On the menu today: The Biden campaign lists North Carolina as one of its seven most important swing states of the 2024 presidential campaign. Mark me down as a skeptic, and on the heels of yesterday’s trip to Atlanta, I’m not so sure that Georgia belongs on that list, either. Yes, Biden won Georgia by the skin of his teeth last cycle, but he’s got really lousy numbers right now. Meanwhile, Biden’s most recent impromptu exchange with reporters featured the bizarre confession that U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis weren’t working, as well as a lot of other self-inflicted controversies.
Biden’s Southern Woes
The Biden campaign believes the 2024 presidential election will come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. (Those of us of a certain age will marvel that states such as Florida, Ohio, and Iowa are not considered swing states anymore.)
North Carolina, which President Biden visited yesterday, doesn’t really belong on that list. Trump won the Tarheel State twice. Yes, in 2020, Trump only won the state by 1.34 percent, but that still adds up to a margin of 74,483 votes, or roughly the capacity of the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium. The only Democrat to win the state since 1980 was Barack Obama in 2008, and he won by three-tenths of 1 percent.
North Carolina is perhaps best thought of as the kind of state that a Democrat can win when everything goes right, and/or everything goes wrong for the Republican nominee. It is definitely not as Republican-leaning as some of the other southern states; North Carolina has a Democratic governor, state attorney general, secretary of state, and state auditor. But the state’s lieutenant governor, state treasurer, agriculture commissioner, insurance commissioner, labor commissioner, and superintendent of public education are all Republicans, and Republicans have a 30–20 advantage in the state senate, and a 72–48 advantage in the state house of representatives.
In 2022, Republican Ted Budd won the U.S. Senate race, 50.5 percent to 47.3 percent. The last Democrat to win a Senate race in North Carolina was Kay Hagan in 2008, helped along by the Obama wave. North Carolina Republicans don’t always win by wide margins, but they usually win.
And while every now and then you can find a survey of North Carolinians that puts Biden ahead by a percentage point, most polling of the state in the past few months puts Trump ahead by anywhere from three to eleven percentage points. As of November, Biden’s job approval rating in North Carolina is at 36.4 percent; 58.5 percent of likely general-election voters say they disapprove of the job Biden is doing.
I would be surprised if, when push comes to shove, the Biden campaign chooses to allocate considerable time, money, and staff to a state that Biden didn’t win last time.
My takeaway from my short trip to Georgia this week is that at some point in the 2024 election cycle, the Biden campaign will start to see winning Georgia as an expensive luxury, a state it would like to have, but not one it needs to have.
Some will doubt that, as Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, was Senator Raphael Warnock’s campaign manager and grew up in Georgia. Some Democrats will look at their victories in the last three Senate races and conclude that Georgia is a purple state.
But the Senate race between Warnock and Herschel Walker was the only race that went well for Democrats in 2022; Republicans won the races for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, labor commissioner, state superintendent of schools, insurance commissioner, and agriculture commissioner. Republicans enjoy a 33–23 advantage in the state senate, and a 102–78 advantage in the state house. Georgia is a Republican-leaning state. That doesn’t mean that a Republican nominee like Trump is guaranteed to win, just that he’s got the advantage in a normal political environment.
Georgia was the closest state in 2020, with Biden winning by 11,779 votes, or about two-tenths of 1 percent. Again, this is the kind of state where a Democrat can win when everything goes right, and/or everything goes wrong for the Republican nominee.
As I noted earlier this week, Biden’s poll numbers in Georgia are particularly weak, including some surprising weakness among African Americans. Biden could turn that around, but . . . it’s not like Democrats should expect the 81-year-old Biden to barnstorm across all the swing states, with multiple rallies per day, firing up crowds with his soaring oratory. The single most valuable asset of any campaign is the candidate’s time.
States such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are must-haves for the Biden campaign on the path to 270 electoral votes; Georgia and North Carolina are nice-to-haves.
Listening to the President
As mentioned earlier this week, President Biden rarely does formal press conferences or sit-down interviews anymore. He and the White House staff believe an acceptable substitute is when he has brief exchanges with a gaggle of reporters when he’s leaving the White House to board Marine One.
Our Noah Rothman noticed that President Biden’s statement about U.S. airstrikes in Yemen amounted to an admission of failure and an inadvertent declaration that he doesn’t know what he is doing, but also refuses to change course.
Biden’s entire exchange, which is about 500 words, is worth reading just to get a sense of the terse and vague sentences that he now offers when asked about new developments on the pressing issues of the day:
Q: What do you make of these attacks between Iran and Pakistan?
THE PRESIDENT: As you can see, Iran is not particularly well-liked in the region.
Q: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: And where — where that goes, we’re working on now. I don’t know where that goes.
Q: And how was your — how was your meeting yesterday?
THE PRESIDENT: I thought the meeting went well yesterday. I thought the meeting went well.
Q: What are the sticking points on the border agreement? Where are the disagreements you’re working on?
THE PRESIDENT I don’t think we have any sticking points left.
Q: Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, when you say “working,” are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.
Q: Mr. President, how do you feel about aid for Ukraine after yesterday’s meeting with members of Congress?
THE PRESIDENT: I think the vast majority of members of Congress support aid to Ukraine The question is whether or not a small minority are going to hold it up, which would be — which would be a disaster.
Q: How concerned are you with the Arab American votes during this election? And what Iowa means to you, to your reelection race?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t think Iowa means anything. The President got 50-some-thousand votes — the lowest number of votes anybody who’s won got. You know, this idea that it’s been a runaway, I think he can characterize it any way he wants. I’ll let them make that judgment
What was the second part of the question?Q: The part was: Are you concerned with the Arab American votes voting for you during this election because of Gaza? Many say they will not vote for you.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, the President wants to put a — the former President wants to put a ban on Arabs coming into the country. We’ll make sure he — we understand who cares about the Arab population, number one.
Number two, we got a long way to go in terms of settling the situation in Gaza.Q: The March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, D.C. — the March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, D.C.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I know that.
Q: What’s your message to those attending?
THE PRESIDENT: March
Q: Sir — sir, can you talk about inflation? When will prices come down?
Q: Should anybody be held for — should anybody be held criminally responsible for failures after the Uvalde shooting? Should anybody be held responsible with criminal charges
THE PRESIDENT: I have not read the full report. The report will be out today—
Q: Today.
THE PRESIDENT: — number one. We’re going to do what we can to implement the recommendations of the Justice Department But I don’t know if there is any criminal liability. I — I have not read the report.
Q: Were you — were you briefed by the Attorney General on this?
THE PRESIDENT: I was briefed by my staff on it. Thank you.
Noah writes:
It’s not exactly comforting to hear the commander in chief of the armed forces explain that the strategy to which he has committed the military is not working. It’s only marginally more disconcerting for him to insist in the same breath that he’s fully committed to what he has just admitted is a failure.
Besides declaring that the airstrikes against the Houthis aren’t working but will continue, in the span of several minutes, Biden let us know that his takeaway from military conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran is, “Iran is not particularly well-liked”; blew off the importance of Iowa in the general election (Biden lost that state by eight percentage points last time); suggested that Arab-American citizens will have no choice to vote for him because Trump allegedly wants to end Arab immigration; and claimed that pro-lifers ought to march for greater restrictions on abortion.
It is not hard to see why Biden’s staff keeps him away from formal sit-down interviews and press conferences, and why some Democratic senators are floating the suggestion that Biden should refuse to debate Trump. He can barely get through an impromptu handful of questions with reporters without creating some new messaging problem.
ADDENDUM: Thanks to everyone who came out to yesterday’s talk at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, cosponsored by the National Review Institute.