Yet the more fundamental challenge Trump presents is that his expectation of unwavering fealty denies blue-state Republicans the opening they need to establish independence that’s crucial to success in states where he’s unpopular. Particularly in governor’s races, and particularly when your party is in the White House, Republicans running in blue states and Democrats competing in red states must take steps to appeal to independents and voters in the other party by separating themselves from the national brand, at least symbolically.

Nonetheless, Virginia’s Winsome Earle-Sears and New Jersey’s Jack Ciattarelli have embraced Trump in states he’s never won in three consecutive presidential elections. On its face, such a posture is confounding. But the two Republicans, as with every GOP candidate in this era, fear the president. It’s what Trump has wrought: To even gingerly step away from him is to risk a thunderbolt from the White House that would drive days of news and risk depressing a MAGA base that’s hard enough to turn out when the president isn’t on the ballot.

The idea that a candidate could criticize Trump and not face blowback is unthinkable. He’s not the sort who’d respond well to an aspiring governor privately telling him: “You know, Mr. President, I may have to ding you a little bit to get through this race. You won’t mind, will ya?”

So GOP hopefuls, no matter their state or district, are handcuffed to an unpopular president and act as though their primary never ended or they’re all running in Alabama.

It’s how Ciattarelli is made to stand up at a debate and, when asked what grade he’d give the president, awards him with an “A.” And it’s why Earle-Sears, running in a state in which the federal workforce is akin to the auto industry in Michigan, can never offer a word of criticism about her own voters being forced out of their jobs.

It will likely ensure defeat. The engaged, high-end voters who dominate the two states would be able to sniff it out, even if the Democratic hopefuls — Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill — weren’t spending millions on TV ads reinforcing the message that their opponents won’t stand up to Trump.

“People seem to have forgotten that authenticity is the single most important attribute to win,” as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie put it to me. “And if they think that you’re not being authentic, you’re sunk, that’s it. Be who you are — you’re a blue-state Republican!”

Neither Earle-Sears nor Ciattarelli are Christie-level political talents, to put it mildly. But it makes the races all the more difficult when Trump is a get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats and puts his own party’s candidates in a vise in which they’re squeezed between his enthusiasts who expect loyalty and more skeptical voters who demand independence.

It’s hardly a new story. Democrats dined out on this exact same dynamic in almost every election between 2017 and 2020, the first time Trump was president. As the ever-insightful Charlie Cook recently noted, “In the four elections since Trump was first elected president, Republicans have lost 17 of the 21 Senate races” in the country’s seven presidential swing states.

What’s remarkable is that Republicans have been here before, and they still just take it.

Sherrill and Spanberger can scarcely believe how easy their rivals have made it to link the Republicans to Trump.

In an interview at an Oktoberfest in South Jersey earlier this month, Sherrill told me with an element of wonder that Ciattarelli has “not separated himself an inch” from Trump (which is quite the full circle turn for someone who said in 2016 that Christie should consider resigning if he was going to spend so much time stumping for then-candidate Trump).

Alluding to her opponent offering Trump an “A” grade, Sherrill said: “How could somebody who’s running for governor of New Jersey have so little concern for the people of New Jersey and abdicate a leadership role here in favor of not pissing off Trump?”

Aboard her campaign bus and near the tailgates at Hampton University’s Homecoming football game last weekend, Spanberger was equally thrilled with how easy Earle-Sears had made her messaging.

“It’s an important proof point to say that at the end of the day, you’re going to do what’s right for your state, you’re not wholly or only or solely aligned with party,” Spanberger told me, arguing that it wasn’t only Virginia’s Democratic tilt but its DOGE-damaged economy that demanded it. “We have seven months of rising unemployment.”

If, Spanberger continued about Earle-Sears, “At a bare minimum you can’t say, ‘Hey, hey, like, maybe don’t fire tens of thousands of Virginians’, as tepidly as you want, the fact that she’s not even pursuing that path, I think, people read that very, very clearly in terms of how ready she is or isn’t to lead.”

Most striking about this year, though, may be what Trump is not doing in California. More than New Jersey and Virginia, he has a direct self-interest in defeating the Gov. Gavin Newsom-directed ballot measure to allow a redraw of the state’s congressional map that will spell the demise of a handful of House Republicans.

Yet as Newsom gleefully sends out fundraising emails proclaiming he doesn’t need any more money to push the referendum to victory — proponents have more than doubled the fundraising haul of opponents — Trump is focused on his role as the senior member of the White House building and grounds crew. He has time to raise money for the White House ballroom from wealthy donors, and join them for a dinner, yet can’t be bothered to deliver the cash needed to block a ballot measure that will deliver Democrats House seats.

It’s puzzling, especially given how determined Trump is to retain the House and fend off a third impeachment and wave of subpoenas. After all, this redistricting arms race began when Trump ordered Texas Republicans to redraw their House map to create safer GOP seats.

All the president would have to do is make a handful of phone calls to his tech oligarch friends, many of whom live in California, and he could easily exceed the $97 million Newsom’s allies have raised. And let’s just be honest: It’s not as though this president is subtle, nor his Department of Justice vigilant, about tying contributions to government actions.

Yet while he hits them up for his new East Wing ballroom or even solicits their advice about addressing street crime in San Francisco, Trump doesn’t ask the plutocrat set for what would be pocket change.

And nor does he apparently push the RNC to step in, and at a time the committee has $86 million on hand compared to the DNC’s $12 million.

I understand, and find persuasive, the politics 101 argument that Trump being publicly involved in California would only energize Democrats. Yet that doesn’t explain why he won’t privately raise the money to give opponents a chance to defeat the ballot measure and save GOP lawmakers.

“They’re at risk in the first place because the White House started this with Texas, and now we’re going to lose some really good members,” one House Republican lawmaker told me. “I’m mystified. I guess we’re kind of an afterthought right now. But we won’t be if we lose the majority because it’ll be all hands on deck to stop his impeachment.”

Here we are in 2025, and California Republicans are having to rely on the generosity of Charles Munger Jr. rather than their all-powerful president to fight the Newsom redistricting push?

And a year after he spent nearly $300 million of his own money on Trump’s reelection campaign, the extent of Elon Musk’s direct contributions to the 2025 campaigns appears to be saying “Wow” in replies on X.

It’s a stunning political disarmament and a godsend for Democrats.

Yet it’s not clear who would push Trump on any of this. Beyond his work as general contractor at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., he’s chiefly focused on claiming a lasting foreign policy legacy — the stuff of many a second term-president, but on hyper-speed just nine months into his administration.

If Trump is not summiteering overseas, he’s hosting a foreign leader in the Oval Office most weeks. The reason the seemingly esoteric matter of Argentinian beef imports has penetrated the Republican psyche is because it’s a stand-in for: Hey, why is the president so focused on these other countries instead of bringing down costs here?

Trump does almost no domestic political travel either. In fact, he hasn’t held one of his signature rallies for nearly four months. His last one was July 3 in Iowa, the day before he signed a bill, the big beautiful one, that he’s done nothing on the road to sell ever since.

That’s why it was news that he’d hold a fundraiser for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s re-election because he’s done little for his party’s candidates or their committees. And even then, the Graham event isn’t a grip-and-grin: It’s a day of golf with donors in Florida in November, which is already how Trump spends his weekends.

Clear-eyed Republicans knew electing Trump would be a gift for Democrats in off-year elections. But even the shrewdest among them couldn’t have known how much, by commission and omission alike, he’d hurt the party’s fortunes this year.