Senator Martin Heinrich, a two-term Democrat from New Mexico, was not on anyone’s watch list of incumbents facing serious re-election trouble given the reliable partisan tilt of his state, which has not voted for a Republican for Senate since 2002 or a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.
But in the weeks after President Biden turned in a disastrous debate performance against Donald J. Trump last month, Mr. Heinrich was among the Democrats privately panicking. Polls showed New Mexico slipping into an expanding universe of potentially winnable states for the former president — foretelling an electoral disaster for Mr. Biden and trouble in the senator’s own re-election race.
So Mr. Biden’s decision last weekend to exit the race took a weight off the shoulders of Mr. Heinrich and other Democratic incumbents, who now describe a sense of hope and momentum overtaking the doom and gloom that had permeated their party since late June.
“It just feels like a completely different world than a week ago,” said Mr. Heinrich, who is facing a challenge from Nella Domenici, the daughter of the state’s last Republican senator, Pete Domenici, a popular figure and household name in New Mexico. “Across the board — engagement, social media, anecdotal — everything feels different. I feel better about the broad momentum.”
Mr. Biden’s withdrawal is still fresh, polling is only beginning to come in and Democrats still face significant challenges in holding their thin Senate majority and gaining control of the House.
But lawmakers who just days ago were bracing for what they feared would be a November wipeout say the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket has stabilized races and given Democrats a fighting chance. Instead of running from awkward questions about Mr. Biden’s age, mental acuity and fitness, Democrats are hoping to benefit from a surge of grass-roots support for Ms. Harris.
“It’s a feel,” said Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who is one of the most threatened incumbents and had warned colleagues in a private meeting that he could not win with Mr. Biden running. “I’m more than in the game. We’re good.”
In Wisconsin, Senator Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat up for re-election in another pivotal race, had declined to appear on the campaign trail with Mr. Biden, citing scheduling conflicts. For two months in a row, when the president appeared in the Badger State, his remarks shouting her out were the nearly the same: “While she couldn’t be here, I’m always grateful for one of the best senators in the United States Senate, Tammy Baldwin.”
That dynamic changed as Ms. Harris became the presumptive nominee. Ms. Baldwin was there alongside her on Tuesday at the vice president’s first campaign rally in Milwaukee, even flying back to Wisconsin on Air Force 2 with Ms. Harris. After the rally, Ms. Baldwin posted a photo of them side by side on social media: “VP @KamalaHarris and I are ready,” she wrote. “Let’s win this, Wisconsin.”
In the House, where Democrats started the current Congress with high hopes of winning back the majority in November, members in some of the most competitive races were in near despair about the outlook with Mr. Biden leading the ticket.
Even before the debate, members in competitive districts had for weeks shared private polling in closed-door meetings showing Mr. Biden’s disapproval ratings refusing to budge. They had hoped that his debate performance would help — and were horrified when it had the opposite effect.
Some members saw that they would need to outperform Mr. Biden by almost 10 points to keep their seats, a near impossibility in the sharply divided political environment, according to people familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.
Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who challenged Mr. Biden in the presidential primary, said he believed “the tipping point” in the president’s decision came after polling showed that voters’ concerns about his age were pulling congressional Democrats down with him.
“That made the real difference,” Mr. Phillips said. “And now the funereal pall around here has lifted.”
“I see a whole new energy and enthusiasm on the ground,” Representative Mike Levin of California, who had called on Mr. Biden to step aside in a contentious private virtual meeting, said in an interview. Mr. Levin likened the surge of volunteer enthusiasm he has seen since Mr. Biden left the race to 2018, when he and other Democrats swept red districts in the state and helped flip control of the House back to his party.
“It’s still early; there’s 103 days to go,” he said. “But I think we will be able to sustain that energy on the ground, and that will be a huge deal in House races all across the country and Senate races in competitive states.”
Top Republicans are not buying the new Democratic optimism, though Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who heads the G.O.P. Senate campaign operation, conceded that Mr. Biden dropping out of the race was likely an immediate boost for Democrats.
“You had a disaster in Joe Biden,” Mr. Daines said. “Age was the issue for Biden. The issue for Kamala Harris will be her far-left policies.”
Like other Republicans, Mr. Daines argued that the vice president’s liberal record would ultimately hurt Democrats, particularly those who need to win in red stakes like Mr. Tester in Montana and Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
“This just feels like a replay of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis,” said Mr. Daines, referring to the losing Democratic presidential candidates in 1972 and 1988. “The nation is not ready for a far-left president.”
Democrats say Ms. Harris does not have to carry red states for their incumbents to win. They say she just needs not to lose so badly that the Democratic incumbents, who were already polling ahead of Mr. Biden, are not overwhelmed. They see new hope.
“The one thing that is very apparent right now is there is a tremendous boost of energy, which is incredibly important for all of our races,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Ultimately, what wins or loses elections is energy on the ground.”
“It is one thing to have good numbers in a poll,” he said. “It’s another thing to actually have good numbers of people who are going to go to the polls and vote.”
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