Democratic strategist and pollster Mark Penn is out with a new op/ed in the New York Times in which he grapples with the reality that key voters in the critical states may well be swinging toward reinstalling Donald Trump in the Oval Office. The piece, entitled "Biden is Doing it All Wrong," argues that the president is overly fixated with appealing to his party's left-wing base, which is coming at the cost of alienating moderates. "If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America," Penn writes.
He offers a number of examples of this destructive phenomenon:
President Biden appears behind in all the swing states and his campaign appears all-too-focused on firming up his political base on the left with his new shift on Israel, a $7 trillion budget, massive tax increases and failing to connect on the basic issues of inflation, immigration and energy. By pitching too much to the base, he is leaving behind the centrist swing voters who shift between parties from election to election and, I believe, will be the key factor deciding the 2024 race...scared candidates are, in my experience, easily sold the idea that the Democratic base or Republican base is going to stay home in November unless they are constantly fed what they want to hear. One call from the head of a religious group, a civil rights group, a labor group and others (often called “the groups”) and fear runs through a campaign...The reality is that swing voters in battleground states who are upset about immigration, inflation, what they see as extreme climate policies, and weakness in foreign affairs are likely to put Mr. Trump back in office if they are not blunted...
...Unfortunately, Mr. Biden is not reaching out to moderate voters with policy ideas or a strong campaign message. He is not showing clear evidence of bringing in large numbers of swing voters in the battleground states at this point. Those swing voters look for fiscal restraint without tax increases, climate policies that still give people a choice of cars and fuels and immigration policies that are compassionate to those who are here but close the borders...Mr. Biden’s campaign has fundamentally miscalculated on Israel. Those Haley voters are strong defense voters who would back ally Israel unreservedly and I believe want to see a president who would be putting maximum pressure on Hamas to release hostages. By pandering to base voters with no choice, Biden is pushing the [Nikki] Haley vote to Trump and so his first instincts on Israel were both good policy and good politics. Eighty-four percent of independents support Israel more than Hamas in the conflict and 63 percent believe a cease-fire should occur only after the hostages have been released. The more Biden has pandered to the left by softening his support of Israel, the weaker he looks and the more his foreign policy ratings have declined.
Penn recommends "pushing back against the base rather than pandering to it," but is Biden capable of that? His operation seems to be run by people tugging him leftward, and the 'news' media tends to apply similar ideological pressure on him. Journalists, in many cases, represent the vanguard of the left flank of the Democratic base. It seems right that Biden constitutes the sort of "scared candidate" Penn writes about, and his campaign has good reason to be nervous at this stage of the campaign:
📊 @RacetotheWH polling average (5/11)
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) May 12, 2024
National
🟦 Biden 45.6%
🟥 Trump 45.6%
—
Swing States
• North Carolina: Trump +4.7
• Georgia: Trump +4.1
• Arizona: Trump +3.5
• Michigan: Trump +1.7
• Nevada : Trump +1.5
• Pennsylvania: Trump +0.5
• Wisconsin: Biden +0.4
—
EC… pic.twitter.com/BdMhq7d5Bg
Trump is ahead -- at least for now -- in six of the seven swing states, on average. Trump and Biden were literally never tied in the national polling average in 2020, with Biden consistently leading by between four and ten percentage points. The final polling average that cycle was Biden +7.2 percent, which overestimated his actual victory margin by nearly three points. If Trump over-performs his 2020 showing, potentially by a decent margin, there would be a few plausible paths for him to get to 270 on the electoral map:
Changing topics to the Electoral College. How does Trump get to 270? The answer is one of those things that is very simple and very hard. Win all his 2020 states plus GA and PA. Or win GA and AZ and one of PA-MI-WI. Lots of combinations. https://t.co/m19xUmmaIi
— Byron York (@ByronYork) May 11, 2024
The number of electoral votes in some states has changed because of the 2020 census. For example, in 2020 Trump won 38 votes for winning Texas. He will win 40 for winning Texas in 2024. Biden won 55 votes for winning California in 2020. He will win 54 by winning in 2024...[Trump] has to hold the states he won in 2020. That appears to be quite possible. The only state Trump won in 2020 that is on the RealClearPolitics list of battleground states is North Carolina, where Trump is ahead of Biden by 5.4 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls...When it comes to adding states, Trump needs to start by winning Georgia. That would take him from his 2020 total to 251 electoral votes. Then he needs Arizona. That would get him to 262. Trump is ahead of Biden in both those states in the RealClearPolitics averages, by 3.8 points in Georgia and 5 points in Arizona. At that point, Trump would be only eight electoral votes away from winning the presidency.
As York notes, all of Trump's 2020 states, plus Georgia, plus Arizona, plus (maybe) Nevada still wouldn't furnish enough electoral votes to put Trump over the top. So, once again, the importance of three midwestern states comes into focus. If Trump wins just one of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, there's a good chance he'll become the 47th president. Win more than one, and that's almost a lock. Go 0-for-3 and a loss is pretty likely. I'll leave you with this -- is Biden so afraid of his own base's radicals that he may make part of his convention virtual?
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Joe Biden’s top advisors are worried the Democratic convention could erupt in protests — so they’re pushing to move it semi-online https://t.co/QIyKl7MzIV
— POLITICO (@politico) May 10, 2024
