Democrats scramble into defensive posture in final stage of midterms

And in Pennsylvania, Democrats were trying to move past a shaky Tuesday debate performance by John Fetterman, who is recovering from a stroke. One former party official relayed hearing from people who wondered why Fetterman agreed to debate during his recovery. The U.S. Senate nominee’s once comfortable polling lead has shrunk in a race that party leaders have long seen as their best opportunity to flip a red Senate seat and take a step closer to preserving their narrow majority in the chamber.

Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, Democrats have moved into a defensive crouch, scrambling to shore up the party’s candidates as Republicans charge deeper into their terrain. The scope of their challenge has come into sharper focus in the past 48 hours, when much of the attention in the party has been on protecting swaths of the country where Democrats have long enjoyed more support.

Late-summer Democratic talk of going on offense by running on abortion rights while Biden’s approval rating ticked up has run headlong into the harsh reality that Republicans are well-positioned to make potentially large gains on Nov. 8, some Democratic strategists said, by hammering them over crime and inflation — and seizing on fatigue over Democratic leadership in government.

“Some of what is going on is a reversion to the norm. After all the sound and fury, elections go back to their basics,” said Craig Varoga, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential, gubernatorial and Senate races.

Like other Democratic strategists, Varoga said he worried his party put too much emphasis on abortion over the summer and should have more aggressively made it part of a broader argument that Republicans oppose personal freedom. “Politics is hard work. It’s like personal wellness — you can’t rely on one thing to fix everything,” he said.

Multiple Democratic strategists said that fear of losing the right to abortion is proving to be a less motivating factor in blue states because voters believe their access to the procedure will be protected by current laws and Democratic control of state government.

That has been compounded by other factors, some said. One Democratic strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid, described a “blue-state depression” for House races, pointing specifically to New York, Oregon and California where a handful of races are “closer than normal.”

House Majority PAC, a well-funded organization designed to support House Democrats, placed new ad buys Wednesday in New Jersey’s 5th…