[He needs to be pressured into this? That's not a good start for my cell phone. Look: Biden has no choice but to be aggressive--he must win 3+ states that Trump won in 2016.]
In a series of phone calls, Democratic lawmakers and party officials have lobbied Mr. Biden and his top aides to seize what they believe could be a singular opportunity not only to defeat Mr. Trump but to rout him and discredit what they believe is his dangerous style of racial demagogy.
[So it's not just Joe. It's his campaign staff.]
This election, the officials argue, offers the provocative possibility of a new path to the presidency through fast-changing states like Georgia and Texas, and a chance to install a generation of lawmakers who can cement Democratic control of Congress and help redraw legislative maps following this year’s census.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, though, is so far hewing to a more conservative path. It is focused mostly on a handful of traditional battlegrounds, where it is only now scaling up and naming top aides despite having claimed the nomination in April.
[It is unconscionable that they are NOW just getting boots on the ground in Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, the "traditional battleground" states. They should have had those states LOCKED DOWN by now and be moving to "scaling up and naming top aides" in the "new path" states.]
At the moment, Mr. Biden is airing TV ads in just six states, all of which Mr. Trump won four years ago: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. The campaign included perennially close Florida only after some deliberations about whether it was worth the hefty price tag...
[I understand, I understand, I understand. We start with the burden of proof. We must claw back states and their electoral delegates. But to include Florida only after "deliberations"? You had to deliberate about Florida! Florida cost Al Gore and HRC both! That is ridiculous.]
The campaign’s reluctance to pursue a more expansive strategy owes in part to the calendar: Mr. Biden’s aides want to see where the race stands closer to November before they broaden their focus and commit to multimillion-dollar investments, aware that no swing states, let alone Republican-leaning states, have actually been locked up.
[1) They don't believe the polls, either. They reject the notion that people have made up their minds about Trump. That is what "Democratic lawmakers and party officials" told them on those calls. The campaign said when Trump was down 10+ that they believed that was his "low point" and that they expected the race to tighten. 2) They are running this campaign by the book--except that the book tells them to have flooded the traditional battlegrounds by now, and they haven't even done that--3) They are running this campaign by the book and the book is outdated, irrelevant, to 2016 and 2020. How can they not see that?
4) Expectations can make reality. If you believe swing states are not locked up then acting on that belief they will not be locked up. If you "want to see where the race stands closer to November" before committing then the race is going to tighten! Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum and into it Trump will rush.]
Yet they are increasingly bumping up against a party emboldened by an extraordinary convergence of events. Mr. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, his self-defeating rhetorical eruptions and the soaring liberal enthusiasm — reflected in the sprawling social justice protests and Democrats’ unprecedented Senate fund-raising — have many officeholders convinced they must act boldly.
[YES! This is an "extraordinary" time—and they are consulting the book on how it was done in 1992 or 1976 or 1960 or 1948.]
...
“Trump’s abominable presidency, especially in the context of the total failure to confront coronavirus, makes Texas very winnable,” said Representative Filemon Vela, an early Biden supporter. He said he is “getting bombarded” with pleas from Texas Democrats who are similarly convinced the state could turn blue with a substantial commitment.
Mr. Vela, who represents a long stretch of South Texas, said he had repeatedly made his case in recent weeks with Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon. He argued that the former vice president’s strength with Black voters and suburbanites, and his ability to shave the party’s rural losses, gave him the party’s best chance in decades to claim the state’s 38 electoral votes.
[Dillon ran Beto's campaign. After winning Super Tuesday Joe changed campaign managers and picked Dillon.]
Some Democrats remain chastened by 2016, when there were similar bursts of optimism, and believe this moment is so turbulent, and Mr. Trump so willing to break through political guardrails, that the party should not grow overconfident. The president retains strong support among Republican voters, and is hoping a backlash to the defacing of statues will allow him to successfully portray Democrats as radicals.
[ 1) It is not "overconfidence" to be aggressive, it is the reality of what we must do. 2) Act as if there are no guardrails with Trump because there AREN’T. 3) If you are tentative about "turbulence," things will get more turbulent 4) If you worry about backlash over statues, then you’re insane. Statues! Trump is trying to make statues an issue out of desperation. I have written a memo to Brad Death Star Parscale encouraging statues. “Statues are the real silent majority, Brad.” Statues are for graveyards. SEIZE THIS TIME! DO NOT SHY AWAY!]
Texas is not the only traditionally conservative state agitating for attention from Mr. Biden’s campaign. Georgia Democrats are especially eager for him to compete in the state because it has two Senate seats up for grabs this year. More consequential, they argue, 2020 could kick-start a long-term realignment, allowing the party to build an enduring electoral advantage.
“The Sun Belt expansion is what will drive the next 30 years of elections,” said Stacey Abrams...
The pressure on Mr. Biden, however, is not coming just from the South, where the virus’s resurgence has put Mr. Trump and Republican governors on the defensive.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is pushing the former vice president’s aides to compete in his state, a longstanding political battleground that, after Mrs. Clinton’s dismal showing, many Democrats had concluded was out of reach.
[They concluded it was out of reach and now that expectation has conditioned their action and will make their conclusion reality. OHIO! They wrote off OHIO! Ohio was the state that put the swing in swing state! "Nobody has ever become president without winning Ohio since..."]
“Ohio was a bellwether until 2016,” Mr. Brown said, arguing that Ohioans, unlike Sun Belt voters who’ve backed only Republicans, can be lured back because they’ve long voted for Democrats like Mr. Biden.
[I have always liked Senator Sherrod Brown.]
Mr. Biden’s advisers point out that he needs only 270 electoral votes to win and that remains their first objective. Their caution reflects the sobering possibility that, in the end, none of the conservative-leaning states will flip to Mr. Biden, and that his lead in Florida and the critical Midwestern states is tenuous.
[1) Right? “Let’s just make sure we get California, New York, Massachusetts, and D.C. locked down before going crazy on exotica like "Florida," "Ohio," and "Texas." Texas! Oh my God you're dreaming!” That is a fair caricature of their thinking. It is defeatism. 2) Reach-exceeding-grasp axiom. Counter: If you reach and grasp a low prison sentence for your client as a "win" and the prosecutors would have offered your client probation you are left grasping your dick. 3) Why do you have to "deliberate" before committing to Florida? Why did you write off Ohio? The path to 270 can end-around Florida and Ohio but it is a most circuitous path indeed without Florida. FLORIDA IS MUST WIN! 4) Their statement, "270 First," is illuminated by their actions, and inaction and revealed to be "270 First, Last, Only." They entirely reject as "overconfidence" the reality that they have this WON, that the only issue is whether they can make this a transformative election. They are "sobered." One of them said about Lincoln Project's ads, "They're not my cup of tea." Bitch, whether it was a woman or man who said that, bitch, this ain't no tea party! You need to get you some liquid courage!]
“When you look under the hood, we are ahead in the majority of the battleground states, but we expect them to tighten because these are battleground states in a pretty polarized electorate,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said in an interview.
[It was she who said it. Joe, Mr. President sir, FIRE DILLON!]
In addition to the pressure to go on the offensive, she’s also being warned not to lose sight of potentially vulnerable blue states...[like] Nevada.
[Mr. President, can you play defense in this election and win? You have to win 3+ states that Trump won to get to 270, is that the math that you understand, sir? Okay, then FIRE DILLON!]
While Mr. Biden’s aides assess the landscape, though, Mr. Trump is signaling where he thinks the race is headed.
Last week, the president spent just over $150,000 on television ads in Michigan, where polls have him significantly trailing, while he poured over $1.3 million into commercials in Georgia and over $600,000 in Ohio, where surveys show a dead heat, according to the firm Advertising Analytics.
[Three states Trump WON in 2016. Ms Dillon, Biden campaign, President Biden, as you "assess the landscape" what do you make of Trump spending money in three states he won? Is that not wise defensive strategy? (It is.) Does it not show in addition that he thinks his hold strategy is faltering in those states? (It does.) That you, who must have a GRAB strategy, can, therefore must, grab at Michigan, Georgia, and Ohio? (Yes.)
No state offers as big a temptation, and potential payoff, as Texas...
[Texas does not tempt me just yet. It is so hugemongous that the ad buys there would drain just about any campaign. Going into Texas with anything like what would be required reminds me of R.E. Lee's decision to invade Pennsylvania. Bold, thrilling, outside the box, ultimately disastrous, the "high water mark of the Confederacy." I would wait until "closer to November" on Texas.]
Recent Texas polls show a close race, with neither candidate leading by more than the margin of error.
Representative Joaquin Castro said Mr. Trump’s turn toward racial politics only made the state more alluring for Democrats.
“In Texas you have a very diverse group of voters who reject that kind of message and approach,” said Mr. Castro, predicting that Mr. Biden “could do better in Texas this time than some of the states that have been considered swing states for a generation.”
[Congressman, we're not sippin' on Texas tea just yet. Well, they reject the unconventional wisdom, which is reality this year as it was in 2016, they see no new path, there is no new path in the book whose first edition was published in 1948 and was updated last in 1996, they stare optimism in the face and they blink, they are afraid of tsunamis—they’re afraid of their own shadow—and don’t want to get wet from backwash, they prefer calm seas and the tried and untrue book; it is a blue ripple that the candidate and his staff are after, not a blue tsunami. The boyz and gurlz at LP will take care of the tsunami.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/us/politics/trump-biden-2020-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
