- Joined
- Jun 28, 2020
For those wondering, this is the article (archive) Live Monitor is referring too. My question is, how many operatives did Clinton had in 2016? Trump won the state so it is worth noting if the Democrats have scaled down efforts to get what honestly should be one of their biggest pushes this year.IMO Trump should have just livestreamed a reaction video to the final DNC night with Hannity/Tucker, which would have just been them drinking cold drinks and lobbing cheap potshots, bad jokes, and quips at Biden and the DNC.
Would have easily cleared a million views in the first day or so, easy. And the boomers and blue-collars would love them for that.
Florida, Ohio and Iowa are relatively safe IMO. Trump might be able to get Minnesota if he plays the right cards, but I still think it leans blue.
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The Rust Belt and NC/Georgia is where attention needs to be paid. Arizona, maybe, but it's likely a harder uphill battle especially with McSally.
Important note is to see where the candidates spend their time (also keep an eye out for state polls, national ones are useless at this point):
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Speaking of state polls, keep an eye out on RealClearPolitics if you have not. They will update whenever a poll happens (at least most of the time, not sure why the Wisconsin being a tie between Biden and Trump is not showing up).
I believe that had Sanders won the nomination this year, he would have taken Arizona since he would actually excite potential Hispanic voters. As it is, I see as a toss-up that leans red this year. As for Iowa, I still think it will stay red even if by a smaller margin. It beat out both Texas - a likely and Ohio this year and I'm not sure if there will be a double digit swing back to the Democrats when the Midwest has been trending purple in the 2010s.Try to get a million first-generation, broke-ass dishwashers to take a shift off work to vote for Biden or Trump. not happening.
Sanders at least drew them to political action. They've got relatives in the Trump/Obama cages, they're not going to turn out for this round. AZ will probably be red.
edit to add; I wouldn't be so sure about Iowa. Most jobs there are packing plants, farming. That derecho wiped them the fuck out, after two years of economic battering from Trump (or that they perceive as from him) and they're not pleased.
Minnesota has a decent chance just because of how badly the riots damaged Minneapolis's economy and that the state has been trending increasingly purple since 2008. Trump needs to hit Minnesota hard and win it while the citizens are willing to listen to Republican alternatives. Doing so could turn it into a red-purple state and will continue chipping off the Blue Wall the Democrats made between 1992 and 2012.
The problem with COVID-19 is that unless you're on the right (and even then only a maybe), you are likely going to assume that COVID-19 is a fuck up on Trump's part. That has hurt Trump's job approval and he is only now starting to recover from that. I don't see the pandemic doing any good for Trump unless he starts hitting on how Democrats in states like New Jersey (which has the highest percentage of COVID-19 fatality) and New York failed to respond to it. Even then, he will also be hit with how the mostly Republican-controlled Florida has "failed" its citizens. Unless COVID-19 declines in death rate in Florida by the time election hits, I don't see it helping him. I still think Florida is the biggest question mark and I do not have a gut feeling either way. As Harvey Danger said, voters care about how they feel about the situation and most do not approve of Trump's handling of the pandemic.I have no idea about Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, I do think Ohio is very likely to go to Trump but it's always a swing state. Florida is another perpetual swing state but it also is one of the hardest hit states by COVID-19.
I think Michigan is still very much in play just because of how much Wilmer is hated and I also think Virginia has a chance of flipping red for similar reasons with Northam and how badly the Richmond area was battered by BLM. Trump is more likely to win Michigan than Virginia due to the fact that Wilmer is even more brazenly corrupt and openly detested than Northam is and because the DNC does not want to lose a Southern state that they spent decades turning blue.
I think Arizona is safely red for now but will definitely be a purple state in future elections, and I also think New York flipping red is very optimistic at the absolute best but I can see the GOP getting over the 40% threshold because of how bad Cuomo fucked the state and how bad NYC got battered by the pandemic and the subsequent riots.
Unless the voter turnout is extremely depressed within the wider NYC area and the voter base is extremely energized upstate, I do not think New York will be able to flip red. Same goes for the vote in Oregon, although I think Trump has a slightly better shot at winning Oregon than New York. Slightly.
The big ones to focus on are Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota.
Trump should also do what he can to get more ground game in Arizona, North Carolina, and Virginia in addition to Minnesota and the four key states he won in 2016. This would be both to keep the former three and possibly flip the latter one and make sure he wins the as many of the other five a second time.
Trump winning Minnesota is the kind of thing that can also be a motivating factor in the DNC and the corporate elites fully disavowing the Woke Left should Trump win 2020.
The Dems might win Iowa but it'll be close either way, so Trump should likely do some ground game there too.
Fair point with Michigan and Virginia. I still lean blue on both, but Michigan has a better chance because of what you said. As for Oregon, I noticed that we have not seen a single poll regarding it to my knowledge. I've wondered if it could be a swing state, but I do not want to get my hopes up. The best bet for conservative Oregon citizens would be to keep pushing for the state to turn red, which the riot could start pushing towards. The state I want to see flip the most is Minnesota for what you said and that it would be the first time in forty-eight years it voted Republican.
I have wondered what Republican's plans are to flip states that are solidly blue now in the coming decades. Up until Trump's election, I had assumed Republicans were simply trying to maintain lost ground, but the surprise win of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania made me think that maybe Republicans have an opportunity to re-align the country to where the Midwest and Northeast mostly vote Republicans while keeping most of the Northwest and the Southeast + Utah and maybe Oregon. The problem is, they need to get non-whites to start voting for them and it needs to start this election. If non-whites trend further blue, Trump will lose even if he picks up a percentage or two of the white only population (as the White Hispanics vote mostly Democrats anyway)