Elections Today
- Pennsylvania
Recent Projections
| State | Candidate | Delegates |
|---|---|---|
 Donald Trump | ||
Pennsylvania |  Joe Biden |
The Note: Old-school scare tactics haunt campaign messaging
Republicans use old scare tactics against Democrats in midterms.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The TAKE with Rick Klein
Few things scare Democrats more than the prospect of President Donald Trump getting a midterm boost.
But Republicans are trying to scare voters about Democrats with messaging from pre-Trumpian — though no less vicious — days.
Scan a few GOP ads and you’ll see Democrats decried as Washington insiders, socialists, pro-Nancy-Pelosi-and-Hillary-Clinton liberals, sexual predators, anti-defense dangers, tax-hiking big spenders, and “radical” or “dangerous” in any of a dozen different ways.
A mailer in Arizona attacks a Democratic Senate candidate with imagery of a mushroom cloud. An Iraq war combat veteran running for a House seat in Minnesota is having his patriotism questioned in a TV ad, over his support for Colin Kaepernick.
Indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter is blasting his opponent as a “security risk” while labeling him “a Palestinian, Mexican, millennial Democrat” whose support is coming from vaguely nefarious places.
They are slash-and-burn tactics for an era of politics defined by sharp conflict. The tactics predate Trump, yet seem like good fits for his style nonetheless.
The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks
Is it 2020 already?
On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a video that looked an awful lot like an announcement ad. She seemed to say she was running for president, without saying just that.
Instead, the formal line from her team is that she will give it “a hard look” after the midterm elections in November. But her video included a rebuttal to Republicans' most frequent, personal attack against her, a response to the president, a rejection of his discriminatory tone, and an introduction to her family’s middle-class story.
This weekend, too, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., will both be in Iowa, before hitting other early 2020 states, Nevada and South Carolina, respectively.
Democratic voters are hungry for leaders, but at what point is the look ahead, a look too far ahead. Should the party, for example, fail to win back control of at least the House of Representatives in three weeks, will these Washington incumbents have legs to stand on in the new year?
The TIP with John Verhovek
After Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke last week announced the biggest fundraising haul ever for a U.S. Senate candidate, a chorus of Democrats griped that the historic sums were better spent elsewhere, given a full slate of Democratic incumbents in red states struggling for political survival and a chance to snag control of the U.S. House at stake.
But as House candidates in key battleground districts begin to announce their own fundraising numbers, the concern, at least on that side of the battleground, may be for naught.
Thus far, seven Democratic House candidates, all in competitive races, have announced that they raised more than $3 million in the third quarter of 2018:
Josh Harder in California-10
Andrew Janz in California-22
Katie Hill in California-25
Related Stories
Amy McGrath in Kentucky-06
Antonio Delgado in New York-19
Abigail Spanberger in Virginia-07
Kim Schrier in Washington-08
Those are monumental numbers for non-incumbent candidates. And while money isn't everything, for these candidates it's a nice thing to have heading into the final three weeks of a campaign.
THE PLAYLIST
ABC News' "Start Here" Podcast. Tuesday morning’s episode features ABC News Deputy Political Director MaryAlice Parks, who says with three weeks until the midterms, Elizabeth Warren plunged into the 2020 presidential race with the results of her DNA test. https://bit.ly/2Ohkpz8
FiveThirtyEight's Politics Podcast: Can Democrats Win Big With Only Women? ABC News' friends at FiveThirtyEight consider whether Democrats can win the House or Senate by relying solely on their advantages with women. https://53eig.ht/2OqaNWu
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY
The Note has a new look! Download the ABC News app and select "The Note" as an item of interest to receive the day's sharpest political analysis.
The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights political analysis of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.
Related Topics
