Lose in Arizona, lose the White House. Here’s why
Choose wisely, Democrats. Strategy matters. Winning here could mean winning the Oval Office
Arizona Democrats will matter in this year’s presidential election because, unlike past years when Arizona’s electoral votes were predictably in the Republican column, that is no longer the case.
While the GOP winning margin was 8% in 2008 and 2012, in 2016 the difference declined to less than 4%. And last year Arizona Democrats won a U.S. Senate race, two statewide races, and gained ground from Nogales to Page. So, Arizona is competitive. Indeed, Arizona may even prove to be a key swing state on the national map. The target states Democrats must flip to win in 2020 are Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania. All were won by Trump in 2016, yet three of the four elected a Democratic governor last year. But Democrats need a cushion, and the next two closest states Trump won are North Carolina and Arizona.
This means that Arizona Democrats shoulder a larger responsibility in making their choice this year.
While it’s tempting to fall in love with candidates who meet every aspirational ideal, this year we must apply a different — more pragmatic — standard. Can they win Arizona? Because it may determine who wins the White House.
There are multiple theories that address this question.
Are lessons to be learned from past
Democratic statewide winners like Bruce Babbitt, Dennis DeConcini or Janet Napolitano? The recent successful campaigns of Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and education chief Kathy Hoffman? Or — given that we are talking about federal issues — of Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema?
These were notably center-left campaigns that all successfully captured disaffected moderate GOP voters and a super-majority of independents.
Progressive Democrats make a different case that a more ideologically pure candidate will ignite record turnout of new voters that will make the difference on election night. This is the “vote-for” argument.
This was the theory of David Garcia’s courageous campaign for governor last year. He and Sinema were both good candidates with much to offer, but the electoral difference between them was a significant 15 points.
And a major reason was that many of these GOP and independent swing voters were available to Sinema but not for Garcia. Their respective campaign strategies reflected this.
This year the tri-partisan Sinema “coalition” is definitely available to a Democratic presidential nominee.
Yet the policy discourse in the Democratic primary campaign has focused on Medicare for all, more open borders, health care for immigrants, free college, reparations for African-Americans, a federal $15-hour minimum wage and other aspirational (and expensive) issues.
The Democratic left is looking to use this platform to primary centrist candidates across the country. And President Trump is skillfully making “the Squad” — and socialism — the face of the national Democratic party.
Would Senator Sinema have carried Arizona on this platform?
Consider 2018 national results. Democrats flipped 40 congressional seats and governorships in the presidential battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina, as well as in Louisiana, Kansas and Montana — states where Trump won by margins of 15% to 20%.
The New York Times interviewed many of these successful governors who expressed deep concern with the ideological drift of the presidential race.
Democrats are right to make the case that our economy isn’t working for most Americans; that the wealth gap is strangling opportunity; that power and wealth rig the system — both economic and political — and that health care is a right inherent to all Americans.
But Democrats are smart to seek a nominee that can win in the Midwest as well as in Arizona.
They need to make this case to a friendly audience, rather than a reelected — and greatly emboldened — President Trump.
The Republicans in the Senate don’t have that excuse. They spent at least eight years warning of economic catastrophe if Obama didn’t check his runaway spending.
Now they’re enabling more debt because the guy in the White House has an R after his name.
Trillion-dollar deficits weren’t acceptable when Obama pushed them and aren’t acceptable when Trump does. What can’t go on forever, won’t. Printing dollars won’t solve the problem any more than my indebted “friend” getting a credit increase.
Until voters of both parties demand Washington cut up its credit card, politicians will continue to live well beyond their means. And taxpayers will be the ones left holding the empty wallet. already eligible for funding through the transportation slush fund established by the 2015 vote. Prop. 105 is just a missed opportunity to do some additional cleanup.
Fixed rail proponents understand that they have no case to make with respect to transportation. Fixed rail costs a lot to move not a lot of people. So, they emphasize their idiotic economic development argument.
In the Valley, there is a certain demand for real estate, residential and commercial, based upon population trends and business plans. Putting down a fixed rail line doesn’t materially increase that demand. It might move new development from one part of the Valley to another. But it does very little to create truly new economic activity.
The Valley made a mistake investing in fixed rail and missed an opportunity to develop a truly better, more flexible public transportation system. Prop. 105 would stop at least Phoenix from doubling down on that mistake.