MESSAGING: Trump’s two-minute final ad: “The Argument for America.”

This plays now like a more generic populist attack on “the system” and its corrupt self-dealing administrators, embodied most notably by Hillary Clinton. This is exactly how you should frame your closing argument if you’re a candidate like Trump, who’s carting around tons of baggage. It’s not about electing him, supposedly, it’s about stopping them. His voters already tend to view their vote less as support for Trump than as opposition to Clinton. He’s encouraging that impulse here: Go to the polls and vote against business as usual in Washington. In the end, the candidate who wins will probably be the candidate who succeeded more at turning the vote into a referendum on his or her opponent’s fitness for office. This is Trump’s last, best effort.