Donald Trump hasn't been able to land any particularly effective attacks on Kamala Harris since she became the Democratic nominee, and he almost seems to have given up trying.
The former president has limited himself on the campaign trail to giving interviews over the phone or at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and his TV advertisement spending has been largely limited to Georgia and Pennsylvania – which Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton argued is a disturbing sign of things to come after the votes are counted.
"You will notice that the Trump campaign is only competing in Pennsylvania and Georgia," Parton wrote. "All the other swing states are apparently being left to their own devices. This is surprising, to say the least. They do have less money to play with than the Democrats but you'd think they'd at least try to hedge their bets. But the consensus is that they have decided that if they can hold all their 2020 states they will put all their money on picking up those two states which will bring them to exactly 270."
That strategy requires that Trump holds onto North Carolina from 2020, but Parton said the campaign's focus on preserving the narrowest pathway to victory in two states where allies are already laying the groundwork to contest this year's results gives away the game.
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"If they lose either one (or N. Carolina) that's the ballgame," Parton wrote. "Just as likely they're really just planning on a post-election legal challenge in any or all of those states, claiming that the Democrats stole the election. You can certainly bet they'll do it in Pennsylvania and Georgia where they are already plotting with local officials. Trump himself has said repeatedly that 'our primary focus is not to get out the vote, it is to make sure they don’t cheat.'"
Trump tried but ultimately failed to overturn his 2020 election loss, and he and his allies have been indicted on multiple charges related to the wide-ranging scheme – which culminated with the attack on the U.S. Capitol that has resulted in the prosecutions and convictions of hundreds of his supporters.
"If they can find a way to throw the election to the House, as they wanted to do in 2020, they will win, and I kind of suspect that Trump would actually prefer to do it that way," Parton wrote. "It's the ultimate power play to make the Democrats lose through a post-election ploy that's engineered by Trump and his cronies. In his twisted mind, I think that would even validate his Big Lie."
In the meantime, Trump is going through the motions on the campaign trail while already laying the groundwork to question a loss that seems more likely with Harris as the nominee instead of president Joe Biden.
"All of this probably explains why Trump isn't really bothering to campaign much," Parton wrote. "He'll spend some time in Pennsylvania and Georgia and make some perfunctory stops in some of the other swing states just to keep it close enough to contest. He'll keep doing right-wing media, the purpose of which is as much to keep his followers charged up about the alleged stealing as anything else. But unless he wins those two big states, which he might, he's preparing for the post-election Big Lie 2.0."
"He's old and tired and at this point," she added, "I think he'd actually rather whine than win."
