Candidates Are Downplaying Ideology

Nicholas Lehman: “I’ve been spending time lately traveling to closely contested political territories, watching endangered Democrats campaign. If you live in deep-blue America, as I do, this can feel surreal. The issues my neighbors talk about on the street, usually in a tone of crisis-level alarm—the ill health of American democracy, the fragility of the planet, the pervasiveness of social injustice—and the issues the candidates I watched talk about on the campaign trail have only one point of intersection: the threat to abortion rights.”

“The candidates talk less about fighting climate change, more about lowering your federal taxes through solar credits; less about the January 6th insurrection, more about the many reasonable Republicans they enjoy working with; less about the Biden Administration’s passage of historic legislation, more about insulin price caps. And they combine this with a tough, unsentimental way of practicing politics that includes trying like hell to draw far-right opponents.”