From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarale. This is The Daily.

Today, Republicans in this year's midterms are using one person to represent everything that's wrong with the Democratic Party.

As it turns out, many Democrats are turning on the same figure.

It's Friday, August 17th.

Alex, last time we talked to you, it was on the eve of the special election in Ohio.

And you said the election there represented a test of whether the Republican strategy in the midterms would essentially be to run an opposition-only campaign.

Vote for us because we're not the Democrats. And what have we learned since then?

Well, we learned that it worked just barely in Ohio.

In politics, they call this tight as a tick. Take a look at these results last night in Ohio's 12th district.

This is a special election for the House of Representatives to replace a retiring Republican representative.

This was an election in a conservative part of the state.

A district that President Trump carried by 11 points, the Republican candidate appears to have won there by a little bit less than one percentage point.

They're still counting and litigating some of those votes.

But it was really a skin of their teeth kind of victory.

Alex Burns covers politics for the times.

And what Republicans took away from that is that the total war strategy is what it's going to take.

And it very well might succeed at holding down their losses and holding the House.

And what is that strategy actually looking like in the midterms?

It's a very big country. So I imagine that it means running against Democrats differently from district to district.

There are definitely going to be important gradations, regionally depending on the nature of the district.

In more rural areas where the president is stronger, you're going to see Republicans raising more issues like immigration, more issues like football players kneeling and support for the police in more suburban areas where the president is less popular, where more educated Republicans are a little bit shakier on the party.

You're going to see an equally negative campaign, but probably about some different issues more about taxes, more about the Iran deal and national security.

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