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      Introducing ‘The Run-Up,’ a Politics Podcast from The New York Times

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicStarting Sept. 6, 2022First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is back.Through conversations with colleagues, newsmakers and voters across the country, Astead Herndon will grapple with the big ideas animating the 2022 midterm election cycle — and explore how we got to this fraught moment in American politics.Elections are about more than who wins and who loses. “The Run-Up” starts Sept. 6. See you there.Meet Your HostASTEAD HERNDON is a national politics reporter for The New York Times. Previously, Astead was an integral part of The Times’s reporting on the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential elections, anchoring the coverage on Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. Before joining The Times, Astead held several positions as a reporter at The Boston Globe, including one as a national politics reporter in the Washington office, where he covered the Trump White House.In 2020, Astead was included on Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 media list. His reporting on grass-roots voters and the politics of white grievance was included in a New York Times submission that was named a finalist for a 2021 Pulitzer Prize. Astead is also a political analyst for CNN. More

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      Donald Trump’s Death Grip Has Upended the G.O.P. Senate Map

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      As today’s politicians go, Senator Michael Bennet is kind of boring. Ideologically moderate. Dispositionally low-key. Scandal-free. A sensible technocrat rather than a charismatic ideologue. Heck, when Mr. Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, ran for president in 2020, he joked that a perk of electing him would be that people could simply forget about him for days on end.It is a tribute to the weirdness of this political season, then, that Mr. Bennet’s re-election race is shaping up to be one of the midterms’ more interesting and illuminating contests. It isn’t considered a first-tier nail-biter like Georgia’s or Nevada’s, but it promises to be a more serious fight than many had anticipated in largely blue Colorado.Like Democratic candidates everywhere, Mr. Bennet had already been bracing for electoral headwinds having little to do with his job performance. Among the big-picture fundamentals working against his party are inflation, pandemic fatigue, President Biden’s unpopularity and a thermostatic electorate that, even in less surly times, tends to punish a first-term president’s team in the midterms.More recently, though, Mr. Bennet’s fortunes have been threatened because of trouble brewing on the Republican side. Specifically, this November’s Senate election map has grown more pear-shaped for the G.O.P. A mix of broad political developments (more on those in a minute) and weak nominees in key battlegrounds is making Republican leaders twitchy — they need a net gain of one seat to control the Senate — prompting them to look around for other places where they could flip Democratic-held seats. Colorado is one of those places. And so Mr. Bennet finds himself navigating the unpredictable crosscurrents roiling the national scene and making this election cycle unsettling for both parties.Things weren’t supposed to be this complicated. Cruising into the summer, Republicans were feeling feisty, their heads filled with visions of total congressional domination. But then the Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade, firing up many, many women voters. Gas prices started creeping down. Congressional Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act (which is more about tackling climate change and the price of prescription drugs than reducing inflation, but why quibble?). The next thing you know, Democratic voters are feeling more motivated to go to the polls, shrinking the so-called enthusiasm gap between the parties.Now layer onto this a G.O.P. roster of not-so-sparkling Senate nominees — for which Republicans overwhelmingly have a certain ex-president to thank.In some cases, Donald Trump’s death grip on his party hurt efforts to recruit broadly appealing candidates. The most notable failures were in New Hampshire and Arizona, where the states’ Republican governors declined to debase themselves in the manner required to woo the Trump-addled base in Senate runs.Worse, the primary process — in which Mr. Trump meddled heavily — served up multiple nominees of questionable experience, appeal or basic competence.Take Blake Masters, Mr. Trump’s man in Arizona. A darling of the hard right, Mr. Masters has a tendency to do things like blame Black people for America’s gun violence and accuse Democrats of trying to change “the demographics of our country” by flooding it with immigrants. (For a really wild ride, check out his online musings circa 2007.) Playing footsie with racists and replacement-theory nutters may delight many in the MAGAverse, but it feels a little edgy for a purple state like Arizona.In Pennsylvania, the Trump-approved Dr. Oz is getting pantsed pretty much every week for being a rich, out-of-touch celebrity carpetbagger. (Crudité, anyone?) In Ohio, J.D. Vance has so far run such a nothingburger of a campaign that one could be excused for forgetting that he is the nominee. And, lordy, what is there to say about Herschel Walker in Georgia? Come for the abuse allegations and incoherent babbling. Stay for the candidate’s fountain of fabrications about his academic achievements and business record.Recent polling shows Dr. Oz, Mr. Masters and Mr. Walker trailing their Democratic opponents. A couple of public polls show Mr. Vance with a strikingly narrow lead in solidly red Ohio, while FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has him one point behind. Also lagging is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who lost his soul — and his grip on reality — to Trumpism and has spent the past couple of years as the Senate’s foremost conspiracymonger.Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, sounds less smug than usual, recently noting that flipping the chamber could prove challenging, in part, because of “candidate quality.”It’s hard to think of a defeated president who has taken a more aggressive role in undermining his party’s electoral edge. Well played, sir.In the midst of this Trump-fueled chaos, Colorado has caught Republicans’ eye. In a departure from the cycle’s norm, Republicans there chose a Senate nominee who isn’t a MAGA wing nut: Joe O’Dea, a self-made construction magnate. By the standards of today’s G.O.P., his politics are moderate, and he has little patience for Mr. Trump’s shenanigans. Mr. O’Dea has rejected the election-denial insanity and said he hopes Mr. Trump does not run again in 2024. Mr. O’Dea is pitching himself as a political outsider above rank partisanship.This is precisely the kind of challenger that Democrats did not want to be facing — and fought to avoid. As they did in multiple states, Democrats tried to manipulate Colorado’s Republican primary, in this case spending millions to paint Mr. O’Dea as a wishy-washy RINO. The presumed aim was to drive conservative voters into the arms of a more MAGAfied candidate who, Democrats figured, would be easier to beat in a general election.Whatever your views on the overall strategy, it flopped in Colorado. And Mr. Bennet is now saddled with a Republican opponent whom members of his own party worked to brand as a reasonable moderate.Eager to redefine Mr. O’Dea, Team Bennet is turning to the hot topic of abortion, hitting the Republican as an enemy of reproductive rights. This brings its own challenges, since Mr. O’Dea says he supports abortion access up to 20 weeks and beyond that under extenuating circumstances. Team Bennet is stressing that Mr. O’Dea would have voted to confirm the conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and is clearly looking for the post-Roe energy to drive voters away from the G.O.P. in general.Suddenly, even the most cautious Democrats are aspiring culture warriors.Election Day is still a political eternity away, and it’s tough to know how seriously Republicans will wind up playing in Colorado. Last month at a Washington, D.C., fund-raiser for Mr. O’Dea, Mr. McConnell pledged to go “all in” on the Colorado race. In early August the National Republican Senatorial Committee threw a bit of money into advertising there — a modest quarter million but enough to serve as a warning shot. In mid-August the race got shifted from “likely Democrat” to “leans Democrat” by the handicappers at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.Colorado is still Colorado. And Mr. O’Dea is still the underdog. But Mr. Bennet and his party have been put on notice not to take this race for granted. In this highly fluid political moment, not even solid, inoffensive incumbents are safe.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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      In New Hampshire, Republicans Weigh Another Hard Right Candidate

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      Don Bolduc, a retired Army general, has played to the Republican base and is leading in polls to take on Senator Maggie Hassan, who is viewed as vulnerable in November.MANCHESTER, N.H. — He has said the state’s popular Republican governor is “a Chinese Communist sympathizer,” called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment allowing direct popular election of senators and raised the possibility of abolishing the F.B.I.The man behind these statements is Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who leads the Republican field in what should be a competitive race for the New Hampshire Senate seat held by Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat.In one primary after another this year, Republican voters have chosen hard-right candidates who party officials had warned would have trouble winning in November, and Mr. Bolduc could be on course to be the next. Like him, many embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election denial. “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Donald Trump won the election and, damn it, I stand by” it, Mr. Bolduc said at a recent debate.The suddenly fraught midterm landscape for Republicans caused Senator Mitch McConnell, the G.O.P. leader, to complain recently that poor “candidate quality” could cost his party a majority in the Senate that had long seemed the likely result.In the final competitive primary of the year, scheduled for Sept. 13, Republican officials in New Hampshire are echoing Mr. McConnell. They warn that grass-roots voters are poised to elect another problematic nominee, Mr. Bolduc, and jeopardize a winnable race against a vulnerable Democrat.This month, Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican moderate broadly popular in his purple state, said on New Hampshire talk radio that Mr. Bolduc was a “conspiracy theorist-type candidate.” He added: “If he were the nominee, I have no doubt we would have a much harder time trying to win that seat back.”Mr. Bolduc, who served 10 tours in Afghanistan, held a formidable lead with Republican voters in a poll this month, in large part because he has barnstormed continuously for more than two years, while his rivals joined the race later. The contest was effectively frozen for a year until November, when Mr. Sununu, a top recruiting target of national Republicans, declined to run for Senate, deciding instead to seek a fourth term as governor.Mr. Bolduc has built a following by offering red meat to the conservative base. But New Hampshire is a politically divided state where Republicans who win statewide traditionally appeal to independents and conservative Democrats. Its four-member congressional delegation is entirely Democratic; state government is firmly in the hands of Republicans.“We’re not a red state, we’re not a blue state, we’re a weird state,” said Greg Moore, a Republican operative not involved in the Senate primary. He was skeptical that Mr. Bolduc, after targeting only his party’s base, would be able to attract a broader coalition in November.In a debate on Wednesday outside Manchester, Mr. Bolduc denounced the provision in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act authorizing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, saying, “Anything the government’s involved in, it’s not good, it doesn’t work.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBiden on the Campaign Trail: Fresh off a series of legislative victories, President Biden is back campaigning. But his low approval ratings could complicate his efforts to help Democrats in the midterm elections.The 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.A rival of Mr. Bolduc’s, Kevin Smith, told him at an earlier debate, “You know, Don, your M.O. seems to be ‘Fire, ready, aim.’”Mr. Bolduc, 60, is a compact figure who still sports a military haircut close-cropped on the sides. In the minutes before the debate went live on Newsmax, while other candidates studied their notes, he spontaneously led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance and in singing “God Bless America.”Gov. Chris Sununu, a moderate Republican, said he felt that a Bolduc primary victory would weaken the G.O.P.’s chance to control the Senate.Jon Cherry/Getty Images For ConcordiaA poll this month by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics showed Mr. Bolduc with support from 32 percent of registered Republican voters, well ahead of his closest rival, Chuck Morse, the State Senate president, who was at 16 percent. Others in the poll, including Mr. Smith, a former Londonderry town manger, were in the low single digits.All of the candidates have struggled to raise money and draw voters’ attention — 39 percent of Republicans said in the poll they were still undecided.That gives Mr. Bolduc’s rivals hope, although time is running out: The primary is just one week after Labor Day, when most voters traditionally tune in.Ms. Hassan has long been seen as vulnerable. Just 39 percent of voters in the Institute of Politics survey said she deserved to be re-elected.At the debate outside Manchester, the candidates bashed Ms. Hassan, a former governor, linking her to rising gas prices and expected high prices for home heating oil this winter.Ms. Hassan, in response, defended voting for Democrats’ climate and prescription drug law. “While I’m fighting to get results for New Hampshire, my opponents are out on the campaign trail defending Big Oil and Big Pharma and bragging about their records of opposing a woman’s fundamental freedom,” she said in a statement.Mr. Trump has made no endorsement in New Hampshire, and he may not make one at all. He snubbed Mr. Bolduc in a 2020 Senate primary, endorsing a rival. Neither Mr. Bolduc nor Mr. Morse have spoken to Mr. Trump lately about the race, according to their campaigns.Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager, who is a New Hampshire resident, has publicly urged his former boss not to back Mr. Bolduc, calling him “not a serious candidate.”Mr. Bolduc declined to comment for this article. Rick Wiley, a senior adviser to Mr. Bolduc, said the criticisms of him — that he is unelectable, that independents won’t vote for him — were the same ones thrown at Mr. Trump in 2016.“The electorate wants an outsider, that is resoundingly clear,” Mr. Wiley said. Shrugging off Mr. Sununu’s criticisms, he added: “I expect we’re probably going to be sharing a ballot with the governor. There will be unity on the ticket in November and Republicans up and down the ballot will be successful because of the policies Biden and Maggie Hassan have put in place.”The biggest primary threat to Mr. Bolduc, and the preferred candidate of much of what remains of the G.O.P. establishment, is Mr. Morse, a low-key, self-made tree nursery owner with a strong Granite State accent, who appears in his TV ads riding a tractor at dawn at his operation in southern New Hampshire. Despite his prominent role in state government, a poll in April found that 54 percent of Republican voters didn’t know enough about Mr. Morse to have an opinion. Just 2 percent named him as their choice for the nomination. His ascent to 16 percent in the latest public poll this month is seen by supporters as a sign of momentum.Dave Carney, a strategist for Mr. Morse, agreed that Mr. Bolduc was the current race leader. But he said that Mr. Morse’s superior fund-raising, which allowed him to buy TV ads, was raising his profile, and predicted that he would continue to gain on Mr. Bolduc.Ms. Hassan has a considerable fund-raising lead over her Republican rivals.Adam Glanzman for The New York Times“Sixty-one percent of the voters are willing to replace Hassan,” Mr. Carney said, referring to the share of voters in the Institute of Politics survey who said that it was time to give someone new a chance to be senator or that they were undecided. “We need to nominate somebody who can do that.” He called Mr. Bolduc a “flawed candidate,” adding, “I don’t think there’s any way in hell he could get conservative Democrats or the vast majority of independents to go his way.”Mr. Morse had $975,000 in his campaign account as of July, compared with Mr. Bolduc, who had just $65,000. Ms. Hassan’s $7.3 million on hand has allowed her to aggressively spend on TV ads all year, including one promoting her work for people with disabilities that features her son, who was born with cerebral palsy.The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which this month slashed its planned spending in three battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin — has kept a commitment to spend $6.5 million on the New Hampshire race after the primary, reflecting its belief in Ms. Hassan’s vulnerability.With the Senate divided 50-50 between the parties and Democrats optimistic about flipping at least one seat, in Pennsylvania, Republicans need to take down two or more Democratic incumbents to win a majority. Their top targets are in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire.At the recent debate, the audience was mostly committed supporters of each of the candidates, with few appearing undecided. Bolduc fans dismissed out of hand Mr. Sununu’s view that their candidate would have a hard time in November.“Sununu is a globalist clown and is not a Republican,” said Kelley Potenza, a candidate for the state House of Representatives who is from Rochester. “He’s afraid because Don Bolduc is the only candidate that’s not going to be controlled.”In the audience before the lights went down, Bill Bowen, a recent transplant from California and a Morse supporter, said Mr. Bolduc had reached his ceiling in the polls. He said supporters of Mr. Bolduc who ignored doubts about his electability in November were misguided.“That’s all that matters,” he said, adding, “This is the 51st vote,” referring to a potential Republican majority in the Senate. 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

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

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

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

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

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      N.Y. Special Election Shows Power of Abortion Debate to Move Democrats

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      Within an hour of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, Pat Ryan, a combat veteran, released an ad for his congressional campaign, stressing his support for abortion rights. After Kansans overwhelmingly voted to defend abortion protections this month, Mr. Ryan cast his upcoming race as the next major test of the issue’s power.And on Wednesday, hours after Mr. Ryan won his special election in a battleground district in New York’s Hudson Valley, he said that the lessons from his contest were clear.“Stand up and fight. Stop pulling our punches,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “Conventional wisdom is that abortion rights and reproductive rights are a really emotional, very personal topic, but to me that calls even more for being clear, so people really know where your heart is,” he added. Mr. Ryan’s victory in the 19th District of New York quickly topped the list of signs that the fall campaigns may be more competitive, in more places, than strategists in both parties had once anticipated.The New York race also came a few weeks after the Kansas referendum, which showed that voters even in traditionally conservative states believe it is possible to go too far in restricting abortion rights — but that was an up-or-down vote on a single ballot question. Democrats quickly looked to Mr. Ryan’s race to test whether the issue could resonate in a congressional contest, as voters weighed two personalities and a range of other considerations.Special elections are always an imperfect gauge of the electorate. But Mr. Ryan was one of several Democrats to outperform President Biden’s 2020 numbers in contests this summer. Mr. Ryan’s victory is the latest evidence that once apathetic Democrats who had trailed Republicans on questions of enthusiasm are now increasingly engaged, even as the party continues to face significant political headwinds. And some Republicans acknowledge that they no longer have total ownership on enthusiasm.Abortion rights advocates rallied in front of the Nebraska State Capitol in July after a woman was charged with aiding an abortion in Lincoln.Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated Press“I worry about us being complacent going into the fall, everyone thinking that these are going to be kind of massive waves, no end in sight, red, red, red, and — doesn’t appear to be that way,” said Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican pollster. “It’s as if the goal posts have been pushed back a bit on us.”Mr. Blizzard cautioned against overreading the results of special elections and stressed that Democrats continue to face staggering challenges, especially amid Mr. Biden’s abysmal approval ratings. “Until Biden’s approval rating gets out of the toilet with independent voters, it’s still going to be a very good year for Republicans,” he said. Still, he added, “The angrier people is where the energy always is. But you can’t overturn Roe v. Wade and not have some more fired-up Democrats.”A recent NBC poll found that Democrats had closed a significant enthusiasm gap: 68 percent of Republicans expressed a high level of interest in the upcoming election, while 66 percent of Democrats said the same. In March, Republicans had a 17 percentage point advantage on that question, according to NBC.And Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, has released data showing that since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision handed control over abortion protections back to the states, there has been a surge in voter registration among women. They are “mostly younger, and they’re overwhelmingly Democrats,” he said in an interview, adding on Twitter on Wednesday, “Women accounted for 58% of the early/absentee votes in NY19, despite comprising only 52% of registered voters.”“Women have surged in registration in ways that we’ve never seen in this country,” he said. Whether that dynamic lasts through November is an open question, he said, but for now, “it shows no signs of slowing down,” he added.What was especially striking about the result in New York, Mr. Bonier noted, was that the Republican candidate, Marc Molinaro, could be regarded as a “pre-Trump Republican.” In other words, he is a county executive who is well-known locally and kept his messaging far more focused on crime and inflation than on the far-right cultural battles some candidates have embraced.Mr. Molinaro has said both that he would vote against a federal law ensuring abortion access nationwide and that he would oppose a nationwide ban. Abortion is legal in New York.Headed into the special election, some Republicans cautioned that Mr. Ryan could do better than public polling suggested because the contest was held at the same time as New York’s primaries — when independent voters, who appear deeply unhappy with President Biden, are unaccustomed to turning out. Other fundamentals, they argue — including dissatisfaction with the direction of the country — continue to work against the party in power.“Democratic voters were energized by the Supreme Court decision, and because we were running in the midst of a Democratic primary, they showed up to vote,” Mr. Molinaro said in an interview.Through a quirk of New York’s complicated redistricting process, both candidates will run again in November but not against each other. Mr. Molinaro is running for a full term in the new 19th Congressional District. Mr. Ryan is seeking a full term in the neighboring 18th District, which will now contain his home in Ulster County.“November is going to be about, as midterm elections always are, a check on the party in power,” Mr. Molinaro said, arguing that cost of living remained top of mind for many voters. “The dynamic and the turnout and, I believe, the results, are going to be different.”For now, though, it was evident that Mr. Ryan’s efforts to frame the contest as a referendum on abortion rights had resonated with some voters.“You’re going to force a religious right, fundamentalist Christian whatever on the whole country?” said John Ravine, as he came out to vote for Mr. Ryan on Tuesday. Describing himself as “staunchly Catholic,” Mr. Ravine expressed his concerns about the rollbacks of abortion rights across the country. “You can’t do that. You can’t hold a country hostage.”Grace Ashford contributed reporting from Hudson, N.Y. More

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

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