Donald Trump like Hung Cao’s name, but that’s only because of envy

Donald Trump, as Barack Obama reminded us, is obsessed with, you know, size, which makes his comment about Hung Cao all the more phallic.

“I love his name, Hung Cao. I love that name. And that name alone should get you elected, right?” Trump said at a campaign appearance on Monday with Cao, the not-often-seen Republican Senate nominee in Virginia, as those on hand laughed, nervously.

Cao is challenging, in a manner of speaking, the Democratic incumbent, Tim Kaine, in the Nov. election.

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Cao hasn’t made it a point to do a lot in terms of campaigning on his own behalf, and has largely avoided having to share the stage with other politicians, skipping 12 of the 13 scheduled candidate forums in the Senate primary in the spring, and agreeing to just one general-election debate with Kaine in the fall.

It seems he thinks he’s running from ahead, when he’s very much not: he’s only within single digits of Kaine in one of the 10 most recent polls listed on FiveThirtyEight.com, and in that one, he’s down nine.

Nate Silver’s polling model has Kamala Harris ahead of Trump by 5.7 points in Virginia, so maybe Trump being side-by-side with Cao can move the needle a point or two.

And maybe his first name can boost him a tiny bit more, though that’s likely only going to move things with the subset of male voters with a certain kind of envy.

“You can win, definitely win, and we’re looking to win the state, and I think we will win the state,” Trump said. “We’re looking at polls that are showing us with a lead in this state, which is traditionally not necessarily for Republicans, but I’m not the average Republican, and neither are you.”