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      Kyrsten Sinema Brings Bad Tidings for Democrats in 2024

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      Arizona was on the cusp of seating a Democratic governor alongside two Democratic senators for the first time since 1951 when Senator Kyrsten Sinema abruptly announced last week she is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.The move was met with harsh criticism from the left, which saw it as another in a series of self-aggrandizing acts that risk sacrificing the Democratic Party’s power and President Biden’s legislative agenda for her personal benefit.Polls make it clear that Ms. Sinema is reviled by a large segment of her now-former party. In a recent Civiqs poll of likely voters, she was at a meager 7 percent approval among Arizona Democrats. Her switch to declare herself an independent may seem like a desperate act to hold on to the Senate seat she won in 2018 by fewer than three percentage points.It may be that. But for Democrats looking ahead to 2024, her move compounds the difficulties of what is promising to be a brutal Senate map and suggests some hard truths about the party’s chances in Arizona and places like it.The Donald Trump era may have given Democrats in Arizona a bit of a blue mirage. They were very successful in the midterms: Senator Mark Kelly won re-election, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the new governor, and Adrian Fontes will become the secretary of state.But it seems that the Democrats’ success is not simply the result of permanent shifts in Arizona’s demographics. Before Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat, Arizona voted for five consecutive Republican presidential candidates and, before Ms. Sinema’s win in 2018, had not elected a single Democratic senator since 1976. Arizona’s electorate has certainly grown, urbanized and diversified, but registration percentages haven’t changed much since 2012. Today, 35 percent of Arizona registered voters are registered Republicans; 34 percent are Independents; and 31 percent are Democrats.Democrats’ recent victories were presaged by overtly moderate Democratic candidates running against opponents endorsed by Mr. Trump. Ms. Sinema’s path to the Senate was buoyed by her opponent’s irreparably damaging association with Mr. Trump.In announcing her departure from the Democratic Party, Ms. Sinema argued that representing Arizona as an independent will “provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country who also are tired of the partisanship.” She is not wrong on that point: Over a quarter of Americans say they dislike both parties according to Pew Research Center. Only 6 percent said so in 1994.For independent voters, it is disdain for partisanship — not moderate ideology — that drives most of them to buck the party label. A vast majority of independents, 75 to 90 percent, have no trouble identifying their preferred party, and they nearly always vote for it. It is the rancor and incivility associated with partisanship that dissuades independents from publicly showing their true colors.Independent voters are hardly a uniform voting bloc: Generally, they just about evenly divide between those who hold liberal views and usually vote for Democrats and those who are conservative and usually vote for Republicans.The bad news for Ms. Sinema — and perhaps for Democrats — is that independent candidates rarely succeed. Without a sizable Republican or Democratic base, an independent will struggle to cobble together ideologically incompatible voters who are bonded primarily by their reluctance to publicly identify with the party they secretly support.This is one area where the Trump effect has come into play. In recent Arizona elections, the state’s independents have shown that they appear to be more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. In the state’s Senate race, exit polls suggest that independents backed Mr. Kelly over his Trump-endorsed opponent, Blake Masters, by 16 percentage points, and self-identified moderates favored Mr. Kelly by 30 percentage points. Ms. Hobbs similarly won the independent vote against her Trump-endorsed opponent, Kari Lake, by seven percentage points, and she won self-identified moderates by 20 percentage points.Indeed, recent survey data I collected across Arizona shows that independents look much more like Democrats than Republicans when it comes to their disdain for Mr. Trump. Even among those Arizona independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, 40 percent see the state G.O.P. as “too conservative.”Given repeated Republican losses, it seems that Arizona Republicans — and independents, who have a large say in Arizona’s electoral outcomes — have rejected Mr. Trump as well as his chosen nominees, and this has helped usher in a wave of Democratic candidates, Ms. Sinema included.When a state’s status shifts to swing, it is often attributed to demographic change in the electorate. But in Arizona, that is not likely the case, or at least that isn’t the full story. And this is why the outlook for Democrats might be troubling.Sure, Arizona boasts high population growth in urban areas like Maricopa County. But voter data does not support theories that a transforming electorate is shifting electoral tides. Over time, voter registration percentages have shown Republicans declining slightly but maintaining their numerical advantage.That shift is probably better attributed to changes in the politicians who are running rather than to the people deciding whether to vote for them.If she had remained a Democrat, Ms. Sinema would not be the first politician who faced harsh criticism for frustrating her party, and many of them prevailed in subsequent elections. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are examples.If nothing changes and Ms. Sinema runs for re-election, her former party will be left in a pickle. She probably can’t win as an independent, especially if her popularity doesn’t improve quickly, but a Democrat (like Representative Ruben Gallego, who has hinted at a Senate bid) running against Ms. Sinema and a Republican is also unlikely to win.So for Democrats, Ms. Sinema has made a daunting Senate map in 2024 even worse. There will be 33 Senate seats up for re-election, and Democrats will defend 23 (including Ms. Sinema’s). Three of those seats are in states that Mr. Trump won by at least eight percentage points in 2020: Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.When Republicans in Arizona and other states leave Mr. Trump behind, Democrats will lose this electorally useful foil. States where Democrats enjoyed upset victories against MAGA Republicans might see some of their gains rolled back, especially if the Republican Party rejects Mr. Trump and elevates candidates who better represent more of the party’s voter base.Ms. Sinema’s move has just added another degree of difficulty to a formidable Senate puzzle for Democrats in 2024 — and beyond.Samara Klar is a political scientist at the University of Arizona and an author of “Independent Politics: How Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction.”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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      Despite Modest GOP Gains, Democrats Maintain Grasp on Suburbs

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      MARIETTA, Ga. — Suburban voters famously rejected Donald J. Trump twice, first by handing Democrats a congressional majority in 2018, then by largely paving the road to the White House for President Biden in 2020.Heading into this November, a key question was whether suburbanites would remain in the Democratic camp again, or snap back to favor Republicans, delivering the kind of sharp rebuke that presidents have come to expect in their first midterm election.The answer: Despite a small swing of the pendulum back toward the G.O.P. in 2022, Democrats largely held onto their gains among suburban voters, particularly in battleground states.How the suburban vote shifted between electionsDemocrats made big gains in the suburbs between 2016 and 2020. Republicans made up some ground in 2022, but in most areas those gains were smaller than the Democratic shift in previous elections. More

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      2022 Review: How Republicans Lost Despite Winning the Popular Vote

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      There were several reasons Republicans struggled to translate votes into seats, including candidate quality and strength in the wrong places.The Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, backed by Donald Trump, lost his race.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesHere’s a figure about the 2022 midterm elections that might surprise you: Republicans won the national House popular vote by three percentage points — 51 percent to 48 percent. They still won by two points after adjusting for races in which only one major party was on the ballot.Yes, that’s right: Republicans won the popular vote by a clear if modest margin, even as Democrats gained seats in the Senate and came within thousands of votes of holding the House.If you’re looking to make sense of the 2022 election, the Republican lead in the national vote might just be the missing piece that helps fit a few odd puzzle pieces together.The national polls, which showed growing Republican strength over the last month of the campaign, were dead-on. On paper, this ought to have meant a good — if not necessarily great — Republican election year.Imagine, for instance, if the Republicans had run seven points better than Joe Biden’s 2020 showing in every state and district, as they did nationwide. They would have picked up 21 seats in the House, about the number many analysts expected. They also would have easily won the Senate, flipping Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and holding Pennsylvania.Yet for a variety of reasons, Republicans failed to translate their strength into anything like a clear victory.Real Republican strengthThe Republican win in the national House popular vote is not illusion. It is not a result of uncontested races. It is not the result of lopsided turnout, like Californians staying home while Texans showed up to vote. The Republicans would still lead even if every county or state made up the same share of the electorate that it did in 2020.It is not just about one or two Republican shining successes, like Florida or New York, either. Republicans outran Donald J. Trump’s 2020 showing in nearly every state. The exceptions are all very small states with one or two districts, where individual races can be unrepresentative of the broader national picture.Under a lot of circumstances, this Republican showing would be impressive. Consider, for instance, that Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House in all four of the crucial Senate states where Republicans fell short: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. More

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      Lauren Boebert, Far-Right Firebrand, Wins Re-election After Recount

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      Ms. Boebert defeated Adam Frisch in Colorado’s Republican-leaning Third District to win a second term in the House.After a recount in a remarkably close race, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, known for heckling President Biden during his State of the Union speech, arming herself on Capitol Hill and ignoring Covid mask rules, won her bid for a second term. Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, announced the results on Monday.Ms. Boebert, 35, staved off a fierce challenge from Adam Frisch, a Democratic businessman and former Aspen, Colo., city councilman, in the state’s Republican-leaning Third District.Mr. Frisch, who faced a deficit of roughly 500 votes out of more than 327,000 cast, gained just two votes in the automatic recount. In the end, Ms. Boebert won with 50.06 percent of the vote, to Mr. Frisch’s 49.89 percent.On Twitter on Sunday, before the recount was made official by the secretary of state, Ms. Boebert said: “Our conservative policies will help all Americans to overcome the challenges we face so each of us has the opportunity to live our very best life. Thank you for entrusting me to help lead the way. I’ll be working every day to prove I can get the job done right.”Mr. Frisch had sought to cast Ms. Boebert as a flamethrower in an increasingly polarized Congress, saying she was focused more on placating the Republican Party’s far-right Trump wing than on reducing inflation and adding jobs.He presented himself in a television ad as not a typical Democrat, saying that he would not vote for Representative Nancy Pelosi for House speaker and that he supported border security. He showed footage of himself hunting with a shotgun.But a disadvantage in name recognition and the makeup of voters in the district proved too much for Mr. Frisch to overcome against Ms. Boebert, who has drawn national attention for her incendiary actions.On Monday evening, he released a statement on his loss. “While we hoped for a different outcome,” Mr. Frisch said, “we defied incredible odds with the closeness of this race.” He added, “I am confident that the coalition of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters we built throughout this campaign to reject hate and extremism in Southern and Western Colorado will grow into the future.”Along with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a fellow Republican also in her first term, Ms. Boebert brought a no-holds-barred brand of politics to the House, feeding off a social media echo chamber of loyalists who backed former President Donald J. Trump. That has put Ms. Boebert at odds with platforms like Twitter, which temporarily suspended her account after she spread the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged.Her rhetoric and her style of politics also made her a target of Democrats during the Republican primary, many of whom crossed party lines to support her Republican challenger, driven by fears of her extremism.Ms. Boebert won her seat in Congress in 2020, when she unseated a five-term incumbent in the Republican primary before going on to win the general election. Until then, she had run a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado’s ranch country — the Shooters Grill — where she encouraged staff members to carry firearms and defied restrictions by staying open during the pandemic. More

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      Inside the Battle for Control of the Republican National Committee

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      Ronna McDaniel, the longtime chair of the committee, has become a vessel for discontent over the party’s losses in 2022.As anger and frustration ripple through the Republican Party over its underwhelming performance in this year’s midterm elections, Republicans are offering a number of explanations for their losses.Bad candidates. Weak fund-raising. The looming presence of Donald Trump. Election denial. The Democrats’ edge in the mechanics of running campaigns. Strategic and tactical errors by Republican leaders. Too much cultural red meat and not enough serious answers to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans.Some in the Trump wing of the party have settled on their own scapegoat: Ronna McDaniel, who has been the chair of the Republican National Committee since 2017. Coming after McDaniel reshaped the committee in the former president’s image — it was even paying his considerable legal bills until recently — this discontent is a striking turn of events.The committee’s 168 members from across the country will vote on McDaniel’s re-election in January. And the race has heated up over the last two weeks.She has already deterred one challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, this year’s Republican nominee for governor of New York, who briefly explored a run — but pulled back days later after finding only a few dozen potential supporters within the committee.While McDaniel appears to have shored up her internal position, she is also contending with a hunger for change from outside the party’s formal structures. And the one person who might be able to secure her standing — Trump — has told aides that he is staying out of the race.Roughly two-thirds of committee members are already backing McDaniel, according to a letter circulated by her allies.The letter praises McDaniel’s investments in state parties, community centers and “election integrity units”; her decision to cut ties with the Committee on Presidential Debates, which hosts those much-anticipated events every four years; and her “ongoing investments in data, digital, and in a permanent ground game in key locations around the country.” McDaniel’s allies also credit her with raising $1.5 billion as party chair, including $325 million for the 2022 midterms, and for making gains in party registration in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.The race for R.N.C. chair is just one window into the Republican Party’s post-midterm demolition derby — with governors and senators leading an increasingly vocal anti-Trump chorus — but a revealing one. It’s proving especially useful for those who would prefer to change the subject from Trump, whose third presidential run has landed in the party with a mixture of trepidation and condemnation.But it would be mistaken to see this as a proxy war over Trump, party insiders say. McDaniel’s supporters include longtime Trump backers like David Bossie, a Republican operative and committee member from Maryland — and she has declined to fault the former president in recent interviews. Her critics include members like Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, who has been one of Trump’s most vocal detractors.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Kyrsten Sinema’s Exit From the Democratic Party

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      More from our inbox:As History Shows, Incumbents Have the EdgeBlack HomeownershipAn Opera Fan’s DreamAlone, and FreeKyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator, plans to keep her committee posts.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Leaving Party, Sinema Rattles a Race in 2024” (front page, Dec. 10):Senator Kyrsten Sinema is being deceitful in justifying her decision to leave the Democratic Party in favor of being an independent. This isn’t a principled decision. It’s a self-serving and strategic move on her part.Ms. Sinema is unpopular with Democrats in her home state, many of whom feel betrayed by her failure to support the progressive agenda she led them to believe she was committed to. In fact, she’s been a self-absorbed political opportunist primarily serving special interests and not the good of average citizens whom she pretends to care so much about.She claims that she wants to escape the partisanship and extremism that afflicts Congress, creating a false equivalency between the two parties. Reality check: It’s only the Republican Party under the thumb of Donald Trump that has sunk into corruption, hyperpartisan conduct and extremism.Ms. Sinema has been an obstacle to even the most widely popular and beneficial legislation, playing games with the Senate leadership and trying to position herself as someone needing to be courted for her support again and again.If she cared half as much about the citizens she represents as she cares about her wardrobe styling and need for attention, she might be more credible in declaring herself an independent.T.R. JahnsHemet, Calif.To the Editor:Senator Kyrsten Sinema officially ditched the Democratic Party and announced that she has registered as an independent. The move wasn’t entirely a shocker, yet it was still a gut punch for Arizona Democrats who worked hard to send a Democrat to Washington.I understand that she is ditching the Democratic Party because she knows that she can’t win a primary as a Democrat. Her past behavior suggest she’s adept at ditching anyone or anything no longer useful to her.She began her public life as a Green Party activist. She ran for the State Legislature as an independent, which didn’t work. Her big break came when she became a Democrat. In that role she created all sorts of drama and attention-grabbing stunts such as her thumbs-down vote on raising the minimum wage for hardworking Americans.Her antics were guaranteed to garner attention and annoy. For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday ripped into Ms. Sinema: “Not once in this long soliloquy does Sinema offer a single concrete value or policy she believes in. She lays out no goals for Arizonans, no vision, no commitments.”Kyrsten Sinema appears to be the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time.Richard A. FrenchPasadena, Calif.To the Editor:Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to go independent may be a healthy sign for U.S. politics. The Australian federal election in May saw a decline in the vote for both major parties, and a historic wave of votes for independents who were capable, professional women. Their presence is injecting new vigor and accountability into our Parliament.Ray EdmondsonKambah, AustraliaTo the Editor:The only politician more self-centered, selfish and self-aggrandizing than Kyrsten Sinema is Donald Trump.Michael K. CantwellDelray Beach, Fla.As History Shows, Incumbents Have the Edge Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Strong Election Showing Eases Democrats’ Fears of Biden ’24,” by Katie Glueck (Political Memo, front page, Nov. 28):A key reason that Democrats should support President Biden for re-election is that history shows that a sitting president has the best chance of winning. Several recent Democrats have run again despite low approval ratings halfway through their first terms, including Harry Truman in 1948, Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012. Each was re-elected.In contrast, incumbent presidents who voluntarily give up the White House or are subject to a primary challenge are almost always a political disaster for the party in power. L.B.J.’s 1968 decision not to run left the nation in political turmoil, resulting in a Nixon presidency that undermined Americans’ faith in government. Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy in 1980 and never recovered. George H.W. Bush was weakened by Pat Buchanan in 1992, then lost to Bill Clinton.In any event, America needs Mr. Biden to deal with a series of problems, including an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party, a delicate U.S. economy, Russia’s war on Ukraine and the growing climate crisis — problems that he has proved well qualified to address.As long as Mr. Biden remains healthy and able to perform as president, Democrats would be crazy to nominate anyone else.Paul BledsoeWashingtonThe writer is a lecturer at American University’s School of Public Affairs and served as a staff member for the Senate Finance Committee and Clinton White House.Black HomeownershipNearly 45 percent of Black households own their homes, compared with more than 74 percent of white households, a new report has found.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Racial Gap Begins at the Mortgage Application” (Real Estate, Dec. 4):It’s encouraging to see The Times cover the continuing racial discrimination in homeownership. As your headline aptly states, our unacceptable disparities result from discrimination in every aspect of home buying for Black people — from loan approval to interest rates to home appraisals.In New Jersey, like across the U.S., this problem stubbornly persists. About four in 10 Black families in the state own their homes, compared with more than three-quarters of white families. High-income Black families are more likely to be denied a loan than low-income white applicants.Appraisal discrimination, one piece of the puzzle, is finally getting due attention in the Garden State with the Legislature poised to pass a bill to combat it early next year.If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that racism is baked into our policies. It’s time for the federal government, as well as states like New Jersey, to step up and design policies that root out ongoing barriers to homeownership and other drivers of wealth for Black and other households of color.Laura SullivanNewark, N.J.The writer is director of the economic justice program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.An Opera Fan’s Dream Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Reviewing the Opera? Nah, I’m in It” (Arts, Dec. 8):I send my deepest gratitude to the critic Joshua Barone for the immersive and entertaining account of his experience as an extra in the Metropolitan Opera’s extravagant production of “Aida.”Some little kids dream of being an astronaut, a U.S. president, a famous movie star. But since first being brought to the opera at age 4 to see “Tosca,” and staying awake through its entirety, I’ve had the fantasy dream of somehow being on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage (or, alternately, in the orchestra pit).I’ve been a lifelong operagoer since then, and now, well past middle age, I found myself in a state of complete vicarious joy reading Mr. Barone’s “inside scoop.” Bravo!Jane Garfield FrankQueensAlone, and Free Ben WisemanTo the Editor:Re “I Live Alone. Really, I’m Not That Pathetic,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion, nytimes.com, Dec. 9):I am someone who grew up with seven siblings. My own “alone home,” for me, represents freedom and euphoria.To cope with societal expectations, we one-member households need to remember: The most important thing about living alone is that it’s not your job to worry about what other people think.Ted GallagherNew York More

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      Meet Kyrsten Sinema, Former Democrat of Arizona

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I hope I’ve succeeded in turning you into a World Cup fan. In the meantime, any choice words about, or for, Kyrsten Sinema, former Democrat of Arizona?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, you’ve at least turned me into a fan of the Times coverage of World Cup … activities. I also sorta like times like this when there are a billion different games on TV — not just soccer — and for a while every day, people don’t feel obliged to think about the rest of the world.Bret: Such as …Gail: Such as Kyrsten Sinema. Not a fan of hers from the get-go. Always seemed as if her compulsive effort to prove she wasn’t really a loyal Democrat was less about political independence and more about making wealthy donors happy.Bret: And this is on the theory that other politicians don’t care for what their wealthy donors think?Gail: But her official spin is that the two-party system is broken, and virtue lies in standing outside as an independent. I hate that kind of thinking.Bret: Whereas I love it. To me, the choice these days between Republicans and Democrats is about as appealing as a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter: Either you get your heart cut out or your brain removed, and both get served with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti.Seriously, you don’t see any virtue to wanting to break this awful political duopoly?Gail: Virtue, for me, lies in fighting to make the two parties better. Pick the one that’s closest to your beliefs and get busy. Fight for the good local leaders and nominees.It’s way easier to just announce you’re superior to both of them and start your own group. The new gang probably won’t last long, and even if it does, its big achievement will most likely be to draw votes away from the major party candidates you most agree with.Never recovered from Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy for president in 2000 — a noble quest on the issues front that wound up costing Al Gore the job.Bret: A few years ago I would have agreed with you. But the Republican Party is pretty much irredeemable, while the Democrats are … just not the team I’m ever going to bat for.Gail: Come on in. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are waiting with open arms …Bret: Not so sure the Dems would ever want me in the first place: I heart Texas not taxes.As for Sinema, having her join someone like Maine’s Angus King as an independent shows it’s at least possible to have an alternative. I realize she has some very self-interested political reasons for doing so, since the move will spare her a primary challenge from the left if she runs for re-election in 2024. But it also reminds the party establishments that they shouldn’t take their centrist voters for granted. Now I wish a few sane-minded Republicans might go ahead and join her. Lisa Murkowski, hello?Gail: Hey, weird that of the two of us, I’m the one who thinks somebody should try to save the Republican Party.Bret: Raising the dead is beyond our powers, Gail.Gail: You know I don’t do foreign affairs, but I do feel obliged to ask you about Brittney Griner. Do you think Joe Biden did the right thing in making the trade that got her out of prison in Russia?Bret: Well, obviously I’m happy for Griner and her family that she’s back after her 10-month ordeal. And it says everything about the moral difference between the United States and Russia that they will take a harmless person hostage so they can trade her for one of their most notorious gangsters.On the other hand, I don’t understand why we didn’t prioritize the release of Paul Whelan, an American who has been wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for four years but doesn’t have the benefit of Griner’s celebrity. Nor should we forget Marc Fogel, a 61-year-old American teacher trapped in one of Putin’s prisons. My advice to the Biden administration is to tell Russia that $1 billion of its foreign reserves will be seized for every additional day these two stay in prison.Gail: Hope they’re listening.Bret: Oh, and speaking of dealing with gangsters — your thoughts on the current crop of legal cases against the former guy?Gail: I’ve never thought — and still don’t — that a former president is going to go to jail, even for stealing federal documents or rousing violent crowds to march on the Capitol.Bret: Agree. Alas.Gail: But I’ve always had a yearning that he might wind up bankrupt and, say, living in a Motel 6. Knew that was impossible — told myself to remember all the money he can make just on speaking tours or hosting parties at Mar-a-Lago.Bret: Pretty depressing how American culture has descended from “My Dinner With Andre” to that dinner with Kanye.Gail: Now, though, I’m sort of wondering. Is there going to be a market for this guy — chooser of terrible Senate candidates and breaker of bread with neo-Nazis — even just as a celebrity?Bret: I had nearly lost hope that the day would ever come, but I think we are finally watching Trump self-destruct before our eyes even faster than anyone else can destroy him. The midterm results seem to have persuaded a critical mass of Republican voters and politicians that he’s toxic for their chances. Dinner with his antisemitic pals seems to have been the icing on the cake — or whatever the exact opposite of “icing on the cake” is. Toxic algae in the cesspool?Gail: Rotting rutabaga in the refuse? Sorry, that doesn’t actually make much sense. I was seduced by all the R’s.Bret: Gail, would you mind if I rant for a minute?Gail: Bret, I love it when you rant. Even when I hate it.Bret: There’s a special place in hell for the Paul Ryan Republicans — let’s call them PRR’s. What I mean is a certain type of well-heeled, intellectually minded conservative who never liked Trump’s person or politics and who occasionally tut-tutted at his vilest excesses, but who consistently made excuses for him and his presidency while heaping scorn on Never Trumpers as a bunch of virtue-signaling prigs. These Trump-appeasing PRR’s were prepared to defend and vote for him again until the day after the midterms, when they finally realized that he was a titanic political liability.Gail: Well, I truly do love this rant. Go on.Bret: To adapt something Winston Churchill purportedly said to Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938: In 2016 conservatives were given the choice between electoral defeat and personal dishonor. They chose dishonor. In the end, they still got defeated.Gail: You know I’m going to ask who’s a Churchillian pick in the Republican world. For instance, Ron DeSantis was never a huge Trump pal, but I think that was only because he was eyeing his job.Bret: So, weirdly, I have much less of a moral objection to those Republicans like DeSantis who liked Trump to begin with, whether because they agreed with most of his policies or appreciated his thumb-in-the-eye personality, or both. At least they came about their support for Trump honestly, without convoluted rationalizations and self-exculpations and various suspensions of disbelief. Of course I don’t agree with them, but I long ago stopped disdaining them.Speaking of disdain, any views on all of these disclosures about Twitter’s speech policies?Gail: Is there any way we can make it illegal for the richest man in the world to own one of the largest social networks? Guess not, huh?Bret: Probably not, though I doubt Musk will profit from the acquisition.Gail: Definitely felt sorry for the Twitter workers who discovered that Musk was putting beds in their work space. And his wild political seesawing would ruin the influence of anybody who wasn’t closing in on a quarter of a trillion dollars.But here we are, and I don’t have any great strategy for making him behave in a more responsible way when it comes to things like … keeping violent hatemongers off his platform. Do you have one?Bret: Violent hatemongers aside, I thought it was pretty appalling to see the lengths to which pre-Musk Twitter went to ban legitimate news stories, like The New York Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and to downplay views that went against conventional wisdom, like the Stanford professor of medicine who warned about the ill-effects of lockdowns, and to coordinate its decisions with the Biden team — and then mislead the public about what it was doing. Even progressives like Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in Congress, warned Twitter about its anti-free speech attitude, which is entirely to his credit and not at all to theirs.Gail: Bret scores …Bret: I guess the point is, we don’t want giant corporations banning political speech, whether it comes from the left or the right, and that goes especially for companies whose entire business model relies on the principle of free speech. For exposing this, I have to give Musk credit.Gail: We’ll pick this up again, Bret. Somehow I suspect Elon Musk will follow us into the new year.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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      Want to Know Why Democrats Lose Rural America?

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      STORM LAKE, Iowa — Democrats are getting their derrières handed to them by the kickers and the Busch Light drinkers from out here on the edge of the Great Plains all the way to Appalachia, where the Republicans roam.So what do the Democrats do?Dump the Iowa caucuses into the ditch. At the hand of President Biden, no less. He decreed that South Carolina’s primary should go first on the presidential nominating calendar, displacing Iowa. The Democratic National Committee seems happy to oblige.We get it. Let someone else take a turn up front. But discarding Iowa is not a great way to mend fences in rural America — where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable. The Democratic big shots hated Iowa’s pride of place since the caucuses rose to prominence a half-century ago because money couldn’t control the outcome. Jimmy Carter broke through from Plains, Ga., with nothing but a toothy smile and an honest streak. Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously — you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects.Candidates weren’t crazy about it. The media hated Storm Lake ice in January. We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer.Iowa has its problems. We are too white. The caucuses are complicated, confusing and clunky. The evening gatherings in homes, school gyms and libraries are not fully accessible and not as convenient as a primary for people with jobs and kids at home.But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House. Iowa actively encouraged Black candidates to challenge the white establishment. Mr. Obama beat Hillary Clinton here. Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle. Black, white or Latino, it’s organization that matters in Iowa. You have to herd your people to the caucus and keep them in your pen for an hour while other campaigns try to poach them. It’s town hall democracy. Mr. Obama won with it. Candidates who ran feeble campaigns have to blame something. Latinos in Storm Lake overwhelmingly caucused for Mr. Sanders. Julián Castro can complain all he wants.The talking heads say Iowa messed up by not reporting the results quickly. The problem was that a cellphone app suggested to the Iowa Democratic Party by the Democratic National Committee crashed. The democratic process worked — the app didn’t.Anyone looking for an excuse to excise Iowa and further alienate rural voters could find one. The time was ripe.Mr. Biden doesn’t owe Iowa a thing. He finished fourth in the caucuses. He did owe Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, big time for an endorsement just ahead of the Palmetto State primary, where Black voters put Mr. Biden over the top. It was sweet payback. We get that, too.Actually, the caucuses haven’t been the best thing for Iowa. The TV ads never stop. It puts you in a bad mood to think everything is going wrong all the time. We asked good questions, and the candidates gave good answers, then forgot about it all. Despite all the attention, nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared, and the undocumented dwell in the shadows. Republican or Democrat, the outcome was pretty much the same. At least the Republicans will cut your taxes.So it’s OK that South Carolina goes first. Iowa can do without the bother. The Republicans are sticking with Iowa, the Democrats consider it a lost cause. No Democratic state senator lives in a sizable part of western Iowa. Republicans control the governor’s office, the Legislature and soon the entire congressional delegation. Nobody organized the thousands of registered Latino voters in meatpacking towns like Storm Lake. Democrats are barely trying. The results show it.The old brick factory haunts along the mighty Mississippi River are dark, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and everyone else who sold us out for “free trade.” Keokuk, the gate city to the river, was once a bustling industrial and shipping hub but recently lost its hospital. Your best hope in rural Jefferson was to land a casino to save the town. You essentially can’t haul a load of hogs to the packinghouse in a pickup anymore — you need a contract and a semi. The sale barn and open markets are quaint memories. John Deere tractor cabs will be made in Mexico, not Waterloo. Our rivers are rank with manure. It tends to frustrate those left behind, and the resentment builds to the point of insurrection when it is apparent that the government is not here to help you.It’s hard to feel from 30,000 feet. So Donald Trump landed in Sioux City on the eve of the midterm election to claim his stake before a large crowd buffeted by the gales out of Nebraska. “The Iowa way of life is under siege,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”They loved him. The Democrats view the crowd as deplorable, and told Iowa to get lost.Art Cullen is the editor of The Storm Lake Times and author of “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.”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