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Nervous Republicans See Trump Sinking, and Taking Senate With Him

The election is still six months away, but a rash of ominous new polls and
the president’s erratic briefings have the G.O.P. worried about a
Democratic takeover.

President Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus outbreak,
the worsening economy and a cascade of ominous public and private polling
have Republicans increasingly nervous that they are at risk of losing the
presidency and the Senate if Mr. Trump does not put the nation on a
radically improved course.

The scale of the G.O.P.’s challenge has crystallized in the last week. With 26 million Americans now having filed for unemployment benefits, Mr.
Trump’s standing in states that he carried in 2016 looks increasingly
wobbly: New surveys show him trailing significantly in battleground states
like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he is even narrowly behind in must-win
Florida.

Democrats raised substantially more money than Republicans did in the first quarter in the most pivotal congressional races, according to recent
campaign finance reports. And while Mr. Trump is well ahead in money&#
160;compared with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
Democratic donors are only beginning to focus on the general election, and
several super PACs plan to spend heavily on behalf of him and the party.

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Trump’s single best advantage as an
incumbent — his access to the bully pulpit — has effectively become a
platform for self-sabotage.

His daily news briefings on the coronavirus outbreak are inflicting grave
damage on his political standing, Republicans believe, and his recent
remarks about combating the virus with sunlight and disinfectantwere a breaking point for a number of senior party officials.

On Friday evening, Mr. Trump conducted only a short briefing and took no
questions, a format that a senior administration official said was being
discussed as the best option for the president going forward.

Glen Bolger, a longtime Republican pollster, said the landscape for his
party had become far grimmer compared with the pre-virus plan to run almost singularly around the country’s prosperity.

“With the economy in free-fall, Republicans face a very challenging
environment and it’s a total shift from where we were a few months ago,”
Mr. Bolger said. “Democrats are angry, and now we have the foundation of
the campaign yanked out from underneath us.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies have often blamed external events for his
most self-destructive acts, such as his repeated outbursts during the two-
year investigation into his campaign’s dealings with Russia. Now, there is no such explanation — and, so far, there have been exceedingly few
successful interventions regarding Mr. Trump’s behavior at the podium.

Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, said the president had to
change his tone and offer more than a campaign of grievance.

“You got to have some hope to sell people,” Mr. Cole said. “But Trump
usually sells anger, division and ‘we’re the victim.’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/politics/trump-election-briefings.html