The staff at progressive web site The Daily Kos sees a Trump ad buy in Ohio, won by Trump in 2016 by 8 points, as a signal that Trump has already lost:
So they’re spending money to shore up Ohio, which is for presidential election purposes an irrelevant state! It’s as if Democrats spent money playing defense in Nevada, which Hillary Clinton won by 2.4% in 2016. Because if we lose Nevada (or Minnesota, another close 2016 state), we’ve already lost enough other states to call it a day.
Or to put it another way, Trump’s problem isn’t Ohio. His problem is that his national numbers have tanked, and because of that it’s potentially putting reach-states like Iowa, Ohio, and Texas in play. But Ohio isn’t going to cost him the election. It’ll be the seven battlegrounds that will fall to Biden long before—and by a bigger margin than—Ohio ever will.
So why spend money on such ads in Ohio?
So there are two options: The first is that Trump is dictating where money should be spent. It would be just like him to assume he knows more than the experts and usurp their judgment. It’s easy to imagine Trump seeing a poll showing him narrowly losing Ohio and panicking, then ordering his campaign to go on the air in a state that won’t be deciding who wins or loses.
That theory fits in with the kind of campaign Trump is running: one based on his own prejudices, score-settling, and whatever else his lizard brain demands. It’s the kind of campaign that thinks mocking Biden for wearing a mask is effective when 72% of Americans agree on the importance of wearing a mask. It’s a campaign build on getting cheers from the QAnon deplorables, not on winning the actual votes he needs to win an actual election.
The other option is that his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is actually bad at his job. It’s not as if Trump has ever surrounded himself with the best and the brightest. So it’s not a stretch to think that Parscale is just another in a long list of failures inside Trump’s orbit.
Personally, I think they have to dig a little deeper in the swamp. The Trump Campaign has an amazing amount of money for a campaign that appears to be going down to defeat. By buying ads in Ohio, they’re transferring some of that money, sent by loyal donors, from their coffers to someone in Ohio. The Daily Kos staff might want to consider following the money.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out to involve firms under the influence of the Trump family?
Odder things have happened in politics. I’m not even sure it’d be illegal. But I’m guessing the fees would be steeper than usual.
