Trumps Losing, So When Are Republican Candidates Going to Abandon Him? – The New Yorker

On Wednesday afternoon, the latest batch of polls in the Presidential campaign were released, and they showed an increasingly grim picture for Donald Trump. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey had Joe Biden up by eleven points. Fifty per cent of those surveyed said that there was no chance they would support Trump. The Quinnipiac University poll showed an even wider national lead for Biden, of fifteen points. Trumps job-approval rating had sunk to thirty-six per cent, and a daunting sixty per cent of Americans disapproved of his performance in office. There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the President, Tim Malloy, the Quinnipiac polling analyst who oversaw the study, said. A few hours later, Trump ousted his campaign manager, Brad Parscaleor, rather, had his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, do so. His new campaign manager is Bill Stepien, a New Jersey operative and former Trump White House political director best known for his role in former New Jersey Governor Chris Christies Bridgegate scandal. I look forward to having a big and very important second win together, the President tweeted, shortly before 9 P.M.

Reaction was swift, and withering. Brads not the one going off message. Brads not the one refusing to wear a mask, a senior White House official told CNN, lambasting Trump. Hes not focussed. Everyone has told him that. Nothing has changed. The political analyst Amy Walter said, The campaign manager isnt the problem. The problem is the candidate. Of course, she was right: Trumps summer slump is real, and it is his own fault.

Parscale did not tell Trump to downplay the threat of the coronavirus, or to deny its deadliness. He did not force Trump to undercut Americas scientists and public-health officials. He did not demand that America open back up for business in the midst of an untreatable plague. He was merely an extremely well-compensated cheerleader for the Presidents reckless actions. Now, with cases rising in forty-one states, the country has come to a new awareness that there will be no return to normalcy this fall. Many of Americas largest school districts announced this week that they will not welcome students back to classrooms in September. Trumps own head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, said this week that this fall may be one of the most difficult times that the country has ever confronted. With little more than a hundred days left until the election, no amount of Trumpian rage, denial, bluster, or attacks has been able to obliterate this unpleasant reality of the Presidents making.

One of the enduring mysteries of this most unusual of campaign seasons is why Trumps precarious relection bid has not affected his standing with the Republican politicians who will be on the ballot alongside him. In the past, a historically unpopular President plummeting in the polls would have caused a slew of panicking pols to distance themselves. In July of 1980, when Jimmy Carters popularity sank into the low twenties and he hovered just under forty per cent in the polls in his race against Ronald Reagan, Carter even gave a speech in which he volunteered to stay away from Democratic members districts if they thought that his campaigning for them would hurt their chances. It didnt work, of course, and when Carter was defeated by Reagan his party lost twenty-nine seats in the House and control of the Senate.

But the vast majority of Republicans this time are not abandoning Trump; some are even choosing to double down on their embrace of the President, a political choice that speaks loudly to the current moment. Part of it is that Trump is an unusually vengeful politician, one who is obsessed with loyalty and who does not hesitate to go after members of his party who cross him. On Tuesday night, Trump and his inner circle crowed when his former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was soundly defeated in a Republican primary in Alabama, a humiliating end to his bid to win back the Senate seat that he gave up to serve in Trumps Cabinet. Sessions, who committed the unpardonable sinto Trumpof recusing himself from the Russia investigation, had been the first senator to endorse Trump, back in 2016. Even after being fired by the President, Sessions continued to publicly suck up to Trump during his comeback bid. A few weeks ago, when Trumps mid-pandemic return to the campaign trail, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, bombed, Sessions blithely praised the President for his masterful performance and winning message. But that was not enough for Trump, who endorsed Sessionss opponent and bad-mouthed his former A.G. as a disaster who let us all down. After the vote, Trump exulted in Sessionss defeat. So did Trumps close adviser Stephen Miller, the young immigration hawk who owes his career to Sessions. Asked on Wednesday about Sessionss loss, as he strolled across the White House driveway, Miller called it a great victory for the country, a great victory for the President.

Fear alone, however, does not explain whats going on with Republicans. Not every state is Alabama, where Trump will win in November no matter what. Trump has been sagging even in reliably red states, such as Georgia and Texasa Democratic Presidential candidate has not won the latter state since Carter, in 1976where surveys now show Biden more or less even with Trump. The Dallas Morning News wrote the other day that Trump represents a bigger threat to fellow Republicans than any GOP nominee in forty-four years. As coronavirus cases spike in Texas, the crucial suburban voters in Dallas and Houston, who have long been the G.O.P.s bedrock in the state, appear to be souring on the President. Yet Senator John Cornyn, a mild-mannered Republican-establishment type never previously seen as a Trumpite, has chosen to respond to his increasingly uphill relection challenge in Texas by becoming one of the Presidents more ardent public defenders. Hes tweeting more. Hes trolling. He told Texans to go out and drink some Corona beer and not to panic about the disease. Democrats are now calling him Mini-Don. There are plenty of other Republican officeholders like him.

The best, or at least most vivid, explanation for this phenomenon that Ive seen is a recent piece in Rolling Stone by the Republican strategist Tim Miller, an adviser to Jeb Bushs doomed 2016 Presidential campaign who became a fervent Never Trumper. Miller asked nine G.O.P.-consultant friends who are still welcome in the Party why the dumpster fire that is the Trump 2020 campaign has not caused their Republican candidates to abandon the President. There are two options, you can be on this hell ship, or you can be in the water drowning, one told Miller. Millers report from the U.S.S. Hellship suggests that the trapped sailors are well aware of how badly Trump is faring but are unable to bail outespecially in competitive elections, where the Party can ill afford to lose any Republican votes. In rural Texas, one of Millers informants pointed out, Trump gets like Saddam Hussein level numbers here. Cornyn desperately needs those Trump superfans in order to win statewide. Loyalty to Trump among such voters now outweighs any policy position, which means that catering to them requires Cornyn to strike a hard pro-Trump line, even if it further alienates the suburban moderates now wavering on the President. No dissent is tolerated, a consultant in another state told Miller. And, besides, another strategist told him, the election is all about Trumptheres no use pretending otherwise. Their observations are strikingly similar to a conversation that I had last month with a veteran Republican pollster, whose clients are running in competitive states. I asked him whether, given the bad and worsening poll numbers, we might soon see his candidates running away from the President. I dont think so, he said, citing the Trump Twitter curse. He stirs up his base all the time, so you cant take a position to reach out to the independents who have trouble with his persona, because the Republican Trump base will turn on you in a second. And so the Hellship sails on.

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Trumps Losing, So When Are Republican Candidates Going to Abandon Him? - The New Yorker