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      Biden Faces One More Inflection Point After a Life of Struggle

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      President Biden had hoped to preside over a moment of reconciliation after the turmoil of the Trump years. But the fever of polarizing politics has not broken ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Before heading into a community center for a campaign rally the other day, President Biden stopped to speak to the overflow crowd that could not squeeze into the small facility.As often happens whenever Mr. Biden finds a microphone and a willing audience, his family made a cameo appearance. This time it was his long-dead grandparents. “Every time I’d walk out of my grandpop’s house, he’d yell, ‘Joey, keep the faith,’” the president recounted. “My grandmother would yell, ‘No, Joey, spread it.’ Go spread the faith.”Mr. Biden has been spreading the faith across the country in recent days, undaunted by the polls and prognosticators forecasting a devastating defeat for his party in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Faith has been Mr. Biden’s calling card in his nearly two years in office — faith in the system in which he has been a fixture for more than half a century, faith that he could repair the fissures of a broken society, faith that he and he alone could beat former President Donald J. Trump if they face off again in 2024.It is not a faith shared by everyone, not even among fellow Democrats, not even among his own advisers and allies, some of whom view the coming days with dread. After turning to Mr. Biden for a sense of normalcy two years ago following the turmoil of Mr. Trump, voters now appear poised to register discontent that he has not delivered it the way they expected, regardless of whether it was realistic in the first place.History has rarely favored first-term presidents in midterm elections and Mr. Biden’s party does not even have to lose in a landslide for him to lose the presidency as he has known it. The turnover of just a handful of House seats and a single Senate seat will severely constrain his options going forward and raise questions about whether he should lead the Democrats into the next election.And so these are frustrating, even perplexing times for Mr. Biden, who according to confidants had expected the fever of polarizing politics to have broken by now and was surprised that it had not. The presidency he envisioned, one where he presided over a moment of reconciliation, is not the presidency he has gotten. He thought that if he could simply govern well, everything would work out, which in hindsight strikes some around him as shockingly naïve if somewhat endearing.Mr. Biden speaking during a campaign event at MiraCosta College in San Diego for Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California. Mr. Levin is running for re-election.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“In the old days, when I was a United States senator, we’d argue like hell with one another, disagree fundamentally, and go down to the Senate dining room and have lunch together,” Mr. Biden reflected to an audience in San Diego last week. “Because we disagreed on the issues, but we agreed on the notion that the institutions matter.”“Well, the institutions are under full-blown attack,” he added. “I’m already being told, if they win back the House and Senate, they’re going to impeach me. I don’t know what the hell they’ll impeach me for.”Like other presidents in stressful moments, he has turned to Abraham Lincoln for inspiration. As he traveled in recent days, he brought with him “And There Was Light,” the new biography of the 16th president by Jon Meacham, the historian who has become a friend and outside adviser to Mr. Biden.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.“One possible lesson for President Biden, who’s engaged in a profound battle to preserve the Constitution and the rule of law, is that moral commitment matters and can prevail, no matter how difficult the struggle,” Mr. Meacham said. “There will be bad days and good days. The key thing is to remember why you’re fighting for what you’re fighting for.”The bad days often seem to outnumber the good days in this challenging autumn, although Mr. Biden, the self-described “wacko Irishman,” would hardly put it that way. “I’m optimistic,” he says regularly, even while outlining all the ways his optimism is taking a beating lately.He does not indulge often in introspection, nor subject himself to much cross-examination about where he believes he has gone wrong, if in fact he does. He avoids interviews with major networks and newspapers, preferring friendlier questioners like the podcaster who told him mid-interview recently that “you’re the coolest guy in the world.”As he approaches his 80th birthday this month, Mr. Biden’s life is less in his control than it has been in years. He starts his day at 8 a.m. with exercises, then heads to the Oval Office, returning to the residence around 7 p.m. for dinner with Jill Biden. Since she teaches in the morning, she goes to bed earlier, around 9:30 p.m., while he tells people that he stays up with his thick briefing book until around 11 p.m. He does not read much for pleasure, and when he watches television, it is mainly the news or sports.He elliptically acknowledges the effects of age. During a conversation with the actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett for their podcast “SmartLess,” Mr. Biden said he cannot skip workouts without penalty. “The thing I learned, the difference in age, if I let it go for a week, I feel it,” he said. “I used to be able to go for a week and nothing would change.”Perhaps sharing more than his wife might prefer, the president confided that Mrs. Biden insists he combat the effects of age in other ways. “She gets very upset if I have not fully shaven, all this excessive amount of hair I have,” he said. “You know what I mean?”His family remains an inseparable element of his life and his politics. Barely a speech on the trail goes by that he does not mention his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. His dad and mom are quoted with great regularity. He makes a point of texting or calling each of his seven grandchildren every day.And so those around him know the most important voice in his ear as he contemplates what comes next is Jill Biden. While aides make tentative plans for a re-election campaign in case he opts for one, the president has not had extensive conversations about it with some of his closest aides. He insists to them, though, that Mrs. Biden is all-in if he wants to run, a self-justifying contention some view with skepticism.In that sense, the return to the campaign trail this fall after a largely shelter-in-place Covid-19 campaign in 2020 has served as something of a test run of what a 2024 bid might look like.He is not a rip-roaring speaker nor does he have the celebrity factor that electrifies a crowd beyond the trappings of the office. His crowds have been enthusiastic but nowhere near as large as his recent predecessors drew at similar points.At an event in Hallandale Beach, Fla., one of his warm-up speakers had to goad the audience into showing a little more spirit. “Come on, people, let’s wake up!” exhorted Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida. “We got the president of the United States in the house. Come on, now! I know you got a little more energy than I hear.”At a rally in Miami Gardens later that day, he was an hour late and the crowd, which had been there for hours to get through security, had faded by the time he was halfway through his speech, some even slipping out before he was finished.Mr. Biden has adjusted his style lately, abandoning the lectern for a hand-held mic that lets him better project his voice, which is softening with age, and allows him to wander the stage, hand in pocket. But his speeches are peppered with familiar Biden-isms like “I’m serious” and “look folks” and “I really mean it.”Mr. Biden seems to think he comes across as funnier than he does. “Not a joke!” he says again and again, four, eight, 10 times in a single speech. In San Diego last week, he told one audience that his remarks were “not a joke” a full 17 times — and threw in “I’m not joking” four more times. (A Biden speech is like a drinking game for political nerds — “Not a joke!” Drink!)Indeed, Mr. Biden has always connected with audiences not through humor so much as humanity. His speeches are animated by stories of pain — his young wife and daughter killed in a car accident, his own near-death experience with two brain aneurysms, his son Beau’s death. He still summons the name of the nurse who took care of him in the hospital more than three decades ago.“People understand that I understand loss and I think it’s so important that people understand that from that loss — the pain never goes away but you can do incredible things,” he said last week. “The person you lost never leaves your heart. I don’t know how many times I ask myself what would Beau do?”Even now, his childhood struggles with stuttering define him. To this day, he divides his speech texts with hash marks, a technique he learned to make public speaking earlier. And the insecurities that come from it are never far from the surface. He brought it up last week seemingly at random.“I used to ta- ta- ta- talk — talk like that wh- wh- wh- when I w- wa- was a kid,” he told one audience. “It’s awful hard to ask the girl, ‘Will you go to the p- pr- pr- prom with me?’ And it sounds funny, but guess what? It makes you feel like an idiot.”Anticipating the next few days, Mr. Biden refuses to concede defeat. He was encouraged by the energy of Saturday night’s rally in Pennsylvania with former President Barack Obama and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate candidate, as well as positive indicators from Arizona and New Hampshire.His mood, aides said, is one of fighting through the tape. “He’s spent the last weeks pushing us — what else can he do?” said Anita Dunn, his senior adviser.But if he takes a licking on Tuesday, aides said, he will own it and move ahead. In a life of falling and getting back up, it would be one more stumble, not the end. On that at least, he has faith. More

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      Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress

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      What Republicans are offering, if they win the 2022 election, is not conservatism. It is crisis. More accurately, it is crises. A debt-ceiling crisis. An election crisis. And a body blow to the government’s efforts to prepare for a slew of other crises we know are coming.That is not to say there aren’t bills House Republicans would like to pass. There are. The closest thing to an agenda that congressional Republicans have released is the House Republican Study Committee’s 122-page budget. The study committee is meant to be something akin to an internal think tank for House Republicans. It counts well over half of House Republicans as members, and includes Representatives Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik and Gary Palmer — all the leaders save for Kevin McCarthy.After spending some time with the document, what I’d say is that it lacks even the pretense of prioritization, preferring instead the comforts of quantity. It lists bill after bill that House Republicans would like to pass. Legislation that would upend the structure and powers of the government, like the bill sponsored by Representative Byron Donalds that seeks to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, gets exactly the same treatment as Representative Bob Good’s bill to force schools to release their correspondence with teachers’ unions about when to reopen, or Representative Michael Cloud’s resolution disapproving of vaccinating 11-year-olds in Washington, D.C. There are plans to privatize much of Medicare and repeal much of Obamacare and to raise the Social Security age and no fewer than eight bills attacking Critical Race Theory.But even if Republicans win the House and Senate, they cannot pass this agenda. It would fall to President Biden’s veto. What Republicans could do is trigger crises they hope would give them leverage to force Biden to accept this agenda or perhaps force him out of office. And even where Republican leadership does not actually believe that crisis would win them the day, they may have to trigger it anyway to prove their commitment to the cause or to avoid the wrath of Donald Trump.Start with the debt ceiling. U.S. Treasuries are the bedrock asset of the global financial system. They are the safest of safe investments, the security that countries and funds buy when they must be absolutely sure that their money is safe. Much else in the financial system is priced on this assumption of American reliability: Lenders begin with the “riskless rate of return” — that is, the interest rate on U.S. treasuries — and then add their premiums atop that. If the U.S. government defaults on its own debt, it would trigger financial chaos. (I guess that’s one way to deal with inflation: Crash the global economy!)Republicans have been perfectly clear, though: They see the debt limit as leverage in negotiations with Biden. “We’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader and potential Speaker of the House, told Punchbowl News. “We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right?”McCarthy may sound measured, but that he would open the door to this tactic at all either shows his weakness or his recklessness. A hostage is leverage only if you’re willing to shoot. And there will be plenty of voices demanding that Republicans pull the trigger or at least prove their willingness to do so.One of those voices will be Trump’s. “It’s crazy what’s happening with this debt ceiling,” the former president recently told a conservative radio host. “Mitch McConnell keeps allowing it to happen. I mean, they ought to impeach Mitch McConnell if he allows that.”To put it gently, the record of Republican Party leaders resisting the demands of their party’s hard-liners, even when they think those demands are mad, is not inspiring. McConnell and the former Republican Speaker John Boehner didn’t have enough command of their members to reject Ted Cruz’s doomed 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, which both of them thought to be lunacy. And Cruz’s influence with the Republican base and the G.O.P.’s congressional caucus in 2013 was nothing compared with the power Trump now wields.That’s not the only looming crisis. At this point, much is known about the myriad attempts Trump and his backers made to subvert the result of the 2020 election. The country’s saving grace was that there was little preparation behind that effort, and Republicans in key positions — to say nothing of Democrats — proved hostile to the project. But as The Times reported in October, more than 370 Republicans running for office in 2022 have said they doubt the results of the last election, and “hundreds of these candidates are favored to win their races.”The 2022 election is very likely to sweep into power hundreds of Republicans committed to making sure that the 2024 election goes their way, no matter how the vote tally turns out. Hardly anything has been done to fortify the system against chicanery since Jan. 6. What if congressional Republicans refuse to certify the results in key states, as a majority of House Republicans did in 2020? What if, when Trump calls Republican Secretaries of State or governors or board of elections supervisors in 2024, demanding they find the votes he wishes he had or disqualify the votes his opponent does have, they try harder to comply? The possibilities for crisis abound.Here, too, Republican officeholders who don’t fully buy into Trumpist conspiracy theories may find themselves rationalizing compliance. This is a movie we have already watched. Most of the House Republicans who voted against certification of the 2020 election knew Trump’s claims were absurd. But they chose to hide behind Representative Mike Johnson’s bizarre, evasive rationale for voting as Trump demanded they vote without needing to embrace the things he said. Johnson’s solution was to suggest that pandemic-era changes to voting procedures were unconstitutional, thus rendering the results uncertifiable. It was nonsense, and worse than that, it was cowardice. But it’s a reminder that the problem is not merely the Republican officeholders who would force an electoral crisis. The enabling threat is the much larger mass of their colleagues who have already proven they will do nothing to object.Not all crises begin with a political showdown. Some could come from a virus mutating toward greater lethality. Some could come from a planet warming outsides the narrow band that has fostered human civilization. Some could come from the expansionary ambitions of dictators and autocrats. The past few years have brought vivid examples of all three. But particularly over the past year, the Republican Party has shown itself to be somewhere between dismissive of — and hostile toward — the preparations and responses these possible crises demand.Last week, I criticized the Biden administration for failing to find a party-line path to financing pandemic preparedness. But such a path was only necessary because the Republican Party has swung so hard against efforts to prepare for the next pandemic. The Republican Study Committee’s budget is a vivid example of where the party has gone on Covid. It is not that Republicans are pro-Covid. But the party’s energy is very much anti-anti-Covid. It includes policy after policy attacking vaccine mandates, emergency powers and vaccinations for children. But in its 100-plus pages I could find nothing proposing ways to make sure we are better prepared for the next viral threat.It is easy to imagine what such policies might be: The government was slow to authorize certain new treatments and tests, cumbersome in its efforts to dole out money for research, and not nearly as innovative as it could have been in deploying technology to monitor new and emerging diseases. This is a libertarian, not a liberal, critique of government. But the study committee’s budget offers no discussion of how deregulation might foster a better response next time.And it’s not just Covid. Republicans have long been skeptical of efforts to prepare for climate change. The study committee’s budget is thick with plans to goose fossil fuel extraction and bar federal dollars from supporting the Paris Climate Accords. Republicans have been, shall we say, divided in their affections for Vladimir Putin, but at least in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many backed efforts to support Ukraine. But McCarthy has suggested that Republicans will cut aid to Ukraine if they win in November, and he’s far from alone in wanting to see the United States back off from the conflict.I’ll say this for Republicans. They have not hidden their intentions, nor their tactics. They have made clear what they intend to do if they win. Biden ran — and won — in 2020 promising a return to normalcy. Republicans are running in 2022 promising a return to calamity.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, Don’t Despair. There Are Bright Spots for Our Party.

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      The Democratic Party and Senator Mitch McConnell rarely see eye to eye on anything. But if Democrats hold the line in the elections on Tuesday and keep control of the Senate — and we still have a shot — it will come down to candidate quality.That’s the phrase that Mr. McConnell used this past summer alluding to his Republican Senate nominees.Going into Tuesday’s vote, Democrats face fierce headwinds like inflation and the typical pattern of losses in midterm elections for the party in power. But unlike some Republican candidates — a real-life island of misfit toys — many Democratic Senate candidates have been a source of comfort: the likable, pragmatic, low-drama Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, the heterodox populists John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Tim Ryan (Ohio). If the party can defy the odds and hold the Senate, there will be valuable lessons to take away.For many election analysts, the hopes of the summer —  that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe could help Democrats buck historical trends — look increasingly like a blue mirage, and Republicans seem likely to surf their way to a majority in the House.Yet the battle for the Senate is still raging, and largely on the strength of Mr. Kelly, Mr. Warnock, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman. Their races also offer insights that can help Democrats mitigate losses in the future and even undo some of the reputational damage that has rendered the party’s candidates unelectable in far too many places across the country.In a normal midterm year, Mr. Warnock and Mr. Kelly would be the low-hanging fruit of vulnerable Democrats, given that they eked out victories in 2020 and 2021 in purple states.But they bring to the table compelling biographies that resist caricature. Mr. Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot and astronaut whose parents were both cops. Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, quotes Scripture on the campaign trail and compares the act of voting to prayer.They’ve rejected the hair-on-fire, hyperpartisan campaign ads that endangered incumbents often rely on. Mr. Kelly’s ads highlight his bipartisanship and willingness to break with the Democratic Party on issues like border security — he supports, for example, filling in gaps in the wall on the border with Mexico.Mr. Warnock, too, has focused on local issues: His campaign has highlighted his efforts to secure funding for the Port of Savannah and his bipartisan work with Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to help Georgia’s peanut farmers. These ads will probably not go viral on Twitter, but they signal that Mr. Kelly and Mr. Warnock will fight harder for the folks at home than they will for the national Democratic agenda.In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman have showed up in every county, red or blue, in their states. Democrats can’t just depend on driving up the margins in Democratic strongholds — they also need to drive down Republicans’ margins in their strongholds.Mr. Fetterman is holding to a slim lead in polls. Most analysts doubt Mr. Ryan can prevail in what is a tougher electoral environment for a Democrat, but even if he loses, he helped his peers by keeping his race competitive, and he did it without a dollar of help from the national party. He forced national Republicans to spend about $30 million in Ohio that could otherwise have gone to Senate races in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.Anything could happen on Tuesday. Politics, like football, is a game of inches. It’s still possible that Democrats could pick up a seat or two. It’s also plausible that Republicans could take seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and even New Hampshire.But when the dust settles on the election, Democrats need to do some real soul-searching about the future of our party. We look likely to lose in some places where Joe Biden won in 2020. And what’s worse, we could lose to candidates who have embraced bans on abortion and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, views shared by a minority of the American people. This outcome tells us as much about the Democratic brand as it does the Republican Party.Fair or not, Democrats have been painted as the party of out-of-touch, coastal elites — the party that tells voters worried about crime that it’s all in their heads and that, by the way, crime was higher in the 1990s; the party that sneers at voters disillusioned with bad trade deals and globalization and that labels their “economic anxiety” a convenient excuse for racism; the party that discounts shifts of Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party as either outliers or a sign of internalized white supremacy.If Democrats are smart, they’ll take away an important lesson from this election: There is no one way, no right way to be a Democrat. To win or be competitive in tough years in places as varied as Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, we need to recruit and give support to the candidates who might not check the box of every national progressive litmus test but who do connect with the voters in their state.Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Ryan offer good examples. Both have been competitive in part because they broke with progressive orthodoxy on issues like fracking (in Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman was called the “enemy” by an environmentalist infuriated by his enthusiastic support for fracking and the jobs it creates) and trade deals (in Ohio, Mr. Ryan has bragged about how he “voted with Trump on trade”).It also means lifting up more candidates with nontraditional résumés who defy political stereotypes and can’t be ridiculed as down-the-line partisans: veterans, nurses, law enforcement officers and entrepreneurs and executives from the private sector.In some states, the best candidates will be economic populists who play down social issues. In others, it will be economic moderates who play up their progressive social views. And in a lot of swing states, it will be candidates who just play it down the middle all around.It might also mean engaging with unfriendly media outlets. Most Democrats have turned up their noses at Fox News even though it is the highest-rated cable news channel, but Mr. Ryan has made appearances and even put on air a highlight reel of conservative hosts like Tucker Carlson praising him as a voice of moderation and reason in the Democratic Party. In the frenzied final days of the campaign, Mr. Fetterman wrote an opinion essay for FoxNews.com.This year we still might avoid losing the Senate. And Democrats can avoid catastrophe in future elections. It all comes down to two words: “candidate quality.”Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”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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      Walker and Warnock Spend Big on TV Ads as Georgia Football Wins

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      Nothing quite holds an audience captive like a clash of undefeated college football behemoths. Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker didn’t need reminding of that on Saturday.Neither candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race blinked at the $50,000 cost of a 30-second campaign ad during Saturday’s game between the top-ranked University of Tennessee and the third-ranked University of Georgia, according filings with the Federal Communications Commission.Each of them booked two ads on Atlanta’s CBS affiliate, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee listed as sharing some of the cost of one of the ads supporting Mr. Walker.On CBS in Atlanta, a 30-second ad during the pregame show or on Friday night prime time cost $5,000; it was a thrifty $75 during the station’s “Wake Up Atlanta” show in the 5 to 5:30 a.m. time slot on weekdays.Mr. Walker won the Heisman Trophy in the 1980s when he starred for the Georgia Bulldogs, which are the defending national champions in college football. Georgia beat Tennessee, 27-13.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.In one ad for Mr. Warnock that he highlighted on Twitter during the game, three Georgia graduates conveyed their reverence for Mr. Walker’s accomplishments as a college football star, but said that was where the praise ended. One was wearing a jersey with Mr. Walker’s No. 34 and another displayed a football autographed by him.“I’ve always thought Herschel Walker looked perfect up there,” said a man identified in the ad as Clay Bryant, a 1967 graduate, pointing to photos of Mr. Walker on a wall in his home.“I think he looks good here,” another graduate said, gesturing to her jersey.“I think he looks great there,” the third one said, sitting next to the football and a copy of Sports Illustrated with Mr. Walker on the cover.“But Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate?” the three asked critically in unison.On social media, college football fans groused about being bombarded with attack ads run by the candidates and groups aligned with them, including dueling commercials that lobbed domestic abuse allegations at Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock.Senator Lindsey Graham, left, campaigned with Herschel Walker in Cumming, Ga., in October.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker has been roiled by accusations that he urged two women to have abortions, despite campaigning as a conservative who opposes the procedure.On the CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., Mr. Walker booked a 30-second ad during the game for $35,000, while Mr. Warnock reserved a 30-second block for $15,000. Advertising rates are typically higher for coordinated efforts between parties and candidates than for candidates on their own.On the CBS affiliate in Augusta, Ga., Mr. Walker reserved a pair of 30-second ads during the game for $25,890, with the N.R.S.C. listed as helping to pay for one, according to federal filings. Mr. Warnock bought ads on the same station, but not during the game.Mr. Warnock and Mr. Walker, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, were not the only bitter rivals in a close Senate race who invested heavily this week advertising around sporting events.In Pennsylvania’s open-seat contest, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, spent six figures to run campaign ads during the World Series featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros.Both candidates booked multiple ads on Fox’s Philadelphia affiliate at a rate of $95,000 for 30 seconds, according to federal filings. Mr. Fetterman also reserved 30 seconds of airtime during Thursday night’s National Football League game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Texans. More

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      Why Aren’t the Democrats Trouncing the Republicans?

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      My big takeaway from this election season would be this: We’re about where we were. We entered this election season with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Democrats had a slight advantage. We’ll probably leave it with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Republicans have a slight advantage. But we’re about where we were.Nothing the parties or candidates have done has really changed this underlying balance. The Republicans nominated a pathetically incompetent Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, in Georgia, but polls show that race is basically tied. The Democrats nominated a guy in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke and has trouble communicating, but polls show that that Senate race is basically tied.After all the campaigning and the money and the shouting, the electoral balance is still on a razor’s edge. What accounts for this? It’s the underlying structure of society. Americans are sorting themselves out by education into two roughly equal camps. As people without a college degree have flocked to the G.O.P., people with one have flocked to the Democrats.“Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon,” Eric Levitz writes in New York Magazine, “it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every Western democracy.”Over the past few years, the Democrats have made heroic efforts to win back working-class voters and white as well as Black and Hispanic voters who have drifted rightward. Joe Biden’s domestic agenda is largely about this: infrastructure jobs, expanded child tax credit, raising taxes on corporations. This year the Democrats nominated candidates designed to appeal to working-class voters, like the sweatshirt-wearing Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Tim Ryan in Ohio.It doesn’t seem to be working. As Ruy Teixeira, Karlyn Bowman and Nate Moore noted in a survey of polling data for the American Enterprise Institute last month, “The gap between non-college and college whites continues to grow.” Democrats have reason to worry about losing working-class Hispanic voters in places like Nevada. “If Democrats can’t win in Nevada,” one Democratic pollster told Politico, “we can complain about the white working class all you want, but we’re really confronting a much broader working-class problem.” Even Black voters without a college degree seem to be shifting away from the Democrats, to some degree.Forests have been sacrificed so that Democratic strategists can write reports on why they are losing the working class. Some believe racial resentment is driving the white working class away. Some believe Democrats spend too much time on progressive cultural issues and need to focus more on bread-and-butter economics.I’d say these analyses don’t begin to address the scale of the problem. America has riven itself into two different cultures. It’s very hard for the party based in one culture to reach out and win voters in the other culture — or even to understand what people in the other culture are thinking.As I’ve shuttled between red and blue America over decades of reporting on American politics, I’ve seen social, cultural, moral and ideological rifts widen from cracks to chasms.Politics has become a religion for a lot of people. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education no longer just have different ideas about, say, the role of government, they have created rival ways of life. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education have different relationships to patriotism and faith, they dress differently, enjoy different foods and have different ideas about corporal punishment, gender and, of course, race.You can’t isolate the differences between the classes down to one factor or another. It’s everything.But even that is not the real problem. America has always had vast cultural differences. Back in 2001, I wrote a long piece for The Atlantic comparing the deeply blue area of Montgomery County, Md., with the red area of Franklin County in south-central Pennsylvania.I noted the vast socio-economic and cultural differences that were evident, even back then. But in my interviews, I found there was a difference without a ton of animosity.For example, Ted Hale was a Presbyterian minister there. “There’s nowhere near as much resentment as you would expect,” he told me. “People have come to understand that they will struggle financially. It’s part of their identity. But the economy is not their god. That’s the thing some others don’t understand. People value a sense of community far more than they do their portfolio.”Back in those days I didn’t find a lot of class-war consciousness in my trips through red America. I compared the country to a high school cafeteria. Jocks over here, nerds over there, punks somewhere else. Live and let live.Now people don’t just see difference, they see menace. People have put up barricades and perceive the other class as a threat to what is beautiful, true and good. I don’t completely understand why this animosity has risen over the past couple of decades, but it makes it very hard to shift the ever more entrenched socio-economic-cultural-political coalitions.Historians used to believe that while European societies were burdened by ferocious class antagonisms, Americans had relatively little class consciousness. That has changed.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Guys Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

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      If Democrats do better than expected in next week’s elections, let’s hope they send a thank-you card to Donald Trump.Just because it’d drive him crazy. But his meddling is also a real factor: If you look at some of the most competitive races, the awfulness of the Republican nominee is thanks in good part to Trumpian support.“My record is unparalleled, my endorsements, it’s totally unparalleled,” he bragged earlier this year. It certainly was extensive — he reportedly made about 200 primary endorsements. But there weren’t a ton of heavy lifts. His choices were mainly incumbents and others who were virtually unopposed.“It’s like the Celtics winning a game against the Little Sisters of the Poor,” said a friend of mine.Still, when there was a serious race, Trump had a major-league talent for picking the least attractive possibility.Take Georgia. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock should probably be in deep, deep trouble given the general political climate. But the polls show a near-even race. Warnock sure is lucky that Trump made such a heroic effort to promote Herschel Walker, who was terrible even before he plunged into his serial abortion scandals.And then there’s J.D. Vance, who Trump is backing in the Ohio Senate race. The former president showed up for a Vance rally last month in Youngstown, standing right next to the contender, who, he told the crowd, “is kissing my ass, he wants my support so much.”A comment that has been quoted a time or 20 by Vance’s opponent, Tim Ryan.To be fair — if you really feel like being fair — Trump’s favorites generally did win. ( “Nobody’s ever had a record like this. I’m almost unblemished.”)Of course, it’s natural that voters in Republican primaries would care about the opinion of the last Republican president. Trump’s endorsement certainly made a difference in Arizona — where the deeply unappealing Blake Masters won the Senate nomination with his help.And his backing was also very important in Pennsylvania, where Republicans are now stuck in the governor’s race with Doug Mastriano, a state senator who’s argued that women who have abortions relatively early in a pregnancy should be charged with murder.The general elections are a different kind of competition, where the Trump name can be a little less, um, attractive. Wisconsin observers couldn’t help noticing that once Tim Michels had won the Republican nomination for governor, his campaign website scrubbed all references to “Endorsed by President Trump,” only to put them back up an hour later. Such is the life of the Trump acolyte.In New York, the Democratic candidate for governor, Kathy Hochul, cannot remind voters enough that her opponent, Lee Zeldin, has Trump’s backing. Zeldin, who was happy to have Trump appear at a September fund-raiser, now likes to focus on crime, and you will probably not hear the 45th president’s name in his ads unless Trump gets mugged on Park Avenue.Even when he’s not promoting anybody, Trump is … keeping in touch. It’s hard to avoid his emails, the vast, vast majority of which are asking for money. My absolute favorite, which arrived last month, announced he “just couldn’t wait any longer to tell you this EXCITING NEWS.”Which was — wait for it:“I HAVE BEEN NAMED THE #1 PRESIDENTIAL GOLFER IN HISTORY!”The namer was a conservative website called the DC Enquirer. We will not mention the very different opinion of experts like the sportswriter Rick Reilly, who wrote about Trump’s game in his book “Commander in Cheat.”But our former president was sharing this exciting news to remind us that “we still have a few boxes left of our LIMITED EDITION Trump Golf Balls.” A collector’s item!You can get any of this stuff by clicking a box and making a contribution — pick any amount you want, although that vibrant blue $250 box is doing a special happy dance. All the money goes to Trump’s own personal election fund-raising operation, which cynics might just refer to as Donald’s Piggy Bank. From which he’s forked out more than $13 million for TV ads over the last month to help out his fellow Republicans.That may sound nice, but put in another context, it amounts to about 15 percent of what he had on hand. And about one-fifth of the $71 million Republicans are getting from the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell’s super PAC. McConnell, by Trump’s calculation, is a “Broken Old Crow.” So, of course, nothing Mitch does counts.I guarantee the emails will keep on coming. What else can Trump do? He’s still banned from Twitter and his attempt at a substitute, Truth Social, probably has fewer followers than some minor celebrities. Although definitely more than a semi-popular college sophomore.Well, hey, D.J.T. does need some diversion. His business organization is wrestling with multitudinous court cases in New York right now — tax fraud is a central topic.He’s been on the road a lot, making speeches, raising money and being protected by Secret Service agents who the Trump Organization has charged up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms. Yeah, he’s so grateful for security over the past few years he’s billed us more than $1.4 million.Let’s see what happens next. If his pitiful candidates don’t survive, maybe some Republicans will ask for their money back.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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      Republicans Float Changes to Social Security and Medicare

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      Democrats have seized on Republican proposals to limit retirement benefits to galvanize voters ahead of the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.Prominent Republicans are billing the moves as necessary to rein in government spending, which grew under both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent decades and then spiked as the Trump and Biden administrations unleashed trillions of dollars in economic relief during the pandemic.The Republican leaders who would decide what legislation the House and the Senate would consider if their party won control of Congress have not said specifically what, if anything, they would do to the programs.Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. The ideas are being floated as a way to narrow government spending on programs that are set to consume a growing share of the federal budget in the decades ahead.The fact that Republicans are openly talking about cutting the programs has galvanized Democrats in the final weeks of the midterm campaign. Mr. Biden has made securing Social Security and Medicare a late addition to his closing economic messaging, and Democratic candidates have barraged voters with a flurry of advertisements claiming Republicans would dismantle the programs and deny older adults benefits they have counted on for retirement.Mr. Biden has repeatedly said he will not agree to cuts to Social Security, which provides retirement and disability pay to 66 million Americans, or Medicare, which provides health insurance to about 64 million people.“You’ve been paying into Social Security your whole life. You earned it. Now these guys want to take it away,” Mr. Biden said during a visit to Hallandale Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. “Who in the hell do they think they are? Excuse my language.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.Former President Barack Obama, who campaigned last week in Wisconsin for the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Mandela Barnes, excoriated Senator Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican, over his plans for the legacy programs. Mr. Obama faulted Mr. Johnson for supporting tax breaks for the wealthy that were included in Republicans’ 2017 tax cut legislation, along with spending proposals that Mr. Obama said jeopardized Social Security’s future.American retirees “had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security,” Mr. Obama said. “And if Ron Johnson does not understand that — if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who have worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect — he’s not the person who’s thinking about you and knows you and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin.”Mr. Johnson has proposed subjecting Social Security and Medicare to annual congressional spending bills instead of operating essentially on autopilot as they do now. That would leave the programs susceptible to Washington’s frequent and fraught debates over funding the government, making it more difficult for retirees to count on a steady stream of benefits.Still, Mr. Johnson does not hold a leadership position, and it is unclear whether his ideas — or any of the more aggressive proposals presented by those in his party — would find purchase with Republican leaders. This week, he said that Mr. Obama had “lied” about his proposal and that he had never called for Social Security cuts.Mr. Biden and other Democrats have also criticized a plan from Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, who has proposed subjecting nearly all federal spending programs to a renewal vote every year. Like Mr. Johnson’s plan, that would make Medicare and Social Security more vulnerable to budget cuts.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said this year that a bill to sunset those programs every five years “will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda.”Still, the fact that key Republicans are openly broaching spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare — or declining to rule them out — is a break from former President Donald J. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to leave the programs intact.With President Biden in the White House, Republicans have little chance of securing changes to Medicare or Social Security.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesSeveral conservative Republicans vying to lead key economic committees in the House have suggested publicly that they would back efforts to change eligibility for the safety net programs. The conservative Republican Study Committee in the House, which is poised to assume a position of influence if the party claims the majority, has issued a detailed plan that would raise the retirement age for both programs and reduce Social Security benefits for some higher-earning retirees. The plan would increase premiums for many older adults and create a new marketplace where a government Medicare plan competes with a private alternative, in what many Democrats call partial privatization of the program.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is in line to be House speaker if his party wins control, told Punchbowl News last month he would not “predetermine” whether Social Security and Medicare cuts would be part of debt-limit negotiations. Those comments suggested that, unlike in past negotiations, Republicans could demand future cuts to the programs in order to raise America’s borrowing limit and avoid a default on government debt. Mr. McCarthy later told CNBC that he had not brought up the programs and was committed to “strengthening” them, though he did not provide details.Asked whether Mr. McConnell would support any changes to the programs should Republicans capture the majority, aides pointed only to his specific comments about Mr. Scott’s plan.With Mr. Biden in the White House, Republicans have little chance of securing changes to either program.Democratic candidates and outside groups supporting them have spent $100 million nationwide this election cycle on ads mentioning Social Security or Medicare, according to data from AdImpact. Nearly half of that spending has come since the start of October.“Far-right extremists are gutting retirement benefits,” a narrator says in an advertisement targeting Cassy Garcia, a Republican seeking to unseat Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, in a fiercely contested Texas district. “They’ll slash Medicare and Social Security — benefits we paid for with every paycheck.”Republicans have campaigned far less on the programs, spending about $12 million this cycle on ads mentioning them. Republican candidates have largely embraced repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr. Biden signed in August and which reduces prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare. Some candidates have begun pushing back against Democratic attacks about Social Security and Medicare.In a recent ad, Don Bolduc, a Republican challenging Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, says he will not “cut Social Security and Medicare for older Americans,” though it remains unclear if he would reduce benefits for future retirees. Mr. Bolduc spoke in favor of privatizing Medicare in August, Politico reported this fall.Democrats and Republicans largely agree Congress will need to ensure the solvency of the programs in the decade to come. Spending for the programs is projected to balloon in the coming decade as more baby boomers retire. The trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds estimate that a key Medicare trust fund will run out of money in 2028 and the main Social Security Trust Fund will be insolvent in 2034, potentially forcing cuts in benefits if Congress does not act to avoid them.In the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed raising payroll taxes on high earners to help fund Social Security, while also making the program’s benefits more generous for many workers. He put that plan on the back burner in his first two years in office, as he pushed a sweeping economic agenda that included new spending on infrastructure, low-emission energy, health care and advanced manufacturing. Republicans largely oppose Mr. Biden’s tax increases.Fiscal hawks said this week that Mr. Biden’s attempts to wield Social Security and Medicare against Republicans in the midterms would only set back efforts to shore up the programs.“This is clearly election-time pot stirring,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington. “Changes desperately need to be made to the programs to ensure solvency — politicians can disagree about what changes to make, but not whether they need to be made. It’s highly disappointing to hear the president, who knows better, resort to fearmongering rather than using his platform to help enact needed changes.”Emily Cochrane More

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      Patty Murray Faces Stiff Challenge From Tiffany Smiley in Senate Race

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      SEATTLE — Ahead of their first election in Washington State, Carys Hagen and her partner, Shaw Lenox, stumbled upon a rally held for Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, on a stage in the corner of the Seattle Center.“Like, don’t love,” said Ms. Hagen, who identifies as a socialist, summing up her feelings about Ms. Murray after listening to the opening minutes of her stump speech. “But I’ll take ‘like’ any day of the week.”For Ms. Murray, who is facing a surprisingly tough race after three decades in Congress, the lack of enthusiasm is reason for concern.“If they just — ‘Oh, Patty’s fine, she always has been’ — that’s when elections get really tight,” Ms. Murray said in an interview. “Because we need Democrats to vote.”Since she first won her seat in 1992, Ms. Murray has steadily climbed the ranks to wield heavy, though understated, influence as a senior member of leadership and the chairwoman of the Senate committee that focuses on health, labor and education. Should she win a sixth term next week, she will be the fourth most senior senator and in line to be the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee that controls government spending.But her re-election hinges in large part on voters like Ms. Hagen putting aside their frustrations with a national party that has fallen short of some of its most expansive policy ambitions and casting a vote for Ms. Murray, whom many of them have come to regard as a fixture who will be there no matter what.She is working to fend off a surprisingly stiff challenge from Tiffany Smiley, a Republican who is mounting her first run for public office after years as a nurse, veterans affairs advocate and caregiver.Ms. Murray has spent the final weeks of her campaign trying to ward off complacency within her party.“We are a Democratic state,” she told a group at a “pro-choice, pro-Patty, pro-coffee” event at a local Seattle coffee shop. “If people vote.”In an open primary this year, Ms. Murray easily bested Ms. Smiley, winning more than 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Smiley’s nearly 34 percent, and she is still seen as the favorite to prevail. But Republicans have continued to funnel millions of dollars into Washington State, Ms. Smiley has out-raised the incumbent senator and polls have tightened in recent weeks, rattling some Democrats.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.If Ms. Smiley — who is 41, the same age Ms. Murray was when she first announced her run for office — were to prevail, she would be the state’s first Republican senator in more than two decades.Underscoring the severity of Ms. Smiley’s challenge in what political handicappers considered a safely Democratic seat until this month, multiple high-profile surrogates have trekked to Washington to rally for Ms. Murray and try to galvanize Democratic voters who they fear might fail to turn out for midterm elections in a typically liberal state.Tiffany Smiley, center, a nurse and veterans affairs advocate, is challenging Ms. Murray.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesVice President Kamala Harris headlined a donor gathering in the state last week, as well as an event highlighting investments from the $1 trillion infrastructure law. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts came to rally supporters for Ms. Murray, a cerebral politician more comfortable in a private negotiation than at a raucous rally.“Patty is not the first person to jump into the spotlight; she’s not the loudest in high-volume debate,” Ms. Warren said in an interview before she walked out with Ms. Murray to Dolly Parton’s working woman’s anthem, “9 to 5.” “But she is effective — anyone who underestimates her is going to find out that they’re on the losing end.”Ms. Murray, 72, has also made a point of crisscrossing the Seattle suburbs and other parts of the state to connect with local leaders and ensure that her core Democratic supporters are turning out to vote. On a gray, drizzly Friday before the rally, she shuttled from a meeting with leaders at a historic Black church to visits with Asian American political leaders and businesses in the city’s international district.In prepared remarks that tick through her legislative accomplishments, she revisits the themes that helped pave her path to Washington three decades ago: the lore of how a male legislator dismissed her as a “mom in tennis shoes” — a slight that she adopted as her campaign calling card — her desire to protect women’s rights and a push to provide affordable health care.She has also focused on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision establishing a right to an abortion, and vowed to codify it into a law — a message that has resonated in the deep-blue suburbs and cities like Seattle.“We had this assurance for 50 years that we could make choices about our bodies,” said L’Nayim Austin, 51, who brought her 10-year-old daughter, dressed as a suffragist, to see Ms. Murray speak. “It’s infuriating.”Senator Elizabeth Warren, left, campaigned with Ms. Murray in Seattle in late October.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesMs. Murray has focused her campaign on turning out Democratic voters and supporting reproductive rights.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAt her campaign office, where there are well-worn posters from previous campaigns scattered around, Ms. Murray described the election as challenging because “this time I have someone who isn’t telling people who she really is, and that’s much harder — she’s trying to look moderate, be conservative without telling anybody.”Ms. Smiley, who has pointedly noted that Ms. Murray once made a speech on the Senate floor praising her, has distanced herself from some conservative stances, saying she will not support a federal ban on abortion access or cutting back Social Security benefits. She has centered her campaign on reducing federal spending, addressing crime and increasing security at the nation’s southern border.And pressed in a recent interview, she asserted that President Biden is the nation’s “legitimately elected president,” though earlier in the campaign cycle, she dodged questions about whether he had been legitimately elected.That has led Ms. Murray and her allies to frame Ms. Smiley as aligned with the Republican Party’s far-right extremists, airing ads evoking the Jan. 6 riot and the prospect of cuts to social safety net programs. Ms. Smiley has accused her opponent of relying on political talking points to hide an ineffective policy record.“Maybe some of Senator Murray’s intentions are good, but we can’t base policy off of intentions,” Ms. Smiley said in an interview aboard her campaign bus, where she criticized many of Ms. Murray’s policies. “It’s very, very dangerous. Policy has to be based off of results.”Supporters have also connected with Ms. Smiley’s emotional recollection of her years of caregiving and advocacy, after her husband, Scotty, was blinded in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq and became the first blind active-duty officer in the Army.At a rally kicking off her bus tour across the state, Ms. Smiley held back tears as she talked about her husband’s encouragement for her political campaign, reiterating a pledge to work so “that our children have a country worth giving their eyesight for” as the crowd murmured and cheered in approval. She will linger after events to warmly embrace supporters and pose for selfies, thanking them for their prayers ahead of the election.“She’s probably the one and only person maybe in the state who can beat Patty Murray,” said Angela Dabb, a small-business owner and Republican who attended an event on Ms. Smiley’s bus tour at Nana’s Southern Kitchen, a restaurant in Covington that boasted fried chicken and catfish. “I was in tears — and so when a politician can move you like that, you know it’s coming from their heart.”Supporters of Ms. Smiley have connected with her emotional recollection of caregiving and advocacy, after her husband was permanently blinded in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesA crowd of more than 100 people applauded Ms. Smiley as she kicked off her bus tour in Maple Valley, Wash.Chona Kasinger for The New York TimesAt stops along Ms. Smiley’s bus tour, attendees described frustration with years of Democratic control in their state and across the country. For multiple voters, it was the first time they had decided to volunteer for a campaign and attend events, seeing a glimmer of hope that Republicans could not only claim a seat in the Senate, but also flip at least one in the House.Ms. Smiley, for her part, has also worked to weaponize Ms. Murray’s decades on Capitol Hill, riffing off Ms. Murray’s own motto to brand herself “a new mom in town.” At a bar in Maple Valley a short drive outside Seattle, where she began the bus tour, a raucous crowd of more than 100 people cheered and applauded as Ms. Smiley appeared with her husband, accompanied by Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, and a soundtrack of Americana classics.They whooped and laughed as Ms. Ernst joined other national Republicans in lampooning Ms. Murray’s more taciturn affect, noting “I don’t know that I’ve seen her smile once” and calling for a change in representation.But Ms. Murray remained adamant that there was more for her to do in the Senate.“When I was running before, it was — we had no voices in the Senate, there wasn’t anybody in the rooms who could say what we needed to say,” she said, reflecting on her first campaign, in what would become known as the “year of the woman.” “I’m now in that room, but I need to be in that room by being elected.”Ms. Smiley’s supporters described frustration with years of Democratic control both in their state and across the country.Chona Kasinger for The New York Times More