Who will win the Senate?

There’s the presidency, of course, with the added significance of a Supreme Court nominee whose name is all but on the ballot. But there’s also the Senate. Republicans spent three election cycles chipping away at the Democratic majority, finally winning a 54-seat majority in the 2014 midterms.

Two years later, Democrats hope to reverse those losses in one sweeping election cycle.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Democratic leader-in-waiting, has good reason for hope. Republicans are defending 24 seats this year, while only 10 Democratic senators are on the ballot. Eight of those Dems will cruise to reelection.

Of the Republicans, 12 are all but guaranteed to keep their jobs, and another six are likely. But there are another six seats in states swamped by the 2010 GOP wave, which are really Democractic territories that President Obama won in 2008 and 2012.

Political experts see those seats as toss-ups for Republicans, at best, and worse than that in some cases. Democrats expect minority voters who turn out in presidential elections to recapture those seats for them from the Republicans.

They hope that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee will alienate independents, and that likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will inspire high turnout among Democratic women, perhaps even picking up some votes from Republican women.

If Clinton becomes president, her Democratic vice president would be the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate, so Democrats need just four more seats to take control. With Donald Trump well placed to become a disastrous GOP presidential nominee, Democrats can be forgiven for dreaming of their best election cycle since the Iraq War. “He’s a disaster for them,” one national Democratic operative said of Trump.

But 2016 is hardly normal, as is clear both from Trump’s successes and socialist Bernie Sanders’ durability in the Democratic presidential primaries.

“It’s a ‘Coming Apart’ election,” Republican political consultant Brad Todd said in a reference to political scientist Charles Murray’s study of the class-based divisions among white Americans.

Murray analyzed “the state of white America [from] 1960-2010” and found a new upper class had formed in that time — a cognitive elite whose smart kids go score high on the ACT or the SAT, go to top-flight universities, marry their college classmates and use their high combined incomes to buy houses in “Belmont,” raising their kids in only the most desirable neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, back in “Fishtown,” Murray’s name for working-class communities, those who struggled as high school students go on to struggle as adults. They are less likely than the upper class to marry, and more likely to divorce and to have children out-of-wedlock. They’re not religious. They are poor, either unemployed or working in low-skilled jobs at wages that have been falling since the 1970s.

They believe politicians are corrupt, but they’re not motivated by rigorous ideological narratives. They don’t have the elite education to do so.

“The Fishtown voter is real,” Murray told the Washington Examiner, although he conceded he is not an elections expert. “By ‘Fishtown voter,’ I’m now not talking about a conservative. I’m talking about the person who is actually a more natural part of the Democratic constituency as the Democrats historically have maintained their same sympathy for blue-collar [voters].”

Some of these voters have backed Republicans since the Reagan years, but Trump has had “unprecedented” success in recruiting Democratic supporters from these communities, according to a GOP data expert.

This population takes on extra significance this year because the path to the Senate majority runs through Fishtown almost literally, for Murray derived the name from a real neighborhood in Pennsylvania, where Republican Sen. Pat Toomey hopes to win reelection.

If Republicans can find a policy core that appeals to the Fishtown Democrats who favor Trump, without alienating the conservatives and swing voters repelled by the real estate mogul, that could make the difference in key Senate races.

The ideal Fishtown candidate would hit certain key themes: skepticism about free trade; hawkishness on border security, immigration and terrorism; and a touch of compassionate conservatism, as when Ohio Gov. John Kasich warns against drug use. “Those are things that appeal to a Fishtown voter,” Murray said.

These voters could provide hope for the GOP majority where they seem most likely to lose, in five of the Obama states: Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. The sixth is Florida, where Fishtown voters don’t have the same critical mass. If the GOP holds on to three of those seats, Democrats will have a difficult time taking the Senate.

If they can’t (and not every senator is well-suited to win those voters), Republicans have to pick up Nevada to have any hope of retaining the majority. But the most crucial campaigns of the year will be fought in Fishtown.

Illinois

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., is the most vulnerable senator in the country. Party operatives hope a robust organization, strong fundraising and targeting of GOP voters can save him. “We intend to be better prepared than Democrats everywhere, across the board,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Greg Blair said. He can count on Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Illinois Republican Party pulling out all the stops for him, if only to help Rauner prepare for a 2018 reelection bid.

Even so, a victory this year will be tough. “I think you can take Kirk out of your picture,” said a GOP operative working on another campaign. That’s because Kirk won his seat in 2010 with just under 1.8 million votes. Mitt Romney beat that total in 2012, but Obama won the state by 900,000 votes.

Kirk’s political brand sells better in Belmont than Fishtown. A Republican who supports abortion rights, Kirk hopes to woo centrist Democratic voters in the “collar counties” around Chicago. “He’s very strong in the suburbs,” said a Republican data analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity due to having several clients around the country.

Republicans spent three election cycles chipping away at the Democratic majority, finally winning a 54-seat majority in the 2014 midterms. Two years later, Democrats hope to reverse those losses in one sweeping election cycle. (AP Photo)

Kirk voted for the Gang of Eight immigration bill and criticized GOP attempts to defund Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration. He also supports free trade, which has helped Illinois farm exports, and so voted to “fast track” Obama’s trade deal negotiations. Most recently, he was the first Senate Republican to meet Judge Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, and said he “would consider” voting to approve his confirmation.

Kirk’s health is a wildcard. Having made a dramatic recovery from a debilitating stroke, the Illinois lawmaker says he hopes to “be a powerful example for people who have gone through this.” But Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both her legs serving in Iraq, is also an inspiring figure who can hope for suburban support. Kirk also has to wrestle with the effects of the stroke, which make him tire more easily than he used to.

“This is a touchy subject, but Kirk doesn’t seem to have been 100 percent since his stroke, ” said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics. “He’s had some gaffes, which is unlike him. You have to run a pitch-perfect race to win as a Republican in Illinois, and he hasn’t run a pitch-perfect race.”

Wisconsin

Fishtown voters may have a tough time deciding between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, but Democrats project confidence and Republicans feel acutely vulnerable. The state has gone blue in every presidential election since 1988, and Feingold, who lost to Johnson in 2010, leads by about 11 points in the last three polls of the race.

“He has pretty much stuck to his conservative principles in a purplish state,” a New Hampshire Republican operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in rueful admiration. “I would not want to work for him [this election cycle].”

Facing a tough opponent in Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk is the most vulnerable senator in the country. (AP Photo)

Johnson’s team finds hope in Gov. Scott Walker’s election victories, along with the fact that the voter turnout does not vary as dramatically from a midterm to a general election in Wisconsin as it does in other states. Wisconsin Republicans think Trump could help in that regard. “There’s a real possibility that he affects turnout, that he brings out people in Wisconsin that Romney couldn’t,” said Brad Todd, who advises Johnson’s campaign.

Johnson’s record is mixed, from Fishtown’s perspective. As chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, he is well-positioned to work on immigration and national security issues that they care about. Johnson confronted U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services when a whistleblower exposed the mishandling of the case of the man who allegedly provided weapons to the San Bernardino terrorists, for instance.

In February, his committee reported that illegal immigrants may receive as much as $750 million in Obamacare tax credits. This was on the same day that Feingold, who voted for Obamacare, admitted he had pushed for a single-payer health structure.

But free trade could be Johnson’s Achilles’ heel. “He’s got to find his voice on trade,” the GOP data analyst said of Johnson. “Feingold knows how to speak to that middle-class voter … He may be an urban elite liberal, but he knows how.”

So far, Feingold has outflanked Johnson by opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump so often attacks. “People in this country know, on a bipartisan or nonpartisan basis, this is a raw deal for American workers, and especially Wisconsin workers,” Feingold said in March. Johnson supports free trade and has avoided taking an explicit position on the 12-nation trade pact, saying he needs time to review the details.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is trailing in his rematch against former Sen. Russ Feingold. (AP Photo)

In the meantime, he can knock Feingold for breaking his long-time promise not to take money from lobbyists. He’ll also criticize Feingold for enthusiastically supporting Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. “[Johnson] still talks and thinks and looks at the world like someone from Oshkosh, Wis., not someone who spends his time in the United States Senate,” Todd said. “And Feingold presents a unique contrast because he spent his entire career in politics.”

Those attacks might not be enough for Johnson to win. “He could create an environment where he held his base and drew over those angry and working-class Democrats who are currently attracted to Trump, and that would be a winning coalition,” the GOP data analyst said. “I just don’t think Johnson will do it … I would still consider this a toss-up, with a thumb on the scale for Feingold.”

New Hampshire

If a Fishtown firewall exists for Republicans, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s reelection bid will be an important part of it. Most political operatives regard this race, along with Ohio and Pennsylvania, as more likely to produce a GOP win than Illinois or Wisconsin. Ayotte would sleep soundly if she were running against any Democrat but the popular sitting Gov. Maggie Hassan.

“I think Hassan is their best candidate, and the Democratic base is large enough that she won’t have to tend to it,” one national Republican operative said. That means that New Hampshire will host a nail-biter of a race, following months of presidential primary electioneering and a hard-fought Senate race in 2014.

Such permanent campaigning has taught at least one lesson about the New Hampshire electorate: national security is a huge deal. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown gave Sen. Jeanne Shaheen the scare of her political career in 2014 by warning that Islamic State terrorists could cross an unsecured southern border, and called for a ban on travel from countries affected by the ebola virus. Against that backdrop, Trump’s primary win in New Hampshire and Brown’s eventual endorsement of the real estate billionaire looks less surprising, even if the two campaigns aren’t perfect analogues to each other.

Ayotte is no Donald Trump, and faces a nominal primary challenge from a recent convert to Team Trump. But Ayotte has spent her time in the Senate talking to the “security moms” who so often decide New Hampshire general elections. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she was a prominent investigator of the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi in 2012.

More recently, she voted to pause immigration from “high-risk” countries following the Paris terrorist attacks. Her campaign will try to tie Hassan to Obama on unpopular issues, such as the Iran deal, and watch for the governor to make foreign policy gaffes (such as saying that the fight with the Islamic State began with the Paris attacks).

Hassan has an advantage, one in-state Republican conceded, because she can avoid commenting on issues that don’t play to her benefit. For instance, Hassan announced her opposition to Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay, which also helps her avoid seeming rigidly partisan. She is trying to undermine Ayotte’s national security reputation by faulting her for opposing a Democratic proposal to ban Americans on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.

As a corollary to Hassan’s occasional disagreements with Obama, Democrats will portray Ayotte, a former Tea Party candidate, as a right-winger. “Sen. Ayotte is someone who has voted with Americans for Prosperity,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said. “Once she had to start thinking what she was going to start positioning herself as for her reelection, you started to see these slight shifts to be a moderate.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte faces a possible nail-biter against New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan. (AP Photo)

Liberal super PACs are already hammering Ayotte as a creature of the Koch brothers who only lately started supporting environmental issues. The Koch association, they hope, will help convince voters that Ayotte is hostage to monied special interests. “We talk about trying to impress the Koch brothers because the Koch brothers … They’re looking out for themselves. They’re looking out for their bottom line,” a national Democratic operative explained.

Look for Ayotte to rebut those charges by talking about her years of legislative work on the heroin epidemic. “One of the most striking things that’s been going on in Fishtown has been just an epidemic of white drug use,” Murray said. Forty percent of New Hampshire voters see drug abuse as the state’s biggest problem, a March poll showed, up from 4 percent last year.

Over the past two years, Ayotte has worked to increase federal funding for drug abuse and mental health programs. Ayotte helped lead negotiations of a major bipartisan bill to expand support programs for drug addicts and provide law enforcement with medicine to reverse opioid overdose.

Ayotte’s strength could be Hassan’s weakness, as the governor vetoed a budget that included funding to fight the epidemic. Hassan hurriedly called for a special session of the legislature to address the crisis, but the damage was already done. Local media accused her of having political motives even as they welcomed the additional support.

Ayotte’s policymaking and political skills prompt confidence among Republicans that she will win. She leads by four points in the latest polling. But Democrats note that Scott Brown couldn’t win in a Republican wave midterm election. “It was a bad year for Democrats,” one liberal operative noted, and Brown still lost.

“Your median voter there is not real conservative,” a GOP operative conceded.

Ohio

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Ayotte’s Republican partner on the drug abuse bill, also has a tough reelection campaign ahead. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, he trails about a point behind former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who was unseated in 2010 by Kasich. Portman’s decision to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership is perhaps the clearest sign that the race is tough, or at least that he wants to catch the Fishtown wave.

“It’s hard to believe that Portman, who voted to fast track this same proposal just months ago, served as the trade representative under President Bush and voted for eight other free trade agreements, suddenly has a problem with the type of deals he’s helped broker,” Passalacqua said in February.

Portman, who hails from suburban Cincinnati, expects to perform well among the centrist voters who tend to make life difficult for Republicans in presidential battleground states. He also has a history of talking about issues that matter to Trump’s angry working-class supporters without repelling those centrists. The drug abuse bill is one important example.

On immigration, Portman responded to the border crisis by investigating the Health and Human Services Department for placing unaccompanied children with human traffickers. He is also leading an investigation into Backpage, a website that has been implicated in numerous sex-trafficking cases.

That fits the kind of compassionate conservative image that Kasich developed in the run-up to an easy victory in his gubernatorial reelection, and even allies of the more antagonistic Trump acknowledge it can work in Ohio.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman is trailing former Democratic Gov. Ron Strickland. (AP Photo)

“I love it,” Barry Bennett, who worked for a pro-Portman super PAC last year and now is preparing to help Trump’s campaign navigate the Republican National Convention, told the Washington Examiner. “I think if he was just out there giving lofty foreign policy speeches and talking about the importance of pro-growth policies, that’s a danger zone. You’ve got to relate back to the people and to their problems and show them that you understand them and that you’re listening, more than ever.”

Democrats hope that Ted Strickland’s traditional appeal among working-class white voters will help him reassemble the coalition that Obama used to sink Romney.

“[Strickland can] engage with voters in the Appalachia, and that really is important for Democrats who are trying to win in Ohio,” Passalacqua said. “Rob Portman, meanwhile, is someone, just from an economic policy perspective, who doesn’t really line up with where voters are. He didn’t support the auto bailout, which is criminal in a state that relies so heavily on auto production.”

Republican operatives describe Strickland as “a dud” candidate who can’t take advantage of Portman’s potential weaknesses. The former Democratic governor undercut his image as an “ambassador to Appalachia” by taking a job at the nation’s leading liberal think tank and saying that Americans need to “transition” away from coal. Republicans will use that issue and foreign policy to portray him as a liberal ideologue.

“When we get done with Ted Strickland, there will be nothing left to vote for,” Corry Bliss, Portman’s campaign manager, told the Washington Examiner. “He continues to support the Iran deal, he continues to support President Obama’s plan to close [Guantanamo Bay] and bring terrorists to America. So on issue after issue, Rob Portman is on the side of Ohio and Ted Strickland is on the side of President Obama.”

Pennsylvania

Toomey’s reelection campaign provokes disagreement among Republican strategists. One strategist thinks the Pennsylvania senator has one of the most comfortable paths to reelection of any Republican in a competitive race. “The Democrats cannot get their act together,” the data analyst said. “They just can’t.”

Another veteran GOP operative thinks Toomey could be the second-most vulnerable Republican. “Pennsylvania is the hardest state of this group, structurally, except Illinois,” the operative said. “You have to have upscale, graduate-degree people in the mainline suburbs of Philadelphia who are not conservative on anything, other than that they think Democrats are the party of poor people, and they’re not poor. You have to take that group of people and fuse it to middle American Republicans in the middle of the state … and blue-collar Democrats in western Pennsylvania.”

Toomey is working to thread that needle, but the trade deal could complicate his outreach to western Pennsylvanians. He voted to give Obama the fast-track authority to negotiate the agreement, which will likely draw criticism from either of his expected Democratic opponents.

But he has been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, such as when he introduced legislation last fall that would penalize sanctuary cities following the murder of a woman who was shot by a man who had been released by San Francisco law enforcement officials, despite the Department of Homeland Security asking them to hold him.

That was a perfect issue for Toomey, who has made public safety, which just so happens to unite suburban moms and blue-collar unions, a hallmark of his political identity. In late September, Toomey introduced the Thin Blue Line Act, which would make the murder of any first-responder a death penalty offense. He was joined on that “police lives also matter” bill by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the GOP liaison to white working-class voters.

More recently, Toomey has pushed a series of bills to crack down on sex offenders working in schools. He also worked with the state’s Democratic Sen. Bob Casey to add an amendment to the drug abuse bill that helps the opioid epidemic’s “forgotten victims,” senior citizens. Plus, he offered a compromise gun control proposal following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It carried some political risk in rural Pennsylvania, but played well with swing voters and helped Toomey brand himself as an independent, non-ideological senator.

Toomey might still need luck to win reelection, but he’s gotten some already from the local Democratic Party. Attorney General Kathleen Kane might have been a nearly unbeatable Senate rival, if a Pennsylvania district attorney hadn’t accused her of killing a bribery investigation that had ensnared several Democrats. She has since been indicted for perjury in an unrelated case.

That leaves a showdown between former Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak and Kathleen McGinty, a former Clinton administration aide who quit her job in the state governor’s office to run for Senate. D.C. Democrats view her as the stronger general election candidate and they still hold a grudge against Sestak, who defied Obama’s request that he drop out of the 2010 Senate race in favor of Sen. Arlen Specter, who had recently joined the Democratic Party.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., will face either Kathleen McGinty or Joe Sestak. (AP Photo)

“He’s not seen as such a team player,” one Pennsylvania Democratic operative said. Sestak has made that a point of pride and, in an outsider year, might be able to pull off the primary.

So what happens in a general? It depends on who you ask. It’s hard for some strategists to forget that there are about 1 million more Democrats in the state than Republicans, and that the GOP always seems to think they have a shot at turning Pennsylvania red, only to lose convincingly.

“I’m very tired of Republican consultants trying to sell snake oil about Pennsylvania in a presidential year,” one New Hampshire strategist admitted. That said, Toomey consistently leads Sestak by three or four points. For now, he leads McGinty by seven, although Democrats hope that Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy would boost McGinty’s chances of becoming the state’s first female senator.

Internal polling data from a liberal outside group that plans to target Pennsylvania suggests that voters care less about partisanship than in past years, but they can be convinced that Toomey doesn’t care about middle-class constituents. On the other hand, Toomey will have plenty of money to spend reminding voters why they like him now.

“The Democrats need to run up big margins in those near-suburbs there to offset outstate and western Pennsylvania,” said the GOP data analyst. “And the reality is right now, Toomey has put himself in about as good a position as he can.”

Nevada, best shot at picking up a seat

If Republicans struggle throughout the Midwest, they will need to salvage their majority by picking off one of the two competitive Democratic seats. Their best shot, as it happens, comes in the state that bucked the political trends in 2010: Nevada, the home of retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

National officials in both parties recruited candidates from the Vegas area, which is home to about 70 percent of the state’s population.

Reid and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who relinquished her seat due to term limits after eight years in office, in an attempt to ensure that she crowds out the less formidable Democratic primary hopefuls. As statewide officials go, Cortez Masto is low profile, to the chagrin of her Democratic colleagues, but her most notable public acts had universal appeal.

“The only thing she took a profile on was fighting sex-trafficking,” Jon Ralston, the state’s top political reporter and commentator, told the Washington Examiner. She also has strong relationships with Nevada businesses, dating to her father’s tenure as head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (an important local industry organization; “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” as their ads say).

National Republicans have turned to Rep. Joe Heck, a Army Reserve brigadier general who represents a toss-up district that covers part of Las Vegas and the suburbs.

Nevada GOP Rep. Joe Heck will have to beat former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto to win the open seat left by retiring Sen. Harry Reid. (AP Photo)

“He’s a first-class candidate,” Ralston said. “If he can cut enough in Clark County into [Cortez Masto’s] base, he could have a shot.” To get to the general election, he’ll have to beat Sharron Angle, the 2010 GOP Senate nominee. He’s expected to win easily, but some Republicans worry he’ll spend too much money or that Angle will push him to take positions that will hurt in November.

Having run in every election since 2010, Heck has had ample opportunity to establish his reputation with Nevada swing voters, including the Vegas area’s large Hispanic population. In 2014, for instance, he broke with most House Republicans by voting against a rollback of Obama’s original executive order conferring some of the benefits of legal immigration on people who were brought to the country illegally as children.

If national security figures as a major political issue in these races, Heck could put Cortez Masto on the defensive throughout the general election. He maintained that the United States had “no reason from a national security perspective” to bomb Libya, an intervention championed by Hillary Clinton and various Republican hawks that culminated in the death of the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi and three others.

Heck also opposes Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, unlike Cortez Masto. “Heck is running against somebody who has never really been involved in the kind of race that this is going to be,” Ralston said. “He’s battle-tested. She’s not.”

Heck also stands to benefit from the voter registration drives led by conservative outside groups, who have buttressed the famously ineffective Nevada Republican Party’s voter registration efforts. GOP Sen. Dean Heller won reelection by 12,000 votes in 2012, when there were about 100,000 more registered Democrats in the state. For now, the conservative groups have cut that margin to about 47,000.

“Heller probably would have won by 50 or 60,000 if he had those voter registration numbers,” said Jack St. Martin, president of a non-partisan conservative voter registration and education group called Engage Nevada.

That doesn’t mean Heck will roll. About 30 percent of Nevada voters are Hispanic, and Cortez Masto hopes her candidacy will excite them. “It’s time we send the first woman from Nevada, and the very first Latina, to the Senate,” actress Eva Longoria said when she endorsed the Democratic contender in February. GOP operatives and political experts believe that factor, combined with the prospect of Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, could hamstring Heck.

“That’s an evenly matched race, but if you have Trump generating massive Hispanic turnout and Heck having to back away from every third word he says, it makes that probably a ‘leans’ or ‘likely Democratic’ scenario,” he said. Certainly, Reid’s political machine knows how to make the most of Republican mistakes.

The Trump effect

If Trump sinks Heck by driving Hispanic turnout, he’ll probably also harm Republicans in other states with large Hispanic populations. Democrats probably would pick up Sen. Marco Rubio’s seat in Florida. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., would likely be reelected, even though recent polling suggests just 30 percent of voters think he should stay in office.

If Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is correct that “it’s a concern to have Trump at the top of the ticket, no doubt, for anybody on the ballot,” then even John McCain might have to fight to win his reelection campaign. “I can see the Trump campaign writing off the competitive West,” one GOP strategist said.

The negative tone in the GOP race may give the edge to some Democratic incumbents like Colorado’s Sen. Michael Bennett. (AP Photo)

Trump’s toxicity with Hispanics could drive away some traditional white Republicans, even outside the western states. “There’s an old saw that when Republicans talk soft on race, they’re not necessarily trying to win the non-white vote, they’re trying to win over moderate whites,” Trende said. “Someone like Trump, who is the opposite of that approach, probably turns off moderate whites who don’t want to be associated with racism in any way.”

Maybe Trump’s celebrity status means that they won’t associate him with incumbent senators, but he could just as easily make it impossible for Midwestern Republicans to reach out to Fishtown without alienating “Belmont” — the wealthy suburbanite community that Murray also describes in Coming Apart. “It’s really easy [for voters] to label them a racist and move on,” Trende said.

If the 60 percent of Americans who view Trump unfavorably punish Republican senators for his membership in their party, then Election Day will turn into a nightmare for conservatives. The only remaining questions would be: can Democrats win a landslide (in a dream year, they might knock off Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, Missouri’s Roy Blunt or Richard Burr of North Carolina), or would their margin in the Senate be small enough that Republicans could regain control in 2018?

Some Republicans worry that Donald Trump’s rhetoric may push more Latino voters to the polls. (AP Photo)

Either way, Republicans will have to scramble to correct “intergenerational brand damage” among minority voters, as one GOP strategist put it, in addition to doing the intra-party fence-mending needed to prevent Trump (or someone like him) from staging another political coup in 2020.

“There is a core underlying truth to the anger about immigration issues,” Murray, the Coming Apart author, told the Washington Examiner. “We don’t pay any of the prices of immigration — people in my position, people in your position and so forth. We are not people who are watching contractors hire lower-wage immigrant workers instead of us.

“And I think a lot of Republicans are going to have to say, ‘OK, we’ve heard you on immigration. Maybe we aren’t going to deport 11 million people from this country, but we are going to pass a bill that severely restricts low-skill immigration and that we will secure the border’ … That’s going to satisfy, I think, an awful lot of the Fishtown voters.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Nevada Rep. Joe Heck is a former Army Reserve brigadier general.