Retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey offered a pointed closing message for his fellow Republican colleagues on Sunday, saying that former President Donald Trump’s hold on the party is “waning.”
“I have heard from many, many formerly very pro-Trump voters that they think it’s time for our party to move on,” Toomey told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“So yes, I think that process is underway. … It’s not a flip of a switch, it doesn’t happen overnight. He still has a significant following, that’s for sure. But I do think his influence is waning,” he added.
Toomey’s comments highlight an ongoing rift within the GOP about how to respond to the party’s underwhelming performance in November’s midterm elections. Republicans narrowly won the US House, finishing well short of pre-election expectations, while Democrats expanded their US Senate majority, with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman flipping Toomey’s seat.
The Republican soul-searching comes at a critical moment for Trump and the party. Senate GOP leaders are eager to move on from the Trump years and court candidates who have more moderate and mainstream appeal to the suburban voters who left the GOP over their disdain for the former president.
But these Republicans are up against a powerful and vocal Trump-aligned faction within their party – especially in the incoming House GOP majority, where a hard-right bloc now holds sway over Republican leader Kevin McCarthy in his pursuit of the speakership – as they argue for the GOP to return to bedrock conservative principles.
Toomey, a vocal Trump critic who was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict the former president at his second impeachment trial, said in his farewell speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, “Our party can’t be about or beholden to any one man. We’re much bigger than that. Our party is much bigger than that.”
He stood by that stance Sunday when asked by Tapper about being called a RINO, or “Republican in name only,” over his Trump criticism.
“When Republicans had criticisms of [Trump] – I certainly think mine were valid – that doesn’t always sit well with folks who see him as carrying the fight to the other side. So some of that tribalism is built into public political systems anywhere,” he said.
“Again, I think, as his influence wanes, the sort of conventional understanding of what words mean kind of gets restored over time. I’m not worried about that,” Toomey said.
Republican Pat Toomey is retiring from his Pennsylvania Senate seat at the end of the term. But before he goes, he is speaking some hard truths to his party.
Asked Thursday by CNN’s Erin Burnett about how Republicans lost the contest to replace him, Toomey was blunt that “President Trump inserting himself into the race … was never going to be helpful.”
Trump had endorsed Mehmet Oz in the primary and rallied with him the final weekend before the general election.
Noted Toomey: “We were in a moment, we were in a cycle, we were at a time when it’s good for Republicans for the race to be about President Biden, who is not popular, whose policies have failed. And instead, President Trump had to insert himself and that changed the nature of the race.”
Toomey wasn’t done. He added that: “All over the country, there’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses, or at least dramatically underperforming.”
Which isn’t wrong! In Toomey’s home state, aside from Oz’s 4-point loss to Democrat John Fetterman, Trump-backed Doug Mastriano lost the governor’s race by 15 points, a landslide in a state as closely divided as Pennsylvania.
In battleground Michigan, Trump-endorsed Tudor Dixon lost by 11 points to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a defeat that led to a blue wave down-ballot in the state. In Illinois, the Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate lost by 10. In the Maryland governor’s race, the Trump-backed candidate lost by 25.
On the Senate side, Blake Masters, the Trump-picked candidate in Arizona, trails Sen. Mark Kelly in a race that is still too close to call. Herschel Walker, another high-profile candidate backed by Trump, finds himself headed for a runoff in Georgia on December 6 against Sen. Raphael Warnock. And even in places where the Trump-supported candidate won – like Ohio – it took a massive outlay of cash from national Republicans (roughly $30 million) to drag J.D. Vance across the finish line.
Trump, for his part, is entirely unwilling to consider that he was – and is – anything but an unalloyed good for his party, declaring a “Big Victory” on his Truth Social website Friday.
There is, without question, a portion of the Republican Party that believes that – and will follow Trump wherever he leads them (even if it’s to electoral destruction).
But as Toomey’s comments make clear, there is also a group of Republicans who view this as a now-or-never moment with Trump and the party. Either they use what happened in the midterms to push him to the side, or he remains a dominant figure and they just keep losing elections.
The Point: Toomey can’t be congratulated too strongly for his bravery in speaking out against Trump, given that he has one foot already out the door. But his voice is part of a growing chorus of Republicans suggesting that Tuesday’s election was the final straw for Trump. Will base voters listen?
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) won Pennsylvania’s high-stakes Senate race Tuesday, defeating Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, according to the Associated Press, a significant victory as Democrats flip the seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey and vie to maintain control of the Senate.
Fetterman beat Oz by more than two points to flip the key Senate seat in favor of the Democrats.
Mark Makela/Getty Images
Key Facts
With 91% of the votes counted at around 2 a.m., Fetterman led Oz 49.9% to 47.7%, a lead of 113,036 votes.
Fetterman gave a speech thanking the people of Pennsylvania after several TV networks called the race for him, and tweeted: “I won’t let you down.”
Oz has yet to publicly concede the race.
Crucial Quote
“This race is for the future of every community across Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said after the race was called by multiple media outlets.
Key Background
The two candidates in one of the most closely watched toss-up races in the country could not have been further apart when it came to style and personality. Oz is a Republican TV celebrity and doctor who is worth over $100 million and didn’t even live in their state until December 2021. Fetterman, who sported a hooded sweatshirt and goatee on the campaign trail, was born and raised in West Reading, Pennsylvania, served as mayor of the struggling steel town of Braddock for 13 years before becoming lieutenant governor. He suffered a stroke days before the May primary that took him off the campaign trail for months and left him with auditory processing issues that affected his ability to communicate in interviews and during the candidates’ sole debate. Oz seized on his opponent’s health issues to cast him as unfit for office, while Fetterman described his struggles as a way to empathize with everyday Pennsylvanians. In the final days before the election, prominent players from both parties campaigned alongside the candidates in hopes of securing wins in a contest that will help determine which party controls the Senate. As former President Donald Trump rallied with Oz, on Saturday, President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama campaigned with Fetterman.
Big Number
0.5. That’s the number of points Oz led the polls by heading into Election Day, according to FiveThirtyEight, representing more than a 10-point shift from Fetterman’s lead in mid-September.
PHILADELPHIA—Outside the basketball arena at Temple University, a long line of anxious Democrats contemplated their party’s possibly bleak political future, as a brass band played Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
That strange juxtaposition of dread and joy seemed to be the theme of Saturday afternoon’s rally at the Liacouras Center. Democrats were happy to hear a closing campaign message from President Joe Biden, and excited to show their support for Senate candidate John Fetterman, gubernatorial hopeful Josh Shapiro, and the rest of the Democratic slate. They were cautiously hopeful, in their Fetterman gear and Phillies hats. But they also see the present moment as an unusually perilous one—for the future of the party, and for democracy itself. So they were desperate, more than anything, for some last-minute reassurance and inspiration from their one-time party leader.
“Obama has a gift for putting things in perspective, that makes [politics] accessible to just about everybody,” Barbara Pizzutillo, a physical therapist from the Philadelphia suburbs, told me before the rally. “To see the excitement in the crowd is what we need right now.” A Philly native named Kip Williams said he was excited just to be there, near the band. “This line inspires me. I got a real good hope for Tuesday!”
When the 44th president came on stage, the crowd greeted him like a long lost friend—or a favorite teacher who’d returned after a series of varyingly unimpressive substitutes.
“The kind of slash and burn politics that we’re seeing right now, that doesn’t have to be who we are. We can be better,” Barack Obama said, coming on stage after Biden, Shapiro, and Fetterman. “I believe things will be okay,” he assured the audience. “They’ll be okay if we make the effort … not just on Election Day but every day in between.”
Polls have been tightening in recent weeks, especially in Pennsylvania, where the Republican candidate Mehmet Oz is now virtually tied with Fetterman in the race to replace Pat Toomey in the U.S. Senate. In Arizona, Republican Blake Masters is catching up to Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, and in Georgia, apparently no number of abortion-related scandals can keep the anti-abortion Republican Herschel Walker down in his race against the Democrat Raphael Warnock. And nationwide, a majority of Republican candidates on the midterms ballot maintain that Biden didn’t win the election in 2020.
Which is why, three days before Election Day, Democrats have broken out their biggest gun of all. Pennsylvania was the latest stop on a swing-state tour that Obama began only about a week ago in a last-ditch effort to energize voters in Arizona and Wisconsin. Events like these are not meant to persuade undecideds; they’re to reward activists and volunteers, and help turn out the base—the people who will knock on doors and give rides to the polling station on Election Day.
“Like Brad Lidge in 2008,” said Anthony Stevenson, likening the pitcher who helped Stevenson’s hometown Phillies win the World Series to the Democrat who gained the White House that same year. “He’s the closer!”
How effective this rally will be, just 48 hours before Election Day, is hard to know. But the promise of hearing from Obama was enough for voters at Saturday night’s rally. They needed to hear from him, they told me, because they needed to remember what politics used to be like—and, they hoped, could be again.
Biden opened the event, but Obama was the headliner. Right away, the former president was in his element, fluent with the gags and punchlines: “Don’t boo! Vote!” He teased Fetterman for being “just a dude” who wore shorts in the winter. (Fetterman had earlier tweeted how he’d “dressed up (wore pants)” to meet Obama on a previous occasion.) But there were serious moments, too.
Obama dutifully bashed Oz’s “snake oil” peddling and GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano’s extremist beliefs. And he reminded the audience that the Democrats had been “shellacked” in the 2010 midterms when he was president, and took a drubbing again in 2014. The same would happen this year, he warned—if they didn’t turn up at the polls.
“I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now, especially when you’re worried about paying the bills,” Obama said, echoing Biden’s choice recently to focus message. But “when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences.”
Voters last night seemed to feel the weight of his words. “It used to be that you were just voting on politics and ideology,” Jody Boches, from nearby Abington Township, told me. “Now the integrity of all these institutions and the right to vote and the wellbeing of our democracy” are under threat. When I asked about what it meant to see Obama, Boches gestured to her cell phone and laughed. “My daughter who’s at grad school at UVA has asked me to record him speaking, just so she can remember what it was like to hear him speak.”
Some at the rally expressed a very qualified optimism. The main priority for everyone I spoke to was abortion—coupled with the hope that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade could be what boosts Democratic turnout this year. Mary Halanan, from Doylestown, told me that she could envision a strong bloc of such voters emerging on Tuesday—“people like me,” she said. “I’m hoping I’m the silent majority.”
Others were more nervous about what next week will bring. As once-promising Senate races have tightened, the prospects for the president’s party in the House are grim. Republicans need to pick up only five seats to take a majority; they seem poised to do much better than that. Even if the Democrats keep control of the Senate—at best, a tenuous proposition—the rest of Biden’s term in the White House seems certain to involve a barrage of investigations and impeachment attempts, rather than any effort toward bipartisan legislation.
Again and again, the Democrats I spoke to in the crowd told me how much they missed Obama’s thoughtfulness and compassion. Their longing was all the more poignant for what it seemed to say about what they found missing from the Democratic leadership today: They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
When the rally was over, Rosalin Franklin and Pam Parseghian stood side by side, waiting to cross the street. “We were just talking about how he brings people together,” Parseghian said, with a sigh. “Here he is talking about his wife, talking about the good.” And she reenacted his words: “Believe in science! Believe in the future!”
After Parseghian and Franklin finished explaining how delighted they’d been by Obama’s appearance, I asked whether they felt more confident about their party’s electoral outlook than they had before the rally. Both women paused. “Yes,” Parseghian said eventually. Franklin nodded slowly. “Yeah … still worried. But yeah.”
The Democratic Party’s most powerful voices warned Saturday that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Biden — over the final weekend of the high-stakes midterm elections.
“Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh.
“On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years,” Obama said. “The only way to save democracy is if we, together, fight for it.”
Obama was the first president, but not last, to rally voters Saturday in Pennsylvania, a pivotal state as voters decide control of Congress and key statehouses. Polls across America will close on Tuesday, but more than 36 million people have already voted.
By day’s end, voters in the Keystone State also were to have heard directly from Mr. Biden as well as former President Donald Trump. And former President Bill Clinton was campaigning in New York.
Each was appearing with local candidates, but their words echoed across the country as the parties sent out their best to deliver a critical closing argument.
Not everyone, it seemed, was on message, however.
Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology.
“Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said.
The White House said Mr. Biden’s words were “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense” and that he was “commenting on a fact of economics and technology.”
Democrats are deeply concerned about their narrow majorities in the House and Senate as voters sour on Mr. Biden’s leadership amid surging inflation, crime concerns and widespread pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests that Democrats, as the party in power, will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
Clinton, 76, addressed increasing fears about rising crime as he stumped for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose reelection is at risk even in deep-blue New York. He blamed Republicans for focusing on the issue to score political points.
“But what are the Republicans really saying? ‘I want you to be scared and I want you to be mad. And the last thing I want you to do is think,’” Clinton said.
In Pittsburgh, Obama accompanied Senate candidate John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor who represents his party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat. Later Saturday, they appeared in Philadelphia with Mr. Biden and Josh Shapiro, the nominee for governor.
Trump will finish the day courting voters in a working-class region in the southwestern corner of the state with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Senate nominee, and Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor.
Former U.S President Donald Trump speaks at a ‘Save America’ rally on October 22, 2022 in Robstown, Texas. The former president, alongside other Republican nominees and leaders held a rally where they energized supporters and voters ahead of the midterm election.
BRANDON BELL / Getty Images
The attention on Pennsylvania underscores the stakes in 2022 and beyond for the tightly contested state. The Oz-Fetterman race could decide the Senate majority — and with it, Mr. Biden’s agenda and judicial appointments for the next two years. The governor’s contest will determine the direction of state policy and control of the state’s election infrastructure heading into the 2024 presidential contest.
Shapiro, the state attorney general, leads in polls over Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who some Republicans believe is too extreme to win a general election in a state Mr. Biden narrowly carried two years ago.
Polls show a closer contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey as Fetterman recovers from a stroke he suffered in May. He jumbled words and struggled to complete sentences in his lone debate against Oz last month, although medical experts say he’s recovering well from the health scare.
Obama addressed Fetterman’s stroke directly when appearing with him in Pittsburgh.
“John’s stroke did not change who he is. It didn’t change what he cares about,” he said.
Fetterman railed against Oz and castigated the former New Jersey resident as an ultrawealthy carpetbagger who will say or do anything to get elected.
“I’ll be the 51st vote to eliminate the filibuster, to raise the minimum wage,” Fetterman said. “Please send Dr. Oz back to New Jersey.”
Oz has worked to craft a moderate image in the general election and focused his attacks on Fetterman’s progressive positions on criminal justice and drug decriminalization. Still, Oz has struggled to connect with some voters, including Republicans who think he’s too close to Trump, too liberal or inauthentic.
Obama acknowledged that voters are anxious after suffering through “some tough times” in recent years, citing the pandemic, rising crime and surging inflation.
“The Republicans like to talk about it, but what’s their answer, what’s their economic policy?” Obama asked. “They want to gut Social Security. They want to gut Medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts.”
Obama and Fetterman hugged on stage after the speeches were over.
Saturday marked Obama’s first time campaigning in Pennsylvania this year, though he has been the party’s top surrogate in the final sprint to Election Day. He campaigned in recent days in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, while Mr. Biden has spent more time in Democratic-leaning states where he’s more welcome.
Mr. Biden opened his day in Illinois campaigning with Rep. Lauren Underwood, a two-term suburban Chicago lawmaker in a close race.
The president ticked through his administration’s achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Action, passed in August by the Democratic-led Congress. It includes several health care provisions popular among older adults and the less well-off, including a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses and a $35 monthly cap per prescription on insulin. The new law also requires companies that raise prices faster than overall inflation to pay Medicare a rebate.
“I wish I could say Republicans in Congress helped make it happen,” Mr. Biden said of the legislation that passed along party lines. He also vowed that Democrats would protect Social Security.
Yet his comments from the day before about the energy industry — and Manchin’s fierce response — may have been getting more attention.
“It’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil,” Mr. Biden said Friday in Southern California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”
Pennsylvania has largely transitioned away from coal, but fossil fuel companies remain a major employer in the state.
As for Trump, his late rally in Latrobe is part of a late blitz that will also take him to Florida and Ohio. He’s hoping a strong GOP showing will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he’s expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.
Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans.
At a rally Thursday night in Iowa, traditionally home of the first contest on the presidential nominating calendar, Trump repeatedly referenced his 2024 White House ambitions.
After talking up his first two presidential runs, he told the crowd: “Now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again, OK? Very, very, very probably. Very, very, very probably.”
“Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon,” he said.
In the race for Senate in Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz meet for their only debate Tuesday. CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa joins John Dickerson from Harrisburg with the latest on the race.
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The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh became a symbol of the country’s troubled infrastructure, collapsing into a ravine earlier this year, hours before President Biden visited the city.
At the time, Mr. Biden detoured to survey the scene, where vehicles were stranded on shards of roadway and several people were injured, and pledged that help was on the way. On Thursday, the Democratic president returned to the bridge in hopes of turning it into a symbol of success for his administration.
US President Joe Biden speaks about the rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure at the Fern Hallow Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 20, 2022. – The bridge carrying Forbes Avenue through Frick Park, collapsed early on January 28, 2022, hours before Biden was due for a Pittsburgh visit.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden has become a frequent visitor to Pennsylvania, leading up to the midterms less than three weeks away. John Fetterman, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was on hand for the president’s visit. Fetterman, known for his casual attire, wore a suit for the occasion.
President Joe Biden speaks with greeters, including US Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania Bob Casey (R), Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (2nd R) and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. and Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman (3rd R), upon arrival at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 20, 2022 .
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
A new span is being built, and the bridge could be finished by December.
“I’m coming back to walk over this sucker,” Mr. Biden said Thursday. “Although my staff said to me, ‘You realize how many times you’ve been to Pittsburgh?’ I said no. ‘Nineteen.’”
The White House is crediting the bipartisan infrastructure law championed by Mr. Biden for the accelerated timeline.
“It’s being done in record time. Normally, you’d be looking at two to five years to build a bridge like this,” Mr. Biden said, adding the cost is $25 million and “fully paid for” by the federal government.
The legislation is one of the president’s most notable successes from the first two years of his term, and he repeatedly emphasizes its impact while traveling the country to roadways, airplane terminals and seaports. Out of roughly $1 trillion in spending, about $40 billion is dedicated to bridges.
The Biden administration has sought to increase the , hosting a summit last week at the White House to help state and local government officials streamline their processes.
The push to speed up the permitting, design and construction process has come as high inflation has been pushing up costs and causing delays. The Commerce Department has an initiative to coordinate the installation of water pipes and broadband and power lines to avoid tearing up roads multiple times. And the Transportation Department launched an internal center to advise on best practices for construction.
Biden, before boarding his helicopter on the White House South Lawn, challenged a reporter who suggested that few Democratic candidates have done events with him ahead of the midterm elections.
“That’s not true,” Biden responded. “There have been 15. Count, kid, count.”
After the bridge, Mr. Biden plans to stop in Philadelphia for a fundraiser with Fetterman, trying to replenish coffers that have been drained in one of the year’s most expensive races.
Fetterman is competing with Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, for an open seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey, also a Republican. If Fetterman wins, Democrats will have a much better shot at maintaining control of the Senate.
Mr. Biden was born in Pennsylvania, and the state remains central to his political identity.
His trip on Thursday will be his 14th to the state since taking office. A 15th trip has already been scheduled for next week, when he’s expected to return to Philadelphia for another political event.
Asked during a stop at a Pittsburgh sandwich shop if Democrats will hold the Senate, the president responded, “I think so. It ain’t over until it’s over.”
