Georgia, Ohio, Texas: Democrats tell Biden to go big

WASHINGTON >> 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’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 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.