Donald Trump’s intensifying battle with his own party is tearing open the nation’s political map, pulling Republicans across the country into a self-destructive feud that could imperil dozens of lawmakers in Congress and potentially throw conservative-leaning states into Hillary Clinton’s column.
Democrats are moving swiftly to exploit Trump’s crumbling position in the presidential race, aiming to run up a big margin of victory for Clinton and extend their political advantage into the congressional elections next month.
Clinton’s campaign has concluded that at least two traditionally Republican states, Georgia and Arizona, are realistic targets for her campaign to win over. And Republican polling has found that Trump is at dire risk of losing Georgia, according to people briefed on the polls, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Clinton now holds such a strong upper hand that Priorities USA, a super PAC backing her campaign, may direct some of its war chest into Senate races, two people said, and may begin broadcasting ads for those contests as soon as next week. Congressional Democrats also hope to persuade Clinton to continue pouring money and campaign resources into states like Virginia and Colorado, where they believe her victory is assured, in order to lift other Democratic candidates.
In a signal of Democrats’ growing focus on the House and Senate, Clinton used a recent visit to Miami to attack both Trump and Senator Marco Rubio, whom Clinton blasted for what she described as his indifference to climate change.
“We need to elect people up and down the ballot, at every level of the government, who take it seriously,” Clinton said, adding, “It is an unacceptable response for Marco Rubio, when asked about climate change, to say, ‘I’m not a scientist.” Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D Podesta, said that she would continue to call out down-ballot Republicans.
Rubio, who has led in his re-election campaign by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin, is among the Republicans whom Priorities USA may seek to defeat, if the group decides to intervene in Senate races, a strategist said.
Increasingly anxious Republicans have not come up with a unified strategy for containing the damage from Trump’s embattled candidacy, and several strategists and party officials said they were awaiting a new round of polling before settling on a course. But, in a sign that Republicans now view the presidential race as a lost cause, several Senate candidates are preparing ads asking voters to elect them as a check on Clinton in the White House.
Yet Trump himself, having been rejected in recent days by dozens of Republican elected officials, has indicated that he will make any separation an exceptionally messy and painful ordeal for the party.
Trump lashed out publicly on October 11 morning at two of his best-known critics: Senator John McCain of Arizona, who withdrew his endorsement of Trump over the last weekend, and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, who informed congressional Republicans on October 10 that he would no longer defend Trump.
Seething on Twitter, Trump attacked Ryan as “weak and ineffective” and described McCain as “very foul mouthed.” And in a Fox News interview, Trump mocked both men as disloyal, reserving special venom for Ryan. “Paul Ryan opened borders and amnesty and bad budgets,” Trump said. He declared himself a liberated man, writing on Twitter: “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.”
Should Trump continue deriding the leaders of the institutional Republican Party, it could have profound consequences down the ballot, potentially depressing turnout by demoralising the party or leading Trump’s ardent supporters to deny their votes to Republicans who abandoned him. But there is little Republicans can do to control Trump’s behaviour: The party’s donors have no leverage over him, he is relying largely on small donors and, at 70, he is not mindful of any future campaign.
The emerging dynamic may be especially toxic for Republicans in swing states that are also home to competitive races for the House and Senate, where the party’s candidates must choose between two unpalatable options: alienating much of their party’s base or standing behind a nominee who is unacceptable to most mainstream voters. The voting bloc that especially concerns Republican officials are the right-of-centre, college educated voters who usually favour Republican candidates but cannot abide Trump. These voters can make up anywhere between a quarter to a third of the party’s electoral coalition.
“Not going to vote for Donald Trump,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist who is working on several Senate races. “But if they don’t vote at all, it’s catastrophic for us.”
Centre of battlefield
The nightmare possibility for the party is that swing voters punish the party because of Trump, the anti-Trump Republicans stay at home and Trump’s base casts a ballot for him and then leaves the polls. Under those conditions, Senate races in places like Pennsylvania and North Carolina could fall to Democrats, while Senate and House races in places like Missouri, Arizona and Kansas could move to the centre of the battlefield.
Already, Republicans view Trump’s sharp downturn in the presidential race as having jeopardised their majorities in Congress. A poll published on October 11 by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found Trump trailing Clinton by 9 percentage points nationally and drawing just 37% of the vote. No major-party nominee since World War II has received a smaller share of the vote.
But in an illustration of the bind Republicans are in, the poll found that three-fourths of Republicans believed their candidates should stay loyal to Trump. Other Republican-leaning voters say they may punish those who fail to denounce Trump. Several Republicans in difficult Senate races have criticised Trump in strong terms without coming out in opposition to his candidacy, including Senators Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Rubio.
Like their Republican counterparts, Democrats do not plan to make final strategy decisions until they receive new polling. But they have already begun aggressively attacking Republicans, even as those officials retreat from Trump.
Three Democratic congressional candidates have started running ads this week that showcase footage of Trump describing sexual assault in graphic terms from a 2005 recording.
Governor Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who is challenging Senator Kelly Ayotte, used the footage in a campaign video, saying Ayotte recently denounced Trump only to “protect herself.” And outside groups supporting congressional Democrats have begun to reallocate their spending to take advantage of the shifting environment.
The House Majority PAC, the principal outside group supporting House Democrats, this week made a $1.2 million reservation to contest the suburban Philadelphia seat held by Republican Michael G Fitzpatrick, who is retiring.