Thursday, September 19, 2019

Trump's Strategy

Trump's recent visits to Democratic majority states raise some interesting questions about his support for his 2020 run and his opposition.  His stated reasons focus on the possibility of flipping those states to the red column.  That seems like a pretty unlikely scenario and it is hard to believe Trump - and even more so his advisers - really consider such a development at all likely.

There is also the fact that Trump's rhetoric at his campaign events in those blue states really is not effectively aimed at broadening his base.  Trump continues to harp on imaginary economic gains associated with his policies and he continues to rant about immigrants and non-white groups - all the themes that are red meat for his base.  In the case of California Trump has also prefaced his visit with attacks on the state's emission standards and on San Francisco's homeless policies.

What we have not seen in recent political commentary is any assessment of what Trump's visits to the ultra-blue states have had on the opposition.  While Trump's words and actions seemed mostly designed to push the Dem's noses into the dirt, it seems possible that he could easily be hardening the opposition's determination to make Trump a one-termer.  It would be interesting to see the results of polling immediately before and after Trump's visits to New Mexico and California.  I could not find any such fine-grained analysis in progress right now, but maybe the pollsters will decide to play catch-up.

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