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President Trump strongly stepped up Monday the Republican campaign to present the midterm elections as a battle over immigration and race, issuing an obscure and unfounded warning that "unknowns from the Middle East "were heading for the US border with Mexico.
This unfounded accusation marked an escalation of Mr. Trump's efforts to stir up fears about foreigners and crime before the November 6 vote, as he did with great success in the run-up to the presidency. Trump and other Republicans are trying hard to link Democrats to unhindered immigration and violent crime. In some cases, this summer and autumn, they attacked minority candidates in naked racial terms.
Trump is now claiming in daily speeches and on Twitter the caravan of migrants heading north through Central America, and on Monday called for a national emergency. The caravan dominated the conservative talk radio and Fox News, where there has also been vague speculation about a connection to terrorism. The seemingly unfounded inclusion of "unknowns from the Middle East" in the caravan echoes Mr. Trump's long-standing practice of amplifying the fears raised by Islamist militants during the election campaign.
"It's an assault on our country and in this caravan, you have very bad people and we can not let this happen to our country," said the president during a protest in Houston Monday night. Mr. Trump suggested without any evidence that the opposition had participated in the instigation of the caravan. "I think the Democrats have had something to do with this," he said.
In targeting the caravan, the president seems determined to end the election season with a cultural struggle over national identity rather than the problems that party leaders initially wanted to attack, such as tax cuts or the economy.
But Trump was not the only one to try to divide the electorate along racial lines this fall: in the run-up to congressional elections, a number of Republican candidates and political committees have clearly addressed messages aimed at stirring up the cultural anxiety of white voters and even appealing. manifest racism.
Mr. DeSantis and his associates have been reprimanded several times for inflammatory racist comments. In August, DeSantis said Florida should not "exaggerate" by electing Mr. Gillum – a comment that he described as a normal speech – and one of the following. his leader, nicknamed the Democrat Andrew Kill – "em, alludes to Tallahassee's crime rate.
The most widespread were broad and largely false claims that Democrats supported an "open border" immigration policy that would lead to a large influx of violent crime. Republicans have deployed this charge in innumerable elections and now link ordinary Democrats who support immigration reforms to far-left activists in favor of the abolition of the agency. of immigration and customs. Republicans also accuse the Democrats, without any evidence, of being restrained by MS-13, a Latin American gang that Trump routinely describes as a national threat.
The approach taken by Mr. Trump and like-minded Republicans stands in stark contrast to the way the Democrats campaigned in 2018 and to the way Republican leaders in Congress initially promised to move closer to the middle. mandate. Democratic candidates tended to downplay the importance of immigration as a theme, focusing instead on a small number of issues regarding kitchen tables, primarily health care.
[[[[Here's a guide to everything you need to know about the November elections.]
After a campaign campaign in Florida on Monday, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president who is considering running for president in 2020, criticized Trump's ferocity over the issue of migrants. "The caravan is 3,000 km away. It gives the impression that they cross the border. It's hysteria on his part. Let him calm down, "said Biden.
When asked if Republicans were trying to win the elections with racial appeals, Mr. Biden replied, "They are because they are what they are."
Republicans often took a stand for conflicting racial and cultural issues when the political mainstream seemed to them opposed, qualifying Democratic candidates for a series of off-season elections of immigration and crime summaries. A study published last week by the Wesleyan Media Project found that health care was the dominant topic in advertisements for the 2018 campaign, but that about one-eighth of Republican campaign ads also dealt with immigration – more than double the on the part of Democratic ads.
Newt Gingrich, a former House spokesman and casual advisor at Trump, said that immigration could be a bigger problem than the economy. "The caravan is an existential moment," he said.
Citing polls revealing a strong majority in the country against illegal immigration, Gingrich said, "This is a much larger margin than you will get in the near future on Trump's economic policy. "
Ali Noorani, head of the National Forum on Immigration, a non-partisan advocacy group that advocates comprehensive immigration reform, said it was no surprise that M Trump orients Republicans in this way rather than focusing on economic themes.
"We really expected the president to place a big bet on an anti-immigrant message as we got closer and closer to the mid-term," Noorani said. "There's a surprise, it's that he's not talking about Kavanaugh or the economy as much as I thought."
But Noorani said the Republicans were facing a compromise: "Is this going to be a message that dispels independent voters?"
Much of the harshest publicity about immigration and race has taken place in relatively homogeneous and conservative districts, in which Republican incumbents are under severe threat. For lawmakers such as Mr. Collins and New York representative John Faso, who faces Mr. Delgado, the most likely chances of reelection depend on the strong support of conservative whites.
In an interview on Monday, Delgado said he did not believe voters would accept what he described as "false grotesque representation" of Republicans in his biography and beliefs. He acknowledged that the crude negativity of the attacks had been a shock.
"I did not expect that," Delgado said. "I think it's a source of contention and that's ugly, and I think it does not have a place in our politics."
The polls suggest close races in the districts held by Mr. Faso and Mr. Collins, as well as the Dallas area headquarters where Mr. Allred is running against the representative Pete Sessions.
But one does not see how a Trump-style rhetoric on immigration and race could be accommodated in the vast map of the mid-term map, which covers the wealthy suburbs, the different cities and rural areas with important Latino communities The severe nationalism of Trump. While opposition to illegal immigration is strong, a poll released Sunday by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that voters had a little more confidence in Democrats than Republicans in the overall immigration issue.
Mr. Trump and other Republicans hope that the image of thousands of migrants seeking to enter the country will further energize his political base, composed mostly of low-income white voters, generally wary of -vis of immigration.
Stephen K. Bannon, the immigration spokesman who advised Trump at the White House, said the Republicans were nationalizing the mid-term elections around themes that electrified the right. Mr. Bannon compared this at the end of the 2016 election, when Mr. Trump "became alive in the last few weeks of this campaign and closed his doors firmly".
At present, Mr. Bannon said, "Trump's local base is united and on fire."
There is a precedent for voters in the Red State who reward Republicans for their racist rhetoric, including in the mid-term elections of 2014. But last year, voters in Virginia inflicted Republicans a heavy defeat after being appointed governor. Ed Gillespie has spent most of his campaign connecting Democrats, MS-13 and friendly immigration policies.
Justin Fairfax, lieutenant governor of Virginia, who won a landslide victory in 2017 to become the state's second black constitutional officer, said the Republicans had been trying to follow a "very dark political path," as does now Mr. Trump.
"Americans are rejecting this bleak view," said Fairfax, a Democrat, adding, "What we have shown in Virginia is not only that they would lose, but they would lose in historical proportions."
In Nevada, former President Barack Obama alluded to Monday at an early rally in the Republican campaign, telling Democrats that the party G.O.P. would try to "appeal to the tribe" and "oppose one group to the other" over the next two weeks. But voters had little hope that Mr. Trump could change course.
It was in the same state last week, after all, that Mr. Trump falsely claimed that there had been riots against illegal immigration to California.
"That's what they do," said Reese Williams, a 49-year-old veteran of Trump's party. "These are the cards that they shoot all the time."
But Mr. Trump's dystopic images have clearly left an impression on some people. Carol Shields, a 75-year-old Republican from north Minnesota, said she feared migrant gangs would take control of the lake's summer vacation homes.
"What stops them?" Said Mrs. Shields, a retired accountant. "We have a lot of people living on the lakes in summer and winter elsewhere. When they come back in the spring, their house will be occupied.
