President Donald Trump was in the midst of his fourth political rally in three days when he asked a close associate the question that had been troubling him for some time: How did the Republican Party get in this bad of shape?
It was mid-October, and with just weeks to go to the midterm elections, the GOP was bleeding support in dozens of races across the country. The House majority was lost. Senate control was, improbably, a toss-up. And Trump had embarked on a monthlong salvage mission, crisscrossing the US to rouse apathetic voters in the kinds of blood-red districts that he’d carried easily just two years ago.
