(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Flight, A Voter and a Verdict [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-03 I have to admit, after the Trump verdict, i couldn’t wait to get back to the doors. I think the biggest question has been what can or will change the dynamics of this race. Sure, the Biden campaign has a theory of this race, but it wasn’t necessarily being reflected at the doors. I’ve been doing this for a long time, going back to the last century and i can’t remember an incumbent Democratic president being this weak. His favorables (among the Democratic and unaffiliated voters we talk to week in and week out) haven’t been that high, but his negatives weren’t really that high. For the most part, Biden’s favorables have been hanging around 50% (which sucks, we’d like to see them at or higher than 70% from this group of voters) and his negatives have been running (generally) between 7% and 11-12% (which is not indicative of significant dissatisfaction for an incumbent. This had seemed to be the “eh” election. I came away from this weekend’s canvassing with two sorts of “insights,” one micro and one macro. Today’s diary will focus on the micro observations. For the most part, Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] volunteers have been knocking on doors in the suburbs, where — even though these can be highly educated voters — not a lot of people have been paying attention to this race. Yet. Nothing could have been made more obvious to me than an encounter i had at National Airport last Friday. Waiting for the plane, i took out my iPad and started to read the news. The news, of course, was all about the Trump verdict and i was trying to catch up. But i noticed there was someone reading over my shoulder and i turned and gave him (what i assume to be) a quizzical look. “All over the papers, uh?” I guess, i told him. Trying to read what i missed this week. “Yeah, it’s hard to miss.” I was really busy today. “Oh, yeah, it’s all anybody is talking about,” he clearly missed my put-off responses here. So i set down the iPad. Well, it is D.C., so, you know, company town. “I’m not from around here.” Silence. “But don’t you think Democrats really cornered him?” Who? “Trump!” He sat down next to me. So we started to talk about the trial, or at least his impressions of it. No president has ever been charged, he asserted (not true, but, Grant’s speeding fine is probably not too germane to a nation of speeders), “Are we going to start charging everyone who leaves the White House?” Huh? Do you anticipate electing any more criminals? I asked? “So you think Trump is a criminal?” Sure, Trump’s criminality is his appeal. He’s bragged about it. He thinks everyone does it. And that “everyone” is his base. He doesn’t exactly hide that. “But I’m not a criminal.” Do you support Trump? And we ended it on that question. Because he sort of sat there, let me return to my reading, and just walked away. I don’t know anything about the man, maybe he was lonely. But i got to read the Nate Cohn article, where he notes that “One of the better explanations for Mr. Trump’s strength among disengaged voters is that he has benefited from being out of the news — that his political liabilities had faded from the minds of voters.” That made me think of that conversation (in fact, reading that made me start this diary). That might not be true anymore. It might not be clear for some time whether those voters will shift away from Mr. Trump and whether such a shift will last. But in such a close race, anything could be enough to make a difference. “Voters are risk-averse,” John Anzalone told the Wall Street Journal. “They’ll think Trump is going to be in a quagmire of problems—new impeachment, trials—and all they’re going to care about is that, and that the real work is not going to get done, and so I think this is a tremendous problem for him.” But that wasn’t really my big takeaway from the weekend. Because i knocked on doors and got more than an earful there. Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024 Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do. This week, i visited one of our groups canvassing in Arizona. I try to join one of our Hope Springs groups and canvass with them every weekend possible. I didn’t last week, because my wife was leaving town for 3 weeks and i wanted to spend some time with her before she left. My turf was in Mesa. We knew it was going to get hot (it sure did!) and we met early so that everyone got be done well before noon. This is also the kind of weather were fewer people are willing to open their doors or talk to you. They don’t want to let the air conditioning out, they will tell you. But that wasn’t my experience this weekend. People did want to talk, they really did. I met two really talkative voters, one who came outside and one who stood in their doorway. So not really typical for this kind of weather. But they wanted to talk. Both said they were independents, although that doesn’t mean much nowadays. The female voter was pegged as a Democratic-leaning voter in VAN, although both were marked as unaffiliated voters. Which just means they didn’t declare a party when they registered to vote. I asked the man if he had a favorable impression of the president, and he told me, “I didn’t want to but I guess I do.” You guess, i asked. I am writing this down. “Yeah, he’s a lot better than the alternative.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but you take what you can get. “I mean, I was wanting Biden to do a better job,” he went on. “There’s a lot of pent-up energy (i wrote that down, to help me remember) and everyone seems to be waiting for something.” “I feel like we need to shake things up.” Here’s the thing: in prior weeks, if a voter had said that to me, they would have likely had a negative impression of the president and been looking elsewhere. But this voter seemed to think he couldn’t continue to look elsewhere. Trump’s a felon now. And that’s tough to hide from. He sparked an insurrection and now he’s been convicted of felonies. His criminality is “all over the papers.” And that’s something that i remembered when i read a different Nate Cohn article: The polls have shown Donald J. Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks. That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote. [...] Importantly, these disengaged low-turnout voters are often from predominantly Democratic constituencies. Many continue to identify as Democratic-leaning and still back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, but they nonetheless are backing away from Mr. Biden in startling numbers. In our polling, Mr. Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterm election, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him. Mr. Trump’s strength among low-turnout and less engaged voters helps explain a lot of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Mr. Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms. “I didn’t want to but I guess I do.” As the WSJ put it, “The verdict injects an unimaginable wild card into a race between Trump and President Biden that has appeared stagnant for months, with Trump holding a narrow lead in the battleground states that will decide the victor, and polls suggesting voters dislike both men.” “I didn’t want to but I guess I do.” I’ve been doing this for decades (longer than i should admit to), but i’ve never heard a voter define an election so succinctly. “I didn’t want to but I guess I do.” The news for President Biden hasn’t been great. He has trailed in national and battleground state polls for months. His approval ratings are among the lowest on record for a first-term president. He’s struggling among young, Black and Hispanic voters. And all of this against an opponent who faces several criminal trials, including one that could have a verdict this week. But the news is not all bad for Mr. Biden — or, at least, it’s not all that bad. The race is still pretty close. It’s close enough that he would have a very serious chance to win if the election were held tomorrow. And of course, the race won’t be held tomorrow: There are five-plus months to go for a possible Biden comeback. [...] As a consequence, Mr. Biden is within two points in states worth 270 electoral votes. Looking back over the longer run, his two-point deficit in the key states makes this election closer than those heading into Election Day in 2020, 2016, 2012 and 2008. If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn’t be especially surprising if Mr. Biden won by narrowly sweeping these three states. In fact, Mr. Biden could win if the election were held tomorrow even if the polls had an above-average year in terms of accuracy, simply because the polls don’t have to be off by much at all for him to prevail. “I didn’t want to but I guess I do.” The challenge is to find these voters in these Swing States and string them together for the win. But this is exactly why we canvass. We know how to do this. We faced the same challenges in NY-03 (turning it from Red to Blue) and the 2023 Ohio “special” elections, turning away a Republican attempt to increase the threshold for winning the abortion amendment in November and then WINNING that election 7 months ago. We know how to do this. Conventional Wisdom says that “Trump simply cannot beat President Joe Biden relying solely on the votes of people who think his legal travails are a politically motivated scam, and who cheer Trump not in spite of his transgressions but because of them.” That’s why the verdict is so critical here. Mr. Trump’s big edge among nonvoters means the exact number of new voters could be hugely important or even decisive. And even beyond the proportion of new voters, exactly which new voters show up could also be pivotal. In recent years, Democrats have benefited from what we’ve called a “hidden” turnout advantage — a tendency for Democratic-leaners who vote to be more anti-Trump than those who stay home. “Trump’s only path to victory is a coalition that includes many Republicans and independents who find him deplorable but think a second Biden term would be even more so.” This verdict, Trump’s criminality, raises that bar. “I didn’t want to but I guess I do,” “that many voters who don’t much like Biden received an emphatic, unambiguous reminder of why they don’t like Trump.” That’s what we are hearing at the doors now. Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year. By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File. Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches. It’s a big year. There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year. Our biggest expense is the Voter File. But it is also a fixed cost. That won’t change as we raise and spend more money. Printing literature is our second largest cost. Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs. 2023 Hope Springs expenses Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation. We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/3/2244160/-A-Flight-A-Voter-and-a-Verdict?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/