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      The Democrats’ No Good, Very Bad Day Changes the Landscape

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      Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, the Democrats lose a gubernatorial election in Virginia and the next thing you know, the nation has a brand-new $1 trillion public works program. Who says democracy isn’t efficient?Bret Stephens: Defeat has a wonderful way of concentrating the political mind.Gail: You’ve always been a fan of the infrastructure bill, right? Any reservations on that front now that it’s going to be signed into law?Bret: As someone who occasionally drives the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey — gripping the wheel with both hands while idly wondering if a bridge that was built in the Hoover administration will hold for another five minutes or collapse into the Hackensack River — I remain a committed fan of the infrastructure bill.Gail: Bridges of America, rejoice!You wrote a terrific column about the elections last week, Bret. Can’t say I agreed with all your conclusions but it was, as always, very smart. If you were on the phone with Nancy Pelosi today, what would you advise her to do next?Bret: First, madam speaker, please don’t hang up on me.Second, put the social spending bill in the basement ice box and don’t take it out until Democrats have the kind of majorities that can pass it.Third, look for a bipartisan win on immigration reform, starting with a trade on citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for more border security and a firm “Remain in Mexico” policy for migrants.And finally, find ways to separate the Democratic Party brand from Toxic Wokeness.Gail: I’m with President Biden that the next stop is his social spending program. Admittedly it’ll be carved down, but it has to include support for workers who temporarily need to stay home to take care of newborns or aging family members. And of course that universal preschool education.Bret: Maybe you’re right and over time those programs will prove wildly popular and successful. But I’m struggling to see how anything the Democrats are doing these days directly addresses the sorts of issues that average voters worry about day to day. Inflation is at a 30-year high, while personal incomes are down. Gas prices (at least where I live in the far suburbs) are close to $4 a gallon. Illegal crossings at the southern border are the highest they’ve been since at least 1960.Gail: As a person who very seldom attempts to justify her positions by pointing to the stock market I will refrain from noting that the Dow Jones rose on better-than-expected job numbers.Bret: Hehe. We should all enjoy this tulip mania while it lasts.Gail: And I’m with you on some of your immigration points — certainly citizenship for Dreamers. As far as the message of the election goes, I think the biggest lesson for the Democrats after Virginia is not to run against Donald Trump unless Donald Trump is running. And to remember that when voters decide if they like their governor, they don’t necessarily think much about national issues.Bret: Also: Don’t infuriate that itty-bitty voting bloc known as “parents of school-age children.”But I also think Democrats need to take a step back and see the broader message of the election, which is that the party has shifted waaaaaaay too far to the left. How else did the Republican Ann Davison get elected city attorney in Seattle? Or the Republican Jack Ciattarelli nearly win the governor’s race in deep-blue New Jersey?Gail: For me, New Jersey was mainly about people yearning for a fresh face now and then. And in Seattle I guess you have a point — if your message is that the voters shouldn’t have picked a candidate for city attorney who had once praised whoever had apparently set off explosives inside a police precinct. Duh.And local elections are … local. Some of our Seattle readers were quick to point out that their mayor-elect was far from a traditional law-and-order candidate. That’s the guy who promised to “put Seattle on fire with our love.”Bret: True, though he was the least-leftist candidate in the race.Gail: Pretty clear that the future, for local government, lies in candidates who promise to reform the police while also giving them strong budgetary support. Our own incoming mayor Eric Adams comes to mind.Bret: Hope Adams can save the city. He’s got a big job ahead of him. The city hasn’t seemed so dirty in decades. There’s an infestation of giant rats. The other day I watched a drug deal go down on Eighth Avenue in sight of two cops who stood around pretending nothing was going on. (For the record, I was not part of the deal.) Addicts are shooting up near our office in broad daylight. All of this brought to you by the Worst-Mayor-Ever-From-The-Rosy-Fingered-Dawn-Till-The-Bitter-End-Of-Time-Bill-expletive deleted-de Blasio.Gail: Hehehehe. That would make a great nickname if de Blasio ever tried, God help us, to run for president again.Bret: Or governor! Also, many Americans don’t take well to being lectured on, say, MSNBC about how Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia is a sign of a racist white backlash when Virginians also elected a Republican, Winsome Sears, to become the first Black woman to serve as lieutenant governor.Gail: Well, the results from Virginia’s governor’s race were pretty normal given the state’s history of voting against the party of a new president. Looking at that, I didn’t make the racist backlash argument.However, I would say that given the Republicans’ crazed howling about teaching the history of racism in America, voters were being misled in the way they were being urged to think there was something wrong with the schools.Bret: We agree on teaching the history of racism. I’m less keen on using teachers to propagate the ideological legerdemain that goes by the name of “antiracism.”But leaving aside the policy issues themselves, all of these Democratic fixations are gifts to the populist right. Someone needs to start a “Sanity Democrats” caucus to save the party from the progressive “Justice Democrats.”Gail: Certainly important for prominent Democrats not to sound didactic or obsessive when it comes to race and racism, but I sure as heck don’t want to discourage them from taking it into context when they’re passing legislation.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, have I ever mentioned how relieved I am never to have used Facebook?Gail: This doesn’t count the fact that your column goes up there, right? I’m all for using Facebook to pass along written pieces you like. But I haven’t had time to engage in any conversations there for years.Bret: Does my column really post on Facebook? Didn’t know that.This probably sounds horribly misanthropic, but when Facebook came around I feared it would be a handy way of connecting with people … to whom I didn’t particularly want to be connected. So-and-so from graduate school? Maybe we fell out of touch for a reason. Second cousin, twice removed in Melbourne? Hope they’re having a nice life. It’s hard enough to be a good friend to people in our real lives to waste time on virtual friendships in digital spaces.Now I’ve been reading a multipart investigation in The Wall Street Journal on the perils of the platform, which include less sleep, worse parenting, the abandonment of creative hobbies and so on. Facebook’s own researchers estimate that 1 in 8 people on the platform suffer from some of these symptoms, which amounts to 360 million people worldwide. As someone pointed out, the word “user” applies to people on social media just as much as it does to people on meth.I guess the question is whether the government should regulate it and if so, how?Gail: This takes me back to early America, when most people lived in small towns or on farms and had very little input from the outside world.They were very tight-knit, protective, familial — and very inclined to stick to their clan and isolate, discriminate, persecute and yes, enslave, the folks who weren’t part of the group. You had a lot of good qualities of togetherness and helping the team, but a lot of clannishness and injustice to nonmembers.Bret: Almost sounds like an academic department at a placid New England college. Sorry, go on.Gail: The Postal Service brought newspapers and letters and changed all that. And of course there were also unfortunate effects — a lot of mobilizing to fight against the newly discovered outside world.I think the digital revolution is maybe as important — people are making new friends around the globe, discovering tons and tons of new information, but also ganging up on folks they don’t like. Discriminating not only against minority groups but also the less popular members of their own.Bret: The moral of the story is that there’s no substitute for in-person relationships, whether it’s between colleagues, acquaintances, friends, family members or even two columnists who agree about 40 percent of the time. Which reminds me that there’s this cabernet that we still need to share, so that we can mourn — or celebrate — last week’s news.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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      Trump Missed the Part About No Do-Overs

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, I know we don’t typically talk about office politics, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid — as when our friend and colleague Nick Kristof leaves us to run for governor of his home state of Oregon. Our readers ought to know what an incredible guy he is behind the scenes.Gail Collins: Bret, I am extremely proud to say that when I was the editor of this section, I lured Nick over from the news side to be a columnist.One of his early projects was to write about the vile goings-on in a remote African country. I can’t remember all the details. But it involved a short plane ride that cost about $10,000 because he was barred from entry and had to be flown in by a brave pilot who claimed to be transporting a barrel of wheat.Bret: Now you’re going to see Nick’s opponents accuse him of flying private.Gail: I was of course impressed by the work, but the small, evil part of my brain thought, “Wow, this guy is going to cost me a fortune.” Then I started getting his bills for the long trek through Africa that followed, and they were like, hotel: $2; dinner: $1.25.Bret: Nick is one of the few people I know who actively seeks out opposing points of view, which only makes him hold his own with greater depth and zero rancor. He and I probably disagree on 95 percent of policy issues (OK, Oregon lefties, make that 100 percent). But I never missed his columns because there was always something important and interesting to learn from them.Also, accounts of Kristof family holidays fill me with a sense of both awe and deep parental inadequacy.Moving from the inspiring to the debased, what do you think the chances are that Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy will ever challenge Donald Trump on his claims of election fraud?Gail: Well, about the same as my chances of competing in the next Olympics.Bret: Your chances are better.Gail: Watching the rally Trump had recently in Iowa, I was sort of fascinated by his apparent inability to focus on anything but the last election. Don’t think a 2020 do-over is at the top of anybody else’s list of priorities.Bret: It would be nice to think that his obsession with 2020 is solely a function of his personal insecurities. But there’s a strategy involved here, which is hard to describe as anything less than sinister. Within the Republican Party, he’s making the stolen-election fantasy a litmus test, which Republican politicians defy at the peril of either being primaried by a Trump toady or losing vital Trump voters in close elections. At the national level, he’s creating a new “stab in the back” myth to undermine the legitimacy of democracy itself.Of course Joe Biden’s job performance so far isn’t helping things.Gail: About our current commander in chief: Biden’s moving into troubled waters — through no fault of his own — as chances grow of strikes or some kind of work stoppage everywhere from the cereal industry to tractor factories. He’s vowed to be “the most pro-union president” in history. Am I right in guessing that’s not something you’d look forward to?Bret: Anyone remember a certain politician from the late 1970s named James Callaghan? He was the U.K.’s Labour prime minister during the “Winter of Discontent,” when the country seemed to be perpetually on strike. Those strikes were the proximate cause of Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, which is something the Biden administration might bear in mind before getting too close to the unions.Gail: Did I ever tell you that long ago, in days of yore, I was president of the union at a small paper in Milwaukee? We only formed it because the publisher was a truly evil guy who’d threaten to write editorials denouncing local businesses unless they invested in advertising. Went on strike and the publisher closed down the whole operation.Bret: He sounds like Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.” You went on to bigger and better things.Gail: This is a prelude to saying that I think unions are critical to protecting the nation’s workers, but well aware that they don’t protect everybody who needs it.Bret: I still think the most pro-worker thing the White House can do is get the infrastructure bill passed. Biden dearly needs a political victory, especially one like infrastructure that will divide Republicans while keeping Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on the Democratic side, as opposed to the social spending bill that unites Republicans and alienates those two.Gail: I’ll refrain from pointing out that Sinema appears to be the captive of big-donor business interests and that the climate change part of Biden’s bill is now under pressure because of Manchin’s ties to Big Coal.Instead, remind me how you came around to be on the side of Big Spending.Bret: I love your concept of “refraining.”In my perfect world, the federal government would be about one-third the size that it is today and we would privatize and regulate functions like the Post Office, Amtrak and Social Security. But we live with the reality of big government and a Democratic presidency, so I’d prefer my tax dollars to go into investments that produce blue-collar jobs in the short term and long-term returns in public utilization. Plus, a lot of our infrastructure could really use a major upgrade: Just think of New Jersey.Gail: Ah, New Jersey. Sending you sympathy, which you’ll have time to appreciate while caught in traffic jams and train backups.Bret: In the meantime, it looks like the commission Biden appointed to study reforms for the Supreme Court was divided on the idea of adding new justices. The commission also seemed lukewarm on other ideas, like term limits for justices. Personally, I’m pretty relieved, but some of my liberal friends seem to think this was a lost opportunity.Gail: I’d like to be on your side when it comes to court appointments. Having one arm of government that takes an apolitical, long-term view of the world is definitely desirable.I hate to say one more time that I remember when …But I remember when both parties regarded Supreme Court appointments as something special; everybody tried to join hands in search of candidates who were wise and willing to rise above short-term partisan concerns.Well, at least that’s what they said. And even pretending to be bipartisan is better than nothing.Bret: Forty years ago, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ronald Reagan’s first nominee, was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 99-0. The vote for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Clinton’s first nominee, was 96-3. Since then, things have pretty much gone to hell.Gail: Mitch McConnell ruined the tradition by refusing to hold hearings on Barack Obama’s nominees. I truly doubt we’ll ever be able to return to the old ways. And if so, we should do some reorganizing. That might include term limits of maybe 18 to 20 years.Bret: I would quarrel a bit about whether the blame lies solely with Mitch. Some of us remember Harry Reid, when he was Senate majority leader, blocking qualified judges nominated by George W. Bush. But I also think a 20-year term-limited appointment to the high bench wouldn’t be the worst thing.Gail: By the way, speaking of long-running arguments, I see the New York City Council is thinking about tossing Thomas Jefferson’s statue out of City Hall. We’ve talked about this before, but any change in your feelings about whether we should withdraw that kind of honor from founding father slaveholders?Bret: My mind’s unchanged. If you’re going to get rid of Jefferson’s statute on that account, then why not get rid of the statues of George Washington, since he was also a slaveholder? For that matter, why not start a campaign to rename both the national capital and the state? This is the kind of dumb, symbol-chasing leftism that can only wind up helping Trump.Gail: Not arguing for renaming all the George Washington stuff, but it’d be nice to have a state named after, say, Susan B. Anthony.Bret: Anthony’s home state of Massachusetts should consider it. It would relieve the commonwealth of the sin of cultural appropriation and is also a lot easier to spell.We should be able to see our founders’ profound flaws while also honoring the fact that they established a republic in which the principle of human liberty and equality were able to take root and flourish as nowhere else, and in which the concept of a “more perfect union” is written into the Constitution. In the context of the late 18th century, that was an extraordinary step forward.Gail: Jefferson’s always been one of my least-favorite founders — his attitude toward women could be creepy even by 18th-century standards.Bret: Him and J.F.K. and a few other presidents I could mention.Gail: My rule is that big names of the past should be honored on the basis of their main thing — I’m OK with giving Columbus a holiday to commemorate his life as an explorer, as long as we spend a good part of it recalling his slaughter of Native Americans.Bret: Agree entirely. And preserve the names of Ohio’s capital and the Upper West Side’s premier institution of higher learning in the bargain.Gail: What bothers me about the Virginia founding fathers is that although they made inspiring speeches about liberty, most of them were focused on protecting their state institutions from federal intervention. Particularly plantation life and culture, which included slaves.The New-York Historical Society may be willing to take Jefferson’s statue on a “loan” and that seems like a good plan.Bret: That’ll give us something to keep arguing about.Gail: In the meantime, I’ll honor Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence. Always appreciate somebody who’s good with words. Which is why I enjoy our conversations, Bret. Bet I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun going back and forth with Thomas J.Bret: Nor I with Susan B.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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      It’s All or Nothing for These Democrats, Even if That Means Biden Fails

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      If President Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill dies in Congress, it will be because moderate Democrats killed it.Over the past month, those moderates have put themselves at the center of negotiations over the $3.5 trillion proposal (doled out over 10 years) for new programs, investments and social spending. And they’ve made demands that threaten to derail the bill — and the rest of Biden’s agenda with it.In the House last week, a group of moderate Democrats successfully opposed a measure that would allow direct government negotiation of drug prices and help pay for the bill. One of the most popular items in the entire Democratic agenda — and a key campaign promise in the 2018 and 2020 elections — federal prescription drug negotiation was supposed to be a slam dunk. But the moderates say it would hurt innovation from drugmakers. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has likewise announced her opposition to direct government negotiation of the price of prescription drugs.Similarly, a different group of moderate Democrats hopes to break the agreement between Democratic leadership and congressional progressives to link the Senate-negotiated bipartisan infrastructure bill to Biden’s “Build Back Better” proposal, which would be passed under the reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster by Senate Republicans.The point of the agreement was to win buy-in from all sides by tying the fate of one bill to the other. Either moderates and progressives get what they want or no one does. Progressive Democrats have held their end of the bargain. But moderates are threatening to derail both bills if they don’t get a vote on infrastructure before the end of the month. “If they delay the vote — or it goes down — then I think you can kiss reconciliation goodbye,” Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, one of the moderates, told Politico. “Reconciliation would be dead.”Of course, if the House were to vote on and pass the infrastructure bill before reconciliation was completed, there is a strong chance those moderates would leave the table altogether. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, for example, wants to table the reconciliation bill. “Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation,” Manchin wrote this month.Moderate Democrats want Biden to sign the bipartisan infrastructure bill. But it seems clear that they’ll take nothing if it means they can trim progressive sails in the process, despite the fact that many of the items in the “Build Back Better” bill are the most popular parts of the Democratic agenda.Here, it’s worth making a larger point. In the popular understanding of American politics, the term “moderate” or “centrist” usually denotes a person who supports the aims and objectives of his or her political party but prefers a less aggressive and more incremental approach. It is the difference between a progressive or liberal Democrat who wants to expand health coverage with a new, universal program (“Medicare for All”) and one who wants to do the same by building on existing policies, one step at a time.Moderates, it’s commonly believed, have a better sense of the American electorate and thus a better sense of the possible. And if they can almost always count on favorable and flattering coverage from the political press, it is because their image is that of the “grown-ups” of American politics, whose hard-nosed realism and deference to public opinion stands in contrast to the fanciful dreams of their supposedly more out-of-touch colleagues.Given this picture of the ideological divide within parties, a casual observer might assume that in the struggle to move President Biden’s agenda through Congress, the chief obstacle (beyond Republican opposition) is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and its demands for bigger, more ambitious programs. Biden was, after all, not their first choice for president. Or their second. He won the Democratic presidential nomination over progressive opposition, and there was a sense on the left, throughout the campaign, that Biden was not (and would not be) ready to deal with the scale of challenges ahead of him or the country.But that casual observer would be wrong. Progressives have been critical of Biden, especially on immigration and foreign affairs. On domestic policy, however, they’ve been strong team players, partners in pushing the president’s priorities through Congress. The reconciliation bill, for instance, is as much the work of Bernie Sanders as it is of the White House. As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders guided the initial budget resolution through the chamber, compromising on his priorities in order to build consensus with other Democrats in the Senate.Progressive Democrats want the bill to pass, even if it isn’t as large as they would like. They believe, correctly, that a win for Biden is a win for them. Moderate Democrats, however, seem to think that their success depends on their distance from the president and his progressive allies. Their obstruction might hurt Biden, but, they seem to believe, it won’t hurt them.This is nonsense. Democrats will either rise together in next year’s elections or they’ll fall together. The best approach, given the strong relationship between presidential popularity and a party’s midterm performance, is to put as much of Biden’s agenda into law as possible by whatever means possible.But this would demand a more unapologetically partisan approach, and that is where the real divide between moderates and progressives emerges. Moderate and centrist Democrats seem to value a bipartisan process more than they do any particular policy outcome or ideological goal.The most charitable explanation is that they believe that their constituents value displays of bipartisanship more than any new law or benefit. A less charitable explanation is that they see bipartisanship as a way to clip the wings of Democratic Party ambition and save themselves from taking votes that might put them in conflict with either voters or donors.What is true of both explanations is that they show the extent to which moderate Democrats have made a fetish of bipartisan displays and anti-partisan feeling. And in doing so, they reveal that they are most assuredly not the adults in the room of American politics.There is nothing serious about an obsession with the most superficial aspects of process over actual policy and nothing savvy about leaving real problems unaddressed in order to score points with some imagined referee.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. 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      How G.O.P. Election Reviews Created a New Security Threat

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      As Republicans continue to challenge the 2020 results, voting equipment is being compromised when partisan insiders and unvetted operatives gain access.Late one night in May, after surveillance cameras had inexplicably been turned off, three people entered the secure area of a warehouse in Mesa County, Colo., where crucial election equipment was stored. They copied hard drives and election-management software from voting machines, the authorities said, and then fled.The identity of one of the people dismayed state election officials: It was Tina Peters, the Republican county clerk responsible for overseeing Mesa County’s elections.How the incident came to public light was stranger still. Last month in South Dakota, Ms. Peters spoke at a disinformation-drenched gathering of people determined to show that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald J. Trump. And another of the presenters, a leading proponent of QAnon conspiracy theories, projected a portion of the Colorado software — a tool meant to be restricted to election officials only — onto a big screen for all the attendees to see.The security of American elections has been the focus of enormous concern and scrutiny for several years, first over possible interference or mischief-making by foreign adversaries like Russia or Iran, and later, as Mr. Trump stoked baseless fears of fraud in last year’s election, over possible domestic attempts to tamper with the democratic process.But as Republican state and county officials and their allies mount a relentless effort to discredit the result of the 2020 contest, the torrent of election falsehoods has led to unusual episodes like the one in Mesa County, as well as to a wave of G.O.P.-driven reviews of the vote count conducted by uncredentialed and partisan companies or people. Roughly half a dozen reviews are underway or completed, and more are being proposed.These reviews — carried out under the banner of making elections more secure, and misleadingly labeled audits to lend an air of official sanction — have given rise to their own new set of threats to the integrity of the voting machines, software and other equipment that make up the nation’s election infrastructure.Election officials and security experts say the reviews have created problems ranging from the expensive inconvenience of replacing equipment or software whose security has been compromised to what they describe as a graver risk: that previously unknown technical vulnerabilities could be discovered by partisan malefactors and exploited in future elections.In Arizona, election officials have moved to replace voting machines in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, after conservative political operatives and other unaccredited people gained extensive access to them as they conducted a widely criticized review of the 2020 results. In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state decertified voting equipment in rural Fulton County after officials there allowed a private company to participate in a similar review.And in Antrim County, Mich., a right-wing lawyer publicized a video showing a technical consultant with the same vote tabulator the county had used — alarming county officials who said that the consultant should not have had access to the device or its software.Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colo., during a news conference in June 2020.Mckenzie Lange/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, via Associated PressWhen such machines fall into the wrong hands — those of unaccredited people lacking proper supervision — the chain of custody is broken, making it impossible for election officials to guarantee that the machines have not been tampered with, for example by having malware installed. The only solution, frequently, is to reprogram or replace them. At least three secretaries of state, in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Colorado, have had to decertify voting machines this year.Far from urging panic, experts caution that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to meddle with voting results on a nationwide scale because of the decentralized nature of American elections.But experts say that the chain of custody for election machines exists for good reason.Already this year, three federal agencies — the Justice Department, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission — have issued updated guidance on how to handle election machines and preserve the chain of custody.“There are some serious security risks,” said J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan who studies election security. “Especially given the constellation of actors who are receiving such access.”Republicans say they are simply looking for the answers their constituents are demanding about the 2020 election.“This has always been about election integrity,” Karen Fann, the Republican leader of the Arizona Senate, which authorized that state’s election review, said in an interview posted on the state party’s website last month. “Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. This is about making sure that our votes are counted.”Security experts say that election hardware and software should be subjected to transparency and rigorous testing, but only by credentialed professionals. Yet nearly all of the partisan reviews have flouted such protocols and focused on the 2020 results rather than hunting for security flaws.In Arizona, the firm chosen by the Republican-led Legislature, Cyber Ninjas, had no previous experience auditing elections, and its chief executive has promoted conspiracy theories claiming that rigged voting machines cost Mr. Trump the state. The company also used Republican partisans to help conduct its review in Maricopa County, including one former lawmaker who was at the Jan. 6 protest in Washington that preceded the Capitol riot..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In Wisconsin, the Republican Assembly speaker, Robin Vos, is pushing for a review of the 2020 results to be led by a former State Supreme Court justice who claimed in November that the election had been stolen. And in Pennsylvania, the Republican leader of the State Senate has announced hearings that he likened to a “forensic investigation” of the election, saying it could include issuing subpoenas to seize voting machines and ballots.Christopher Krebs, the former head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said such reviews could easily compromise voting machines. “The main concern is having someone unqualified come in and introduce risk, introduce something or some malware into a system,” he said. “You have someone that accesses these things, has no idea what to do, and once you’ve reached that point, it’s incredibly difficult to kind of roll back the certification of the machine.”Decertifying machines effectively means replacing them, often in a hurry and at great cost. Philadelphia’s elections board rejected an earlier G.O.P. request for access to the city’s election machines, saying it would cost more than $35 million to buy new ones.In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told Maricopa County in May that her office would decertify 385 machines and nine vote tabulators that had been handed over for the G.O.P.-led election review.“The issue with the equipment is that the chain of custody was lost,” Ms. Hobbs said in an interview. “The chain of custody ensures that only authorized people have access to it, so that that vulnerability can’t be exploited.”Pulling compromised machines out of service and replacing them is not a foolproof solution, however.The equipment could have as-yet-undiscovered security weaknesses, Mr. Halderman said. “And this is what really keeps me up at night,” he said. “That the knowledge that comes from direct access to it could be misused to attack the same equipment wherever else it’s used.”A polling place in Philadelphia in November. Subpoenas could be issued to seize voting machines and ballots as part of a Republican-led investigation into Pennsylvania’s results in the 2020 election.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesAs an example of his concerns, Mr. Halderman pointed to Antrim County in northern Michigan, where, months after a court-ordered forensic audit in the county, a lawyer involved with the case who has frequently shared election conspiracy theories still appeared to have access to a Dominion Voting Systems ballot-scanning device and its software.The lawyer, Michael DePerno, posted a video from a conservative news site featuring a technical consultant who went to elaborate and highly implausible lengths to try to show that votes in the county — which Mr. Trump carried by a wide margin — could have been switched. (County officials said this could not have happened.)The device and its software are only supposed to be in the possession of accredited officials or local governments. “I was shocked when I saw they had a tabulator in their video,” said Sheryl Guy, the county clerk, who is a Republican.Neither Mr. DePerno nor Dominion Voting Systems responded to requests for comment.Easily the most bizarre breakdown of election security so far this year was the incident in Mesa County, Colo.The first sign of suspicious activity surfaced in early August, when a conservative news site, Gateway Pundit, posted passwords for the county’s election machines, the result of a separate breach in the county from the same month.A week later, the machines’ software showed up on large monitors at the South Dakota election symposium, organized by the conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said her office had concluded that the passwords leaked out when Ms. Peters, the Mesa County clerk, enlisted a staff member to accompany her to and surreptitiously record a routine voting-machine maintenance procedure. Gateway Pundit published the passwords a week before the gathering in South Dakota.Ms. Griswold’s office is investigating and has said that Ms. Peters will not be allowed to oversee elections in November.Ms. Peters, who has called the investigation politically motivated, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In an online interview with Mr. Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, she admitted to copying the hard drives and software but insisted she had simply backed them up because of some perceived but unspecified threat to the data. She also cited unfounded conspiracy theories about Dominion equipment.“I was concerned that vital statistics and information was being deleted from the system or could be deleted from the system, and I wanted to preserve that,” she said.But she flatly denied leaking the passwords or software. “I did not post, did not authorize anyone to post, any election data or software or passwords online,” she said.Even so, the secretary of state’s office said that Colorado counties had never been advised to make copies of their election machines’ hard drives.“It is a serious security breach,” Ms. Griswold said in an interview. “This is election officials, trusted to safeguard democracy, turning into an internal security breach.”The local district attorney has opened a separate inquiry into the episode and is being assisted by the F.B.I. and the Colorado attorney general’s office. Ms. Griswold, a Democrat, said she had also alerted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.But Ms. Griswold said she worried that with so many Republican leaders “leaning into the big lie,” the risks of what she called an “insider security issue” were growing.“I think it’s incredibly time-sensitive that elections are set up to guard both from external and internal threats,” she said. More

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      How Andrew Cuomo’s Exit Tarnished a Legacy and Dimmed a Dynasty

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      Andrew M. Cuomo always cared about his place in history.And so, early in his governorship, he invited Robert Caro, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and historian of power, for a private audience in Albany. The pitch had been for Mr. Caro to share lessons from the legacy of Robert Moses, the master builder who ruthlessly rolled over his opponents to remake New York in the past century.But over cookies at the Capitol, it quickly became clear that Mr. Cuomo would be doing most of the talking. For close to two hours, he spoke admiringly about Mr. Moses, outlined his own governing philosophy and regaled Mr. Caro with his ambitions to build big — overhauling bridges, airports and more. Then, the governor politely declared the meeting over.“It was an arrogant and angering thing to do,” Mr. Caro, now 85, recalled in an interview. “To think I had given a day of my life to have him lecture me.”Imposing his will on others to accommodate his agenda and ambitions has been a hallmark of Mr. Cuomo’s career, from his role as chief enforcer for his father, the three-term governor Mario Cuomo, through his own decade-plus reign as New York’s unrelenting chief executive. He trampled lawmakers, lashed his own staff and browbeat political officials — in both parties, but often fellow Democrats — throughout a steady rise that saw him accumulate power and enemies in almost equal measure.His strong-arming often worked. Mr. Cuomo pushed through some of the very infrastructure projects he foretold in his talk with Mr. Caro, including replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge and overhauling La Guardia Airport.For more than 40 years, the Cuomo name has been almost synonymous with Democratic governance in New York, with a Cuomo running for statewide office in every election but one since 1974.Now, suddenly, it stands for something else.The first accusation of sexual harassment against Mr. Cuomo came in December, then another in late February, and then another, and then calls for investigations and resignations and ultimately, an independent investigation from the office of the state attorney general. The damning final report on Aug. 3 corroborated or lent credence to the accounts of 11 women alleging various degrees of harassment and misconduct by Mr. Cuomo, including one accusation of groping.Facing almost certain impeachment, Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation on Tuesday, even as he denied the harassment claims and any inappropriate touching.“It’s a stain that’s always going to be there,” said Robert Abrams, who served as New York attorney general while Mr. Cuomo’s father was governor. The accusations and his stepping down, Mr. Abrams said, would surely be etched into the opening lines of Mr. Cuomo’s eventual obituary.Andrew Cuomo, far right, was preparing to run for a fourth term, which would have surpassed his father, the three-term New York governor Mario Cuomo.Keith Meyers/The New York TimesIt was a fall so swift that observers could be forgiven for alternating between calling it a Greek and a Shakespearean tragedy. An upscale sweater shop that a year ago had hawked “Cuomosexual” and “Cuomo for president” wares was now offering free embroidery to remove that stitching and replace it with “Believe survivors” (or any other phrase).Mr. Cuomo will no longer equal the 12-year tenure served by his late father, whose reputation as an orator and icon of liberalism has forever shadowed his son’s career. The younger Mr. Cuomo wore a pair of his late father’s shoes for his own third inauguration, and in recent days his aspiration for a fourth term — to be the longest-serving Cuomo — evaporated.“I love New York,” Mr. Cuomo said in his resignation speech on Tuesday. “Everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love.”Mr. Cuomo and his allies have argued that his methods were in service of taming a notoriously unruly state apparatus. Most prominently, he quarterbacked same-sex marriage through the divided Legislature in his first six months as governor, corralling conservative Democrats and recalcitrant Republicans alike to make New York then the largest state to allow it.There would be more: a gun-safety package and timely balanced budgets, a phased-in $15 minimum wage and other crucial infrastructure investments, including the new Moynihan Train Hall and the Second Avenue subway.“Historians are going to have to be honest about the accomplishments that he notched,” said Harold Holzer, who worked for Mr. Cuomo’s father and drove Mr. Caro to the meeting in Albany. Now the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, Mr. Holzer summed up the younger Mr. Cuomo’s legacy as: “Flawed human being and a great governor.”But where exactly Mr. Cuomo’s love of the state ended, and his pursuit of power and control began, has long been a blurry line. Former advisers have grappled with that question in recent therapy sessions, text chains and over drinks.“Toxic, hostile, abusive,” Joon H. Kim, one of the lawyers who led the inquiry, quoted witnesses describing the Cuomo office culture. “Fear, intimidation, bullying, vindictive.”Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation at his Manhattan office, attributing his behavior with women to generational differences. Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesAmong Mr. Cuomo’s former closest confidantes, there has been a recent reconsideration of how necessary his tactics truly were. “Did we all create a patina around the governor that gave him more latitude than he deserved?” said Christine Quinn, the former New York City Council speaker and a former Cuomo ally.Mr. Cuomo has been characteristically unrepentant about his style. In his first post-resignation interview, with New York Magazine, he said: “You can’t charm the nail into a board. It has to be hit with a hammer.”Still, that heavy-handedness had a crucial side effect: The governor was fatally isolated at his time of political need.In resigning, Mr. Cuomo said he “didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn” on sexual harassment. He left out that, as governor, he had done some of the redrawing as he signed legislation to impose new protections against sexual harassment. A day after the bill-signing, Mr. Cuomo asked a female state trooper why she did not wear a dress, according to the report.Now the 63-year-old governor is days away from unemployment and still facing criminal investigations into his conduct with women. Federal authorities also have been examining his administration’s handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic, and the state attorney general is looking into the use of state resources for Mr. Cuomo’s memoir last year.“I am sure he feels like he has enormous unfinished business left to do,” said Charlie King, Mr. Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor in 2002 and one of the few people who counseled Mr. Cuomo to the end. “And that, more than anything, will stick with him as he closes the gates at Eagle Street and says goodbye to the governor’s mansion.”Eyeing the history booksAndrew Cuomo in 1988, when he was president of Help Inc., a nonprofit agency that helped provide housing to the homeless.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesFrom the start, Andrew Mark Cuomo had a knack for vivid political imagery and a flair for exuding his dominance. He conducted interviews while lighting cigarettes in his office in the 1980s and puffing cigars in a Manhattan park in the early 2000s. Behind the scenes, he was known to shape stories with off-the-record chats.His first run for office, in 2002, was a flop, when he dropped out of the primary even before getting a chance to match up against the Republican, Gov. George Pataki, who had ousted his father in 1994.But he quickly spun a comeback narrative of contrition that propelled him to become attorney general four years later. Successive implosions of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Gov. David Paterson in scandal put him on a glide path to the governor’s mansion by 2010.Even before he had won, Mr. Cuomo was eyeing the history books — sending copies of a biography of former Gov. Hugh L. Carey to labor leaders that October. He said he had learned from the hard-charging Mr. Spitzer’s mistakes, too.“Lesson 1 from Spitzer,” Mr. Cuomo said then. “Don’t alienate the Legislature on Day 1.”“It’s a stain that’s always going to be there,” Robert Abrams, who served as attorney general during Mario Cuomo’s governorship, said of Andrew Cuomo’s legacy. Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesIt took Mr. Cuomo a little longer, but by this year, he had precious few friends in Albany.His winner-take-all approach to politics — with the executive always winning — grew wearisome for legislators as they saw their ideas either repeatedly stomped on or co-opted (and sometimes both).A centrist, especially on fiscal policy, Mr. Cuomo triangulated between the parties to curb the most progressive elements of his party.For years, he had tacitly backed a division among Democrats in Albany, when a breakaway faction of Senate Democrats formed a power-sharing agreement with the Republicans. Mr. Cuomo long claimed he was powerless to reunite the party — until he helped broker an accord to do just that in 2018.The Path to Governor Cuomo’s ResignationCard 1 of 6Plans to resign. More

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      Don’t Be Fooled By Mitch McConnell’s Sudden Bout of Bipartisanship

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

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      German Candidates Fail to Find Footing in Flood Response

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      So far, none of the main contenders to replace Angela Merkel have come across as strong leaders in the aftermath of floods that killed 170 people and caused billions in damages.BERLIN — Floods have had a way of reshaping German politics.Helmut Schmidt made a name for himself responding to deadly floods in Hamburg in 1962, and went on to become chancellor in the 1970s. Images of Gerhard Schröder wading through muddy water along the Elbe River in 2002 are credited with helping him win another term.The floods that ravaged Germany last week — more severe than any in centuries — are already doing their work in this election year. But the striking thing they have revealed, political analysts say, is that none of the major candidates has been able to demonstrate the level of leadership in a crisis the public has grown accustomed to under Chancellor Angela Merkel.While the deadly flash floods have offered the candidates a chance to show their stuff, political experts said that each has struggled to communicate competence and reassurance. Voters seem to agree.The first poll since the flooding showed a drop in popularity for the two leading candidates — the conservative Armin Laschet and his Green party rival, Annalena Baerbock — after what political experts say have been lackluster performances by both this week.“This will not be an election in which the candidates play a deciding role,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at the University of Trier. “None of the candidates have the kind of overwhelming charisma that is able to fully convince voters.”The floods have killed 170 people, with more than 150 still unaccounted for, the police said on Wednesday. The number of missing is significantly lower than figures announced last week, when downed communication networks and blocked roads rendered many people unreachable.In the latest polling, which was carried out from Tuesday to Sunday, Mr. Laschet’s leading Christian Democratic Union dipped below 30 percent support, to 28 percent, while their main rivals, the second-place Greens, held steady at 19 percent.When asked if they could vote for an individual candidate (Germans cast votes only for parties), which one would receive their endorsement, only 23 percent said Mr. Laschet, according to the survey by the Forsa polling group.On Saturday, Mr. Laschet came under fierce public criticism after he was caught on camera chatting and laughing with colleagues, while President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was giving a solemn statement to reporters after the two had met with flood victims in the city of Erftstadt.Mr. Laschet, 60, who is the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, was forced to apologize. On Tuesday he visited another devastated town alongside the chancellor.Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party’s chancellor candidate, Armin Laschet, behind her, visiting the flood-ravaged city of Iversheim on Tuesday. The town is in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Mr. Laschet is governor.Pool photo by Wolfgang RattayIf there is one thing Ms. Merkel has learned in her four terms in offices, it is how to be calm in the face of calamity — whether pledging to keep Germans’ savings safe in 2008, or wading through the flooded streets of eastern Germany five years later.Standing beside her Tuesday after meeting with volunteers in the city of Bad Münstereifel, Mr. Laschet tried a more statesmanlike tone. He offered an open ear and a supportive clap on the shoulder to people cleaning the mud and debris from their homes, as well as condolences for victims.“Nothing we can do can bring them back, and we barely have words for the suffering of those who survived,” he said, pledging to double his state’s contribution to emergency aid. “So that we, too, are doing our part,” he said.Ms. Merkel’s government on Wednesday approved a 200 million euro, or $235 million, package of emergency assistance to be paid out to flood victims immediately. That figure will be matched by the affected states.An estimated 6 billion euros, $7 billion, will be needed to repair the infrastructure that has been damaged, including roads, bridges, homes and buildings.Much of that money will flow through the finance ministry run by Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who is also running for chancellor. Getting financial aid to people quickly could give him an edge, but so far he has failed to translate his position into a political advantage, experts say.“If we need more money, then we will make it available,” Mr. Scholz, 63, told reporters in Berlin, “We will do what we have to do to help everyone who needs it.”Markus Söder, Bavaria’s governor, right, and Olaf Scholz, the country’s finance minister and another chancellor candidate, visited the municipality of Schoenau am Koenigssee on Sunday.Lukas Barth-Tuttas/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Scholz visited stricken communities in Rhineland-Palatinate last week and then headed to the southern state of Bavaria just days after the heavy rains stopped there. But he has failed to connect with voters in a meaningful way, experts said. His party gained only 1 percentage point in the most recent survey and Mr. Scholz’s personal popularity remained unchanged.“He is a candidate that people just can’t really warm up to,” Mr. Jun said.But if any party should be in a position to find a political advantage in the events of the past week, it should be the Greens, who have been pushing for Germany to speed up its transformation to a green economy for decades.Especially popular among the country’s younger voters, climate issues have helped the Greens to replace the Social Democrats as the second most popular party in recent years. But after their candidate for chancellor, Ms. Baerbock, 40, stumbled over accusations of plagiarism in a recently published book and inaccuracies on her résumé, even a deadly weather catastrophe appeared unable to lift the party’s standing significantly.The Greens remained firmly in second place, according to the most recent poll, with 19 percent support — enough to create a majority if they were to agree to join forces in a government led by Mr. Laschet’s conservatives, in a tie-up that many observers believe would be the most likely coalition.Making Ms. Baerbock’s position more difficult is the fact that she currently does not hold a political office that would give her the opportunity to make a public visit to the stricken regions, as do both of her competitors. Last week she decided against taking members of the news media with her when she visited communities in Rhineland-Palatinate afflicted by the severe weather.In several interviews afterward, Ms. Baerbock called for Germany to move more quickly on its exit from coal, currently planned for 2030, and to increase spending to better prepare communities for the dangers posed by extreme weather. She also laid out a three-point plan that included adapting to the changing climate, amid attempts to halt it.“This is not an either-or between climate precaution, climate adaptation and climate protection, but a triad that is actually decided in the same way in all the climate protection treaties worldwide,” Ms. Baerbock told ARD public television.In the wake of last week’s flooding, the Greens are no longer the only party making such calls, but as the images of devastation retreat from the headlines, her party remains in the strongest position to gain voters from the renewed focus on the threat posed by changes to the world’s climate.“I assume that the weather events will indeed raise the issue of climate change to the top of the electorate’s agenda, which will help the Greens,” said Ursula Münch, director of the Academy of Political Education in Tützing, but added that it would not be enough of an advantage to close the gap with the leading conservatives. “It still won’t help Ms. Baerbock into the chancellor’s office.” More

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      In New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan May Face a High-Profile Fight

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      Senator Maggie Hassan, a former governor of her state, is working to burnish her centrist image without making political waves.MEREDITH, N.H. — At the Twin Barns Brewing Co., perched near the shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee, Senator Maggie Hassan sampled some of the signature product on a recent afternoon, then chased it with a promise to fight for more reliable internet service, which the owners said they needed to maintain their customer base.“If you are a young professional and you’ve discovered over the 18 months of the pandemic that you don’t actually have to be in the office — you can work remotely — this is a perfect work-life balance,” said Dave Picarillo, co-owner of the brewery and restaurant, which has seen an uptick in business as people have decamped to New Hampshire’s Lakes Region during the pandemic. “But without broadband and cellular, that will never happen.”As she tried a tasty blonde ale, Ms. Hassan assured Mr. Picarillo and his partner, Bruce Walton, that she was on the case. She was part of a bipartisan group of senators who were working to speed a compromise infrastructure plan that included new broadband funding to President Biden’s desk — whether or not her party was able to push through a second, broader package of Democratic initiatives.“I think you’ve got to get things done when you have the opportunity,” said Ms. Hassan, a former two-term governor seeking a second Senate term.Ms. Hassan is the moderate Senate Democrat and potential swing vote who few people in Washington talk about. She does not make waves or grab headlines like Joe Manchin III or Kyrsten Sinema, her colleagues from West Virginia and Arizona who draw much of the attention as the centrists most likely to defect from their party. Her every utterance is not parsed for significance about what it means for legislative progress. Reporters don’t throng around her.And that’s no accident, she said: “I just like to keep my head down and get work done.”Yet while she tries to fly under the radar, what happens in Congress in the next few months as Democrats and Mr. Biden try to enact their ambitious agenda will probably do more to determine her future than either Mr. Manchin’s or Ms. Sinema’s. Unlike those two Democrats, Ms. Hassan will be on the ballot in a swing state next year, during a midterm cycle that is traditionally unkind to members of the president’s party.“I think she will, to a large extent next year, rise or fall with Joe Biden, his numbers and how New Hampshire voters will feel about the economy,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire.Even more than those factors, her political future could turn on whether Chris Sununu, the popular Republican governor and a member of one of the state’s most prominent political families, decides to answer the call from his party to jump into the race. He would be a formidable opponent and immediately transform the New Hampshire race into a marquee contest, placing Ms. Hassan among the most threatened incumbents as Democrats try to retain their extremely fragile hold on the Senate.“If the race is with Sununu — and I don’t know if it is Sununu — it is going to be a tough one,” said Thomas D. Rath, a former state attorney general in New Hampshire and a longtime Republican force in the state.Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican and a member of a prominent New Hampshire political family, could challenge Ms. Hassan for her Senate seat in 2022.Pool photo by David LaneMr. Sununu, whose father was a former governor and White House chief of staff and whose brother was a U.S. senator, has not tipped his hand on whether he will run despite entreaties from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and others who believe he gives them by far the best chance of taking the seat as they battle for the majority. He has expressed some qualms about jumping into the Washington maelstrom, including losing the executive power that comes with being a governor to join a legislative body.“I’m a manager, I’m an executive,” Governor Sununu said last week on the New Hampshire Journal podcast. “There are very few of those in Washington,” he said, adding that he also has to determine, “is it the right path for my family? I have kids to put through college, and all that kind of stuff.”Still, the betting in both New Hampshire and Washington is that the governor, whose office declined an interview request, will make the race, finding it too hard to resist the opportunity.As for Mr. Hassan, she said the governor’s plans were not a factor in her own.“I don’t know, and it doesn’t really change my work,” she said last week when asked whether she thought Mr. Sununu would run. “I’m proud of what I’ve done and I will make my case to the people of New Hampshire.”While she may be low-key in Washington, Ms. Hassan has been a fixture in New Hampshire politics for almost two decades, serving in the State Senate as majority leader and twice winning races for governor before toppling Kelly Ayotte, the incumbent Republican senator, by just over 1,000 votes in 2016. Her allies say that Republicans have consistently underestimated Ms. Hassan, and will likely do so again.“She has got chops when it comes to winning tough races, and it has not just been one tough race,” said Kathy Sullivan, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “She works very hard at it.”Republicans are already trying to paint Ms. Hassan as a loyal acolyte of Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader. They say her low profile — one called her “invisible” — is a sign of ineffectiveness.“We think with the way things are trending with the Democratic Party moving hard to the left, the outlook for 2022 and potentially a very strong challenger that this is a very winnable race for us,” said T.W. Arrighi, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Ms. Hassan has been a fixture in New Hampshire politics for two decades.John Tully for The New York TimesAs she prepares for a likely onslaught, Ms. Hassan is emphasizing her bipartisan record, hoping it resonates with the famously independent voters of New Hampshire. As governor, Ms. Hassan found ways to work with Republican-controlled legislatures to approve state budgets and expand Medicaid coverage. She said she was now trying to apply that same approach in the Senate.She has teamed up with Republicans on a variety of issues, including tax assistance for small businesses, money for rural broadband and a crackdown on surprise medical billing included in a major funding bill last year. Now she is part of the group negotiating a bipartisan public works bill that Mr. Biden has hailed as a breakthrough.“We think it is really important for the country to see where we have common ground and see us really trying to work across party lines,” she said.But the bipartisan package is just one piece of the equation facing Congress. Democrats also want to force through a much larger measure that includes an expansive array of costly proposals, using a special budget maneuver known as reconciliation to shield it from a Republican filibuster. Many top Democrats believe the two bills should be linked and approved only in tandem to assure that both pass.But Ms. Hassan appears ready to push forward with the public works bill even as the reconciliation plan takes shape — a stance that could put her at odds with some colleagues. She says Congress needs to strike while it can.“I think it’s important that when you do have agreement on something as major as this level of infrastructure, which we need so desperately, that when there’s common ground, you come together,” she said at the brewery.Ms. Hassan is generally supportive of a second bill to advance other elements of Mr. Biden’s plan, some of which she said would be “critical to building a foundation for a modern 21st-century leading economy,” but first she wanted to see what was in it. She has balked in the past at using reconciliation to accomplish far-reaching progressive priorities. She was one of seven Democratic senators who voted against including a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the nearly $1.9 trillion pandemic aid bill passed under reconciliation with solely Democratic votes and enacted in March.Despite the legislative difficulties ahead, Ms. Hassan said she and her colleagues were in position to get much of what they sought, with a bipartisan imprint on some of it as a bonus.“You know, there are always some white-knuckle moments,” said Ms. Hassan about the coming legislative drama. “But I’m feeling optimistic.” More