Nothing will be over in Pennsylvania until all the votes are counted, but it may be telling that one candidate in particular doesn't actually want the votes to be counted.
Donald Trump has been sowing doubts about election integrity for months, but in the last 24 hours he has stepped up his focus on the Keystone State specifically. On Monday, Trump railed against a Supreme Court ruling that allows extended time for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted. He also trained his disinformation rhetoric on the state's biggest Democratic stronghold, telling reporters, "I’m very concerned about Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is known for bad things happening with voting..."
What's been increasingly clear throughout Election Day is that the "bad things" that really have the Trump campaign worried turns out to be their GOTV operation—or lack thereof. In a stunning series of tweets, NBC's Peter Alexander has painted a picture of dismayed Trump campaign officials who somehow weren't prepared for Pennsylvania to be such a critical state and perhaps don't have the ground game they need in order to deliver a state that nearly everyone has been eyeing as the potential break point for the better part of six months.
Alexander later added this quote for someone with direct knowledge of the campaign’s efforts in the state: “When you bank your entire election on Election Day turnout, you have to ask people if they’re going to stand in line for two hours.”
But this isn’t simply coming from one reporter. As we noted Monday, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump went in search of the Trump camp’s ground game in Scranton this past weekend and basically came up dry. Scranton, in the Northeastern part of the state, could actually decide which way the state falls since Western Pennsylvania has been fertile ground for Trump while Philadelphia in the Southeastern corner of the state is undoubtedly pro-Biden.
MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, also reporting from Scranton on Tuesday, said that while Democrats had some 40 lawyers on hand to handle any election disruptions, she had yet to locate any GOP lawyers—which seems pretty strange since trying to litigate the election is basically the GOP’s entire strategy.
In the meantime, Philadelphia election officials decided they would simply livestream the counting of mail-in ballots since Trump is so concerned about it.
Let’s just say that whatever is happening for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania right now does not seem “ideal,” to borrow a quote from Trumpworld.