While Republican strategists inside Washington view Donald Trump as a millstone around their necks, GOP officials in the states are donning their rose-colored glasses and chilling the Asti Spumante for Election Day.
Politico reports that interviews with more than 50 Republican party chairs at the state, district, and county level revealed a mindset of optimistic denialism. They apparently think coronavirus is over, the economy is roaring back, and remain impervious to the national conversation about systemic racism and police brutality.
Joe Biden? Well, he's old and frail and probably has trouble drinking and navigating ramps. And the media—ha!—they're out to lunch.
“The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump,” Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, North Carolina, told Politico. Right on—Trump's failures are priceless! Robeson is a rural Obama-to-Trump county in a swing state that Trump won by 3.5 points and has grown very competitive in the last several months. “We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump.’ Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016.” Never a dull moment with a stable genius at the helm. "We're thinking landslide," Stephens added.
The outlook of these state GOP officials range from optimistic to delusional. Since Trump eked out a surprise victory in 2016, now they're prone to dismissing anything coming from outside their personal bubbles.
After a bit of a hiccup in March and April, the state party chairman in Wisconsin, Andrew Hitt, says, Trump's "focus on the economy and on re-opening and bringing America back is resonating with people.”
Jane Timken, the state party chair in Ohio—where Trump is polling so low that his campaign is freaking out—says Trump's support is as strong as ever. And the state GOP chair in Pennsylvania, Lawrence Tabas, predicted Trump would best Biden in the Keystone state by over 100,000 votes, more than twice Trump's margin in 2016.
In Michigan, where recent head-to-heads favor Biden by an average of more than 7 points, Muskegon County GOP chair Joe Bush dismisses the Beltway "narrative" out of hand. “Here in the heartland, everybody is still very confident, more than ever," Bush says.
If progressives are leery of polling after 2016, Republicans at the state level have grown outright dismissive of it—despite a good deal of accuracy in the 2018 midterm polling. In fact, to many Republicans, polling is just a conspiracy now. "Republicans see an industry that maliciously oversamples Democrats or under-samples the white, non-college educated voters who are most likely to support Trump," writes Politico.
“I used to be an avid poll watcher until 2016," said Jack Brill, the acting GOP chair in in Sarasota County, Florida. "Guess what? I’m not watching polls.”
Bottom line, state Republican officials see a rising economy and a law and order message from Trump that's pitch perfect given the protests.
“The other side is overplaying its hand, going down roads like defunding the police and nonsense like that,” said Michael Burke, chairman of the Republican Party in Pinal County, Arizona. “Most of the American people are looking like that saying, ‘Really?’”
In the meantime, GOP Sen. Martha McSally is repeatedly getting trounced by double digits in recent polling against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, and Trump appears to be trailing Biden in a state he won by 3.5 points.
More broadly, Trump's approvals continue their downward trend (40.8% in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate), Biden's up by more than 8 points nationally, and states like Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia are competitive when no one really expected them to be.
What this means is, Democrats have to redouble their efforts to make a difference wherever they can. Pick a Senate race to give to, pick a local race to pour some energy into. If you live in a Democratic stronghold, Crooked Media has a cool "adopt a state" program where they're training people to conduct remote outreach in battleground states. Let's make sure that "landslide" is in Democrats' favor come November.