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      Fetterman Returns to Senate Campaign Trail in Pennsylvania

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      ERIE, Pa. — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, returned to the campaign trail on Friday evening for his first major public event since he suffered a stroke in mid-May.Mr. Fetterman was by turns emotional and brash as he addressed an exuberant crowd, acknowledging the gravity of the health scare he faced while also slamming his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician, and pledging to fight for “every county, every vote.” “Tomorrow is three months ago — three months ago, my life could have ended,” said Mr. Fetterman, who spoke for around 11 minutes and then greeted some attendees. At another point, his voice appeared to break as he added: “I just got so grateful — and I’m so lucky. So thank you for being here.”Supporters of Mr. Fetterman at his rally on Friday. In recent weeks, he has started to emerge, but this was his first major public event of the general election.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesThe rally in Erie — in a swing county in what is perhaps the nation’s ultimate swing state — was an important moment in a race that could determine control of the Senate. It was Mr. Fetterman’s first official in-person campaign event of the general election as he runs against Dr. Oz, who squeaked through the Republican primary with the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Fetterman’s stroke occurred days before the Democratic primary in May, and in early June, his doctor said he also had a serious heart condition. His wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, introduced him on Friday as a “stroke survivor.”In recent weeks, Mr. Fetterman has started to emerge, greeting volunteers, granting a few local interviews and attending fund-raisers and events, including with senators and other Senate hopefuls. Several people who have spoken with him or heard him speak at private events described him as eager to return to the campaign trail, though some have also said it was evident when he was reaching for a word. He has acknowledged that challenge, and it was at times apparent on Friday when he started a sentence over or spoke haltingly.“I’ll miss a word sometimes, or I might mush two words together sometimes in a conversation, but that’s really the only issue, and it’s getting better and better every day,” Mr. Fetterman recently told KDKA-TV, the CBS station in Pittsburgh.But onstage on Friday, Mr. Fetterman also came across as high-energy, and his remarks sometimes took on the feel of a stand-up routine, fueled by a supportive crowd of 1,355 people, according to an organizer whose information was provided by the campaign. More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAug. 9 Primaries: In Wisconsin and a handful of other states, Trump endorsements resonated. Here’s what else we learned and a rundown of some notable wins and losses.Arizona Governor’s Race: Like other hard-right candidates this year, Kari Lake won her G.O.P. primary by running on election lies. But her polished delivery, honed through decades as a TV news anchor, have landed her in a category all her own.Climate, Health and Tax Bill: The Senate’s passage of the legislation has Democrats sprinting to sell the package by November and experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.Disputed Maps: New congressional maps drawn by Republicans in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio were ruled illegal gerrymanders. They’re being used this fall anyway.“There’s a lot of differences between me and Dr. Oz,” Mr. Fetterman said to laughter, as he wondered how many mansions his opponent owned. Before the event, the line to get into the convention center snaked deep into the parking lot, drawing both older voters — including at least two who said they had voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 — and a young woman in a glittering sash, who said she had chosen to spend her 19th birthday at his campaign rally. Several attendees of varying ages cited abortion rights when discussing their votes in the Senate race, after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.“To watch, at my age, to have it taken away from my great-granddaughters, my granddaughters, my daughters, is just so upsetting to my heart, that I’m here for Roe v. Wade,” said Judy Pasold, 80, who thought Mr. Fetterman sounded “very well.” “That’s why it’s going to be Democrat all the way through. Probably. Because most of the Republicans have gone the other way, so far the other way.” More

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      How a New Class of Republicans Could Push America to the Right

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      Much of the attention paid to Donald Trump’s favorite candidates running in the midterms has focused — rightly! — on their support for relitigating the 2020 election. (Which, for those still unsure, was not stolen.)But across a range of policy issues, including abortion, climate change, same-sex marriage and education, Trump’s MAGA warriors have taken positions that put them on the fringes of the Republican Party — let alone the nation as a whole.The usual caveats apply: Candidates often say things to win a primary that they then jettison or downplay when facing general-election voters.But the nature of political partisanship in America has changed over the last decade or so, raising doubts about whether that conventional wisdom still holds. If they are elected in November, the Trump crowd could shove American politics sharply rightward.Let’s take a look:AbortionNowhere is the starkness of the these candidates’ positions more evident than on abortion, which has become a much more urgent litmus test on the right since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, has said she supports enacting a “carbon copy” of the Texas abortion law in her state. That law does not include exceptions for incest or rape. It also contains an unusual provision that was meant to work around Roe v. Wade before the decision was thrown out in June: Anyone can report someone violating the law and claim a $10,000 bounty from the state.Blake Masters, who won the G.O.P. nomination for Senate in Arizona, has supported a federal “personhood” law that would establish that fetuses are people. He has also raised questions about whether Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision granting couples the federal right to use contraception, was correctly decided — but he does not support a ban on contraception.The list goes on: In Georgia, Herschel Walker, the party’s nominee for Senate, has told reporters, “There’s not a national ban on abortion right now, and I think that’s a problem.” Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor of Pennsylvania, introduced a fetal heartbeat bill as a state senator. Again, the bill contained no exceptions for incest or rape.Climate changeSkepticism of the human impact on the planet’s climate abounds, despite mounting scientific evidence that severe flooding, rising global temperatures, droughts and volatile weather patterns have already arrived.Mastriano, for instance, has called climate change a “theory” based on “pop science.” Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, has leaned on his background as a doctor to adopt a markedly unscientific pro-carbon position.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaA First: Indiana became the first state to draw up and approve a near-total abortion ban in the post-Roe era. Some major companies in the state, including Eli Lilly, have criticized the law.An Uneasy Champion: President Biden, a practicing Catholic, is being called to lead a fight for abortion rights that he has sidestepped for decades. Advocates wonder if he’s up to the task.A Resounding Decision: Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major win for abortion rights in a deep-red state.Safe Havens: After Roe, conservatives are seeking to expand ways that allow women to give up newborns, such as baby drop boxes. But for many experts in adoption and women’s health, they are hardly a solution.The “ideology that carbon is bad” is “a lie,” Oz said during a forum among primary candidates in Erie in March. “Carbon dioxide, my friends, is 0.04 percent of our air. That’s not the problem.”Asked about the Green New Deal during a Georgia campaign event in mid-July, Walker expounded on his own theory about global wind currents that even Fox News found “head scratching.”Herschel Walker, who is challenging Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in Georgia, has put forward dubious theories on climate change.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decides to float over to China’s bad air,” Walker said. “So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.” More

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      Meet Mandela Barnes, the 35-Year-Old Candidate Working to Oust Ron Johnson

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      MILWAUKEE — Millennials came of age at a time of crisis. They are the first generation in American history positioned to be worse off than their parents, their economic trajectory forever altered by the economic meltdown of the late 2000s, as the ladders to the middle class were pulled up or broken by the crushing burden of student debt, the decline of unions and skyrocketing health care and housing costs, and as rapid technological changes proved more calamitous than democratizing.Mandela Barnes — who won the Democratic Senate primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday night — understands the challenges this era has thrust upon millennials better than most in his position. Serving under Tony Evers as the lieutenant governor of the state, Mr. Barnes is just 35 years old, and if elected could be only the second senator born in the 1980s.In many respects, he embodies both the flaws and the promise of his generation. Running to be the first Black man to represent a Rust Belt state in the Senate since Roland Burris, he is talented, charismatic and passionate, a fresh face entering the national scene in a party still dominated by an aging political establishment. But like many other millennial politicians now considering higher office, his path was a more progressive one. Mr. Barnes came up as a young State Assembly representative on Milwaukee’s liberal North Side. This fall, he will face challenging questions about his record, like his position on bail reform and the Evers administration’s response to the unrest in Kenosha.But he has the tools he needs to overcome them — he can win this race in part because he has endeared himself to mainstream Democrats as a member of the Evers administration, and because he may be able to tap into a new pool of Wisconsin voters.The fault lines in American politics are sometimes generational as well as ideological, and that is certainly part of the story unfolding in the midterm elections in Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican — a vulnerable one — faces a Democrat roughly half his age.Mr. Barnes is more than a decade younger than any of the other swing state Democrats running for Senate this year. If elected, he and Jon Ossoff of Georgia would be the only millennials in the upper chamber.This generation is not especially well represented in Washington. Just 31 people born between 1981 and 1996 are currently serving in the House. And the Senate is the oldest it has ever been. One-third of its members are over the age of 70, and there are roughly as many members of the Senate in their 80s (seven) as there are under the age of 50 (eight).As Jamelle Bouie wrote recently, the older guard lacks “any sense of urgency and crisis — any sense that our system is on the brink.” Democrats have been delivering legislative wins as of late, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the Senate’s sweeping health and climate bill, but it’s been an arduous process to get there, stalled by filibusters and parliamentarians and everyday D.C. gridlock.Mr. Barnes, for his part, seems to grasp what the old guard does not. He has put eliminating the filibuster front and center in his campaign and has, throughout his career, talked about the need for Democrats to be more bold, both in their messaging and on “bread and butter issues” like health care, environmental issues and racial injustice.As a young Black millennial from a tough part of a large Midwestern city, he can give voice to issues many in the Senate cannot relate to, and he can do it through lived experience. He’s the son of a United Auto Workers father and a public-school teacher mother, who was born in a troubled, high-poverty area of Milwaukee.Of course, Mr. Barnes has his flaws as a candidate. He has encountered several mini controversies. He was once photographed holding an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt and has worked alongside Representative Ilhan Omar from neighboring Minnesota and called her “brilliant” — the type of thing that could irk centrist swing voters.But some of Mr. Barnes’s controversies are actually reasons that he may understand where younger voters are coming from. He was delinquent on a property tax payment and had an incomplete college degree (both since rectified). He also drew negative headlines for being on BadgerCare (Wisconsin’s Medicaid program) while he was running for lieutenant governor in 2018. But encountering financial challenges and making some early career mistakes sounds like a typical millennial experience. Perhaps if more of our elected officials faced similar challenges, they’d have a better idea of how to help others find solutions to them.Of course, one does not need to be a millennial to understand their problems, and age alone does not guarantee support from younger voters. Many in the demographic gravitated to Bernie Sanders over other, younger candidates in the last two presidential primaries. But Mr. Sanders’s popularity was rooted in the fact that the country he described mirrored the one that millennials had experienced — one in which economic precarity and wealth inequality had transformed the American dream into pure fantasy.To be fair, plenty of other Democratic candidates are harnessing this kind of rhetoric. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania is one example. But because of his relative youth, Mr. Barnes is uniquely well positioned to give voice to the anxieties and problems of his generation: We millennials were introduced to the horrors of school shootings through the massacre at Columbine in our adolescence; now our children go through active shooter drills in pre-K. Our country is not doing enough to address climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, rapidly eroding reproductive rights, diminishing voting rights or the skyrocketing costs of health care, child care and housing. The list goes on.Wisconsin is more politically complex than it can sometimes appear. The idea that the state can’t stomach a politician as progressive as Mr. Barnes is pure fiction. Liberal candidates have won 10 of the last 11 statewide elections. Like Mr. Barnes, Senator Tammy Baldwin was also accused of being too far left for Wisconsin when she first ran for statewide office a decade ago, and in 2018, she was re-elected by an almost 11-point margin. And while slogans like “Abolish ICE” and “Defund the Police” have become unpopular, the Black Lives Matter movement — which Mr. Barnes is a vocal supporter of — is still quite popular in Wisconsin, with a higher favorability rating than almost any state or national politician, according to the most recent Marquette University Law School poll.What’s more, Mr. Barnes has chosen his moment wisely: The state Republican Party is in disarray, riven with bickering over their nominee for governor, mired in an endless battle over the results of the 2020 election and saddled with Mr. Johnson, whose chaotic and conspiratorial comments are already alienating swing voters, tanking his favorability rating to just 21 percent among moderates.If Mr. Barnes can deliver a new kind of message that both speaks to the anxieties of younger generations and harnesses their hope, he has a fighting chance. Wisconsin is one of the nation’s most closely contested swing states, where elections are often decided by tenths of a point.If Mr. Barnes can turn out just a few thousand voters with promises to enact big, bold changes in Washington, he may be able to pull off an upset, beating Mr. Johnson in November. Colleges will be seeing their most normal returns to campus since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and students could be more directly engaged in these midterms than they were in other pandemic elections, especially with heightened activism around abortion. And in Milwaukee, turnout has never reached the levels it did during Mr. Obama’s second presidential election. If Mr. Barnes can reach a sliver of young Black voters and turn them out to the polls, it could be enough to tilt the race in his favor.Wisconsin can often be a bellwether of political change. The Tea Party wave of 2010 made the state a Republican testing ground for hard-right conservative policies that would soon go national. The 2018 election of Tony Evers was in many ways predictive of President Biden’s win two years later. A victory for a young Black millennial politician in this of all states could be a sign that a generational shift in American politics is well on its way.Dan Shafer (@DanRShafer) is a reporter based in Milwaukee. He writes a newsletter about Wisconsin politics, The Recombobulation Area.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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      Democrats Enter the Fall Armed With Something New: Hope

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      Vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators like Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada are already planning events promoting the landmark legislation they passed over the weekend. Democratic ad makers are busily preparing a barrage of commercials about it across key battlegrounds. And the White House is set to deploy Cabinet members on a nationwide sales pitch.The sweeping legislation, covering climate change and prescription drug prices, which came together in the Senate after more than a year of painfully public fits and starts, has kicked off a frenetic 91-day sprint to sell the package by November — and win over an electorate that has grown skeptical of Democratic rule.For months, Democrats have discussed their midterm anxieties in near-apocalyptic terms, as voters threatened to take out their anger over high gas prices and soaring inflation on the party in power. But the deal on the broad new legislation, along with signs of a brewing voter revolt over abortion rights, has some Democrats experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.“This bill gives Democrats that centerpiece accomplishment,” said Ali Lapp, the president of House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC.In interviews, Democratic strategists, advisers to President Biden, lawmakers running in competitive seats and political ad makers all expressed optimism that the legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act — would deliver the party a necessary and powerful tool to show they were focused on lowering costs at a time of economic hardship for many. They argued its key provisions could be quickly understood by crucial constituencies.“It is easy to talk about because it has a real impact on people every day,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in an interview. The measure must still pass the House and could come up for a vote there later this week. “It’s congressional Democrats who’ve gotten it done — with no help from congressional Republicans.”Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday after Democrats in the Senate passed the climate and tax bill.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesWhether Democrats can keep the measure in the spotlight is another matter. On Monday evening, former President Donald J. Trump said the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home, a significant development that threatened to overshadow the news of the Senate deal and that gave already-energized Republicans a new cause to circle the wagons around Mr. Trump.Still, for younger voters, who polls have shown to be cool to Mr. Biden and his party, the package contains the most sweeping efforts to address climate change in American history. For older voters, the deal includes popular measures sought for decades by Democrats to rein in the price of prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. And for both the Democratic base and independents, the deal cuts against the Republican argument that a Democratic-controlled Washington is a morass of incompetence and gridlock unfocused on issues that affect average Americans.“It’s very significant because it shows that the Democrats care about solving problems, it shows that we can get things done and I think it starts to turn around some of the talk about Biden,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat running in a competitive re-election race, alluding to angst about the president as his national approval rating has hovered around 40 percent.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Adding to the Democratic Party’s brightening outlook were the results of the Kansas referendum on abortion rights last week, when a measure that would have removed abortion protections from the Kansas Constitution was overwhelmingly defeated. It was a stark reminder of the volatile and unpredictable political impact of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.Voters in Lawrence, Kan., last week when the state abortion referendum was defeated.Katie Currid for The New York Times“I can kind of feel it on the streets, that there’s some change in momentum,” Ms. Titus said.Indeed, in recent days, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans for the first time this year when voters were asked which party they would prefer to control Congress — the so-called generic ballot test — according to polling averages maintained by the data-journalism website FiveThirtyEight.There is no guarantee of success in selling the bill. Last year, the White House shepherded through a rare bipartisan infrastructure deal. But its passage, which drew great fanfare in Washington, did little to arrest the continual decline in Mr. Biden’s approval ratings — and many Americans were still unaware that the measure passed months later, polling showed.Republicans say the new legislation could galvanize their own base against an expansive progressive wish list that has been decades in the making, just as the passage of the Affordable Care Act preceded the Republican wave of 2010.“That’s the sort of thing that could really set a spark to the powder keg — in the same way that the midnight passage of Obamacare was the moment that electrified Republican voters and started to really pull independents in our direction,” said Steven Law, who leads the main Republican super PAC devoted to Senate races.Republican assaults on the legislation — for bulking up the Internal Revenue Service, for creating a green energy “slush fund,” as Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has called it, and for expanding spending programs despite the bill’s Inflation Reduction Act title — have already begun. 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      What to Watch for in Tuesday’s Primary Elections

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      Voters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut head to the polls on Tuesday for primaries and for a special election in Minnesota that could further narrow the already tight Democratic majority in the House.Here is what to watch as the returns roll in:Another Trump-tinged brawl in Wisconsin.The expected Democratic primary fight for the right to challenge Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, fizzled when one contender after another dropped out and endorsed the state’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, setting up a highly anticipated race for the fall.But Republicans are in fighting form over who will try to stop the re-election of Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Of four remaining candidates, Tim Michel, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, and Rebecca Kleefisch, the choice of former Vice President Mike Pence, have the best shot.If you’re looking for ideological differences, it will be a strain. Ms. Kleefisch, who was lieutenant governor under Gov. Scott Walker, has said President Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Wisconsin was “rigged,” though repeated examinations of the nearly 21,000-vote margin have turned up nothing of the kind.Mr. Michels, an insurance executive for whom Mr. Trump held a rally on Friday, hasn’t ruled out supporting an effort in the Republican-dominated Legislature to overturn the 2020 election results altogether, though such a move would be symbolic at best. He has also promised to abolish the state’s elections commission, a bipartisan regulatory agency that administers elections — a move that Mr. Evers says is meant to give the gerrymandered Legislature the final say in election results.Both candidates have also taken a hard line against abortion, which, after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, became illegal in the state under a law enacted in 1849. State law now allows abortions only to save the life of the mother, and, during a televised town hall-style debate last week, each of the candidates said they would oppose any additional exceptions.Given the centrality of Wisconsin in recent presidential elections, and how Mr. Evers has portrayed himself as a Democratic bulwark against Republican efforts to alter the electoral system, much may rest on the outcome of the governor’s race.A Democratic fight for an open House seat.In Wisconsin’s only competitive House race, four Democrats are vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, in the G.O.P.-leaning seat of Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat who is retiring. Mr. Kind has been a Republican target for years, and Mr. Van Orden came close to beating him in 2020.Then came Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Van Orden, an actor and retired member of the Navy SEALs, was in Washington to protest Mr. Biden’s victory. What exactly he was doing there is in dispute. Democrats say a Facebook photo proved he crossed into a restricted area as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Mr. Van Orden denied that and said he was merely in the nation’s capital “to stand for the integrity of our electoral system as a citizen.”State Senator Brad Pfaff faces three other Democrats vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, who has cleared the G.O.P. primary field in the race to succeed Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesAll of his would-be Democratic opponents say Mr. Van Orden is singularly dangerous, but they are taking different tacks. Brad Pfaff, a Wisconsin state senator, is emphasizing his accumulated experience in politics and claiming the mantle of Mr. Kind’s style of centrism. His main rival, Deb McGrath, a former C.I.A. officer and Army captain, is taking a more liberal line and a more confrontational stance against Mr. Van Orden, a fellow veteran who she said “took the same oath that I did to protect and defend the Constitution,” but then went to Washington on Jan. 6.Whoever wins the primary can expect an uphill climb to keep the seat in Democratic hands.In Minnesota, a special election could narrow the Democratic edge in the House.The death from cancer of Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican, in February has given voters in his southern Minnesota district the chance to fill his seat just in time for the final big votes in an already narrowly divided House. In another year, the seat might have been more competitive. After all, it was represented by Tim Walz, now Minnesota’s Democratic governor, before Mr. Hagedorn was elected in 2018.But the district leans Republican, and Brad Finstad, a farmer who held an Agriculture Department post in the Trump administration, has the edge over his Democratic opponent, Jeff Ettinger. Mr. Ettinger, the former chief executive of Hormel Foods, is not making it easy on the Republicans: He has poured $900,000 of his own money into the race. Mr. Finstad, who won his May primary by just 427 votes, must unite the G.O.P. and turn out the vote in a state where the big-ticket race for governor does not have a competitive primary. More

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      Democrats and Republicans Struggle to Forecast 2022 Midterms

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      Doug Sosnik is the kind of political analyst who likes to figure out the results of the next election well in advance — it’s just how he’s wired.But even Sosnik, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who now tries to forecast elections as a hobby, is stumped about the 2022 midterms.“I can’t figure this one out,” Sosnik said on Monday, a day after Democrats passed Build Back Better — whoops, pardon me, the Inflation Reduction Act, a woolly mammoth-size package that aims to shrink both the deficit and the risk of catastrophic climate change.The bill’s passage is one of a string of recent victories for beleaguered Democrats, who have spent the past 18 months squabbling among themselves and fretting about the coming elections. Gas prices are ticking down. Jobs are plentiful, with the unemployment rate at a 50-year low.Congress also passed the bipartisan CHIPS Act, a bill that would provide $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States and would add more than $200 billion for applied scientific research.Even President Biden, whose age and concern about the virus forced him to spend much of the 2020 presidential election campaigning from his home in Wilmington, Del., managed to shrug off 18 days of coronavirus-induced quarantine.As Ethel Merman might say, everything seems to be coming up roses for Joe and the gang in recent weeks, despite widespread predictions that Democrats are likely to lose the House and possibly the Senate.A ‘blood bath’ that might never arriveAccording to the usual logic Sosnik uses to make predictions, Democrats should expect a “blood bath” in the fall. But he’s not so sure anymore and is questioning everything he knows about the deeper patterns of U.S. elections.He is puzzled by one thing in particular: Which past elections offer a guide to 2022?The question doesn’t have an easy answer, in part because times have changed — there was no recent assault on the Capitol with the partial backing of one particular party in the 1982 midterms, for instance — and in part because the nature of political partisanship has changed.That latter point makes it really hard to compare today’s approval ratings to the past; back in, say, the 1960s, voters were much more inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Today, far fewer partisans are willing to give the other side an ounce of credit or respect.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Midterms are completely different animals than presidential election cycles, too: Fewer voters turn out, and the electorate tends to be older and more Republican.Historically, or at least since World War II, the party in power has lost seats in every midterm election but two: 1998 and 2002.The first came as Clinton skillfully exploited the unpopularity of congressional Republicans, whose impeachment drive backfired. The second came after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when patriotic sentiments were still running high.But these midterms are structurally different from many others. For one thing, many of the Democratic House members in battleground districts — the Cindy Axnes and Elissa Slotkins of the world — were elected in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. Those who held onto their seats in 2020, a good year for Republicans in Congress despite Trump’s loss, may know a thing or two about staying in office. More

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      Herschel Walker Is Target of Ad on Domestic Abuse Accusations

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      ATLANTA — In his campaign for the Senate, Herschel Walker has not hidden his past struggles with mental illness and violence in past relationships, aspects of his background that he outlined in a 2009 memoir and that his campaign sought to address in its earliest days.Now, a group of anti-Trump Republicans is hammering him over one of those episodes.In a new advertisement running on major networks in the Atlanta media market, footage of Mr. Walker scoring a touchdown for the University of Georgia is juxtaposed with close-up video of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, describing how he once held a gun to her temple and threatened to pull the trigger.“Do you think you know Herschel Walker?” a narrator asks. “Well, think again.”Mr. Walker has not denied Ms. Grossman’s accusations, saying his violence against her was a consequence of his struggles with mental health. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.The ads were purchased by a subsidiary of the Republican Accountability PAC, a group that grew out of Republican Voters Against Trump, which was established in 2020 by “never-Trump” Republicans including the strategist Sarah Longwell and the writer William Kristol. It says it has allocated $10 million in negative advertising and voter mobilization efforts over the next three months to stop Mr. Walker and other candidates it views as unfit for office or a danger to democracy. They include two candidates for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Nevada.The initial ad buy against Mr. Walker in the Atlanta media market is just $100,000. It would take far more to make serious inroads with Georgia’s vast Republican base, for whom Mr. Walker still retains near-godlike status from his career as a college running back. But the anti-Trump group is hoping at least to turn the heads of some swing voters.Specifically, Ms. Longwell, the group’s executive director, said it hoped to exploit what she called an emerging gap in support for candidates atop Georgia’s Republican ticket. While Mr. Walker was running roughly even in the polls with Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, she said, Gov. Brian Kemp was outpacing his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by a slightly larger margin.“We think that there’s a lot of these voters in Georgia who will split their ticket, and who will vote for Kemp, who will vote for Brad Raffensperger, but cannot vote for Herschel Walker,” she said, also naming the Georgia secretary of state. “For a lot of these voters, it’s about understanding the difference between the football player and the person running for Senate.”One such voter she pointed to was Brenda James, a Republican from Columbus, Ga., who in an interview said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but President Biden in 2020, according to the Republican Accountability PAC. She condemned Republicans for “attempting to manipulate and use” Mr. Walker.“Bless poor Herschel’s heart,” Ms. James said. “The man needs help. He doesn’t need to be thrust into political limelight in the way that they are doing. Frankly, I think it’s disgusting and despicable.” More

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      In Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes Is Already Looking Past the Democratic Primary

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      The Wisconsin Democratic primary isn’t until Tuesday, but after three of his top rivals dropped out of the race last month, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is already sharpening his attacks against his Republican opponent, Senator Ron Johnson.In ads and speeches, Mr. Barnes has started hitting Mr. Johnson on what he calls a pattern of hurting the state’s manufacturing industry and failing workers. As he aims to make the race a referendum on Mr. Johnson, Mr. Barnes has his own vulnerabilities, and Republicans are certain to try to portray him as too left wing for Wisconsin.But his strengths, and Mr. Johnson’s own polarizing qualities (he has pushed false theories about the coronavirus pandemic and doubts about the 2020 election), are setting up a race that could help decide control of the Senate.“What he pulled off is pretty impressive — to coalesce the entire field behind him in such a short time,” said Joe Zepecki, a Democratic strategist in Wisconsin. “He is getting a head start, and you have to sort of just tip your cap to him.”Mr. Barnes, 35, is entering the primary as the clear favorite after three of his main competitors dropped out of the race in the span of one week in late July: Alex Lasry, an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks; Tom Nelson, executive of Outagamie County; and Sarah Godlewski, the state’s treasurer. All three have endorsed him.To consolidate the support, Mr. Barnes, who is the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and would be its first Black senator if he were to win, ran a tight campaign squarely centered on jobs and rebuilding the middle class. In an interview, he said his campaign had benefited from the kind of coalition building he did as a community organizer. He also said it came down to a broader recognition among Democrats that the stakes are just too high for infighting.“This is about uniting the party, but it is also about uniting the state,” Mr. Barnes said.He leads in fund-raising and name recognition among his remaining rivals, including Kou Lee, a restaurant owner; Steven Olikara, a musician; Peter Peckarsky, an investigative reporter, lawyer and consultant; and Darrell Williams, a state emergency management administrator.He has racked up endorsements from both progressive Democrats like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as centrists including Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina.Wisconsin is one of the nation’s most fiercely contested political battlegrounds. Along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, it was one of the key states in the country’s industrial core that Mr. Trump won in 2016, shattering the Democratic “blue wall” and leading to his election.Democrats have since made somewhat of a comeback. In 2018, Tony Evers was elected governor and Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election. In 2020, President Biden won the state by just over 20,000 votes.Understand the Aug. 2 Primary ElectionsWhile the Trump wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a loud warning to the G.O.P. on abortion rights.Takeaways: Tuesday’s results suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed. Here’s what we learned.Kansas Abortion Vote: In the first election test since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in a reliably conservative state.Trump’s Grip on G.O.P.: Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of former President Donald J. Trump reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party.Winners and Losers: See a rundown of the most notable results.The Senate race is expected to be close. Mr. Johnson, 67, who is seeking his third term, is one of the most vulnerable Republicans this cycle. A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed he was viewed favorably by 37 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 46 percent. Additionally, Mr. Biden’s poll numbers are poor, and out-of-power parties typically perform well in the midterms during a president’s first term.Mr. Johnson has alienated many voters by suggesting that gargling with mouthwash could fend off Covid-19 and saying people who don’t like Wisconsin’s abortion laws can move. He has downplayed the U.S. Capitol attack, saying it didn’t “seem like an armed insurrection” and floating theories that Democrats edited videos to exaggerate the mob violence.And the House Jan. 6 committee this summer surfaced embarrassing evidence that Mr. Johnson wanted to hand-deliver fake elector votes from Michigan and Wisconsin to Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Johnson acknowledged receiving the package but claimed he did not know where it came from or what it contained.But Mr. Barnes stuck to economic issues in his first attack television ad against Mr. Johnson, echoing his message throughout the Democratic primary. The ad criticizes Mr. Johnson for publicly praising outsourcing and defending a company that moved jobs to China from Wisconsin. On the trail, Mr. Barnes has been criticizing the senator over his comments suggesting Social Security and Medicare should be eliminated as federal entitlement programs and instead should be approved annually by Congress.Senator Ron Johnson has faced scrutiny for controversial remarks he made regarding the U.S. Capitol attack, Covid-19 and Wisconsin abortion laws. Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMr. Johnson has pushed back against the criticism and has argued he stood up for small businesses when he pushed for a tax provision in the 2017 Republican tax law to level the playing field for them. “A manufacturer himself, Ron Johnson helped Wisconsin small businesses remain competitive with the big guys by making sure they got a tax cut that helped businesses all across the state survive the pandemic,” said Ben Voelkel, a spokesman for Mr. Johnson, pointing to the measure.The provision also benefited his family-run plastics company.Independent fact checkers have found that the claim from at least one Democratic group arguing Mr. Johnson’s vote for the law rewarded “companies that outsource to China” was false, and a 2021 study by university researchers found the law decreased incentives for U.S. firms to move operations out of the country.But fact checkers have also found Mr. Johnson’s tax provision overwhelmingly benefited ultrawealthy Americans over small businesses.Mr. Barnes has been the target of criticism as well. He has been cited for paying his property taxes late, and Republican activists and local leaders have sought to paint him as a far-left Democrat who supports stances like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“Mandela Barnes will speak out of both sides of his mouth to convince voters that he is a moderate,” said Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.At one point, Mr. Barnes was photographed holding an “abolish ICE” shirt, though he has said that is not his position. More recently, he opposed the Biden administration’s proposal to end Title 42, a Trump-era policy that was introduced during the pandemic and has been used to turn away most migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr. Barnes argued that Mr. Biden should first have a comprehensive plan to handle an increase in people crossing the border.Mr. Barnes, whose father worked third shift at a General Motors factory and whose mother was a longtime schoolteacher, is betting his record and biography will help him weather the attacks. He became a community organizer after watching former President Barack Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.By the time he was 25 in 2012, Mr. Barnes had defeated an incumbent state lawmaker in Milwaukee, his hometown. He lost a Senate bid four years later, but he won his race to become lieutenant governor in 2018 with Mr. Evers at the top of the ticket and a strict focus on the economy.Katie Rosenberg, the mayor of Wausau, Wis., said Mr. Barnes was talking about the issues residents care about, including affordable child care and health care, the expansion of broadband and the need to stop the corporate takeover of family farms. Earlier this year, the two visited small businesses wracked by the pandemic. They even got tattoos in support of a local tattoo parlor. Mr. Barnes featured it on his TikTok.“I am an optimist,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “I think he can do this. He has a lot of momentum.” More