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    Vulnerable Democrats, Seeking Distance From the Left, Offer a Midterm Agenda

    The plan aims to inoculate Democrats in conservative-leaning states from Republican attacks on cultural issues, underscoring how successful the G.O.P. has been at weaponizing them.WASHINGTON — A cluster of House Democrats from conservative-leaning districts is circulating a reworked legislative agenda for the coming election season that would embrace some of President Biden’s most popular initiatives and tackle rising prices while distancing lawmakers from the left’s most divisive ideas.The plan, obtained by The New York Times, seeks to inoculate the most vulnerable Democrats from the culture wars pursued by Republicans trying to win back the congressional majority. Its existence underscores how successful Republicans have been at weaponizing issues like pandemic-related school closures and “defund the police” efforts against Democrats in politically competitive districts.The draft agenda was written by Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. It includes almost 75 bipartisan bills already drafted and broader bullet points such as “Combat Rising Costs for Food, Gas, Housing and Utilities,” “Reduce Prescription Drug Prices, Co-Pays and Deductibles” and “Fight Crime & Invest in Law Enforcement.”Rather than proposing cuts to funding for police departments, for example, it suggests financing the hiring of additional officers, especially in rural and small-town departments — though it would also fund body cameras and training, demands from liberal critics of law enforcement. Taking on Republican efforts to end mask mandates and school closures, the agenda includes legislation to “re-establish faith in America’s public health system and ensure preparedness for future pandemics, so that our economy and schools can remain open.”The plan avoids other items popular with progressives, such as a $15 minimum wage and a universal, single-payer “Medicare for all” insurance system, but it embraces some of the most broadly popular health care initiatives in Mr. Biden’s now-moribund Build Back Better Act: an agreement to allow Medicare to negotiate the prices of some of the most expensive drugs on the market and an expansion of Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing care.Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, one of the authors of the draft agenda.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesWith their wafer-thin congressional majority and a president whose approval ratings are mired around 42 percent, Democrats are facing formidable headwinds in November’s midterm elections. The document, though stuffed with actual legislation, is more notable for its political message than for its policy details — in part because it omits any mention of how to pay for its initiatives.Some of its headline initiatives are not backed by the legislation below those programs. The plan promotes “Combating the Climate Crisis,” for instance, but the bills listed on that topic address the reliability and resilience of the electricity grid, top concerns for climate change deniers.But the agenda’s authors hope to at least revive a sense of momentum in a Democratic Congress that has entered the doldrums since enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure law in November, followed by the Senate’s stymying of House-passed climate and social safety net legislation and a far-reaching voting rights bill.It is no accident that the document is circulating just before Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, and the following week’s House Democratic “issues” retreat.The dozens of bills listed in the agenda all have Democratic and Republican authors, many of them endangered either by anti-Democratic momentum or by challengers endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.One such bill, written by Representatives Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, would make permanent Medicare tele-health expansions undertaken during the pandemic. There is a diabetes prevention bill by Representatives Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, and Tom Rice of South Carolina, a Republican who, like Ms. Cheney, voted to impeach Mr. Trump. An expansion of tax-favored education savings accounts is co-sponsored by Ms. Spanberger and Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, another Republican who voted to impeach. Also included is a significant expansion of eligibility for child and adult nutrition programs, drafted by Representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Democrat of Oregon, and Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican facing a serious Trump-backed challenge for her impeachment vote.There are even incentives for utilities to invest in cybersecurity written by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrat who has raised the contempt of the left by blocking the social policy and climate change bill in the Senate, and refusing to join his party in changing the filibuster rule to pass voter protection legislation over Republican opposition.But most striking is how the draft agenda takes on issues that appear to be dominating the campaign trail, even if they have not generated much debate on the floors of the House and the Senate.To beat back inflation, one bill the group is pushing would “prohibit” foreign governments from participating in cartel-like activities, a hit at OPEC that would have no real impact. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would be granted the authority to order refunds for natural gas bills “that are unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory or preferential.” And assistance would be given to new and small meat processors to combat monopoly pricing from the few dominant meat processors, an effort already underway by the Biden administration.Rising crime rates across the country would also receive attention, through an expansion of existing grants to local law enforcement, new safety requirements for ride-hailing companies, stronger reporting requirements for electronic communication service providers to help track child predators and a new federal crime designation for “porch pirates” who steal packages from home stoops.One measure included in the agenda appears to accept the Republican talking point that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory in China, then covered up by the World Health Organization — assertions that have been challenged repeatedly by scientific researchers.The Never Again International Outbreak Prevention Act, by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Conor Lamb, a centrist Democrat running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, “would provide accountability with respect to international reporting and monitoring of outbreaks of novel viruses and diseases, sanction bad actors and review the actions of the World Health Organization.” More

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    How Democrats Can Stop a Red Wave

    Republicans like their chances in November. But politics can change quickly.A “red wave” is building this year — or so we’re told.Republicans are confident that the country’s sour mood will sweep them back into power in Congress, mainly because Americans are fed up with the coronavirus and inflation. They think they’ll pick up 30 or so House seats and four or five seats in the Senate.“It’s crystal clear,” said Corry Bliss, a partner at FP1 Strategies, a consulting firm that helps Republicans. He added: “The red wave is coming. Period. End of discussion.”But what if that’s wrong? We asked about two dozen strategists in both parties what would need to happen for Democrats to hold the House and Senate in November. And while we’re not making any predictions, it’s possible that Democrats could retain control of Congress. Difficult, but possible.Democrats have 222 seats in the House, and 50 seats in the Senate. That means Republicans need to pick up just six House seats and one Senate seat to take full control of Congress.Here’s what needs to happen for Democrats to pull off an upset in 2022:Biden voters show upPundits often make it sound like voters are judiciously studying each party’s arguments and forming conclusions. But that’s not really the way American politics works. Modern elections are much more about mobilization (getting your supporters to the polls) than persuasion (convincing the other side’s supporters to switch), though both matter.Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes in 2020. So for Democrats, winning in 2022 means figuring out how to get as many of those people as possible to vote, even though Trump won’t be on the ballot this time.“Their primary motivation for voting in the last election was defeating Trump,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, which on Monday announced a $30 million program of digital ads aimed at reaching what he calls “new Biden voters” in seven swing states.The last two elections — the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential vote — saw the biggest turnout in history. That means there’s an unusual amount of uncertainty among insiders about which voters will show up in 2022.Regaining a sense of normalcyEvery person we spoke with agreed: This is the biggest unknown.While voters are upset about high prices today, inflation and the coronavirus could be down to manageable levels by the summer. Several strategists say it is also essential, politically speaking, that schools are fully open in September. If all of that happens, Democrats could enter the midterms as the party that defeated Covid and brought the economy roaring back to life, or at least fight Republicans to a draw on both issues.But the White House is well aware that it’s not really in control — the virus is.“The script’s not written yet for the remainder of the year,” said Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of House moderates.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.Biden finds a winning messageFor months, Democrats have fretted that the White House was too slow to recognize inflation as a political problem, and was too mired in endless congressional negotiations. That’s changing.President Biden has been speaking more frequently about the issue, at the urging of moderate Democrats. “The president is recognizing his superpower, which is empathy,” said Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat in a swing district in Minnesota.Sean McElwee, executive director of the group Data for Progress, told us that the president should embrace what he calls “solverism” — basically, being seen on TV every day tackling the problems that voters care about.After a fall characterized by damaging infighting, Democrats have been working to bring more harmony to their messages. With the State of the Union address coming up, President Biden has a chance to rally the country around his vision and the improving economic numbers. But with the fate of Build Back Better now in question, what will he talk about, exactly?Redistricting being more or less evenDemocrats feel good about the maps that have been approved so far. For now, there are only three Democrats running in House districts that Trump won in 2020, and nine Republicans in districts that Biden won.But a few unknowns remain. The Democratic-controlled State Legislature in New York is still weighing how aggressively to redraw the state’s maps. Courts have yet to render final judgments in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And in Florida, Republicans are divided between Gov. Ron DeSantis’s maps and those proposed by the State Senate.We do know that many of the House districts that are up for grabs in November are in the suburbs, which have shifted left in recent elections. That could help Democrats. Liberal strategists point out that Republicans won’t be able to benefit from the massive margins that they run up in rural areas and they also note that the seats Republicans picked up in 2020 were the easy ones.To which Republicans counter: Look at what happened in suburban Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin pared back the party’s past losses to win the governor’s race.The Supreme Court overturns Roe v. WadeIn that Virginia race, the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, spent millions of dollars portraying Youngkin as an extremist on abortion. Democrats were convinced that the issue would help them with suburban women in particular, and McAuliffe predicted that abortion would be a “huge motivator” for voters. His campaign ran three different ads on the subject, which collectively aired more than 1,000 times.It didn’t work.Youngkin danced around the issue, while saying he preferred to focus on the economy, jobs and education. According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, just 8 percent of voters said abortion mattered most to their decision, the least of five preselected topics.But abortion could come roaring back as a voting issue if the Supreme Court issues a clear repudiation of Roe v. Wade this year. Should that happen, many Democrats say it could help their candidates in Senate races, where they can highlight Republican positions that polls suggest are out of the mainstream.Republican candidates go hard rightDemocrats are watching Republican primary campaigns closely, clipping and saving remarks that the candidates are making that could prove hard to defend in a general election. The need to cater to Trump’s hard-line base of voters has made the Republican brand toxic, they say. But that’s where the consensus ends.Endangered Democrats want to localize their races as much as possible, and prefer to talk about kitchen-table issues like jobs and the economy. Nationally, Democrats are still debating how to communicate their alarm about the state of American democracy, which can come across as either abstract to voters or simply more partisan noise.For now, Democrats are planning to use Jan. 6 as just one of several data points to portray Republicans as extremists on a range of issues, including abortion and climate.“I don’t think this election is going to easily fall into the traditional pattern, and it’s because of the radicalization of the Republican Party,” said Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democrat Network.Trump seizes center stageAfter the Virginia governor’s race, Democratic strategists launched various efforts to study the lessons of that campaign. One takeaway: Talking about Trump also energizes Republicans, which makes it tricky for Democrats to make the former president a central issue in 2022.Democrats have also found that it’s not effective simply to associate a Republican candidate with Trump, as McAuliffe did in Virginia. They believe they need to indict Republican candidates directly. But there’s an ongoing debate about whether Democratic candidates need to do this themselves, or have outside groups run attack ads on their behalf.The former president has endorsed dozens of candidates who in one way or another agree with his false notion that the 2020 election was stolen. On Sunday evening, he said it outright — claiming, falsely, that then-Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election” on Jan. 6, 2021.If Democrats manage to hang on to their congressional majorities, Trump will be a major factor.What to readTrump had a greater role than previously known in plans to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines, our colleagues report.Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified before the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Luke Broadwater reports.Katie Rogers reports that the White House has chosen Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator from Alabama, to shepherd its Supreme Court pick through the nomination process in the Senate.briefing bookGov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota filed amendments to a series of old F.E.C. reports.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFilings cleanupAs our colleague Shane Goldmacher was digging on Monday through the glut of campaign disclosures covering the last quarter of 2021, he noticed updates to some very old filings.The filings, from as far back as 2017, were from the Keeping Republican Ideas Strong Timely & Inventive PAC. That’s better known as KRISTI PAC, as in Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, the former Republican congresswoman who created the committee.Governor Noem filed amendments to no fewer than 16 old Federal Election Commission reports this week. The amendments appeared mostly minor. But what is more interesting is that she was making those at all. It is the kind of cleanup that politicians typically do when they are considering a future run for president, mindful that opposition researchers will be looking for any slip-ups to feed to the press.The KRISTI PAC treasurer, Kevin Broghamer, simply told the F.E.C. that the PAC had “conducted a comprehensive review and reconciliation of all financial activity since January 1, 2017.”A spokesman for Noem, Joe Desilets, said that Broghamer had been asked to conduct the review “to ensure the governor’s committees were wholly compliant and amend any filings as needed. Unfortunately there isn’t anything else to read into with the amended filings.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More