Donald Trump’s Blue State Strategy – Top 3 Takeaways – October 14th, 2024
- Every American is worth fighting for. As most of us are turning a page this week from the fog of Hurricane Milton last week, we’re now finding ourselves only three weeks and a day away from Election Day. An Election Day that’s truly the most important of our lives. What we also see is an interesting and atypical Trump-team strategy. Rallying in traditional blue states which are said to be unwinnable for Trump. This has spawned headlines like this over the weekend from the Washington Post: Donald Trump holds a rally in California, a state he's almost certain to lose and this from The Hill: Why is Trump campaigning in blue states?. Probably my favorite of the bunch came from the Intelligencer which produced a story under the headline...Why Trump Is Holding Rallies in Blue States He Can’t Win. I particularly get a kick of declarative statements of fact as is presented in that headline, that in fact aren’t factual. Can’t, of course, means not possible. However unlikely it may be for Donald Trump to win California, a state that hasn’t been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and New York, which hasn’t turned red since Reagan won 49 states in 1984, it is at least a possibility. But, as is true with anything in life, it’s only possible if you put forth the effort. Think for a moment about things that tend to bug you about most politicians. From person to person the specifics may vary a bit but there’s likely an overarching theme to our collective gripes that transcend political parties and even the type of elective office. They’re fakers. They say the stuff they think they need to say to get elected and once in office they do what they want to do rather than what they promised you they would do. Right? From municipal governments to the federal government, the politicians you most personally dislike are likely to fall under that category. After all there’s never been a serious political candidate who’s run on a campaign platform promising to make your life worse. And btw, I can add some professional perspective to this. Having done what I have done for 27 years, I’ve seen and experienced it all with political candidates and politicians. One of the easiest ways for me to discern the sincere from the insincere is with those who are consistently engaged with us, and accessible to us, when there are important issues that they need to address with their constituents as opposed to those who suddenly show up looking to flood the airwaves in the months leading up to Election Day. Btw, do you know who one of the proactive politicians historically has been? Donald Trump as president. Of the three times I’ve interviewed Donald Trump since becoming president his team reached out to me for two of them. Also, two of those interviews didn’t take place during an election year.
- Whether you love him or hate him that’s who he is. Someone who’s sincere. Yes, he is a serial exaggerator, yes his rhetoric at times is over-the-top, but yes on the issues he means what he says, and he does what he says he’ll do. Isn’t that what we want all of our politicians to do? While many political pundits have pontificated on why Donald Trump has recently been holding rallies and making campaign stops in California, Colorado and New York – to name a few...as opposed to say pitching a tent in say PA. And actually tomorrow, the blue state tour continues with a stop in Illinois. This is clearly part of a bigger strategy. Pundits and politicos are all out with their reasons why. There are several credible theories. Among those floated over the weekend were these that fit into a few categories: 1) It’s a vanity project. Donald Trump wants to win the popular vote not just the Electoral College vote and that can’t be done without performing better in highly populated blue states. Donald Trump has always wanted to win his original home state of New York. 2) He needs the campaign cash. The thought goes that he needs to visit well-heeled donors in blue states because of his campaign’s deficit to Harris’ campaign and is just trying to salvage some of these stops with rallies that might divert attention away from why he’s really there. 3) The campaign narrative. He’s long talked about the enormous issues in blue states and blue cities within blue states due to illegal immigration and soft-on-crime polices, going to these locations helps emphasize these points. 4) The down ballot effect. It’s important to Trump to not only win the presidency but to have a governing Republican majority that will allow him to enact his policies. Republicans only hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives due to winning several tight elections in California and New York two years ago. Holding those seats are critical to holding control of the House. 5) The intrigue and viral factor. Your three largest media markets are New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Donald Trump will have made stops in or just outside of all of them. Taking the rallies to them not only enhances the liklihood that they’ll be covered, but that also more stories will be produced referencing these rallies than would be if say he was holding his fifth (or whatever the number is) rally in Pennsylvania. Now...
- There’s potentially at least some truth to all of them. Independent of ego, there’s no doubt that Donald Trump would love to win the popular vote. Given that Trump has significantly outperformed his popular vote totals in the Electoral College, including winning the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote by two-points, if he can carry the popular vote, it would accomplish two things. It would be a slam dunk that he’d win the election, but it would also add momentum to his policy mandate which could matter with how moderate members of Congress on both sides react to his agenda items. Pertaining to cash... Trump has had to make some blue state stops for campaign cash and it's possible that campaign cash geography has at least at times influenced the timing and strategy around campaign stops. The notion that the blue state stops help him drive home his campaign narrative of blue city and state policies failing, in addition to the Biden-Harris administration's policies failing the blue states, is entirely plausible. Also, there’s no doubt that there’s a down ballot concern for Donald Trump this election. He recently held a rally in Montana, one of the safest states in the country for him, because he is attempting to flip the senate seat in that state. There’s no doubt that controlling Congress is critical to his overall strategy in this cycle. And yes, Donald Trump, ever the master marketer, may well have planned these stops near the largest media markets to help generate maximum coverage on-air and online. But there’s also something else that none of the many stories on this I read on this offered up. That every American is worth fighting for. Donald Trump – when President of the United States made more of a personal effort with me to directly reach you, at the local and regional level, than many local and state officials ever do. It’s quite the thing when you get a call from the White House out of the blue asking if the President of the United States may go on the air with you. Donald Trump is the only president who has ever done that. And along with those interviews came no strings. No agendas, no prepared topics to stick to. No questions to ask and questions not to ask. Nothing. Just an honest to God interview about whatever it is that I would bring up. Every American is worth fighting for. I was a kid when Ronald Reagan was president. Donald Trump is the only president, and one of the few politicians generally, who has a track record of demonstrating that he actually cares about every American. Maybe, just maybe, that factors into his campaign plans too.