At times on Sunday, it almost felt like Trump was running a campaign against the man whom he has defined himself against, his predecessor in the Oval Office, Barack Obama.
The 44th president is making the most direct assault on Trump yet attempted by any prominent Democrat. Ten years to the day after he delivered his soaring victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago, Obama doubled down on hope, painting it as the antidote to what he said were the dark impulses exemplified by his successor, and warned America was at a crossroads.
Obama says Republicans have 'racked up enough indictments to field a football team'
"In the closing weeks of this election, we've seen repeated attempts to divide us with rhetoric, to try to turn us on one another," Obama said in Gary, Indiana, revisiting, a city familiar from his 2008 campaign.
"The good news is, Indiana, when you vote, you can reject that kind of politics," he said. "When you vote you can be a check on bad behavior. When you vote you can choose hope over fear."
Tuesday's election represents another clash between Trump's capacity to subvert political norms and the weight of history and electoral logic.
Omens look poor for Republicans, since Trump's approval rating sits between 40% and 45% in most polls and history suggests that first-term presidents who are that unpopular typically lead their parties to heavy losses.
Democrats are increasingly confident they can recapture the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years and are banking on a backlash against the President from voters who stayed home in 2016. Their path to power lies through more diverse, suburban and affluent districts where Trump's cultural warfare plays poorly.
But Trump's ironclad loyalty from a political base that sees him as a hero and a guardian of traditional, largely white, working-class life means that Republicans are strong favorites to keep the Senate, as vulnerable Democrats fight for political life in states where Trump won big two years ago like Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Montana.
Cultural and racial turmoil is also raging in several high-stakes gubernatorial races that, on a good night for Democrats, could produce the nation's first African American female governor, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and Florida's first black chief executive in Andrew Gillum. In Wisconsin, an often liberal-leaning state that Trump crows about winning in 2016, a national political figure, Republican Gov. Scott Walker is facing yet another uphill battle to retain power.
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