REMINDER: Maine and New Hampshire are not battlegrounds in 2024
Not even if Chris Sununu is the R nominee and Elizabeth Warren is the D nominee, no.
1) If you believe that Maine and New Hampshire will be competitive because Trump isn’t on the ballot as the nominee and that educated whites will (somehow) swing back to 1988 margins, you might as well use the inverse of that argument for Ohio and Iowa, but that is obviously a ludicrous suggestion that would get laughed off.
2) The rationale to why ME/NH trended D are not limited to Trump’s unique educated white repellant, and the rationale to why Ohio and Iowa trended R are also not limited to “Orange Man Good” (Reminder that Iowa was only D+5 in 2012, with Ryan on the ticket, and Romney obviously being a horrific fit for the state).
I cannot comprehend why certain wish-casters on this forum are so desperately obsessed with deluding themselves into believing that those two states are magically competitive, or that a Trump-less GOP would return to 2004/2012 levels with college educated white suburbanites, or that the RGV/Miami shall somehow magically swing back to 2012 margins, (also a delusional concept), but none of that is occurring any time soon.
There's like 2:1 odds that THG is right. Take from that what you wish.
I agree. But the odds are at least as good that I am right as well. And there is no contradiction there. ME and NH are about as safe for Dems as OH and IA are safe for Rs now. Which makes perfect sense considering they voted, you know, almost exactly parallel to each other. The people with the worst takes on this forum are those who think that somehow OH and IA are now titanium R but ME and NH (and MN for that matter) are not safe D. There is no rational, logically consistent reason to believe this. And if you say “muh elasticity,” well Iowa and Ohio have also been considered “elastic.” If you say because trends could revert to pre-Trump well, again, same argument for Iowa and Ohio. Except actually it’s dumber than the opposite because it has been way longer since these states, Maine in particular, voted R than it has been since OH/IA voted D.
So again, I agree that in all likelihood, in almost all realistic scenarios, Ohio and Iowa are now out of reach for Dems. It’s just that ME, NH, etc. also are out of reach for Rs for pretty much the exact same reasons, and anyone who pretends otherwise is a hack.
