If you’ve gone to a Democratic campaign rally recently, chances are you’ve heard a version of the following sentence: This is the most important election of our lifetime.

Jared Golden isn’t buying it. The third-term House Democrat from Maine thinks America will be just fine if Donald Trump returns to the White House. “No matter who wins the presidency,” Golden told me last month at a Dunkin’ in his district, “the day after the election, America is going to get up and go to work.” ...

“He’s deliberately soft-pedaling a very grave threat to constitutional democracy,” Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia told me.

But as one of only five House Democrats who represents a district that Trump carried in 2020, Golden has good reason to avoid sounding alarms about the former president. He is virtually the only Democrat trying to lower the stakes of the election. That might be how he helps his party win it.