Expert: Trump playing ‘whack-a-mole’ in attempt to salvage states he should be winning

A top political analyst says President Donald Trump seems to be flying blind as he heads toward an electoral loss.

Dave Wasserman, the U.S. House editor for the Cook Report, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that demographic changes had turned formerly reliable red states into competitive congressional races, and that same dynamic had made Trump's re-election campaign even more challenging.

"Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina, if you talk to the Trump data people they'll hang their hat on the gap getting narrower in those states," Wasserman said. "What's happening is that a lot of the older voters who, for lack of a better term, are exiting the electorate. They are disproportionally registered Democrats who are conservative and voted for Trump in 2016. Yes, the registration gap is narrowing, fewer voters are registering to vote this year than did in 2016 because we're in a pandemic. That doesn't mean the states are getting more favorable to Trump."

Georgia and Texas appear to be up for grabs in the the presidential race, which Wasserman and host Joe Scarborough could hardly believe.

"The fact that President Trump is advertising in them is a sign that he doesn't understand the electoral map," Wasserman said. "He's got to recover nationally, close this gap by four points to get the presidential margin nationally within, you know, three to four to five points to have a shot. Right now he's down about eight, and the fact that he's up in Ohio and Iowa, states that he carried by eight and nine points in 2016 says that, you know, he's trying to play whack-a-mole here. He needs to get those states in better shape before he competes in the tipping point states, the six states he won by less than five that's where the presidential race will be decided."