Back in November, concerns emerged that Donald Trump’s White House might not be up to the task of wrangling Republicans in time to guarantee the party’s success in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump’s chosen political director, Bill Stepien, had neither deep ties on Capitol Hill nor sway in the administration—two somewhat crucial assets for the person tasked with herding party leaders and synchronizing efforts with the Republican National Committee. “Nobody knows what the f--- he’s done or is doing to advance the president’s agenda politically,” a senior administration source told Axios, while a prominent conservative leader called Stepien’s office “a completely passive operation.”

After the G.O.P. suffered a crushing in Virginia, New Jersey, and Alabama, it seems Stepien’s incompetence is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent weeks, Trump allies have warned the president about what looks to be an increasingly grim 2018 landscape. Ahead of the special election in Alabama, R.N.C. Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel outlined the Republican Party’s eroding support among women in a two-page memo delivered to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Politico reported. McDaniel reportedly cautioned that a full-throated endorsement of Roy Moore, an accused child molester, would likely accelerate the G.O.P.’s exodus of women supporters. (Moore has denied any wrongdoing.)

Moore’s eventual loss to Democrat Doug Jones, as well as the governor’s race in Virginia, in which Republican Ed Gillespie lost to Democrat Ralph Northam by almost nine points, illustrated the perils of running a Trumpian campaign without Trump; one Democratic strategist characterized Gillespie’s loss in the traditionally purple Virginia as the “suburban revolt against Donald Trump and suburban revolt against the current state of the Republican Party,” noting that it could foreshadow Republicans losing their majority in both houses of Congress.

Left, newly elected Alabama Senator Doug Jones celebrating his victory; Right, Virgina's newly elected Governor Ralph Northam on election night. Left, by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Right, by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

With a potential electoral slaughter looming, Trump advisers are reportedly scrambling to nail down a cohesive strategy. Multiple outlets reported that within hours of the tax reform’s passage on Wednesday, Trump met with aides and outside advisers including Kelly, Stepien, senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, data and marketing adviser Brad Parscale, communications director Hope Hicks, and informal adviser Corey Lewandowski to discuss the outlook for 2018. But according to accounts by The New York Times and The Washington Post, the meeting devolved into a dustup between Stepien and Lewandowski, the latter of whom criticized both Stepien’s performance and the R.N.C., arguing that Trump “wasn’t being served well” by either.

After the meeting, Stepien and Lewandowski continued their dispute outside the Oval Office, though three people briefed on the exchange [told the Times] (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/us/politics/trump-stepien-lewandowki.html?_r=0) that they ended their conversation on cordial terms. Their tussle underscored the competing power centers in Trumpworld: while Lewandowski and Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, have pushed for Trump to embrace his flame-throwing tendencies and back populist candidates, others in the White House have urged greater restraint and a more calculated approach to the midterms.

But the path forward is far from clear, and Republicans are predicting, in the words of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a “real knock-down, drag-out—even on the Senate side . . . The environment today is not great, the generic ballot’s not good, and I’d love to see the president’s approval rating higher,” McConnell said in an interview on Thursday. Scott Jennings, who served as a top political adviser to George W. Bush and is close with McConnell, told Politico that the prospect of an upset is becoming more real by the day. “There are 10 months to improve the fundamentals here . . and I think there’s a realization that there’s at least a 50-percent chance one or both chambers could fall,” he said. “In less than one year, this first term could be, for all intents and purposes, over.”