The key difference between KY-GOV and the presidential race next year, though, is that Beshear is quite popular (otherwise he wouldn’t have a chance.) Either way, KY has been far more open to electing Democrats, and even a very strong candidate couldn’t beat Reeves last time, so I’m not sure I really see this being another LA-GOV type situation unless there’s some huge development that damages Reeves quite a bit more.
On the other hand, Cameron isn’t as unpopular as Trump, which would be the equivalent of running Bevin again.
Also, the gap between MS and KY in 2019 was... literally just five points, with Hood losing by 5 and Beshear winning in a virtual tie. You’d think it was a 15- or 20-point gap reading this thread and other analyses of the KY/MS races.
KY being "far more open to electing Democrats than MS" is a common take but one that — nowadays, at least — is fairly disputable, as Beshear was the only Democrat who managed to win in 2019 and only did so by the skin of his teeth against an absolute joke of an opponent. In notable federal races, Mike Espy actually came closer to ousting Cindy Hyde-Smith than Amy McGrath came to defeating Mitch McConnell. KY went for Donald Trump by 26 points, MS did so by 16 points.
I frankly don’t believe that there’s a convincing argument that the MS of 2023 is considerably more "inelastic" (you know my thoughts on this nebulous term) than the LA of 2015. Yes, MS Democrats got absolutely blown out in 2022, but so did LA Democrats in 2014, and we all know how much good that did David Vitter in his gubernatorial race. A Pressley win wouldn’t be a sign of the state's R trend coming to a halt or reversing, it would just be another unique JBE-type situation.
Besides, the exact same argument was already made in 2015 (including by xingkerui, who was convinced that LA was going to be an easy Vitter win and was far more likely to go R than KY) — LA is inelastic, KY isn’t, therefore Conway has a much better chance of winning than JBE. That turned out to be a complete fallacy because people didn’t take a close look at what actually matters in those races: the candidates themselves, not some buzzwords like "elasticity."
Brandon Pressley is almost a caricature of the type of Democrat you need to run to be competitive in MS, campaigning as an even more socially conservative and practicing Christian than Jim Hood (who was always too ambiguous about his stances on some of those issues and had some authenticity issues in that regard), painting Reeves as part of a corrupt, out-of-touch 'ol'-boy' network which has destroyed the quality of life for working people in the state, and steering clear of any racial rhetoric/issues that would alienate the white voting base while going all in on a convincing brand of economic populism. Has it ever occurred to people that the actual reason Mississippi is usually "inelastic" in elections is precisely because Democrats don’t usually run candidates like Brandon Pressley? If MS were as inelastic as it’s made out to be, Espy wouldn’t have overperformed by that much and Hood wouldn’t have come within 5 points of beating Reeves (who was a stronger opponent in 2019 than he is now).
People meme about this, but it’s undeniable that social conservatism is a make-or-break area for Democrats in the Deep South and that there is in fact a large chunk of white voters who are
very much waiting for a conservative Pressley-type Democrat to support against against an arrogant pol like Reeves who thinks he can get away with anything because of partisanship. Yes, Republicans usually don’t bleed white voters in the Deep South, but "when it rains, it pours" (as we saw in LA in 2015).
The path for Pressley is very clear and certainly real. Whether he’ll actually win is a different matter, but nobody should be writing him off because of some weird preconceptions about states and meaningless buzzwords which are proven wrong every cycle. Even a quick look at their campaign ads should tell you which campaign is acting more desperate — Reeves' only response to the state's myriad problems is literally "let’s stop trans athletes from participating in women's sports" (something that’s basically unheard of in MS):
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/07/12/brandon-presley-tate-reeves-tv-ads-governor/It doesn’t get more out-of-touch than that. He’s doing nothing to change the perception that he is a sleazy, selfish pol putting himself above the state and only ever throwing red meat when it’s campaign season. This type of candidate really,
really doesn’t play well in the Deep South.