And I'm going to say something as someone who has been a part of losing Republican campaigns--I've heard this talk before. I heard exactly this when I was a very low-level volunteer guy working on George Bush's campaign in 1992. I heard this when I was hustling for Bob Dole as a CR in 1996. "Yeah--it's ok if Clinton wins because we're still going to have the Senate . . . ."
Now, I'm going to tell you that such rationalizations didn't usually start coming out into October. But still--I've heard exactly this before.
We were fucked in 1992 and 1996, and we damned well knew it.
But here's the thing--the GQP is even more fucked now. And they don't know it.
In the 1990s, the Republican Party was still a real political party. It had policy positions that it wanted to advance. It had ideas with which its supporters agreed. So you could go to them and say "but so long as we keep the Senate and the House, our ideas and policy positions will still be advanced (or at least not completely frustrated)." And shit--that was especially true with the Great Triangulator in the White House. So you could still motivate people who knew they were going to lose the White House to go out and vote in the down-ballot races.
The GQP today isn't a political party. It doesn't have a single ideology or a single set of policy positions. It has a single cult of personality. The less-engaged will stay home because it's not fun to get your teeth kicked in. They don't fucking care about the Senate or the House or the state legislature. If it's not Trump, they don't give a shit (as they've repeatedly shown in midterms and special elections).