Tragedy in Pittsburgh, House and Senate Latest, Beto Backer: 9 Days to Go nyti.ms/2yC7uSa
2/"Welcome to The Tip Sheet, a daily political analysis of the 2018 elections, based on interviews with Republican and Democratic officials, pollsters, strategists and voters. *Where things stand: After a Trump supporter was arrested Friday, accused of mailing pipe bombs to
3/"Democrats, President Trump worried aloud that Republican “momentum” in the fall elections had stalled. On Saturday came the Pittsburgh massacre. Mr. Trump went to an Illinois campaign rally and denounced gun violence as “evil” and called for unity, then criticized Hillary
4/"Clinton and Representative Maxine Waters (who were two targets of the pipe bomber). It’s always difficult to know how major news events may affect an imminent election. This time is no exception, with crosscurrents of grief, faith, fear and gun politics.
5/"But two things are clear: • Some of Mr. Trump’s lowest moments in past polls have come as he has struggled to serve in the traditional presidential role of national healer, most memorably after his “blame on both sides” response to the neo-Nazi violence last year in
6/"Charlottesville, Va. • Mr. Trump — defiant, defensive and eager to blame the news media for his combativeness — does not seem interested in changing his approach in the final days of 2018 campaigning. His remarks on Friday and Saturday were striking for their limited empathy
7/"and for his decision to go beyond mourning and offer armchair analysis and conjecture. “This is a case where if they had an armed guard inside, they might have been able to stop it immediately,” he said about the synagogue shootings. “Maybe there would have been nobody killed,
8/"except for him, frankly. It’s a very, very, very difficult situation, and when you look at it, you can look at it two ways.” “You can look at it two ways” is the sort of phrase, in the immediate aftermath of deadly violence, that you rarely heard from a president before
9/"Mr. Trump. Given many voters’ dismay with Republicans on gun issues in some key suburban districts, the president’s performance may suggest another obstacle for Republicans hoping to retain control of the House. At the very least, another conversation about whether Mr. Trump
10/"bears any responsibility for today’s toxic political environment is not what the party had in mind this close to Election Day. Mr. Trump himself does seem eager to move on. By late Saturday night, the president was tweeting about the World Series.
11/"Some Democrats call Trump to account: *The moment is complicated for Democrats, too. Some have not been shy about drawing a line from Mr. Trump to the violence — or at least coming awfully close — while many more have stayed away from such judgments. • Tom Malinowski, a
12/"Democrat hoping to flip a Republican-held seat in New Jersey’s Seventh District, suggested it was no accident that anti-Semitic attacks were on the rise in the United States. “Our highest national leaders are legitimizing rhetoric once confined to the paranoid extremes of our
13/"society,” he said in a statement. “These words are like sparks to the gasoline of disturbed minds. These words can kill.” • Scott Wallace, a Democrat running in a competitive race in Pennsylvania’s First District, seized on the president’s suggestion that the synagogue could
14/"have better protected itself by having armed personnel. “No, Mr. President, the synagogue is not at fault for being insufficiently armed,” he said. “To say that the solution to gun violence is more guns is like saying that the solution to lung cancer is more cigarettes.”
15/"• Other Democrats made clear that they did not plan to alter their campaigns’ messages at this late stage, no matter what Mr. Trump did. “We are still closing with an anti-corruption, pro-health care message,” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii wrote on Twitter,
16/"and there is nothing that the president can do to prevent that.” A pitch for vulnerable senators: *Sometimes, a simple fund-raising email can tell the story of three races at once. • On Saturday night, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked supporters via email to pitch in some
17/"money for the difficult re-election fights of two fellow Democrats: Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. “We don’t usually send you messages about other races,” the note read, “but this is important.” • It’s not uncommon for colleagues to raise
18/"money for one another, but the request highlights just how comfortable Mr. Brown is in his own race, despite running in a state that Mr. Trump won by eight points — and just how close the contests in Florida and Indiana are expected to be.
19/"A star backs O’Rourke: *Beto O’Rourke’s latest endorser: LeBron James. The basketball star wore a “Beto” hat before his Los Angeles Lakers played a road game in San Antonio, signaling his preference in the Texas Senate race between Representative O’Rourke, a Democrat, and
20/"Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican. Mr. James’s last major foray into electoral politics: a rally for Hillary Clinton just before Election Day 2016 in his native Ohio. It…did not put her over the top." ~Matt Fleigenheimer && Patrick Healy, NYT, 10/28/18
