After losing the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump could have worked on his golf swing or produced another book by the pool at his South Florida beach club.

Instead, he threw himself into the midterm campaign with unprecedented enthusiasm, betting his kingmaker reputation on a number of controversial candidates in key primaries.

However, his open-race US Senate candidates — mostly anti-abortion hardliners, supporters of his vote-fraud conspiracy theories, or out-of-towners with weak local ties — struggled.

And with just a month to go before Election Day, many Republicans are blaming the gates of Mar-a-Lago.

“Donald Trump is not on a ballot paper in 2022, but his political future is,” John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent blog post.

Trump’s project to reshape the Republican Party’s image over the midterms is likely to “make Donald Trump either a contender or a commanding force in party politics for years to come,” Hudak argued.

Many of Trump’s key endorsements have been seen as undermining more electable mainstream alternatives and potentially wasting easy victories on key battlegrounds seen ripe for being turned around by Democrats.

Controversial favorites include prominent Pennsylvania doctor Mehmet Oz — regarded by many as a no-contact “carpet man” prone to rhetorical slips — and Ohio-based JD Vance, a venture capitalist who has lived most of his adult life in New York Silicon Valley and faces similar problems.

The story is the same in Georgia, where ex-football star Herschel Walker faces questions about domestic violence, dishonesty about his past and mental fitness.

And in Arizona, Blake Masters is fighting for a seat that should be up for grabs with a campaign that Politico has described as a “hardline nationalist.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — who only needs a win to wrest the upper house from Democrats — has made indirect hints that he sees “candidate quality” as a problem.

Hudack put it more clearly.

“(If) Senate nominees like Walker, Oz, Vance or Blake Masters end up losing in numbers that sustain the Democratic Senate majority, Mr. Trump will be widely blamed,” he said.

A bad election night for Trump candidates would be a sidekick to his 2024 rivals, a list that may include outspoken anti-Trumpist Liz Cheney, Florida’s scathing Gov. Ron DeSantis, and ex-Vice President Mike Pence.

Aside from Cheney, Republican presidential nominees have largely continued to kneel before Trump during his post-presidency tenure.

But figures like ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, estranged Trump ally Chris Christie and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley may be heartened by poor Nov. 8 results.

David Greenberg, a media and history professor at Rutgers University, said the former president — for now the clear front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination — had “little things to gain” at the halftime.

“But Trump has a lot to lose because if his candidates flare up then you’ll assume he’s lost his magic,” Greenberg told AFP.

“Some primary voters in 2024 may think twice about backing him, especially if a popular alternative like DeSantis also runs.”

A note of caution: Polls are expected to tighten ahead of November, and all of Trump’s most controversial candidates could still triumph in photo finishes.

Expect some of the circling sharks to back off on that one — and for Trump to suddenly look more like a political genius with a bold vision than a commitment.

Trump watchers often point out that much of the former president’s die-hard base cares little about the Senate or Washington politics anyway.

“Despite losing re-election, two impeachments, nearly a dozen serious criminal investigations, and countless scandals that would long ago eclipse almost any politician, Trump remains the clear leader of the Republican Party,” said Georgia College and State University political analyst Nicholas Creel .

“Trump’s support in the Republican Party is far too robust to be damaged by a poor performance by the party this November.”

Other observers, however, expect the tycoon’s many legal troubles, including the escalating scandal surrounding his abuse of top-secret government secrets, will hurt his political prospects as badly as his mid-term election performance.

Irina Tsukerman, a New York-based national security attorney and geopolitical analyst, said Trump is increasingly perceived as a “political liability” — unable to win a future presidential election even against a weak Democrat.

“Overall, it looks like he’s being strongly discouraged from running in 2024, which he may not be doing for reasons of his own — like avoiding embarrassment and keeping the money he’s currently raising,” she told AFP.

Trump’s office did not respond to a request for comment.