On its face Trump appears to be doing everything he can to lose this fall’s elections. He seems like his worst enemy. But if we think about it a bit, there is some method to his madness. What he is doing is shamelessly appealing to his base and to hell with everybody else. He figures that there is little he can do to win the majority of voters at this point. Their attitudes and votes are already baked in and unchangeable, except a few here and there. So his path to a second term lies with activating every last person in his base to vote, with a special appeal to white workers without a college education.

He figures if he can do that, while suppressing the vote for Biden, he can win on the thinnest of margins and once again prove the pollsters wrong. It’s a steep climb in my opinion.