Should Democrats triage Florida?

[S019]

On the statewide level? Absolutely. We're not getting a governor or senator or electoral vote there anytime soon.

But I think they can keep trying in congressional races.

This - my own thoughts exactly - and not just now - this point was evident after 2018 (particularly FL-SEN 2018). Now it’s perfectly clear that any dollar spent on a statewide race in FL is a dollar wasted, a dollar much better spent (and let the record show that I was always against the Democrats/DSCC dropping a cent for Demings this year - knew it was a pointless exercise and that that it was Safe R).

Honestly, there’s just one point I slightly disagree with Ferguson: FL may still be winnable presidentially, but it’s much more likely to go red, even if we spend a lot of money there. BUT - and here I agree with him, there’s no point spending money in FL or campaigning there - it’s not worth it: 2020 showed a path to victory without FL, and it’s only really the GOP that needs FL to win, not us (similar to TX in that regard).

Democrats don't need Florida for the Presidency sure, but they have a very narrow path in the Senate as is (dependent on deep red seats that are very unlikely to hold), and I don't think needing 5/6 Senators in the Blue Wall is a sustainable thing long term. If Texas+North Carolina start to contribute some D Senators that'd help, but even the three red state seats flipping and each of the Blue Wall states sending one D senator would bring it down to 54-46 R, this is also still dependent on winning both Senators in Nevada (not guaranteed), needing both Senators in Minnesota (not guaranteed) and needing Maine not to trend Republican long term (not guaranteed), let's also say Alaska comes on the map. That leaves 6 currently R seats and Dems basically need like at least 2-3 of these imo (if they still keep getting lucky in the Blue Wall), but not that hard to see them need 4 or 5. Now, the current Democratic path in Florida is difficult, but rebuilding the state party so that it can build the infrastructure to make the state competitive again (Republicans managed to turn the state from a tossup to Likely R in two years) would allow Democrats to win there again and would greatly help the problem of Senate math.

[S019]

Is this a meme, at this point?

Mathematically, Florida is still quite winnable for Democrats.  Biden won 600k more votes in 2020 than DeSantis did this year, so there's a lot of untapped midterm potential being left on the table.  The key to Democratic chances moving forward is unlocking Central Florida's growing Puerto Rican and Venezuelan immigrant vote.  Democrats did very poorly with immigrants across the board in 2022.

I actually think Florida is maybe the likeliest state to flip in a Biden vs Trump rematch.  I'm unsure Trump can match his 2020 performance in Miami-Dade without covid as an issue, and he may lose votes if he burns DeSantis voters in the primary.  

The problem for Democrats is that they need close to Hillary numbers in Dade to win the state given how red everything else is. I don't think that's undoable, but it will require a lot of investment, which I don't think the party is putting in right now. I'm pretty confident Trump will not be the nominee, but I agree that Miami-Dade turning safely Republican is a meme. They can't give up on it for the reasons I said above but they're going to need to put in a lot of effort to win those 30 electoral votes in 2024.