With President Donald Trump’s poll numbers sliding in traditional battlegrounds as well as conservative-leaning states, and money pouring into Democratic campaigns, Joe Biden is facing rising pressure to expand his ambitions, compete aggressively in more states and press his party’s advantage down the ballot.
In a series of phone calls, Democratic lawmakers and party officials have lobbied Biden and his top aides to seize what they believe could be a singular opportunity not only to defeat Trump but also to rout him and discredit what they believe is his dangerous style of racial demagogy.
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.
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.
At the moment, Biden is airing TV ads in just six states, all of which 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, and when Trump’s struggles with older populations made it clearly competitive, according to Democrats familiar with their discussions.
The campaign’s reluctance to pursue a more expansive strategy owes in part to the calendar: 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.
Yet they are increasingly bumping up against a party emboldened by an extraordinary convergence of events. 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 fundraising — have many officeholders convinced they must act boldly.
Public and private polling shows Trump not only trailing badly in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin but also running closely with Biden in traditionally conservative bastions like Kansas and Montana.
“Trump’s abominable presidency, especially in the context of the total failure to confront coronavirus, makes Texas very winnable,” said Rep. 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.
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While the campaign has made a flurry of hires in recent weeks, its pace of building out regional desks and state teams has prompted some private grumbling from party operatives. They worry the Biden camp isn’t yet positioned to capitalize on this year’s opportunities — or adequately prepared for the organizational demands of a massive vote-by-mail push made necessary by the pandemic.
Long-tenured Democrats, however, say there are more profound reasons to contest a broad array of states.
“An Electoral College landslide gives Biden the ability to move on major issues,” Brown said. “Second, it’ll give him a stronger majority in the Senate and give the party more state legislators.”
More broadly, Brown posited, a resounding repudiation of Trump would make it more likely that Republicans will discard his politics.
“They’ve got to reject their plays to race if they’re going to be a national party that can compete in the future,” he said.
Paul Begala, the veteran Democratic strategist, was even blunter about the need for a convincing win.
“It used to be that anything past 270 electoral votes was useless because it doesn’t matter how far you run past the goal line in football,” Begala said. “But for the first time in American history there’s a legitimate concern that the incumbent president will not surrender power.”
I don’t have a whole lot to add to what I’ve already said on this subject. Resources are finite, and decisions have to be made about how best to deploy them. But I do think the “we need a landslide” argument has a lot of merit, and with recent polls showing Biden even or slightly ahead in Texas, it’s hard for me to understand the case for just letting things play out as they would. I understand that if Texas is truly winnable, then Biden has already won, and it thus makes more sense to ensure that he has indeed locked up those other states first. I’m not advocating an abandonment of the states Biden is currently contesting. I am saying that unless the resources just aren’t there, it makes more sense to me to add in some contingency states than it does to double down on the existing battlefields, because surely there’s a point of diminishing returns there. The Senate seat in Texas plus the multiple Congressional seats and the chance to win the State House all add weight to that position. I admit I’m biased, but I will not concede that it doesn’t add up to compete in Texas. It doesn’t add up to not compete.
UPDATE: So, this happened.
Joe Biden is launching his first general-election TV ads in Texas as a growing number of polls show a close presidential race here.
As part of a four-state ad buy that Biden’s campaign is announcing Tuesday, the presumptive Democratic nominee is going up with a 60-second spot in Texas that addresses the increasingly dire coronavirus situation here.
“I’m thinking all of you today across Texas,” Biden says in the ad, which opens with a shot of Marfa. “I know the rise in case numbers is causing fear and apprehension.”
“The virus is tough, but Texas is tougher,” Biden later says, telling Americans to follow guidelines to slow the spread of the virus — and that he wants them to know: “I will not abandon you. We’re all in this together.”
The buy, which also features digital ads, is across Texas, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina — and it marks the campaign’s first TV and digital ad spending in Texas since Biden secured the nomination. A Biden campaign official described the size of the four-state buy as “mid-six figures.”
It’s a start. A “mid-six figures” buy is not a whole lot, but it did generate some earned media, which is always a plus. As others have noted, Trump has been running ads here; my younger daughter loves procedurals, of which NCIS is one of her favorites, and I’ve seen a few Trump ads when she has streamed episodes from the most recent seasons on CBS All Access. If Trump thinks it’s necessary to run a few ads in Texas, it’s got to be worth it for Biden to do so as well.
Mike Bloomberg has claimed he wants to help, and the Lincoln Project has already made a number of spot on and devastating ads. I suggest they start with airing “Mourning in America” in TX, FL, GA, and AZ.