Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021)

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      So You Lost the Election. We Had Nothing to Do With It.

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      Among Democrats, there is no question that the Democratic Party is sailing in rough waters. Yes, it assembled a winning national majority in the 2020 presidential election, but it has struggled to sustain itself at every other level of government.The Republican Party controls a majority of states and state legislatures, holds a modest advantage in the fight for control of the House ahead of the 2022 midterm elections and holds a substantial advantage in the fight for control of the Senate on account of the chamber’s rural bias. It also has a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court and can more easily win the Electoral College — and thus the presidency — without winning a majority of votes, as it did in 2000 and 2016.Everyone, within the Democratic Party, can see the problem. The question is who, or what, is to blame. For the past year, the answer from many moderate Democrats — and a sympathetic coterie of journalists, commentators and strategists — is that progressives have sailed the ship aground with their views on race, crime, immigration and education, which alienate potential swing voters, including working-class and blue-collar Hispanics.Writing on this problem for The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein quotes the demographer and election analyst Ruy Teixeira, who argues, “The more working class voters see their values as being at variance with the Democratic Party brand, the less likely it is that Democrats will see due credit for even their measures that do provide benefits to working class voters.”In a similar piece, my colleague Tom Edsall quotes William Galston of Brookings, who also argues that progressives threaten to limit efforts to win blue-collar support and that “Some progressives, I fear, would rather be the majority in a minority party than the minority in a majority party.”It is true that some progressives — either Democratic lawmakers or affiliated activists — hold unpopular views or use unpopular language. It is also true that Republicans have amplified this to some electoral success. But missing in this conversation is one inconvenient fact: Progressives are not actually in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party.It’s easy to think otherwise. Even the most sober version of this critique makes it sound as if the Democratic Party is in the grip of its most left-wing officials and constituents. But it isn’t — to the dismay and frustration of those officials and constituents.The president of the United States, and leader of the Democratic Party, is Joe Biden, the standard-bearer for a bygone era of centrist governance and aisle-crossing compromise, who made his mark in domestic politics as a drug warrior in the 1980s and a “law and order” Democrat in the 1990s.The speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi, a long-serving liberal establishmentarian. Her leadership team — the majority leader, Steny Hoyer; the majority whip, James Clyburn; the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark; and the Democratic caucus chairman, Hakeem Jeffries — are similarly positioned in the center-left of the Democratic Party. The same is true of Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, as well as the people who run the various organizations of the institutional Democratic Party.Although the share of progressives within the Democratic Party is much larger than the share of progressives writ large (12 percent of the party versus 6 percent nationally, according to the most recent political typology survey from the Pew Research Center), a large majority of Democrats are moderate to moderately liberal on most issues. That’s why — and how — Joe Biden won the nomination for president in the first place, easily beating his more left-wing opponents in the South Carolina primary and rallying much of the rest of the party behind him on Super Tuesday and beyond.In office, Biden has led from the center of the Democratic Party. His main legislative achievement so far, Covid relief notwithstanding, is a bipartisan infrastructure bill. The next phase of his agenda, the Build Back Better plan, now rests in the hands of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He does not celebrate violent protests; he denounces them. He supports law enforcement and the criminal justice system — see his comments on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict — and avoids most cultural battles. This is true, as well, of most elected Democrats in Washington.There was a battle for control of the Democratic Party, and the moderates won. They hold the power and they direct the message. But despite this victory, moderate Democrats and their allies can’t seem to take responsibility for the party’s fortunes. When faced with defeats — as they were last month when Terry McAuliffe fell to Glenn Youngkin in the race to succeed Ralph Northam as governor of Virginia — they blame the left. It’s the same song, each time. If progressives would just stop alienating the public, then they could make gains and put power back in Democratic hands. Somehow, the people in the passenger’s seat of the Democratic Party are always and forever responsible for the driver’s failure to reach their shared destination.Writing for his newsletter, the journalist Osita Nwanevu made a version of this point earlier in the year. Progressive politicians and activists may be occasionally off-message but in the main, “The simple truth is that most of the things moderate liberals tend to argue Democrats should be doing and saying are, in fact, being done and said by the Biden administration, Democratic leaders in Congress, and the vast majority of Democratic elected officials.”If, despite their influence, moderate Democrats are not satisfied with the state of their party, then they might want to turn their critical eye on themselves. What they’ll find are a few fundamental problems that may help explain the party’s current predicament.After all, 2020 was not the first year that Democrats fell short of their expectations. They did so in 2010, when moderates had an even stronger grip on the party, as well as in 2014 and 2016. Here, again, I’ll echo Nwanevu. Despite pitching his administration to the moderate middle — despite his vocal critiques of “identity politics,” his enthusiastic patriotism and his embrace of the most popular Democratic policies on offer — Barack Obama could not arrest the Democratic Party’s slide with blue-collar voters. For the past decade, in other words, “the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects have been in decline for reasons unattributable to progressive figures and ideas that arrived on the political scene practically yesterday.”Perhaps the problem, then, lies less with the rhetoric (or existence) of progressive Democrats and more with any number of transformations in the material circumstances of American life and the response — or lack thereof — from the Democrats with the power to do something. What was the Democratic Party’s response to a generation of neoliberal economic restructuring? What was its response to the near-total collapse of private-sector unions? What was its response to the declining fortunes of American workers and the upward redistribution of American wealth?The answer, for most of the past 30 years, is that the moderate Democrats who led the party have either acquiesced in these trends or, as in the case of the Clinton administration, actively pushed them along. And to the extent that these Democrats offered policies targeted to working Americans, they very often failed to deliver on their promises.As a result, as David Dayen of The American Prospect notes in “The Case for Deliverism,” “cynicism finds a breeding ground. People tune out the Democratic message as pretty words in a speech. Eventually, Democratic support gets ground down to a nub, surfacing only in major metropolitan areas that have a cultural affinity for liberalism.” These Democrats, in their failure to deliver, lend credence to the view that Washington is more a hindrance than a help. We can see this right now, as moderate and conservative Democratic resistance to the most ambitious parts of Biden’s agenda has bogged down the entire party and hurt its overall standing.Read in this light, the frequent focus on progressives as the cause of Democratic woes looks less like hard-nosed analysis and more like excuse-making. And my sense is that this excuse-making will only get worse as Republicans weaponize the institutions of American politics to entrench their power and lay the conditions for durable minority rule.Right now, the moderate Democrats who run the party have a narrow and slipping hold on Congress against an opposition that relies on structural advantages, which could be mitigated, or at least undermined, with federal power. They have failed to act, and there’s no sign, so far, that anything will change.If and when Democrats lose one or both chambers of Congress — and when we all face the consequences of their failure — I am confident that we’ll hear, once again, how it’s everyone’s fault but their own.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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      Governor Steve Bullock Warns: Democrats Face Trouble in Rural America

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      I take no joy in sounding the alarm, but I do so as a proud Democrat who has won three statewide races in a rural, red state — the Democrats are in trouble in rural America, and their struggles there could doom the party in 2022.The warning signs were already there in 2020 when Democrats fell short in congressional and state races despite electing Joe Biden president. I know because I was on the ballot for U.S. Senate and lost. In the last decade and a half, we’ve seen Senate seats flip red in Arkansas, Indiana, North Dakota, and more. Democrats have lost more than 900 state legislative seats around the country since 2008. And in this year’s governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, we saw the Democratic vote in rural areas plummet, costing the party one seat and nearly losing us the other. It was even worse for Democrats down ballot, as Democrats lost state legislative, county, and municipal seats.The core problem is a familiar one — Democrats are out of touch with the needs of the ordinary voter. In 2021, voters watched Congress debate for months the cost of an infrastructure bill while holding a social spending bill hostage. Both measures contain policies that address the challenges Americans across the country face. Yet, to anyone outside the Beltway, the infighting and procedural brinkmanship hasn’t done a lick to meet their needs at a moment of health challenges, inflation and economic struggles. You had Democrats fighting Democrats, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and desperately needed progress was delayed. It’s no wonder rural voters think Democrats are not focused on helping them.I was re-elected as Montana’s governor in 2016 at the same time Donald Trump took our state by more than 20 points. It’s never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also against conservative media’s (and at times our own) typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.To overcome these obstacles, Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month. And the most insulting thing is being told what your self-interest should be.Get out of the cities and you will learn we have a libertarian streak, with a healthy distrust of government. We listen when folks talk about opportunity and fairness, not entitlements. We expect government to play a role in our having a fair shot at a better life, not solve all our problems.We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.For me, that meant talking about Obamacare not as an entitlement, but as a way to save rural hospitals and keep local communities and small businesses afloat. It meant talking about expanding apprenticeships, not just lowering the costs of college. It meant framing public lands as a great equalizer and as a driver for small business. It meant talking about universal pre-K not as an abstract policy goal, but being essential for our children and for keeping parents in the work force. It meant talking about climate change not just as a crisis, but as an opportunity to create good jobs, preserve our outdoor heritage, and as a promise not to leave communities behind.These lessons apply broadly, not just to swing states. We need to do the hard work of convincing voters that we are fighting for every American, regardless of party or where they live, or it’ll only get worse for us in the 2022 midterms and beyond.It’s in the void of inaction and failure to solve problems real people face that racially tinged cultural fights, like we saw in Virginia, take hold. My children are in high school and have never heard of critical race theory — nor have their teachers. What voters want to know is that Democrats will fight for racial justice and to improve the lives of rural Americans, no matter the color of their skin. After all, that’s what we’ve always done.In the parts of America that are completely rural, there are nine infants and toddlers for every daycare slot, one in eight lack health insurance and one in four pays over half their income in rent. High-speed internet has eluded many parts of our country. Voters in my state may have grown cynical about the legislative process, infighting and eye-popping price tags in Washington, but enacting the Build Back Better bill, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, gives Democrats something to run on: proof that we have voters’ backs, including those who live in rural America.It’s time for Democrats to get uncomfortable and go beyond friendly urban and suburban settings to hear directly from folks in small towns who are trying to run a business, pay the bills, and maintain access to health care. They have stories to tell and ideas to share, and we should listen. When then-candidate Barack Obama spent the Fourth of July 2008 in Butte, Mont., he didn’t go there because Butte was suddenly key to winning in November, but showing up there sent a loud and clear message to places like Butte all across our country that he gives a damn about us.Butte and Scranton may be a long way away geographically, but they’re not that far apart in terms of working-class roots, values and attitudes. President Biden can help rural Americans know and believe Democrats are tackling the challenges they face. Democrats need to get off the polling and consultant calls, get into the community and engage voters directly: Do you have a decent job that covers the bills and leaves a little left over? Can you afford your home and pay for health care? Do you feel safe? Do you believe we are doing right for your kids, educationally, environmentally and economically? Do you see a path forward toward a better life for you and your family?Fighting for every American means that, whether you live in Manhattan, N.Y. or Manhattan, Mont., you have an opportunity to climb the economic ladder and a temporary safety net to catch you if you stumble. Too often the Democratic Party comes off as a buffet line of policies, each prepared for a different group of voters. If we talk about — and work to address — the issues that people discuss around their kitchen table or at the fence line, the issues that fill endless hours of cable television become a hell of a lot less relevant. Our kitchen tables might look and feel different, but we need to learn to talk in a way that makes sense around everyone’s table.Voters are facing real challenges — and so is our country. They need to know that Democrats are listening, working, and fighting for them. The voters deserve that level of respect and need to know we have their back.Steve Bullock is the co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century. He was governor of Montana from 2013 to 2021. 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 Struggle to Energize Their Base as Frustrations Mount

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      Even as President Biden achieves some significant victories, Democrats are warning that many of their most loyal supporters see inaction and broken campaign promises.Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters, warning the White House and congressional leadership that they are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.President Biden has achieved some major victories, signing a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill and moving a nearly $2 trillion social policy and climate change bill through the House. But some Democrats are warning that many of the voters who put them in control of the federal government last year may see little incentive to return to the polls in the midterms — reigniting a debate over electoral strategy that has been raging within the party since 2016.As the administration focuses on those two bills, a long list of other party priorities — expanding voting rights, enacting criminal justice reform, enshrining abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, fixing a broken immigration system — have languished or died in Congress. Negotiations in the Senate are likely to further dilute the economic and climate proposals that animated Mr. Biden’s campaign — if the bill passes at all. And the president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful, as violent language flourishes and threats to lawmakers flood into Congress.Interviews with Democratic lawmakers, activists and officials in Washington and in key battleground states show a party deeply concerned about retaining its own supporters. Even as strategists and vulnerable incumbents from battleground districts worry about swing voters, others argue that the erosion of crucial segments of the party’s coalition could pose more of a threat in midterm elections that are widely believed to be stacked against it.Already, Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a sharp fall among some of his core constituencies, showing double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters. Those drops have led to increased tension between the White House and progressives at a time of heightened political anxiety, after Democrats were caught off-guard by the intensity of the backlash against them in elections earlier this month. Mr. Biden’s plummeting national approval ratings have also raised concerns about whether he would — or should — run for re-election in 2024.Not all of the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Biden; a large percentage of frustration is with the Democratic Party itself.“It’s frustrating to see the Democrats spend all of this time fighting against themselves and to give a perception to the country, which the Republicans are seizing on, that the Democrats can’t govern,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads the A.M.E. churches across Georgia. “And some of us are tired of them getting pushed around, because when they get pushed around, African Americans get shoved.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading House progressive, warned that the party is at risk of “breaking trust” with vital constituencies, including young people and people of color.“There’s all this focus on ‘Democrats deliver, Democrats deliver,’ but are they delivering on the things that people are asking for the most right now?” she said in an interview. “In communities like mine, the issues that people are loudest and feel most passionately about are the ones that the party is speaking to the least.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats acknowledge that a significant part of the challenge facing their party is structural: With slim congressional majorities, the party cannot pass anything unless the entire caucus agrees. That empowers moderate Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia to block some of the biggest promises to their supporters, including a broad voting rights bill.A more aggressive approach may not lead to eventual passage of an immigration or voting rights law, but it would signal to Democrats that Mr. Biden is fighting for them, said Faiz Shakir, a close adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Shakir and others worry that the focus on the two significant pieces of legislation — infrastructure and the spending bill — won’t be enough to energize supporters skeptical of the federal government’s ability to improve their lives.“I’m a supporter of Biden, a supporter of the agenda, and I’m frustrated and upset with him to allow this to go in the direction it has,” said Mr. Shakir, who managed Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020. “It looks like we have President Manchin instead of President Biden in this debate.”He added: “It’s made the president look weak.”The divide over how much attention to devote to staunch Democratic constituencies versus moderate swing voters taps into a political debate that’s long roiled the party: Is it more important to energize the base or to persuade swing voters? And can Democrats do both things at once?White House advisers argue that winning swing voters, particularly the suburban independents who play an outsize role in battleground districts, is what will keep Democrats in power — or at least curb the scale of their midterm losses. They see the drop among core groups of Democrats as reflective of a challenging political moment — rising inflation, the continued pandemic, uncertainty about schools — rather than unhappiness with the administration’s priorities.“It’s November of 2021, not September of 2022,” John Anzalone, Mr. Biden’s pollster, said. “If we pass Build Back Better, we have a great message going into the midterms, when the bell rings on Labor Day, about what we’ve done for people.”Even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation that passed the House earlier this month offers proposals transforming child care, elder care, prescription drugs and financial aid for college, as well as making the largest investment ever to slow climate change. But some of the most popular policies will not be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections, nor will the impact of many of the infrastructure projects.Already, Democrats face a challenging education effort with voters. According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally. Among white Democratic battleground voters, support for the bills is only 72 percent.Representative James E. Clyburn, the high-ranking House Democrat from South Carolina and a close ally of Mr. Biden, said the way the bills were negotiated and reported in the media had voters in his district asking him about money that was cut from initiatives rather than the sweeping benefits.“People stopped me on the streets saying we cut money from our H.B.C.U.s,” Mr. Clyburn said, pointing out that more funding for historically Black colleges and universities will be added in the coming years of the administration. “So while everybody keeps blaming the Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, it’s the Senate rules that are archaic, and stop us from passing these bills.”Mr. Clyburn and other lawmakers say they struggle to explain the vacillations of congressional wrangling to their voters, who expected that by electing Democrats to the majority they would be able to pass their agenda.“Nobody thought about the filibuster and the realities,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee. “People don’t understand the Byrd rule and the parliamentarian and the things we have to put up with. It does lower their enthusiasm.”Atlanta voters cast their ballots last November. Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia, but inaction on voting rights has weakened their support.Jessica Mcgowan/Getty ImagesAs they’ve begun to do with the infrastructure bill, the White House plans an aggressive approach to sell the social policy legislation once it passes, dispatching Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top officials for events across the country.“There is a real window of opportunity to show the cooperation and competence people expect from us,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of a moderate wing of lawmakers in congressional negotiations. “It’s up to us to communicate what we just accomplished for families and for the country.”Yet many activists say the White House is to blame for failing to aggressively push for the central promises made to their supporters during the campaign. They said they wanted Mr. Biden to leverage both his bully pulpit and executive powers to tackle student loans, criminal justice, immigration reform and other issues.“We’re talking about democracy in such a crisis and here we are with very few legislative days left and the lack of urgency is deafening,” said Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, a minister and civil rights advocate who has helped lead the response from faith leaders on voting rights. “For the president to say he can only do one thing at a time is simply not true.”Lorella Praeli, the president of Community Change Action, a group advocating immigration reform, offered a terse warning to the administration about keeping Latino support: “There are no participation trophies.”Some of the most popular policies in the social safety net bill that passed the House won’t be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAlready, the national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who may lose seats in redistricting and face the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.Tomás Robles, the co-chair of Lucha, a Latino civil rights group based in Phoenix that is widely credited with helping Democrats win the state in 2020, said people were “disillusioned and unmotivated” by what they had seen in the first 10 months of Democratic governance.“When you’re not passing bold progressive policies, you have to be able to show something,” Mr. Robles said. “President Biden gets the most blame because he’s the most visible, but it’s the party as a whole that has failed its voters.”In Georgia, inaction on voting rights has fueled a steepening decline of enthusiasm for Mr. Biden among Black voters. The New Georgia Project, a progressive civil rights group, conducted a study last month of Black voters in Georgia, and found that 66 percent approved of the job Mr. Biden was doing, and 51 percent thought that his administration was working to address the concerns of the Black community. In 2020, Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia.Representative Cori Bush, a progressive whose district includes large parts of St. Louis, said the social safety net and climate provisions included in the bill that passed the House could not be pared down any further. And, she added, the White House has to follow through on other provisions if Democrats want to excite Black voters — perhaps the party’s most loyal constituency — ahead of the midterm elections.“Do I believe Black community members will be happy to see these investments? Absolutely. Will they feel like this has changed their lives in some ways? Yes,” Ms. Bush said. “But will this be enough to excite? When you’re excited, that means that you feel like something else is coming. You have hope that more is happening. So what’s next?” More

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      How Higher Prices This Holiday Season Could Cost Democrats, Too

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      Rising prices for gas and a holiday meal could come back to bite Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the 2022 midterms.AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Samantha Martin, a single mother shopping ahead of Thanksgiving, lamented how rising gas and grocery prices have eaten away at the raise she got this year as a manager at McDonald’s.Gas “is crazy out of hand,” Ms. Martin said as she returned a shopping cart at an Aldi discount market in Auburn Hills, a Detroit suburb, to collect a 25-cent deposit.Her most recent fillup was $3.59 a gallon, about $1 more than the price in the spring. Her raise, to $16 an hour from $14, was “pretty good, but it’s still really hard to manage,” Ms. Martin said. “I got a raise just to have the gas go up, and that’s what my raise went to.”Ms. Martin, 35, a political independent, doesn’t blame either party for inflation, but in a season of discontent, her disapproval fell more heavily on Democrats who run Washington. She voted for President Biden but is disappointed with him and his party. “I think I would probably give somebody else a shot,” she said.As Americans go on the road this week to travel for family gatherings, the higher costs of driving and one of the most expensive meals of the year have alarmed Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the midterms. Republicans are increasingly confident that a rising cost of living — the ultimate kitchen-table issue — will be the most salient factor in delivering a red wave in 2022.Democrats’ passage in quick succession of the $1 trillion infrastructure law and, in the House, of a $2.2 trillion social safety net and climate bill, promise once-in-a-generation investments that Democratic candidates plan to run on next year, with many of the policies in the bills broadly popular.But, despite rising wages and falling unemployment, Democrats are also in danger of being swept aside in a hostile political environment shaped in large part by the highest inflation in 30 years, which has defied early predictions that it would be short-lived as the country pulled out of the pandemic.With control of Congress and many key governor seats at stake, Republicans are pointing to public and private surveys that show inflation is linked to Americans’ falling approval of Mr. Biden. And, given the wholesale gerrymanders drawn, particularly by Republicans, in the current round of congressional redistricting, the Democrats would face a high bar in keeping their paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives, even in a favorable environment. President Biden talking with an assembly line worker as he looks over an electric Hummer by General Motors during a plant visit in Detroit last week. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe president’s recent tour of ports, bridges and auto plants — which was meant to promote the infrastructure legislation — was overshadowed in part by inflation anxieties. As he test drove an electric Hummer at a General Motors plant in Detroit this week, his message of a future of zero-emission vehicles was eclipsed by a present in which Americans are driving more miles in conventional vehicles, contributing to soaring gas prices.Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat in a vulnerable House district, wrote to Mr. Biden this week that inflation was the most pressing concern of her constituents. A former C.I.A. analyst in Iraq, she urged the president to pressure Saudi Arabia to increase oil output.Ms. Slotkin, who won her seat in the midterm wave of 2018, is one of two Michigan Democrats in highly competitive districts that include the Detroit suburbs. In the Trump years, Democrats had mixed results in the populous region, advancing in white-collar communities but losing ground with their traditional union supporters.In an interview, Ms. Slotkin said that during a recent visit home, she heard constantly about the high costs of gas and groceries, and experienced them herself. “I buy groceries, I drive a ton,” she said. “Thanksgiving week is going to be more expensive by a long shot than last Thanksgiving.”[This Year’s Thanksgiving Feast Will Wallop the Wallet.]She acknowledged the political peril that rising consumer prices could pose for her party if it continues next year. “Kitchen-table issues affect Michigan and the Midwest more than any other national issue going on in Washington,” she said.In interviews with voters in suburban Detroit, including from Ms. Slotkin’s district and that of the second vulnerable Democrat, Representative Haley Stevens, residents almost universally acknowledged the pain of rising prices on their budgets. But it was unclear, from their accounts, that Democrats would suffer politically. Most voters ascribed blame according to their party leanings — as they do on almost all issues in an era of hyperpolarization.Margie Kulaga of Hazel Park, a Trump voter in 2020, said she paid 49 cents a pound, up from 33 cents a pound last year, for a 23-pound turkey that she had just bought from a Kroger market. Prices for meat and eggs have risen by 11.9 percent in the Midwest from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.“I blame Biden, his whole administration,’’ Ms. Kulaga, 55, said. “I never used to cut coupons, but now I do.”On the other hand, Gloria Bailey, 63, a special-education teacher who lives in the suburb of Redford, is a Biden supporter who said rising costs should not be laid at his doorstep.“The coronavirus has affected a lot of shipments and deliveries and crops and drivers who bring the food to market,” she said.Container ships waiting to enter the Port of Los Angeles in October.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThis month, Republicans broadly advanced in elections across the country, especially in Virginia, prompting forecasts of a similar tide in 2022. Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governorship after emphasizing the rights of parents to control how schools operate and what they teach.But Mr. Youngkin’s chief strategist, Jeff Roe, said the “big takeaway” of the election was how the rising cost of living had significantly motivated voters, an issue that was little covered by the news media. He predicted it would drive Senate and House races around the country next year (many of which he and his firm have a hand in).Biden’s ​​Social Policy Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 6A narrow vote. More

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      What We Give Thanks for and What We Say No Thanks To

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      Gail Collins: Happy Thanksgiving week, Bret. Anything you’re thankful for in particular — besides your lovely family of course.Bret Stephens: The E.M.T.s, cardiac surgeons and nurses who saved my mother’s life earlier this year will be the first people we’ll toast this Thursday, Gail.Gail: To the lifesavers!Bret: And I think we’ll also raise a glass to our regular readers, who seem drawn to a style of conversation that isn’t about compulsive loathing, bottomless contempt, frenzied recrimination, petty score-keeping, histrionic eye-rolling, suppurating disdain and Tucker Carlson-style smirking just because we sometimes have different political views.How about you?Gail: Well, gee, not gonna argue against toasting the readers. In a time when trashing folks on the web is so in, they’re so … out in a very, very fine way.Bret: Our readers: Gluttons for emollient.Gail: If I get to add one, I’d add teachers, especially the early childhood education community. They not only do essential work, they do it for very little applause — or money.Bret: Absolutely. But maybe I’m detecting a subtle hint that you really want to switch the subject to the House of Representatives passing the Build Back Bigger bill?Gail: Bret, I am now giving thanks that you remember at least part of the name of the Build Back Better bill. Which I will always think of as Not the Infrastructure Bill Even Though It Sounds Like It.Anyhow, we are talking about the social-safety-net-stop-climate-change bill. Known to many conservatives as That Two Trillion Dollar Thing.Bret: I gather you’re delighted with it.Gail: I’m happy. Never bought into the idea that President Biden was elected just to not be Donald Trump. He promised during his campaign to expand government help for non-wealthy families, battle the cost of prescription drugs, increase the scope of Medicare and achieve universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds.Got elected, now it’s happening. Good news.Bret: Sorry to be the perpetual Grinch, Gail, but I’ll bet you my considerable store of Zabar’s leftovers that it isn’t happening. Certainly not in anything like the size of the House bill and very possibly not at all. And I have two numbers to support my argument: 60 and 32. The first is Joe Manchin’s approval rating in West Virginia. The second is Joe Biden’s approval rating in West Virginia. If Manchin votes for the bill, about which he’s already expressed big doubts, it’s going to mean the likely end of his political career when he’s up for re-election in 2024.Gail: This gives me another chance to point out that West Virginia gets around twice as much in federal aid as its residents pay in federal taxes.Gee, do you think Manchin’s magical ability to hang onto that seat is connected to the federal largess he brings home?Bret: The other pair of numbers I’m looking at is minus 12.1 and minus 11.6 percentage points. The first is the spread between Biden’s approval and disapproval ratings, the second is Kamala Harris’s. Why do you think it makes sense for the administration to double down on its policies instead of a nice Clintonian U-turn?Gail: The negativity is mainly all about Biden’s inability to get things done. Which won’t look better if he fails to get this bill passed.Bret: Despite what you said earlier, I don’t think Biden was elected to be a transformative president the way Reagan or Obama were, both of whom had clear electoral mandates to change America. He was elected to be a steadying presence. Biden’s failed totally so far, partly for reasons that were not under his control, like the persistence of the pandemic, and partly for reasons that were, like the bungled exit from Afghanistan.Either way, he is misreading his mandate, and the new legislation won’t help. It’s deeply unwise to try to change the entire shape of government based on a tiebreaking vote in the Senate. It’s even more unwise to do so when prices for groceries and gas seem to be rising by the minute.Biden is overseeing a combustible mixture of sweeping progressive social change and working-class economic distress — a formula that gave us Trump in 2016 and may give us Trump again in 2024. And all this is on top of the already hyperpolarized culture we have in this country.Gail: Well, let’s move onto something even more depressing. I sorta hate to bring this up on a holiday week, Bret. But I have to ask you about the Rittenhouse verdict. Your thoughts?Bret: David French had a lovely line on the case in a recent essay in The Atlantic: “The law allows even a foolish man to defend himself, even if his own foolishness put him in harm’s way.” Obviously Kyle Rittenhouse should not have been out that night, much less waltzing around with a rifle. But it also seems clear from the trial that much of what the world thought it knew about him — that he was some kind of out-of-town white supremacist who had crossed state lines with a gun and was looking for trouble — was false.What’s your view?Gail: I can understand the way it went, given the absolute mess that Wisconsin’s gun laws seem to be. But I wish I believed it would be a call to state legislatures — and Congress — to fix the system so that toting guns around in public is flat-out illegal. For anybody.Bret: Something like 43 states allow people to carry around guns in most places. And depending on how it goes with a case being decided this term by the Supreme Court, that number may soon be 50. Personally, I’d argue that if you’re too young to buy a beer you’re surely too young to parade around with a gun, unless you’re in the military or the National Guard.Gail: The two things that totally depress me are realizing that our politicians aren’t going to stop fawning over the gun-rights lobby and knowing that Rittenhouse is going to become even more of a right-wing hero who’ll probably be given a medal at the next Republican convention.Bret: He’s no hero. But I also think this case is a good reminder of why America needs responsible and effective policing, particularly during violent urban protests or riots: When law enforcement fails to protect lives and property, vigilantes spring up.Gail: Back for a minute to the House vote on Biden’s non-infrastructure bill: I presume that you listened to every word of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s more than eight-hour speech against it, right? What were your takeaways?Bret: Yeah, sure, right after I performed a root canal on myself while watching “Ishtar” dubbed in Finnish.OK, I didn’t actually see the speech, but I did read The Times’s priceless account of it. My favorite detail: “Representative Madison Cawthorn, a hard-line Republican from North Carolina, sat behind him, stuffing his lip with chewing tobacco and spitting in a cup. Mr. McCarthy, for his part, sustained himself with peppermint candies, unwrapped one by one by aides.”Gail: Do you think that was in their original job descriptions?Bret: How much do you look forward to having him as Speaker, Gail?Gail: Aaauuughh. I’m not the most pessimistic Democrat when it comes to future expectations, but I have to admit the chances of the party hanging onto the House and Senate are not … super.My greatest source of optimism is what seems like a flood of terrible Republican candidates, many of them already endorsed by Trump despite minor defects like allegations of spousal assault.I know you have some extremely responsible, forward-looking Republican contenders you can point to, but it seems like there are only about six of them. Do you disagree?Bret: Unfortunately, you’re pretty much right. John Stuart Mill once described the Tories of his day as “the stupider party,” and the er in “stupider” seems to describe today’s G.O.P. pretty nicely. It isn’t out of the question that Republicans could trip themselves up on the way to a Congressional majority because all of the most Trumpy candidates win the primaries and then lose in the general election.On the other hand, Republicans will benefit mightily from the latest round of gerrymanders. Also, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia showed how a Republican candidate can distance himself just enough from Trump to win back more moderate voters, while not so much as to alienate the Trump die-hards. Which is another way of saying that I think you’ll be dealing with Speaker McCarthy and Leader McConnell in the next Congress.Gail: And both of them are the opposite of bipartisan, unless there’s a chunk of money for back-home roadbuilding up for grabs.OK, gonna block all this out until after the holidays.Bret: So, remind me again, what else will you be giving thanks for this Thanksgiving?Gail: Don’t know if I ever told you, but we have a tradition of having a group of old friends over every year for the holiday dinner. This is something we started in college — one of this year’s guests, who is 32, was born into it. So it’s partly an annual reunion and a chance to be grateful for longtime pals.As well, of course, for the relative newcomers. So when it comes to thanks, I’ll be including another year of conversing with you, Bret. And looking forward to carrying on into 2022 and beyond.Bret: As am I. And here’s to you.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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      A.O.C. on Why Democrats’ ‘Talking Points Are Not Enough’

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      The House progressive spoke about “demoralizing” congressional negotiations, how she was told to stay away from Virginia’s elections, and what it means to excite the Democratic base.Last year, after Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the Democratic presidential nomination, a group of progressive lawmakers rallied around him to project party unity at a critical time.More than a year later, as the president seeks to pass a robust spending package of social policies that represent the bulk of his domestic agenda, many of the same leaders are looking for a return on their political investment.In an interview with The New York Times, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the country’s most prominent progressives, questioned whether Democratic leaders and the White House understood the scope of the demands coming from the party’s base. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Why do you feel this social policy bill has to pass as soon as possible, at the biggest scale possible?I think the stakes are really, really high.The entire reason that the Progressive Caucus gave their votes [for the infrastructure bill] was based on direct promises from the president, as well as direct promises from more conservative Democratic holdouts. And from House leadership as well. So if those promises don’t follow through, it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to get votes on anything moving forward, because the trust that was already so delicate will have been broken.Do you think these extended negotiations and the stuff that was cut will have an electoral effect? Obviously the Senate will have its say, but if the spending bill largely looks like what the House passed this week, will Democrats say it fulfills the promise of Election Day?I think that if we pass the Build Back Better Act as the House passed it, that we have a shot to go back to our communities and say we delivered. But that’s not to say that this process has not been demoralizing for a lot of folks, because there were enormous promises made. Not just at the beginning, and not just during the election, but that continued to be made.And this is where I have sounded the alarm, because what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don’t keep.With the bipartisan infrastructure plan, there’s all of these headlines going around. And I understand the political importance of making a victory lap. But I think that the worst and most vulnerable position we could be in is to over-promise and under-deliver.So let’s not go around and say, “We’re going to replace every lead pipe in this country,” because according to the bipartisan infrastructure plan, that is not going to happen. That has not been funded. And if the Build Back Better Act gets cut even further, then that’s definitely not going to happen. You and other progressives backed Biden during the general election. Do you feel that this White House has continued to be open to the left? And that created trust, because trust requires vulnerability from all parties.There was some good faith with the American Rescue Plan [Democrats’ $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package, signed in March]. But after that, which was quite early, it’s been a bit of a slog.I actually don’t direct this critique directly at the White House. I think, in general, the party doesn’t quite fully grasp what is happening in deep-blue communities.What is it that you say they’re missing?The talking points are not enough.Yes, is child care great? Absolutely. Universal pre-K, this is something I’m deeply, deeply supportive of. But we also have too much of a top-down strategy when it comes to our base. We’re always giving them the medicine and telling them what they need to accept, as opposed to really monitoring where the energy is, and being responsive to it. And allowing that to shape our strategy.And even with the infrastructure plan, this kind of investment is deeply needed in underserved communities like the Bronx. However, if we as a party are asking every single person in this party to take a victory lap, and do a news conference in front of a bridge or pothole, and we aren’t funding and actually fixing that pothole, I’m very concerned about how people are going to interpret that a year from now.But doesn’t the White House agree — didn’t it propose a more robust package? The obvious response here is that the administration faces the reality of a 50-50 Senate.There is an enormous amount of executive action that they’re sitting on that I think is underutilized. On student loans. We’ve got executive action on the table with respect to climate. There are certainly things that we can do with immigration.So why are we taking this as a legislative compromise, when the opportunity is so much greater, or when Biden could do this stuff with a stroke of a pen, and is just reminding us that he’s choosing not to?We always try to tell people why they need to settle for less, instead of being able to harness the energy of our grass roots and take political risks in service of them, the same way that we take political risks in service of swing voters. We can do both. The Infrastructure Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 5The bill receives final approval. More

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      Democrats Shouldn’t Panic. They Should Go Into Shock.

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      The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024.Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, put it this way in an essay published on the network’s website:As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51 percent of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41 percent say the Democrat. That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981.These and other trends have provoked a deepening pessimism about Democratic prospects in 2022 and anxiety about the 2024 presidential election.Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, holds similar views, but suggests that the flood tide of political trouble may be beyond Democratic control:Biden and the Democrats have had almost all bad news: the pandemic is still going; the economy has not picked up in terms of perceptions of the expected increases in employment and economic growth not on fire; perceptions of what happened in Afghanistan; what has happened on the southern border; high crime rates, all amplified in news reports. It is all perception, and the latest is the increase in inflation and gas prices that people see/feel. The critical race theory controversy and perceptions of Democrats being too woke and extreme. The bad news is overwhelming.Bill McInturff, a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, provided me with data from the October WSJ/NBC poll asking voters which party can better manage a wide range of issues. On three key issues — controlling inflation (45R-21D), dealing with crime (43R-21D) and dealing with the economy (45R-27D) — the Republican advantage was the highest in surveys dating back to the 1990s.“Washington Democrats are spending months fighting over legislation,” McInturff wrote by email,but, during this time, voters tell us prices are soaring, the cost of living is tied for the top issue in the country, and there is a sharp increase in economic pessimism. It is these economic factors that are driving negative impressions about the direction of the country to unusually high levels, and this is hurting Democrats everywhere. No administration is going to thrive in that economic environment.In his analysis of the Nov. 6-10 Washington Post/ABC News Poll, Langer made the case thatWhile a year is a lifetime in politics, the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans — 62 percent say so.The numbers are even worse for Democrats in the eight states expected to have the closest Senate elections, according to Langer — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not only is Biden’s overall job approval rating in those states 33 percent, 10 points lower than it is in the rest of the country, but registered voters in those eight states say they are more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than for Democrats by 23 points (at 58 percent to 35 percent).On Nov. 3, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball updated the ratings for three incumbent Democratic senators — Mark Kelly of Arizona, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — from “lean Democratic” to “tossup.”An examination of Gallup survey results on the question “As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?” reflects the damage suffered by the Democrats. From January through August, Democrats held a substantial 7.9 point advantage (48.2 percent to 41.3 percent). In September, however, Gallup reported a 2-point (47-45) Republican edge that grew to a 5-point (47-42) edge by October.In terms of election outcomes, Republican are once again capitalizing on their domination of the congressional redistricting process to disenfranchise Democratic voters despite strong public support for reforms designed to eliminate or constrain partisan gerrymandering. On Monday, The Times reported that the Republican Party “has added enough safe House districts to capture control of the chamber based on its redistricting edge alone.” The current partisan split in the House is 221 Democratic seats and 213 Republican seats, with one vacancy.There is perhaps one potential political opportunity for Democrats — should the Supreme Court overturn or undermine Roe v. Wade, mobilizing supporters of reproductive rights across the country.In the meantime, uneasiness prevails. Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard, noted in an email thatBiden had two drops in approval ratings, one from June to August of about 6 points, and another from September to October of another 6 points. The first was a response to Afghanistan. The second was a response to Covid and weak employment growth over the summer.Passing the infrastructure bill should help “with the sense that the administration wasn’t doing enough for the economy,” Ansolabehere continued, but “the hit from Afghanistan is going to be harder to reverse, as it was a judgment about the administration’s handling of foreign affairs.”Micah English, a graduate student in political science at Yale who studies race, class and gender dynamics, argued in an email that Democratic leaders have, at least until now, mismanaged the task of effectively communicating their agenda and goals.“The Democratic Party has a messaging problem that they don’t seem to have any plans to rectify,” she wrote:The Republicans message right now is essentially “Democrats and Biden are only concerned about teaching your children critical race theory instead of focusing on the economy!” The Democrats have no unified countermessage, and until they do, they are likely to continue to suffer major losses in the midterms and beyond.This failure, English continued, has resulted in an inability to capitalize on what should have been good news:The Democrats have proposed legislation that contains incredibly popular policies, but if they continue to fail to communicate the benefits of this legislation to the wider public, it won’t do them any good in the midterms. Additionally, as the 2020 election demonstrated, the Democrats cannot continue to rely on the prospect of changing demographics to deliver them electoral victories.One theme that appeared repeatedly in the comments I received in response to my questions is that even as Biden has succeeded in winning passage of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, he has struggled to maintain an aura of mastery.Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, argued in an email thatwhat a lot of swing voters expected from Biden was competent leadership during a time of crisis. And many perhaps expected that a return to normal leadership would immediately solve the unprecedented problems facing the country. Of course, that was never a realistic expectation.The crucial factors underlying Biden’s declining favorability rating, Schaffner continued, are “several things calling into question Biden’s effectiveness — the Afghanistan withdrawal, the continued impact of Covid, the struggling economy and the difficult time Democrats have had in passing their major legislative initiatives.”I asked a range of political scientists for their projections on how the 2022 elections for control of the House are likely to turn out. Their views were preponderantly negative for Democratic prospects.Matt Grossmann of Michigan State wrote: “Based on simple midterm loss averages, the Democrats are expected to lose 4 points of vote share and be down to ~45 percent of seats on ~48 percent of votes in 2022.” Those numbers translate into roughly a 24-seat loss, reducing Democrats to 197 seats. “There is not much under Democrats’ control that is likely to make a big difference in the extent of their losses,” Grossmann added. “They can try to avoid retirements and primary challenges in swing districts and avoid salient unpopular policies.”Robert M. Stein of Rice University is even less optimistic:In South Texas, Florida and parts of Arizona immigration policy is hurting Democrats with traditional-base voters. This is especially true with Hispanics in Texas border counties, where Trump did well in 2020 and Abbott (incumbent Republican governor) is making significant gains by appealing to the concerns of Hispanics over jobs and immigration.Stein adds:My guess is that Republicans are poised to take the House back in 2022 with gains above the average for midterm elections. Since 1946, the average seat gain for the party not in the White House is 27 seats. The best the Democrats can do is hold at the average, but given the Republican’s advantage with redistricting, my guess is that the Republicans gain 40+ seats.Martin Wattenberg of the University of California-Irvine wrote that “it would take a major event like 9/11 to keep the Democrats from losing the House.” He was more cautious about control of the Senate, which “really depends on the quality of the candidates. Republicans have had the misfortune of nominating candidates like Christine (“I am not a witch”) O’Donnell who have lost eminently winnable races due to their own foibles. It remains to be seen if they will nominate such candidates in 2022.”Wattenberg cited data from the General Social Survey showing a sharp rise in the percentage of Democrats describing themselves as liberal or slightly liberal, up from 47 percent in 2016 to 62 percent this year: “The left-wing movement of the Democrats is probably going to hurt with the 2022 electorate that will likely be skewed toward older, more conservative voters.”At the same time, Bruce Cain of Stanford suggested that a Democratic defeat in 2022 could be a potentially favorable development for the party’s long term prospects:It is quite possible that losing in the 2022 midterm is the best path to winning the presidency in 2024. It will put the Republicans in a “put up or shut up” spot vis a vis problems facing the country, and Biden meanwhile can work the middle without looking over his left shoulder.Cain took this logic a step further to argue thatIn retrospect the worst thing that happened to Biden was the Democrats winning the two seats in Georgia. It raised expectations among some in his party that they could go left legislatively while the political sun was shining when in reality the political math was not there for that kind of policy ambition.Cain added:The best hope for the Democrats is that Trump will undermine some Republicans during his vengeance tour and that the weakness of the people who want to run under his banner will create some unexpected wins for the Democrats.Howard Rosenthal, a political scientist at N.Y.U., added this observation:Pundits, who have to earn a living, always want to impute causality to election losses. However, the midterm cycle is just normal. Voters tend to balance the president. Over time, they also create divided government at the state level.A surprising number of those I contacted made the case that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan did more lasting damage to Biden than might have been expected.“The extended wall-to-wall media coverage of the hurried exit from Afghanistan probably served as a catalyst for some folks to ‘update’ their views on Biden’s performance and take into consideration both the foreign and domestic concerns,” Ted Brader, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, wrote in an email:I’m skeptical that those events themselves drove the lower assessments; Americans weigh domestic events much heavier than foreign affairs. But the heightened attention and criticism can serve as an attention-getting call to re-evaluate the president: “Wait, how well is he doing his job?” As political science research has convincingly demonstrated, bipartisan criticism, as we saw with the Afghan withdrawal, in particular, opens the door to weaker support among independents and members of the president’s own party.Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, wrote me that “things touching on competence (Afghanistan, border, congressional inaction) are probably the most important” in driving down Biden’s ratings, but “for the future, it is inflation and the general economy that will matter most, I think.”Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, contended in an email that the problems facing Biden and his Democratic colleagues run deeper than any single issue:Biden was elected as a moderate to put back some sanity into government through a steady hand and incremental reforms. Instead, a wing of the Democratic Party took the 2020 election in which the Democratic Party lost a surprising number of House seats as a voter mandate to implement a pretty fundamental program of social reform and sociocultural change. While I personally might like a lot of these policy initiatives myself, I also realize that this programmatic ambition is consistent with the wishes of only a minority of core Democratic voters, and certainly not that of the centrist voters who prevented Trump from being re-elected.The history of midterm elections suggests that substantial House losses for the party of the incumbent president are inevitable, barring such unusual circumstances as public hostility to the Republican-led impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks raising Republican support in 2002 — the only two times since that the incumbent party gained seats since World War II.In 2010, Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien, political scientists at Dartmouth, Columbia and the University of Texas at Austin, published “Balancing, Generic Polls and Midterm Congressional Elections,” in which they argued that “between February and Election Day, the presidential party’s vote strength almost always declines.” But, they continued,the degree of decline is unrelated to the public’s evaluation of the president. Clearly, during the midterm election year, the electorate shifts away from the presidential party in its vote choice for reasons that have nothing to do with the electorate’s attitudes toward the president. By default, this is balancing: The electorate votes against the presidential party to give more power to the other party.In a 1988 paper, “The Puzzle of Midterm Loss,” Erikson examined every midterm contest since 1902 and explicitly rejected the theory that such contests are a “negative referendum on presidential performance.” Instead, Erikson wrote,A “presidential penalty” explanation fits the data nicely. By this explanation, the midterm electorate penalized the president’s party for being the party in power: Holding constant the presidential year House vote, the president’s party does much worse at midterm than it would if it did not control the presidency.While substantial midterm losses for the incumbent president’s party are inevitable under most circumstances, that does not mean external developments have no influence on the scope of the outcome.Kitschelt, quoting James Carville, noted in his email: “It’s the economy, stupid. And that means inflation, the supply chain troubles and the inability of the Democrats to extend the social safety net in an incremental fashion.”The inflation rate, Dritan Nesho, the director of civic technology and engagement at Microsoft and a co-director of the Harvard-Harris Poll, wrote in an email,is now outpacing wage growth. As a consequence close to 4 in 10 voters are saying that their personal financial situation is getting worse. This figure is up from the low 20s in May and importantly, majorities of voters are not confident in either the Biden administration keeping inflation at bay (56 percent not confident/44 percent confident) and also of the Federal Reserve (53 percent not confident/47 percent confident).In addition, Nesho said,over two-third of voters (68 percent) believe illegal monthly border crossings have increased since Biden took office, 65 percent blame Biden’s executive orders for encouraging illegal immigration, and 68 percent want stricter policies to reduce the flow of people across the border.In January 2021, the month Biden took office, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index stood at 79. By Nov. 1, the index had fallen to 66.8, the lowest it has been since November 2011. Richard Curtin, director of the consumer sentiment survey, wrote in a commentary accompanying the report: “Consumer sentiment fell in early November to its lowest level in a decade due to an escalating inflation rate and the growing belief among consumers that no effective policies have yet been developed to reduce the damage from surging inflation.”Similarly, when Biden took office in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the inflation rate was 1.4 percent; as of October this year, the rate had risen to 6.2 percent.Perhaps nothing better encapsulates the problems Democrats face than the price of gas at the pump, which has risen, in the nearly 10 months Biden has been in the White House, to as high as $4.21 a gallon in California, $3.94 in Nevada and upward of $3.60 across the Mountain West.And no one foreshadows the dangers ahead more succinctly than Larry Summers. In his Nov. 15 Washington Post column, Summers, a former secretary of the Treasury, warned: “Excessive inflation and a sense that it was not being controlled helped elect Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and risks bringing Donald Trump back to power.”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