If other liberal groups follow the lead of Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, Republicans could find another presidential election falling into their laps due to massive Democratic strategic errors.
Fox News has reported that Priorities USA, which wasted a massive $133 million in support of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, said it has dropped Ohio from its list of states targeted for spending on behalf of whoever becomes the Democratic nominee in 2020. Ohio has traditionally been viewed as a major, elector-rich “swing state” where presidential battles are most hotly contested. But the super PAC now has downgraded its chances as a likely Democratic win, rating it behind such more traditionally Republican states as Arizona, North Carolina, and even Georgia.
“It’s not in our initial spending plans,” Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Priorities USA, told the outlet. “It is in the states to watch-and-see if an investment is worth making.”
Ohio’s majority voted twice for Barack Obama before favoring Donald Trump by a surprising 8 percentage points in 2016. Last November, in an upset, it elected Republican Mike DeWine governor over the favorite, Democrat Richard Cordray. At the same time, though, Ohio gave a much larger win to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in his re-election race for the U.S. Senate.
In short, by all ordinary criteria, Ohio remains a state almost equally winnable by both major parties. For Priorities USA to write Ohio off its primary target list, reportedly because it expects the 2020 Democratic candidate to be too “progressive” for Buckeye State voters, is a sign that the Democrats are abandoning “middle America,” both geographically and figuratively.
It also seems to repeat the stunningly counterproductive decision of the 2016 Clinton campaign of investing few resources and candidate time to Rust Belt states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump’s team, on the other hand, heeding the advice of deputy campaign manager David Bossie, threw significant final-week resources into those states, along with visits by Trump himself.
The difference was decisive. Had Clinton won just the first two of those, plus a random district in Maine, the election would have been thrown to the horse-trading vagaries of the U.S. House of Representatives. Had she won all three states, she would have won the presidency outright. Her failure to fight hard for those states effectively gift-wrapped the election for Trump.
All of which must make the Republican National Committee very happy indeed. If Ohio is handed to Republicans without a fight, despite its heavily “blue” urban or academic centers in Cleveland, Toledo, Youngstown, and Columbus, then Democrats will be relying solely on attracting trendy leftist voters hostile to workers in what once was known as “heavy industry.”
Priorities USA claims it is just trying to target resources where they will be most effective. Republicans can thank goodness the Democrats apparently don’t understand just how fluid politics is, how important it is to plant seeds for long-term political harvest of the electoral weather changes, and how deeply risky it is to treat middle America with neglect. The old saying remains almost always correct: As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.
