共和党人在最具竞争力的众议院和参议院选举中，已就选举日前的最终攻势达成一致：民主党过于极端，不应掌控国会。
Republicans across the most competitive House and Senate races have settled on a closing pitch ahead of Election Day: Democrats are too extreme to be given control of Congress.
这是一项通过大量电视广告和特朗普总统的竞选集会演讲推动的努力，旨在敦促对汽油价格和更广泛的经济状况感到愤怒的选民，将不满从执政党转移开。为了论证自己的观点，共和党人重新引起人们对一系列文化问题的关注，这些问题在2024年损害了民主党，其中包括跨性别运动员参加女子体育比赛、边境安全，以及民主党想要实行社会主义的说法。
It is an effort, pressed in a flood of TV ads and in President Trump’s rally speeches, to urge voters who are angry about gas prices and broader economic conditions to redirect their frustration away from the party in power. To make their case, Republicans are calling renewed attention to a set of cultural issues that hurt the Democratic Party in 2024, among them transgender athletes in women’s sports, border security and the claim that Democrats want socialism.
民主党试图通过在这些问题上与特朗普及其政党站在一边，来抵御这一攻击，以对抗最初推动这些想法的进步派人士。
Democrats are trying to blunt the attack by siding with Trump and his party on some of these issues over progressives who first propelled the ideas.
“毫无疑问，越境人数大幅下降，毫无疑问，这是因为特朗普总统，”得克萨斯州民主党州长候选人吉娜·希诺霍萨在一档电视采访中谈及非法移民问题时说。
“There is no question that crossings are way down, and there is no question it is because of President Trump,” Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor in Texas, said of illegal immigration in a TV interview.
“我不支持生物男性参加女子体育比赛，”南卡罗来纳州民主党参议院候选人安妮·安德鲁斯在一则面对镜头的电视广告中说。
“I don’t support biological men playing women’s sports,” says Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina, in a direct-to-camera TV ad.
“绝对不会削减警察经费，”北卡罗来纳州民主党参议院候选人罗伊·库珀在一则广告中说。“你应该感到安全，这与政治无关。”在将民主党描绘为不合主流的同时，共和党人试图诉诸选民的党派冲动，因为民调发现许多选民缺乏投票动力。他们还担心，共和党参议院候选人，如得克萨斯州的肯·帕克斯顿和堪萨斯州的罗杰·马歇尔，所获得的支持率低于该党的州长候选人。
“No way do we defund the police,” says Roy Cooper, the Democrats’ Senate nominee in North Carolina, in an ad. “You deserve to feel safe, and there’s nothing political about that.”In casting Democrats as out of the mainstream, Republicans are trying to appeal to their voters’ partisan impulses as polls find that many are unmotivated to vote. They also worry that GOP Senate candidates, such as Ken Paxton in Texas and Roger Marshall in Kansas, are drawing lower levels of support than are the party’s gubernatorial candidates.
这表明，一些共和党人在这些参议院选举中支持民主党人，可能跳过参议员投票，或者完全不投票。民主党在密歇根州等州的参议院候选人身上也面临类似问题。
That suggests that some Republicans are backing the Democrat in those Senate races, might skip voting for senator or sit out the election altogether. Democrats have similar problems with their Senate candidates in states such as Michigan.
“你可以投票给激进的左翼民主党共产党人，让他们掠夺你的财富，将你的税收增加5万亿美元，消灭你的边界，”特朗普本周在俄亥俄州的一次集会上说，这已成为他近期竞选演讲中的常见内容。相比之下，他说，“你可以击败民主党共产党人，投票让自己口袋里有更多钱……如果你想要那样，你必须投共和党的票。”
“You can vote for the radical left Dumocrat communists to loot your wealth, raise your taxes by $5 trillion, annihilate your borders,” Trump said at a rally this week in Ohio, in what has become a familiar element of his recent campaign speeches. By contrast, he said, “You can defeat the Dumocrat communists and vote for more money in your pockets…If you want that, you must vote Republican.”
一些州的共和党人大力依赖这样的说法：他们的对手因支持跨性别者权利而与选民背道而驰。在俄亥俄州，特朗普批评民主党参议院候选人谢罗德·布朗，说：“他想看到男人参加女子体育比赛。他想看到对你的孩子进行跨性别阉割。”
Republicans in some states have leaned heavily on claims that their opponents are out of step with voters by favoring transgender rights. In Ohio, Trump criticized the Democrats’ Senate nominee, Sherrod Brown, saying: “He wants to see men playing in women’s sports. He wants to see transgender mutilation of your children.”
布朗表示，他反对跨性别女性参加女子体育比赛，并且未成年人跨性别医疗护理的问题已成定法。“在俄亥俄州，对儿童进行跨性别手术是违法的，”他的一则电视广告说。“没错，这是违法的。”“我看到的关于我对手谈论跨性别问题的头条新闻，远多于我在选区听到的事情，”佛罗里达州一个选区的民主党众议院候选人贝尔·道尔顿说。他列举了生活成本、医疗费用和伊朗战争，称这是他听选民提及最多的问题。
Brown has said he opposes transgender women in girls’ sports, and that the question of transgender care for minors is settled law. “In Ohio, it’s against the law to perform transgender surgeries on kids,” one of his TV ads says. “That’s right, it’s illegal.”“I do see far more headlines of my opponent talking about trans issues than the things I hear about across the district,” said Bale Dalton, the Democratic House nominee in a Florida district. He ticked off the cost of living, healthcare costs and the war in Iran as issues he hears most from voters.
仅自9月1日以来，一个共和党超级政治行动委员会就花费5900万美元制作了三则广告，攻击德克萨斯州民主党参议院候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科，称他 allegedly 支持未成年人跨性别医疗护理，这些广告在所有众议院和参议院竞选中，按播出花费排名位列前五。
Just since Sept. 1, a Republican super PAC has spent $59 million on three ads attacking James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, for allegedly backing gender transition care for minors, ranking those ads in the top five across all House and Senate races for the amount of money spent airing them.
第四则广告，在过去六周内获得超过1000万美元的投放，重述了塔拉里科的言论，即“生物性别远不止两种”以及“上帝是非二元性别”。广告以这句话结束：“詹姆斯·塔拉里科：为‘他们/她们’而非为你”——重复了特朗普在2024年对阵其民主党对手时有效使用的一句话。
A fourth ad, backed by more than $10 million in spending in the past six weeks, reprises Talarico’s statements that “there are many more than two biological sexes” and that “God is nonbinary.”It ends with the statement, “James Talarico: For they/them, not for you”—reprising a line that Trump used effectively against his Democratic opponent in 2024.
塔拉里科表示，他支持对未成年人进行性别确认手术的全国禁令，但认为其他护理应由父母和医生决定。他本周在 CNN 上露面时说，上帝不能用人类的类别来定义，因此他关于非二元神的评论在神学上并无争议。
Talarico says he supports a national ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors but believes parents and doctors should determine other care. Appearing on CNN this week, he said that God can’t be defined using human categories, so that his comment about a nonbinary deity was theologically uncontroversial.
许多在竞争激烈的选举中参选的民主党人试图与几年前备受关注的跨性别权利辩论保持距离。正在伊利诺伊州竞选州长的罗布·桑德、俄亥俄州州长候选人艾米·阿克顿以及北卡罗来纳州的众议员唐·戴维斯都表示，他们所在的州已经对跨性别者参与体育运动或对未成年人进行性别确认护理进行监管，因此此事已是既定法律。
Many other Democrats in competitive races have sought to distance themselves from the debates over trans rights that were prominent several years ago. Rob Sand, running for governor in Iowa, as well as gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton in Ohio and Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina, have all said that their states have regulated transgender participation in sports or gender-affirming care for minors, and so the matter is settled law.
除了特朗普之外，其他共和党领导人也在试图将民主党描绘为主流之外的力量，有时会引用民主社会主义者的言论。“民主党正在提名一些人，他们说我们需要摧毁美国的生活方式，并想要摧毁核心家庭，”副总统JD·万斯上个月在爱荷华州表示，并补充道：“今年秋天参选的某些民主党人，他们是彻头彻尾的疯子。”
In addition to Trump, other GOP leaders are trying to portray Democrats as outside the mainstream, sometimes drawing on statements from Democratic socialists. “The Democrats are running candidates who say we need to destroy the American way of life and want to destroy the nuclear family,” Vice President JD Vance said last month in Iowa, adding: “Some of the Democrats running this fall, they are out-and-out lunatics.”
在佛罗里达州，共和党众议员玛丽亚·埃尔维拉·萨拉扎在最近的一则广告中展示了纽约市长佐兰·曼达尼、参议员伯尼·桑德斯（独立，佛蒙特州）及其他民主社会主义者的形象，以此攻击她的民主党挑战者埃利奥特·罗德里格斯。该广告称，罗德里格斯支持那些企图“用社会主义经济取代我们自由市场”的民主党人。
In Florida, GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar shows images of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and other Democratic socialists in a recent ad attacking Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic challenger. The ad says Rodriguez supports Democrats who are bent on “replacing our free market with a socialist economy.”
罗德里格斯在一次采访中表示，他是自由企业体制的产物，并称他的父亲是古巴移民，是一名在布朗克斯经营杂货店的商人。“我反对社会主义，”罗德里格斯说。他补充道，萨拉扎和其他共和党人试图将民主党描绘为极端势力，“因为他们对选民提出的问题没有答案，这些问题就是，‘你们打算如何应对这经济和生活成本？’”
Rodriguez, in an interview, called himself a product of the free enterprise system and said his father, a Cuban immigrant, was a businessman who ran a bodega in the Bronx. “I denounce socialism,” Rodriguez said. He added that Salazar and other Republicans were trying to portray Democrats as extreme “because they have no answers to the questions voters are asking, which are, ‘What are you going to do about this economy and the cost of living?’ ”
有助于共和党努力的一个因素是：一些民调显示，摇摆选区的选民对民主党的看法比对共和党更差，这表明在最具竞争力的选区中的选民可能对共和党的说法持接受态度。“因此，以‘不要把国会的钥匙交给另一方’这样的论点来收尾是我们最好的选择，”共和党民调专家韦斯·安德森说。“这是否足以削弱民主党的热情仍有待观察。”
One factor helping the GOP effort: Voters in battleground districts have a worse opinion of the Democratic Party than the GOP, some polling shows, suggesting that voters in the most competitive races might be receptive to the Republican claims. “For that reason, finishing with an argument that says ‘Don’t give the other side the keys to Congress’ is our best option,” said GOP pollster Wes Anderson. “Whether that’s going to be enough to blunt Democratic enthusiasm remains to be seen.”
2010年，当时全国仍在金融危机的阴影中挣扎，时任总统贝拉克·奥巴马敦促选民在中期选举中坚持支持他的党，而不是把国会的钥匙交还给他所说的导致国家陷入困境的共和党。当年他的党最终在众议院失去了63个席位。
In 2010, with the nation still smarting from a financial crisis, then-President Barack Obama urged voters to stick with his party in midterm elections, rather than return the keys to a Republican Party that he said had driven the national car into a ditch. His party wound up losing 63 House seats that year.
一些分析人士指出，这表明在选民做出投票决定时，很难说服他们回顾过去的历史，而是让他们根据当前的情况来做出选择。
Some analysts say that shows it’s hard to persuade voters to look back in time when they make their voting choices rather than react to current conditions.
“目前有22场众议院选举和几场参议院选举正在进行中；在所有这些竞争激烈的选举中，民主党的主要议题都是‘成本’和‘腐败’问题，而共和党的主要议题则是‘跨性别者权益’以及‘社会主义’，”民主党策略师查克·罗查（Chuck Rocha）说道。
“I’m in 22 congressional races and several Senate races, and in every competitive race the Democratic message is about costs and corruption, and the Republican message is about trans and socialism,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist.
他认为，共和党的竞选策略在今年不太可能奏效，但他也不能完全排除这种可能性。
He said he thinks it is unlikely the GOP pitch works this year, though he can’t rule it out.
“只有当人们的生活基本稳定（比如食物充足、汽油价格仅为每加仑2美元）时，那些关于社会和文化问题的论点才会产生影响。虽然这些论点有时确实能起到作用，但这次显然不属于这种情况。不过，总还是存在一定的机会……我曾经说过唐纳德·特朗普永远不可能当选，但他却两次成功当选了。”如需联系作者，可发送邮件至：Aaron Zitner: aaron.zitner@wsj.com Neil Mehta: neil.mehta@wsj.com
“The social and cultural stuff only works when everyone’s belly is full and gas is $2 a gallon,” he said. “It works at times, and this ain’t one of them. But there’s always a chance. I said Donald Trump would never be elected, and he won two times.”Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Neil Mehta at neil.mehta@wsj.com