Midterm Elections (2022)

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      A Journey Into Misinformation on Social Media

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      “Fake news” has gone from a hot buzzword popularized during the 2016 presidential campaign to an ever-present phenomenon known more formally as misinformation or disinformation.Whatever you call it, sowing F.U.D. — fear, uncertainty and doubt — is now a full-time and often lucrative occupation for the malign foreign actors and even ordinary U.S. citizens who try to influence American politics by publishing information they know to be false.Several of my colleagues here at The New York Times track the trends and shifting tactics of these fraudsters on their daily beats. So I exchanged messages this week with Sheera Frenkel, Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson, all three of whom spend their days swimming in the muck brewed by fake news purveyors here and abroad.Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:This is a political newsletter, so let me ask my first question this way: What are you seeing out there that is new during this election cycle, in terms of tactics or topics?Sheera Frenkel: I’d say it’s the way misinformation has shifted slightly, in that you don’t have the same type of superspreaders on platforms like Twitter and Facebook that you did in the 2020 election cycle. Instead, you have lots of smaller-scale accounts spreading misinformation across a dozen or more platforms. It is more pervasive and more deeply entrenched than in previous elections.The most popular topics are largely rehashes of what was spread in the 2020 election cycle. There are a lot of false claims about voter fraud that we first saw made as early as 2016 and 2018. Newspapers, including The New York Times, have debunked many of those claims. That doesn’t seem to stop bad actors from spreading them or people from believing them.Then there are new claims, or themes, that are being spread by more fringe groups and extremist movements that we have started to track.Tiffany Hsu: Sheera first noticed a while back that there was a lot of chatter about “civil war.” And, quickly, we started to see it everywhere — this strikingly aggressive rhetoric that intensified after the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago and with the passage of a bill that will give more resources to the I.R.S.For example, after the F.B.I. search, someone said on Truth Social, the social media platform started by Trump, that “sometimes clearing out dangerous vermin requires a modicum of violence, unfortunately.”We have seen a fair amount of “lock and load” chatter. But there is also pushback on the right, with people claiming without evidence that federal law enforcement or the Democrats are planting violent language to frame conservative patriots as extremists and insurrectionists.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Stuart A. Thompson: I’m always surprised by how much organization is happening around misinformation. It’s not just family members sharing fake news on Facebook anymore. There’s a lot of money sloshing around. There are lots of very well-organized groups that are trying to turn the attention over voter fraud and other conspiracy theories into personal income and political results. It’s a very organized machine at this point, after two years of organizing around the 2020 election. This feels different from previous moments when disinformation seemed to take hold in the country. It’s not just a fleeting interest spurred by a few partisan voices. It’s an entire community and social network and pastime for millions of people.Sheera, you’ve covered Silicon Valley for years. How much progress would you say the big social media players — Facebook/Meta, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube — have made in tackling the problems that arose during the 2016 election? What’s working and what’s not?Sheera: When we talk about 2016, we are largely talking about foreign election interference. In that case, Russia tried to interfere with U.S. elections by using social media platforms to sow divisions among Americans.Today, the problem of foreign election interference hasn’t been solved, but it is nowhere near at the scale it once was. Companies like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Twitter announce regular takedowns of networks run by Russia, Iran and China aiming to spread disinformation or influence people online. Millions have been spent on security teams at those companies to make sure they are removing foreign actors from spreading disinformation.And while it is not a done deal (bad actors are always innovating!), they’ve made a huge amount of progress in taking down these networks. This week, they even announced for the first time that they had removed a foreign influence op promoting U.S. interests abroad.A cutout of Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, dressed as the “QAnon Shaman” and cutouts of others involved in the Capitol riot before a House hearing last year.Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesWhat has been harder is what to do about Americans’ spreading misinformation to other Americans, and what to do with fringe political movements and conspiracies that continue to spread under the banner of free speech.Many of these social media companies have ended up exactly in the position they hoped to avoid — making one-off decisions on when they remove movements like the QAnon conspiracy group or voter fraud misinformation that begins to go viral. More

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      Not the Win We Wanted, but a Win Nonetheless

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      The Biden administration has finally delivered on its long anticipated student loan cancellation plans. The timing is critical: Midterm elections are around the corner. Just a few weeks ago, the consensus was that the Democratic Party was in trouble. But a series of policy wins has changed that narrative.President Biden’s executive order on student loans is another win.The top-line debt cancellation numbers do not sound impressive at first: Ten thousand dollars will be forgiven for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 or households earning less than $250,000. But the policy has many layers. Taken together, it is a meaningful response that mostly gets the diagnosis for how we got here right.The Student Loan Law Initiative at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and the Higher Education, Race and the Economy Lab analyzed Biden’s executive order. They estimate that around 41 million debt holders will be eligible for some form of student loan forgiveness, and that 25 million of those people will be eligible for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. Twenty million people, including 3.8 million Black borrowers, could have their entire debts canceled.That isn’t full debt cancellation, but it will help a lot of people. And the people it will help most are those who got the rawest deal. That includes the millions of people who have debt but no degree — nearly one-third of all borrowers. It also includes people who took on student loans to pay for occupational degrees in blue-collar trades like cosmetology and mechanics. Republicans are criticizing the policy as giving handouts to the rich. They really want to implant the image of a Harvard liberal arts graduate getting a free pass. But cancellation is squarely targeted at the debt that working-class students have accrued to hold pretty working-class jobs. The G.O.P. will have a hard time telling those voters that this relief has not improved their lives.Other parts of the policy address underlying problems that created the student loan boondoggle. Millions of people have paid their loans as promised, following the official guidance of student loan servicers, only to owe more than when they started with because of interest. This negative amortization made it nearly impossible for some borrowers to pay off their loans. And documented problems with public student loan forgiveness programs meant that this burden often fell heaviest on people with public interest careers, such as public defenders, teachers and social workers. Now, income-driven repayments for undergraduate loans will be capped at 5 percent of the borrower’s take-home income. If you don’t have a lot of discretionary income, that payment could be low — too low to cover interest on the loan. Previously, this gap added up and increased the total amount owed. Under new guidelines, the government will cover that interest as long as the borrower is making payments. This does not get rid of the scourge of negative amortization for all borrowers. But it does two things: It effectively ends it for public interest workers. That lives up to the promise of public service loan forgiveness, which is that it becomes possible for people to do the work that society desperately needs done without living in eternal debt peonage. It also gives us a model for expanding that option for more borrowers in the future. It is a safe bet that student debt cancellation organizers are paying attention to that possibility.The other bit of good news in the details of this proposal is targeted relief for borrowers who were also Pell grant recipients. Pell grants are a bright spot in our higher education financing ecosystem. They help reduce the impact of one of the biggest drivers of inequality in higher education access, affordability and returns: family income. As tuition costs have dramatically increased, Pell has struggled to keep up. Earlier this year, the Biden administration increased the maximum amount of money attached to Pell grants. When you add that increase to this proposal’s targeted cancellation for anyone who currently or at any time in their undergraduate career qualified for Pell, it is a big help for poor families.Class — income and wealth — is how the Biden administration prefers to deal with racial inequalities that stem from student loan debt. Black borrowers come from poorer families who have less income and less wealth to pay their tuition. Those borrowers take on more student loan debt and their families take on more family loans, like the PLUS program, to help them pay for college. This is acute at lower levels of student loan debt, such as the millions of borrowers that will be included in the $10,000 and $20,000 forgiveness amounts. But these racial differences in debt also show up at the top of distributions. Black borrowers take on a lot of debt to be competitive in the labor market, from associate’s degrees to graduate programs. That debt then makes it hard for those borrowers to help their children pay for college. It’s a vicious cycle. This program won’t help those high-earning but negative wealth borrowers much.It also won’t reduce the cost of college, but it was not designed to. The executive branch does not have a lot of tools it can use to address that. What it does have is the big stick of federal student loan programs. It has used that stick in the past to make college more accessible, but at a cost that became too much for many borrowers to bear. The fight for affordability is primarily a state issue. Like abortion rights, public education and public health initiatives, the real battle for the future of higher education will happen at the state level.As for the federal fight, organizers will ask for more cancellations. I believe that they should. And while this recent policy is not total debt cancellation, it is far from where the Biden administration started. It accounts for research on how the student loan crisis became such a crisis in the first place. The administration has reformed target areas where abuses are the most egregious: bad student loan servicing companies and predatory for-profit colleges. The latest analysis from Goldman Sachs projects that inflationary pressures will be mild, at most. Restarting payments offsets a lot of the modeled risk. And this relief comes for poor and working-class families just as they start tuning in to midterm races. It is hard to argue that this is anything but good news for millions of people — and for the Democrats.Sometimes policy helps people, and sometimes those people remember it when it is time to vote. More

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      Democrats Might Get Exceptionally Lucky This Fall, and They Should Be Ready for That

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      Republicans are still favored to gain seats in the midterm elections but are not as favored as you might have thought.They have lost their lead in the generic congressional ballot and face longer-than-expected odds to win the Senate as a result of flawed, extreme and extremely flawed nominees in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And while Republicans are heavily favored to win control of the House of Representatives, Democrats, according to the forecast at FiveThirtyEight, are still in the game, with a one in five chance to keep their majority,This is, for comparison’s sake, just a notch lower than Donald Trump’s odds of winning the White House in 2016. Recent election results — like the Democratic victory in a special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District — provide even stronger evidence that the national environment may have shifted away from the Republican Party.There is a real chance, in other words, that Democrats could enter the next Congress with their majority intact, a major change from earlier this year, when it looked as if Republicans would ride a red wave to victory in November. And if Democrats get exceptionally lucky — if conditions break just the right way in their favor — then there’s a chance that they begin the new year with a larger majority in the Senate in addition to a majority in the House.The question is: In the unlikely event that Democrats enter 2023 with a stronger majority than they’ve had the past two years, what should they do? There has been plenty of discussion about what Republicans should do with their putative future majorities, but what should the Democrats do with theirs?The easy answer is: everything Democrats couldn’t do in the previous Congress. But as we’ve seen, time is precious, and success depends as much on the willingness to set priorities as it does on the ability to find consensus. What, then, should Democrats prioritize?If the legislative story of the past two years — of the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — is the return of industrial policy, then the legislative story of the next two years must be the return of social policy, as well as an all-out effort to protect and secure the rights that are under assault by the Republican Party and its allies on the Supreme Court.This might sound expansive, but it amounts to just a handful of proposals. On social policy, Democrats should fight to make a child allowance a permanent feature of the social safety net. We already know it works; in just its first round of payments, President Biden’s child tax credits — enacted under the American Rescue Plan — brought more than three million children out of poverty.The Biden plan expired at the end of 2021, but there are still proposals on the table. Last year, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah introduced a plan to give every family a monthly benefit of up to $350 per child for children 5 and under and $250 per child for children 6 to 17. If passed into law, Romney’s plan would, according to the Niskanen Center, cut child poverty by roughly a third. The latest version of the Romney plan isn’t as generous as the original, but it would still put a significant dent in America’s rates of child poverty. There aren’t many policies as clearly good and necessary as a permanent child allowance, which would improve the lives of millions of Americans as well as help Democrats appeal to working- and middle-class voters. They absolutely have to do it.On the question of rights, there are three places Democrats should act as quickly as possible. The first is abortion and reproductive health. In this future in which Democrats still control Congress, they will almost certainly owe their majority to the backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the subsequent drive to criminalize abortion in Republican-led states.In a sense, Democrats would have no choice but to codify abortion rights into law, most likely using the framework developed in Roe v. Wade. There’s actually a bill that would do just that — the Women’s Health Protection Act, which passed the House last year. A less expansive bill, the Reproductive Freedom for All Act, is pending in the Senate.Passing abortion rights into federal law isn’t just the smart thing for Democrats to do; it is the right thing to do — the only way to show the public that the party is willing and able to live up to its rhetoric on reproductive freedom.You can say the same for the other two issue areas that Democrats must address if they somehow keep their majority: labor and voting rights. Both are under assault from right-wing judges and politicians, both need the protection of the federal government, and both are fundamental to the maintenance of a free and fair society. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen the right of workers to form unions and bargain with their employers, is still on the table, as are proposals to revitalize the Voting Rights Act and end partisan gerrymandering.Of course, to pass any of these laws, Democrats will have to kill the legislative filibuster. Otherwise, this agenda or any other is dead in the water. If Democrats win a Senate majority of 51 or 52 members, they might be able to do it. And they should.It is not often that a political party gets a second bite at the apple. If Democrats win one, there is no reason to let the filibuster — a relic of the worst of our past — stand in the way of building a more decent country, and a more humane one at that.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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      Fresh Off a Series of Victories, Biden Steps Back Onto the Campaign Trail

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      But embracing the role of the Democratic Party’s top campaigner will mean confronting Republican attacks when nearly three-quarters of voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction.WASHINGTON — President Biden is preparing for one of the biggest tests of his presidency: Can he save his party?Fresh off a series of legislative victories, the president kicked off the transition to campaign mode with a speech at a Democratic National Committee rally in Maryland on Thursday as he tries to preserve the party’s control of Congress in the midterm elections.In a spirited speech before an enthusiastic campaign crowd, Mr. Biden delivered his strongest condemnation to date of what he called “ultra-MAGA Republicans” and hailed the success his administration has had in meeting key priorities on climate change, guns, jobs and the coronavirus.“Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans have made their choice: to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division,” Mr. Biden said to about 2,400 people at a suburban Maryland high school gym. “But we’ve chosen a different path: forward, the future, unity, hope and optimism.”The president’s new stump speech was the start of what his aides say will be a more aggressive Joe Biden, willing to brag about his accomplishments and assail his opponents.“If the MAGA Republicans win control of the Congress, it won’t matter where you live. Women won’t have the right to choose anywhere, anywhere,” Mr. Biden said, prompting loud boos from the audience. “Let me tell you something. If they take it back and they try and pass it, I will veto it.”In his speech, Mr. Biden delivered his strongest condemnation to date of what he called “ultra-MAGA Republicans.”Al Drago for The New York TimesBut Mr. Biden’s approval rating remains stubbornly low — lower, in some cases, than those of the candidates he hopes to help — and inflation remains stubbornly high. At 79, Mr. Biden is the oldest president in American history, which has become an increasingly uncomfortable issue for Democrats.Embracing the role as his party’s top campaigner will mean directly confronting Republican attacks when nearly three-quarters of voters say the United States is heading in the wrong direction. It will also mean enduring cold shoulders from some Democratic candidates, a few of whom have made clear that they would prefer if Mr. Biden stayed away.Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is running for the Senate, cited scheduling conflicts when Mr. Biden was in his state in July, declining to appear beside the president even as Mr. Ryan — a moderate — is locked in one of the country’s most intense campaign battles in a traditional swing state that has been moving toward Republicans.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Mr. Ryan’s spokeswoman, Izzi Levy, said the president was not someone the congressman wanted to campaign with.“We haven’t been interested in him or any other out-of-state surrogates,” she said, noting that Mr. Ryan’s approval rating in Ohio was higher than Mr. Biden’s. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is running for the Senate, declined to appear with Mr. Biden in his state, citing scheduling conflicts.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesIn the West Wing, the president’s advisers are betting that he can help Democratic candidates despite the drag on his popularity. They note that gas prices have dropped for more than two months; the coronavirus has receded, as Mr. Biden promised it would; and he has pushed through big Democratic wins on climate change, drug pricing and taxes on corporations. On Wednesday, he announced billions of dollars in student debt relief, a move that aides hope will energize young voters.White House strategists also believe no one is better positioned to contrast the Democratic Party’s ideas with those of “ultra-MAGA Republicans,” a phrase the president uses to draw attention to the control that former President Donald J. Trump still wields and the number of Republicans who adhere to his election-denying conspiracies.“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Mr. Biden said at a D.N.C. reception before the evening rally on Thursday. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semifascism.”The F.B.I.’s search of Mr. Trump’s home in Florida this month to retrieve classified documents has focused attention on him at an opportune time for Mr. Biden, raising new questions about the former president’s norm-busting — and possibly illegal — behavior. But it has also made it tougher for the White House’s messages to break through the barrage of Trump-related news coverage. More

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      How Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Dividing Democrats

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      President Biden’s executive order Wednesday to cancel thousands of dollars in college debt for millions of Americans has divided Democratic candidates like few other policies of his administration, with some Democrats using the plan to distance themselves from a president who could prove to be a heavy burden in their states and districts.The responses were starkly divided along racial and generational lines, with Black candidates and younger voters more likely to approve and Democrats running as centrists more likely to be critical. But among Democratic candidates in tough campaigns, there was little consistency to be found.Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin, both Black and both hoping to be in the Senate next year, were supportive. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat in a tight race for re-election and running as a moderate conciliator, was highly critical.Yet Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, another Democrat seeking re-election in a swing state as a bipartisan moderate, backed the plan.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Senate candidate hoping to appeal to working-class voters, praised the move as relief to struggling Pennsylvanians too often forgotten by policymakers. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, also running for the Senate as a voice of the working class, decried it as a gift to those already on a path to success at the expense of Ohioans shut out of higher education.“While there’s no doubt that a college education should be about opening opportunities, waiving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement.The sharp divisions over the debt relief order were somewhat surprising considering how long the plans were under consideration and the lengthy journey the issue has taken from a rallying cry at Occupy Wall Street protests more than a decade ago to a Biden campaign promise in 2020.The provenance of the plan was no doubt from the left wing of the party — including Senators Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts — that campaigned on promises of far more generous debt forgiveness. The fact that Mr. Biden issued a moderate version a little more than two months before the November midterm elections might have been expected to unite the party, not divide it.But the move was coming from an unpopular president at a time when Republicans — and some Democratic economists — have been portraying any expensive social welfare proposal as jet fuel for skyrocketing inflation.“There’s still a real debate in the party on how interventionist the government should be,” said Waleed Shahid, a liberal strategist and spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that has strongly pushed for student debt relief. He added, “Some of these Democrats feel like they have to punch back at the president in purple states, and this is what they have chosen to punch back on.”Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, said the debt relief was not targeted enough at low-income Americans.John Locher/Associated PressBeneath the raw politics of the moment are substantive criticisms. Mr. Biden’s action would cancel $10,000 in debt for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year and cancel $20,000 for low-income students who received Pell grants.Ms. Cortez Masto and Mr. Ryan both said the debt relief was not targeted enough at low-income Americans or college students entering fields with low pay and desperate need, like rural health care or emergency medicine. More

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

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