I spoke to a very influential Republican strategist earlier this week, and asked him what he thought the party should do to fix the mess it’s in. His answer: “I don’t think it’s fixable.” Republicans are only now as alarmed as they should have been six months ago, when they might have been able to put together an agenda to improve their standing. Now there are too few legislative days left before the election to do that–and it makes more sense for congressmen to spend time campaigning in their districts than for them to increase the number of days in session.

He blames both the White House (“They’ve known since last September that they needed to put together an agenda and they have failed to do so. Their State of the Union gave us nothing to work on in an election year.”) and the Congress (“People believe that all politics is local and you can look at it race by race [and see a good outcome]. That’s all horse—-.”). “So I’m not Mr. Happy, you can say.”