Donald Trump is running the kind of presidential campaign he likes, but not one he needs

Away from their candidate and the television cameras, some of Trump’s aides are quietly conceding just how dire his political predicament appears to be, and his inner circle has returned to a state of recriminations and backbiting In public, President Donald Trump and his campaign team project a sense of optimism and bravado. Less than three weeks before Election Day, there is now an extraordinary gulf separating Trump’s experience of the campaign from the more sobering political assessments of a number of party officials and operatives, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Republican strategists, White House allies and elected officials. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally, said this past week that Democrats had “a good chance of winning the White House,” while Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said his party might be facing a “blood bath.” Although fear of retaliation by Trump has muzzled most members of the party, strategists are deeply concerned that Trump might spend the final weeks of the campaign entertaining and energising his existing supporters while eschewing any concerted effort to find new ones: an approach that could cripple other Republicans running for office. Ken Spain, a Republican strategist, said Trump was “not delivering a consistent message at the most critical juncture of the campaign.” “The president appears to have doubled down on a base election strategy,” he said, “while Republicans down ballot must figure out a way to appeal to independent voters in states like North Carolina and Maine and Michigan.” Trump’s advisers are hopeful they can use the days through the next debate to change the trajectory of the race. In an interview in July with The New York Times, Jared Kushner, a White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law, was candid about who was in charge of the 2020 race: Trump, he said, was “really the campaign manager at the end of the day.” Trump’s first campaign manager, Brad Parscale, focused heavily on building online infrastructure and using it to raise money, while Kushner oversaw his work.