Will This Be the Year Arizona Turns Blue?

[RandySF]

During a virtual conference hosted by Arizona Ready, earlier this summer, the focus was on the effort to defeat Republicans at the state and national levels. The fact that Mr. Biden and the Senate candidate Mark Kelly part company with progressive organizations on important issues won’t prevent progressives from supporting them. There are just too many “overlapping crises” that will “activate people on the left,” according to Emily Kirkland, the executive director of Progress Arizona.

Without a doubt, Republicans will be mobilized, too. Polls have found that Mr. Trump’s supporters in Arizona are more enthusiastic. Mr. Biden’s support among Latinos, especially Latino youth, has decreased over the past few months. The Covid-19 outbreak has led to a precipitous decline in voter registration in Arizona, and Republican leaders are fighting to make absentee voting more difficult. In a larger sense, it won’t be easy to flip a state that has been reliably conservative for so long.

If Arizona does flip, Democrats would break the hold that Republicans have had on the state since the mid-20th century. A Democratic victory in Arizona may not signal the rise of progressivism that many on the left hope for — and which these times of manifest injustice and inequality seem to demand — but wins there would signal the beginning of an end to the ugliness of the past decade and more. It would be a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a party and a president who’ve long viewed Arizona as a stronghold. In 2016, Arizona’s Republican leaders made Trump the embodiment of all they’d worked for, and it may spell their demise.




https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/opinion/will-this-be-the-year-arizona-turns-blue.html

[OrlandoDem2]

1. Come on, Arizona Democrats!! Let's gooooooooo!!'

[beachbumbob]

2. defunding Social Security and Medicare will make arizona blue, florida blue and texas blue

[DFW]

3. The Arizona Republicans messed up

Instead of quietly shoving Martha McSally, the appointed interim Senator, to the door and putting a strong candidate in there to compete with Mark Kelly, they chose to keep her as their candidate. A weak Trump ass-kisser, she doesn't have an original thought in her head. The Arizona Republicans thought that her military background was enough to make her seat safe. But Mark is also military, and a former astronaut. Oops.

Not only that, but he stuck by his wife, Gabby Giffords, who was tough enough to fight back from near death from a point blank gun shot wound to the head. So he is also loyal, compassionate, and tenacious. He also happens to be a hell of a nice guy. McSilly is not known for being exceptionally personable.

Underestimating the popularity of Mark and Gabby in Arizona is not a wise thing to do, especially in a time when Trump's total indifference to parts of the country that are suffering. That may not flip the state in the presidential race, but Mark and Gabby will have some very strong tailwinds that might just bring the state into Biden territory. It's far from impossible. In a diverse, thinly settled state like Arizona, it's a short jump from "not impossible" to "likely."