On Politics: 5 big questions for the political year ahead

Inflation and the pandemic are hurting Biden's popularity, but the midterms are still months away.

View in browser|nytimes.com January 7, 2022 By Leah Askarinam and Blake Hounshell Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to political news. We're your hosts, Blake and Leah. We know it feels early, but it really isn't, politically speaking. It's 2022, and the midterm elections have started, whether we're emotionally prepared or not. With control of Congress and key states at stake, we're watching about a dozen competitive Senate races, 30 or so governor's races and a few dozen competitive House races, along with a host of primaries and lower-tier contests. Here are five questions that could shape the outcome. Gasoline and groceries have led the way in rising costs facing American households.Rory Doyle for The New York Times 1. Does inflation cool off? The reasons behind the surge in inflation are complex. But for months, Republicans have banged home a simple attack: It's President Biden's fault. And that's been devastatingly effective. The Consumer Price Index had risen 6.8 percent last year through November — the fastest in four decades. Most troubling for the White House: Gasoline and groceries have led the way. Research shows that public approval ratings of presidents track closely with gas prices. Taming inflation by November won't be easy, economists say. "There's little that can be done to affect the overall inflation rate over the next six to nine months," Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, told us. Summers is urging the Biden administration to show a "united front" against inflation through rhetoric and key Federal Reserve Board appointments, and to resist populist calls to attack corporations for raising prices. "I think they flirt with the idea that it's greedy meatpackers causing inflation," he said, "which is modestly counterproductive." Inflation isn't the only reason Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in 70 years, with an average approval rating of just under 43 percent. He is also struggling on crime, government spending, immigration and taxes in recent polls. Although Biden isn't on the ballot in 2022, he's the leader of the Democratic Party. In midterm elections, presidents with job approval ratings below 50 percent have seen their parties lose an average of 37 House seats. The only president who rebounded significantly in his second year? Donald J. Trump. 2. Does the Covid-19 pandemic finally recede? Biden got elected in part by promising to "beat the virus." More than 62 percent of Americans are now fully vaccinated, according to C.D.C data. There are no more follies in the White House briefing room. New medicines are coming. But two years on, the coronavirus is still with us. More than 1,000 Americans on average are dying of Covid-19 each day. Public health officials keep issuing confusing messages. The new Omicron variant is exposing flaws in the U.S. testing regime. Life is not back to normal. The murky results make us wonder whether Biden can reap a political windfall if and when conditions improve. "We just have to continue to keep our heads down, focus on solving the problems, focus on what we can do to deal with Covid, continuing to try to get vaccination rates up, continuing to try to work through this challenge," said Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat running for re-election. And though many Republicans have resisted vaccines, masks and other measures to combat the pandemic, there are no signs that voters intend to punish them for it. "If you're Biden, I don't think you want to go into the midterms having the discussion we're having with Covid," said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. "That discussion has gotten very stale with people." 3. How does redistricting shake out? About 30 states have finalized new congressional maps based on 2020 census data. For some incumbents, new maps mean facing primaries against other sitting members of Congress. For others, new maps might offer a convenient excuse to retire rather than taking on a colleague in a primary or testing their political strength in newly competitive seats. So far, it's safe to say the House battleground has shrunk. A handful of districts that were competitive in 2018 and 2020 won't be in 2022. In Texas, for example, Democrats and Republicans will be fighting for control of just a few districts, down from about 10 in 2020. But even after every state passes its final lines, courts can intervene. Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the maps passed in North Carolina and Ohio the "worst-case scenario for Democrats," but expects those to change as a result of lawsuits. "I think there will be a sufficient number of competitive seats for Democrats to hold the House in 2022 even in a tough cycle," Burton said. "I feel cautiously optimistic." Even if things could have gone worse for Democrats in the redistricting process, they're still at a disadvantage in the race for the House. Democrats oversee redistricting in about half as many House districts as Republicans, and history is working against the president's party, which has lost House seats in all but two midterm elections since the 1940s. 4. Can Democrats pass their agenda in Congress? Senator Joe Manchin III seemed to answer that question with a knife-twisting "no" in a Fox News interview before the holidays, announcing he could not support the Democrats' $1.75 trillion social policy bill, the Build Back Better Act. But there's too much at stake for Democrats to just give up. So Senate leaders are quietly trying to revive Build Back Better, along with federal voting rights legislation that would need to somehow overcome a Republican filibuster. Even Oprah is getting involved. Some Democrats argue for breaking Build Back Better into chunks: "For example, if we can move on prescription drug pricing, if we can move forward on child care, things that literally end up being part of that kitchen table conversation," Kildee, the Michigan Democrat, told us. It could be months before those efforts succeed, if ever, and, in the meantime, Democrats in vulnerable seats are venting their frustration over the impasse. The longer the bickering in Washington drags on, the longer they'll be stuck in limbo. "If B.B.B. actually collapsed, it'd be very bad for elected Democrats," said the Democratic pollster Brian Stryker. He added: "It would also further the narrative that Democrats would rather fight each other than govern." 5. Will American politics get healthier or sicker? This is perhaps the most important question of all. We just observed the one-year anniversary of a deeply traumatic national event — the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The congressional panel investigating the events of Jan. 6 has released memos and texts suggesting a plot that was both more serious and more absurd than we knew at the time. And we haven't even gotten to the public hearings or final report yet. At the center of all this is Trump, who has spent the last year urging Republicans to embrace his falsehoods as he attempts to reshape the election machinery of states he lost in 2020. Only a third of Republican voters now say elections are fair, and "election integrity" is one of the top issues motivating the grass roots of their party. Dozens of G.O.P.-led legislatures are moving to restrict voting access. Biden has planned a speech Tuesday in Atlanta on his struggling federal voting rights push, but some Democrats are running low on patience. On Thursday, a coalition of groups in Georgia issued a blistering statement declaring they would "reject any visit by President Biden that does not include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster, and be signed into law; anything less is insufficient and unwelcome." What to read tonight At the Supreme Court today: Hearing arguments over the Biden administration's efforts to require vaccinations in some workplaces, the "conservative majority seemed skeptical," writes Adam Liptak. Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater describe "a strange and emotional day on Capitol Hill" on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack. Facing criticism for opaque messaging, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, defended the agency's new guidance during a call with reporters on Friday. Subscribe Today We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times with this special offer. VIEWFINDER Doug Mills/The New York Times We'll regularly feature work by Doug Mills, The Times's longtime White House photographer and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Here's what Doug had to say about capturing this shot above: We had just come back from the holidays, and Biden was about to give some remarks on reducing prices in the meat-processing industry. I saw the president peeking through this door to the stage in the South Court Auditorium inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the White House built a TV studio set last year that's meant to resemble a room inside the West Wing. I was struck by the fact that the president was wearing a mask, because the pandemic had just come back at hyper speed, and everyone had suddenly returned to wearing masks at their desks. Thanks for reading. We'll see you on Monday. — Blake & Leah Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Politics from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

On Politics: Jamie Raskin’s year of tragedy and Trump

Losing his son was crushing. His new book helped him heal.

View in browser|nytimes.com January 6, 2022 By Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation. We're your hosts, Blake and Leah. Representative Jamie Raskin was asked to lead the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump.Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times 'Unthinkable' twin traumas On the morning of Dec. 31, 2020, Representative Jamie Raskin went down to his basement and found his son Tommy, 25, lying dead on the bed where he had been sleeping while staying with his parents. He had committed suicide after a long struggle with depression. Raskin was shattered. He and his son had been uncommonly close, sharing a passion for legal arcana and late-night Boggle games and an unyielding liberal idealism. One week after Tommy's suicide, a violent mob burst into the Capitol, forcing Raskin, a lawmaker from Maryland, to seek shelter in a congressional hearing room. His youngest daughter, 23-year-old Tabitha — who had come to Washington to look after her traumatized father — barricaded herself in another member's office. Six days after that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Raskin to lead the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. He immediately said yes. "I had no choice," Raskin said in an interview at his home in Takoma Park, Md., a proudly progressive enclave just outside Washington. "I felt it was necessary, and Tommy was with me every step along the way." Raskin choked up at this point, bowing his head on folded hands. "Pelosi's got some magical powers," he went on, after collecting himself. "That was a very low moment for me. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating. And I wasn't sure if I would ever really be able to do anything again. And by asking me to be the lead impeachment manager, she was telling me that I was still needed." A secret mission Months earlier, Raskin reveals in "Unthinkable," his wrenching new memoir, Pelosi had tapped him for a special assignment: to think like Trump. Two men could hardly have been more different: Raskin, an earnest constitutional law scholar who keeps a vegan diet; and Trump, a showman with a cynical disregard for legal niceties and a preference for well-done steak. As early as May 2020, Pelosi had begun to worry that Trump would try to win a second term as president by any means — even if he lost at the ballot box. She confided in Raskin, who had long been obsessed with the Electoral College system, which he thought was full of "booby traps" that someone like Trump could exploit. So when Pelosi asked him to game out what Trump might do in November, Raskin undertook the task with characteristic vigor. Over the next few months, he tried to piece together the Trump team's likely strategy. "We all had become great students of Donald Trump and his psyche," Raskin recalled. "I just figured out what they would do if they wanted to win." Raskin summed up his findings a few months later in a memo to Pelosi's leadership team. "Everything he ended up doing we essentially predicted, other than unleashing the violent insurrection against us," Raskin said. "I fault myself for not having taken seriously the possibility of the outdoors violence entering into the chamber." When investigators later unearthed a proposed six-step plan by John Eastman, a fringe conservative scholar who advised Trump on his Jan. 6 gambit, Raskin found it eerily similar to his own thinking. "It was not as good as my memo. I would have done a better job," Raskin said, allowing himself a sly smile. "It was a shoddy, superficial product, but it was as I predicted." Some colleagues, Raskin said, suggested he was overthinking the prospect for Republican misdeeds, saying, "There's the constitutional law professor again, you know, lost in the nooks and crannies of the Constitution." 12th Amendment arcana As Raskin delved deeper, he realized that Democrats were vulnerable to one potential Trump move in particular: the triggering of a "contingent election" in the House of Representatives. Under the 12th Amendment, if no candidate musters a majority of the Electoral College to Congress on the appointed day, the House must immediately vote to choose the new president. But there's a catch. Instead of a simple majority of House lawmakers, a majority of House delegations picks the winner. All the representatives from each state vote on that state's choice for president, and then each state casts one vote. That put Democrats at a disadvantage, because before the 2020 election, Republicans controlled 26 states to Democrats' 22 (two others were tied). But if Democrats could flip at least one Republican-held delegation, they would deny the G.O.P. a majority. So Raskin sought to change the balance of power via the upcoming election. First, he identified nearly two dozen Democratic candidates who would be crucial to either defending or flipping House delegations. Then, he steered money toward them through a group he named "Twelfth Amendment Defenders Fund." Back then, educating donors about such a hypothetical scenario proved to be quite an endeavor. "I had to engage in a mini-constitutional seminar with everybody we were asking for money," Raskin said. He ultimately raised nearly half a million dollars. Each of his candidates ended up getting around $20,000 from the fund — welcome help, but hardly a flood of cash. On Nov. 3, 2020, Republicans knocked off nearly a dozen House Democrats. They flipped the Iowa delegation after unseating Representative Abby Finkenauer, meaning the G.O.P. now had a 27-22 majority of state delegations even though Democrats still controlled the House as a whole. Another of Raskin's Iowa candidates, Rita Hart, lost by just six votes. Now, if Raskin's worst fears were realized and Trump engineered a contingent election in the House, President-elect Joe Biden would lose. Raskin believed that on Jan. 6, the fate of American democracy hinged on how Vice President Mike Pence understood his constitutional role. Would he simply pass along the results of the Electoral College, as his predecessors had all done? Or would he toss out the electoral votes of a few battleground states Trump had lost, throwing the election to the House? "We were very close to all of that happening," Raskin said. "If Mike Pence had gone along with it, it certainly would have happened." 'A religious and political cult' Today, Raskin is weary of thinking and talking about Trump. He even insisted that the former president's name appear nowhere on the jacket of his book, including on any signs in the cover photograph of the Capitol mob. But Raskin is also deeply anxious about how Trump's fixation on the 2020 election is reshaping the G.O.P., from his efforts to bolster hard-right candidates in key offices to his allies' push for new laws that seem aimed at consolidating Republican power. "The Republican Party is no longer operating like a modern political party," Raskin said. "It is operating much more like a religious and political cult, under the control of one man." Raskin often consulted his son, by all accounts a brilliant student at Harvard Law School, for legal and political advice. He had been planning to ask him to review his Jan. 6 speech. The loss of an intellectual partner, alongside the grief of losing his only son, was doubly crushing. A portrait of Tommy by Lang Wethington, a local artist and teacher, hangs in the Raskins' living room.Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times If he were alive today, Raskin says, Tommy most likely would have found ways to empathize with the Capitol rioters, even as he condemned their cause. "Tommy was tough as nails intellectually and politically, but he had a perfect heart," Raskin said. "He wanted to redeem the good in everybody's humanity at every turn. But he also wanted to fight fascism." What to read tonight Former President Donald J. Trump holds "a dagger at the throat of America," President Biden warned in a speech at the Capitol on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot. Top Republicans skipped today's events commemorating Jan. 6. Many were attending the funeral of Johnny Isakson, the former Georgia senator who recently died of Parkinson's disease. Six former advisers to President Biden's transition team are recommending the president change strategy on the coronavirus pandemic. A new Democratic super PAC aims to yoke Republican candidates to Trump in the midterms, CNN reports. Its name? Stop Him Now. One more thing… On Thursday's episode of The Daily, Representative Liz Cheney publicly confirmed for the first time that she had a furious exchange with a fellow Republican on the House floor on Jan. 6. Our colleague Michael Barbaro asked Cheney: "It has been reported that on that day, a member of the Freedom Caucus and a House Republican colleague of yours, Jim Jordan, was standing in the aisle as members of Congress were being escorted away from, from the mob, from the protesters, and that he said something to you, he said, 'We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.'" Barbaro then asked Cheney to confirm that she pushed away Jordan's hand, saying, "Get away from me" and "You did this," along with an expletive that underscored her anger. To which Cheney responded: "Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's true … It was both that I certainly didn't need his help, and secondly, I thought clearly that the lie that they had been spreading and telling people had absolutely contributed to what we were living through at that moment." Thanks for reading. We'll see you tomorrow. — Blake & Leah Correction: Yesterday's newsletter misstated the last name of a Michigan state senator. He is Adam Hollier, not Adam Collier. Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Politics from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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