In a previous post, I suggested that each of the 2020 candidates for president be required to state and defend the Electoral College math that they intend to use to win the general election. It’s far too easy for a candidate to win the nomination with no prayer of winning the election.
Lo and behold, one candidate’s campaign manager made such a statement yesterday. Unfortunately, it was Trump’s campaign manager.
Brad Parscale, who served as Trump’s digital media guru in 2016, shared that the Trump campaign will target all of the states that Trump took in 2016 and then additionally target Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and New Mexico – with a stretch goal of adding Minnesota. Those are five of the seven states I previously identified as only “Likely D”. The five extra states combine for an extra 34 Electoral votes.
Sure enough, Trump does have a chance of winning in every state he’s targeting and no chance of winning in any of the 14 “Safe D” states. Of course, Parscale hasn’t yet revealed a strategy for how they’ll win in these five new states. He also skips over the hard task of repeat wins in the six 2020 “Toss Up” states and the slightly easier task of again winning the five “Likely R” states. But that’s just political spin. Parscale expects to lose some “Toss Up” states and he needs some cushion. The math just isn’t that hard and it appears that Parscale knows it.
It sure would be nice if I could say the same thing about a Democratic campaign.