With just over a week to go before Election Day, President Trump is making his biggest bet: that the portion of the American electorate living between the blue states on the coasts knows what is in its best interest. He thinks these Americans know that their interests — economic, cultural, familial — diverge sharply from the interests of those who control most of the power in Boston, Seattle, New York, Silicon Valley, D.C. and Los Angeles.

This is not an ethnic or religious divide. It isn’t a difference in education or taste. It is fundamentally a choice between those who think it is okay to dictate to people how to live and those who believe it is better to leave people alone.

Trump has taken up the case for folks between the coasts, or in states at the margins. He’s counting on them for a second term, and counting especially on voters in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Turnout is going to be enormous. Which means, for the first time since I started following politics closely in 1976, a blowout in either direction is possible. Though the candidates don’t care about the popular vote, it still is useful to explain what is happening.

Trump not only maintains the allegiance he won from voters in 2016, but he has also motivated many people who haven’t voted before though long eligible to do so, or for the first time in decades. Old liberal hands say the massive crowds at Trump rallies don’t mean anything. They discount Trump’s direct appeal to the Black and Latino communities. They dismiss the way Joe Biden wilted after 75 minutes in the final debate and his promise that the United States would “transition away from the oil industry." They don’t want to talk about Hunter Biden’s business decisions.

And the pollsters, they’ve adjusted their models, right? They know to pay more attention to rural America? To listen to those who don’t normally vote, right? What about those long lines to vote? Well, they must mean America has had it with drama and is now ready for good old Joe. They must mean that voters approved of the mute button at the last debate. They must mean the unbalanced commentary is working! What other explanation could there be?

Trump is betting on something different: voters’ instincts. He thinks Americans want the country to lead the world on its terms. He thinks Americans want a strong military and that they don’t want to use it much. He thinks Americans like his “colorful” style and that they prefer a president who says a vaccine is weeks away to one predicting a “dark winter.”

These things matter in the center of the country. To be sure, that’s not a neatly geographic divide. Pennsylvania has a busy port. Florida has many. Michigan has an international border. The politics of the battleground states are all different and constantly changing.

Trump’s last debate was designed to remind: to remind everyone that Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972. That the Paris climate accords were an awful giveaway intended to impress Al Gore‘s “An Inconvenient Truth” faithful in America at the expense of jobs in America. That the Iran deal was a strategic disaster and its demise produced sweeping change for peace.

Trump is betting that his supporters — new and old — have grown accustomed to winning, the sort of winning that Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation will represent, and the sort of winning that the accession of Sudan to the Abraham Accords portends. And indeed, we like it. We love it.

Trump is betting that voters are smart. He reminded them Thursday night of why they sent him to the swamp. Biden’s promise that the nation would “transition away from the oil industry” added a dash of fresh absurdity to the claims of elite coastal expertise.

A very good night for the president, and a good start to the sprint toward the finish.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/24/with-just-over-week-go-trump-makes-his-final-bets/