Brimming with new confidence, Hillary Clinton turned up the heat Wednesday on Republican candidates who are facing both tight election races and tough decisions on what to do about Donald Trump. She’s now seeking to spread her new momentum to fellow Democrats on November ballots.
Are you with him or not? Clinton and her campaign are demanding of GOP candidates as she surfs a wave of new support, part of the fallout from the revelations of Trump’s aggressive sexual comments about women.
Some Republican lawmakers are doing as she demands – but not all of them in the way she hoped.
Two senators and two House members who called for Trump to step aside over the weekend now have climbed back aboard. Their basic case: They’re voting for a Republican next month, and if Trump isn’t leaving then he’s got to be the one.
John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate told the Rapid City Journal he had “reservations about the way (Trump) has conducted his campaign and himself.” However, he said, “I’m certainly not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Also back on board after calling on Trump to resign: Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Reps. Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Bradley Byrne of Alabama. There still are some three dozen GOP lawmakers who have withdrawn their support or are calling for Trump to step aside.
At a rally in Colorado, Clinton declared that Trump is “desperate” and running “scorched earth strategy.”
“That’s all they have left – pure negativity, pessimism,” she said.
Indeed, Trump kept up his unrelenting denunciations of Clinton at a rally in Florida. It’s not enough for voters to elect him instead of her, he declared, “She has got to go to jail.”
Later Wednesday, Clinton was campaigning in Las Vegas, where she planned to call out Rep. Joe Heck, a Republican in a tough Senate fight who revoked his support for Trump after hearing his caught-on-video boasts about groping women.
The focus on Republican congressional candidates is the latest sign the Clinton campaign is moving past a narrow focus on winning the White House, and now is aiming to win big – by delivering the Senate to Democrats, making deep cuts into the Republicans’ majority in the House and, possibly, winning states long considered Republican territory.
“If you’ve got friends in Utah or Arizona, make sure they vote, too,” Clinton said.
She had sympathetic words – serious or not – for Trump supporters who have begun to interrupt her events.
As security escorted one man out in Pueblo, Clinton said: “You have to feel a little sorry for them; they’ve had a really bad couple of weeks.”