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      In Palm Springs, L.G.B.T.Q. Voters Could Sway a Key House Race

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      Representative Ken Calvert, a long-serving Republican, is facing a tough re-election race in a redrawn district that now includes Palm Springs, proclaimed to be the gayest city in America.PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Tucked away in the California desert, where windmills line the sprawling hills and rainbows adorn the crosswalks, a sizable progressive L.G.B.T.Q. community has turned a once reliably Republican stronghold into a battleground in the fight for control of Congress, giving Democrats hope for picking up a House seat that has long been beyond their reach.Representative Ken Calvert, a Republican who has served in Congress for three decades, has almost never faced a tough re-election contest in this ruby-red corner of Southern California. But a redrawn political map in the state has reshaped his district this year, adding Palm Springs, a liberal bastion that residents proclaim to be the gayest city in America. The new district lines have put his seat at risk as he faces off against an openly gay Democrat, Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor.The shift has made Mr. Calvert’s district one of only a handful of Republican-held House seats that Democrats have a hope of flipping in November’s midterm elections, in which they are bracing for losses that could cost them the House majority. While Mr. Calvert has an edge in fund-raising and the power that comes with years of incumbency, the shifting political ground has made his re-election race more competitive than it has been in over a decade.Much of the shift has been driven by heavily L.G.B.T.Q. Palm Springs, which in this year’s primary election had the highest turnout rate in the district, with just under 54 percent of eligible voters casting a ballot, well above the 34 percent turnout level for the district overall, according to Political Data Intelligence, a California-based political and voter data firm.“People flock here from across the Inland Empire for safety and comfort,” Christy Holstege, a bisexual member of Palm Springs’ all-L.G.B.T.Q. City Council, said of the surrounding region as she gazed up at the statue of Marilyn Monroe that overlooks the city. “They know that this is a little sliver of safety, and since our turnout is high, it makes us that much more powerful.”Christy Holstege, a member of the City Council in Palm Springs, said people “know that this is a little sliver of safety.”Adam Perez for The New York TimesChad Gardner, a local business owner and chef who is gay, said he was moved by the influence that his community has in the election.Adam Perez for The New York TimesThe city was known in its early days as a retreat for Hollywood celebrities, and it later became home to thousands of gay men who relocated there during the AIDS epidemic for the warm climate, affordable housing and access to health care. It is now the epitome of kitsch and rich, with its midcentury architecture, pastel pink at every corner and a lively nightlife.Chad Gardner, a local business owner and chef who is gay, said he was moved by the influence that his community has in the election.“We do have some areas that are more conservative in the Inland Empire, so it’s going to come down to how we can energize our base,” Mr. Gardner said, lounging in a plush white chair in an air-conditioned upscale restaurant to escape the 100-degree heat on a recent morning.Mr. Calvert, who received a zero on the Human Rights Campaign’s most recent scorecard rating members of Congress on issues of interest to the L.G.B.T.Q. community, appears to have taken notice. In July, he joined 46 other Republicans in voting in favor of a bill that would recognize same-sex marriage at the federal level, a reversal after years of opposing legislation to protect L.G.B.T.Q. rights.“As I have said for years, I believe the legality of same-sex marriage is settled law and I do not support revisiting that determination,” Mr. Calvert said in a statement. He declined to be interviewed.Representative Ken Calvert has rarely faced a tough election in his three decades in Congress.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Associated PressDespite the turnabout, he may have an uphill slog to earn the backing of the gay and lesbian voters in his new district, many of whom have bitter memories of the last time Mr. Calvert faced a gay opponent.In 1994, in his race against Mark Takano, who is gay but had not yet come out publicly, Mr. Calvert circulated pink mailers questioning whether Mr. Takano would be “a congressman for Riverside … or San Francisco?” (Eight years later, Mr. Takano won election to represent a different House district in California, becoming the first openly gay person of Asian descent to serve in Congress.) More

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in office | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in officeAustin Sarat and Dennis AftergutRepublicans have put all their chips on extremism. But voters are sending more and more signals that they’re fed up with it Polls and election results over the last week reminded Americans that politics seldom moves in a straight line. As in physics, action produces reaction. Overreach invites backlash.For a long while former President Trump and his cronies seemed to be immune from this rule of political life and from the consequences of even the most outrageous conduct. As Trump himself once famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”And so it seemed. He escaped conviction in not one but two impeachment trials and cowed Republican leaders to fall in line after the January 6 insurrection. He remains the leading contender for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination.Today Republicans are still falling over themselves to prove their loyalty to him by outdoing each other in extremism.On 19 August, a Republican candidate for Florida’s state assembly even took to Twitter to call for violence against federal law enforcement officials. “Under my plan,” Luis Miguel tweeted, “all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other [federal agents] ON SIGHT! Let freedom ring!”In Washington, the US supreme court cast aside almost 50 years of settled precedent to overturn Roe v Wade. Republican-dominated state legislatures rushed to enact draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.This kind of extremism may be off-putting to swing voters. There are signs that most Americans aren’t ready to trade their rights and freedoms for a strongman and his election-denying, rights-infringing, violence-threatening allies. As the Cook Report’s Amy Walters wrote on 26 August: “The more Trump is in the news, the more dangerous the political climate for the GOP.”But let’s start with the supreme court’s Dobbs decision.Dobbs sent shock waves across the political spectrum and has jolted Democratic turnout. On 25 August, Axios reported that immediately after Dobbs, “Democratic primary turnout for governors’ races increased … in five of the eight states holding contested primaries.”Similarly, a report from TargetSmart suggests that in states like Michigan and Wisconsin “where reproductive rights are at stake”, women “are out-registering men by significant margins.”This pattern portends a “pink wave” in November, as women mobilize to defeat pro-life candidates. We saw evidence of this in the 23 August special congressional election in New York, where Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro, 52% to 48% in a bellwether swing district.Ryan’s campaign message was largely focused on protecting abortion rights. His victory follows the striking 2 August referendum vote in Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to ban abortion.Are Republicans being taught a lesson they should have learned from history?When the supreme court gets too far out in front of – or too far behind – the American public by ignoring American sentiment, political backlash results. That happened in the 1850s in the run-up to the civil war and in the 1930s when the conservative court that Franklin Roosevelt inherited struck down a new minimum wage law.It happened again after Roe v Wade, when abortion foes reacted and organized for a 50-year battle that resulted in a reactionary court majority.Republicans may now be reaping what those reactionaries on the court sowed.And it isn’t only that many Americans have been alarmed and aroused by what the court did last June. They are also awakening to the threats posed by Trump’s “big lie” and the election denial it has inspired.Democratic messaging that has called out the “big lie”, along with the meticulously presented hearings of the January 6 congressional hearings, seem to be taking root.Americans are coming to see that, as President Biden has warned, “A poison is running through our democracy … with disinformation massively on the rise. But the truth is buried by lies, and the lies live on as truth.”At the start of this summer’s January 6 hearings, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney echoed that sentiment: “People must pay attention. People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”An NBC News poll last week suggests that the American people are indeed now paying attention. It found that more respondents ranked “threats to democracy” as the most important issue facing the country, more important than inflation or jobs.Other polls suggest that candidates who are running as election deniers or opponents of a woman’s right to choose will pay a price in November.Take Pennsylvania, for example. A Franklin & Marshall poll released on 25 August found that the Democratic candidate for the Senate, John Fetterman, is leading Trump-endorsed election denier Mehmet Oz, 43% to 30%. Fetterman is also a vocal abortion rights supporter, while Oz supported overturning Roe.The same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, leads the Trump favorite and abortion foe, Republican Doug Mastriano, by 44% to 33%.According to the Washington Post, “In 2020, Mastriano tried to block Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory by introducing a resolution asserting incorrectly that the Republican-dominated legislature had the right to choose which electors’ votes should be counted.” As the Post also notes, “He attended the Jan. 6 riot … where he was captured on video crossing the police line.”This is not to say that in Pennsylvania or elsewhere the Trump fever has completely broken. And polls are not the same thing as an election. But they are signs of hope.Democracy won’t save itself. Abortion rights will not restore themselves. The American majority’s power to defeat Trumpism lies at the ballot box. If Trumpist candidates lose in general elections, over time Republicans may get the message that they’ve placed a losing bet on extremism.There is much to be done by Americans committed to preserving our republic and to saying “no” to Trump. As former president Obama put it in his 2017 farewell address: “It falls to each of us to be … jealous guardians of democracy.” Across America, a majority of voters are ready to do just that.
      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022US SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativescommentReuse this content More

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      Republicans Signal Worries About Trump and the Midterms

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      Few Republicans appeared on the major Sunday talk shows to defend the former president. Those who did indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.WASHINGTON — Headed into 2022, Republicans were confident that a red wave would sweep them into control of Congress based on the conventional political wisdom that the midterm elections would produce a backlash against President Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings.But now some are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on Mr. Biden — and the high inflation and gas prices that have bedeviled his administration — is being complicated by all-encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president: his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.Those worries were on display on Sunday morning as few Republicans appeared on the major Washington-focused news shows to defend Mr. Trump two days after a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate revealed that he had retained highly classified material related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering. And those who did appear indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that Mr. Trump “should have turned the documents over” but quickly pivoted to the timing of the search.“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program,” Mr. Blunt lamented on ABC’s “This Week.”Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, also pointed to a fear that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles could hurt his party’s midterm chances.“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”The Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, which followed repeated requests over more than a year and a half for Mr. Trump to turn over sensitive documents he took when he left office, initially prompted most Republicans to rally around the former president, strengthening his grip on the party. Some reacted with fury, attacking the nation’s top law enforcement agencies as they called to “defund” or “destroy” the F.B.I. Others invoked the Nazi secret police, using words like “Gestapo” and “tyrants.”Polls showed an increase in Republican support for Mr. Trump, and strategists quickly began incorporating the search into the party’s larger anti-big-government messaging. They combined denunciation of the F.B.I.’s actions with criticism of Democrats’ plans to increase the number of I.R.S. agents in hopes of rallying small-government conservatives to the polls.But as more revelations emerge about Mr. Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents, some of those voices have receded.Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchCard 1 of 4Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe release on Aug. 26 of a partly redacted affidavit used by the Justice Department to justify its search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence included information that provides greater insight into the ongoing investigation into how he handled documents he took with him from the White House. Here are the key takeaways:Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe government tried to retrieve the documents for more than a year. More

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      ‘A Stirring of Democratic Hearts’: Three Writers Discuss a Transformed Midterm Landscape

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Molly Jong-Fast, the writer of the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic, and Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, to discuss whether the Democrats have shifted the narrative of the midterm elections.FRANK BRUNI: Doug, Molly, an apology — because we’re doing this in cyberspace rather than a physical place, I cannot offer you any refreshments, which is a shame, because I do a killer crudité.MOLLY JONG-FAST: The case of Dr. Oz is baffling. I continue to be completely in awe of how bad he is at this.DOUG SOSNIK: He is a terrible candidate, but he is really just one of many right-wing and unqualified candidates running for the Senate and governor. Herschel Walker in Georgia and most of the Republican ticket in Arizona are probably even more unqualified.BRUNI: Let’s pivot from roughage to the rough-and-tumble of the midterms. There’s a stirring of Democratic hearts, a blooming of Democratic hopes, a belief that falling gas prices, key legislative accomplishments and concern about abortion rights equal a reprieve from the kind of midterm debacle that Democrats feared just a month or two ago.Doug, do you now envision Democrats doing much better than we once thought possible?SOSNIK: I do. Up until the start of the primaries and the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, this looked like a classic midterm election in which the party in power gets shellacked. It has happened in the past four midterm elections.BRUNI: Is it possible we’re reading too much into the abortion factor?JONG-FAST: No, abortion is a much bigger deal than any of the pundit class realizes. Because abortion isn’t just about abortion.BRUNI: Doug, do you agree?SOSNIK: I am increasingly nervous about making predictions, but I do feel safe in saying that this issue will increase in importance as more people see the real-life implications of the Roe decision. So, yes, I agree that it will impact the midterms. But it will actually take on even more importance in 2024 and beyond.JONG-FAST: One of the biggest things we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision is doctors terrified to treat women who are having gynecological complications. In 1973, one of the reasons Roe was decided so broadly was because some doctors didn’t feel safe treating women. We’re having a messy return to that, which is a nightmare for the right.SOSNIK: For decades, the getting-candidates-elected wing of the Republican Party — which means people like Mitch McConnell — has had a free ride with the issue of abortion. They have been able to use it to seed their base but have not been forced to pay a political price. With the overturning of Roe, that has all changed. And polling shows that a majority of Americans don’t agree with their extreme positions.JONG-FAST: I also think a lot of suburban women are really, really mad, and people who don’t care about politics at all are furious. Remember the whole news cycle devoted to the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to go out of state for an abortion. Roe is seismic.BRUNI: I noticed that in an NBC News poll released last week, abortion wasn’t one of the top five answers when voters were asked about the most important issue facing the country. Fascinatingly — and to me, hearteningly — more voters chose threats to democracy than the cost of living or jobs and the economy. Do you think that could truly be a motivating, consequential factor in the midterms? Or do you think abortion will still make the bigger difference?SOSNIK: There are two issues in midterms: turnout and persuasion. I am quite confident that the abortion issue will motivate people to vote. The NBC poll shows that Democrats have closed the enthusiasm gap for voting to two points, which since March is a 15-point improvement. And for persuasion, those suburban women swing voters will be motivated by this issue to not only vote but to vote against the Republicans.BRUNI: Is this election really going to be all about turnout, or will swing voters matter just as much? And which groups of Democratic voters are you most worried won’t, in the end, turn out to the extent that they should?SOSNIK: Yes, this midterm will be primarily about turnout. For Democrats, I would start by worrying about young people turning out, which was no doubt on the administration’s mind when it released a plan on Wednesday to forgive student loans.There is also a pretty sizable group of Democrats who have soured on President Biden. They are critical for the Democrats to turn out.BRUNI: Molly, Doug just mentioned President Biden’s announcement that he was forgiving some college debt for some Americans. Is that decision likely to be a net positive for the party, drawing grateful voters to the polls, or a net negative, alienating some Democrats — and energizing many Republicans — who think he’s being fiscally profligate and playing favorites?JONG-FAST: I grew up extremely privileged and for years grappled with the issue of fairness. In my mind, $10,000 was the floor for debt forgiveness. I am particularly pleased with the $20,000 for Pell grant recipients who qualify. I never thought America was a fair country, and it’s become increasingly unfair. Biden was elected with this promise, and he’s keeping it. I think that should help turn out the base.SOSNIK: Student loan forgiveness is a Rorschach test for voters. If you believe in government and a progressive agenda, it is great news. If you think that the Democrats are a bunch of big spenders and worried about the elites — the 38 percent of the country that gets a four-year college degree — then it will work against them.BRUNI: Will former President Donald Trump’s feud with the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Mar-a-Lago search boost Republican turnout and work to the party’s advantage?JONG-FAST: Trump has been fighting with parts of the government for years. I’m not sure how fresh that narrative is. The people who are Trump’s people will continue to be Trump’s people, but much of this persecution-complex narrative is old.SOSNIK: The F.B.I. raid goes with several other items — Jan. 6, Roe, the Trump-endorsed right-wing nominees — that are driving this to be what I’d call a choice election.There have been only two elections since World War II when the incumbent party did not lose House seats in the midterms — 1998 and 2002 — 2002 was an outlier, since it was really a reaction to 9/11.Nineteen ninety-eight was a choice election: We were in the middle of impeachment when the country largely felt that the Republicans were overreaching; 2022 could be only the second choice midterm election since World War II.BRUNI: Democratic hopes focus on keeping control of the Senate or even expanding their majority there. Is the House a lost cause?JONG-FAST: The result of the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District on Tuesday — widely considered a bellwether contest for control of the House in November, and in which the Democrat, Pat Ryan, beat a well-known, favored Republican, Marc Molinaro, by two points — makes people think that it is possible for Democrats to keep the House.I know that Democrats have about dozens of fewer safe seats than Republicans. And they hold a very slim majority — Republicans need to pick up a net of five seats to regain the majority. But I still think it’s possible Democrats hold the House.SOSNIK: It will be very difficult for the Democrats to hold the House. They have one of the narrowest margins in the House since the late-19th century. Because of reapportionment and redistricting, the Republicans have a much more favorable battlefield. There are now, in the new map, 16 seats held by Democrats in districts that would have likely voted for Trump. Expecting a bad cycle, over 30 Democrats in the House announced that they would retire.The Cook Report has the Republicans already picking up a net of seven seats, with the majority of the remaining competitive races held by Democrats.BRUNI: I’m going to list Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races in purple or reddish states that aren’t incontrovertibly hostile terrain for the party. For each candidate, tell me if you think victory is probable, possible or improbable. Be bold.John Fetterman, Pennsylvania.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Raphael Warnock, Georgia.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Cheri Beasley, North Carolina.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Val Demings, Florida.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Ugh, Florida.BRUNI: Mark Kelly, Arizona.SOSNIK: Probable.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: Tim Ryan, Ohio.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Possible.BRUNI: Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada.SOSNIK: Possible.JONG-FAST: Probable.BRUNI: ​​ Name a Democratic candidate this cycle — for Senate, House or governor — who has most positively surprised and impressed you, and tell me why.JONG-FAST: Fetterman is really good at this, and so is his wife. Ryan has been really good. I think Mandela Barnes is really smart. I’ve interviewed all of those guys for my podcast and thought they were just really good at messaging in a way Democrats are historically not. Val Demings is a once-in-a-lifetime politician, but Florida is Florida.SOSNIK: Tim Ryan. I don’t know if he can win, but he has proved that a Democrat can be competitive in a state that I now consider a Republican stronghold.BRUNI: OK, let’s do a lightning round of final questions. For starters, the Biden presidency so far, rated on a scale of 1 (big disappointment) to 5 (big success), with a sentence or less justifying your rating.JONG-FAST: Four. I wasn’t a Biden person, but he’s quietly gotten a lot done, more than I thought he could.SOSNIK: Four. They have accomplished a lot under very difficult circumstances.BRUNI: The percentage chance that Biden runs for a second term?JONG-FAST: Fifty percent.SOSNIK: Twenty-five percent.BRUNI: If Biden doesn’t run and there’s a Democratic primary, name someone other than or in addition to Kamala Harris whom you’d like to see enter the fray, and tell me in a phrase why.JONG-FAST: I hate this question. I want to move to a pineapple under the sea.SOSNIK: Sherrod Brown. He is an authentic person who understands the pulse of this country.JONG-FAST: I also like Sherrod Brown.BRUNI: What’s the one issue you think is being most shortchanged, not just in discussions about the midterms but in our political discussions generally?JONG-FAST: The Supreme Court. If Democrats keep the House and the Senate, Biden is still going to have to deal with the wildly out-of-step courts. He will hate doing that, but he’s going to have to.SOSNIK: I agree with Molly. On a broader level, we have just completed a realignment in American politics where class, more than race, is driving our politics.BRUNI: Last but by no means least, you must spend either an hour over crudité with the noted gourmand Mehmet Oz or an hour gardening with the noted environmentalist Herschel Walker. What do you choose, and briefly, why?JONG-FAST: I’m a terrible hypochondriac, and Oz was an extremely good surgeon. I would spend an hour with him talking about all my medical anxieties. Does this mole look like anything?SOSNIK: The fact that you are raising that question tells you how bad the candidate recruitment has been for the Republicans this cycle.Other than carrying a football and not getting tackled, Walker has not accomplished much in his life, and his pattern of personal behavior shows him to be unfit to hold elected office.BRUNI: Well, I once spent hours with Oz for a profile and watched him do open-heart surgery, so I’m pulling weeds with Walker, just out of curiosity. And for the fresh air.Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) writes the “Wait, What?” newsletter for The Atlantic. Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser in President Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 2000 and is a counselor to the Brunswick Group.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democrats Sense a Shift in the Political Winds, but It May Not Be Enough

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      Energized abortion-rights voters. Donald J. Trump back in the spotlight. Stronger-than-expected special elections, including a surprising win early Wednesday in New York.Democratic leaders, once beaten down by the prospect of a brutal midterm election in the fall, are daring to dream that they can maintain control of Congress this November.An unexpected victory by Pat Ryan, a Democrat, in a special House election to fill a vacancy in New York’s Hudson Valley offered Democrats solid evidence that their voters were willing to come out and that their message was resonating. It followed strong Democratic showings in other special elections, in Nebraska, Minnesota and upstate New York, since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Mr. Ryan placed abortion rights front and center while his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro, sidestepped the issue to focus on the problems his party still believes will drive voters — inflation, crime, the economy. It didn’t work.“Kevin McCarthy made a big mistake by measuring the drapes too early and doubling down on Trumpism, and it’s proving to be fatal,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to the House Republican leader.But the House map in 2022 favors Republicans, thanks to Republican-led redistricting and a slew of retirements of Democratic lawmakers. That means the shifting political winds are more likely to merely blunt any Republican wave in the House rather than save the Democratic majority.Primary races and special elections, which fill seats that are vacated before the end of a lawmaker’s term, are not necessarily reliable predictors of general election turnout, Republicans note.“Majorities are won in November, not August,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ official campaign arm. “We look forward to prosecuting the case against Democrats’ failed one-party rule that’s left American families worse off.”That endeavor is becoming harder. Falling gas prices have robbed Republicans of the starkest visual evidence of inflation. Passage in recent weeks of legislation to control prescription drug prices, tackle climate change, extend health insurance subsidies, bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and impose tighter gun controls on teenagers and the mentally ill have given Democrats achievements to run on while countering accusations of a do-nothing Congress.And the F.B.I.’s seizure of hundreds of highly classified documents from Mr. Trump’s Florida home has put the former president back into the spotlight as Democrats press their efforts to cast Republicans as extremists and make the November election a choice between the two parties, not a referendum on President Biden.Demonstrators against former President Donald J. Trump near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after the FBI recovered boxes of government documents.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesFor the first time since the fall of 2021, polling averages indicate a narrow majority of voters who say they prefer Democratic over Republican control of Congress.Even some Republicans own up to nervousness.“It looks like troubling clouds on the horizon to me,” said Representative Billy Long, a Republican from Missouri. “The Republicans need to heed Satchel Paige’s advice of ‘Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.’”And yet, for all the trend lines tilting toward Democrats, there is still the unavoidable math of the midterms.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaFetal Personhood: A push to grant fetuses the same legal rights as people is gaining momentum, as anti-abortion activists move beyond bans and aim to get the procedure classified as murder.Struggling to Decode Laws: Doctors’ concerns about complying with new abortion bans left a pregnant Louisiana woman with a fatal diagnosis for her fetus, but no clear path for an abortion.Surrogacy Industry: Fearful of legal and medical consequences of new abortion laws, gestational surrogates and those working with them are rewriting contracts and changing the way they operate.A Rare Prosecution: A teenager used pills to terminate her pregnancy at home with the aid of her mother. Their Facebook messages are now key evidence in a rare prosecution over abortion.Republicans need a mere five seats to win a House majority — and their candidates are in strong positions to win the bulk of nine districts that Mr. Trump would have won easily two years ago if the new maps had been in place. Seven of those nine seats do not have a Democratic incumbent to defend them. Republicans might have their pick of another seven Democratic seats that Mr. Trump would have won in 2020, though by narrower margins. Four of those have no incumbent to defend them.The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 10 Democratic seats as leaning toward or likely to be Republican, against three Republican seats that lean Democratic. That works out to a Republican majority.“The Republicans don’t need a wave to win back the House,” said Nathan L. Gonzalez, a nonpartisan House election analyst. “There will be some Democrats who win in Trump districts, but they will be the exceptions, not the rule.”Still, more than a dozen interviews with Democratic candidates illustrated the consistency of their optimism. They all saw Democratic and independent voters as newly energized by the abortion issue. They believed recent Democratic achievements had changed their image as an ineffectual majority to an effective one. And they detected real fear among voters of a resurgent, anti-democracy right wing, abetted by the Republican leadership. More

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      What Two Primaries Reveal About the Decline of Working-Class Democrats

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      The results of the Democratic congressional primaries in New York City on Tuesday give us a hint of just how far the working-class liberalism once associated with city politics has declined. The winners of two races in particular, Jerrold Nadler and Daniel Goldman, who will almost surely represent much of Manhattan (and a bit of Brooklyn) in the House, emerged as the victors of complicated congressional primaries in districts that were redrawn to reflect national shifts in population.They represent different kinds of New York City Democrats — Mr. Nadler, a longtime congressman, has deep roots in the old grass-roots liberalism of the Upper West Side, while Mr. Goldman is a political newcomer whose star has risen through his association with opposition to Donald Trump — but their shared success nonetheless highlights socioeconomic divisions in Manhattan that have a long history.The primaries reflected the tensions and divisions within contemporary liberalism itself and raise the question of how (or whether) Democrats can effectively represent such radically different constituencies.The changes in the city districts were a result of math — subtraction, to be specific. New York State lost a seat in the House because its population came up short by 89 people in a census conducted in 2020, at the height of Covid in New York. Indeed, if so many New Yorkers had not died in the early months of the pandemic, these contests — particularly the one that pitted Mr. Nadler against his House colleague Carolyn Maloney — would almost certainly not have taken place.Beyond the numbers, though, the primaries were part of a continuing story of class divisions in New York City. In the mid-1930s, the Columbia University sociologist Caroline Ware wrote a study of Greenwich Village that focused on the Irish and Italian immigrants who moved there in the late 19th century and whose Catholic churches still dot the neighborhood.Some at the time saw the Village as a success story of immigrant assimilation. But Professor Ware had a different interpretation. The people of the Village, she suggested, lived side by side but had little contact with one another. They were left to navigate a complicated city as “isolated individuals rather than as part of coherent social wholes.”The national Democratic Party faces a similar class divide between highly educated urbanites and the working-class voters for whom it often claims to speak. It’s no secret that the party has moved away from the fiercely pro-union New Deal politics of the mid-20th century. For much of the 20th century, New York State’s congressional delegation included more than 40 representatives (compared with 27 today), a voting bloc that generally collaborated in support of an expansive social welfare state and working-class interests. New York representatives included many of the country’s most left-leaning politicians (like the Upper West Side’s Bella Abzug).Mr. Nadler and Mr. Goldman come from different backgrounds, politically and economically. Mr. Nadler grew up in the city and got active in politics opposing the Vietnam War. Mr. Goldman is a Washington native who attended Sidwell Friends, Yale, Stanford; he served as assistant U.S. attorney with Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York.For Mr. Nadler, despite his victory on Tuesday night, the political world he emerged from no longer exists as a vital force. This is in part because of transformations within Democratic politics.Mr. Nadler’s political career was forged at a pivotal moment in the aftermath of New York’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s. He was first elected to the State Assembly in 1976. In the following years, Democratic city officials were forced to increase subway fares, close public hospitals, charge tuition at CUNY and cease to embrace a politically ambitious role for local government. Mr. Nadler was elected to Congress in the early 1990s, when Democratic leaders like Bill Clinton proclaimed the end of the era of big government and were most optimistic about free trade and deregulation despite its impact on cities like New York.He has supported many measures over his long career that would aid working-class people, but at the same time the Democrats have generally backed away from politics that would more forcefully address inequality and the economic divide.Meanwhile, the economic fortunes of Manhattan were also changing — as part of an effort to secure a steadier tax base in the aftermath of the collapse of manufacturing, the city under Ed Koch began to reorient its economy toward Wall Street and real estate development.As Wall Street became an engine of the city’s economy in the administration of Michael Bloomberg, Manhattan’s demographics began moving in largely the opposite direction from the city as a whole. From 2010 to 2020, the white and Asian share of the borough’s population grew, while the Black and Latino share fell.Today, the institutions that had once helped to stitch together constituencies from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, like unions, are far weaker in the city and nationally than they once were. People confront the problems of living in New York through the lens of personal ambition — as “isolated individuals,” as Professor Ware put it — rather than through collective efforts to improve the city’s life.The narrow victory of Mr. Goldman illustrates even more sharply the political crisis of working-class New York. In addition to being an heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune, Mr. Goldman is a type well known to denizens of Lower Manhattan, a successful lawyer who was able to self-fund his campaign. He is clearly a candidate whose political appeal was strongest for the new leaders of the Village and Lower Manhattan, the professional upper classes who work in law firms and investment banks, who fund their children’s schools’ parent-teacher associations and the park conservancies.This is a social world that has little meaningful overlap with the working-class population, often Asian and Latino, that still dwells here but lacks the confident political organization and alliances with the middle class that it once possessed.Mr. Goldman’s political fortunes rose with his role as lead counsel in the first impeachment suit against Mr. Trump; his path to the House was largely paved by this rather than any deep engagement with the kinds of material issues that affect the lives of working- or even middle-class New Yorkers.Mr. Goldman’s race was very close — he won by roughly 1,300 votes. The runner-up, Yuh-Line Niou, a state assemblywoman, ran a campaign whose rhetoric focused on class appeals, but unions and progressive groups proved unable to act in a coordinated way to support any single candidate in a crowded field.Despite their different backgrounds, both Mr. Goldman and Mr. Nadler embody a Manhattan that has shifted in ways that affect not only its own politics but those of the country at large. Their careers point to the divides that Professor Ware pointed out decades ago.In her account, the Village — and New York, and America as a whole — faced the problem of how to respond to the collective problems of a modern industrial society through the lens of a political culture that had been shaped by ruthless individual acquisition. The particular problems have changed, and yet Lower Manhattan remains home to a population that, as dense as it is, is intensely divided by class and ethnicity, that is characterized (as Professor Ware put it) by “an almost complete lack of community integration.”The bitter politics of the August primaries, which reveal yet again the declining power of New York’s liberalism, are the result.Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of “Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics” and “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal.”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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In N.Y. Primaries, a Fight for the Democratic Party’s Future

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      The party’s more moderate establishment declared victory, but a closer look reveals the battle for the soul of the party will grind on.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a moderate Democrat from New York City’s northern suburbs, saw a clear-cut lesson in his lopsided primary victory Tuesday night over one of his home state’s brightest left-wing stars.“Tonight, mainstream won,” Mr. Maloney, who also leads House Democrat campaign committee, declared afterward. “Common sense won.”The 30-point margin appeared to be a sharp rebuke to the party’s left flank, which had tried to make the race a referendum on Mr. Maloney’s brand of leadership in Washington. A second, narrower win by another moderate Democrat, Daniel Goldman, in one of the city’s most liberal House districts prompted more hand-wringing among some progressives.But as New York’s tumultuous primary season came to a close on Tuesday, a survey of contests across the state shows a more nuanced picture. Four summers after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise victory ignited Democrats’ left flank and positioned New York at the center of a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, the battle has entered a new phase. But it is far from abating.Mostly gone this year were shocking upsets by little-known left-leaning insurgents like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and a gaggle of challengers in Albany. They dislodged an entrenched block of conservative Democrats controlling the State Senate in 2018. Representative Jamaal Bowman defeated a powerful committee chairman in 2020. Those contests made the political left appear ascendant.Kristen Gonzalez, a State Senate candidate supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, won her primary race in a district in Brooklyn and Queens.Janice Chung for The New York TimesTwo years later, though, the tension within the party appears likely to grind on, as progressives struggle to marshal voters into movements as they did during the Trump presidency. At the same time, the party’s establishment wing has regained its footing after President Biden and Mayor Eric Adams, avowed moderates, won the White House and City Hall.“We are past that political and electoral moment,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of New York’s liberal Working Families Party, said of the rapid gains of past election cycles. “The headwinds are a real amount of voter fatigue, economic malaise and just the pressures of everyday life.”Ms. Nnaemeka and her allies still found reason to celebrate on Tuesday though, particularly over state-level contests. Kristen Gonzalez, a tech worker supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, won a marquee Brooklyn-Queens State Senate race over Elizabeth Crowley, despite Mayor Adams and outside special interests openly campaigning against her.“Today, we really proved that socialism wins,” Ms. Gonzalez told jubilant supporters after her win.As moderates backed by well-financed outside groups and well-known leaders like Mr. Adams sought to oust them, progressives also successfully defended key seats won in recent election cycles.Among them were Jabari Brisport, a member of the Democratic Socialists, and Gustavo Rivera, another progressive state senator targeted by Mr. Adams. Mr. Bowman, whose district had been substantially redrawn in this year’s redistricting process, also survived.“We had some really good wins,” Ms. Nnaemeka added. “Despite the headwinds, despite the dark money, despite the redistricting chaos, we sent some of the hardest working champions of the left back to the State Senate to complete the work the federal government isn’t doing right now.”But in many of the most recognizable races, there were clear signs that those wins had limits.Mr. Maloney provided moderates with their most resonant victory, defeating Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive state senator who was part of the 2018 insurgency, by a two-to-one margin. This time, she had the vocal backing of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. She fiercely critiqued Mr. Maloney as “a selfish corporate Democrat with no integrity.”Alessandra Biaggi mounted an aggressive challenge to Mr. Maloney from the left.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut she was drowned out by a flood of outside spending that came to Mr. Maloney’s aid, with attacks centered on her harsh past criticisms of the police. She struggled to quickly introduce herself to voters in a district she had never run in before. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Bill Clinton also openly lent their support to the congressman.In the race for an open Democratic seat in New York City, Mr. Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, beat out three progressive stars in some of the city’s most liberal enclaves. All had once enjoyed the backing of the Working Families Party. And former Representative Max Rose, an avowed centrist attempting to make a comeback on Staten Island, handily turned back a primary challenger championed by activists.The outcomes — along with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s yawning primary victory in June over a left-aligned challenger, Jumaane Williams — left leaders of the party’s more moderate wing crowing over what they see as a more pragmatic mood among the electorate in the aftermath of the Trump presidency. More

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      Republican Wins Special House Election in Rural New York

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      Joe Sempolinski, a local Republican Party leader and former congressional aide, won a special election on Tuesday for a vacant House seat in western New York, according to The Associated Press, keeping the sprawling rural district under Republican control.The race was surprisingly close, but Mr. Sempolinski was ultimately able to capitalize on his deep Republican Party ties in one of the most conservative regions of the state to repel a Democratic challenge by Max Della Pia, an Air Force veteran.Mr. Sempolinski had won 53 percent of the vote, compared with 47 percent for Mr. Della Pia, with 95 percent of votes counted. Mr. Trump won the district by 12 points in 2020.In the short term, the Republican victory will serve to tighten Democrats’ already narrow margin in the House of Representatives in Washington. The seat in the 23rd Congressional District, centered in New York’s rural Southern Tier and running west to Lake Erie, had been vacant since Representative Tom Reed, a Republican, left the House in May to take a position at a Washington lobbying firm.Mr. Sempolinski’s time in Washington will be short-lived. A former aide to Mr. Reed and a current Republican county chairman, he does not plan to run for a full term in November’s midterm election.“I am looking forward to hitting the ground running and making sure constituent services are back up and working” Mr. Sempolinski, 39, said on Tuesday night after securing the victory. “We have no time to waste.”Despite his defeat in the special election, Mr. Della Pia, 69, will be on the ballot again in November as the Democratic nominee for the newly reconfigured 23rd District. On the campaign trail, he has highlighted his long military service, stressed a bipartisan approach to governance and said he would prioritize creating jobs and protecting the environment.Mr. Della Pia will face the winner of a bitter Republican primary contest between Carl P. Paladino, a wealthy businessman known for his impolitic public statements, and Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York Republican Party.The new district, which will include portions of suburban and exurban Buffalo in addition to the Southern Tier, still heavily favors Republicans. But if Mr. Paladino prevails, his far right positions and explosive statements on race and history could make the race more competitive. More