Morning Joe weighs in on Trump’s Florida ground game, which is pretty much non-existent, saying it’s absolutely staggering:
Trump is making a big mistake in Florida. … @JoeNBC: His ground game is 'absolutely staggering.' https://t.co/z7TJWFD4XI
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) September 2, 2016
Chris Cillizza puts the primary vs the general in context, pointing that Trump will need to get almost 4 times the votes he got in the primary in order to win. In the primary Trump got around 16 million votes. In the 2012 general election, Romney got 60 million and he lost the election.
The point is, as Cillizza argues, is the one thing they know about getting people to vote in general elections is you must have a ground game in order to convince enough people to come vote for you.
Now Trump, I think, doesn’t have a ground game in Florida because he doesn’t think he needs one. He acts like cult leader who thinks everyone is just going to come out and vote for him on election day because they think he’s so amazing or something.
Now who knows, maybe it will work. Trump has very high name recognition. But people knowing who you are and actually coming out to vote for you, especially when the inconvenience factor might be high because of long lines, is two different things entirely.
And as they pointed out, not everyone is a hardcore supporter. There will be many who are on the fence that need a push, one way or the other, to decide on who they are voting for.
So I guess we’ll see. If Hillary wins this year, none of us will be surprised. And the lack of a ground game by Trump will be one of the big things to blame for a Trump loss.
Of course if he wins, the he will hail himself as the best campaigner ever.