Does Biden Have What It Takes To Compete In North Carolina? How About... Florida?

In the video below, Tim Miller explains what everyone else has been explaining: what’s wrong with RFK Jr. Basically, he’s full of shit and a tool of Bannon. It’s hard to imagine that this “Tulsi Gabbard drag-king act masterminded by the Bannon Stone rat fuckers on the right” is drawing as much as 10% (or even 19% in one outlier) of Democratic primary voters in some polls. Yeah, I don’t like Biden either but Marianne is a much better protest vote choice— much better.

More interesting was a report by Michael Scherer and Tyler Pager yesterday about how the Biden campaign is talking about competing in North Carolina and possibly Florida. Florida used to be a swing state and maybe it can be brought back in that direction but… probably not by Joe Biden in 2024. North Carolina really is a swing state and Biden has a shot there. In 2020, Trump beat him but it was competitive:

• Trump- 2,758,775 (49.9%)

• Biden- 2,684,292 (48.6%)

On the same day, Thom Tillis was reelected— narrowly— over a weak GOP-lite Democratic candidate, Cal Cunningham:

• Tillis (R)- 2,665,598 (48.7%)

• Cunningham (D)- 2,569,965 (46.9%)

But, also that day… Democrat Roy Cooper was reelected governor with more raw votes— and a significantly bigger proportion of the votes— than either Trump or Tillis:

• Roy Cooper- 2,834,790 (51.5%)

• Dan Forest- 2,586,605 (47.0%)

Also that someday, Josh Stein (D) was reelected Attorney General against Republican Jim O’Neill, drawing more votes than Tillis and nearly as many as Trump.:

• Stein (D)- 2,713,400 (50.1%)

• O’Neill (R)- 2,699,778 (49.9%)

Stein is the Democratic candidate for governor next year and he’s running against unpopular MAGA extremist Mark Robinson, whose campaign is focus on homophobia and taking away women’s choice.

Biden campaign strategists are mindful that “Biden won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by less than a single percentage point. If he loses all three states in 2024, he can still win the White House by winning North Carolina and holding onto his other states… Since Biden announced his reelection effort, his nascent campaign… has spent about $1.6 million on television advertising with the DNC, according to media-tracking firm AdImpact. Of the money spent on state-specific television markets, about 12 percent has been divided between North Carolina and Florida, with the rest going to six states that Biden won in 2020 which are widely expected to be battlegrounds in 2024: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

“This would be the right call for President Biden,” said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) about the Biden campaign investing heavily in his state. “North Carolina is the fullback of presidential politics. Republicans have to win it to be president. Democrats don’t. But it’s critical for Democrats to keep it close because Republicans have to expend extraordinary resources and time making sure they win North Carolina.”

Both Florida and North Carolina require expensive advertising, and neither was considered a top-tier landscape for the party during the 2022 elections, when Republicans comfortably won statewide contests. Florida, in particular, has been the most expensive state for presidential campaigns in recent election cycles, given its size and multiple media markets.

Biden’s 2020 campaign and supporting groups spent more than $166 million on television ads in the state in the last six months of the campaign, according to AdImpact. The 2020 Biden campaign spent $47 million on ads in North Carolina, making it the fourth most expensive state for the campaign.

…“If the Biden campaign, by spending money early and putting some people on the ground, can get to the place where Republicans have to take Florida seriously, that is a massive move on the chessboard,” said Steve Schale, a Florida Democratic strategist who advises the pro-Biden group Unite the Country. “I also don’t think there is any world in which Florida went from a one point state to a three point state to an 18 point state in a couple of campaign cycles.”

Biden aides believe their efforts will be aided by other state-specific developments, according to people briefed on the plans.

Republicans in North Carolina are expected to override a veto from Cooper later this year to narrow the legal window for legal abortions in the state from 20 weeks of gestation to 12 weeks, while imposing new regulations on doctors performing abortions and expanded requirements for an additional in-person meeting with doctors before a patient undergoes either a surgical or medication-induced procedures.

Morgan Jackson, a political adviser to Cooper and other Democrats in the state, said “2024 is setting up to be referendum in North Carolina on abortion and that is a bad thing for Republicans. This kind of action is going to galvanize women. It is going to galvanize younger voters.”

Demographic trends in the state, including a rising share of college-educated voters, is also expected to help the party. Barack Obama won North Carolina during the 2008 election and then narrowly lost the state four years later, despite hosting the party’s nominating convention in Charlotte. Since then, the population has grown by about 10 percent, making it the 15th fastest-growing state. Nearly half of the state’s population was born elsewhere.

Since 2020, Republicans have outpaced Democrats in voter registration in the state, adding more than 6,000 voters while Democrats have lost more than 175,000 voters.

…Activists in Florida, in the meantime, are working to get two statewide ballot measures approved for the 2024 ballot— one to legalize recreational marijuana for adults and a second to reverse the recent six-week abortion ban, with rape and incest exceptions allowed up to 15 weeks, approved by DeSantis. Democrats hope that the initiatives will help reverse a dramatic drop in turnout among their voters in 2022.

A March poll by the University of North Florida found that 3 in 4 Florida voters opposed a six-week abortion ban without rape and incest exceptions.

It won’t be enough to flip Florida blue, but how do you think DeSantis’ newest legislation is going to go over, 3 bills (SB 266, HB 931, and SB 240) he signed yesterday “barring the state’s colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and limiting how race can be discussed in many courses?”