A potential hole in Democrats’ 2024 “blue wall” exposed a path to electoral victory fraught with close races as the GOP set its sights on forcing the issue.
Familiar states made the top of the list of Democratic Party priorities looking toward November as leading figures within the ranks readily contradicted their optimistic sales pitch about President Joe Biden’s performance with a tempered outlook of the electoral map.
In speaking with The Hill, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Chair, sought to sell improving numbers in several key states dubbed the “blue wall” as a lock for a Biden re-election.
“It was critical in 2020, it was critical in ’16,” she said while touting, “The CEO of U.S. Steel has called in a manufacturing renaissance. We’re bringing jobs back. Basically, the Biden administration is doing everything that others — including Donald Trump — have talked about but were never really serious about doing.”
“President Biden is aiming right at the middle class: particularly, bringing jobs home. Rebuild America. You tackle costs, you take on the drug companies. Made in America,” added the senator.
However, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk eyed one glaring issue that could lead toward toppling that wall as he pointed at a concerted effort to alter Nebraska’s electoral apportionment.
“This entire argument assumes Nebraska will NOT pass winner-take-all this year,” wrote Kirk on X as he singled out GOP politicians in the state. “Nebraska can block Joe Biden’s most likely route to the White House…Nebraska Republicans have a chance to be heroes. Encourage the governor to force this issue and call for a special session to get this done.”
THE HILL: Top Democrats confident ‘blue wall’ in Midwest will save Biden
“Top Democrats acknowledge … that winning in Arizona and Georgia will be tough given Biden’s low approval rating. But Democrats are counting on what’s called the “blue wall” in the Midwest: Michigan,…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 8, 2024
Based on 2020 figures, such a change in Nebraska would have given then-President Donald Trump one additional electoral vote. Including victories in Georgia and Arizona, both conceded by Democrats to be too close to count on in 2024, would still leave Trump 10 votes short of the 270 threshold.
Keeping that in mind, Democratic strategist Steve Schale remarked to The Hill, “Generally, the most reasonably [sic] way to predict future voting behavior is to look at past voting behavior. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin are all states that, by and large, we’ve done pretty well in over the years — 2016 being the outlier there.”
A flip of any one of those states, of which Trump had won all three in 2016, would be enough to send Biden out of office when accounting for the other victories the GOP candidate had had against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Schale admitted that the battleground states had a long way to go to be truly blue.
“I’ve said that to my Democratic friends a lot about Arizona and Georgia. Obviously, Biden won those states, and I think there are a lot of reason to feel good about those states moving into the next decade or two decades, but they’re not going to be blue states overnight.”
Still, legislators from the left remained optimistic about their “blue wall” that relied on an impression of a strong economy for Americans continuing to struggle against the ravages of inflation, a factor experts anticipated would remain high.
“You couldn’t ask for a better narrative than what this administration and this president have done reshoring manufacturing, and if they tell that story in those states, I think things will go very well,” said New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich.
Likewise, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch admitted “It’s going to be tight.”
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Author: Kevin Haggerty
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