They are, for a given value of “enemy”.
And yet it’s Trump who expanded his family businesses in China, bragged about bringing jobs to China, and continues to praise President Xi. Funny, that.
2015? Al Gore is calling from 2000 reminding us that this current map goes back further 
. I’d say the only real changes since then are, as you said Florida and Ohio becoming redder, Virginia going blue, and Arizona and Georgia joining the purple Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. IMHO that means only 3 states (Virginia, Arizona, and Georgia) have flipped in the last quarter century.
True…though I’d add that Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana were considered swing states as recently as 2008, and are now firmly red (though some say there’s still hope for Iowa).
I remember this because the 2008 Obama campaign sent me and my wife to a neighborhood in Missouri (an hour from our Kansas house) to knock on doors. Obama only lost Missouri by about a percentage point.
One of the commenters to today’s Simon Rosenberg column, Daniel Solomon, is part of an organization called Field Team 6, actively working in Florida and other states to register Democratic voters. This morning, Solomon posted:
I’m having a tough time convincing some advocacy groups that Florida is now a swing state.
Republicans did us a favor by enacting the six week abortion ban, putting abortion (and marijuana) on the ballot. 80% of all women oppose. 30 electoral votes. Trump won the state by 3.2% in 2020. If we flip 2% we win. IMHO there may be enough disgruntled Republicans to do it, but just in case, most of the unregistered, and the more than 3 million “no party” are women, trending at 80%.
They turned us from a red to a purple state verging blue. Perhaps a million unregistered folks trend heavily Democratic. Register Democrats, save the world.
Crazy talk? Or onto something?
Solomon’s math is slighly off. Trump won in 2020 by 3.36%. Accordingly, one vote north of 1.18% would’ve won Florida for Biden – 198,481 votes out of 10,965,776 cast (excluding third-parties).
Sounds a tad too optimistic, but I agree the abortion referendum should make it closer than recent elections have been. It’s just such an expensive media market…but the Dems should definitely do GOTV ground game in Florida. Not as much as in Michigan and Arizona (and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), but some.
“… I hear you’re free on Wednesdays”
Bad news here.
Those who will love that quip are already voting for Biden. If it is a choice between two unpresidential candidates, Trump will be the swing voter choice.
The Commission on Presidential Debates wanted three presidential debates, and Biden is now proposing just two. Trump’s people will notice and use.
Polls show Joe won the 2020 debates. Negotiating new rules with Trump cannot help.
Lolol.
I have a really hard time imagining that people other than political junkies care about the number of debates, or that one missing debate is going to turn the tide of the election, or that any number Biden proposed would have been acceptable to “Trump’s people.”
Judging by news clips, I don’t think Trump’s debate skills have improved since 2020. I would be surprised if the scheduled two don’t get cancelled.
“Tough talk” quips like that are not to sway a swing voter that’s a reliable, every-election voter. It’s more a “get off the sideline” thing for don’t-often-vote types. The hit rate will be low, but could still be sufficient in the right areas.
Honestly, in May 2024, if you (a) fully intend to vote for president, and (b) not right now committed to vote for Biden, you’re almost certainly not a gettable vote for Biden. Small numbers matter, so if 1% of the so-described cohort vote for Biden in the right areas, it could help. But I don’t see there’s really much that can feasibly be done to draw uncommitted likely voters to the Biden camp. Perhaps the calculus is that the hardly-vote people will be a richer vein to mine.
I agree with all three of your claims. But if an election is close, everything matters.
Until today, three were scheduled. Nothing is now scheduled, although two are proposed.
If I was a Trump aide, I would advise him to set conditions for debating that Biden cannot agree to, such as the first debate being hosted by a right-wing network. That’s because Trump is bad at debates.
Prediction: If Trump testifies at his Manhattan hush money trial, he will debate. That’s because, in both cases, logic says to be quiet while inclination says to talk.
I think Biden has proposed terms extremely unfavorable to Trump:
(emphasis added)
Not being able to ramble on after the time is done, or interrupt Biden, would drive Trump absolutely bugshit, and I can’t imagine he’ll agree to such conditions.
This is strictly true, but neither candidate was committed to the Commission on Presidential Debates dates. It was more that the commission was holding three dates open and had venues arranged – they just needed the candidates to agree. That last part never happened.
On the one hand you’ve got a guy who tried to overthrow the government and has explicitly stated his desire to rule like a dictator. On the other hand you’ve got a guy who told a funny joke in a tweet.
Sure, “two unpresidential candidates.”
This kind of comparison illustrates why I don’t really believe in “the power of the swing vote” in the 2024 election. If a person is consistently taking hugely different things about both candidates, holding them up side by side, and treating them as equivalencies … than that person is almost certainly never going to come around to Biden.
“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds - That’s only because he doesn’t get them,” Trump wrote.
No surprise, he wants a studio audience.
Another (potential) advantage of this for Biden is that it completely cuts RFK Jr. out of the debates. I know it’s up for debate whether RFK pulls more from potential Biden voters or potential Trump voters, but I tend to lean toward the former.
Neither does Trump anymore.
Wrong. Nothing was scheduled, there were three proposed dates by a Commission which both candidates, for their own reasons, found unacceptable.