“Democrats keep overperforming in elections. Republicans keep underperforming and struggling. We even saw this in Iowa. Despite Trump’s victory, turnout there was abysmal,” says political strategist Steven Rosenberg.
“Only 7 percent of all registered Republicans voted for Donald Trump in Iowa. It’s a terrible number. And so, when Democrats actually go vote, we just keep winning, and they keep losing. I go into 2024 feeling really good about where we are,” he said on the Ezra Klein New York Times podcast.
In other words, the polls about Biden’s approval rating are overblown because voters are saying the opposite and are electing Democrats nationwide. “There’s a force in our politics that’s more powerful than disappointment in Joe Biden and the Democrats, which is the fear and opposition to MAGA,” Rosenberg said.
“I think we’re going to win the 2024 election by high single digits and make this election a clear repudiation of MAGA.”
“Inside the battleground states, where Democrats turned on their big campaigns in 2022, we did not just do well, but we got to 59 percent in Colorado, 57 percent in Pennsylvania, 55 percent in Michigan, 54 percent in New Hampshire. Those would be extraordinary performances in a good year when the red wave was going to wash all across the country and wipe us out.”
An Anti-MAGA Coalition
Trump and MAGA are even more unattractive, more dangerous, more ugly, and more extreme in 2024 than they were in 2022 and 2023. “Trump, to me, is a much weaker candidate than he was in 2016 and 2020. I don’t know how you dress up Donald Trump and make him look like a serious candidate for president again. I just don’t think it’s possible. His performance on the stump is far worse and more wild.”
“What I see as a really crappy presidential candidate, and I think we’re going to kick his ass,” Rosenberg said. President Biden labeled Donald Trump a “loser” in a campaign speech over the weekend, using the term two times.
MAGA candidates are a mobilizing force for Democrats, who are an anti-MAGA coalition that has turned itself into a vessel to stop them. “This counter-mobilization has created the strongest Democratic Party than any of us have ever seen.”
“That huge machine just played a major role in winning an election in Orlando, Florida, that nobody in Florida thought we were going to win. We flipped the state house in Virginia just in November, which none of the political operatives thought we were going to do. We keep performing at the upper end of what’s possible as Democrats because of this machine, this counter-mobilization.”
To defeat MAGA in 2024, Democrats need to close the “loudness gap” with the right. For example, Trump uses his court appearances as campaign stops. “There has to be an expectation that Democrats are fighting with unbelievable ferocity and intensity every day in the information space to allow us to win. That’s the most important thing that we need to do in the coming months.”
“Democrats have to feel the campaign, to feel the intensity. Part of the reason we’ve been winning so much is because of this counter-mobilization,” he said, adding, “There is a massive new Democratic political machine that has grown up organically in recent years.”
“It’s just going to be too big and too overwhelming for Donald Trump in 2024 because it’s independent of any candidate. It has nothing to do with who’s running. It’s the simple thing: Democrats are going to save the country. Republicans are dangerous.”
The Economy is good!
“I’m more optimistic about our ability to sell Biden’s economic story because I don’t think the country is down on the economy. I think that Republicans are. If you look at Democrats, and the people we have to talk to get to win the election, they actually give Biden very high marks on the economy, and they think the economy is doing really well.”
Three things have improved America’s economic vibes: the soaring stock market, falling gas prices, and eggs.
- Both the Dow and the S&P 500 hit record highs this month. This is good news for retirement savings. Contrary to popular belief, most Americans do own stocks — and a good stock market tends to be an economic mood booster.
- The current national average for a gallon of gas is $3.09, per AAA, compared to $3.44 a year ago and down from a record high of over $5 in 2022.
- A dozen grade-A large eggs ran about $2.51 last December; a year earlier, they were $4.25, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economic vibes are directly tied to the egg aisle at the supermarket.
“Republicans are living in a completely different information environment than Democrats are or than non-MAGA and non-Republicans. And in the non-MAGA information environment, the economy is actually doing well. People are happy.”
“When you look at these other measures — life satisfaction, job satisfaction, income satisfaction — life satisfaction numbers are up in the 70s and 80s. Job satisfaction numbers are up in the 60s. Income satisfaction is in the 50s. If you look at the Axios poll, Americans are actually pretty happy with their finances on questions of ‘how are you doing,’ not ‘how is the economy doing?’ The numbers are way up in the 50s and 60s.”
Four blinking red warning lights for Trump
- “If you want to talk about a blinking red warning light about the potential for the Trump candidacy to collapse, the data is there. When an NBC Sunday poll with the Des Moines Register asked Nikki Haley voters in the Iowa electorate, ‘Would you vote for Trump or Biden in the general election?’ — 43 percent said Biden. Only 22 percent said Trump.
- Further, Iowa Republicans said if Trump is convicted of a crime, 30 percent of those voters said it would be a disqualifier for him being able to run for president.
- “We are doing better in Arizona and the parts of the country with heavily Mexican-American populations than we’ve ever done. We’ve just gotten more votes in the last four presidential elections than we’ve gotten since the 1930s and ’40s when FDR was in office,” Rosenberg said.
- “We’re going to do really, really well with young people. We’re going to do particularly really, really well with young women because of abortion issues,” he said. “Many, many young women are just not available to Republicans anymore and may never be for the rest of their lives.”
“The Republicans have lost the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2023 elections,” he said. “You’re going to see in 2024 is a really substantial and significant splintering of the Republican Party.”