MAYBE THE TRUMP REELECTION CAMPAIGN IS GOING ABOUT THIS ALL WRONG

There's an op-ed in The New York Times today by Liz Mair, a right-wing Trump critic. Reviewing the results of this week's Kentucky gubernatorial contest, Mair notes that the president seem to be very weak as a "closer" for Republican candidates in tight races. One paragraph in her op-ed stood out for me.

On the eve of the election, President Trump descended on Kentucky for a pro-Bevin rally. Between the available public polling and the Trump campaign’s own data coming out of that rally, the rally should have pushed Mr. Bevin to re-election. But it didn’t.

The link in that paragraph goes to this tweet, from Trump's campaign manager.

Data from tonight’s Kentucky rally:

✅ 27,285 voters identified

✅ 28% voted once or less in last 4 elections (14% in zero)

✅ 23% Democrat

✅ Nearly 100% from Kentucky

Big numbers to help @MattBevin win four more years as the governor of Kentucky!

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) November 5, 2019

Parscale posts a tweet like that after every Trump rally..



The goal, clearly, is to acquire contact information from people who never or rarely vote, or who might not otherwise be identified as potential Trump voters (perhaps because they're registered Democrats), then bombard them with targeted ads and get-out-the-vote efforts until they show up at the polls.

Smart observers, like the Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman, think this has the potential to work.

Another reason Dems shouldn't extrapolate 2018 into 2020: by my math, there were roughly *52 million* eligible non-college whites who didn't vote in 2018 vs. only 13.7 million eligible college whites who didn't vote.

There's plenty of upside for Trump, esp. in Upper Midwest.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2019

But what if it doesn't work?

Obviously, it was Matt Bevin's campaign and not Trump's that had the job of turning those rally attendees into Bevin voters. It's quite possible that they were never going to be Bevin voters because their attendance means they like Trump -- it doesn't necessarily mean they like Bevin. And the Trump campaign's plan -- to harvest the data and court these infrequent voters over a long period of time -- isn't the same strategy as holding an Election Eve rally and hoping the enthusiasm generated will result in a vote the next day.

But you'd think the rally would have had some positive impact on Bevin's numbers. Apparently it didn't. It's quite possible that there are a lot of MAGA-heads who want to go to a big MAGA pseudo-rock concert and wallow in MAGA-tude, but simply aren't in the habit of voting.

Lots of Americans aren't in the habit of voting. Maybe Parscale's brilliant plan to turn non-voters into voters will work. But what if the Trump team can't get more than a handful of these people out to the polls because they just don't do voting?

It's clear that the Trump campaign has no intention of trying to broaden Trump's appeal to voters in the ideological middle. Everything will be about reaching people who like Trump just the way he is. I'm sure there are millions of voting-eligible adults who can theoretically be brought to the polls on Trump's behalf.

But if they don't care about voting -- or if they don't bother to vote because they believe no "real American" could possibly dislike Trump and Trump is clearly on his way to a landslide victory (a message they'll hear if they're fans of the right-wing media) -- then Trump is screwed.

Let's hope.