Republicans Are Caught Up in Trump’s Obsessions

To say that the current political environment is a moving target is an understatement. A steady state during the first six months of 2024 has turned into anything but since that fateful night of debate in June. And if you think it’s difficult to run a presidential campaign in this unstable environment, try running a House or Senate race.

A month ago, Democrats at the polls who were trying hardest to persuade President Joe Biden to give up were in a panic. Biden himself said as much in an interview with CBS News over the weekend.

“The polls we carried out showed that it was a close race; it would have been custom-made,” Biden said. “But what happened was that several of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought I was going to hurt them in their races. And I was worried if I stayed in the race, that would be the issue.”

This was as transparent as any about the process for persuading Biden to resign. But let’s explain more about what Biden meant by “that would be the subject”. What became clear to him during the three-week campaign to persuade him to step aside was that every House and Senate Democrat on the battlefield would likely be forced into the uncomfortable position of throwing their presidential standard-bearer overboard. . That’s because Republicans telegraphed, right after the June debate debacle, that all Democrats would have to answer for “hiding” Biden’s diminished abilities.

This digital ad posted by Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, about a week before Biden finally dropped his candidacy, was the plan. It was a compilation of Democratic Senator Bob Casey’s defense of Biden’s abilities to serve four more years, as well as establishing Casey’s close ties with the then very unpopular Biden.

Incumbent Democrats were bracing for more announcements like the one above every House and Senate battleground.

Given his lack of a large and dedicated personal political base, Biden realized he was a man on an island. Despite his belief that there was enough anti-Trump sentiment to propel him to victory, if the rest of the Democratic candidates had been running away from him and calling themselves a “check on Trump” before the GOP victory, this would have become self-defeating. -realizable for voters to decide to go against him.

Therefore, Biden chose the most rational path to get out of the conundrum he placed his party in: he left the stage.

Almost immediately, Democrats saw a surge of support — mostly from disillusioned Democratic voters. And this renewed relief among the grassroots manifested itself in the polls not only of the presidential race, but also in the negative election campaigns.

So far, Vice President Kamala Harris has turned that expression of relief into a real boost when it comes to money and resources, which has also reached the ballot box.

Almost a month after the start of this new Democratic reality, the question of who has the weakest presidential candidate for the least voted candidates is back up for debate. As of this writing, it is now Republicans in swing states and districts who are begging their candidate to change course. And so far, former President Donald Trump isn’t listening.

A good example of this gentle public encouragement of Trump to change his approach comes from Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate who has been circulating in the media calling for a more focused and even moderate Trump campaign. Here is his most recent public appearance, via NPRAnswering the question about how Trump should pivot:

“Who will guarantee the security of the border, who will make the economy grow, who will stay out of the Third World War? And more intangibly… who will restore national pride to this country? I think Donald Trump has strong arguments on all of these counts, and I think he and the Republican Party would be well served to focus on the policy contrasts.”

And yet, in almost every public forum Trump has been involved in since Harris’s ascension, he has been unable to steer toward a message that comes close to Ramaswamy’s advice.

This wouldn’t be difficult for a normal candidate. And yet, for Trump, it has been quite difficult. From talking to people who know him well, it is clear that he cannot overcome his loss to Biden in 2020. His only personal hope of overcoming Biden’s defeat in 2020 was to defeat him in 2024. Now, Biden has denied him that opportunity . .

He also doesn’t seem to respect Harris as an opponent, and voters are noticing that. Disdain for a candidate can turn undecided voters against that campaign and toward the target. The best example of this? Hillary Clinton, who clearly never saw Trump as a worthy opponent in 2016. The “deplorable” comment only reinforced that view.

Well, Trump is falling into the same trap. It’s possible that the less respect he shows for Harris, the less afraid the public will be to give him a chance.

Now, some might argue that if he can’t overcome this and can’t pivot, then maybe he should abandon the nomination like Biden. Setting aside the fact that the Republicans have already had their convention for a moment, it is quite obvious that if the Republican Party’s sole focus was to deny the White House to the Democrats, the best course of action would be to persuade Trump to step aside and nominate the primary candidate. runner-up, Nikki Haley.

But as obvious as this may be to a political scientist, the reality of the Republican Party is quite different. Since Trump’s surprise election in 2016, the Democratic Party has been organized around, basically, one principle: stop Trump. It allowed the party to paper over many ideological differences for nearly a decade.

As for the Republican Party, Trump and his allies have done everything they can to shape the Republican Party in Trump’s image, and anyone who doesn’t share that vision has essentially been purged. Even if the low-polling Republican candidates wanted to kick Trump out of the party, ordinary Republican voters wouldn’t agree like the Democrats just did. In fact, it was more than acquiescence: rank-and-file Democrats joined Democratic elites in a primal cry to get Biden to step aside. (See polls that showed less than half of Democrats were “satisfied” with or excited about Biden as a candidate long before the debate.)

All of this explains why Republicans, especially those who are committed to trying to flip the Senate or keep the House, are publicly imploring Trump to shift from a grievance-focused campaign to a policy-focused campaign. These Republicans know they would be in a better position if they had a candidate who was future-oriented and not obsessed with the past.

But what will happen if Trump never changes? So what do these low-voting Republicans do?

In 2016, many down-voted Republicans felt comfortable running against Trump or simply ignoring him, both because they (and many Republican voters) were skeptical of him and because most Republicans — let alone those Democrats and the media – thought he wouldn’t win. All of this created a permission structure that allowed Republicans like then-Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to run his own race. He won re-election without having to support Trump or appear with him.

No battleground-state Republican could do what Toomey did in 2016 and win in 2024. Toomey felt no pressure to appear with Trump at any rallies in Pennsylvania in 2016, but the same can’t be said for McCormick, this year’s Republican nominee to the state Senate. If you doubt me, let me remind you of what Trump did in Georgia just a few weeks ago when he attacked Republican Governor Brian Kemp for refusing to use (or abuse) his powers as governor to help his efforts to question the results in 2020.

The last thing Republican nominees in key Senate races want in 2024 is for Trump to harass them in public (which he would do) for not showing up to his rallies. Perhaps the only Republicans who can achieve this are former governor Larry Hogan in Maryland, or perhaps Nella Domenici, the GOP Senate candidate in New Mexico, where her name is synonymous with Republican politics.

The point is that while voters in the Democratic base wouldn’t punish a Democrat for running away from their presidential candidate (have you noticed how Sherrod Brown is doing well in Ohio while making a point of skipping the Democratic convention?), there is plenty of evidence that voters of the Republican base would do so.

All of which brings me back to the question: What will low-polling Republican candidates do if Trump never fully changes? At some point, the obvious response would be to run a campaign based on being a “check” on Harris’ presidency, similar to what Republicans ran in 2016 against Clinton. But running this campaign would not be easy. Just a stray public comment from an anonymous staffer at some campaign who starts to move away from Trump, and it could rain, you know what, on that campaign.

Among all the competitive Senate races, I would say that McCormick of Pennsylvania and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan are in the most precarious positions when it comes to Trump’s need to pivot. So keep an eye on the messages these two campaigns develop. Swing voters who don’t like Trump personally are the voters Rogers and McCormick need. Can they find a way to send them a message without alienating Trump — especially if Trump himself can’t make the obvious pivot that any generic candidate in his position would make?

Of course, the real challenge for both Republicans will be figuring out how to handle Trump’s appearances in their respective states. If Trump’s numbers continue to falter, it will be tempting for these candidates to distance themselves from him. Ultimately, it may be a fool’s errand, even if reality is ahead of the campaign. After all, there is a limit to what a low-polling candidate can do if the top of the ticket is unpopular or undisciplined.