As Election Day nears, common sense suggests Donald Trump’s interest should be on swing states and competitive 2020 battlegrounds. But the president instead seems fixated on a Democratic stronghold.
Trump … took aim at some states governed by Democrats, suggesting their condition was another reason to vote for him. “California is going to hell. Vote Trump!” Trump said in one tweet.
The logic behind the message seems flawed: California is going to hell in the Trump era, which is why the Republican incumbent believes voters should extend the Trump era?
Nevertheless, if the missive seemed familiar, there’s a good reason for that. Yesterday, Trump implored Californians to vote for him. A few days earlier, he pushed the same message. And then he pushed it again.
The president told Rush Limbaugh on Friday that he expects to do well in the Golden State. He also talked up California during an interview with Fox Business, and then again with Fox News.
In case this isn’t obvious, it’s worth emphasizing that Trump lost California four years ago by 30 points. FiveThirtyEight’s model gives Joe Biden a greater than 99% chance of carrying the state in this year’s cycle. So why in the world is the president suddenly fixated on California, bringing it up practically every day for the last five days? From a distance, it’s hard to say with confidence, but if I were an incumbent, my team just showed me some bad polling news, and I started to become convinced that I’m on track to lose badly unless I found a new path to 270 electoral votes, I might start looking anew at the nation’s largest electoral prize.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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