too hard, who doesn’t try hard enough, who can read the electorate without staring,” Matt Flegenheimer writes. Tim Ryan, he says, “has made Ohio perhaps the country’s unlikeliest Senate battleground by taking this premise to its logical extreme.”John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, faces twin challenges in his debate on Tuesday night against Mehmet Oz: making the case for his policies while convincing voters he is healthy enough to serve, write Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Trip Gabriel.For the first time in 70 years, America’s largest majority Black city may not send a Black representative to Washington. Clyde McGrady reports from Detroit.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Murkowski Says She Will Rank Peltola First on Her Ballot in Alaska

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      ANCHORAGE — Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a centrist Republican facing a tough re-election campaign, plans on ranking Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, first on her ballot this November, crossing party lines to back the incumbent in her race to serve a full term in the House.Sitting in a quiet backstage corner behind exhibitions and vendors at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this weekend, Ms. Murkowski confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday her support for Ms. Peltola, who earlier this year overcame a chaotic field of four dozen candidates to finish the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term after he died in March.Ms. Murkowski declined to say whether or how she would rank Ms. Peltola’s challengers: Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor and vice-presidential candidate, or Nicholas Begich III, a conservative member of an Alaskan liberal dynasty, both registered Republican candidates, or Chris Bye, a libertarian. Under Alaska’s new ranked-choice system, voters can rank their preferred candidates, which are counted until at least one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.Ms. Murkowski brushed off the significance of her comment, describing it as “Lisa being honest” and adding that she was primarily focused on her own race, where she is fending off Kelly Tshibaka, a right-wing challenger endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and the state’s Republican Party. Ms. Murkowski has also retained broad support from Alaska Native voters in the state, and they proved crucial to her write-in campaign in 2010. (Ms. Peltola told The Washington Post she also planned on voting for Ms. Murkowski, and they posed together for a photo at the convention.)“Alaskans are going to go through the same process that I am, which is evaluating people, looking at their values and whether they represent them, and they will make that determination going forward,” Ms. Murkowski said.But the comment underscored the broad coalition Ms. Peltola is assembling in her bid to remain the sole representative for the state’s 734,000 people, after being sworn in last month as the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. At the convention, Ms. Peltola was feted with raucous cheers and emotional prayer songs and tributes, as attendees rang cowbells and waved cutouts of her face at the very mention of her name.“We are in Mary’s house, and I know this,” Ms. Palin proclaimed at a candidate forum at the convention. “Doggone it, I never have anything, like, to gripe about — I just wish she’d convert on over to the other party.”Ms. Palin, while quick to lavish Ms. Peltola, her longtime friend, with praise, made no mention of Mr. Begich, who also appeared and who siphoned away some conservative voters in the primary. More

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      This Wasn’t the Vibe Shift Democrats Had in Mind

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      Gail Collins: Bret, as you know, I always try to avoid discussing foreign affairs — never been my specialty — but I do want to ask you about the British, um, situation.Bret Stephens: You mean the country that seems to have switched places with Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, politically speaking, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s Argentina, economically speaking, and Groucho Marx’s Freedonia, comically speaking? Go on.Gail: The Tory prime minister, Liz Truss, set a record for failure before she slunk out of office last week. She came into 10 Downing Street promising to cut taxes on the rich, and she did, and she … nose-dived.Any message there for the rest of us?Bret: When Margaret Thatcher was pressed on whether she would switch course on her free-market policies, she famously said, “The lady’s not for turning.” She went on to be one of the longest-serving prime ministers in British history. Truss turned against her own policies almost immediately and wound up being turned out of office almost immediately.So the first lesson is that if you announce a policy, have the guts to stick to it or face political destruction.Gail: Well, in this case I think we’d have seen political destruction either way. The tax cut idea was disastrous.Bret: I’d say it was the execution, not the idea: Tax cuts usually stimulate a sluggish economy. The second lesson is that Britain’s economic mess isn’t the result of a month and a half of Truss but 12 years of big-government Toryism under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Britain just isn’t an attractive country to live or invest in anymore, particularly after it made the foolish decision to leave the European Union.Bottom line: Have the courage of your convictions and the wit to defend them. Your take?Gail: That cutting taxes on the rich isn’t the magic answer to economic problems. I believe in a lot of what you’d call big government, but sooner or later, you’ve gotta pay for stuff.Bret: Gail Collins, fiscal conservative …Gail: Speaking of debt, President Biden’s plan to start his program of canceling student loans to poor and middle-class borrowers is facing a slew of Republican court challenges.I’m rooting for him to win the fight — a matter on which I believe we disagree.Bret: Totally against loan forgiveness. We’ve increased the national debt from $20 trillion to $31 trillion in barely five years and now higher interest rates are going to make it more expensive to service that debt. And we are supposed to write off $400 billion in college loans — including to couples making up to $250,000 — without even giving Congress an opportunity to weigh in? It’s bad policy and worse politics.Gail: Let me quickly point out that many of the folks who are spending their lives paying off big student loans signed up for the deal when they were little more than kids, some not ready for the programs they were recruited into, and some who were assured that their major in medieval history would lead to high-income jobs that would make it easy to pay off the debt. The system did not work.Bret: I probably shouldn’t say this, but anyone who thought, at any age, that a degree in medieval history would lead to a life of riches needs stupidity forgiveness, not loan forgiveness.I guess we’ll find out soon enough if the courts even allow the plan to go through, though I did find it interesting that Amy Coney Barrett effectively sided with the administration on this issue. Nice to see a Trump nominee show some independence.Gail: Agreed. Meanwhile, I’ve been wanting to ask you about the Senate races. The whole world is watching! Or at least the politically obsessed part of America. Anything grabbing your interest?Bret: The most interesting Senate race is in Ohio. I really don’t see Tim Ryan beating J.D. Vance, but the fact that he’s even competitive in a state Trump won in 2020 by eight points suggests he’s found a formula for how Democrats win back white, working-class votes from the Republicans. Mainly that means running as far away as possible from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the progressive wing of his party.How about you?Gail: Since Cincinnati is my hometown, I’ve been watching Ohio pretty intently. I think Ryan has a chance — he’s in a pretty red state, but one that’s elected Democrats before. Including the state’s other senator, Sherrod Brown, who’s considered liberal.Bret: True. And just by outperforming expectations Ryan is forcing Republicans to pour a ton of money in the race just to hold the seat.Gail: Plus Ryan is running against a truly terrible candidate. Vance seems to have an unending supply of mini-scandals about his financial dealings.Bret: I thought Vance did fine in the debate last week. What bothers me about him aren’t his financial dealings. It’s the crass opportunism it took for him to flip almost overnight from Never Trumper to MAGA Republican. And the fact that he represents the isolationist wing of the conservative movement. Hard to overstate how dangerous that is in the face of the new axis of evil in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing.Gail: Also interested in New Hampshire, where the Democratic incumbent, Maggie Hassan, seemed doomed in a Republican-leaning year, given that she won her last election by only about 1,000 votes.But her opponent, the retired general Don Bolduc, has been another awful candidate — all over the map, trying to be a right-wing stalwart in the primaries and now metamorphosing into a moderate who wants to raise Social Security taxes on the wealthy.Who would you vote for there?Bret: Hassan, no question. She’s a good senator, willing to work across the aisle. I would have supported the Republican governor, Chris Sununu, if he’d decided to run, but apparently the sanity gene runs too strongly in his family so he stayed out of the race. And Bolduc isn’t just an election denier or even an election-denier denier — in that he retracted his denialism after he won the primary. It’s that he subsequently denied that he denied being a denier. Which means he should be denied the election.Gail: Bret, either you are the most fair-minded commentator in the country or this is yet another marker for how far the Republican Party has sunk. Even its defenders can’t defend many of this year’s candidates.I’m inclined to say both are true, by the way.Bret: Thanks! Can we switch to some of the races for governor? In New York the Republican candidate, Lee Zeldin, seems to be zooming up in the polls.Gail: Aauugh. If this was a New York Republican like your old fave George Pataki, I’d be unshocked — Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. But Zeldin is terrible! If you want to get a really good feel for this contest, read our editorial board’s very powerful Hochul endorsement.Bret: Zeldin is doing well because New Yorkers are doing badly. We have the highest overall tax burden in the country if you count income, property, sales and excise taxes, but we are very far from having the best school districts, the best infrastructure or the safest streets. The only area in which we lead the country is in losing people to other states. And one-party rule is bad for governance. There are things I don’t like about Zeldin, starting with his proximity to Donald Trump, but I’ll vote for him next month.Gail: Looking elsewhere — how about Arizona? The race pits Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, against Kari Lake, a Republican TV personality. I certainly think Hobbs would make the better governor. But if Lake wins I could see her turning into a possible vice-presidential candidate on a Trump ticket.Bret: Our news-side colleague Jack Healy wrote a devastating report about Hobbs, whose personal strengths apparently don’t include campaigning. She refuses to debate her opponent on the grounds that Lake is an election denier, which seems to me like an especially good reason to debate. My bet is that the governorship stays in Republican hands — and that it might push Blake Masters to victory in his Senate race against the incumbent Democrat, Mark Kelly.Gail: It was a great piece, which did note that Lake refuses to answer any questions from the state’s major newspaper.Bret: Bigger picture, Gail, I suspect it’s going to be a pretty good November for Republicans, despite all of the lousy candidates they’ve put forward. Do you see this as just part of a natural cycle in which the incumbent party usually does badly in midterms? Or would you put some blame on the way Biden has handled the presidency so far?Gail: In a world full of war, energy shortages, health crises and political polarization, our president is doing a decent job of keeping things calm. Wish he had a more electric personality, but we’ve certainly learned there are worse things than a chief executive who isn’t great on camera.It is true that the incumbent party usually does poorly during the midterms. Fortunately, the Republicans under Trump have nominated so many terrible candidates that there’s a chance the results won’t be quite as dire for Biden’s side.What do you think? And more important, which side are you rooting for?Bret: I’m rooting for Biden to succeed because we can’t allow Trump to come back, Vladimir Putin to win or the country to come even more unglued and unhinged than it already is.Of course my way of rooting for success is to scold Biden nonstop whenever I think he’s screwing up. It’s a formula my mom has been using with me for nearly 49 years. She’s confident that in a few years more, she might even succeed.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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      The Midterms Look Very Different if You’re Not a Democrat or a Republican

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Liel Leibovitz, an editor at large for Tablet magazine, and Stephanie Slade, a senior editor at Reason magazine, to discuss how they and other “politically homeless” Americans are thinking about the midterm elections.Ross Douthat: Thanks to you both for serving as representatives of the important part of America that feels legitimately torn between the political parties. Liel, in December of 2021 you wrote an essay about what you called “the Turn,” meaning the feeling of no longer being at home on the political left, of being alienated from the Democratic Party by everything from Covid-era school closures to doctrinaire progressivism.Where does “the Turn” carry you when it comes to electoral politics, facing the (arguably) binary choices of the midterm elections?Liel Leibovitz: Nowhere good, I’m afraid. I’m an immigrant, so I have no real tribal or longstanding loyalties. I came to this country, like so many other immigrants, because I care deeply about two things — freedom of religion and individual liberties. And both parties are messing up when it comes to these two fundamental pillars of American life, from cheering on law enforcement spying on Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11 to cheering on social media networks for curbing free speech. “The Turn” leads me away from both Democrats and Republicans.Douthat: Stephanie, you’re a libertarian, part of a faction that’s always been somewhat alienated from both parties, despite (usually) having a somewhat stronger connection to the right. This is not, I think it’s fair to say, a particularly libertarian moment in either coalition. What kind of Election Day outcomes are you actually rooting for?Stephanie Slade: This is tough. As someone motivated by a desire for much less government than we currently have, I’m always going to be nervous about the prospect of a Congress that’s willing to rubber-stamp the whims of a president (or vice versa). So I’m an instinctive fan of divided power. But that preference is running smack up against the almost unimaginable abhorrence I feel toward some of the Republicans who would have to win in order for the G.O.P. to retake the Senate.Douthat: Liel, as someone whose relationship to the left and the Democrats has become much more complicated in recent years, what do you see when you look at the Republican alternative?Leibovitz: Sadly, the same thing I see when I look at the Democrats. I see a party too enmeshed in very bad ideas and too interested in power rather than principle. I see a party only too happy to cheer on big government to curtail individual liberties and to let tech oligopolies govern many corners of our lives. The only point of light is how many outliers both these parties seem to be producing these days, which tells me that the left-right dichotomy is truly turning meaningless.Douthat: But political parties are always more interested in power rather than principle, right? And a lot of people look at the current landscape and say, “Sure, there are problems in both parties, but the stakes are just too high not to choose a side.” Especially among liberals, there’s a strong current of frustration with cross-pressured voters. How do you respond to people who can’t understand why you aren’t fully on their side?Slade: Those seeking power certainly want people to feel like the stakes are too high not to go along with their demands. Yes, there are militant partisans on both sides who consider it traitorous of me not to be with them 100 percent. At the same time, there’s a distinction worth keeping in mind between where party activists are and where the average Republican or Democratic voter is. Most Americans are not so wedded to their red-blue identities.Leibovitz: The most corrosive and dispiriting thing is how zero-sum our political conversation has gotten. I look at the Democratic Party and see a lot of energy I love — particularly the old Bernie Sanders spirit, before it was consumed by the apparatus. I look at the Republican Party and see people like Ted Cruz, who are very good at kicking up against some of the party’s worst ideas. There’s hope here and energy, just not if you keep on seeing this game as red versus blue.Douthat: Let me pause there, Liel. What bad ideas do you think Cruz is kicking against?Leibovitz: He represents a kind of energy that doesn’t necessarily gravitate toward the orthodoxies of giving huge corporations the freedom to do as they please. He’s rooted in an understanding of America that balks at the notion that we now have a blob of government-corporate interests dictating every aspect of our lives and that everything — from our medical system to our entertainment — is uniform.Douthat: This is a good example of the gap between how political professionals see things and how individuals see things. There’s no place for the Bernie-Cruz sympathizer in normal political typologies! But you see in polls right now not just Georgians who might back Brian Kemp for governor in Georgia and Raphael Warnock for senator but also Arizonans who might vote for Mark Kelly and Kari Lake — a stranger combination.Stephanie, what do you think about this ticket-splitting impulse?Slade: Some of this isn’t new. Political scientists and pollsters have long observed that people don’t love the idea of any one side having too much power at once. In that, I can’t blame them.Leibovitz: I agree. But it’s still so interesting to me that some of these splits seem just so outlandish, like the number of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then in 2016 for Donald Trump. That’s telling us that something truly interesting, namely that these tired labels — Democrat, Republican — don’t really mean anything anymore.Slade: We insiders always want to believe that voters are operating from a sort of consistent philosophical blueprint. But we’re seeing a lot more frustration-based voting, backlash voting. This can be fine, in the sense that there’s plenty in our world to be frustrated about, but my fear is that it can tip over into a politics thoroughly motivated by hatreds. And that is scary.Douthat: Right. For instance, in the realm of pundits, there’s an assumption that Republican candidates should be assessed based on how all-in they are for election conspiracy theories and that swing voters should recoil from the conspiracists. That seems to be happening in Pennsylvania, where the more conspiratorial Republican, Doug Mastriano, seems to be doing worse in his governor’s race than Dr. Oz is in the Senate campaign. But in Arizona, Lake is the more conspiratorial candidate, and she appears to be a stronger candidate than Blake Masters is in the Senate race.Which suggests that swing voters are often using a different compass than the political class.Leibovitz: Let me inject a very big dose of — dare I say it? — hope here. Yes, there’s a lot of hate and a lot of fear going on. But if you look at these volatile patterns you’re describing, you’re seeing something else, which is a yearning for a real vision. Voters are gravitating toward candidates who are telling them coherent stories that make sense. To the political classes, these stories sometimes sound conspiratorial or crazy or way removed from the Beltway reality. But to normal Americans, they resonate.Douthat: Or, Stephanie, are they just swinging back and forth based on the price of gas, and all larger narratives are pundit impositions on more basic pocketbook impulses?Slade: Yeah, I’m a little more split on this. Economic fundamentals matter a lot, as do structural factors (like that the president’s party usually does poorly in midterms, irrespective of everything else).Douthat: But then do you, as an unusually well-informed, cross-pressured American, feel electing Republicans in the House or Senate will help with the economic situation, with inflation?Slade: It’s a debate among libertarians whether divided government is actually a good thing. Or is the one thing the two parties can agree on that they should spend ever more money? I don’t have a ton of hope that a Republican-controlled House or Senate will do much good. On the other hand, the sheer economic insanity of the Biden years — amounting to approving more than $4 trillion of new borrowing, to say nothing of the unconstitutional eviction moratorium and student loan forgiveness — is mind-boggling to me, so almost anything that could put the brakes on some of this stuff seems worth trying.Douthat: Spoken like a swing voter. Liel, you aren’t a libertarian, but your particular profile — Jewish immigrant writer put off by progressive extremism — does resemble an earlier cross-pressured group, the original 1970s neoconservatives. Over time, a lot of neoconservatives ended up comfortably on the right (at least until recently) because they felt welcomed by the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.Do you think that the toxic side of the G.O.P. is a permanent obstacle to completing a similar move rightward for people alienated by progressivism?Leibovitz: Not to get too biblical, but I view Trump less as a person and more as a plague, a reminder from above to mend our ways, or else. And many voters mortified by the sharp left turn of the Democratic Party are feeling, like me, politically homeless right now.But politically homeless is not politically hopeless. The way out for us isn’t by focusing on which of these two broken homes is better but on which ideas we still hold dear. And here I agree with Stephanie. Stopping the economic insanity — from rampant spending to stopping oil production and driving up gas prices to giving giant corporations a free pass — is key. So is curbing the notion that it’s OK to believe that the government can decide that some categories, like race or gender or sexual orientation, make a person a member of a protected class and that it’s OK for the government to adjudicate which of these classes is more worthy of protection.Douthat: Let’s end by getting specific. Irrespective of party, is there a candidate on the ballot this fall who you are especially eager to see win and one that you are especially eager to see lose?Leibovitz: I’m a New Yorker, so anyone who helped turn this state — and my beloved hometown — into the teetering mess it is right now deserves to go. Lee Zeldin seems like the sort of out-of-left-field candidate who can be transformative, especially considering the tremendous damage done by the progressives in the state.Douthat: OK, you’ve given me a Republican candidate you want to see win, is there one you’d like to see fail?Leibovitz: I know Pennsylvania is a very important battleground state, and the Democrats have put forth a person who appears ill equipped for this responsibility, but it’s very, very hard to take a Dr. Oz candidacy seriously.Slade: I spend a lot of my time following the rising illiberal conservative movement, variously known as national conservatives, postliberals, the New Right and so on. What distinguishes them is their desire not just to acquire government power but to wield it to destroy their enemies. That goes against everything I believe and everything I believe America stands for. The person running for office right now who seems most representative of that view is J.D. Vance, who once told a reporter that “our people hate the right people.” I would like to see that sentiment lose soundly in November, wherever it’s on the ballot. (Not that I’m saying I think it actually will lose in Ohio.)Douthat: No predictions here, just preferences. Is there someone you really want to win?Slade: Like a good libertarian, can I say I wish they could all lose?Douthat: Not really, because my last question bestows on both of you a very unlibertarian power. You are each the only swing voter in America, and you get to choose the world of 2023: a Democratic-controlled Congress, a Republican-controlled Congress or the wild card, Republicans taking one house but not the other. How do you use this power?Leibovitz: Mets fan here, so wild card is an apt metaphor: Take the split, watch them both lose in comical and heartbreaking ways and pray for a better team next election.Slade: If forced to decide, I’d split the baby, then split the baby again: Republicans take the House, Democrats hold the Senate.Douthat: A Solomonic conclusion, indeed. Thanks so much to you both.Ross Douthat is a Times columnist. Liel Leibovitz is an editor at large for Tablet magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast, “Unorthodox,” and daily Talmud podcast, “Take One.” Stephanie Slade (@sladesr) is a senior editor at Reason magazine.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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      As Midterm Campaign Norms Erode, Even Debates Are Under Debate

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      Candidates for senator or governor routinely used to participate in two or three debates. Now some are skipping them altogether. Retail politicking at diners and state fairs is no longer the cliché it was for generations. And town-hall-style meetings, where citizens get to question their elected leaders and those running to replace them, have given way to the online echo chamber.In midterm campaigns across the country, direct political engagement has been falling away, victim to security concerns, pandemic-era workarounds and Republican hostility to the mainstream media.Many candidates are sticking instead to safer spaces: partisan news outlets, fund-raisers with supporters, friendly local crowds. The result is a profound shift in the long traditions of American campaigns that is both a symptom of and a contributor to the ills afflicting the country’s politics.Campaigning used to force candidates to engage up close with the public, exposing them not only to supporters but to those who might disagree with them. Avoiding those tougher interactions cuts down on the opportunities for candidates’ characters and limitations to be revealed, and for elected officials to be held accountable to those who elected them. For the politicians, it creates an artificial environment where their positions appear uniformly popular and opposing views are angrily denounced, making compromise seem risky.“They run these campaigns in bubbles to these voters who are in bubbles,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a moderate Republican who won seven terms in Congress in a Northern Virginia district and headed his party’s congressional campaign committee.Mr. Davis said he felt “a duty” as a lawmaker to participate in debates and town-hall meetings. “People don’t feel that duty anymore,” he added. “When they say, ‘I went home and talked to my constituents,’ they are talking to their base.”Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the country’s shrinking debate stage. Candidates in 10 of the most competitive contests for Senate and governor have agreed to just one debate, where voters not long ago could have expected to watch two or three. Those debates have already happened in Senate races in Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Wisconsin and in the Texas and Wisconsin governor’s races.Only in five contests — the Senate race in Ohio and governor’s races in Georgia, Kansas, Maine and Oregon — have the candidates agreed to multiple meetings.In at least four other competitive contests, the candidates failed to agree to any debates at all.In Arizona, Katie Hobbs, the Democrat running for governor, flatly declines to debate her Republican opponent. In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor, has rejected debates run by news organizations, citing what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” In Missouri, the Republican nominee for Senate, Eric Schmitt, accused his opponent of refusing to debate. Ten days later, he failed to show for the first general election matchup.And in Nevada, the major-party candidates for Senate agreed in principle to a televised face-off, but none has happened, because they couldn’t agree on the forum.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor’s Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.“It was almost inconceivable that we would not have a series of debates,” said Sig Rogich, a longtime Republican political consultant in Nevada and a former aide to Paul Laxalt, the grandfather of the current Republican Senate candidate, Adam Laxalt. “It used to be three, then it went to two and now it’s down to one. And pretty soon it will be none, and I don’t think that’s healthy.”It’s not just debates. Town halls and other events that offered opportunities to interact with voters — stump speeches in sweaty high school gymnasiums, town square meet-and-greets, barnstorming bus tours — have become less common, and those that are still held are often more restricted than in the past. Campaign schedules that used to be blasted to email inboxes are kept private, leaving reporters to dig like detectives just to figure out where a candidate will show up.The shift reflects a drop in the number of competitive House districts and a polarized environment in which swing voters are disappearing, so candidates see little advantage in trying to win them over.It all amounts to an erosion of fundamental American traditions that date back to the earliest years of the Republic: forums in 17th-century New England meeting houses, Abraham Lincoln’s travels across Illinois to debate slavery with Stephen A. Douglas, and packs of reporters surrounding candidates in crowded church basements and veterans’ halls.Pushing Away Reporters, LiterallyWhen Mr. Mastriano, the Republican running for governor in Pennsylvania, appeared in Philadelphia last month, the event had some of the trappings of a traditional campaign stop. It was open to the news media, the candidate sounded standard Republican themes about crime and he emphasized the need for his party to engage Latino voters.A Texas debate with Gov. Greg Abbott and his Democratic challenger, former Representative Beto O’Rourke, featured no audience and no livestream on C-SPAN.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesBut just off-camera, little was as it might have seemed. Mr. Mastriano took no questions from journalists. And, as they often have during his campaign, aides muscled reporters away from the candidate, throwing arms or blocking those who tried to approach with questions.In Atlanta earlier this month, reporters were not allowed into a “worship and luncheon” held for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee, who had just been accused of paying for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. Police officers and a security guard even shooed journalists out of the parking lot..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.For some Republicans, declining debates and shunning nonpartisan news outlets is a way to cast themselves in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently breaks with political norms. His attacks on reporters energized a conservative base that rewards Republican politicians for viewing the mainstream media as the enemy, leaving many strategists to see skipping debates and interviews as a way not only to protect their candidates from unforced errors but to rally support.The irony of that approach is that while Mr. Trump often attacks mainstream journalists, he can’t quit them, either.“You have these candidates saying, ‘I’m Trump-like, so I’m not going to talk to media or debate’ — meanwhile, that’s all he does,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the battleground state of Pennsylvania who is involved with organizing political debates there.A Republican Stance That SpreadWhile the trend of avoiding the public was initially driven by Republicans, it has seeped across party lines. In-person congressional town-hall meetings have fallen to record lows, according to Indivisible, a liberal grass-roots group that formed after the 2016 election. In 2017, the group counted 1,875 town-hall events by members of Congress. The number spiked to nearly 3,000 in 2019.This year is not on pace to return to prepandemic levels. The group has tracked just 408 through the first half of the year. (Those numbers, the organization said, may fail to account for events announced abruptly on partisan social media.)Dr. Mehmet Oz checked Nikki Haley’s blood pressure during a town-hall-style event last month. These kinds of public political forums have become less common.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesBradford Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, which advises lawmakers on issues like running their offices and communicating with constituents, said he now urged members not to hold open public meetings because of security concerns.In Democratic circles, candidates have skipped debates by saying their opponents’ actions suggest that any forums between them will not amount to a productive exchange of ideas.Campaign aides to Ms. Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor in Arizona, cited the raucous Republican primary debates in their state as a reason for avoiding a general election face-off against her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, a former newscaster who has molded herself after Mr. Trump and his election lies.Mr. Trump benefited immensely in 2016 from primary debates, where he dominated a large field. Four years later, as the pandemic raged and he recovered from Covid, he refused to hold virtual events, leading to the cancellation of the second scheduled presidential debate.A sparsely attended town-hall event this month in Atlanta featured Gov. Brian Kemp, Stacey Abrams and Senator Raphael Warnock.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe Strategy Favoring DebatesFor decades, debates about debates were driven by political strategy. A candidate in a strong position didn’t want to risk a misstep, and strategists grumbled that the hours of preparation could be better used for fund-raising or other events. Those trailing in the polls would push for more face-offs in hopes of a game-changing moment.Such moments are rare, but they do happen.In October 2016, Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire, said that, “absolutely,” Mr. Trump could be a role model for young children. She spent weeks explaining the remark before losing by about 1,000 votes.That same month in 2016, in the Nevada Senate race, Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, delivered a strong performance in a debate against a Republican who struggled to explain why he had backed away from his endorsement of Mr. Trump. She won narrowly and now is trying to pressure Mr. Laxalt onto the debate stage in hopes of gaining momentum in her re-election race.Kari Lake supporters last month during a Latinos for Lake rally. Instead of debates, candidates prefer speaking to their supporters.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMr. Nicholas, the Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, said the lighter debate schedule this year was a far cry from the three debates that his old boss, former Senator Arlen Specter, always participated in.“In normal times, we would have done three to five debates in the Senate race,” Mr. Nichols said. “Now, it looks like of all of the big Pennsylvania races, there’s only going to be one debate in one race.”There is little sign that debates will return in two years. The Republican National Committee has told the Commission on Presidential Debates that its 2024 presidential candidate will not participate in commission-sponsored debates unless it changes its rules on dates and moderators.“The constructive collision of ideas that used to be the hallmark of our democracy is becoming a distant memory,” said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center.Representative Lauren Boebert, the Colorado Republican, debated her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, last month, but attendance was sparse.William Woody for The New York TimesKatie Glueck More

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      McCarthy Suggests a GOP-Led House Would Question Ukraine Aid

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      WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, said that if his party wins a majority in next month’s midterm elections, its members would be unwilling to “write a blank check” to Ukraine, suggesting it could be more difficult for President Biden to get congressional approval for large infusions of aid to bolster the country’s war against Russia.“I think people are going to be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” he said in a recent interview with Punchbowl News. “Ukraine is important, but at the same time, it can’t be the only thing they do, and it can’t be a blank check.”Mr. McCarthy’s comments reflected the rising tide of isolationism in the Republican Party, especially in the House, where an increasing number of libertarian-minded conservatives who have adopted former President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” position have vocally opposed authorizing billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as it fights off an unprovoked attack from Russia.That impulse led 57 House Republicans to vote in May against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. In the Senate, 11 Republican senators opposed the aid package after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, forcefully marshaled support for the legislation in his conference.In total, Congress has approved more than $60 billion to Ukraine this year alone by overwhelming margins, the largest amount of military aid the United States has committed to any country in a single year in nearly half a century, since the Vietnam War.Mr. McCarthy, who is in line to be speaker if his party wins control of the House, voted for the aid package in May, as did his top two deputies. His remarks on Tuesday casting doubt on his party’s appetite to send more aid underscored the precarious balance he is attempting as he tries to straddle the rift among Republicans between the traditional, hawkish conservatives and the harder-right, more anti-interventionist members whose support he needs to be elected speaker.The House Republicans who are poised to run the committees with oversight of the war should they win the majority are largely hawks who have backed the aid to Ukraine, indicating that some in the party may be reluctant to turn their backs on Kyiv. And many Democrats have supported the money for Ukraine, suggesting that even if most Republicans were opposed, the House could still muster bipartisan support to approve such aid.Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday in response to Mr. McCarthy’s remarks that there was still “broad bipartisan support” for aiding Ukraine.“We want to ensure that our NATO partners are stepping up to the plate and bearing the burden of the cost,” Mr. McCaul said, adding of Mr. McCarthy, “I think he’s just saying we’re not going to write a blank check without oversight and accountability, which my committee will be providing.” More