2024 Food for Thought & Florida’s Fight Against Biden’s Border Crisis – Top 3 Takeaways – February 24th, 2023
- How persuadable are people? I can’t believe 2024 conversations have become regular conversations in February in the year before a Presidental election year. In my 25 years of covering this stuff it’s never been the case until now. It’s even odder when two potentially leading candidates haven’t announced and aren’t guaranteed to do so in President Biden and Governor DeSantis. But when we have a president as poor as Joe Biden, which hasn’t happened in over 40 years, we have people pinning for new leadership like we haven’t had in 40 years. And unlike in those days when only a few networks determined what was “news” and what we should care about, we’re free to steer the conversations that are most important to us, and this is clearly one of them as I’m asked about it daily. So, here’s an important question to consider. Have you already decided who you intend to vote for? How persuadable are you really? The answer to that first question may be complicated by the short list of officially declared candidates. The answer to the second question is an important one regardless. One of the most frequent early primary questions by pollsters is what the most important characteristic is in a presidential candidate to you. In mid-2019, when a field of twenty Democrat candidates had just begun seriously vying for position to run against President Trump, there was one consistent theme. And it’s the reason Joe Biden is president today. As many or more voters cared about beating Donald Trump as they did what a candidate stood for...
- Electability, and most specifically beating Donald Trump, was the single biggest motivating factor in determining the vote of Democrat primary voters. Joe Biden consistently polled the best against Donald Trump, so Democrats most consistently voted for him in the primaries and here we are. So, here’s the question. Do you most care about what candidate you most identify with? Do you care most about what they stand for? Do you most care about who you think is the most electable? In 2015 Republicans swept aside the “electability” question (Rubio consistently polled the best in 2016 head-to-head polling) opting instead for someone they identified with, and thought would fight for those beliefs. It worked in that cycle. The question is if it would again in the upcoming one as well? The reason I’ve framed this takeaway the way I have to this point is based on polling which just rolled in from a pollster well thought of on the right which paints an interesting picture. With DeSantis not having entered the race, Rassmussen hasn’t recently polled on him head-to-head nationally against Biden in 2024. But they have with Trump and Haley. In head-to-head 2024 polling against Joe Biden who do you think performs best? Rassmussen most recently has had Biden+3 against Trump (which is the worst of the major pollsters for Trump) but Haley up four. That’s a seven-point swing towards the right for Nikki out-of-the gate. It’s safe to say Nikki Haley isn’t likely to be a candidate most Republican voters identify the most with or think would be the biggest fighter for their values, however if “electability” were to be the prevailing theme could she be given more consideration than most might have considered? This will no doubt be seized on by Haley’s campaign. None of this practically matters anytime soon of course, but tactically it does. Campaigns need funds to run. Polls which point to potential viability can help provide them. Along with conversational food for thought.
- Florida’s fight against Biden’s Border Crisis. The Martha’s Migrants budget is limited. The recently ratified law only allocates $10 million for the relocation of illegals from Florida (or those inbound from other states as the case happened to be). But while leftists scoffed at the Martha’s Migrants stunt, last year they conveniently ignored the real crisis it was highlighting and the hard cost to Floridians specifically. In my analysis last year, I identified that the hard cost to the state of Florida for illegal immigration had reached $3.7 billion. That’s not million – that's billion. The cost to every Florida household? $468 dollars to support Biden’s open border crisis. If news media cared about being compassionate, they’d care about reporting those facts. What percentage of Floridians do you think would vote to end Joe Biden’s border/immigration policy if it meant a refund of $468 annually? But that was then, what we know is the crisis is even worse now. And with that in mind Governor DeSantis produced his newly proposed policy for consideration in the upcoming state legislative session targeting this crisis. Among the reforms proposed, enhanced penalties for human smuggling. Expanded E-Verify requirements to all employees under all circumstances (with business operation revocation for any violating employers). And the disincentivizing of illegal immigrants in Florida by invalidating any government issued ID from another location, mandated hospital reporting of illegal immigrants which receive care, prohibited tuition waivers for colleges and enhanced state detention policies when ICE releases illegals from detention. There’s only so much a state can do to crack down on illegal immigration when the President of the United States is encouraging it. But what’s proposed here seems to be it. That is whatever is left that the state can do this side of a dedicated daily flights of migrants to Martha’s.