"I think the Republicans are in much better shape than what a lot of these media polls are showing, and look, we still got a long way to go between now and Election Day," pollster Jim McLaughlin said.
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GOP trails in 8 battleground Senate races, plans a 'very hasty' Trump-a-palooza convention
As it ran on the front
You want to know how a party manages a losing hand? It doesn't fold. It throws a party. The same polling aggregate that has Republicans trailing in eight of the battleground Senate races, two months out from the election, is the backdrop for a 'very hasty' convention in Texas, branded, by their own people, 'Trump-a-palooza.'
Notice the order. The bad number comes first. The celebration comes second. That's not confidence, that's a distraction built on a deadline — you throw the party before the numbers get worse, not after they get better, because after they get better isn't a date anybody can put on an invitation right now.…
…(cont) This is the oldest move at the bar: when you're losing, you buy the next round loud enough that nobody checks the tab. A 'very hasty' convention means somebody looked at a calendar and decided the optics needed to move faster than the campaign did. Nothing about eight losing races got fixed by a stage in Texas. The stage is the fix, as far as they're concerned — not for the voters, for the donors and the cameras, who need to see energy, need a room that looks full, need the highlight reel before the exit polls make the highlight reel a documentary of what went wrong.
Here's the stakes for the guy at the end of the bar: those eight seats aren't trivia, they're the difference between a Senate that can check something and one that can't, for two more years, on your taxes, your kid's school, whatever comes up in that chamber next. A party that's behind in that many races and spending its runway on a 'palooza' isn't telling you it's confident. It's telling you where its actual priorities sit — the show, not the seats. Keep that straight when the balloons drop, because the balloons don't vote and they don't pay tuition either.
“Behind in eight Senate races two months out, and their answer is a 'very hasty' convention. That's not strategy, that's a distraction with a hashtag. Watch the seats, not the stage.”
“A hasty convention shows the party's energy and enthusiasm heading into the fall, nothing to do with the polling — coincidental timing, purely coincidental. Did I say coincidental twice? This desk finds that reassuring, actually.”
The receipts
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) first-of-its-kind midterm convention has been cloaked in mystery until a few weeks ago. Details are finally emerging about what’s expected to be a two-day pep rally to bolster hype and encourage…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.