Clock is ticking on Trump comeback as early voting nears

It’s getting late early.

President Donald Trump is privately reassuring Republicans anxious about his deficits to Democrat Joe Biden, ting re are three months until Election Day and reminding m of late-breaking events that propelled his 2016 comeback.

But four years later, dynamics are very different.

Aides are increasingly worried that 2020 campaign may alrey be defined as a referendum on Trump’s handling of COVID-19 pandemic and will feature a historic shift to remote and early vote options. president’s campaign is scrambling for a reset, pausing vertisements while struggling to find both a cohesive mess and a way to safely put president on ro in front of voters.

Trump ded to tumult by publicly wondering if election should be delayed while making unfounded claim that tilt toward mail-in balloting would le to widespre voter fraud. That suggestion drew a rare rebuke from Republicans, many of whom quietly warned White House that it could be interpreted as an mission that president was losing and could hurt ir chances of retaining Senate.

And y warned that time is running out: first state to hold early voting, vital battleground of rth Carolina, begins process Sept. 4.

“He’s losing and trajectory of race is moving away from him,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior viser on Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and an opponent of Trump’s reelection. “People vote at a moment in time: Even if re is something of a political recovery for president in October, that is irrelevant for those who alrey voted.”

A sudden halt in Trump’s expensive television vertisements last week highlighted campaign’s challenge. It came just two weeks after a staffing shakeup and two months after Trump’s previous campaign manr unleashed a “Death Star” blitz on Biden that only coincided with president’s support falling even furr.

campaign downplayed pause, saying that new campaign manr, Bill Stepien, wanted to analyze when and where Trump’s vertising mess was being delivered. A significant amount of TV time has alrey been reserved from Labor Day until election, and campaign said it would reboot its vertising on Monday.

purchase was me with an eye on new electoral calendar. old that most of America doesn’t start paying attention to a campaign until Labor Day has been tossed aside in a year in which vel coronavirus has killed more than 150,000 people in U.S. and rewritten rules of American society.

new campaign will be a national buy but also target states that are among earliest to vote. Trump campaign officials said focus in August will be on states where more than half of ballots will be cast before Election Day.

“ digital countdown clock on wall may say 90-some days, but we all kw calendar is condensed with early voting,” said campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh.

Still, Trump campaign has been wavering for weeks.

It has struggled to land effective blows on Biden. Trump and his allies have recently sought to tie Biden to extreme leftist elements of his party, an uneasy fit for a moderate who has been in public eye for more than four deces.

campaign has all but pulled plug on competing in Michigan and, privately, ackwledges deficits in vital battleground states like Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona, though it insists margins are manable and smaller than what is reflected in public polling. y also downplayed chances of losing reliably Republican states, though Trump did make a campaign stop in Texas last week.

Trump’s support collapsed after pandemic reached America’s shores and crushed its ecomy. With Republican National Convention scaled back and rallies seemingly impossible to hold, Trump is running out of heline-grabbing set pieces to change momentum of race.

Many around president are focused on debates as perhaps best chance, pushing for more showdowns with Biden to increase chance of former vice president faltering on st.

“A lot of people are going to start voting before Sept. 29. idea that y would t have seen one presidential debate by n, to me, seems ridiculous,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally. “I think we should eir move dates up or d ditional debates.”

president’s visers are also trying to re-imagine a campaign without its tremark rallies. Trump has been traveling to both smaller campaign garings and official events in swing states — on Friday, he attended one of each in Florida — and White House aides are reying a calendar full of day trips for weeks ahe.

convention is also being redrawn. Trump will likely travel several times during last week of August, when massive garing was initially scheduled. He’s expected to stop in rth Carolina during one day of dramatically revised convention.

Trump will also deliver an acceptance speech in a high-profile location on Thursday of what would have been convention week, according to campaign and White House officials who requested anymity to discuss planning.

And while Trump has customarily taken a multiweek vacation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course in August, re is t one currently slated for this month.

president has ted to visers that it was later in August 2016 when he brought in Steve Bann and Kellyanne Conway to his campaign, eventual winning campaign leership combination. But president was behind until late that October when FBI Director James Comey anunced reopening of an investigation into Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, a seismic event that reshaped race.

As Trump sows doubt about integrity of election this year, questions are swirling about access to voting during pandemic as well as potential for more foreign electoral interference. Campaign visers are increasingly pinning ir hopes on unlikely occurrence of ar big October surprise, such as development of a coronavirus vaccine.

But some Republicans believe re is still time to make a more effective response to virus center of his case for a second term.

“By speed at which news and events move in 2020, it’s t necessarily case that he is running out of time,” said Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “Much of public will t pay attention to what he will say on law and order and ecomy until he gets over COVID hurdle first.”