Interesting piece by Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg over at Bloomberg about the Trump operation at 12 days out from the election. Here’s an excerpt that’s understandably getting the most attention:
“We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.
As the piece says, the Trump people know they’re losing. There’s not much room to expand their appeal beyond the traditional racist yokels, alt-right froggies, knee-jerk Republican jerks, etc., so the strategy is to demoralize the Democratic base and hope Putin’s psy-ops shop pushes something through WikiLeaks that actually sticks. It’s fascinating that they would straight-up admit that.