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      Obama to Georgia Democrats: ‘Resist the Temptation to Give Up’

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      ATLANTA — Former President Barack Obama implored Georgia Democrats not to “tune out” politics and to “resist the temptation to give up,” as he tried to energize his party’s most loyal voters in a state that could decide control of the U.S. Senate. Speaking to a crowd of several thousand, Mr. Obama noted the many issues that may be dampening voter enthusiasm — inflation, rising crime and the war in Ukraine — making little mention that those ills have happened while his party controls Washington. But he cast the midterm elections as a fight not over policy differences, but the health of democracy. “I get why you might be worried. I understand why it might be tempting sometimes to tune out,” Mr. Obama said. “But I’m here to tell you that tuning out is not an option.” His speech, a mix of his familiar applause lines and new warnings about threats to democratic norms, aimed to boost Democratic candidates in the state even as their party has suffered low approval ratings nationwide. He presented Democrats as the best alternative to Republican lawmakers, a group that he said is “not interested in actually solving problems.” Mr. Obama was especially pointed in his criticism of Herschel Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and the Republican challenger to the state’s senator, Raphael Warnock. Mr. Walker, Mr. Obama said, is “a celebrity who wants to be a politician.” Mr. Walker’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Obama’s remarks.Mr. Obama arrived as the campaign enters the final stretch and Democrats are desperate to fire up their base, especially Black voters who have struggled with inflation and rising crime but have been left cold by the Biden administration. His stop in College Park, outside Atlanta, was the first of five events he is planning in coming days. He is due in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday, then Nevada and Pennsylvania next week — all states with close Senate races. Mr. Obama, at times, acknowledged voters’ fatigue and hardly mentioned President Biden, his former vice president. “Joe is fighting for you every day. He’s got your back. He’s doing everything he can to put more money in your pockets,” he said. Georgia Democrats have pointed to sky-high early voting figures as a sign of strength heading into Election Day. Nearly 1.3 million voters have cast ballots in the state, with the strongest performances coming from older Black voters and those in the deep-blue metro Atlanta counties of Fulton and DeKalb, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.But all signs point to strong turnout on both sides, with Republican voters poised to pour into polling places on Election Day. Mr. Biden’s approval ratings remain low, standing last month at an abysmal 37 percent in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. And while key portions of the Democratic base have turned out en masse, Democrats will still need to outperform with voters under 30 and women in the Atlanta suburbs to find success in November.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.“I look at the early vote numbers in Georgia, and see them as certainly positive news for Democrats,” said Tom Bonier, chief executive of the Democratic polling firm TargetSmart, which is working for the Abrams campaign. “But I think it’s also something that shows the work that needs to be done.”Friday’s rally was billed as an event for Georgia’s entire Democratic ticket. But two of its candidates took center stage: Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, in a rematch, and Mr. Warnock. Ms. Abrams’ campaign has been particularly focused on winning over Black men, whose votes are also vital to Mr. Warnock if he is to defeat Mr. Walker. Black voters could also make the difference elsewhere, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where lagging turnout from voters of color helped Donald J. Trump secure narrow victories.“I think we’re going to see Black voters step up to the plate,” said Quentin James, president and co-founder of The Collective, a political action committee devoted to electing Black Democrats. “But you can’t divorce that from the reality that the country hasn’t always stood up for Black voters.”At a Democratic event called Georgia Black Men Call to Action, audience members listened to a speech by Stacey Abrams.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Obama tried to cast the election as dire moment for the country, pointing to Republicans’ questioning of the results of the 2020 election. Democratic candidates, he said, are a bulwark against Republican candidates who are running on a platform of election denial. “If they win, there’s no telling what would happen,” he said. Jameelah Gray, 32, after voting early at Morehouse College in Atlanta. All signs point to strong turnout on both sides in Georgia.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe former president’s earlier forays into midterm battlegrounds were anything but resounding successes. In 2010, he crisscrossed the country trying to rally voters — especially young voters — by telling them that Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and Democrats had pulled it out. Unimpressed, the electorate responded with what he called a “shellacking,” handing Republicans a 68-seat gain in the House, the largest since 1948, along with seven seats in the Senate and six additional governorships.In 2014, Republicans netted nine Senate seats, cementing control of Congress for Mr. Obama’s final two years in office.Out of office, however, Mr. Obama is arguably a more popular Democratic figure than the current president — or any other Democratic leader, for that matter.“There’s nostalgia for the Obama era with a lot of swing voters,” said Tim Phillips, a Republican strategist and former president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political organization funded by the Koch family. “I think he’s their best spokesperson.”For his part, Mr. Biden has been a low-key presence on the campaign trail, avoiding large rallies altogether. On Friday night, he spoke at a Democratic dinner in Pennsylvania, where he celebrated Democrats’ legislative wins and railed against both Republican policies and candidates. Mr. James argued that Mr. Biden’s scarcity on the campaign trail was not really about Black voters, saying Mr. Biden was even less popular with white voters. By contrast, he said, African Americans remained deeply connected to the first and only Black president, who drew the highest turnout of Black voters in history.“Obama’s going to ramp up urgency,” he said, “not just for voting but for voting early. It will be a call to action.”The political environment for Democrats is far more uncertain than it was in either of the Obama midterms. Unemployment is low and the economy is growing, but Americans are confronting the worst inflation the nation has seen in 40 years, which is driving up interest rates and clawing back any sense of income gains as the pandemic recedes.On the other hand, the Supreme Court’s repeal of abortion rights and the looming presence of Mr. Trump are energizing the Democratic base in ways that Mr. Obama did not experience in his years in office.“Presidents look better in the rear-view mirror,” said Mo Elleithee, who was a senior official at the Democratic National Committee during the drubbing the party took in 2014.With little more than a week to go, Democrats are bracing for either a significant Republican wave that hands control of both the House and Senate to the Republican Party, or a split decision, with Democrats retaining control of a tightly divided Senate and Republicans squeaking out a narrow majority in the House.Developments in key races have only heightened Democratic anxieties. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s halting debate performance against Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, spotlighted the effect Mr. Fetterman’s stroke had had on his ability to communicate and frayed the nerves of Pennsylvania Democrats.The Republicans’ main super PAC resumed advertising on television in New Hampshire, convinced that the race between Senator Maggie Hassan and her Republican challenger, Don Bolduc, had tightened. And prognosticators moved the Arizona contest between Senator Mark Kelly and his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, back to a tossup.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, in Syracuse on Thursday, was recorded expressing his concerns to President Biden about where Democrats stood in Senate contests.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesPerhaps most exasperating to Democrats is the Senate race in Georgia, where a second woman this week accused Mr. Walker of having paid for her to have an abortion. Mr. Walker has denied both women’s claims.Caught on a hot microphone on Thursday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, was heard telling Mr. Biden, “The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.” On Friday night the Walker campaign pointed to remarks the candidate made earlier in the day where he said “Unlike Raphael Warnock I’m not a politician. I’m a warrior for God.”Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said, “It really does feel like there is a lot of movement in these races.” She still rates control of the Senate a tossup, but, she added, “If this is a wave, you could see others swept away,” like Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado.On the other hand, recent polling has tantalized Democrats in Iowa, where Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican, is seeking another six-year term at age 89; in North Carolina, where the Democratic nominee for the Senate, Cheri Beasley, remains knotted with her Republican opponent, Ted Budd; and even in Utah, where Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from an independent, the former C.I.A. officer Evan McMullin.“This is the trickiest midterm environment I’ve seen in a long time,” said Steve Israel, a former House member from New York who once headed the House Democrats’ campaign arm.Maya King reported from Atlanta and Jonathan Weisman from Chicago. More

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      The Midterms Look Very Different if You’re Not a Democrat or a Republican

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      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Liel Leibovitz, an editor at large for Tablet magazine, and Stephanie Slade, a senior editor at Reason magazine, to discuss how they and other “politically homeless” Americans are thinking about the midterm elections.Ross Douthat: Thanks to you both for serving as representatives of the important part of America that feels legitimately torn between the political parties. Liel, in December of 2021 you wrote an essay about what you called “the Turn,” meaning the feeling of no longer being at home on the political left, of being alienated from the Democratic Party by everything from Covid-era school closures to doctrinaire progressivism.Where does “the Turn” carry you when it comes to electoral politics, facing the (arguably) binary choices of the midterm elections?Liel Leibovitz: Nowhere good, I’m afraid. I’m an immigrant, so I have no real tribal or longstanding loyalties. I came to this country, like so many other immigrants, because I care deeply about two things — freedom of religion and individual liberties. And both parties are messing up when it comes to these two fundamental pillars of American life, from cheering on law enforcement spying on Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11 to cheering on social media networks for curbing free speech. “The Turn” leads me away from both Democrats and Republicans.Douthat: Stephanie, you’re a libertarian, part of a faction that’s always been somewhat alienated from both parties, despite (usually) having a somewhat stronger connection to the right. This is not, I think it’s fair to say, a particularly libertarian moment in either coalition. What kind of Election Day outcomes are you actually rooting for?Stephanie Slade: This is tough. As someone motivated by a desire for much less government than we currently have, I’m always going to be nervous about the prospect of a Congress that’s willing to rubber-stamp the whims of a president (or vice versa). So I’m an instinctive fan of divided power. But that preference is running smack up against the almost unimaginable abhorrence I feel toward some of the Republicans who would have to win in order for the G.O.P. to retake the Senate.Douthat: Liel, as someone whose relationship to the left and the Democrats has become much more complicated in recent years, what do you see when you look at the Republican alternative?Leibovitz: Sadly, the same thing I see when I look at the Democrats. I see a party too enmeshed in very bad ideas and too interested in power rather than principle. I see a party only too happy to cheer on big government to curtail individual liberties and to let tech oligopolies govern many corners of our lives. The only point of light is how many outliers both these parties seem to be producing these days, which tells me that the left-right dichotomy is truly turning meaningless.Douthat: But political parties are always more interested in power rather than principle, right? And a lot of people look at the current landscape and say, “Sure, there are problems in both parties, but the stakes are just too high not to choose a side.” Especially among liberals, there’s a strong current of frustration with cross-pressured voters. How do you respond to people who can’t understand why you aren’t fully on their side?Slade: Those seeking power certainly want people to feel like the stakes are too high not to go along with their demands. Yes, there are militant partisans on both sides who consider it traitorous of me not to be with them 100 percent. At the same time, there’s a distinction worth keeping in mind between where party activists are and where the average Republican or Democratic voter is. Most Americans are not so wedded to their red-blue identities.Leibovitz: The most corrosive and dispiriting thing is how zero-sum our political conversation has gotten. I look at the Democratic Party and see a lot of energy I love — particularly the old Bernie Sanders spirit, before it was consumed by the apparatus. I look at the Republican Party and see people like Ted Cruz, who are very good at kicking up against some of the party’s worst ideas. There’s hope here and energy, just not if you keep on seeing this game as red versus blue.Douthat: Let me pause there, Liel. What bad ideas do you think Cruz is kicking against?Leibovitz: He represents a kind of energy that doesn’t necessarily gravitate toward the orthodoxies of giving huge corporations the freedom to do as they please. He’s rooted in an understanding of America that balks at the notion that we now have a blob of government-corporate interests dictating every aspect of our lives and that everything — from our medical system to our entertainment — is uniform.Douthat: This is a good example of the gap between how political professionals see things and how individuals see things. There’s no place for the Bernie-Cruz sympathizer in normal political typologies! But you see in polls right now not just Georgians who might back Brian Kemp for governor in Georgia and Raphael Warnock for senator but also Arizonans who might vote for Mark Kelly and Kari Lake — a stranger combination.Stephanie, what do you think about this ticket-splitting impulse?Slade: Some of this isn’t new. Political scientists and pollsters have long observed that people don’t love the idea of any one side having too much power at once. In that, I can’t blame them.Leibovitz: I agree. But it’s still so interesting to me that some of these splits seem just so outlandish, like the number of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then in 2016 for Donald Trump. That’s telling us that something truly interesting, namely that these tired labels — Democrat, Republican — don’t really mean anything anymore.Slade: We insiders always want to believe that voters are operating from a sort of consistent philosophical blueprint. But we’re seeing a lot more frustration-based voting, backlash voting. This can be fine, in the sense that there’s plenty in our world to be frustrated about, but my fear is that it can tip over into a politics thoroughly motivated by hatreds. And that is scary.Douthat: Right. For instance, in the realm of pundits, there’s an assumption that Republican candidates should be assessed based on how all-in they are for election conspiracy theories and that swing voters should recoil from the conspiracists. That seems to be happening in Pennsylvania, where the more conspiratorial Republican, Doug Mastriano, seems to be doing worse in his governor’s race than Dr. Oz is in the Senate campaign. But in Arizona, Lake is the more conspiratorial candidate, and she appears to be a stronger candidate than Blake Masters is in the Senate race.Which suggests that swing voters are often using a different compass than the political class.Leibovitz: Let me inject a very big dose of — dare I say it? — hope here. Yes, there’s a lot of hate and a lot of fear going on. But if you look at these volatile patterns you’re describing, you’re seeing something else, which is a yearning for a real vision. Voters are gravitating toward candidates who are telling them coherent stories that make sense. To the political classes, these stories sometimes sound conspiratorial or crazy or way removed from the Beltway reality. But to normal Americans, they resonate.Douthat: Or, Stephanie, are they just swinging back and forth based on the price of gas, and all larger narratives are pundit impositions on more basic pocketbook impulses?Slade: Yeah, I’m a little more split on this. Economic fundamentals matter a lot, as do structural factors (like that the president’s party usually does poorly in midterms, irrespective of everything else).Douthat: But then do you, as an unusually well-informed, cross-pressured American, feel electing Republicans in the House or Senate will help with the economic situation, with inflation?Slade: It’s a debate among libertarians whether divided government is actually a good thing. Or is the one thing the two parties can agree on that they should spend ever more money? I don’t have a ton of hope that a Republican-controlled House or Senate will do much good. On the other hand, the sheer economic insanity of the Biden years — amounting to approving more than $4 trillion of new borrowing, to say nothing of the unconstitutional eviction moratorium and student loan forgiveness — is mind-boggling to me, so almost anything that could put the brakes on some of this stuff seems worth trying.Douthat: Spoken like a swing voter. Liel, you aren’t a libertarian, but your particular profile — Jewish immigrant writer put off by progressive extremism — does resemble an earlier cross-pressured group, the original 1970s neoconservatives. Over time, a lot of neoconservatives ended up comfortably on the right (at least until recently) because they felt welcomed by the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.Do you think that the toxic side of the G.O.P. is a permanent obstacle to completing a similar move rightward for people alienated by progressivism?Leibovitz: Not to get too biblical, but I view Trump less as a person and more as a plague, a reminder from above to mend our ways, or else. And many voters mortified by the sharp left turn of the Democratic Party are feeling, like me, politically homeless right now.But politically homeless is not politically hopeless. The way out for us isn’t by focusing on which of these two broken homes is better but on which ideas we still hold dear. And here I agree with Stephanie. Stopping the economic insanity — from rampant spending to stopping oil production and driving up gas prices to giving giant corporations a free pass — is key. So is curbing the notion that it’s OK to believe that the government can decide that some categories, like race or gender or sexual orientation, make a person a member of a protected class and that it’s OK for the government to adjudicate which of these classes is more worthy of protection.Douthat: Let’s end by getting specific. Irrespective of party, is there a candidate on the ballot this fall who you are especially eager to see win and one that you are especially eager to see lose?Leibovitz: I’m a New Yorker, so anyone who helped turn this state — and my beloved hometown — into the teetering mess it is right now deserves to go. Lee Zeldin seems like the sort of out-of-left-field candidate who can be transformative, especially considering the tremendous damage done by the progressives in the state.Douthat: OK, you’ve given me a Republican candidate you want to see win, is there one you’d like to see fail?Leibovitz: I know Pennsylvania is a very important battleground state, and the Democrats have put forth a person who appears ill equipped for this responsibility, but it’s very, very hard to take a Dr. Oz candidacy seriously.Slade: I spend a lot of my time following the rising illiberal conservative movement, variously known as national conservatives, postliberals, the New Right and so on. What distinguishes them is their desire not just to acquire government power but to wield it to destroy their enemies. That goes against everything I believe and everything I believe America stands for. The person running for office right now who seems most representative of that view is J.D. Vance, who once told a reporter that “our people hate the right people.” I would like to see that sentiment lose soundly in November, wherever it’s on the ballot. (Not that I’m saying I think it actually will lose in Ohio.)Douthat: No predictions here, just preferences. Is there someone you really want to win?Slade: Like a good libertarian, can I say I wish they could all lose?Douthat: Not really, because my last question bestows on both of you a very unlibertarian power. You are each the only swing voter in America, and you get to choose the world of 2023: a Democratic-controlled Congress, a Republican-controlled Congress or the wild card, Republicans taking one house but not the other. How do you use this power?Leibovitz: Mets fan here, so wild card is an apt metaphor: Take the split, watch them both lose in comical and heartbreaking ways and pray for a better team next election.Slade: If forced to decide, I’d split the baby, then split the baby again: Republicans take the House, Democrats hold the Senate.Douthat: A Solomonic conclusion, indeed. Thanks so much to you both.Ross Douthat is a Times columnist. Liel Leibovitz is an editor at large for Tablet magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast, “Unorthodox,” and daily Talmud podcast, “Take One.” Stephanie Slade (@sladesr) is a senior editor at Reason magazine.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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      Warnock Hammers Walker in Senate Debate, Gesturing to an Empty Lectern

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      ATLANTA — Herschel Walker was not onstage on Sunday night for Georgia’s second U.S. Senate debate. But he was one of its main topics anyway.Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent and a Democrat, excoriated his Republican opponent, Mr. Walker, who chose not to attend the debate, arguing that Mr. Walker’s history of domestic violence, lies about his past and refusal to participate in the forum made him unqualified for office.Throughout the hourlong matchup in Atlanta, Mr. Warnock stepped out of character, opting for direct attack lines over the thinly veiled criticisms he has leveled at Mr. Walker for most of the campaign. He answered panelists’ questions with a mix of policy points and full-throated rebukes of Mr. Walker’s claims about his personal life, business prowess and academic record. He described Mr. Walker’s “well-documented history of violence” in reference to reports about Mr. Walker’s domestic violence against his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, calling them “disturbing.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.The Senate race’s lesser-known contender, the Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, did participate in the debate, bringing up policy points like supporting L.G.B.T.Q. rights and keeping the government out of health care and energy investments. He found common ground with Mr. Warnock as both hammered their opponent for his absence from the debate stage.“This race is about who’s ready to represent the people of Georgia in the U.S. Senate,” Mr. Warnock said as he pointed to an empty lectern meant for Mr. Walker, a former football star. “And by not showing up tonight for the job interview, by giving nonsensical answers about his history of violence, Herschel Walker shows he’s not ready.”Before the debate, Mr. Walker’s campaign issued a statement calling it a “one-sided sham” that would be more favorable to Mr. Warnock.Mr. Warnock’s debate performance on Sunday represents one of his most forceful criticisms of his opponent yet. The Democratic senator has not openly condemned Mr. Walker on the campaign trail, even as damaging reports about him have regularly trickled in. Mr. Warnock did not weigh in immediately after stories surfaced about Mr. Walker’s exaggerated professional success, his fathering of children he did not previously disclose and his ex-girlfriend’s claim that he paid for her to have an abortion despite his endorsement of a no-exceptions ban on the procedure.Mr. Warnock has usually saved his fire for the airwaves, where he and several Democratic groups have spent millions of dollars on anti-Walker messaging. But on Sunday, he brought that message to the debate stage, taking time to list Mr. Walker’s falsehoods toward the end of the forum.Mr. Warnock said of Mr. Walker: “He said that he graduated from college. He didn’t. He said that he was valedictorian of his class. He wasn’t. He said that he started a business that doesn’t even exist. And the other night when I said he pretended to be a police officer, he presented a badge as if that were proof that he really is a police officer. And now he wants us to think that he’s a senator.”The first debate in Georgia’s Senate race, an event on Friday that was hosted by Nexstar Media in Savannah, is most likely the only time Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock will have met on a debate stage. The Atlanta Press Club hosted the face-off on Sunday and invited all of Georgia’s Senate candidates to participate; Mr. Walker’s campaign declined in August and suggested that the press club’s staff members held partisan bias against Republican candidates.The debate comes just before Georgia’s early voting period is set to begin on Monday, a point that Mr. Warnock emphasized repeatedly. More

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      Why Herschel Walker May Win

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      Herschel Walker did himself significant good in Friday night’s debate in Georgia. That may be hard to recognize and even harder to accept, given his occasional struggles to get his words out, his passing acquaintance with policy details, his glancing relationship with the truth. But his performance serves as an important reminder to Democrats who’ve taken such heart from — and found such hope in — the blemishes and blunders of Republican candidates in crucial races: Being flawed and being doomed are very different things.The mess around Walker over the past two weeks and the mess of him over the entirety of his campaign have made it easy to focus on those flaws and forget the advantages that he, like all Republicans running in the midterm elections, possesses. But Walker spent Friday night remembering. He knew what he had to do to stay competitive in, and possibly win, the neck-and-neck Senate race against Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat — which could decide which party controls the chamber.He seized on President Biden’s unpopularity to cast Warnock as Biden’s dutiful manservant. “Can he tell me why he voted with Joe Biden 96 percent of the time?” Walker asked the moderators and the audience. He said Biden’s name so often that a strategy almost came across as a stutter.He dwelled, too, on Americans’ economic woes, the nature of which could well lead voters to punish Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress.And if he was rattled in the least by all the recent attention to a former girlfriend’s allegations that he paid for her to have one abortion and urged her to have another, he didn’t show it. Walker, who opposes abortion rights, emphatically denied her account and then sought to portray Warnock as the hypocrite, suggesting that Warnock’s Christian faith — he’s a Baptist preacher — was incompatible with his pro-choice politics.I think Walker has a lot of nerve. I think he has no business in the Senate. I think he’s unfit for political office, period. But he did a surprisingly effective job of showing that while he has enormous shortcomings, he won’t necessarily come up short in a Republican-friendly year in a Republican-friendly state.Walker’s out-of-wedlock children, Mehmet Oz’s minimal ties to Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance’s ambient ickiness — they’re marvelous grist for opposition ads. They’re priceless fodder for political journalists. And they’re surely why Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, issued his now-famous lament about “candidate quality,” sounding like a disgruntled carnivore who’d ordered a Wagyu rib-eye and was served cold Salisbury steak.But beyond the flaws are certain fundamentals, the ones that had prognosticators talking about a Republican wave in the first place. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has undoubtedly scrambled the G.O.P.-favorable calculus, but to what extent is unknown: There’s no tidy parallel or precedent to look to, no neatly predictive data. And the court’s ruling certainly hasn’t subtracted inflation from voters’ concerns.I could argue that the most meaningful moment in the Walker-Warnock debate wasn’t when Walker loopily held up some sort of law enforcement badge — and was scolded by one of the moderators for breaking a no-props rule — or when Warnock made cutting reference to Walker as an absentee father but when the moderators put a simple bar graph on the screen.It showed the results of a recent poll in which voters in Georgia were asked to name their top concern. The most common answer, given by about 40 percent of them, was the economy. The second most common answer, given by 18.6 percent, was threats to democracy. Access to abortion came in a distant third. Only 11.7 percent of respondents said that.Walker’s task on Friday night wasn’t to make voters excited about him. It was to make them less apprehensive. It was to affirm or reaffirm for them that, whatever his lack of charisma and no matter his deficit of coherence, he’s a reliable vessel for their concerns and a viable expression of their qualms.Were they angry about Biden’s use of an executive order to forgive billions of dollars in student loans? Walker let them know — succinctly and clearly — that he was, too. Did they feel that too many progressives demonstrated too much contempt for the police? He registered his own upset about that.It was as if he was going methodically through a checklist of the reasons Republicans were or should be on board with him, and he did so with a discipline that made prior characterizations of him as a hapless buffoon seem selective. Was he eloquent? Please. Was he articulate? Sporadically — and that was all that was necessary to exceed the expectations for him.He had something specifically for independent voters, too. He had unacknowledged and unapologetic conversions.During the debate, he swerved from past statements that he opposed abortion across the board — no exceptions — to an endorsement of a Georgia law that bans it after six weeks of pregnancy but makes various exceptions, including for medical emergencies and in cases of rape and incest if a police report has been filed.He also appeared to abandon prior claims that the results of the 2020 election weren’t trustworthy, saying for the record that Biden won. Walker might as well have been wearing a sandwich board upon which he’d scrawled: “See? Not half as kooky as you thought I was.”Will Donald Trump fume? Does it matter? Rather than Warnock trying to make Walker answer for his alliance with the former president, Walker insisted that Warnock defend his with the current one — a dynamic that doesn’t exactly track with media coverage of the midterms. We keep wondering how much Trump will wound Republican candidates. Warnock seemed plenty worried about how much Biden would wound him.So when he was asked whether Biden should run again in 2024, Warnock conspicuously dodged the question. “I think that part of the problem with our politics right now is that it’s become too much about the politicians,” he said. “You’re asking me who’s going to run in ’24? The people of Georgia get to decide who’s going to be their senator in three days — Monday.”That’s when early voting begins, and if you thought Walker’s candidacy had already ended, the debate challenged that assessment. It’s not because he dazzled but because he showed up, wearing his team’s colors and making his team’s case and not getting any fresh muck on the uniform. In an era this partisan, amid this much economic anxiety, with a Democratic president whose approval rating remains stubbornly low, that may be more than enough.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).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 Spent $2 Trillion to Save the Economy. They Don’t Want to Talk About It.

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      Polls show voters liked direct payments from President Biden’s 2021 economic rescue bill. But they have become fodder for Republican inflation attacks.In the midst of a critical runoff campaign that would determine control of the Senate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock promised Georgia voters that, if elected, he would help President-elect Biden send checks to people digging out of the pandemic recession.Mr. Warnock won. Democrats delivered payments of up to $1,400 per person.But this year, as Mr. Warnock is locked in a tight re-election campaign, he barely talks about those checks.Democratic candidates in competitive Senate races this fall have spent little time on the trail or the airwaves touting the centerpiece provisions of their party’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package, which party leaders had hoped would help stave off losses in the House and Senate in midterm elections. In part, that is because the rescue plan has become fodder for Republicans to attack Democrats over rapidly rising prices, accusing them of overstimulating the economy with too much cash.The economic aid, which was intended to help keep families afloat amid the pandemic, included two centerpiece components for households: the direct checks of up to $1,400 for lower- to middle-class individuals and an expanded child tax credit, worth up to $300 per child per month. It was initially seen as Mr. Biden’s signature economic policy achievement, in part because the tax credit dramatically reduced child poverty last year. Polls suggested Americans knew they had received money and why — giving Democrats hope they would be rewarded politically.Liberal activists are particularly troubled that Democratic candidates are not focusing more on the payments to families.“It’s a missed opportunity and a strategic mistake,” said Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook and a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School, who is a co-founder of the liberal policy group Economic Security Project Action. “Our public polling and our experience suggest the child tax credit is a sleeper issue that could influence the election, a lot more than a lot of candidates realized.”Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has surveyed voters in detail on the child credit, said data suggest the party’s candidates should be selling Americans on the pieces of Mr. Biden’s policies that helped families cope with rising costs.“We have a narrative on inflation,” Ms. Lake said in an interview. “We just aren’t using it.”Many campaign strategists disagree. They say voters are not responding to messages about pandemic aid. Some Democrats worry that voters have been swayed by the persistent Republican argument that the aid was the driving factor behind rapidly rising prices of food, rent and other daily staples.Economists generally agree that the stimulus spending contributed to accelerating inflation, though they disagree on how much. Biden administration officials and Democratic candidates reject that characterization. When pressed, they defend their emergency spending, saying it has put the United States on stronger footing than other wealthy nations at a time of rapid global inflation.Republicans have spent nearly $150 million on inflation-themed television ads across the country this election cycle, according to data from AdImpact. The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.In Georgia alone, outside groups have hammered Mr. Warnock with more than $7 million in attack ads mentioning inflation. “Senator Warnock helped fuel the inflation squeeze, voting for nearly $2 trillion in reckless spending,” the group One Nation, which is aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, says in an ad that aired in the state in August.Democrats have tried to deflect blame, portraying inflation as the product of global forces like crimped supply chains while touting their efforts to lower the cost of electricity and prescription drugs. They have aired nearly $50 million of their own ads mentioning inflation, often pinning it on corporate profit gouging. “What if I told you shipping container companies have been making record profits while prices have been skyrocketing on you?” Mr. Warnock said in an ad aired earlier this year.Candidates and independent groups that support the stimulus payments have spent just $7 million nationwide on advertisements mentioning the direct checks, the child tax credit or the rescue plan overall, according to data from AdImpact.Far more money has been spent by Democrats on other issues, including $27 million on ads mentioning infrastructure, which was another early economic win for Mr. Biden, and $95 million on ads that mention abortion rights..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Warnock has not cited any of the rescue plan’s provisions in his advertisements, focusing instead on issues like personal character, health care and bipartisanship, according to AdImpact data.Senator Raphael Warnock, who is locked in a tight re-election campaign this year, barely mentions the relief checks.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesFor months after the rescue plan’s passage, Democratic leaders were confident that they had solved an economic policy dilemma that has vexed Democrats and Republicans stretching back to the George W. Bush administration: They were giving Americans money, but voters weren’t giving them any credit.Tax cuts and direct spending aid approved by Mr. Bush, President Barack Obama and President Donald J. Trump failed to win over large swaths of voters and spare incumbent parties from large midterm losses. Economists and strategists concluded that was often because Americans had not noticed they had benefited from the policies each president was sure would sway elections.That was not the case with the direct checks and the child tax credit. People noticed them. But they still have not turned into political selling points at a time of rapid inflation.As the November elections approach, most voters appear to be motivated by a long list of other issues, including abortion, crime and a range of economic concerns.Mr. Warnock’s speech last week to a group of Democrats in an unfinished floor of an office space in Dunwoody, a northern Atlanta suburb, underscored that shift in emphasis.He began the policy section of the rally with a quick nod to the child credit, then ticked through a series of provisions from bills that Mr. Biden has signed in the last two years: highways and broadband internet tied to a bipartisan infrastructure law, semiconductor plants spurred by a China competitiveness law, a gun safety law and aid for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. He lingered on one piece of Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act: a cap on the cost of insulin for Medicare patients, which Mr. Warnock cast as critical for diabetics in Georgia, particularly in Black communities.The direct payments never came up.When asked by a reporter why he was not campaigning on an issue that had been so central to his election and whether he thought the payments had contributed to inflation, Mr. Warnock deflected.“We in Georgia found ourselves trying to claw back from a historic pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t seen in our lifetime, which created an economic shutdown,” he said. “And now, seeing the economy open up, we’ve experienced major supply chain issues, which have contributed to rising costs.”Direct pandemic payments were begun under Mr. Trump and continued under Mr. Biden, with no serious talk of another round after the ones delivered in the rescue plan. Most Democrats had hoped the one-year, $100 billion child credit in the rescue plan would be made permanent in a new piece of legislation.But the credit expired, largely because Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and a key swing vote, opposed its inclusion in what would become the Inflation Reduction Act, citing concerns the additional money would exacerbate inflation.Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, was one of the Senate’s most vocal cheerleaders for that credit and an architect of the version included in the rescue plan. His campaign has aired Spanish-language radio ads on the credit in his re-election campaign, targeting a group his team says is particularly favorable toward it, but no television ads. In an interview last week outside a Denver coffee shop, Mr. Bennet conceded the expiration of the credit has sapped some of its political punch.“It certainly came up when it was here, and it certainly came up when it went away,” he said. “But it’s been some months since that was true. I think, obviously, we’d love to have that right now. Families were getting an average of 450 bucks a month. That would have defrayed a lot of inflation that they’re having to deal with.”Mr. Biden’s advisers say the rescue plan and its components aren’t being deployed on the trail because other issues have overwhelmed them — from Mr. Biden’s long list of economic bills signed into law as well as the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade that has galvanized the Democratic base. They acknowledge the political and economic challenge posed by rapid inflation, but say Democratic candidates are doing well to focus on direct responses to it, like the efforts to reduce costs of insulin and other prescription drugs.Ms. Lake, the Democratic pollster, said talking more about the child credit could help re-energize Democratic voters for the midterms. Mr. Warnock’s speech in Dunwoody — an admittedly small sample — suggested otherwise.Mr. Warnock drew cheers from the audience after he called the child tax credit “the single largest tax cut for middle- and working-class families in American history.”But his biggest ovation, by far, came when the economics section of his speech had ended, and Mr. Warnock had moved on to defending abortion rights. More

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      What Was That Badge Herschel Walker Flashed in His Debate?

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      The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was scolded by a debate moderator and derided online after flashing an honorary badge during an exchange with Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent.NewsNation via ReutersSAVANNAH, Ga. — Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race, drew some head scratches — and a debate moderator’s rebuke — when he brandished an honorary sheriff’s badge on Friday while debating his Democratic opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock.In a moment that ricocheted online, Mr. Walker, a football legend endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, was responding to Mr. Warnock’s accusations that he had misrepresented himself as a law enforcement officer and had previously threatened to commit acts of violence.But Mr. Walker’s flaunting of the honorary badge, a recognition not unusual for celebrities to receive, brought new scrutiny to his credentials and the loosely defined relationships that can emerge between law enforcement agencies and famous people.The moment unfolded after Mr. Warnock made claims about Mr. Walker’s professional history, saying that Mr. Walker “has a problem with the truth.”“One thing I have not done — I’ve never pretended to be a police officer, and I’ve never threatened a shootout with police,” Mr. Warnock said, referencing controversies in Mr. Walker’s past. At which point, Mr. Walker flashed the badge in response, saying he had “worked with many police officers.”The badge was given to him in recognition of community service work he had done with the Cobb County sheriff’s department, according to his campaign spokesman, Will Kiley. Mr. Walker also has an honorary badge from the sheriff department in Johnson County in East Georgia, which includes his hometown, Wrightsville. Representatives for the sheriff’s departments in both counties were unavailable for comment.One of the debate moderators, the WSAV anchor Tina Tyus-Shaw, admonished Mr. Walker after he brandished the badge and asked him to put it away. She said that he was “well aware” of the debate’s rules against using props onstage.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“It’s not a prop,” Mr. Walker countered. “This is real.” However, the badge he presented on the debate stage was not an authentic badge that trained sheriffs carry, but an honorary badge often given to celebrities in sports or entertainment. (It seems likely that Mr. Walker and the moderator attached different meanings to the idea of a prop. She was apparently saying that items used for demonstrations were not allowed; she was not referring to the validity of the badge.)It is not uncommon for athletes to be recognized by law enforcement. In 2021, Cobb County named the Atlanta Hawks legend Dominique Wilkins a special deputy.When Mr. Wilkins was sworn in, a sheriff’s spokeswoman noted to The Cobb County Courier that Mr. Wilkins did not have the same authority as a regular deputy sheriff to carry a weapon and arrest people. She characterized his role as being a liaison and partner.In 2021, the sheriff’s office in Henry County, Ga., which is about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta, gave a member of the N.B.A. Hall of Fame, Shaquille O’Neal, the title of director for community relations.Neil Warren, who was the Cobb County sheriff when he named Mr. Walker an honorary deputy sheriff, endorsed his Senate bid in July.In a statement at the time, Mr. Warren said that Mr. Walker “partnered with the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office for over 15 years” and “led trainings on leadership, advocated for mental health, encouraged countless officers, and was always there to lend a hand whenever we needed him.”But many others express significant skepticism about the kind of honorary recognition granted by law enforcement.“Georgia sheriffs were seriously handing out those badges like candy in a candy dish,” J.Tom Morgan, a former district attorney in DeKalb County, Ga., who was elected as a Democrat, said in an interview on Saturday. “That badge gives you no law enforcement authority. He doesn’t have the power to write a traffic ticket.”Mr. Morgan, who is now a professor at Western Carolina University, said the badges became so widely abused that the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association curtailed the practice of giving them out.“What would happen is somebody would get stopped for speeding, and they would whip out one of those badges,” he said. “And there were people charged with impersonating a police officer.”J. Terry Norris, the executive director of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, said in an email on Saturday that honorary credentials are not regulated by state law and offered at the pleasure of the law enforcement officials.“There is no arrest authority associated with honorary credentials,” Mr. Norris said.Mr. Walker has exaggerated his work in law enforcement before. In 2019, he told soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State that he was a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, which was false. He has also repeatedly said in campaign stump speeches that he worked as a member of law enforcement, but he did not.In Georgia, the role of sheriff is an elected partisan office, and there can be rewards for both the donors and recipients of honorary badges.According to the National Sheriffs’ Association, there are no formal guidelines stipulating the use and appearance of honorary badges — and what distinguishes them from real ones.“It should be understood that an honorary badge is for the trophy case,” Pat Royal, a spokesman for the National Sheriffs’ Association, said in an email on Saturday. Mr. Royal specified that he was referring to honorary badges in general, not Mr. Walker’s.Mr. Walker’s performance during the debate yielded a flurry of memes and widespread derision online.“In fairness to Herschel Walker,” George Takei, the actor known for his role on “Star Trek,” tweeted on Friday night, “I sometimes pull out my Star Fleet badge to get past security at Star Trek conferences.”Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator, defended Mr. Walker.“He was made an honorary deputy sheriff in Cobb County, Georgia, and spent 15 years helping that department and discussing with deputies how to handle mental health situations,” Mr. Erickson said on Friday night on Twitter. “But I know facts don’t matter on Twitter.”The image of Mr. Walker waving his badge during the debate called to mind another celebrity with a penchant for badges: Elvis Presley. During a meeting in 1970 with President Richard M. Nixon, the King famously asked for a federal narcotics agency badge. Mr. Presley’s widow, Priscilla Presley, discussed the badge’s allure in her memoir, “Elvis and Me.”“The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him,” Ms. Presley wrote. More

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      Herschel Walker, Butcher of Language

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      I have written that political debates have outgrown their utility, and I stand by that.They are now more about theater than substance. They are more about making moments than making points. The cameras and the commentators wait for the zingers and the flubs, the clippable, quotable passage, the 10 seconds that stand out for their dramatic effect rather than for their deeper meaning.Debates have become a choreographed dance of managing expectations, of setting individual hurdle heights for individual candidates, so much so that on debate stages the candidates cease to compete against each other and simply compete against the expectations set for themselves.Debates have been bastardized beyond belief.And debate prep has followed suit: Candidates are trained to remember and regurgitate attack lines — and ignore the rules.What’s the worst that can happen? You can be admonished, but only briefly, because every minute of admonishment detracts from precious live TV time.So there is no incentive to be an honorable actor other than to avoid appearing to viewers like a bully and bulldozer, and unfortunately, that works in a Donald Trump era.Republicans now want a fighter above all, even if the fighter is of questionable character and of loose allegiance to the truth. Aggression is attractive. You may be wrong, but if you’re loud, it returns you to right.Friday night’s debate between Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, was no different. It was a stage play loosely based on policy. It didn’t change the fundamentals of the race — that Warnock is the only candidate of the two qualified to be a senator — nor should it have.And yet I am still stuck in the position of analyzing the debate because it is a major event in a race I care about. So I’ll begin with Warnock because his performance was the easier of the two to analyze.He didn’t answer directly when asked what limits he favored on abortion, whether he would back President Biden if he runs again in 2024 or whether he would support expanding the Supreme Court.The preacher has become a politician.And his wavering left him open to attack. When he didn’t answer directly, Walker made sure to mark the moments.Equivocation, as a strategy, was a miscalculation for the Warnock campaign, but it pales in comparison to the staggering ineptitude that Walker presented.First, we just must come at this directly: Herschel Walker is an absolute butcher of the English language.When challenged on reducing the cost of insulin, Walker responded: “I believe in reducing insulin, but at the same time, you got to eat right, because he may not know and I know many people that’s on insulin, and unless you have a eating right, insulin is doing you no good.”Say what? English translation: “Healthy diets can help treat and prevent Type 2 diabetes.” The nearly two million people suffering from Type 1 diabetes, not caused by diet and for which whom insulin is needed to stay alive? Oh, well.When Warnock accused Walker of pretending to be a police officer, Walker whipped out a badge and said, “You know what’s so funny? I am worked with many police officers.” A moderator then chastised him for bringing the “prop” to the event.At another point, Walker said: “Well right now, people have coverage for health care. It’s according to what type of coverage do you want because if you have an able-bodied job, you’re going to have health care. But everyone else have health care, it’s the type of health care you’re going to get. And I think that is the problem. And what Senator Warnock wants you to do is to depend on the government. What I want you to do is get off the government health care and get on the health care he’s got.”Huh? As a United States senator, Warnock’s health care is government health care.I could do this for the rest of the column, but I won’t. The point is this: I find myself straining to understand what he’s saying, my mind filling in the words he leaves out or fixing the ones he uses incorrectly.Walker is devastatingly inarticulate. That is the fact of the matter, and a disqualifying one. This is not a dialectic issue, of which I am more understanding. Regional and cultural dialects are real and not a measure of intelligence.That’s not what’s happening with Walker. With him, there is a base inability to convey his ideas in complete thoughts or sentences. And like a child, when his words fail, he fills in the gaps with energy and emotion, hostility and humor.This cheap rhetorical trick works for Republicans. They want the fighter more than the philosopher, the class jock over the class president. As long as the candidate is on their side, it doesn’t matter if he’s up to par, because at the end of the day, they are voting for the power over the person.They will elect a man without command of the English language or the issues if it gives them command of the seat and the Senate. Walker’s debate performance was just designed to allay their fears, to make them think better about doing the unthinkable.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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      Five Key Moments From the Walker-Warnock Debate in Georgia

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      The debate between Senator Raphael Warnock and his less experienced Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, had its share of sharp clashes, as the two candidates in one of the country’s most-watched Senate races faced off for their one and only debate.Mr. Walker, a football star and first-time candidate, surpassed low expectations, largely hewing to his strategy of tying his opponent to President Biden, whose approval ratings remain underwater in the pivotal swing state. Mr. Warnock, a pastor-turned-politician, tried to cast Mr. Walker as unfit for office because of his policy positions and personal baggage.Here are standout moments from the debate.A badge comes out.Mr. Walker’s veracity has been a major issue in the campaign, as he has been accused of misrepresenting topics, including his résumé, his charitable donations and his number of children. Mr. Warnock tried to use an exchange over crime to accuse his opponent of lying.“We will see time and time again tonight — as we’ve already seen — that my opponent has a problem with the truth,” Mr. Warnock said. “And just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s true.”A frame grab from the debate shows Herschel Walker with what appeared to be a badge.Fox 5 AtlantaMr. Warnock then referred to the time his opponent claimed to have been a police officer and an F.B.I. agent. Mr. Walker had made the claims as recently as 2019, when he told an audience that he was an F.B.I. agent — which he has never been. He has also claimed to work with the Cobb County Police Department in Georgia. The department told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that there was no record of him working there.In response at the debate, Mr. Walker pulled out what appeared to be a badge before being reprimanded by a moderator for violating a prohibition against using “props.” Mr. Walker replied, “Well, it’s not a prop. This is real.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.A shift from Walker on abortion.The most notable exchange over abortion rights wasn’t about accusations that Mr. Walker paid for an ex-girlfriend’s procedure. Instead, it was an apparent change in policy.In May, Mr. Walker said a ban on abortion should have no exceptions, pushing for a more expansive proposal than the six-week prohibition passed by the Republican-controlled State Legislature. “Like I say, I believe in life. I believe in life,” he told reporters.On the debate stage, he softened that position, implying that he backs the six-week bill that includes exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. He then turned to Mr. Warnock’s stance, saying the pastor backs no limits on the procedure and is ignoring “the baby in the room as well.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Painting one another as ‘desperate.’In one notable exchange, Mr. Walker tried to flip the script on Mr. Warnock, after the pastor skirted questions about whether an Atlanta apartment building owned by Ebenezer Baptist Church had evicted tenants. The apartments are for people experiencing homelessness or with mental disabilities.Mr. Warnock tried to cast Republicans as “desperate” for trying to “sully” a church attended by civil rights icons, including former Representative John Lewis, of Georgia, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Mr. Walker wasn’t cowed, returning to the issue a question later to cast Mr. Warnock as the “desperate” one.“It’s OK to speak the truth. Do not bear false witness, senator,” shouted Mr. Walker, who said the evictions were “written about in the paper.”Walker reverses on the 2020 election.In an election that has been influenced by the positions of former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Walker made another notable reversal.In the past, Mr. Walker has repeatedly questioned the results of the 2020 election and spread false stolen-election theories. Immediately after the 2020 race, he did not declare Mr. Biden the rightful winner.“I can guarantee you, Joe Biden didn’t get 50 million people to vote for him, but yet, people think that he’s won this election,” Mr. Walker said in a Fox News interview in December 2020. Mr. Biden won more than 81 million votes.Mr. Walker has since tried to temper those statements. In May, during his primary, he told an interviewer, “I think something happened; I don’t know what it was, but I said something happened so people are angry.”But on Friday night, when asked whether Mr. Biden had defeated Mr. Trump, he sounded a different note.“President Biden won and Raphael Warnock won,” he said.On questions of democracy, both candidates said they would respect the results of the election, regardless of its outcome.Looking ahead to 2024.The two men veered from one another on a question of whether they would support their party’s leaders if they won the presidential nomination in 2024.Mr. Walker quickly answered in the affirmative, saying “President Trump is my friend.” He used the moment to hit Mr. Biden — and by extension Mr. Warnock — for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, a move he described as abandoning an ally.For Mr. Warnock, however, the question appeared more difficult. He did not answer directly, saying he had not “spent a minute” thinking about it and noting that he was more focused on the election at hand. More