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Michael Scherer
National political reporter covering campaigns, Congress and the White House
While he was flying aboard the Air Force One to get to a hangar meeting at the Mosinee Airport, Wisconsin, President Trump lamented that his assistants had a duty to to moderate his words.
Pipe bombs had been sent to several of his favorite films, including the homes of two former presidents and CNN offices in New York. Less than two weeks before the mid-term elections, it was a decisive moment for the presidency, which would make a verdict on its first two years in office.
But, according to two colleagues accustomed to Trump's objections, the words to be loaded in the prompter did not correspond to those of the president. his own plans for the closing of the campaign, whose details he had kept with other Republican leaders. He wanted controversy, fury and fear to push the boundaries and get ratings, portray a caravan of Central American migrants as a deadly threat and confuse Democrats as their co-conspirators.
The speech writers were now telling the man who had been encouraging hand fights at rallies in his 2016 campaign to ask "all parties to unite in peace and harmony" . They wanted the real estate developer who called his Democratic opponent "crooked" demands to stop "treating political opponents as morally defective. "
the The mid-term elections would always boil down to a moment like this: President Trump, isolated and imperious, decided the fate of the electoral hopes of his Republican party.
In three years he had become an omnipotent force in American life, reversing the customs of the White House, the values of the Republican Party and the rules of public debate. Its opponents had reacted fiercely, with the biggest street protests since the 1960s and the largest wave of political commitment – measured in terms of money and volunteer energy – that had never been seen in the past. an election held out of the year.
Dan Sena, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, realized shortly after Trump took office in 2017 that Democrats would be forced to break with the party's instincts. (Tom Williams / CQ Roll Cal)
They were united, as rarely before, against him. But that was how he loved it, always in the center of attention, going with his instinct, selling his challenge as a fundamental attribute. He believed in the reactions of his own crowds. They would allow him to challenge the forecasters and polls, display his critics of the media and rewrite the rules of American politics.
At the White House, a number of senior aides privately claimed that Trump's focus on alleviating immigration fears went too far. House President Paul D. Ryan (RS) would call Trump twice in the last few weeks. to ask him to stop talking about immigration and refocus on the economy.
He argued that Trump should focus on voter reaction outside tumultuous rallies. Avoid distractions and unnecessary fighting, Ryan's team told his White House colleagues. Frame the election as a choice between Republican fulfillment and democratic rhetoric.
[[[[Conservatives wonder if Trump could leave them in the cold]
Trump would seem to have agreed on the phone, then quickly return to what interested him, while complaining to his own advisers that Ryan, who was leaving, had let too many members retire.
Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), chairman of the National Republican Congress committee, struggled to overcome divisions within the party that were magnified by Trump's campaign style. (Bill Clark / Call CQ / Getty Images)
Now that Air Force One was crossing Lake Michigan, Trump was not listening anymore. He agreed to read the words on the unit without giving up his own division strategy. To explain the contradiction, he just added a wink and a nod.
"Do you see how good I am doing today? Have you ever seen this? Trump told the crowd, coming out of the screenplay, in a sarcastic aside after calling for harmony. "We all behave very well."
The crowd burst out laughing, offering a beautiful sequence to tease his plans. "Wait to see what we do with our border over the next two weeks," he said. "Our country is attacked by thousands and thousands of people marching past," he said of a group of migrants more than 1,000 kilometers away.
What followed were days of shocks to the political system. The suspect was a reminder of Trump who attended his rallies and, according to the authorities, internalized his appeal. Three other men suspected of racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic or anti-immigrant delusions reportedly killed and killed 15 people in three states over a 10-day period in a supermarket, synagogue and yoga studio.
But Trump has stayed the course, constantly raising the temperature of the public debate. He would not have telephoned the bomb targets, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He complained about the distraction of domestic terrorism hurting Republicans. "For seven days nobody talked about elections," he told a crowd in Colombia on November 1.
Instead, he aired his own news events, not coordinating them with Ryan or the leaders of the Republican Congress National Committee: new troop deployments at the border, a profane publicity campaign blaming the Democrats for leaving a killer of Mexican cops entering the country, the threat of responding to stone throwers at the border with shots fired by US soldiers, or even the pretense of a "treasonous assault on our sovereignty". Sometimes he did not coordinate his ads with his own assistants.
When the president threatened to cancel citizenship with an executive order, Ryan spoke to defend the Constitution as it is written, pushing Trump to publicly attack his ruling partner. The two men spoke by phone later in the day. The conversation was short, said three people aware of the call, and Trump said he thought immigration remained a better message than the economy.
It was purely Trump, and it opened the way for a blow to the president's government coalition as Republicans lost the House while to maintain firm control of the Senate. The Republicans' losses in the House on Tuesday directly affected the outlying areas that were most concerned about the president's division, with many races being decided at the slimmest margin.
This was just the last stage of a political realignment – a repolarization of politics – that began in 2015 with Trump's announcement of his candidacy for the Republican party presidency.
This account of the battle for power at Capitol Hill is based on more than four dozen interviews with campaign strategists, White House advisers, political party officials, government advisers, and elected officials. on both sides of the aisle. Many spoke under the guise of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
They told the story of a Republican party beaten, emboldened and more and more redefined. Trump has also helped the Democrats find a new voice, with a new generation of leaders and a new winning game notebook.
Trump's "Snowball"
The election season began for the executive director of the Democratic House, Dan Sena, at a Cracker Barrel in Pennsylvania, where he went to watch the guests listen to Trump's inauguration in 2017 on their phone. "There was a woman sitting there," she recalls, and she tells her daughter, "We're recording this at home. This is our president. "
In the blink of an eye, Sena lives the challenge. The mid-term elections tended to be referendums on the incumbent president. Large sections of the nation, particularly wealthy suburban women, have rejected Trump. But Sena knew that was not enough given the way the districts were drawn.
To win the Speaker's Speaker Award, Democrats should fight over voters who had already forgiven Trump for breaking his rules and who appreciated his policies in the face of a rising economy. The party should break with its instincts, dismiss Trump and resist any leftist politics. Sena was found to describe Trump to other Democrats as a divine figure. Trump held the nation's attention in his hands, able to release chaos whenever he wanted.
"I can not control what happens when Donald Trump goes like that on the snow globe," he said shaking his hand as he held one. "We knew that to get places in this cycle, we needed a strategy that allowed us to put as many boats in the water, without necessarily waiting for a wave or betting on a wave, but with so many chess pieces. on the tray. you can possibly. "
The first step was to formulate a message. A survey by the Democratic majority of the PAC Chamber of Deputies in the summer of 2017, alarms were triggered: Congressional Republicans achieved better results with working-class whites on issues the Democrats thought they should have, such as the reduction of the power of special interests, the reward of hard work, the defense of people "like you". out of 4, congressional Democrats helped to improve the economy and create jobs, compared to 41% of those who credited Republicans.
"They were certain that Washington was totally corrupt and they were the inevitable losers of this equation," said Jill Normington, the pollster. As discussions continued, voters kept coming back to the same question: "Will there be more money in my pocket or less money in my pocket?"
[Voters are angry and divided, but still believe in the power of the vote]
Investigators quickly returned with a way for Democrats to get out of their abyss – a general message focused on fighting the GOP's plans to increase health insurance premiums, remove protections for pre-existing illnesses and take action account special interests.
"We are sort of combining taxes and health care. The idea that Republicans were going to cut taxes on insurance companies and increase premiums on people was not good for them, "said Matt Canter of the Global Strategy Group, who led discussion groups in the context of # 39; effort.
In the summer of 2018, Democrats had a pocket plan that minimized problems such as immigration and pursued Trump in only a handful of districts where he was deeply unpopular. It was a clear break with the Republican strategy of 2010 and 2014 to campaign more directly against Obama.
But the first democrats had to find new faces to sell their new message, a task that suddenly appeared much easier than expected. These were people like Dan McCready, a Navy veteran who had led troops in Iraq before graduating from Harvard Business School. He began talking to a former classmate, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), In the weeks following Trump's victory.
"We spent hours on the phone," said Moulton. "At one point, he said," Seth, I'm 99% sure. I just need to know that I can be as good a father as a congressman. "
Moulton told McCready, who would follow the first results in the 9th district of North Carolina, that the trip to Washington would not make him a better father. "But you were not when you were a sailor, either," added Moulton. "You served the country."
Shortly thereafter, there were about 20 veteran congressional candidates, including Jason Crow in Colorado, who began exchanging campaign tips on a private Slack channel curated by Moulton. No one has been identified as a liberal crusader and most have expressed skepticism about the current democratic leadership.
Hundreds of women candidates joined them and many of them were encouraged by the activist groups that had emerged to challenge Trump and at the same time as the suburban women, who would be the biggest target. mid-term elections. The rush of new talent with lean political records and more moderate views was a nightmare for Republicans.
Many biographies cut for YouTube, filled with military equipment and direct conversation, who brought millions of all over the country. Mr. Jegar Hegar, a long-time Democratic candidate for Texas, raised $ 750,000 in 10 days after publishing a three-minute video that went viral.
As the popularity of Trump and the Democrats increased and decreased over the course of the campaign, ballots for the first time in the tightest races stabilized, a sign that they had defined themselves as separate from the national poisoned conversation that was triggered. the party in the previous campaigns.
Republicans had always wanted to run against liberals at Nancy Ballosi, as in the first special elections after Trump's victory, when Democrat Jon Ossoff was defeated in Georgia after his supporters had been ridiculed as San's old hippies. Francisco. But the Democrats had learned the lessons of this race and would not make the same mistake.
"If you're perceived as a non-partisan parent of three cute kids, and before you go to Washington to save the world, you'll blow up terrorists in the Middle East, you'll win," said a Republican electoral strategist.
Pelosi makes Clearly there was no consequence to denounce it. "Just win, baby," became his mantra. Candidates such as Kansas Democrat Paul Davis, one of the first to be publicly opposed to Pelosi, have been quietly invited to Washington for advice on strategy and a keynote speech. Pelosi's encouragement.
[Winners and losers from election night 2018]
"It has allowed a large number of candidates to run without any consequences to the party and to portray themselves as real political underdogs," said Andy Surabian, a former White House political adviser who worked for Donald Trump Jr. more late in the cycle.
Republicans have also seen their dream of a socialist rebellion within the Democratic Party materialize. Nominees such as New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly focused on their goals but soon became team players. Only a liberal candidate, Kara Eastman in Omaha, won a primary that, according to Democratic strategists, would have compromised their chances of winning the seat.
Meanwhile, in the US Capitol, the Democrats moved quickly to reduce calls for the removal of their ranks and encouraged candidates not to talk about the colossal new government programs favored by the Democratic base.
"Stay with lower health care costs, higher wages and a cleaner government," Pelosi would say, in public and in private. "The health care issue is dominant – it's dominant."
Behind the scenes, she spoke with a more colorful language of Trump. "You can not participate in a tinkle contest with a skunk," she told colleagues. "You can not."
The members were conquered. "The message" Contain Trump "is a stronger political message than" Impeach Trump, "said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), L & # 39; one of the first to have introduced impeachment articles for Trump, before deciding that he would not want the House to vote on them.
Prior to a special Pennsylvania election in March, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Ryan-affiliated super-club that would spend $ 107 million on House TV ads, sent a researcher to Pittsburgh for three weeks to find Democratic candidate Conor Lamb. veteran of the Navy. had also served as a federal prosecutor. The effort yielded no results, a fact that the general director of the CLF, Corry Bliss, would later explain to a group of Republicans, including Ryan.
"So you say that he's a good person?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah, that sucks," Bliss replied.
The lost
Republicans, meanwhile, had less luck in the candidate department. In early 2018, Republican strategists convened a focus group to sift through a positive announcement on Rick Saccone, Lamb's opponent. Several women in the group reacted in bursts of laughter. When asked why, they indicated the candidate's short mustache.
Lamb, who was 26 years younger, looked like a
Action hero shaved, he beat Saccone in March by 627 votes, or 0.2% of the vote in a district that Trump had achieved with nearly 20 percentage points.
Even before this defeat, the feeling of imminent disaster had spread throughout the party. According to the Brookings Institution, between the 1930s and 2016, no more than 27 Republicans withdrew from the House of Commons in a single election cycle. In Tuesday's vote, 41 constituencies held by Republicans, including Ryan, were out of office because of their retirement or resignation. Of this group, at least 15 were vulnerable to Democrats taking control, more than half of The democrats had to take the majority.
Tens of millions of dollars had to be set aside to defend these seats and, in many cases, there was little hope. "If we had half less [seats to defend]we would keep the house, "predicted a Republican Retirement Strategist.
In the caucus, years of dysfunction had had a negative impact. Leaders had little influence over members and former committee chairs had little incentive to stay. In the White House, political advisers were taken aback as the names began to dribble. "There was no strategy to keep people around," said one person involved in the effort.
More often than not, party leaders discovered that someone was heading out once the decision was made. At the NRCC office, one could hear staff screaming after the announcement on Twitter of another key legislator who would throw in the sponge.
Other members discussing the retreat found themselves prisoners of the new wave of anti-Trump activism sweeping the country, protestors camping in front of their offices.
In early 2017, NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) reacted by trying to prevent Republicans from holding public meetings, to avoid an annoying video result. Those who insisted on meetings were asked to follow clear rules: to enter and exit the event separately from the voters, to ensure security, to ensure that participants are voters and to try to ask questions in advance.
In the 11th district of New Jersey, the representative Rodney Frelinghuysen was to continue the Republican dynasty of his family, composed of elected leaders and dating from the founding of his state. Since 1994, he has never won less than 58% of the vote in his democratically-minded district, but now the resistance camped in front of his office, with a surprisingly sophisticated operation.
"We had a complete research team. We had a data analysis team that looked at the whole area, "said Sally Avelenda, executive director of NJ11th for Change. "We went to every farmers' market, to all the events in the city that did not exclude us."
Frelinghuysen complained about Avelenda's political work with a member of the board of directors of his employer, Lakeland Bank. She says that a supervisor later warned that the congressman was a "friend of the bank", causing her to quit her job and make public the story reported by the committee. the Democratic Congress Congress campaign in digital advertising. Frelinghuysen called he leaves less than a year later, allowing Democrats to take the siege with Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor who became an early favorite.
In California, weekly rallies against Rep. Darrell Issa (right) have evolved over the course of 2017 to become a kind of street carnival, with a soundtrack run by a former Sha Na Na musician and a retirement cake cooked to the magnifying glass. a Hawaiian shirt.
Ellen Montanari, a corporate consultant who saw Trump's election as a disaster, ensured everyone stayed on the message. When a speaker took the microphone to thank the Democrats, Montanari grabbed it and quickly thanked the independents and the Republicans. "I told him," Never do that again, "Montanari remembered.
Issa tried to engage by speaking several times at rallies against him. But in the end, his heart was not there. He decided to spend Christmas without informing party leaders, paving the way for a possible democratic transfer. "It was really a growing frustration with the functioning of the House and the inability to get things done," said Dale Neugebauer, Issa's former chief of staff.
Well oiled machine
With the bridge stacked against them, Ryan and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Majority Leader, have decided on their best option. was trying to get both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on the same page. At a retreat at Camp David early January, McCarthy presented himself in front of the president to present his best imitation of a TED talk, with a slide show of animated charts and charts.
McCarthy explained that the president's party usually lost more seats in the midterm elections than Republicans to allow themselves if they want to stay in power. But there have been two recent exceptions – in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and in 1998 after Bill Clinton's removal, when Republicans were also overtaken by the government's closure.
According to McCarthy, this second example could serve as a model, especially since the Democrats were preparing to turn a blind eye to Trump's decision to end the legal protection of migrants who had been brought into the country as children.
According to McCarthy, the key would be to minimize losses among university-educated women in the suburbs and to maintain the partisan advantage of Democratic House candidates within six points, according to one familiar with the briefing. .
He recommended focusing on legislative efforts to reduce the epidemic of opioids and to limit human trafficking, as well as on an aggressive sales tax reduction plan – from questions supposed to give a sympathetic face to the voters outside Trump's base. Notably, the presentation was not about immigration, the topic that Trump would choose to become obsessed with in the fall.
But for Trump, whose entire brand was steeped in upheaval, sticking to a plan based on appeasing suburban women was a challenge. At a roundtable on tax cuts in West Virginia in April, he announced that his prepared remarks were "a little boring" and threw the newspaper in the air.
What followed was a ragged glimpse of the closing message. He decried citizenship and asserted, without any evidence, that a group of asylum seekers then crossing Mexico included women who had been "raped to a level never seen before".
GOP strategists watched Trump nervously as the generic polls fluctuated as a stock symbol, increasing and decreasing along with national events and the president's actions. The omission to repeal Obamacare and the struggles for tax law have discouraged Republicans, just as the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has encouraged them. Trump's reaction to the White Nationalist 2017 protests in Charlottesville, the Parkland shootout and Helsinki's stormy summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin all swelled the Democratic energy.
The Republican leaders of the House wanted Trump to talk about economic issues. Trump wanted to talk about immigration. The president was upset when his campaign produced an advertisement focused on the economic gains perceived by a mother who hoped her daughter would succeed, which surprised her own political advisers.
He has repeatedly said that his constituents would not go to the polls for the economy, councilors said, and that they did not like Congress. He therefore ordered that advertising be replaced by a spot on the dangers of immigration.
"He thinks that what is good for the base is good for everyone," said a senior Republican official, who noted that issues such as crime and national security did not play the same role in all districts. competitive. "You just work around him."
At the White House complex, Trump's political team examined each district of the House and Senate to determine areas in which it could have the greatest impact. In an office of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the wall was covered with details of its 2016 performance.
The assistants concluded that he could do nothing in the House, but that he could decisively influence the Senate by reminding Republicans in rural areas why they had voted for him. The message matched Trump's desire, never changing, to be on the trail, dominating the news of cable TV.
The decision only aggravated divisions within the party as the NRCC president, Stivers, had long struggled to navigate. In early November 2017, a few weeks after the appearance of "60 Minutes" in the former "60 Minutes," the former White House advisor, Stephen K. Bannon, had stated that Ryan and the leader Majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, opposed the "populist economic agenda" of Trump. at its base on Capitol Hill. The hope was to form a truce within the party, but the immediate effect was the opposite.
Josh Holmes, a McConnell advisor, was enraged. "Dear friends, it's really hard to believe," he wrote in an email to Ryan's staff. Neither the House nor the Senate leaders had been notified of the meeting.
At the end of the cycle, while the alleged hate crimes dominated the news, Stivers became defensive. He had been criticized for appearing on a Sunday show in which he defended the Republican ads calling George Soros, the Jewish financier who was often the target of anti-Semitic propaganda.
After Journalist Steve King (R-Iowa) travels to Austria to meet representatives of a party with neo-Nazi roots, Stivers announced on Twitter that he "strongly condemned" King's behavior – without consulting other leaders beforehand Republicans. He had a scheduled debate in his own district that night.
"It's the NRCC's job to win races, not to be the police of morality," said a former assistant of the NRCC. "Once you start commenting on something, you have to comment on everything."
Pression exercée dans le caucus de la Chambre. A lot compris qu’ils devraient se débrouiller seuls, sans aucune couverture du président ou du parti national.
"La citoyenneté de Birthright est protégée par la Constitution, donc pas de @realDonaldTrump vous ne pouvez pas y mettre fin par ordre exécutif", a déclaré le représentant Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) Après que Trump eut lancé l'idée.
Dans le Colorado, le représentant Mike Coffman (R) adopterait une ligne publique encore plus dure, annonçant que la «tentative de Trump de diaboliser» les migrants en tant que criminels «est tout simplement fausse».
Coffman est une victime classique de tout ce qui a changé dans son parti: la polarisation qui éloigne les banlieues des républicains, l'enthousiasme anti-Trump des démocrates et les signaux parfois croisés des républicains désirant désespérément tenir le Parlement.
Il était également un symbole de ces signaux croisés: le même jour de septembre, lorsque le Fonds du Congrès pour le leadership a annoncé qu'il retirait un million de dollars de publicité télévisée du district de Coffman, le service des dépenses indépendant de la NRCC a annoncé un investissement de 600 000 dollars, pour ensuite retirer des semaines de course plus tard.
La vague verte
Des candidats comme Coffman, critique modéré de Trump qui avait longtemps surperformé son parti dans la banlieue de Denver, avaient un autre problème: le flot de dépenses démocratiques. Lors des courses précédentes, Coffman avait beaucoup investi dans le numérique et le câble, où les démocrates n'étaient pas en concurrence, mais à présent, même ces plates-formes étaient remplies d'annonces pour son adversaire, Jason Crow, ancien capitaine d'infanterie de l'armée qui avait servi trois fois en Irak et en Afghanistan.
Le personnel de campagne de Coffman se réunissait autour de l’ordinateur toutes les semaines lorsqu’on annonçait l’achat d’annonces pour savoir s’ils seraient dépensés quatre fois, voire une fois, 13 fois à la télévision.
À un moment donné, 16 groupes démocrates ont été l'attaquant, comparé à seulement trois défenseurs républicains pour le cycle. Le plan démocrate d’agrandissement de la carte avait eu des conséquences néfastes et les stratèges républicains de Washington ont déclaré à l’équipe de Coffman qu’ils devaient couper les appâts.
"La réponse générale a été:" Regardez, la carte est tellement énorme ", a déclaré Tyler Sandberg, consultant pour Coffman. "C'était juste une attaque." Après avoir gagné par huit points en 2016, Coffman se dirigeait vers une défaite à peu près de la même marge mardi.
Pour les républicains, l'inondation d'argent semblait omniprésente. Jusqu'au début du mois de novembre, les candidats démocrates dépensaient entre 173 millions et 93 millions de dollars pour la publicité télévisée.
Les milliardaires conservateurs ont investi, mais ils ne pouvaient pas concurrencer ActBlue, la société de traitement de dons libérale qui simplifiait incroyablement la conversion de la colère de Trump ou du GOP en un don au téléphone de 5, 10 ou 50 dollars.
La plate-forme a permis de récolter 1,5 milliard de dollars pour les candidats et les causes libéraux au cours du cycle, soit près de deux fois plus que lors de la campagne présidentielle de 2016. Sur les 4,7 millions de petits donateurs, 63% donnaient pour la première fois. L'argent donné directement aux candidats pourrait être utilisé pour acheter du temps d'antenne, aux termes de la loi, à des tarifs beaucoup moins chers que ceux versés par des groupes extérieurs ayant collecté des chèques plus importants.
Le super PACS démocratique, quant à lui, avait trouvé de nouveaux moyens de coordonner leurs efforts. Priorities USA, un groupe qui a soutenu Clinton en 2016, s'est consacré à la publicité numérique en créant un tableau de bord afin que tous les efforts libéraux puissent coordonner leurs achats sur Hulu, YouTube, Facebook et d'autres plateformes.
House Majority PAC, qui a coordonné plus de 200 millions de dollars de dépenses, a créé un centre d’échange séparé combinant sondages, interviews en ligne et dépenses afin de fournir des prédictions pour les courses clés de la maison. Le groupe a également étendu le test en ligne des annonces, après avoir été surpris par le nombre de messages ayant eu un effet négatif sur l'objectif.
«Un tiers des publicités que nous avons testées a en réalité provoqué des contrecoups», a déclaré Jesse Stinebring, spécialiste des données chez Civis Analytics, qui a travaillé sur le projet. Les clients ont été encouragés à tester les petites annonces avant tout achat important.
En été, les républicains ont commencé à craindre que le parti perde la bataille de la définition. Brian Baker, stratège politique pour milliardaire donneurs Todd Ricketts et Sheldon Adelson ont testé plus d’une douzaine de publicités pour tenter de qualifier les démocrates d’extrême. Un groupe de discussion a commencé le jour où la représentante Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) A encouragé les partisans à harceler les républicains dans les restaurants et les grands magasins.
«Même les groupes de discussion démocrates ont été désactivés», a déclaré Baker. Ses groupes investiraient 15 millions de dollars dans une campagne publicitaire nationale qui faisait la promotion des réalisations du GOP et décrivait les démocrates comme une foule hurlante et violente de socialistes et d’anarchistes qui allaient brûler le drapeau, lever les impôts, ouvrir les frontières et destituer le président.
Mais même cet effort a été submergé au cours des dernières semaines par un milliardaire aux tendances partisanes plus troubles. Après avoir partagé ses dons entre les partis En 2016, Michael Bloomberg investirait plus de 115 millions de dollars de son propre argent dans la cause démocrate, la majeure partie au cours des dernières semaines, dont environ 44 millions de dollars dans les campagnes à la Chambre.
«C’est un backbreaker dans beaucoup de courses», a déclaré un deuxième haut responsable républicain.
Sans aucun bailleur de fonds, Bloomberg s’est rendu sur les marchés médiatiques les plus coûteux en banlieue, à New York, Los Angeles et Miami. Il avait aussi de l'argent à expérimenter. Howard Wolfson, un ancien stratège de Democratic House qui dirigeait l’opération Bloomberg, a classé tous les districts en fonction de leur niveau d’éducation, à la recherche de districts hautement éduqués qui auraient pu passer inaperçus.
He then polled for opportunity, eventually deciding to pump nearly $1 million into the suburban Atlanta district of Rep. Rob Woodall (R), who had already been outraised by more than $1 million by his Democratic opponent. Even though he had won by nearly 21 percentage points in 2016, Republicans were forced to scramble for cash to bail him out, only to find donors and strategists resistant, furious that the candidate had done so little to prepare.
Woodall, who spent most of the cycle in what Republicans considered a safe seat, held onto a narrow lead with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
Trump will be Trump
As a candidate in 2016, Trump always believed that his opponents underestimated the power of grabbing people’s attention. By the time he got to Pensacola, Fla., three days before the elections, he felt he needed to educate his critics.
“Why doesn’t he talk about the economy? Why does he talk about immigration and what’s coming up with the caravan?” he asked the crowd rhetorically. “We can talk about the economy, but the fact is we know how well we’re doing with the economy and we have to solve problems.”
His advisers kept trying, anyway. Some continued to tell Trump that he faced both a base motivation problem and a suburban women problem. He only seemed fixated on the former. Even his strategy to bring female aides on stage was less calculated strategy, White House aides said, and more that they were standing beside him before he went out and he thought the crowds would love them.
In what seemed intended as a hint, the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, told ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday that the president was focused on the economy; only the media, she said, focused on immigration. On Monday, the White House placed an opinion piece on Fox News’s website, under the president’s own byline, that contradicted Trump’s points on the stump. “Vote Republican and continue the jobs boom,” the headline said.
It was a hallmark of Trump’s politics. There was no shame in contradiction, misinformation or vilification. When several companies, including Fox News and Facebook, refused to run a version of his closing campaign ad demonizing immigrants as murderers, he responded breezily to a reporter. “A lot of things are offensive,” he said. "Your questions are offensive."
What he was after was attention. “You know the midterm elections used to be, like, boring, didn’t they?” he said at a Monday rally in Cleveland. "Now, it's like the hottest thing."
At the White House, aides had already begun to lower expectations for the House. Trump’s efforts to awaken the Republican base had been effective in rural areas and in states where Senate Democrats were struggling to stay in office, they argued. There was just no more talk of the red wave Trump had once promised. The final average of public polls showed Democrats had a 10-point advantage, far higher than the six-point benchmark set by McCarthy at Camp David.
But Trump’s own approval rating had ticked up from its lows, and he appeared to have energized his own voters down the stretch. His fingerprints were all over the Senate contests, where Republicans gained ground in conservative states like North Dakota, Missouri and Indiana, while beating back a moderate Democratic challenge in Tennessee.
“These are NOT ‘red states’ or ‘Republican states’ — they are ‘Trump states,’ ” White House political director Bill Stepien wrote in an internal memo that was leaked before Halloween.
It was enough for Trump to declare victory, in a tweet that betrayed no misgivings.
“Tremendous success tonight,” he tweeted as the results came in, ignoring his defeats in the House. “Thank you to all!”
Mike DeBonis and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
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