10
votes
Joe Biden campaign ramps upcampaign staffing and posts US electoral college map
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- Title
- Biden campaign ramps up staffing, focus on battleground states, sees a 'clear path' to 270 electoral votes
- Authors
- ABC News
- Word count
- 2192 words
The map.
While I believe Texas, Ohio and Iowa are nearly safe Republican states (although I presume the wording is intentionally lofty, also Texas is put at the bottom of the list), this isn't too unreasonable, and also acknowledges the states that Hillary won in 2016 should probably not be taken for granted either.
Anyway:
One of the things I underestimated in 2016 was the extent to which urbanization has radicalized rural parts of the country. It seems places like Iowa have just lost massive amounts of their young, educated people to places like Minneapolis and Chicago and what’s left is just the folks who couldn’t go. It was genuinely surprising how conservative and how old most of those places had gotten since 2008. Sometimes it seems like the only people past school age and under 40 are Hispanic, which can’t possibly help with the racism thing.
Here and here.
It's pretty crazy. This article touches on it a bit.
Ohio is certainly up for grabs for the Democratic party for a lot of races, but I don't think it's up for grabs in the Biden V. Trump matchup. The state has shifted from a bluish purple to a reddish purple in the last twenty years, but even outside of that Biden is a hard sell in a lot of key areas. If he can't win the Akron-Canton-Youngstown area he has zero chance of taking the state. The GOP doesn't sell there, but neither do the dems as of late. My home county on the other hand I'm convinced has flipped from blue to deep red permanently unless the Dems do a 180 on certain policy and rhetoric.
I think there's a huge and crucial difference between "winnable" which seems is this map, and "tipping point to 270". Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio are all extremely unlikely to be tipping point states--that state whose margin is the difference between 269 and 270 for Biden. If Biden wins those states, and polling is showing they are competitive this cycle, it would be because Biden is up nationally by 8-10 points. States like Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and (awkwardly) North Carolina are more likely to be that tipping point state.
Edit: I'd put Florida in that awkward zone where Democrats want it to be a tipping point state but it'll probably be a weirdo +4 R leaning Florida man anyway.
I think there is real value for political and cultural development to crush Trump and the GOP as decisively as possible. It's not enough to win this in a squeaker. We need to run up the score. The defeat needs to be so crushing that history and the world remembers the Trump administration as an aberration or an interregnum. That's the only way to make the GOP turn from this path they've taken. It's also the way to make it clear to institutional powers (like the police, military, national guard, federal bureaucracy, etc.) where the midpoint of the country is and how out of step Trumpism is from it, just in case they think there is some kind of secret, silent majority behind them.
Totally get that desire (I share it), but it's most important to win. It will be a repudiation of everything Trumpism represents to crush it, and that would let us pay down some of the debt that built up in the past four years.
Well the other aspect is that I think showing a large constituency for progressive policy will also push Joe Biden to be more progressive. It’s like the saying about how only Nixon could go to China. Biden’s a tribune for Reagan Democrat types. If they’re in the coalition for things like trans rights or immigration reform that’s going to be a BFD.
It’s kind of how LBJ was kinda racist and not particularly progressive his whole career and ended up being the signatory to the Great Society.