Trumpism without Trump
By 
The Senate is so heavily titled to small states with reactionary majorities that they will probably get away with it in terms of control of the chamber, but Republican candidate recruitment in battleground Senate races remains awful:
The Republican Party has largely refashioned itself in former president Donald Trump’s image in the past five years, with downballot candidates jockeying for his endorsement, hugging him tightly on the campaign trail and embracing his policy initiatives.
But many of these same candidates running for the Senate have not replicated the former president’s performance in the polls as Election Day approaches, a gap that is raising concerns among Republican campaigns and fundraisers who fear their candidates are running out of time to win over voters they should already have in hand.
The Senate map this year still heavily favors Republicans, with all of the most competitive races for seats held by Democrats, and polling suggests they are on track to flip the Senate red.But Republicans in seven of the eight key Senate races appear to be trailing Trump, and only one GOP Senate candidate — Montana Republican Tim Sheehy — consistently leads his Democratic opponent, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), making control of the Senate more up in the air than might have been predicted.
In the House, where Republicans hold a slim four-seat majority and control of the chamber will be hotly contested in November, the phenomenon of GOP candidates trailing Trump appears less pronounced and less likely to affect the outcome. Fewer voters appear willing to split their tickets, and more Republicans than Democrats represent districts won by the opposite party’s president in 2020. House Republicans are defending 16 seats in districts Joe Biden won in 2020, while House Democrats are defending just five seats Trump won.
In red Ohio, where Trump has a nine-percentage-point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, Republican Bernie Moreno trailed Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown by four percentage points in an AARP poll. And in Nevada, Republican Sam Brown, a decorated military veteran, trailed first-term Sen. Jacky Rosen by 14 percentage points in a Fox News poll, even as Trump was within two percentage points of Harris.
We’ll have further discussion about this tomorrow, but Democrats appear to have the resources to seriously contest any remotely viable Senate race and there’s no reason not to.