Buried deep in an analysis of President Biden's 2024 prospects published this week by the New York Times election data egghead Nate Cohn – not to be confused with FiveThirtyEight election data egghead Nate Silver, who got fired in a round of layoffs – was a really solid point we wish he would've expanded upon about the swing states: "At the moment, there's a case the Electoral College will be less favorable to Mr Trump, relative to the national vote, than it was in 2020…"
"'Democracy' may also play well as an issue in the battlegrounds, as these are the very states where the stop-the-steal movement threatened to overturn the results of the last election," Cohn wrote. And though we wish he hadn't put "Democracy" in those goddamned scare quotes it was definitely an interesting insight into the lasting damage wrought to the MAGA brand by the 2020 election.
It's still a year and a half away, but the smart money says the 2024 election is going to come down to the Big Six of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Should the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee and his fanboys really be feeling good about those states at this point? Sure, three of them – Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin – were extremely tight at less than 1 percent and came down to basically a coin flip, but look at the map:
Yes, Nevada might be a tough fight in 2024, but aside from the only medium-MAGA now-Governor Joe Lombardo, Republicans did not have a great 2022 in the Silver State. It's still competitive and we should come back to it when we get more polling. Michigan and Pennsylvania we probably could've even left out of this article entirely as they seem that far gone from GOP rule after last year.
So with the Big Six now really a Big Three, where are we at? Trump needs all three to win, while Biden needs only one of them. What's happened on the ground in each of those states since 2020?
In Arizona, the Democrats swept every 2022 statewide race except for treasurer. The more MAGA they were, the harder they went down. Insurrectionist scumbag Mark Finchem lost the Secretary of State's race by 5.6 percent to Dem Adrian Fontes. Reptilian fascist Blake Masters lost to incumbent Dem Senator Mark Kelly by 4.9 percent. MAGA psychopath Kari Lake lost to now-Governor Katie Hobbs by a much tighter 0.7 percent. Tighter still was the AG's race in which far right asshole Abe Hamadeh lost to Dem Kris Mayes by 320 votes out of 2,512,390 cast. It could've been a "generic Republican"-preferring, ticket-splitting swing voter who made it so close given Hamadeh's lower profile relative to Lake, Masters, and Finchem. That tracks with incumbent Republican State Treasurer Kimberly Yee's 11 point win over Dem challenger Martin Quezada.
In Georgia, the 2022 reelection of Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Attorney General Chris Carr aren't all that relevant here. Yeah they're assholes who pushed that draconian voter suppression bill ahead in 2021, but nobody can seriously say they're otherwise closely associated with the Orange God Emperor's brand these days. The same could not be said about failed MAGA Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who lost to incumbent Democratic Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock by 2.8 percent in the runoff – a virtual landslide in the tightly divided Peach State (election day was tighter at a 0.9 percent margin for Warnock).
In Wisconsin, incumbent piece of shit MAGA Senator Ron "RonAnon" Johnson defeated Dem Lt Gov Mandela Barnes by 1 percent in 2022. Feels disgusting to have to type that, but here we are. On the same day, incumbent Dem Governor Tony Evers defeated Trump-endorsed GOP challenger Tim Michels by 3.3 percent. Then earlier this month liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated MAGA former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly for a seat on the bench by 12.8 percent.
See a pattern emerging? Except for Ron Johnson, the scummiest, Trumpiest pieces of shit all lost in the Big Three last year. Even more salient was incumbents fending off challengers. In fact across all six swing states the only statewide incumbent to go down was Dem Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak, who probably would've hung on if not for exorbitant gas prices in the state at the time.
Who's the incumbent in the White House now?
But maybe even more important, no one should forget to appreciate how bad 2022 went for Trump mechanically – that all the loyal fascists he tried to put in position to help him seize the electoral college ahead of 2024 failed to get elected. Democracy was on the ballot and it won last year. With that in mind, ask yourself how much better is Trump himself supposed to do when his minions couldn't get the job done? Was Kari Lake somehow not Trumpy enough compared to the real deal?
Yes, again, Biden is old. Lots of shit can happen economically and otherwise. All those caveats and qualifiers. He's also not polling great in head-to-head matchups against Trump. But that's before the insanity of a Biden-Trump rematch really starts and Donald bombards swing state voters with his obnoxious rallies and overdone garbage like this AI-generated ad all day, every day:
We feel for swing state voters having to put up with this shit. But the power is going to be with them to say "fuck off" once again like they did in 2020 and 2022. We feel confident they will.