Clinton makes Republican nominee her Trump card in push to retake Congress

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/23/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-republicans-congress

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With just over two weeks until Election Day, Hillary Clinton is turning her attention to the congressional majorities that would bolster her agenda as president.

Campaigning in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday, with running mate Tim Kaine in tow, Clinton dedicated a significant portion of her speech to attacking someone other than Donald Trump. The Democratic nominee laid into Pat Toomey, a Republican senator who has declined to say if he will vote for his party’s nominee on 8 November.

“He still refuses to stand up to Donald Trump,” Clinton told a crowd of roughly 1,800 in Pittsburgh. “A lot of Republicans have. They have had the grit and the guts to stand up and say, ‘He doesn’t represent me.’”

Thus far, Clinton has made an explicit appeal to “thoughtful Republicans”, moderates and independents reluctant to support Trump’s candidacy.

While she will still extend a hand to Republicans seeking refuge, it became clear this weekend that she will target vulnerable senators whose defeat could help form a Democratic majority.

“As we’re traveling in these last 17 days, we’re going to be emphasizing the importance of electing Democrats down the ballot,” she told reporters aboard her campaign plane. Noting her support for Katie McGinty, the Democratic challenger to Toomey, Clinton added: “I will be doing the same as we go state to state, as will Tim [Kaine].”

Clinton has expanded her lead over Trump, holding a roughly six-point advantage according to polling averages. But in Congress, Democrats are in competitive races.

“I think in general you’re going to hear her do more of what she did [in Pennsylvania] in terms of trying to raise the stakes of the down-ballot races,” Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, told the Guardian.

“We want to continue to extend an open hand to those voters that traditionally vote Republican to cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton, but at the same time there’s a different strain within the Republican party that’s made the decision to go all in on backing Donald Trump because they don’t want to offend his core supporters.

“They should be held accountable in two-and-a-half weeks, for having played a role in Trump’s rise and for standing by him even after he’s gone around and offended people and shown himself to be completely temperamentally unfit.”

Such was the case made against Toomey at Taylor Allderdice high school in Pittsburgh. Running through Trump’s controversial statements – calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “killers”, questioning Barack Obama’s birth, picking a fight with the parents of an Iraq war hero, his behavior toward women – Clinton asked voters why their senator was still undecided.

“How much more does Pat Toomey need to hear?” she said. “If he doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Donald Trump after all this, can you be sure he will have the courage to stand up for you when it counts?”

She also lavished praise on McGinty, who is in a dead heat with Toomey. An aide to Clinton said to expect similar arguments against other vulnerable Republican senators, such as Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Marco Rubio of Florida.

Democrats need to gain at least four seats to retake the Senate if Clinton wins, in which case Kaine would serve as a tiebreaker. Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton super pac, is investing in states including New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, planning to tie embattled Republicans to Trump.

Ted Kwong, a spokesman for Toomey’s campaign, said Clinton’s speech was “further proof that hyper-partisan, ethically challenged Katie McGinty will be a rubber stamp for everything Hillary Clinton wants to do in Washington.

“Pat Toomey has been and will continue to be an independent leader in the Senate on issues ranging from gun safety to ending Wall Street bailouts.”

‘We’ve been very fortunate’

Republican strategists concede that if Clinton’s lead grows, their hopes of holding on to the Senate will diminish.

For a change in the House, which the Democrats lost in the 2010 midterms, 30 seats must fall. But any gain of seats would still empower Democrats to influence, if not obstruct, the agenda of House speaker Paul Ryan.

Barack Obama, campaigning for Clinton, has amplified his own efforts to put Republicans in Congress on trial. The president has argued that the GOP created Trump by adopting extreme positions that have rendered the party unrecognizable from that which supported presidents George W Bush, George HW Bush and the revered Ronald Reagan.

Clinton highlighted the fact that many Republicans have rebuked their nominee, choosing not to say all her opponents belong to the “Party of Trump”, as Obama has done.

Fallon said the Clinton campaign would continue “to differentiate between those reasonable Republicans and independents that are willing to go beyond not just rejecting Trump but also supporting her”.

“I think that we’ve been very fortunate,” he said, “and welcomed with open arms Republicans and independents that made the decision very early on that not only could they not support Donald Trump but that they believed that Hillary Clinton would make for a strong president.”

Where there was synergy with Obama’s message, Fallon said, was in taking to task those who continue to stand by Trump.

“Republicans are trying to localize their race and differentiate themselves from Trump with varying degrees of success,” Fallon said, adding that many such candidates were in key states for the presidential and Senate elections.

“That’s where I think you’ll see us focus our efforts in terms of trying to hold those Republicans’ feet to the fire.”