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      Rethinking Joe Manchin

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      Now that Joe Manchin has saved the Democratic agenda, how should liberals think about him?Joe Manchin has spent much of the past year as the villain of liberal America, receiving the kind of criticism that’s usually reserved for Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell or a conservative Supreme Court justice.Activists aggressively protested against Manchin, some in kayaks outside his houseboat in Washington, others surrounding his car and chanting a vulgarity at him. One Democratic House member called him “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant,” while others called him untrustworthy. Bernie Sanders accused Manchin of “intentionally sabotaging the president’s agenda” and suggested that Manchin’s wealthy donors were the reason. Other critics called him a shill for the energy industry, noting that he personally owns a coal company.And then Manchin made it possible for the Senate to pass the most aggressive climate bill in American history.That bill seems likely to accomplish almost as much greenhouse-gas reduction as President Biden’s original proposal would have. As Paul Krugman, the Times columnist, has written, “Actual experts on energy and the environment are giddy over what has been accomplished.” Tomorrow, the House is expected to pass the same bill — which will also reduce inequities in health care access — and Biden plans to sign it soon afterward.In today’s newsletter, I want to reconsider Manchin’s place in American politics given his ultimate support for the Senate bill. What were his critics right about? What were they wrong about? And what are the larger political lessons?M.V.D.The simplest fact about Manchin is that he is the most electorally successful member of Congress: Nobody else has won a seat as difficult as his.Trump won West Virginia by 39 percentage points in 2020, more than any in other state except Wyoming. Yet Manchin has repeatedly won statewide elections in West Virginia as a Democrat. This chart highlights Manchin’s uniqueness:Senator Party Affiliations More

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      How We Think About Politics Changes What We Think About Politics

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      When so many voters — a majority, in fact — say that they prefer consensus to conflict, why does polarization continue to intensify?In a paper that came out in June, “Explanations for Inequality and Partisan Polarization in the U.S., 1980 — 2020,” Elizabeth Suhay and Mark Tenenbaum, political scientists at American University, and Austin Bartola, of Quadrant Strategies, provide insight into why so much discord permeates American politics:Scholars who research polarization have almost exclusively focused on the relationship between Americans’ policy opinions and their partisanship. In this article, we discuss a different type of partisan polarization underappreciated by scholars: “belief polarization,” or disagreements over what people perceive to be true.The concept of belief polarization has been defined in a number of ways.In their May 2021 paper, “Belief polarization in a complex world,” Alan Jern, Kai-min Kevin Chang and Charles Kemp — of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Melbourne — write: “Belief polarization occurs when two people with opposing prior beliefs both strengthen their beliefs after observing the same data.”There is, they continue, “ample evidence that people sustain different beliefs even when faced with the same information, and they interpret that information differently.” They also note that “stark differences in beliefs can arise and endure due to human limitations in interpreting complex information.”Kristoffer Nimark, an economist at Cornell, and Savitar Sundaresan, of Imperial College London, describe belief polarization this way: “The beliefs of ex ante identical agents over time can cluster in two distinct groups at opposite ends of the belief space.”Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, professors of philosophy at Vanderbilt, argue in their 2019 paper, “How Does Belief Polarization Work”:Part of what makes belief polarization so disconcerting is its ubiquity. It has been extensively studied for more than 50 years and found to be operative within groups of all kinds, formal and informal. Furthermore, belief polarization does not discriminate between different kinds of belief. Like-minded groups polarize regardless of whether they are discussing banal matters of fact, matters of personal taste, or questions about value. What’s more, the phenomenon operates regardless of the explicit point of the group’s discussion. Like-minded groups polarize when they are trying to decide an action that the group will take; and they polarize also when there is no specific decision to be reached. Finally, the phenomenon is prevalent regardless of group members’ nationality, race, gender, religion, economic status, and level of education.Talisse, writing separately, observes:The social environment itself can trigger extremity shifts. These prompts need not be verbal, explicit, or literal; they can be merely implicit signals to group members that some belief is prevalent among them — hats, pins, campaign signs, logos, and gestures are all potential initiators of belief polarization. Further, as corroboration is really a matter of numbers, those with the power to present the appearance of widespread acceptance among a particular social group of some idea thereby have the power to induce extremity shifts among those who identify with that group.Perhaps the most salient recent illustration of belief polarization is the diametrically opposed views of Trump loyalists and of their Democratic adversaries over the legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump supporters are convinced it was stolen; Democrats and independents are certain that Joe Biden is the legitimate president.Similarly, politicians on the right — and Fox News — are treating the F.B.I. raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago on Monday as a corrupt politicization of federal investigative authority, while liberals — and CNN — counter that the raid demonstrates that no one, no matter how powerful, is above the law.Suhay and her colleagues expand the scope of belief polarization to look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats over the causes of inequality:We illustrate large, and increasing, partisan divides in beliefs regarding whether an unequal society, or unequal behavior, is the cause of socioeconomic inequality. Republican politicians and citizens are optimistic about the American dream and pessimistic about poor people’s behavior; Democratic politicians and citizens are pessimistic about the dream and optimistic about poor people’s ability to succeed if given the chance.These patterns, Suhay and her collaborators continue,hold for beliefs about economic inequality along both class and race lines. Variation in societal versus individual blame is consistently associated with views on social welfare, taxation, and affirmative action. We conclude that Americans’ beliefs about the fairness of the economy represent a crucial component of a redistributive versus anti-redistributive ideology that is increasingly associated with the two political parties.Suhay writes:The Democratic Party has long justified its left-leaning economic policies with two central claims: significant economic inequality exists between individuals and social groups, and these great inequalities are unfair because society, not individuals, are to blame for them. The latter proposition is especially important. It is difficult to deny that many harsh inequalities exist in the United States. Exorbitant wealth as well as homelessness are plain to see. However, such inequalities might be tolerated if they are viewed as the outcome of a meritocratic system. Democrats argue instead that “the American dream” — success via hard work — is not a reality for many. Thus, low-income people deserve government assistance.Conversely, Suhay continues, Republicans emphasizeaggregate economic growth and downplay the extent of inequality. Second, Republicans argue that existing inequalities are fair — successful people have achieved success via hard work or ingenuity, and those facing difficult economic circumstances are to blame for them. Third, in response to Democrats’ instinct to use government to combat inequality, Republicans argue government efforts to intervene in business affairs, redistribute wealth, and assist those in need often do more harm than good, depressing the economic output of both firms and individuals. These narratives justify Republicans’ conservative economic agenda by insisting that the status quo is fine: inequality is minimal; inequalities that do exist are “just deserts”; and, even if one wished to help, government intervention in fact undermines individual and aggregate prosperity.Suhay, Tenenbaum and Bartola cite data from American National Election Studies and the Pew Research Center to track the increasing polarization between Republicans and Democrats on various questions, which require respondents to agree or disagree with statements like these: “one of the big problems in this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance”; “most people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard”; and “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”In 1997, 68 percent of Republican and 43 percent of Democratic survey respondents chose “have it easy,” a 25-point difference. By 2017, 73 percent of Republicans said the poor “have it easy,” while 19 percent of Democrats shared that view, a 54-point difference.In an email, Suhay noted thatmany social scientists today are focused on misinformed and extreme beliefs in the Republican Party, including Republicans’ greater likelihood of rejecting climate science and Covid-19 vaccination and their embrace of Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election.But, Suhay wrote, many of those same scholars “are missing growing extremity on the political left. It may be more benign or even beneficial in some cases, but it is still a phenomenon worth study.” In addition to “a surge of claims on the left that the economy is extremely unequal and that this is because our country does not provide equal opportunity to all of its inhabitants,” there has been a parallel surge among liberals on the issue of “racial justice — in both the economic and criminal justice arena.”A third development on the left, Suhay added, and onewhere we have seen the most rapid change, is around gender identity. Democrats increasingly say society ought to protect the rights of transgender people and the expression of transgender identity because gender fluidity is a natural part of the human condition and trying to curb its expression causes people harm. The popularity of each of these views has surged on the left recently.There is further evidence that even people who are knowledgeable about complex issues are sharply polarized along partisan lines.Nathan Lee at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Brendan Nyhan at Dartmouth, Jason Reifler at the University of Exeter and D.J. Flynn at IE University in Madrid argue in their paper “More Accurate, but No Less Polarized: Comparing the Factual Beliefs of Government Officials and the Public” that while “political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public,” the “increase in accuracy does not translate into reduced factual belief polarization. These findings demonstrate that a more informed political elite does not necessarily mitigate partisan factual disagreement in policymaking.”Lee, Nyhan, Reifler and Flynn assessed the views of elites through a survey in 2017 of 743 “elected policymakers, legislative staffers, and top administrative positions in local and state government in the United States.” Three-quarters of the sample held elective office. The survey tested belief accuracy by partisanship and elite status on eight issues including health care, the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent, climate change and voter fraud.Their conclusions run counter to assumptions that elites are less polarized than the general public because “they tend to be more knowledgeable, which is associated with greater belief accuracy” and because they “possess domain expertise in politics and public policy that could reduce the influence of cognitive biases.”In fact, Lee and colleagues counter, “belief polarization can be unchanged or widen when belief accuracy increases.”I asked Nyhan about the consequences of the findings and he wrote back by email:The most important contribution of our study is to challenge the assumption that we will disagree less about the facts if we know more. Elites are better informed than the public on average but Democrats and Republicans still are still deeply divided in their beliefs about those facts. In some ways, the conclusion of our study is optimistic — government officials are better informed than the public. That’s what most of us would hope to be true. But the findings do suggest we should avoid thinking that people becoming more informed will make the factual divides in our society go away. Belief polarization is a reality that is not easily overcome.One theme that emerges repeatedly in looking at belief polarization is the role race plays as a central factor:Peter K. Enns and Ashley Jardina, political scientists at Cornell and Duke, make the case in their October 2021 paper, “Complicating the role of White racial attitudes and anti-immigrant sentiment in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” thatMost of the research on the relationship between white racial attitudes and Trump support is part of a tradition that assumes that racial attitudes are fairly stable predispositions that form early in life and then later become important for political reasoning. Implied in this line of research is that politicians or political campaigns do not change levels of prejudice, but they can prime these attitudes, or make them more or less salient and therefore more or less politically relevant.Enns and Jardina write that in contrast to this view, over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign “many whites shifted their survey responses on questions related to race and immigration to align with their support for Trump or Clinton.”To test their argument, the authors used “a unique panel data set from surveys conducted by YouGov of more than 5,000 respondents interviewed at multiple points during the 2016 presidential election campaign.” From that study, they found:The strong link between white attitudes toward Black Americans and Trump support observed in prior studies is likely due as much to white Trump supporters updating their survey responses to report opinions more consistent with Trump’s as it is to Trump drawing support from more racially antagonistic white voters. Similar results emerge with respect to whites’ immigration opinions.They found, for example, that from January 2016 to August 2016, the percentage of Trump supporters voicing strong opposition to Black Lives Matter grew by roughly 15 percentage points.In an email, Enns contended thatregardless of the precise underlying mechanisms (and multiple mechanisms could be at work), the evidence suggests that Trump’s rhetoric had a meaningful effect on the views his supporters expressed about these issues. We are definitely arguing that the attitudes individuals express can be changed by what candidates they support say and do. Although we cannot observe actual beliefs, to the extent that expressing previously unexpressed beliefs has a reinforcing effect, that would also provide evidence of a deepening or potential changing of racial attitudes.The strong association between Trump support and whites’ views on racial issues, Enns and Jardina argue in their paper,was not merely a result of Trump attracting racist whites by way of his own racist rhetoric or a reflection of partisan racial sorting that had already occurred; it was also a result of white Trump supporters changing their views to be more in line with Trump’s over the course of his presidential campaign. In other words, Trump not only attracted whites with more conservative views on race; he also made his white supporters more likely to espouse increasingly extreme views on issues related to immigration and on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and police killings of African Americans.Andrew M. Engelhardt, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, developed a similar line of analysis in his January 2020 paper, “Racial Attitudes Through a Partisan Lens.”In an email, Engelhardt wrote:Part of the reason White Democrats and White Republicans hold increasingly different views about Black Americans is due to their partisanship. It’s not just that Democrats with negative views became Republicans, or Republicans with more positive views became Democrats. Rather, people are changing their attitudes, and part of this, I argue, is due to how politicians talk about Black Americans. Republicans, for instance, could have internalized Trump’s negative rhetoric, and increasingly held more negative views. Democrats, similarly, hear Trump say these negative things and they move opposite, holding more positive views.In his paper, Engelhardt wrote that undergirding past studies of the role of race in politics and policymakingis an assumption that racial animus feeds political conflict. I turn this conventional wisdom on its head by arguing that political conflict can shape racial attitudes — people’s views and beliefs about groups understood to be racial. Political scientists have failed to examine this possibility, perhaps because racial attitudes are seen as persistent and influential predispositions that form during childhood, long before most Americans become political animals. According to this line of reasoning, individuals use these early formed attitudes to make sense of politics; racial attitudes lead to partisanship.The ever-growing divide between left and right extends well beyond racial issues and attitudes. In his email, Engelhardt wrote that his results are “suggestive of partisanship motivating changes in other orientations which we might presumably see as more stable and core to individuals.” He cited research showing that “partisanship influences religiosity and religious affiliation” and other studies linking “political concerns to changes in racial self-identification.” Engelhardt added that he has “some unpublished results where I find partisanship leads Democrats to hold more positive views of gay men and lesbians, transgender individuals, and feminists, over time, with Republicans holding more negative views of these groups in the same period (data range 2016-2020).”In their January 2022 paper, “The Origins and Consequences of Racialized Schemas about U.S. Parties,” Kirill Zhirkov and Nicholas Valentino, political scientists at the Universities of Virginia and Michigan, make an interesting argument that, in effect, “Two parallel processes structure American politics in the current moment: partisan polarization and the increasing linkage between racial attitudes and issue preferences of all sorts.”Zhirkov and Valentino continue:Beginning in the 1970s, Democratic candidates in presidential elections started to attract large shares of nonwhite voters whereas Republicans increasingly relied on votes of racially conservative whites. Over the same period, voters’ positions on seemingly nonracial political issues have gradually become more intertwined with racial resentment.Overall, the two scholars write,the growing racial gap between the Democratic and Republican support bases leads to formation of racialized stereotypes about the two parties. Specifically, a non-trivial share of American electorate currently views the Democratic Party as nonwhite and the Republican Party as white, though in reality whites continue to be a majority of both parties.This “imagined racial coalition of each party,” in the view of Zhirkov and Valentino,carries profound implications for the ongoing discussion in the discipline about affective polarization in American politics: whites feel colder toward the Democratic Party when they imagine its coalition to be more heavily made up on nonwhites and feel warmer toward the Republican Party when they perceive it to be dominated by their racial group. As a consequence, rather than a cause, they may then come to accept a more conservative issue package advocated by the modern Republican Party.Racial attitudes, the authors argue persuasively, “are now important predictors of opinions about electoral fairness, gun control, policing, international trade and health care.”There are, Zhirkov and Valentino note, long-range implications for the future of democracy here:As soon as ethnic parties start to compete for political power, winning — rather than implementing a certain policy — becomes the goal in and of itself due to associated boost in group status and self-esteem of its members. Moreover, comparative evidence suggests that U.S. plurality-based electoral system contributes to politicization of ethnic cleavages rather than mitigates them. Therefore, the racialization of American parties is likely to continue, and the intensity of political conflict in the United States is likely to grow.I asked the authors how they would characterize the importance of race in contemporary American politics. In a jointly written email, they replied that in research to be published in the future, “we show that race is at least as strong, and often stronger, than cleavages such as religion, ideology, and class.”The pessimistic outlook for the prospect of a return to less divisive politics revealed in many of the papers cited here, and the key role of racial conflict in driving polarization, suggest that the ability of the United States to come to terms with its increasingly multiracial, multiethnic population remains in question. This country has been a full-fledged democracy for less than 60 years — since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the changes wrought by three additional revolutions: in civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights. These developments — or upheavals — and especially the reaction to them have tested the viability of our democracy and suggest, at the very least, an uphill climb ahead.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 Enter the Fall Armed With Something New: Hope

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      Vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators like Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada are already planning events promoting the landmark legislation they passed over the weekend. Democratic ad makers are busily preparing a barrage of commercials about it across key battlegrounds. And the White House is set to deploy Cabinet members on a nationwide sales pitch.The sweeping legislation, covering climate change and prescription drug prices, which came together in the Senate after more than a year of painfully public fits and starts, has kicked off a frenetic 91-day sprint to sell the package by November — and win over an electorate that has grown skeptical of Democratic rule.For months, Democrats have discussed their midterm anxieties in near-apocalyptic terms, as voters threatened to take out their anger over high gas prices and soaring inflation on the party in power. But the deal on the broad new legislation, along with signs of a brewing voter revolt over abortion rights, has some Democrats experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.“This bill gives Democrats that centerpiece accomplishment,” said Ali Lapp, the president of House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC.In interviews, Democratic strategists, advisers to President Biden, lawmakers running in competitive seats and political ad makers all expressed optimism that the legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act — would deliver the party a necessary and powerful tool to show they were focused on lowering costs at a time of economic hardship for many. They argued its key provisions could be quickly understood by crucial constituencies.“It is easy to talk about because it has a real impact on people every day,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in an interview. The measure must still pass the House and could come up for a vote there later this week. “It’s congressional Democrats who’ve gotten it done — with no help from congressional Republicans.”Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday after Democrats in the Senate passed the climate and tax bill.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesWhether Democrats can keep the measure in the spotlight is another matter. On Monday evening, former President Donald J. Trump said the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home, a significant development that threatened to overshadow the news of the Senate deal and that gave already-energized Republicans a new cause to circle the wagons around Mr. Trump.Still, for younger voters, who polls have shown to be cool to Mr. Biden and his party, the package contains the most sweeping efforts to address climate change in American history. For older voters, the deal includes popular measures sought for decades by Democrats to rein in the price of prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. And for both the Democratic base and independents, the deal cuts against the Republican argument that a Democratic-controlled Washington is a morass of incompetence and gridlock unfocused on issues that affect average Americans.“It’s very significant because it shows that the Democrats care about solving problems, it shows that we can get things done and I think it starts to turn around some of the talk about Biden,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat running in a competitive re-election race, alluding to angst about the president as his national approval rating has hovered around 40 percent.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Adding to the Democratic Party’s brightening outlook were the results of the Kansas referendum on abortion rights last week, when a measure that would have removed abortion protections from the Kansas Constitution was overwhelmingly defeated. It was a stark reminder of the volatile and unpredictable political impact of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.Voters in Lawrence, Kan., last week when the state abortion referendum was defeated.Katie Currid for The New York Times“I can kind of feel it on the streets, that there’s some change in momentum,” Ms. Titus said.Indeed, in recent days, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans for the first time this year when voters were asked which party they would prefer to control Congress — the so-called generic ballot test — according to polling averages maintained by the data-journalism website FiveThirtyEight.There is no guarantee of success in selling the bill. Last year, the White House shepherded through a rare bipartisan infrastructure deal. But its passage, which drew great fanfare in Washington, did little to arrest the continual decline in Mr. Biden’s approval ratings — and many Americans were still unaware that the measure passed months later, polling showed.Republicans say the new legislation could galvanize their own base against an expansive progressive wish list that has been decades in the making, just as the passage of the Affordable Care Act preceded the Republican wave of 2010.“That’s the sort of thing that could really set a spark to the powder keg — in the same way that the midnight passage of Obamacare was the moment that electrified Republican voters and started to really pull independents in our direction,” said Steven Law, who leads the main Republican super PAC devoted to Senate races.Republican assaults on the legislation — for bulking up the Internal Revenue Service, for creating a green energy “slush fund,” as Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has called it, and for expanding spending programs despite the bill’s Inflation Reduction Act title — have already begun. 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      Biden’s Remarkable Summer

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      Media narratives are driven by trajectory.Things get better or worse. People rise and fall. Maybe there is an upstart sensation who threatens the establishment. Maybe there is a spectacular fall from grace. Maybe there is a comeback. Regardless of the story, the direction of movement is what matters.Joe Biden got caught in one of those narratives: that things were going badly and people were losing confidence. Then, of course, the polls backed up that narrative, which provided a patina of proof.But the truth is that news narratives and polls are symbiotic. The narratives help shape what people believe, which is then captured by the polls, and those polling results are then fed back into news narratives as separate, objective and independent fact.“Joe Biden can’t catch a break” was a neat narrative. Every new disappointing data point fit snugly within it. But reality doesn’t play by media rules. It is often much more nuanced.As the legendary football coach Lou Holtz once put it: “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”Biden has had some bad months, to be sure, but there is no way to get around the fact the last month or so has been stellar for the administration.On the economic front, as of Wednesday, gas prices had fallen for 50 consecutive days, down 86 cents from the record average high of $5.02 on June 14, according to CNN. The jobs market has also shown incredible resilience. Friday’s jobs report alone far outpaced expectations.There are challenges. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation increased “9.1 percent for the 12 months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981.” This doesn’t invalidate that Biden has had a good month; it only underscores the complexities of any news story.On the legislative front, in June, Biden signed the most significant federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. Two weeks ago, his big spending bill, Build Back Better, which everyone thought was dead, was resurrected in the trimmed down form of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, all Senate Democrats have gotten behind the bill and it has passed in that body. These developments don’t erase legislative disappointments like the failure of the voter protection bill or the police reform bill, but they are victories nonetheless.There are foreign policy wins, like the killing of the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan, and the overwhelming vote in the Senate in favor of expanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden, a direct reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the Russians have suggested that they are open to discussing a prison swap to free Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, both of whom are still being held in Russian custody. Here, again, there are challenges. For instance, tensions are heating up with China, particularly after a visit to Taiwan by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.Then, there is the uber issue of the Supreme Court striking down the right to an abortion. This was a gutting disappointment to liberals, and many have accused the White House of not reacting strongly enough.But it appears that the issue has roused some otherwise disinterested or dispassionate voters and may help Democrats to hold off a massive wave of Republican wins in the midterms. We need look no further than Kansas, a state that voted strongly for Trump in 2020, but that last week voted even more strongly to keep the right to an abortion in the state Constitution.Biden’s string of victories may not yet be enough to shift the narrative about him from spiraling to rebounding, but a fair read of recent events demands some adjustment.The White House must also shift its messaging, from defensive to offensive. I’ve never truly bought the argument that Biden’s polling was bad because he simply wasn’t doing enough to tout his accomplishments. There were some periods where the disappointments actually seemed to carry more weight than his achievements.But that’s not the case now, and the administration must seize this moment, and not be shy about shouting about its wins.This is one area where Donald Trump succeeded: boasting. When he was campaigning in 2016, he claimed that if he was elected, people might even “get tired of winning.” As he put it, people would say: “Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much.” To which he said he would respond: “No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more.”He would go through his term bragging about how anything that happened on his watch was the biggest and best.We now know that the Trump presidency was a disaster that nearly destroyed the country, but, if a failure like Trump can crow about all he did, even when the evidence wasn’t there, then surely Biden can find a way to do a little crowing of his own, particularly during one of the most successful stretches of his presidency.Biden, you did it. Boast about it.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Maybe Joe Biden Knows Joe Manchin Better Than We Thought

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      Gail Collins: Never really thought I’d be leading off with a toast to Joe Manchin, Bret, but troubled times require low expectations.Bret Stephens: You came around!Gail: Joe came around! Or caved, which sounds a little more satisfying. Of course we’ve still got his Senate colleague Kyrsten Sinema and her tax obsessions to worry about. But if it all comes together this week, we’ll get the big Biden program to battle climate change. Will that make you as happy as it would make me, hmm?Bret: Your happiness sounds like it’s an 8 or a 9 on a 10-point scale, and mine is probably around a 5. The Senate just passed a $280 billion bill to support the semiconductor industry under the guise of standing up to China, which is really just a huge giveaway to Intel and other U.S. chip makers. Now we’re dropping another $369 billion, and a lot of that will be in the form of corporate subsidies for companies like Tesla and General Motors. I know Manchin and Larry Summers are saying this will help bring down inflation. But pumping a lot of money into an economy usually has the opposite effect.On the other hand, it’s a whole lot less than the trillions the administration wanted to spend last year, so I’ll take that as a victory. It might keep the nuclear industry alive, which is also vital if we are serious about tackling climate change, and it might also reduce some of the permitting bottlenecks that get in the way of energy infrastructure. And the two bills are solid legislative wins for President Biden, who really, really needed them.Gail: As did all of us who are still Friends of Biden — although I guess we’d prefer not to be called F.O.B.s.Bret: Shame the news arrives the same week we get the second straight quarter of negative economic growth, which is … not a recession?Gail: I prefer to think of it as an, um, a very relaxed financial time.Bret: Not sure how much it would help Biden if he were to say, “Folks, the economy isn’t stalling. It’s relaxing.” Sorry, go on.Gail: And while of course politics is utterly beside the point — who in the world would worry about the entire makeup of Congress? — this legislation has got to help the Democrats come election time. Lots of good reasons we’re in an economic … slump. But you’ve got to be able to deliver a plan for making things better.One of my favorite parts of the bill is the way it clamps down on pharmaceutical companies. Like giving the government power to negotiate on the prices of some drugs covered by Medicare.Bret: Terrible! Price controls inevitably lead to less innovation, fewer incentives to manufacture generics and biosimilars and crazy distortions as pharmaceutical companies jack up the price of some drugs to make up for lost revenue in others. It’s just as bad an idea as rent control and rent stabilization, which is great for some but distorts the overall market and makes the city more expensive.Gail: Hey, we the taxpayers are funding those drugs and we should get assurance that all our money isn’t going to Big Pharma’s profits.Sorry, go on.Bret: I still don’t see the legislation swinging a lot of votes to the Democrats in the midterms. Biden also got his big infrastructure bill passed last year and it didn’t help him one bit politically. The only thing that can save the Democrats now is Donald Trump and his dumb political endorsements.Gail: Anybody you’re thinking of in particular? For instance, that dweeb Blake Masters in Arizona who we talked about recently? The one who now graciously admits he “went too far” when he wrote a youthful essay implicitly criticizing American involvement in World War II. I believe you said if you were voting in Arizona and Masters won the primary, you’d support the — hehehehe — incumbent Democrat, Mark Kelly.Bret: Yes, reluctantly. As David Sedaris might put it, the choice between Democrats and most Republicans these days is like a choice between a day-old baloney sandwich with a sad little pickle on a stale roll versus a plate of rancid chicken served with a sprinkling of anthrax on a bed of broken glass.I’ll take the sandwich.Gail: Got some other big primaries coming up on Tuesday besides Arizona. I’m sure a lot of Missouri Republicans would be happy to see the end of Eric Greitens, a former governor, who now seems to be fading in his run for the Senate. Can’t imagine why, given that he was forced to resign from office in an ethics crisis that included a mind-boggling sex scandal.Bret: The fact that he was the front-runner, at least until recently, really tells you that the G.O.P. has reached its psychotic stage. To recap, Greitens, a former Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL, resigned in disgrace as governor four years ago after barely a year in office. Later, his ex-wife alleged in a sworn affidavit, which Greitens disputes, that he knocked her down and confiscated her cellphone, wallet and keys to keep her and their children prisoner in their home. Also, that he was physically violent toward their 3-year-old son.Gail: Which really should have sealed the deal.Bret: More recently, he filmed an ad that was a live-action fantasy of shooting RINOs — “Republicans in Name Only” — that struck many of us as a pretty open invitation to violence. Even Josh Hawley thinks he’s vile, which is like Nikita Khrushchev taking a strong moral exception to Mao Zedong.Gail: Seems like his fading in the polls shouldn’t require a celebration, but we’ll take what we can get.Bret: As for Masters, his candidacy seems to rest on his promotion of so-called replacement theory.Gail: Yes, the idea that Democrats are encouraging immigration so they can create a minority-majority of voters.Bret: It’s almost amusing, since the most significant replacement to happen in Arizona was the one in which white settlers stole sovereign Mexican territory in an unprovoked invasion and dispossessed Native American tribes.Gail: Bless you.Bret: It’s also a master class in political malpractice, since it only alienates Hispanic voters, who are often fairly conservative and increasingly open to voting for Republicans. Are you feeling optimistic?Gail: Have to admit I’m kinda worried that a lot of liberal voters — particularly the younger ones — are just so appalled by the way things have been going with abortion and guns, and so depressed by the state of the economy, that they’ll just sit this one out.Bret: Yeah, but don’t discount the rancid chicken factor. As in, for instance, the Senate race in Georgia, or the governors’ races in Maryland and Pennsylvania.Gail: Well, just to stick with Georgia for a second, it does seem a guy like Herschel Walker, with a really dreadful performance record as a father, should have tried not to build his campaign around being a family-values candidate.Bret: With luck, maybe after a few losses Republican voters will finally get the message that a Trump endorsement in the primary is the political kiss of death in the general election.Then again, it would also help Democrats if someone cured Biden of his habit of saying things that quickly prove totally wrong. The other day he said there wasn’t going to be a recession. Before that, inflation was “temporary.” Last summer, it was that the Taliban wasn’t going to overrun Kabul. You can almost know what’s coming by expecting the opposite of whatever he predicts. That’s why I’m confident he won’t run for a second term. He keeps insisting that he will.Gail: I still don’t see any point in Biden’s announcing he won’t run this early in the calendar. He should wait until the end of the midterm elections. Then we can all turn our attention to the hordes of would-be successors waving their hands.That’ll still give Democrats a year to check out the options. Don’t you think that’s enough?Bret: If you’re the billionaire governor of Illinois, Jay Pritzker, it doesn’t make that much of a difference, since fund-raising isn’t an issue. Pete Buttigieg can’t be feeling as lucky. But either way I think it would be better for Biden to announce before the midterms. Maybe he will even find it liberating to be a president who can really govern for the rest of his term without the burden of a presumptive campaign and all the nagging questions about it. And it will send the message that he has the grace and wisdom to know it’s time to step aside, which is more than can be said for the Chuck Grassleys and Dianne Feinsteins of politics.Gail: Biden’s political clout, wobbly as it is right now, will vanish completely if he embraces lame-duck-hood. Announcing he’s not running by the end of the year seems a good timetable. But of course actually trying to stay in for another race would be a disaster.Bret: Gail, before we go we should probably mention that we’ll be taking the next two weeks off for travel and family. Any parting suggestions or recommendations for our readers till we reconvene?Gail: Stay cool, read something good — I’ve really been enjoying “A Gentleman in Moscow,” by Amor Towles, a novel about a count who’s trapped in his hotel after the Russian Revolution. That’s one for now, but when we get back, Bret, we’ve got to have that favorite-books conversation we’re always threatening to have.And what’s your tip?Bret: Same. Devote a few weekend mornings to some of the terrific longer pieces in The Times. Start with Alex Vadukul’s devastating, breathtaking portrait of Daniel Auster, Paul Auster’s son. It’s a modern-day “American Tragedy,” worthy of Dreiser. Then get out in the sun and count your life’s blessings. I hope there are many.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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      Biden Savors Much-Needed Victories. But Will the Highs Overshadow the Lows?

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      With the midterm elections around the corner, the challenge for President Biden is to make sure his latest successes resonate with Americans who remain deeply skeptical about the future.WASHINGTON — President Biden and his top advisers have tried for months to press forward amid a seemingly endless drumbeat of dispiriting news: rising inflation, high gas prices, a crumbling agenda, a dangerously slowing economy and a plummeting approval rating, even among Democrats.But Mr. Biden has finally caught a series of breaks. Gas prices, which peaked above $5 a gallon, have fallen every day for more than six weeks and are now closer to $4. After a yearlong debate, Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed legislation this past week to invest $280 billion in areas like semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research to bolster competition with China.And in a surprise turnabout, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat who had single-handedly held up Mr. Biden’s boldest proposals, agreed to a deal that puts the president in a position to make good on promises to lower drug prices, confront climate change and make corporations pay higher taxes.“The work of the government can be slow and frustrating and sometimes even infuriating,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Thursday, reflecting the impatience and anger among his allies and the weariness of his own staff. “Then the hard work of hours and days and months from people who refuse to give up pays off. History is made. Lives are changed.”Even for a president who has become used to the highs and lows of governing, it was a moment to feel whipsawed. Since taking office 18 months ago, Mr. Biden has celebrated successes like passage of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill and slogged through crises like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gas prices soared; now they are coming down. Unemployment is at record lows even as there are signs of a looming recession.The president’s brand of politics is rooted in a slower era, before Twitter, and sometimes it can pay off to have the patience to wait for a deal to finally emerge. But now, with congressional elections coming up in a few months, the challenge for Mr. Biden is to make sure his latest successes resonate with Americans who remain deeply skeptical about the future.The magnitude of the Senate deal was received like a splash of icy water across Washington, which had all but written off the possibility that Mr. Biden’s far-reaching ambitions could be revived this year. Republicans moved quickly to attack the proposal, with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, deriding what he described as “giant tax hikes that will hammer workers.”The Senate deal puts the president in a position to make good on his promise to confront climate change.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesInside the West Wing, aides were forced to scramble to come up with talking points for a deal almost no one saw coming. If Congress manages to pass the compromise reached with Mr. Manchin, they argue, it will move the country to the forefront on addressing the globe’s changing climate and lower drug prices even as it raises money from corporations to lower the federal budget deficit.The deal would give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for millions of Americans, extend health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three years and require corporations to pay a minimum tax — something many progressive Democrats have been demanding for years.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 6The state of the midterms. More

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      Targeting ‘Woke Capital’

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      West Virginia’s banning of five big Wall Street banks for doing business with the state is yet another step toward a politicized world of red brands and blue brands. Florida’s DeSantis: Make profits great again.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressStates take action against ‘woke C.E.O.s’ Five big Wall Street firms woke up to a headache yesterday, and the ailment seems to be spreading fast. Riley Moore, the outspoken treasurer of West Virginia, announced that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were banned from doing business with the state because they had stopped supporting the coal industry, reports The Times’s David Gelles.The banks have sharply reduced financing for new coal projects, while BlackRock has been reducing its actively managed holdings in coal companies since 2020. Coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, has become less profitable in recent years.Some of the firms do business with West Virginia in various ways. JPMorgan, for example, handles some banking services for West Virginia’s public university. But the dollar figures are relatively small, and the law does not affect the holdings of the state’s pension fund.The development is yet another step toward a politicized world of red brands and blue brands. In these hyperpartisan times, companies are increasingly being caught between conservatives and progressives, and some brands are being typecast as Republican or Democratic. The timing of the announcement was striking, coming just hours after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who had been the chief Democratic holdout on climate legislation, relented and agreed to sign on.Meanwhile in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis unloaded on the supposedly “woke” ideology of some financial services firms, criticizing E.S.G. investing and announcing plans for legislation that would “prohibit big banks, credit card companies and money transmitters from discriminating against customers for their religious, political or social beliefs.” At a news conference this week, he also said he wanted to prohibit the state’s pension fund managers from considering environmental factors when making investment decisions. Instead, he said, they need to be focusing only on “maximizing the return on investment.”Businesses now “marginalize” people because of political disagreements, DeSantis said. “That is not the way you can run an economy effectively.” He singled out PayPal, which has cut off accounts associated with far-right groups that participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and GoFundMe, which blocked donations to a group supporting truckers who occupied Ottawa this year.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Amazon’s shares soar as the company says consumer demand remains strong. The positive comments from C.E.O. Andrew Jassy and other top executives caused investors to shrug off the fact that the giant internet retailer reported its slowest quarterly sales growth in two decades, and has cut nearly 100,000 workers. Apple’s quarterly results were also better than expected, as Big Tech’s profits have been resilient even as the economy has slowed.The eurozone economy grew faster than expected, but so did inflation. Positive G.D.P. growth for the region, a day after the U.S. reported that economic growth slumped for the second quarter in a row, relieved some worries about growing stagflation. Still, inflation in the eurozone hit 8.9 percent in July compared with a year ago, a fresh record.The Biden administration plans to offer updated booster shots in September. With reformulated shots from Pfizer and Moderna on the horizon, the F.D.A. has decided that Americans under 50 should wait to receive second boosters.Read More About Oil and Gas PricesPrices Drop: U.S. gas prices have been on the decline, offering some relief to drivers. But weather, war and demand will influence how long it lasts.Stock Market: As financial markets around the world fell this spring amid worries about inflation and rising interest rates, energy was the only sector gaining ground. Summer Driving Season: The spike in gas prices is being driven in part by vacationers hitting the road. Here’s what our reporter saw on a recent trip.Gas Tax Holiday: President Biden called on Congress to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax, but experts remain skeptical the move would benefit consumers much, because tax is such a small percentage of the price you pay at the pump..A new book reignites a debate about how L.A. Times editors handled a 2017 exposé. Paul Pringle, a veteran reporter at the L.A. Times, writes in his book “Bad City” that top editors tried to slow-walk the paper’s initial groundbreaking article, which detailed how the dean of the University of Southern California’s medical school used drugs with young people.Trader Joe’s workers at a Massachusetts store form a union. It is the only one of the supermarket chain’s more than 500 stores with a formal union, but similar moves are afoot elsewhere, just as the union campaign has spread at Starbucks. Trader Joe’s will face at least one more union vote soon, at a Minneapolis store next month, and workers at a store in Colorado filed an election petition this week.Big oil’s big profitsOil companies are reporting surging profits, even as consumers and world leaders are dealing with the hardships caused by higher energy prices.Buoyed by high oil and gas prices, the energy sector is expected to have swelled earnings by more than 250 percent in the second quarter. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the U.S.’s two largest oil companies, reported record profits this morning, with Exxon’s profit more than tripling from a year ago. Europe’s biggest oil companies, Shell and TotalEnergies, yesterday reported a combined $21 billion in profits.The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to significant financial benefits for energy companies and their investors. The pain of rising energy prices and shortages, though, has been felt particularly strongly by consumers and businesses in Europe, which received roughly half of Russia’s oil exports before the invasion. In Asia and Africa, higher energy prices could push millions of people back into energy poverty, the International Energy Agency warned last month.It’s also led to claims of profiteering. President Biden said last month that oil companies were benefiting from their own underinvestment in refining capacity. In Britain, Boris Johnson, the outgoing prime minister, imposed a windfall tax on major oil and gas companies. But a top contender to replace him, Liz Truss, said that she opposed the tax because it would send “the wrong signal to the world,” and that Shell should be encouraged to invest in Britain.Oil companies have pointed the finger back at politicians. Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said yesterday that energy prices were high in part because of government policies that discouraged investment in oil and natural gas in recent years.Gas prices in the U.S. have fallen over the last month, and there are some indications that more relief could be ahead. Citigroup said in a research note today that it expected growth in the supply of oil to outpace weaker demand. Still, geopolitical factors and the weather could change the trajectory of prices, particularly if the U.S. has an active hurricane season that disrupts refining capacity. “Just a few of these risks materializing could work up a continued perfect storm of high volatility,” Citigroup said.“There is a principle at stake. What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”— Stefan Lewis, a former member of Rotterdam’s City Council, explaining the outrage over the city’s decision, which has since been reversed, to temporarily dismantle a bridge to accommodate Jeff Bezos and his superyacht.The dark secrets of corporate subsidy deals Every year, state and local officials negotiate about $95 billion in economic development deals, competing with one another to recruit companies to their communities with lucrative subsidies in exchange for their business.But some corporations are becoming increasingly aggressive about forcing officials to sign nondisclosure agreements that could end up hurting the communities that the businesses were supposed to help, according to a new report by the American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive antitrust advocacy group. The N.D.A.s sometimes prohibit officials from disclosing basic information about a corporation, like its name and the type of business it’s building, Pat Garofalo, an author of the report, told DealBook.These N.D.A.s prevent community members, like workers and local businesses, from sharing their input on the deal until after it is completed. One recent example is the $4 billion battery factory that Panasonic will build in Kansas, which will get nearly $1 billion in subsidies. Before the deal was completed, Panasonic was also negotiating with Oklahoma, and the states were in a bidding war over the electronics giant’s business. But lawmakers could not talk about the corporation on the other side of the bargaining table in public — and sometimes didn’t even know its name. In April, Oklahoma officials complained that they had two hours to contemplate a complex incentive package worth $700 million, or about 8 percent of the state budget. “How am I supposed to go back to my constituents and say, ‘I gave away three-quarters of a billion dollars to a company that I don’t even know their name?’ Is that responsible?” State Representative Collin Walke said during an appropriations meeting.Some states have introduced bills to ban these N.D.A.s, which the report calls “an extremely common tactic” in development deals. This year, such legislation was introduced in New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Florida. New York’s State Senate voted unanimously to approve a ban. Garofalo thinks the New York lawmakers were galvanized by the Amazon HQ2 bid that fell apart in 2019. But he notes that communities don’t have to wait for politicians to fix the problem. Engaged citizens have used public meeting and records laws to solve subsidy mysteries, and sometimes a little transparency is all it takes, Garofalo said. “When the public does get a say,” he told DealBook, “the deals are better, or bad deals are knocked off right away.”THE SPEED READ Deals“Private equity giant Carlyle’s latest big play: Small Brooklyn buildings” (The Real Deal)Ernst & Young’s plan to split is reportedly being held up by debt issues. (WSJ)Newsmax renewed a deal to be carried by Verizon’s Fios, days before its rival One America News is to be dropped. Both are known for their loyalty to former President Trump. (NYT)PolicyThe private equity industry is objecting to a proposed U.S. tax increase on carried-interest income. (NYT)“Dry Fountains, Cold Pools, Less Beer? Germans Tip-Toe Up the Path to Energy Savings” (NYT)The big question is not whether the U.S. is in a recession. It’s whether the economy’s problems will worsen. (NYT’s The Morning)Best of the restArchitects have a reimagined vision for the former Deutsche Bank atrium at 60 Wall Street, with plans to make it look less like a Mediterranean spa and more like a Singapore airport. (NYT)Instagram is rolling back some product changes after celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian criticized them. (NYT)TV showrunners are demanding that studios create protocols to protect employees in states where abortion has been outlawed. (Variety)Richard Rosenthal, the top defense lawyer for dangerous dogs, has even frustrated animal rights groups. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      3 Senate Hopefuls Denounce Big Tech. They Also Have Deep Ties to It.

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      For Republicans running for the Senate this year, “Big Tech” has become a catchall target, a phrase used to condemn the censorship of conservative voices on social media, invasions of privacy and the corruption of America’s youth — or all of the above.But for three candidates in some of the hottest races of 2022 — Blake Masters, J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz — the denunciations come with a complication: They have deep ties to the industry, either as investors, promoters or employees. What’s more, their work involved some of the questionable uses of consumer data that they now criticize.Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance have embraced the contradictions with the zeal of the converted.“Fundamentally, it is my expertise from having worked in Silicon Valley and worked with these companies that has given me this perspective,” Mr. Masters, who enters the Republican primary election for Senate in Arizona on Tuesday with the wind at his back, said on Wednesday. “As they have grown, they have become too pervasive and too powerful.”Mr. Vance, on the website of his campaign for Ohio’s open Senate seat, calls for the breakup of large technology firms, declaring: “I know the technology industry well. I’ve worked in it and invested in it, and I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it. The tech industry promised all of us better lives and faster communication; instead, it steals our private information, sells it to the Chinese, and then censors conservatives and others.”But some technology activists simply aren’t buying it, especially not from two political newcomers whose Senate runs have been bankrolled by Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook and a longtime board member of the tech giant. Mr. Thiel’s own company, Palantir, works closely with federal military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies eager for access to its secretive data analysis technology.“There’s a massive, hugely profitable industry in tracking what you do online,” said Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a new liberal interest group pressing for stricter regulations of technology companies. “Regardless of these candidates’ prospects in the Senate, I would imagine if Peter Thiel is investing in them, he is investing in his future.”Mr. Masters, a protégé of Mr. Thiel’s and the former chief operating officer of Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm, oversaw investments in Palantir and pressed to spread its technology, which analyzes mountains of raw data to detect patterns that can be used by customers.Palantir’s initial seed money came from the C.I.A., but its technology was adopted widely by the military and even the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Masters and Mr. Thiel personally pressed the director of the National Institutes of Health to buy into it.Sharecare, a website whose consortium of investors included Mehmet Oz, answered consumer questions about health issues.Dr. Oz, the Republican nominee for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, was part of a consortium of investors that founded Sharecare, a website that offered users the chance to ask questions about health and wellness — and allowed marketers from the health care industry the chance to answer them.A feature of Sharecare, RealAge Test, quizzed tens of millions of users on their health attributes, ostensibly to help shave years off their age, then released the test results to paying customers in the pharmaceutical industry.Mr. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio and another Thiel pupil, used Mr. Thiel’s money to form his venture capital firm, Narya Capital, which helped fund Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app whose privacy policies allow it to share some user data for targeted advertising.The Vance campaign said the candidate’s stake in Hallow did not give him or his firm decision-making powers, and Alex Jones, Hallow’s chief executive, said private, sensitive data like journal entries or reflections were encrypted and not sold, rented or otherwise shared with data brokers. He said that “private sensitive personal data” was not shared “with any advertising partners.”Peter Thiel has bankrolled Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance in their Senate campaigns.Marco Bello/Getty ImagesAll three Senate candidates have targeted the technology industry in their campaigns, railing against the harvesting of data from unsuspecting users and invasions of privacy by greedy firms.“These companies take this data and sell precisely targeted ads so effective they verge on predatory,” Mr. Masters wrote in an opinion article last year in The Wall Street Journal. “They then optimize their platforms to keep you online to receive ever more ads.”In a gauzy video posted in July 2021, Mr. Masters says, “The internet, which was supposed to give us an awesome future, is instead being used to shut us up.”Mr. Vance, in a campaign Facebook video, suggested that Congress make data collection illegal — or at least mandate disclosure — before technology companies “harvest our data and then sell it back to us in the form of targeted advertising.”In a December video appearance soon after he announced his campaign, Dr. Oz proclaimed, “I’ve taken on Big Pharma, I’ve gone to battle with Big Tech, I’ve gone up against agrochem companies, big ones, and I’ve got scars to prove it.”It is not surprising that more candidates for high office have deep connections to the technology industry, said Michael Rosen, an adjunct fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about the industry. That’s where the money is these days, he said, and technology’s reach extends through industries including health care, social media, hardware and software and consumer electronics.“What is novel in this cycle is to have candidates ostensibly on the right who are arguing for the government to step in and regulate these companies because, in their view, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves,” Mr. Rosen said.He expressed surprise that “a free-market, conservative-type candidate thinks that the government will do a fairer and more reliable job of regulating and moderating speech than the private sector would.”Technology experts on the left say candidates like Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance are Trojan horses, taking popular stances to win federal office with no intention of pursuing those positions in the Senate.On his website, Mr. Vance says, “I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it.”Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Haworth, whose group has taken aim at platforms like Facebook and Amazon, said states like California were already moving forward with regulations to prevent online marketers from steering consumers to certain products or unduly influencing behavior.She said she believed that Republicans, if they took control of Congress, would impose weak federal rules that superseded state regulations.“Democrats should be calling out the hypocrisy here,” she said.Mr. Masters said he was sympathetic to concerns that empowering government to regulate technology would only lead to another kind of abuse, but, he added, “The answer in this age of networked monopolies is not to throw your hands up and shout ‘laissez-faire.’”Multinational technology firms like Google and Facebook, Mr. Masters said, have exceeded national governments in power.As for the “Trojan horse” assertion, he said, “When I am in the U.S. Senate, I am going to deliver on everything I’m saying.”It is not clear that such complex matters will have an impact in the fall campaigns. Jim Lamon, a Republican Senate rival of Mr. Masters’s in Arizona, has aired advertisements tarring him as a “fake” stalking horse for the California technology industry — but with limited effectiveness. At a debate this month, Mr. Lamon said Mr. Masters was “owned” by his paymasters in Big Tech.But Mr. Masters, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, appears to be the clear favorite for the nomination.Representative Tim Ryan, Mr. Vance’s Democratic opponent in Ohio, has made glancing references to the “Big Tech billionaires who sip wine in Silicon Valley” and bankroll the Republican’s campaign.John Fetterman, the Democratic opponent of Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, has not raised the issue.Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said he was very serious about his promises to limit the influence of technology companies.“J.D. has long been outspoken about his desire to break up Big Tech and hold them accountable for their overreach,” she said. “He strongly believes that their power over our politics and economy needs to be reduced, to protect the constitutional rights of Americans.”Representatives of the Oz campaign did not respond to requests for comment. More