The Democratic National Committee is ready to go with millions of dollars in presidential battleground states Donald Trump won in 2016—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona—CNN reports. Two of those states, North Carolina and Arizona, will also feature as Senate battlegrounds with Republican incumbents.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez told CNN the organization is "making historic, early investments to lay the groundwork for our eventual nominee to win in 2020. […] We are taking nothing for granted as we work to make Trump a one-term president and win up and down the ballot in 2020." To that end, they're pouring unspecified "multi-million dollar" chunks into those states in what they call "The Battleground Build Up 2020."
That puts blue states—New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Nevada—out of it for now, though other sources of funds have been going into those states, as well as Ohio and Iowa that flipped from voting for President Obama twice then flipped to Trump. The DNC doesn't want to be caught flat-footed in the states that should be competitive, so it’s sending staff and opening offices now. That will bolster state parties, and allow them to "dramatically increase the immediate scale of their coordinated organizing programs and ensures the eventual nominee and the coordinated organizing program will inherit the nuts and bolts infrastructure to scale their organizations quickly," a DNC spokesman told CNN.
Without a primary to worry about, Trump has been spending millions in these states, along with traveling back frequently to relieve his glory days of 2016 in unhinged rallies. Whether his presence in the states helps or hurts him ultimately won't be known until November, but it's a good thing that the DNC is prioritizing them early.