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To say the current political environment is a moving target is an understatement. A steady state through the first six months of 2024 has turned into anything but since that fateful debate night in June. And if you think trying to steer a presidential campaign in this unsteady environment is hard, try running a House or Senate race.

A month ago, it was panicking Democrats down the ballot who were pushing hardest to persuade President Joe Biden to drop out. Biden said so himself in an interview with CBS News over the weekend.

“Polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race; it would have been down to wire,” Biden said. “But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in their races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race that would be the topic.”

This was about as transparent as anyone has been about the process to persuade Biden to step down. But let’s explain more about what Biden meant by “that would be the topic.” What was made clear to him, during the three-week campaign to persuade him to step aside, was that every battleground House and Senate Democrat was likely to be forced into the uncomfortable position of tossing their presidential standard-bearer overboard. That’s because Republicans were telegraphing in the early aftermath of that June debate debacle that every Democrat was going to have to answer for “hiding” Biden’s diminished abilities.

This digital ad posted by Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, about a week before Biden eventually dropped his bid, was the blueprint. It was a compilation of Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s defending Biden’s abilities to serve another four years, as well as establishing Casey’s close ties to the then-very unpopular Biden.

Incumbent Democrats were bracing for more ads just like the one above all over the House and Senate battlegrounds.

Given his lack of a large, devoted, personal political base, Biden realized he was a man on an island. Despite his belief that there was enough anti-Trump sentiment to power him to victory, if the rest of those on the Democratic ticket were running away from him and styling themselves as a “check on Trump” ahead of GOP victory, it would have become self-fulfilling for voters to decide to go against him.

So Biden chose the most rational path out of the conundrum he put his party in: He stepped off the stage.

Almost immediately, Democrats saw a surge of support — mostly from disillusioned Democratic voters. And that renewed relief among the rank and file has expressed itself in polls of not just the presidential race but down-ballot campaigns, as well.

So far, Vice President Kamala Harris has turned that expression of relief into real momentum when it comes to money and resources, which has also trickled down the ballot.

Nearly a month into this new Democratic reality, the question of who has the weaker presidential nominee for down-ballot candidates is back up for debate. As of this writing, it’s now Republicans in battleground states and districts who are begging their nominee to change course. And so far, former President Donald Trump isn’t listening.

A good example of this gentle public nudging of Trump to change his approach comes from Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate who has been making the media rounds calling for a more focused and even subdued Trump campaign. Here’s his most recent public appearance, via NPR, responding to the question about how Trump should pivot:

“Who’s going to secure the border, who’s going to grow the economy, who’s going to stay out of World War III? And more intangibly … who’s going to restore national pride in this country? I think Donald Trump has a strong case on all of those counts, and I think he and the Republican Party would be well served to focus on the policy contrasts.”

And yet, in just about every public forum Trump has been involved in since Harris’ ascension, he has been incapable of pivoting to a message that’s anywhere close to the advice from Ramaswamy.

This wouldn’t be hard for a normal candidate. And yet for Trump, it has been quite hard. In talking with folks who know him well, it’s clear he can’t get over losing to Biden in 2020. His only personal hope of moving past the Biden defeat in 2020 was to defeat him in 2024. Now, Biden has denied him that opportunity.

He also doesn’t seem to respect Harris as an opponent, and voters are picking up on that. Disdain from one candidate can turn swing voters against that campaign and toward the target. The best example of that? Hillary Clinton, who clearly never viewed Trump as a worthy opponent in 2016. The “deplorables” comment only reinforced that view.

Well, Trump is falling into the same trap. It’s possible the less respect he shows for Harris, the less scared the public will be to give her a chance.

Now, some might argue that if he can’t get over that and can’t pivot, then maybe he should walk away from the nomination like Biden. Putting aside the fact that Republicans have already had their convention for a moment, it’s fairly obvious that if the GOP’s sole focus was to deny the Democrats the White House, the best course of action would be to persuade Trump to step aside and nominate the primary runner-up, Nikki Haley.

But as obvious as that might be to a political scientist, the reality of the GOP is quite different. Since Trump’s shock election in 2016, the Democratic Party has been organized around, basically, one principle: stopping Trump. It has allowed the party to paper over plenty of ideological differences for nearly a decade.

As for the GOP, Trump and his allies have done everything they can to mold the GOP in Trump’s image, and anyone who doesn’t share that view has essentially been purged. Even if down-ballot GOP candidates wanted to push Trump out of the party, the rank-and-file Republican voters wouldn’t acquiesce the way Democrats just did. In fact, it was more than acquiescing: Rank-and-file Democrats joined with Democratic elites in a primal scream to get Biden to step aside. (See the polls that showed less than half of Democrats being “satisfied” with or enthusiastic about Biden as the nominee long before the debate.)

All of this explains why Republicans, especially those invested in trying to flip the Senate or hold the House, are begging Trump in public to pivot from a grievance-focused campaign to a policy-focused one. These Republicans know they’d be in a better position if they had a nominee who was future-oriented rather than past-obsessed.

But what happens if Trump never pivots? Then what do these down-ballot Republicans do? 

In 2016, many down-ballot Republicans were comfortable running against Trump or simply ignoring him, both because they (and many Republican voters) were skeptical of him and because most Republicans — let alone Democrats and the media — thought he wouldn’t win. All of that created a permission structure that allowed for Republicans like then-Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to run his own race. He won re-election without having to endorse Trump or appear with him.

No battleground-state Republican could do what Toomey did in 2016 and win in 2024. Toomey felt no pressure to appear with Trump at any Pennsylvania rallies in 2016, but the same can’t be said for McCormick, this year’s GOP Senate nominee in the state. If you doubt me, let me remind you what Trump did in Georgia just a few weeks ago, when he attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for refusing to use (or abuse) his powers as governor to assist in his efforts to question the results in 2020. 

The last thing Republican nominees in key Senate races want in 2024 is Trump dogging them in public (which he would do) for not showing up at his rallies. Perhaps the only Republicans who might get a pass for that are former Gov. Larry Hogan in Maryland or maybe Nella Domenici, the GOP nominee for the Senate in New Mexico, where her name is synonymous with Republican politics. 

The point is that while Democratic base voters wouldn’t punish a Democrat from running away from their presidential nominee (have you noticed how well Sherrod Brown is holding up in Ohio while he makes a show of skipping the Democratic convention?), there’s plenty of evidence GOP base voters would do that. 

This all brings me back to the question: What do Republican down-ballot candidates do if Trump never fully pivots? At some point, the obvious answer would be to run a campaign based on being a “check” on a Harris presidency, similar to what Republicans ran in 2016 against Clinton. But executing that campaign wouldn’t be easy. Just one stray public comment from an anonymous staffer of some campaign that starts to pivot away from Trump, and he could rain you-know-what down on said campaign.

Among all the competitive battleground Senate races, I’d argue McCormick in Pennsylvania and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan are in the most precarious positions when it comes to the need for Trump to pivot. So keep an eye on the messages those two campaigns develop. The swing voters who don’t like Trump personally are the voters Rogers and McCormick need. Can they find a way to message to them without alienating Trump — especially if Trump, himself, can’t seem to make the obvious pivot any generic candidate in his position would be making?

Of course, the real challenge for both Republicans will be figuring out how to navigate Trump’s appearances in their respective states. If Trump’s numbers continue to languish, it’s going to be tempting for those candidates to find some distance from him. Ultimately, it might be a fool’s errand, even if the reality is staring the campaign in the face. After all, there’s only so much a down-ballot candidate can do if the top of the ticket is unpopular or undisciplined.



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