Where can Democrats go on the offensive nationally in terns of winning Presidential electoral votes?

[Tom Rinaldo]

Last edited Fri Nov 11, 2022, 02:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Having both Florida and Ohio shift red after being seen as the quintessential swing states for so long hurts. Iowa seems to have moved from purple to red as did Missouri before it. They all seem lost to us now in anything other than a major Blue Wave election year. Texas may yet evolve into a purple state, probably it will within a decade or so, but it's clearly not there yet and may not be for two or three presidential cycles.

The last major shifts toward the Democratic column were in Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. None are yet deep blue but Democrats remain highly competitive and probably favored in those states. Arizona is promising but still fragile. Same for Georgia except it is probably more red tinted than Arizona still. It's great that the Blue Wall is back for us in the Mid West and Pennsylvania, but it isn't quite as formidable a barrier to Republicans as it once was. Democrats, IMO, have less margin for error in assembling an electoral college majority than we did back in the Bill Clinton era

North Carolina obviously stands out to me as a State that Democrats need to pour more resources into. I think there is the potential for NC to vote almost as reliably blue as Virginia now does. The rest of the South stills seems like a huge stretch. Maybe we can claw our way back into contention in Louisiana, I dunno. Over the decades I've watched Democrats make inroads in the Mountain Time Zone region. Is there any hope for a place like Nebraska? How much of a pipe dream is a State like Kansas? Yes it once was blood red and mostly still is, but there are a lot of more moderate type Republicans there seemingly. Could it evolve to become more like Iowa once was, into a future purple state?

[onecaliberal]

1. Yes, yes. We definitely should go to NC, we damn near flipped that seat. Imagine if we had put more

Resources there.

[dsp3000]

4. I think what sank us there in 2020 was that the D candidate got caught having an affair or something

[onecaliberal]

7. That is what happened and it was days before the election. It didn't help that he cozied up to

The R in the race either.

[edhopper]

15. And yet

They vote for Trump.

[Atticus]

2. Every county in every state. We may not flip counties from red to blue, but if we can

peel off 3-5%, that could we in the state and its #@;&* electoral votes.

There are progressives everywhere, but where they are vastly outnumbered and they never see a Democrat "in the flesh", many do slide away with a "What's the use? No one cares!" attitude and they stay home on election day.

[sarisataka]

3. Let's phrase that differently

What states, and their Electoral Votes, should we concede to Republicans?

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. Point taken

I was supportive of Howard Dean when he was DNC Chair and launched his 50 state strategy. My core belief hasn't changed since then. I think though that the current health of the Democratic Party differs significantly from State to State, so the nature of the effort it will take to strengthen them will vary accordingly.

Strategically I don't think we should concede any Electoral Votes to the Republicans long term. In States where we currently are chronically weak maybe the best play is to work on building a strong youth organization, and putting an emphasis on reaching college students with an eye toward the future. Some States call for a long game strategy, but some others may be possible to move into the blue column by 2024 or 2028. I would think that pouring resources into strengthening a GOTV ground game apparatus can pay off quickly in NC, for example, much more so than in SC.

[usonian]

5. There are some high reward/risk states as mentioned in the OP and below

but there's also the long game, which has ALREADY paid off, and will continue to do so, IN EVERY STATE.

It's Generation "Z".
Great article by Thom Hartmann
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/10/2135066/-Has-the-Fourth-Turning-Begun

Today’s Zoomers — Generation Z — are the Founding Generation of the next Turning. They will reshape the world and carry that torch — like our first Founding Generation, the Civil War generation, and the Silent Generation that fought WWII.

And the Zoomers began that process in a big way this week. CNN’s exit polls from Tuesday showed that Boomers skewed 13 points toward the GOP. Gen X went for Republicans by 11 points.

But Zoomers saved the day, going for Democrats in this election by 28 points. Younger Millennials helped, going Democratic by 2 points.

Without the Zoomers showing up in this election, there would have been a red wave. Which is why Republicans are now calling to raise the voting age to 21.

So, let's focus on what's winnable in the short 2-year term, and continue to make gains everywhere -- which will lead to 50 winnable states.

[moose65]

6. NC for sure!

I had such high hopes for us after 2008, but then the Republicans took over our state legislature for the first time in 100 years, and it’s been a battle ever since. They have gerrymandered themselves to an almost supermajority, and now the state Supreme Court has flipped to 5-2 Republican. I look for them to re-draw the lines again next year. Ugh.

In Senate races, the NC Dem party keeps ignoring small towns and rural areas in favor of urban areas. I get that, to some degree, but the voter turnout in urban areas on Tuesday was horrible, too. NC still has a large population of rural Black voters in the northeastern part of the state, as well as the inland counties bordering SC. Some work needs to be done there, and the Dems need to realize that EVERY vote counts in Senate and Presidential elections.

Overall, I think the national Democratic Party made a mistake in writing off the entire South and essentially giving it to the Republicans in presidential and Senate races.

[Genki Hikari]

11. The National Democratic party did no such thing

Y'all just don't get how the DNC operates. They have zero to do with selecting candidates or funding campaigns.

ZERO.

NONE.

NADA.

ZILCH.

They never have.

STATE & LOCAL parties decide what candidates to run. State and local parties do the organizing and GOTV and all the rest for elections held in their state. Including for presidential, Senate and Congressional candidates. The DNC had ZERO to do with who was on any ballot as a D. That was left up to the states.

Funding for campaigns comes from various sources--DSCC, DCCC, and so on. THESE ARE NOT DNC GROUPS. They of course work with the DNC in some ways regarding a particular set of tech/organizing resources, but they are not under the DNC umbrella of organizations. They are independent of the DNC.

Really.

Without going to their site, tell me the names of the grass-roots organizing efforts the DNC is currently doing. Did you even know they were devoting resources to that?

This is the problem with too many Democrats. They "know" a lot of stuff about the party that just ain't so, and what is so about the party, they don't know.

[moose65]

13. Whew

I hope you don't get a nosebleed up on that high horse.

When I said "National Democrats" I didn't mean just the DNC. I also mean the DSCC and DCCC - the groups that actually control the money that goes to campaigns. However, the DNC also supports state Dem parties, don't they? Remember the days of the 50 State Strategy? We definitely need that again.

Here in NC, our last 2 Senate races have been very close, and could have benefitted from some help from those national organizations. The NC Dem Party seems content to sit around and act happy that they sustained the governor's veto from a Republican supermajority - by a single vote in the NC House. Also, there were way too many state house and senate seats where there was no Dem candidate, and that really doesn't help at all.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

9. Your analysis seems accurate to me.

I guess I would just say that things change over time. Before 2020, I wasn't really expecting Georgia and Arizona to be that competitive, for example.

[Elessar Zappa]

10. I think North Carolina should be a primary focus.

Also, work should continue in AZ and GA to turn it more blue come 2024.

[lees1975]

12. Both Arizona and Georgia need some shoring up, but both have the potential to be reliably blue

Arizona's population growth comes from the upper midwest, the northeast and the biggest source is California and the Northwest. It is still right at the top in terms of fast growing. The Latino population is also burgeoning, the central school districts in Pnoenix and Tucson is 70% Latino enrollment. Georgia is also growing, not only with a Latino population as well, but also from the Northeast, and the influx tends to be more Democratic.

North Carolina has many of the same characteristics. I think working all three states and helping the local, county and state branches of the party reach out, it could be turned.

I would also, perhaps surprisingly, say Texas. Same thing there, large numbers of Latinos, the state is on the verge of being a majority minority population with African Americans, Latinos and Asians outnumbering whites. Also, lots of in-migration there from California, the upper midwest and Northeast, with a lot of those people being Democrats. The state party needs to figure out how to turn all those constituencies out.

Some work to bring about party unity in Southeastern Wisconsin would lead to that state being reliably blue instead of a question mark. Racine and Kenosha County were once predominantly Democratic, but that shifted in 2016. The African American and Latino population there, added to the white liberals, is a majority. But the voter registration has tapered off. I knocked on doors there during the last two election cycles and they are larger than most of the rural counties in the state. If Democrats can win there, they can flip the state legislature, undo gerrymandering that is the only reason Republicans have a legislative majority, and make a difference. Looks good for 2024 as it is.

If we get what once was the bread and butter of the party back, the working class, that opens the door to winning in places like Ohio and Missouri.

[Sky Jewels]

14. North Carolina was the one that popped into my head first.

[Captain Zero]

17. We have to stay on it in Wisconsin.

Mandela Barnes lost there.
Lots rednecks in that state despite all the Dems in Milwaukee.

[Celerity]

18. Simple: GA, NC, AZ, WI, NH, NV, & 2 split EV districts: NE-2, ME-2. Also completely shore up PA, MI,

VA, CO and MN (preventative, do NOT allow MN to start down the IA, OH, IN, MO route) to make them all perma Blue.

The map this yields:



Longer term, a wild card: Once GA and NC are perma Blue, do the same to the much smaller SC. Move in liberals and TRULY activate the black vote in combuned numbers large enough to swamp and choke off the old school rural and urban peckerwood KKK crews. That completes the entire East and West Coasts as solid Blue, other than hopeless shithole FL in one small corner.

FL, TX, and the midwest OH, IA, MO, and IN are now (some for ages) lost causes statewide. FL and TX are ultra expensive fool's gold other than US House seats and state level legislature seats. The other 4 above are the same, save for Sherrod Brown, the last statewide Dem of true impact standing in all 4.

We have to fight like hell to keep MN (easier to stop) and WI (harder) from joining the shithole 'Heartland' (gag) white nationalist christofash Midwest nazification metatrend.