Democrats Who Are Winning

Recent polls contain a surprising combination of results: Democrats appear to be leading in six tough Senate races even as President Biden trails Donald Trump in the same states.

What are these Democratic Senate candidates doing right? To answer that question, I studied their campaigns, looking at advertisements, social media posts and local news coverage. In today’s newsletter, I’ll highlight the single biggest theme that emerged: The six Democrats are basing their campaigns around a populism that harshly criticizes both big business and China.

(In a follow-up newsletter, I’ll look at several other campaign themes.)

It’s still early in the campaign, obviously, and some candidates who are leading now may lose in November. Still, most of the Democrats in these races aren’t merely ahead in the polls; they also have a track record of winning tough races by appealing to voters who are skeptical of the Democratic Party. I think that their use of populism is crucial to that appeal.

Successful campaigns, like movies and novels, tend to have heroes and bad guys. Republicans are comfortable with this idea. Their bad guys in recent years have included criminals, illegal immigrants and cultural elites. Democrats are sometimes squeamish about naming antagonists (other than Republicans) and prefer a higher-minded version of politics.

This year’s swing-state Democrats are not squeamish. They portray both China and big business as making life hard on working families. Here’s a flavor of what they are saying about corporations:

• Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania talks about corporate “greedflation” and “shrinkflation.” One ad, set to “Pink Panther”-style music, shows fictional C.E.O.s sneaking around a supermarket at night to shrink product sizes.

• In an ad for Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, workers talk about how “Wall Street greed” slashed their pensions and say that Baldwin “fought like hell” to restore them. Brown has run a similar ad, in which a truck driver talks about how Wall Street is trying to “screw Ohio workers.”

• An ad for Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada boasts that she “took on the big drug companies — and won.” Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Ruben Gallego, an Arizona congressman running for Senate, also criticize Big Pharma.

• “The rich and the powerful — they don’t need more advocates,” Gallego says in an ad introducing himself to voters. “It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that needs a fighter for them.”

‘The greatest threat’

The other main antagonist is China, which the candidates portray as using unfair trade tactics to undermine American jobs.

• Tester’s first television ad of the campaign described China as “the greatest threat facing our nation,” Marissa Martinez of Politico noted. Baldwin, in one of her ads, says, “We can’t let China steal Wisconsin jobs.”

• Casey and Brown have trumpeted their work on a law that requires the federal government to use American steel on infrastructure projects. “We were getting screwed,” a steelworker in Casey’s ad says.

• In another Brown ad, workers at a washing-machine maker joke about his reputation for looking rumpled, disheveled and wrinkled — and say they don’t care because he fights to protect their jobs against companies that break trade rules.

  Brown’s blue-collar reputation is central to his uncommon electoral success. He is the only Democrat to have won a Senate, governor or presidential race in Ohio over the past decade. He, Tester and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia (who’s retiring) are the only Democratic senators who represent states that Trump won in 2020.

What about Biden?

This kind of populism, in which politicians promise to fight for ordinary people against the powerful, was once core to the Democratic Party. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman were more populist than many people now remember. Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign was notably populist, too, as was Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

It’s true that almost all elected Democrats today favor some populist policies, like raising taxes on the rich. But as the party has become dominated by college graduates and white-collar professionals, it has tended to emphasize other issues, like climate change and cultural liberalism, that fail to resonate with working-class Americans. Remember — most Americans don’t have a bachelor’s degree.

Biden has shown some signs of running a populist campaign this year. (He has begun to emphasize Trump’s wealth, as my colleague Jess Bidgood has noted.) Still, Biden devotes more attention to Trump’s anti-democratic behavior and to what Biden calls “the very soul of America.”

Lives Lived: Sue Johnson, a British-born clinical psychologist and best-selling author, developed a method of couples therapy based on emotional attachment, challenging what had been the dominant behavioral approach. She died at 76.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: Starting today, the league will officially recognize Negro Leagues statistics from around a century ago, which will change who holds some records.

N.B.A.: The Minnesota Timberwolves won Game 4 over the Dallas Mavericks.

N.H.L.: Sam Reinhart’s overtime goal pushed the Florida Panthers past the New York Rangers, tying their Eastern Conference final series at 2-2.

“Inside the NBA”: The TNT studio show, beloved by basketball fans for over two decades, may end after next season. Charles Barkley isn’t going quietly.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The European Space Agency recently released images and early science gathered from Euclid, a telescope that it launched into space last summer. The telescope can capture, in impressive detail, large swaths of sky. It will help astronomers make sense of two universal mysteries: dark matter and dark energy. See images captured by Euclid.

More on culture

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. We heard from some readers who thought that our use of the phrase “happy Memorial Day” in Monday’s newsletter trivialized a day to honor Americans killed in wars. We understand that criticism, and we won’t use the phrase again. We always welcome feedback and critique from readers.

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