The Wall St. Journal reports “The latest Zogby Interactive poll, taken during the Democratic convention, shows John Kerry ahead in 13 of the 16 battleground states we track. That is his biggest lead — in terms of the number of states — since Zogby began conducting twice-a-month online polls for WSJ.com in late May. Moreover, his lead is greater than the margin of error in five of the states (including Pennsylvania), up from four states just before the convention. And Mr. Kerry took back narrow leads in Florida and West Virginia.”
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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November 1: A Late Assist For Harris From Mike Johnson
In a crazy-close presidential race that may come down to Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris is getting some late help, and not just from the racist comedian at Trump’s New York City rally, as I explained at New York:
As you probably know, weâre in the final week of a dead-even presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Pennsylvaniaâs 19 electoral votes being the most desperately sought prize by both campaigns. Team Trump is already having a difficult week in the Keystone State thanks to a crude racist joke about Puerto Rico that one of Trumpâs comedian buddies told at his wild Madison Square Garden rally, which is not going over well among the pivotal bloc of Puerto Rican voters in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now, Harris has gotten a helping hand in the same vicinity from none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, as NBC News reports:
“House Speaker Mike Johnson took a dig at Obamacare during an event in Pennsylvania on Monday, telling a crowd there will be ‘massive’ health care changes in America if Donald Trump wins the election.
â’Health care reformâs going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say weâre going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,’ Johnson, R-La., said in Bethlehem while campaigning for GOP House candidate Ryan Mackenzie, according to video footage obtained by NBC News.
â’No Obamacare?’ one attendee asked Johnson, referring to the law Democrats passed in 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act.
â’No Obamacare,’ Johnson responded, rolling his eyes. ‘The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.’â
The Harris campaign immediately jumped on his comments, noting that Johnson had promised “one of Trumpâs top priorities will be to repeal the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans.”
Health care is not at all an issue Trump wants Republicans talking about. The effort to repeal Obamacare was one of the less popular initiatives of his presidency and, not coincidentally, one of his biggest failures. Itâs also one of the areas where Harris has outpolled him. He added to his problems during the September debate with his rival when he could cite only âthe concepts of a planâ for replacing Obamacare despite having allegedly spent many years on his own yet-to-be-revealed proposal.
Worse yet, Johnsonâs remarks very strongly suggest two things that are potentially dangerous to Trump in the eyes of swing voters: (1) He plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, which likely means it would be rolled into a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill and steamrolled through to passage if possible, and (2) his partyâs designs on health-care policy are radical, meant to replace the regulations central to Obamacareâs coverage guarantees with âfree marketâ provisions almost certain to return the health-care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone old, sick, or poor. Johnsonâs rhetoric will also give Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that the last ârepeal Obamacareâ package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for poor people and a key part of the countryâs social safety net. Beyond that, Johnson seemed to to be telling Pennsylvanians a reelected Trump wouldnât care if his health-care plans made Americans unhappy, per NBC:
â”We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state. These agencies have been weaponized against the people, itâs crushing the free market; itâs like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so health care is one of the sectors and we need this across the board,’ Johnson said. ‘And Trumpâs going to go big. I mean, heâs only going to have one more term. Canât run for re-election. And so heâs going to be thinking about legacy and weâre going to fix these things.’âTaking a âblowtorchâ to health-care regulations that ensure coverage for preexisting conditions and limit price discrimination probably isnât what swing voters hope for in a Trump administration billing itself as offering a return to American greatness. And the Harris campaign is surely grateful that Trumpâs loyal congressional ally is making it known. Could that be the âlittle secretâ Trump cryptically said he and Johnson would reveal after the election? If so, the Speaker spilled the beans at the wrong place and the wrong time.
Note that Zogby has just classified AZ, CO, VA, and NC as “battleground states”. I thought these states were supposed to be RED. đ
PS: VA hasn’t gone Democratic in a Presidential election since 1964.
Very interesting if you look at this poll state by state.
Using WSJ definitions and expanding it, if you take “Tier I” Kerry battleground states (five of them MI, MN, NH, PA & WA) to be states where he is ahead above the margin of error, adding the electoral votes gives Kerry only 245. Still not enough to win. If you make another set of “Tier II” Kerry battleground states as states where Gore won and Kerry is ahead (OR, IA, NM, WI), then Kerry wins with a total electoral vote of 274. In other words each one of these 9 states is a Kerry MUST WIN, since any of these in the Bush column and Bush wins. OTOW, what is interesting is that there isn’t a single battleground state where Gore won last time and Bush is ahead now. I’m not a professional politician but it must be easier to convince someone to vote Dem again, than to get people to change their mind and admit they were wrong 4 years ago.
Still, although this proves it really is a ballgame,
Kerry has the advantage in turnovers and hopefully politics is like football….
The strategy should be to pound on the four Tier II states (and throw in Nevada (cheap), West Virginia(maybe?) and Florida GOTV), focus on the Tier I states and hope for the best in Missouri, Tennessee and maybe West Virginia.
But what about Colorado?
A lot of people in Ohio work/ed in industries at least tangentially related to Defense, so there’s that. The state has also been leaning right over the past few years – I think in part due to the flagging influence of organized labor as the jobless rates grow.
Put it another way: Bush leads is 3 of 16 swing states.
1. Bush’s lead in NV is 0.6% and the WSJ paints it bright red!
2. Arkansas is a swing state?
3. What’s up with Ohio? Did all the unemployed move to Illinois?