Donald Trump is hoping his scheme to derail the U.S. Postal Service will be enough to tilt the election in his favor, but it appears to be backfiring in key swing states that he must win in order to secure a second term.
As CNN’s Harry Enten noted on Twitter, front pages in six key battleground states all had stories about Trump’s post office sabotage.
Check out the front page of major newspapers in the six closest states Trump won in 2016. All had stories about the mail and voting. https://t.co/Xnddyt8IQMhttps://t.co/rq8TtlYnjahttps://t.co/oD38aDEwZahttps://t.co/yLuOn4YL0vhttps://t.co/NrU54fXF00https://t.co/Rgh25X93vx
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 15, 2020
The six states Enten highlighted were Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where major papers covered Trump’s plot to undermine the post office.
This is where the race currently stands in those key swing states via FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics:
As PoliticusUSA’s Jason Easley noted earlier, Trump’s attempt to derail the USPS seems to be backfiring from sea to shining sea as it’s receiving a growing amount of media coverage.
One basic rule of presidential campaigning is to not generate negative headlines simultaneously in all the states you need to win in order to secure an Electoral College majority – especially when you’re already behind in said states.
The perfect antidote for Democratic complacency?
Given the strong polling for Joe Biden throughout this campaign, there have been some concerns that Democratic voters would become complacent, as they did in 2016 when many thought Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Donald Trump.
But Trump’s post office scheme has Democrats all across the country – including in this writer’s swing state of Ohio – terrified that their vote won’t be counted this fall.
As a result, voters now plan to take extra precautions to ensure that their vote – no matter how they choose to cast it – will be counted.
Donald Trump’s war on voting rights with less than three months before the presidential election is already backfiring as it has turned Democratic enthusiasm up to 11.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.