If Donald Trump wants to win in November, he should stop talking about 2020 election irregularities and focus on what's happening today under the Biden-Harris regime: record inflation, the near-recession, Biden-Harris's wide-open border, and the deplorable state of public education in the United States. Relitigating the 2020 election is not a path to victory. And if Trump wants to do anything about voter fraud, he'll need to win in November, plain and simple.
In a May Pew survey of the top issues facing the U.S., voter fraud and the 2020 election did not even crack the top 16. Inflation was the top issue, and just like in 1992, when James Carville quipped, "It's the economy, stupid," voters want to know what candidates will do to fix inflation and shrinkflation. They care about how much it costs to put food on the table, not grudge matches or revenge fantasies.
I know this is an unpopular opinion in some circles, especially for those who have basically given up on Trump winning over fears of a rigged election in November, but now is not the time to throw in the towel. It's time to double down on winning with issues that large swaths of voters care about.
My colleague Chris Queen wrote earlier today about Trump attacking popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp over the weekend: "He's a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he's a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy," Trump said.
Ok, we get it. Trump is still salty about Kemp not overturning the 2020 election in Georgia. A lot of Republicans are.
But how is this helping? Kemp has a 63% approval rating in Georgia (Trump has a 46% approval rating nationwide), and Trump needs Georgia—and Brian Kemp—if he hopes to earn 270 electoral votes in November.
As Chris noted, "Kemp’s popularity and clout were so strong that the GOP won every statewide office in that [2022] election. The only Democrat victory was in the Senate race, in which too many voters were skittish about football legend Herschel Walker, who was Trump’s handpicked candidate."
Understand this: Trump needs to win in November—and get control of the House and Senate—if he wants to fix voter fraud. Trump had the trifecta of the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2017, but for whatever reason didn't do anything to meaningfully make federal elections more secure. And he did nothing ahead of the 2020 election to prevent the Covid madness sweeping the nation, with states changing their voting rules on the fly.
If he wants a second chance at this, he's going to need Georgia and other battleground states.
The contest for Georgia's 16 electors has Trump leading by .08% in polls conducted since Kamala Harris was coronated. The most recent poll has Harris up by 1%. If Trump wants to win the Peach State decisively, he'll need to step up his game, which means not dumping on Kemp every time he enters the state. Sure, that plays well for the most committed Trump voters, who will vote for him no matter what, but he'll need more than his base to beat Harris.
Based on 270 to Win's electoral map, if Trump loses Georgia, he'll be 35 electoral votes short of 270, which means he'll need to pick up some combination of Wisconsin (10), Michigan (15), Pennsylvania (19), Nevada (6), and Arizona (11).
[Note: Several astute readers pointed out in the comments that S. Carolina should be solidly red and not blue. I apologize for the earlier error.]
Pennsylvania is the big payoff state in terms of electors. Trump currently leads there by 1.8 points, basically within the margin of error. If Harris picks Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her vice president, that could change the map dramatically. A recent poll showed that the Pennsylvania governor had a 55% approval rating. He drew 64% of independents in the 2020 election.
Look: It's okay to be upset about the 2020 election and to hate Brian Kemp. What's not okay is depressing Republican turnout in swing states by trashing popular governors or continuing to litigate 2020. If the goal is to win (and secondarily to ensure future election integrity), Trump must be laser-focused on taking down Kamala Harris, not his fellow Republicans. Right??
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