Trump and the GOP cannot rest on their laurels

No matter how you spin it, former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are well positioned to take unified control of the federal government in November as their Democratic rivals grapple with potentially replacing President Joe Biden as their standard-bearer.

A good rule of thumb in conflicts is to never get in your enemy's way when he is hurting himself. And Trump and the GOP are doing a fine job of staying out of the headlines as polls show Biden is in a free fall and would likely lose the election by a significant margin if it were held today.

To illustrate the scale of Biden's polling problem, an internal Democratic poll that was leaked this week puts Trump in striking distance of winning somewhere in the neighborhood of 330 to 350 electoral votes. States such as Virginia, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, and New Mexico that have not voted for a Republican presidential candidate for decades are all of the sudden extremely competitive.

With a brewing disaster looming on the horizon, elected Democrats are now starting to raise the possibility that Biden could be replaced as the party's nominee, given his declining mental state. But this is merely a self-preservation effort.

In such a polarized environment, an abysmal performance for the Democratic Party at the top of the ticket could spell even worse troubles down the ballot. The slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives would easily expand, while the Democratic majority in the Senate would likely be replaced by a sizable Republican one.

It's a good time for the Grand Old Party. Election Day cannot come fast enough. But even as the party is in the driver's seat to win elections up and down the ballot, the party and Trump must campaign as though they are 10 points behind.

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The party must reject all sentiments of complacency. It must pour significant resources into defending front-line races, and focus its pickup opportunities on must-win races. That means that any investments in Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota must come after significant investments in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. And instead of chasing fool's gold in the Maryland Senate race, the party must focus its resources on unseating Democrats in the competitive states of Ohio, Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The winds are at the GOP's back, but the party, with Trump as its standard-bearer, cannot take anything for granted.