Democrats are getting nervous – and not just because their leading candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-V.T., is an avowed socialist who recently praised the brutal communist regime in Cuba.
It’s because President Donald Trump has just put more states into play… including two key states the left has long assumed to be safe Democratic territory for any candidate, even one as extreme as Sanders.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale revealed the plan to Republican senators this week, vowing to compete in the formerly blue states of Minnesota and New Mexico.
“They are more than ready for 2020,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-M.T., told Politico. “They’re going to be expanding the map.”
New Mexico has gone red just once in the last seven presidential elections, voting for former President George W. Bush in 2004.
In Minnesota, the history is even more daunting: The state hasn’t gone red since 1972, when they voted for former President Richard M. Nixon.
But Republicans who’ve seen the data and the strategy say the Trump campaign is up to the task in both locations.
“They’ve been working hard, whereas last time was kind of spontaneous, this time has been fully prepared,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-L.A., told the website. “They’ve got states, the pathway to victory that we all know they have, and they may be expanding the field some.”
There are no recent polls from either state. Absent an actual nominee, those polls would likely hold limited value anyway.
But the polls we do have should be reason enough to alarm the left.
A Minnesota poll released just weeks ago gave the president a 54 percent approval rating in the state’s suburbs, a core population that could swing the election.
Another conducted in October showed Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren all ahead of Trump in Minnesota… but all of them hovering only around 50 percent.
In a truly “safe” state, they would be well above that mark.
Yet they’re not – and the long-term trend in the Gopher State is even more concerning for Democrats.
After Barack Obama won by 10 points over John McCain in 2008 and 8 over Mitt Romney in 2012, Hillary Clinton barely held on in 2016.
Nearly 3 million votes were cast there in 2016; she won by just 44,000.
What’s more, a recent poll found half of the voters in Minnesota were against the impeachment proceedings, versus just 42 percent in favor.
Clearly, many people there may believe the president got a raw deal and might show their displeasure at the ballot box.
New Mexico has even less polling; but the polls in place show Trump with roughly 46 percent of the vote – within striking distance.
Even more alarming, a key “swing” district captured by the left in the 2018 midterms may be swinging back to the GOP as polls show a statistical dead heat in the state’s Second District, and with 13 percent still undecided.
Parscale’s map war is the latest move in a campaign that’s put Democrats on the defensive around the nation. And the Trump campaign is not only expanding the map, but also the demographics.
They recently launched a renewed effort to reach black voters, a group increasingly open to him given the combination of record low unemployment and historic efforts at criminal justice reform.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, White House aide and close advisor, said they have a clear message for African-Americans.
“You’re never going to get the votes you don’t ask for,” he told The Washington Examiner.
“Last time, it was, ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ Now, we’re going to show them what they’ve gained from President Trump and what more they can gain if they get four more years.”
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”