IN A WORD: EXTREME

“My opponent,” fulminated the candidate, “and those who endorse him continue to focus on the extreme and unconstitutional notion that we can overturn the 2020 election.”

No, that was not said by a Democrat, but by Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin legislature, who was facing, and defeating, a primary challenger endorsed by Donald Trump. Still, Vos did use the word that has become the keynote, the clarion call of the Democrats’ fall campaign: extreme.

Leftists of the Bernie Sanders stripe fantasize that this is a liberal country; it’s not, but it is not a hardright nation, either. Our center of political gravity is close, well, to the center, perhaps tilting slightly to the right. So when Republicans pick candidates who espouse views outside the mainstream, they set themselves up for defeat.

The political world has been focusing on Kansas, where voters crushed an attempt to roll back constitutional protections for abortion rights. But that result comes in a context of outlandish lies about the 2020 election and the lingering stench of Trump’s crazed and chaotic presidency. It’s taken together that these elements give Democrats an opening to label Republicans as dangerously unsafe and unstable.

“The only thing that might save Democrats is Republicans, and they’re trying their damnedest to do it,” David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief political adviser, told The New York Times.

The Democrats remain in deep trouble. In the latest ABC poll, 69% of voters said the economy is getting worse, and a paltry 29% think President Biden is handling inflation well. No wonder his personal approval rating is stuck below 40%.

But as Axelrod points out, Republicans keep giving the Democrats an opportunity to mitigate the effects of Biden’s unpopularity. By relitigating the 2020 election and restricting abortion rights, they shift attention away from the economy and toward issues where they are out of step with public opinion.

The campaign in Kansas is a prime example of this misguided strategy. Trump carried the state by almost 15 points, yet the referendum lost 59% to 41%. Nate Cohn of the Times estimates that nationwide, 65% of voters would reject a similar proposition. That squares with a CNN poll that reports that 63% of voters oppose the Supreme Court’s decision canceling a constitutional right to abortion.

As Kansans were expressing their mainstream impulses, Republican primary voters in Arizona doubled down on their self-destructive tendencies, nominating hard-core election deniers and anti-abortion militants for four statewide offices, including governor and senator.

Democrats still seem doomed to lose the House, but the Senate is another matter. Republican-controlled state legislatures over many years have produced maps that protect many GOP House seats, but since Senate races are statewide, they cannot be gerrymandered, and the playing field is more level.

Arizona is only one of several states — add Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada — where Republicans have nominated weak Senate candidates who can be branded as in over their heads or outside the lines. That’s why the website FiveThirtyEight now makes Democrats a slight favorite to control the Senate, and that would be a critical outcome.

Sure, Biden’s legislative agenda would be stalled by a Republican-controlled House, but the most lasting legacy of any president is often judicial appointments. As long as Democrats retain the Senate, Biden could use his next two years to stack the federal bench with progressive appointments. If that happens, extreme Republicans will bear much of the blame.