President Donald Trump’s bag of tricks is coming out empty against Democratic nominee Joe Biden as voters are not buying his smear tactics against the former Vice President. As a result, Republicans are bracing for an unprecedented wipeout in the November election.
According to The Hill reporters Olivia Beaver and Juliegrace Brufke, “Republicans are privately fearing the worst possible outcome in November, one that could leave them without the White House or a majority in either chamber of Congress next year.”
In the House of Representatives, “Republicans face numerous, almost insurmountable obstacles: a cash shortfall against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 27 retiring lawmakers and a Republican National Committee that is more focused on reelecting President Trump and protecting the Senate GOP majority. They need to pick up a net 17 seats to win back the House,” a feat that is looking harder to achieve by the day.
Some Republicans are expressing a growing sense of doom, the reporters wrote, citing a source saying: “If the election were today, we would lose the House, the Senate and the White House.”
Several GOP lawmakers are warning that the party faces a landslide defeat on Election Day if Trump doesn’t start landing punches on former Vice President Joe Biden, who has a strong lead in the polls both nationally and in key battleground states.
They also acknowledge that the president has failed to inject much-needed urgency into his pandemic response even as U.S. infection numbers approach 5 million, with nearly 160,000 dead.
“People are looking for reassurance … Chaos worked great in 2016, [but] they don’t want it in 2020,” said one GOP lawmaker, according to The Hill. “They want to know that we’re trusting science and doctors on the questions here and they want to know we’re going to get through it. There needs to be more FDR fireside chats and less Jerry Springer knockdowns.”
Trump’s rhetoric has alienated a key voting bloc that Republicans have sought to attract: suburban women. The president’s recent attack on Deborah Birx, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, did not help that effort.
“Conservative women want to see empathy and compassion and don’t like meanness. We are doing really poorly with married, white women,” a GOP source said. “I do not at all understand the Deborah Birx attack at all — not politically and not morally.”
Additionally, with race relations at the forefront of the national discussion following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, Trump’s response to the subsequent protests has been an area of concern for Republicans.
“Republicans groaned when Trump refused, in an interview with Axios, to acknowledge the legacy of the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Instead, the president remarked on how the Georgia congressman skipped his inauguration,” Beaver and Brufke write.
They also point out that “the fiery clash in the House late last month between Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney,” is a clear sign that the election is not looking good for the GOP.
“The best evidence we are in trouble for 2020 is the jockeying for 2020 that is already going on,” they wrote, citing a Republican source said.
You can read the entire column here.
