Some Democrats see Donald Trump winning the nomination as a potential chance to get another left-leaning justice on the bench. | AP Photo Dems: Trump wins us the Senate and Garland Even some conservatives are now calling on the GOP Senate to let Merrick Garland through.

Donald Trump threw a big party Tuesday night. So did every Democrat running for Senate.

The party’s Senate candidates are brimming with excitement about spending the next six months hitting their opponents with Trump — and being able to tie their case together by saying that Republicans’ opposition to President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick means they want a President Trump to fill the vacancy.


“Here’s where we are: If I were Trump or I were [Mitch] McConnell or I were Paul Ryan, the first thing I’d say is, ‘Listen, let’s take one issue off the table quickly: Let’s have hearings on Garland. Let’s have a vote and put him on the court,’” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview Wednesday.

He added, “Every Republican candidate will now have to answer for every racist and every anti-woman and every anti-immigrant statement. There are so many other issues than Trump, but Trump is the No. 1 issue.”

Democrats are gearing up for the next phases of the Supreme Court fight, from having Obama do more campaigning on the vacancy — such as the local news interviews he did Monday, all of which just happened to be in markets with competitive Senate races — to beginning to plot out a final month of campaigning before the election. Preliminary plans call for kicking off the home stretch with commercials highlighting the still-empty seat as the Supreme Court begins its new term the first Monday in October — and riding Republicans on the issue every day until polls open.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee started Wednesday morning pushing reporters in the states to chase senators on recess and ask them whether they’re ready to support Trump as the nominee, and if they want his nominee on the court.

Top Republicans, meanwhile, continue to find ways to avoid saying Trump’s name. McConnell’s spokesman, Don Stewart, for example, responded to a question on Wednesday about whether the Senate majority leader was ready to back the billionaire by saying, “He has long said that he'll support the nominee chosen by Republican voters. So I don't have a new position for you.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee wouldn’t directly respond to a question about whether its candidates would campaign with Trump or appear in ads with him.

Jobs, the economy, national security, issues particular to the states — they're all sure to be debated in key Senate races, but Democrats believe Trump’s unpopularity with key constituencies will overwhelm everything else. And that the Supreme Court fight will focus voters’ attention on what a Trump presidency could mean in real life.

“There are basic differences between Sen. [Rob] Portman and myself, I’ve been talking about them,” said Ted Strickland, who’s trying to win the Ohio Senate seat in what Democrats see as likely their hardest race against a Republican incumbent. “But obviously, Donald Trump is something that I’m going to be talking about, especially in regard to the Supreme Court.”

Theoretically, there are up to 10 Republican seats in play: the five most vulnerable Republican incumbents, in Ohio, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania; the three where Democrats are trying to expand their map in Missouri, Arizona and North Carolina; the seat that’s coming open in Florida because of Sen. Marco Rubio’s retirement; and the huge reach to knock out Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who, as the Judiciary Committee chairman, has been at the center of the Supreme Court fight and drew an opponent specifically because of his opposition to hearings. Some are even throwing around the possibility of making a stronger race in Kentucky against Sen. Rand Paul. (Democrats believe that the two main seats they’re defending, in Colorado and Nevada, are now significantly safer.)

“Does @ChuckGrassley have a victory plan for November?” tweeted Katie Packer Gage, a former Mitt Romney aide who’s led one of the main anti-Trump efforts, shortly after the Indiana results came in.

The impact could be enormous: 2016 was always looking like a good year for Democrats to win the majority, but the GOP-friendly map in 2018 had people thinking they’d very likely lose it back again in two years. Running up the score this November would give them more of a cushion to hold off Republicans, even in a midterm year.

Jason Kander, the Democratic candidate in Missouri — the state many Democrats see as their best shot at expanding the map — said he’s always felt good about the race, but “Sen. [Roy] Blunt’s support for an extremist like Donald Trump only increases my confidence.” (Blunt hasn’t officially endorsed Trump, but has said he’ll support the Republican nominee. He is solidly behind the GOP’s refusal to take up Garland’s nomination.)

Trump said in late March that he would release a list of potential Supreme Court picks but has yet to follow up. His campaign didn’t respond to a request for an update on the process or the timing, or whether the presumptive nominee is interested in campaigning with Senate candidates.

But Trump has a simple, damning response to everyone ready to say he’s got no chance. As he put it during his victory speech after the Indiana primary on Tuesday: That’s what everyone said when he got into the race, and even after he started winning primaries at the beginning of the year. Republican primary voters, at least, don’t seem to have any lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy, and for putting him in the White House.

The polls outside the Republican primary electorate aren’t so generous to Trump.

And ask Democrats how successful their attempts were to keep their Senate races from being nationalized in 2014, when Obama’s popularity was at its lowest — though nowhere near as low as Trump’s is now.

“How do they localize when they’re being asked at every corner, ‘Are you seriously OK with Donald Trump picking the next Supreme Court justice?’” said DSCC spokeswoman Sadie Weiner. “Do you feel like women get to office by having a woman card? Do you think we should ban all Muslims? Frankly, pick a topic.”

But NRSC communications director Andrea Bozek said that they’re not concerned, especially when the Democratic alternative is Hillary Clinton.

“While Democrats are all too eager to campaign on what they are against, Republicans will continue to lay out their visions to help our country recover from eight years of the Obama economy and get people back to work,” Bozek wrote in an email. “There is a reason Democrats aren’t lining up to campaign with Hillary Clinton. She is a toxic candidate whose failed leadership has put the security of our country at risk.”

There’s certainly not universal agreement among Republicans about how to handle what happens next.

In Florida, Senate candidate Rep. David Jolly said before the Indiana results arrived that he didn’t know how he’d vote if Trump were the nominee.

That isn’t the way his state party seems to see things — either on Trump, or letting Trump fill the late Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat.

Florida GOP chairman Blaise Ingoglia put out a statement Tuesday night urging Republicans to come together behind the billionaire New Yorker because “a Clinton presidency would be disastrous for this country, our military, our debt, our freedoms and the Supreme Court.”

Then there’s the statement Tuesday night from Americans United for Change, which is leading efforts in the states to hit Republican incumbents on the vacancy.

“It’s official, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are refusing to do their jobs because they want Donald Trump — a racist, sexist, misogynistic, nativist, isolationist, pathological liar who said he would date his daughter if they weren't related and won’t rule out using nuclear weapons in the Middle East, to make the next appointment to the Supreme Court,” said the group’s president, Brad Woodhouse.

The group has organized several events in Ohio during this recess week to beat up Portman.

“We’re going to say apparently Rob Portman wants Donald Trump to reshape the Supreme Court, and I think there are vast numbers of Republicans, moderate Republicans, Republican women, that would not be sympathetic to Donald Trump having that power,” Strickland said.

Very quickly, several conservatives chimed in saying that Tuesday night’s results, and Trump’s apparent lock on the nomination, has them giving up on the presidential race and on holding up Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

“Republicans Should Confirm Merrick Garland ASAP,” wrote Red State editor Leon Wolf, reasoning that at least he’s older, and would probably retire soon, making his nomination instead of whoever Hillary Clinton might pick “a gift that should not be squandered.”

“Time to let Merrick Garland through?” conservative columnist Tim Carney tweeted Tuesday night.

Safe to say the White House would be ready to have Garland available for a confirmation hearing within an hour, if that’s what it came down to.

There’s no reason to believe that it will.

To any Democrats warning that Trump might get to fill the vacancy, Stewart responded with a variation of the line that McConnell’s been saying every day since Scalia died.

“While I'm glad to see Democrats concede that there won't be a Democrat in the White House next year,” he said, “Republicans continue to believe that the American people should have a voice in this decision and the next president should make the nomination.”

