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Michael Scherer
National political reporter covering campaigns, Congress and the White House
Robert Costa
National political reporter covering the White House, Congress and Campaigns
ERIE, Pa. – Midway through a last rally of noisy arena A week later, President Trump presented a revealing article about Republican Representative Lou Barletta that he had recruited to run for the Senate of Pennsylvania.
"I made that happen," said Trump, referring to what he called "the only bad thing" of Barletta's candidacy in front of thousands of resplendent supporters in red hats. "For the rest of his life, he could have been a member of Congress."
A moment later, the consternation about Barletta's impending unemployment was over, but the riff was telling. Polls show Barletta is far behind the Democratic Party Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult for Republicans to remain optimistic about the chances that it offers to itself and to other GOP candidates in the industrial Midwest.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, many Republicans, many of whom have tied their car to Trump's political movement, are lagging behind in double-digit polls, a remarkable turnaround in turning states decisive for the victory of the 2016 president.
If the current electoral averages hold, the Democrats will retain all their Senate seats in those states, win a handful of seats in the House and, in some cases, take over the house of the governors. In neighboring Iowa, a Trump state gained nearly 10 points, the Democratic candidate for governorship was struggling with the Republican governor in a Des Moines Register / Mediacom Iowa survey. A poll this week revealed Governor Scott Walker (R-Wis.) Following Democratic opponent Tony Evers.
This radical change has forced political strategists to reevaluate their post-mortem lessons of the 2016 election, while raising new questions about Trump's power in 2020. Democratic strategists, who feared that Iowa and Ohio did not escape them during the presidential years, are now encouraged and have begun to return their attention to traditional bells.
"An erroneous assumption has been made, namely that a Trump voter at the 2016 election was necessarily a Republican voter," said John Brabender, a GOP consultant working with Barletta. "We are forgetting Hillary Clinton's power over the vote in 2016. If Hillary was on the ballot, the Republicans would probably do better in all those states."
There is a clear historical precedent for such a change. The incumbent candidate, Barack Obama, swept the industrial Midwest in the 2008 elections, but his party was defeated two years later in his first game midway when Republicans took over their governorates in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin, as well as Senate seats in Indiana and Wisconsin. Obama was nevertheless able to return and win those same states, with the exception of Indiana, when he was re-elected in 2012.
Pollsters do not rule out Trump repeating this success in 2020, especially if the economy remains strong. "He could certainly do what Obama did," said Berwood Yost, director of polls at Franklin and Marshall College, which tracks voters in Pennsylvania. "Trump's approval rating in our state is about the same as Obama's in 2010."
Nevertheless, the short-term impact is disastrous for Republicans. After surprising the country in 2016, Trump seems to generate a participation that will greatly benefit the Democrats, as moderate voters, and especially university-educated women, seek an outlet for their frustration with his politics and his behavior. . Trump's aggressive campaign program for Republicans in these states has failed to turn the tide.
"They thought they had developed a formula to succeed. But it was only Trump and that year, "said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) about the 2016 election." What Republicans are doing now is not working for them. unions or families in difficulty. It does not work for young people. It just does not work. "
Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Who debuted the year as the primary target of conservative super PACs, but beats Republican opponent Leah Vukmir by about 10 points in recent polls, attributes her success at the return of an energetic Democratic vote base, motivated by issues like health care and by the way the party, in his opinion, has built a stronger cause than the mere opposition to Trump.
"The history of Wisconsin in 2016 was actually a drop in voter turnout," Baldwin said. "Over the past two years, I've seen, especially in deeply personal issues like health care, people who realized what was at stake, who were active and who were organizing. They say, "Never sit on the sidelines anymore".
The same trend is also evident in Michigan, where Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) and Democratic Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer both earned comfortable margins in recent polls. Trump won the state by a tiny margin of 10,704 votes in 2016.
"All I see in my numbers is not about his job but his point of view, whether it's favorable or unfavorable," said pollster Richard Czuba, who conducted an investigation into the state of the Detroit News and from WDIV. "Donald Trump does not have an opponent and that's his problem at the moment. "
This results in a general increase in voter enthusiasm in the state compared to 2016 and large fluctuations in the suburbs such as Oakland County, the state's richest region, outside of Detroit. "We have trouble finding Oakland County women university graduates who call themselves Republicans," Czuba said.
This created repercussions in the race for success for retired Rep. Dave Trott (right) in Michigan's 11th district, which includes parts of the county. The district, which had been chosen in 2011 to secure Republican victories, had voted for Trump in 2016 by more than four points, but recent polls have shown that Democratic nominee Haley Stevens, formerly head of the Obama administration, was in the lead.
His Republican opponent, Lena Epstein, co-chaired Trump's Michigan election campaign in 2016 and began the election cycle by calling himself a substitute for Trump. She appeared on Fox News to praise the President's "renunciation of the politically correct". about his commitment to joining the Conservative caucus of liberty and presenting himself as a bipartisan unit.
"People do not always respect women in the business world," says Epstein in his latest ad, which seeks to echo the #MeToo movement. "I have been underestimated, rejected and dismissed."
John Yob, a consultant at Epstein, said the recent confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh at the Supreme Court had boosted the campaign, a trend that other Republicans hope to be able to transform these races in the coming weeks.
"We have seen a significant six-point jump in polls since Kavanaugh's confirmation and would like the president to campaign for Lena at any time," said Yob, describing the campaign's personal data.
But the apparent Kavanaugh effect in other parts of the country might not be enough to tilt the races here. In many Great Lakes states, candidates like Barletta, who have been most committed to the Trump program, continue to make waves. In Ohio, Representative James B. Renacci (R), whose first publicity in the Senate spoke of his close ties with Trump, has not yet surpassed the 10 points of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio ) in a large public survey.
"We have lost millions of members of our party over the past year," said John Weaver, Republican advisor to Ohio Governor John Kasich and Trump critic, on how the candidacy of Trump had divided the party. "A MAGA candidate running as a Junior Walking Dead member and winning the primary will be shot in the general election."
Complicating matters further is the Republican base's dedication to Trump's non-prisoner take-over approach, which can be dangerous for GOP candidates looking to step back.
"When you talk to Republican primary voters, the main problem is 'Are you with Trump?' Said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz), who was retiring. "So, once you've gone through that, it's hard to rotate."
Trump's decision to renegotiate trade deals with Mexico and Canada and trigger a growing tariff war with China has blurred the political fallout in the Midwest, even though economic effects have been relatively pronounced. Rising prices for steel and aluminum, falling soybean prices and new restrictions on car imports have made the headlines in the region about layoffs and farmers' hardships .
But Democrats in the region have largely adopted a nuanced approach to the same issues, with many candidates praising Trump's efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Brown, the Ohio Democrat who opposed NAFTA and other trade deals, praised Trump's approach.
"In fact, it's one of the things I have more in common with Trump than many Republicans," Baldwin said with a chuckle when asked about his protectionist attitude toward trade issues, claiming that it had countered the Republicans' case.
Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a potential challenger for Trump in the 2020 presidential election, said the real driving force in this part of the country comes from the feeling that the region still does not enjoy the general situation of the country. economic growth.
Trump was able to win in 2016 by comparing himself to Clinton, who boasted of an economic revival under Obama, the stock market and the unemployment rate, which many voters did not feel in their daily lives.
"Now he falls into the same argument and people are saying," Not that much, "said Ryan." There is no substantial change. "
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