Four weeks ago, as September was just getting underway, Donald Trump hosted a White House event for congressional Republicans, who heard the president share some of his plans for the midterm elections.
Trump said that over the final month of the cycle, he would headline a series of campaign events, with a specific focus on “35 races.” The president didn’t go into a lot of detail about where he was headed, but he made one thing clear to the GOP lawmakers in attendance: If you’re an incumbent who’s all but certain to win, Trump said, “please don’t ask me to come to your area and make a speech.”
Instead, he added, his focus would be on Republican candidates who are “either tied or you’re winning by a little bit, or you’re losing by a little bit.”
Four weeks later, with 35 days remaining before Election Day, Trump’s upcoming travel schedule is coming into focus — and it’s remarkable how defensive his itinerary is. Politico reported:
President Donald Trump intends to spend the next 30 days campaigning for Republicans, many of whom are underwater in states the president easily carried two years ago. […]
Trump’s upcoming travel — including to Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio this week — puts a focus on what Republican donors and operatives have feared for months: that even a gerrymandered House map and whopping cash advantage won’t be enough to save the House or Senate from Democrats.
For those keeping score, just two years ago, Trump carried Alabama by 31 points, Oklahoma by 34 points and Ohio by 11 points. The president is also reportedly soon headed to Alaska, which he won by 14 points. (Over the weekend, he also attended a college football game in Tennessee — a state he carried by 30 points.)
Not to put too fine a point on this, but with five weeks to go in the midterms, and with the early voting window starting to open, it’s a bad sign to see a Republican president headlining rallies in some of the nation’s reddest states.
It’s possible Trump might yet add some more traditional battlegrounds to his travel plans, but as things stand, one of two scenarios appears true. Either a) Republicans are in so much trouble that the president believes it’s necessary to appear in states he won by landslide margins in the last election cycle, in the hopes of preventing a total electoral catastrophe; or b) Republicans in competitive races have told their party’s unpopular president they don’t want to be seen with him, and a local event would do more harm than good.
Either way, this isn’t the landscape GOP officials were hoping for at this stage in the race.
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