Democratic candidates for the Senate are running very safe campaigns out of an increasing confidence that Donald Trump's perceived self-destructiveness will lead them to take control of the upper house,
Politico reports.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Jon Tester of Montana explains the overall strategy of his party, figuring that the elections will mostly be a referendum on Trump, specifically the widespread animosity towards him that straddles party lines.
"The most important thing here is that our candidates, No. 1, are working hard and doing what they need to do. And not making mistakes," Tester told Politico.
Democrats need to pick up four seats to win a majority in the Senate, assuming that Trump loses the presidential race.
Another perceived advantage for Democrats is that Republican incumbents have to deal with many more political reporters in Washington and cannot so easily escape reacting to Trump's latest controversy. Democratic challengers, located in their own states where there are much fewer political reporters to confront, have an easier time staying on-message.
Some Republicans are quietly acknowledging the uphill battle they face and are trying to come up with a counter-strategy, mainly labelling their opponents as stooges of the national party, while portraying the GOP candidates as hard-working technocrats who are interested in solving important state-level issues.
But some Republicans, such as the anti-Trump Jeff Flake, are being very vocal about the problem.
Flake told NBC's "Meet The Press" that Trump's negativity "will affect the down ballot races in the Senate and the House and everywhere. It really has an impact. I ran in 2012. There were some other Senate candidates making statements that we didn't agree with. That affected our races. I can't imagine how it would be to have the top of the ticket, our standard bearer, our nominee making these kinds of statements. So it's very troubling to those of us who are down ballot. I'm grateful that I'm not running this year."
Not all Republicans are pessimistic, however, pointing out that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is also very unpopular, which they say will cancel out any negative feelings towards Trump.
And some point to previous examples of presidential landslides, such as Richard Nixon winning 49 states in 1972 at the same time the Republicans lost two Senate seats.
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